Eliminate Ship Buffs!!!

[Forzah]

I'm for completely redoing ship buffs. This ship should be a place that you like to hang out in and have some fun, instead of a providing extra character power. So, remove buffs that directly influence gameplay (stats, resistances, etc) and create useful and fun things on the ship. I'm quite happy with stuff like the banker, teleporter, and inn, but it would be cool to have a brawling area on the ship in addition, as well as a damage testing facility. The ship should also have all the trainers and perhaps more advanced teleporters that teleport you to specific quest entrances in wilderness areas. Maybe also some small single or multiplayer puzzlesolving games. There are quite a few possibilities to make ships fun.

[HackSlashKill]

You may think getting it done faster is better, but that's not what she said...

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

[HackSlashKill]

I never dreamed when I was 1st playin that such a Gimmick could exist. 30 % resistance buff is what makes Elite dungeons(mid lvl and below) so Easy for the masses...I'm not to impressed with players who use them below 10th lvl.I been using my 20%ers ,hipacriticlly,to keep up with elite runners elem dam resistance.But I would love for them to Be Gone from the Game...or lvl limits for the resistance ones ,at least.Anyone who supports stupid airship buffs ,is walkin on a crutch of inadaquecy...How fustrating when last player joins your group,everyone at the entrance,and then player chat hits"can I have a ship invite" jesus fruit friggiin christ;often it is player, like 26th lvl in max destiny ,no less;what a joke.Real fair to new players too(sarcasim meter maxed)they are thinkin there are items to find to help run elite heroic;dont be to impressed newbs ;older players run the dungeon on crutches !

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

[Thumbed_Servant]

...

U22 - the Pirates of the Skyship edition...

now with skins to make your ship look like it is made out of beds!

Me WANT this!!!

[Thumbed_Servant]

...also want...a ship bartender wearing a SHIRT!

[Standal]

The only thing I really want from Turbine with regard to ship buffs is an extension of the timer. I want to be able to run a Vale flagging run and not have to rebuff. Ship buffs are here and they are here to stay. The discussion should be first how to prevent them from disrupting the flow of the game, not whether they should exist at all.

30 resists aren't as OP at low levels as people seem to think. It's an easy button, but prepared players always has a resist item that protected against the dominant elemental damage in a quest. With the possible exceptions of Proof is in the Poison and Taming the Flames, you could get resist 10 or 20 cloaks at low level that trivialized element damage.

[Nestroy]

The only thing I really want from Turbine with regard to ship buffs is an extension of the timer. I want to be able to run a Vale flagging run and not have to rebuff. Ship buffs are here and they are here to stay. The discussion should be first how to prevent them from disrupting the flow of the game, not whether they should exist at all.

30 resists aren't as OP at low levels as people seem to think. It's an easy button, but prepared players always has a resist item that protected against the dominant elemental damage in a quest. With the possible exceptions of Proof is in the Poison and Taming the Flames, you could get resist 10 or 20 cloaks at low level that trivialized element damage.

Yeah, and with the exception of 60hp damage lightning bolt spamming kobold shamans in lv. 2 elite quests. Holy sh** these guys hit w/o ship buffs... Had fun today in a solo run. Not for the weak lv. 1-2 toon anyways.

[Standal]

Yeah, and with the exception of 60hp damage lightning bolt spamming kobold shamans in lv. 2 elite quests. Holy sh** these guys hit w/o ship buffs... Had fun today in a solo run. Not for the weak lv. 1-2 toon anyways.

True. I had forgotten that elite is the new normal. Back when I picked up the proper resist item for level the leveling order was nnnnnnhe or however many normals you wanted to run. Frequently, we'd skip the elite run since we weren't up to it.

[Eistander]

Oh. This thread again. This has been mentioned waaaaay too many times to count, and it's fair to say that while I get it, they are here to stay. Path of least resistance and all that stuff.

[Nestroy]

True. I had forgotten that elite is the new normal. Back when I picked up the proper resist item for level the leveling order was nnnnnnhe or however many normals you wanted to run. Frequently, we'd skip the elite run since we weren't up to it.

The problem with elite is the insane beef-up even on lowest level content some monsters and especially traps got to counter exactly these effects from gear and buffs available to low level players. Add in a unhealthy dose of elite streak for XP (helps a lot on the TR path) and everybody wanting to see can clearly see where the whole problems we discuss here with the out-of-whack balancing issues come from. This cannot easily be solved by nerfing just ship buffs. The whole gear/buffs/EDs-countered-by-beefed-up-mobs-thing would need to get toned down. A complete back to the roots, perhaps? - Idk. Back to the roots would be nice, but do you really want to have a longsword hitting 1d8+2(enchantment)+Str+some feat beef for perhaps 12 points damage on lv. 8 fighters? Ofc the beholder would only have 52 hit points on elite... And some 8 hit points per eye stalk in addition ^^. The current system is not DnD, we have to accept that. It is DDO. I do not like the powercreeping, actually. But as long as I want to play DDO I have to accept that ship buffs are OP for low level content and EE end bosses have 150k hit points on average. And as long as the dumb elite and hard streaks system is in place, elite is the new normal, sorry. Especially for TR runners.

If I had a saying in the whole balancing issue, I would suggest to do the following:

• Tone down on bosses and mobs on hard and especially elite content for hit points and resistances.
• Tune up the intelligence of mobs and bosses on hard and elite content. They ofc may employ the same tactics, enhancements, gear and EDs as we players. Why not seeing blitzing or adrenaline mobs doling out 600-800 damage per hit? But it should be realistic damage, not artificially beefed up somethings. Same DCs for mob casters as for us. But same spell damage, ocf. Yes, this means MMs hitting for the full 600 crit damage on elite (procing shirardi effects ^^), with the usual beefed up 33% crit chance - per missile, on us players!
• Make most ship buffs give an additional % instead of fixed resistances, stats or other benefits. This would make buffing up before battle important again - on spells like "Resist Energy". This would make ship buffs interesting for high end EE content again - because the buffs would gain proportionally with the power level.
• Make most tavern / favor house casters give prolonged (and in case of favor house casters stronger) versions of the corresponding buffs like Resist Energy, Spell Resistance or Aid... This would make it interesting for pure melee / non-casting classis to visit the tavern instead to or in addition to the guild ship. Then and only then make the non working silver flame guy on the air ships to cast the most basic versions of the tavern spells at ship discount prices...
• Do away with stacking hard and elite streaks. instead give first time bonuses when a certain quest is done on hard and elite for the first time in a certain life. Make that bonus near as high as the max streak bonus possible. Make it independent from actual completion status, so anybody already having done the quest on elite, running it again on hard gives the hard bonus. On Normal gives no bonus and on casual gives a correct 50% deduction to normal.
• Now, to make group play more common, give a +2% bonus to XP per unique account joining a group and completing the quest. Bonus applies on the same logic that now calculates the quest XP for the joining group member.
• And, finally, for helping with grouping, make the death penalty (loss of bonus) an individual thing.

[Fnordian]

Ship buffs are cool and a nice bonus for being part of a guild, and aside from the elemental resists, the rest generally don't unbalance anything too much.

However, I'm definitely in favor of resistance shrines being changed to a percent bonus reduction instead of a fixed number.

This would make them more useful at high levels and no longer unbalanced at low levels. Win-win for everyone!

Since we know they'll be adjusting buffs anyway in the next full update (at least adjusting the durations and probably more), why not?

I'd also like to see buffs not counting down until you enter a quest--that would mitigate some of the issues of waiting for people. Or at the very least they shouldn't count down while you're still on the ship. I also wouldn't mind them not having a timer but instead lasting through a single quest...but I expect people who routinely run several quests in an hour wouldn't appreciate that so probably some sort of timer is still needed. Or perhaps they could last indefinitely until the character dies?

As for the delays--they've already said they'll be a single place you can get all buff on the ship, or rather, all buffs you want--I believe it was announced as an interface with check boxes so you could tick the ones you want to receive.

I think there was also talk about possibly having some permanently-installed buffs that you don't have to re-purchase every week or month. Not a huge deal maybe (although the large guild chest is a tad expensive) but that could be cool too. Or maybe it was permanent buffs while in the guild...not sure.

[BoBoDaClown]

I'm one of the ones who said 'if you don't like them, don't use them'.

So I disagree with that argument, for the reasons I outlined in another response.

I'm not really arguing for ship buffs to be taken away; they could probably do with a rejig, but that's got to be pretty low priority to other stuff that needs working on.