BBO - Best Buff Only

[John Adams]

Please explain this. I saw BBO mentioned a few times but was waiting til someone spelled it out

Is it as simple as it sounds? If someone casts Haste I on you, then I cast Haste II, I win? Mine knocks theirs off?

[Kilsin]

tl;dr: Yes you are correct in a way but the haste I remains under the haste II, best buff overwrites any other buff but the buffs were also boosted massively to compensate for this, so a 600 HP buff from say a Cleric's All in One APW/PotA was now on a Pally and was 900 HP (this is incorrect, just using it as an example for reference). Which made everyone super powerful (in addition to itemisation boosts, lorestone passive buff boosts etc).

They basically put it in the too hard basket with almost everything else and tried to dull it down for future content (because they made us too powerful for the current content).

Below is a paste from the official forums with the Dev thread discussing it with us.


https://forums.station.sony.com/vg/inde ... ges.70270/

Before getting into what we are proposing to change, let’s take a minute and talk about what we feel is wrong with the system in its current form.

Currently, it is very difficult for players to identify which of their abilities and items will stack with each other. As developers, it is also difficult and very time consuming to create abilities and items while checking against all of the rules currently in place.

Our goal with these changes is to simplify the buff stacking system so that the system can be understood without elaborate explanations. With a simplified stacking system the development team would also be able to safely remove the various stat caps that are limiting our ability to give item and buff progression with future content.

Now for the meat and potatoes, let’s discuss what changes we are looking at implementing.
· Stacking rules for player buffs will be that you receive the benefit from the best buff only.
· Stacking rules from Civics and EEs will be that they ALWAYS stack.
· Player buffs will be increased to compensate for the inherit nerf in the change of stacking rules.
· The player buffs will be re-evaluated and may see design changes with the new stacking rules in mind.

The above changes would provide the following:
· Classes are easier to balance and all classes are guaranteed to be valuable assets to a group.
· Player power will be mostly unaffected, and in most cases, improve player power for small groups and solo players.
· Stacking rules are clear, easy to understand, and entirely player-facing.
· The limits of the system are defined by the system, rather than an arbitrary ‘cap’, which will increase the design potential for progression.
· The system can be easily built upon to add new features.

To better explain what we are trying to do, let’s look at the example below:

Old System -
Queck’s Class Buffs
Buff 1
+25 STR
Buff 2
+500 HP
Buff 3
+30 INT

Rahtiz’s Class Buffs
Buff 1
+10 STR
Buff 2
+100 HP
Buff 3
+40 Int

Tloch14’s Class Buffs
Buff 1
+40 STR
Buff 2
+250 HP
Buff 3
+20 INT

Total Stats Granted under current System assuming that all buffs stacked
+75 STR (25+10+40)
+850 HP (500+250+100)
+90 INT (30+40+20)

New System -
Queck’s Class Buff
+50 STR
+850 HP
+60 INT

Rahtiz’s Class Buff
+30 STR
+250 HP
+90 INT

Tloch14’s Class Buff
+75 STR
+500 HP
+30 INT

Total Stats given under the new system will still be the same without any stat stacking
75 STR granted by Tloch14’s Buff
850 HP Granted by Queck’s Buff
90 INT Granted by Rahtiz’s Buff

[Kilsin]

I just wanted to quote Alimora here on this subject too, because it also applies to Lorestones and everything else basically.

"Just want to emphasize The impact of buffs on everything. If im fully buffed, i can solo everything in bod. if im unbuffed / self buffed the 5 dot elementals 2 shot me in 10 secs.
An buffed group can do a sod named run in 1 hour or less. unbuffed that time would probabaly be double.
I think its fair to say buffs double someone's power, and thats a modest estimate."

This was pretty much how most classes were, fully raid buffed included player buffs and civic buffs (plus passives) and without civic buffs in some cases, it made content extremely hard or just not doable unless you had 24+ players in epic/raid gear (best of the best kinda deal) like how it was back in the day with Akande the Butcher in OT for the Griffon quest, probably one of the hardest mobs in the game at that time (in his hardest version), even harder than raid mobs and without top gear, weapons, right class setup AND buffs, he was almost impossible, even with buffs back then he was a nightmare lol (but I enjoyed it a lot, I have great memories of sitting in OT with my guild cycling members through this part of the quest and helping other get this done).

So my point, buffs are pretty much make or break with VG content, it is a design fault that got way out of hand but sadly it is the reality, which is why a lot of the players who like Ali and myself, crunched numbers, didn't want them touched/changed/boosted/nerfed etc and just wanted to left alone because they balanced our game for us.

Plus there is the whole social aspect too of buffing random layers and starting a conversation, or pushing diplo civics and someone /shout Thank you for buffs! in chunk, i think that is important in VG and missing from a lot of games these days.

Sorry for the long posts, just wanted to be clear with a bit of history behind it and I know how you want this to be a community John, a lot of us share the same thoughts and want to continue that feeling and even build on it

[John Adams]

Perfect, thank you Kilsin. I'm glad you're here to answer my questions. I hadn't played VG in so long, I've forgotten most things and I will need reminders along the way, as will the dev team. Stuff like this is exactly what we need to reference later.

[Source1]

The SOE forums are only suppose to be kept up for another week or so. Might be a good idea to backup technical/design posts like these.

[Koralith]

Being that we can write buff stacking however we want, we can deal with the troubles that were causing the need for BBO in the first place.

We also aren't held back by having to balance around existing content because, well, there is no existing content yet. We get to balance the whole thing from the ground up and make sure it works.

The VG Devs did have a point though in that you never really knew which buff was going to overlap with what and how without extensively testing. So we all just slapped on whatever buff we could get and hoped for the best.

It would be nice to adjust things slightly so that it makes more sense, without the weirdness of the SOE BBO system.

Dungeons and Dragons gets around this issue by having buffs come from Types. Buffs of the same type do not stack. So if you have a Power bonus to Str from your gloves, a Feat bonus to Str from a level acquired feat, and an Epic bonus to Str because you're over level 21 these would all stack together. But if you had two Power bonuses to Str you'd only get the biggest. If you had two Power bonuses but they were for different things you'd get the effect of both.