[Request] Make Shadow of buffs not infinitely long duration

Nobody should be allowed to play this game if they don't know everything about every little detail in the game. You log in, you take a test. Get even one question wrong, you can't play for 24 hours.

I get that people disagree about the functionality and usefulness of these buffs, but it boggles my mind that some people think QoL adjustments like this can't be made because a person might not be forced to learn about every buff they have and manage them perfectly.

For those that keep bringing up increasing buff slots, they don't seem to know about the limitations the team faces in making that change. They probably should get a 24 hour vacation too.

Some of us read everything, have to know every detail, can't function without it, but not everybody is like that. Some people just want to play games with their friends and have fun. There's no reason these buffs can't retain their usefulness as junk buffs, while ceasing to annoy the rest of us, via the most simple change a dev could make, changing a 0 or a -1 to a number of ticks, or whatever they use, that is sufficiently long to make the duration change go mostly unnoticed. If that happens, and you don't notice, beware the login test, you might get a 24 hour vacation for not knowing everything about the game.

Insert 5000 right here you smug b@stards. Fricking heck!

Maybe instead of complaining on the forums about a problem why not educate the people who don't understand and are having buffs/heals blocked because they are buff locked?

This is a big part of the problem for newer players/casuals, and I think making EQ easier for people to get back into helps keep the game alive. There are plenty of other complicated things they need to learn, this is just a stupid thing that should've been changed when they made the stats go into AAs. I don't understand why so many are hell bent against a change in duration.

I would advocate for blocks for the other crappy buffs too, but at least those might be useful to some people depending on level. I'd thought about asking for making low level buffs not land on high level characters, but obviously there are a few that people still use, so I dismissed that. There's the cleric spell haste that doesn't overwrite. There's many factors, but this one could be fixed, but probably won't because people on this thread actually don't want to lose the infinite duration...for some reason.

I've made a few hotkeys that help with blocking alot of the unnecessary buffs at 115. And I've shared them with people openly. I was actually working on making a hotkey to block and then unblock them (to share on Freelance's forums), only to find out it doesn't work with shadow buffs. This was another reason I made this thread. I'd ask to make them blockable, but 1) I assume the code requires they land to activate the AAs (thinking that is why they aren't already blockable), 2) I assume the code work to make them blockable would be equal or more complicated than changing the duration. Otherwise, if they wanted to make them blockable, I'd be fine with that too.

I have, and will when I have to. But I play to have fun, and the only thing less fun than teaching the same boring lesson over and over again is arguing with people on the forums over a change that literally would hurt nobody, but yet is being resisted for reasons of... um, yeah, I guess I don't even understand the reason this is your hill to die on.

We can't have even one person out there thinking that every single EQ player doesn't know every intricate detail about the game.

Because its been stated trying to educate them has also failed.

You cant play the game for them, you can try and educate them though. Thats about as far as it goes and those willing to learn will maker changes. The rest will bask in the glory of many shadow buffs

The correct answer is to make all shadow buffs instant cast. This would make more players happy and not have to hunt for specific clickies.

It idea of them becoming AAs was so that players didn't have to carry a shed load of clickies (after so many asking for more bag space this was their solution). For the first time in years they have given us a dispelling dragons which means players need to keep junk buffs up.

On top of that some don't trust that the game doesn't take the AAs into account and like to keep the buffs up to see which they have.

Giving them a duration doesn't mean players who don't need them won't keep clicking them, which defeats the purpose of giving them a duration.

Best compromise I have seen so far is from Flatchy which was to give the option to turn them on or off.

Failing that give them the longest duration possible which is around 28 hours.

Give em a 2-6h duration and call it good.

I see tons of people walking around with these buffs on.

This is a fair representation of the issue.

Something drops and you don't know what it was, you might look into it, you might not. If you go to the trouble of finding it and clicking it, you might read the buff when it lands. No guarantee, just some potential social engineering.

I'm not opposed to that, and it's probably the second easiest change they could make, I just prefer the easiest one.

Totally reasonable, I don't want to make anything harder for those who use these for junk buffs. Just looking for a little compromise.

Have to keep them on indefinitely for the *checks last time on Sonty* just over 3 minute fight. Ok.

Sitting in a buff pile getting buffs you cannot cast yourself is surely not a waste of time and not a bad choice at all.

And no one returning from before they added shadow buffs would know to get rid of them unless someone told them and a lot of folks who were around when they were added may have forgotten about them.

Many folks who don't know about shadow buffs will know how to block spells.

In my opinion, handling as much as possible from the config screens at least gives the chance to returning or new folks to find the settings by looking there. As it is now too much information in EQ (like many modern games) is hidden from folks and gotten via word of mouth or third party sites. And if the same folks come here and ask things some meet them with disdain. So yeah.

Wait till the lag gets fixed on US servers and the fight will be longer than that, we take around 20 - 30 minutes.

Hate Sont raid with a passion, wish we could alternate each week which was round in a circle we go. I'm dizzy from going anti clockwise.

1. Most of them are raiders and want junk buffs in front in case of getting disspelled.
2. A lot of people are really anUl about the order their buffs are in and OMG this might disturb the force
3. These people want it to stay that way so think its completely fine and everyone should toe the line.

4. HUMANS AS A WHOLE HATE CHANGE , EVEN IF ITS FOR THE BETTER.

As a raid cleric I sorta like the shadow buffs. When I target a character that's loaded with them I know instantly not to bother buffing them because they're too clueless to deserve my time or my mana.

And I haven't targeted a single character ever that used them for dispells. They're always scattered randomly among the garden.

I use the Shadow buffs as a way to avoid getting despelled. They work good for that.

Ros buff clicky, rage earring clicky, AoN clicky, and the fluffy ball of cotton clicky (levitation. Work perfectly for the despells..

Your floating in Skelly form once you go back to normal form and drop to the ground you instantly know to recast the clickies.

Have we not been through this already? Did you miss the part where people don't absorb it? The part where they are oblivious to many of the over intricacies of everquest? Maybe instead of complaining on the forums about other people you should get some different clickies.

Change a part of EQ for the people that want and understand something for the people who don't care to learn? There are plenty of ways for people to get buff locked besides these shadow buffs.

I want it changed, me, not them. I don't care about being buff locked. I explained my reasoning already, but you just want to sit on your hill and crap on any suggestion that isn't "just leave them infinite."

They don't need to exist, DPG could get rid of them tomorrow and a handful of people would be bothered. Despite that, despite the fact that the person arguing against me (you) doesn't care about how this affects other people, I care about how it affects them (you again). Back away for a second and ask yourself, if after all your intransigent grandstanding, if I can still care about how this affects you, why couldn't you care, just a tiny bit, about how it affects others?

28 hours is more than sufficient. That allows you to play 8 hours a day for 3 days. If at the end of those three days, nothing has stripped them, then you click them again. If you play less than 8 hours a day it's even longer. If you only login for raids anyway, it could be weeks before they drop.

I'm not saying they must change it. I'm not saying it's a huge deal. I'm just saying, refusing to even acknowledge that both sides could be happy with a minor change is very short sighted.

They got put in as infinite buffs for a reason when it was switched to AA and many people like them if you don't like them you can easily click them off when you upgrade your gear to a new focus level. If you are complaining about people who are running around with it on than try to teach them about it. There is no reason to change it from permanent to 28 hours or less as the people who think they need it up will just keep on recasting it instead of getting rid of it like they should.