Suggestion: Self buff scrolls for Personas.

I think a good way to reward people who utilize personas is add a way for people to make self only, no drop/no trade buff scrolls for targetable spells (so this excludes self only class buffs, so there remains balance and consistency). For example. If someone has a level 65 cleric, let them create virtue scrolls that they can use as their personas. Remove the heirloom tag from it on all servers. This would be a nice reward for players that fully utilize the persona system.

So like, 1000+ new items to cover all the various targetted buffs or do you have a simpler list in mind?

While this is a nice idea, it is heading too much towards having all classes rolled into one.

Isn't the reward for using personas ... the personas themselves?

These types of requests are exactly what I feared when they introduced the persona system. Requests for further development work that only benefits a small portion of the player base ... and further devalues grouping and seeking out others for assistance.

I think reaching 120 in each class should give a small, non break-or-make bonus.

like a 120 ranger persona would give all personas a 10% extra forage chance, a 120 cleric would give a faster cooldown for expedient recovery, etc.

but NOTHING that would ever make a group/guild/raid say 'you must have this to join us' so nothing that could be the deciding factor in winning a combat encounter like defense/offense buffs.

How is it any different than asking for buffs in PoK/Guild Lobby? It's no different than if you box different classes either.

How will it take 1000+ items? You can make the effects temporary. Buy a scroll and when it's on your cursor, have any buffs cast apply the effect to that scroll instead of the character, simple solution, then you can consume that scroll to apply the effect to a persona. Can even make the enchanted scrolls temporary so people can't just stockpile them day after day.

I do like your ideas on those bonuses, honestly. The hardcore no-life guilds already have stupid requirements like what you listed for other things though.

Even something like that comes with balance issues. Should tanks be required to level multiple personas so they can immediately rebuff themselves following a combat rez? What about short duration buffs that are supposed to be constantly recast, should casters be expected to carry around mana flare scrolls?

Personas were never really figured out well enough by DBG to be fair. You're always going to get these kind of questions as information gets blurred the deeper you go beyond "you can switch to another class". In a similar post, someone has just asked if they could also change their names when they switch personas. I guess 'Healzforplat' is SOL if they want personas.

As someone who used to play in the quiet time on my server, I'm still of the opinion that we could have NPCs that charge for group buffs in PoK etc. It would allow players to game on their own schedule and would greatly reduce the lag piles in PoK / Guild Hall by giving some players the chance to actually log off rather than stay online and AFK for 20+ hours of the day.

Any "requirements" would be between that tank and their guild. The game doesn't require you to do anything you don't want to. If your guild starts getting on you to do something as a requirement, and you don't want to, find a different guild or set boundaries. It's that simple.

Again, my suggestion is to reward people for taking time to level each persona. On Oakwynd I have every persona at level 65 and do MGBs on every class regularly for the community, but it would be nice to be able to do the same for myself as well without having to level another separate set of 65 buffers on a 2nd account. People way overthink intentions.

Sure let's do this. But remove Mercs from EQ to balance it out.

Otherwise, no.

I don't see how those two topics are related in any manner.

No. Personas do not need perks. The perk of using personas is that you can use all of the no trade raid armor, port clickies, and all sorts of other things of your main without doing it again.

I just started using my persona and the only thing I see personas needing are...

1) Armor swaps to drop into a dragon-hoard type storage instead of into bags
2) An XP bonus to make up for a lack of ACH XP, which should work like TLP, where you get a XP bonus to leveling when you have a character at max level, or give the ACH XP bonus to the persona somehow.
3) I anticipate a problem with augments but I haven't got there yet.

This post and all the other posts are the same. Personas suck and I want free stuff. No, personas are fine and you don't need an incentive to play them. They just need to put in a few things to correct logistical problems (gear swaps, no ACH XP, etc)

Guy says personas don't need perks...then proceeds to name perks they need, checks out.

First, I never said personas suck. I have 15 level 65 personas on Oakwynd (Berserker isn't out yet) and am a huge advocate towards them. I just want them to have a better tradeoff in exchange for the inventory space being used.

1) I agree, storage is an issue, but I don't see them changing it any time soon.

2) You're describing Oakwynd's legacy experience system

3) The only issue with augments currently is they go into your bags when you change to a class that uses different augs in those items, so you have to carry all of your augs with you.

If its no different then just ask for buffs. Not sure why having personas requires this. If it becomes common for folks to have all buffs then the game will be balanced towards having all buffs and the advantage of having all buffs totally disappears. This is an example of be care of what you wish for.

...you did see the part where I said you can already get all of the buffs on a second account, right? I literally fully buff my entire raid on my own on one character, and if I feel like it I could repeat it on my box.

So again, tell me how implementing a way to do it on one account vs requiring a second is any different. I think it would just be a nice quality of life improvement.

I do not understand what your reply is saying. No one can full buff a raid with one character at one time. Is your raid going to wait while you switch personas over and over? That IS a balancing thing and you want to take that balance away. And I am talking about just playing the game out of raids. People generally don't go around raid buffed outside of raids unless they just finished a raid.. The raiding game assumes people are fully buffed for tuning the group game does not.

And I will say again in the group game as soon as everyone always has all buffs the game will be balanced towards everyone always having all buffs. Raiding adds other challenges to get around everyone being buffed up... rebuffing on the go, debuffs etc. Thats not nearly as big a thing in the group game. Having access to everything means the devs balance the game towards that.

This is just another Easy Button request.

Each item/effect in the game, no matter if it is temp, consumable, or permanent, has a database entry in the 'code'. The database governs how the item works, looks, tradability, etc. Even when they make a new item via "copy/paste/adjust", they still need to create a new entry in the database. So, what you're asking is that every 'buff' spell in the game have a second database entry for an item that can be used. Thus, the 1000+ items comment.

This assumes that the implementation would work by converting a "Blank Buff Scroll" item to a "Scroll of Hand of Virtue" or something like that when cast, where the buff scroll is predefined. For EQ that is most likely how it would work, but just wanted to point out that the poster was describing a more dynamic system where the Buff Scroll's Spell FK is set at runtime when the buff is cast. It's possible that this could be implemented with just one or two items added. A benefit of going this route as opposed to the item per buff route (if possible for this hypothetical scenario), is that it is future proof for newly added spells each expansion.

Setting it at run time IS using a database entry for it. A blank scroll converted to a buff item. Unless each buff item is 100% identical to every other buff item converted from the blank scroll, it would need it's own entry to record what that item is supposed to do at a later time if it is supposed to hold a spell or whatever. If you had just 1 single character across all servers with a single blank scroll imprinted with a single buff spell, you could do it with just 2 new items in the database and the 2nd one being a variable item that can be dynamically created and destroyed on use (with no other being made while it's "set"). Otherwise, if that 2nd item if set by one character, when another character sets the 2nd item, the database entry would be overwritten and the 1st character would then have their 2nd item set to the spell desired by the 2nd and not the one they expect.

Having a transactional process is usually much more transitory with the 'key' being discarded after a set amount of time and each process is locked while it is in that transaction. Think about how a shopping cart works on a website, whether by database or other structure, database is just the easiest. Some sites can retain items in the cart a longer time because they have an underlying code to store that data associated with a particular user while others have a shorter association because the code and storage for a longer 'temp' association balloons with the increased time of that association. AND, like MQing in game, without code to divide the association in some way (i.e. mark what belongs to one and not another who comes later), the 2nd that comes along gets what the 1st had.

From what I understand, EQ's base structure, because development was started on it in the mid-90s, is not as sophisticated as Amazon's transactional cart and checkout system. EQ's base has gotten upgrades over the intervening time, but not to the same extent and not with the same concept of transactional processing that would be needed to have dynamic items created without a permanent database entry.

AND, just think of the field day the 3rd party app botters would have with being able to write their own effects, etc. on a dynamic temporary item.

We may be talking about different things. Yes, the blank scroll wouldn't be updated in the ItemDefinitions table or whatever it is, that would definitely fail as you described. What I described assumed updating item instances in players' inventories though I didn't actually state it explicitly. Your shopping cart analogy makes sense there, with the inventory being the cart. And now that I actually put some thought toward it, yeah, that probably wouldn't work either due to that inventory instance of the item probably just being a foreign key to said ItemDefinitions table. It would require a custom implementation for sure. As long as the code to update an item is server authoritative, I'm not sure how hackers would have an advantage to print their own effects, but with the other challenges not really relevant as the feature as I described is too convoluted to be implemented in the first place.