This will probably not make a difference to anyone who: plays a single toon, boxes multiple toons, or always plays with lots of other people who can buff them. I have a single account with 90+ chanter, mage, cleric, druid, necro, and shammy (and other lower levels) and it irritates me that the only player characters in the game I can not buff are my own alts. This can be especially irritating when i am looking for chanter crack and can't find anyone to supply it. For the most part, I have just gotten used to running mage, cleric, druid, and shammy without crack which may be as it should be. In any event, it would be nice if there was a mechanism that allowed a toon to turn a spell into a token and pass that to his or her alts so that they could cast the spells on themselves, their pets, their mercs, or their groups. To that end, I have the following suggestion: place a mechanism in the guild lobby on which characters can cast beneficial spells and receive a token which records the specifics of the spell. These tokens should be treated as heirlooms which are locked to the account of the character that created them but can be put in shared bank for distribution to other toons on the same account. To use the tokens, they should be clicked within range of the machine in guild lobby and will cause the tokenized to be cast on the user's target at that time (if also in range of machine) . Ideally, the spell token would record all of the spell parameters at the time it was cast by the original caster (including effects of equipment, AA, buffs, ...) but that would probably be difficult to code in which case either consider the parameters of the user of the token or cast a pure vanilla version of the spell which ignores AA, buffs, equipment, and so on (my least favorite but at least I would be able to get Foresight for my mage). Since the token has to be used at the site of the machine in the guild lobby, they couldn't be used to "store spells" for use in combat, post-wipe, or whatever which would have a detrimental effect on planned encountered balance. Since they could only be used by toons on the same account, they could not be sold to others and would have less affect on buff vending characters than would be the case if they were freely distributable. Thanks in advance to anyone who comments on this considering my initial constraints of allowing toons to buff others on the same account rather than telling me to learn to live with it or to learn to box or to find a vendor or find a group or a better guild. Thanks for your time and consideration. *ducks for cover* Ok, Fire Away.
Well, you just listed 4 ways you could overcome this issue yourself, 3 of which involve more interaction with other people...in this social, massively multiplayer world... I took the 4th way:- my shaman and enchanter started life as buff bots. You can have level 95 aa-extended buffs - for free these days - in less time than it takes the devs to code the tokens. I know you're saving your thanks for people who agree with you (and I would love those thanks, really I would) but I'd rather the devs spent their time on things I can't overcome myself, so nice idea but I'm going to vote no.
Sounds crazy. There IS a reason why not everybody got all buffs. It was always part of the game to cooperate and ask others for them. Besides, anyone can create free Accounts now to create buff bots.
No, it doesn't make any sense. If you want buffs, make buffbots on separate account, you don't have to box them all the time.
Thanks for the input. Not that it will make any difference, but perhaps a little more explanation of why I have the constraints that I do might be illuminating. For the record, I like to raid, group, and solo. Why solo in an MMO? Sometimes I just what to grind some mobs and not talk to anyone. Other times, it is because I am logging on at a weird time and only have a half hour or so and finding a group or trying to find someone online at the time who can buff would take most of the time I have available. Most of the time I just get tired of asking for the buffs and play without them. Even when I have brief time to play, I am usually willing to log my chanter on and bomb haste and crack in the lobby to help others who play at weird hours. When my cleric, druid, and shammy get to 100, I will do the same with them. Like I said, it is irritating that the only toons I can't buff myself are my own alts. As for making a buffbot on another account, I have difficulty running multiple accounts on my laptop especially if there is anything exciting (i.e. combat) going on. Of course, if you want to send me money for a new computer that could handle it ... Besides, I don't really feel like spending the time and effort to level a toon whose only purpose is so that I can buff my own toons. I would rather spend the time getting my alts to 100. Not creating toons that I won't be playing often. Now you say "well then you are going to have to get used to not having the buffs." And I say, I am used to that but fortunately I can at least ask for something that allows me to correct what I see as a problem in the game. Now you say "it isn't a problem it is the way the designers intended". And I say that doesn't stop me from asking. Githy, thanks for at least including a valid reason for opposition (that you would rather the devs spent their time on things you can't overcome yourself). Everyone else just basically ignored the context of the questions and told me that I need to adopt their play style rather than trying to improve the game for my own. It is as if someone posted asking for a better caster augment and people responded "Caster. Pffft. You shouldn't be playing a caster, you should play a tank. And the best augment for a tank is xxx." While the information may be correct it doesn't address the suggestion. I like grouping. I don't mind asking other for buffs. Sometimes people aren't available to help. I don't particularly want to create a buff bot as my system can't handle it very well. I pay for the game so I am asking for something that makes my experience better. If devs don't want to do it, I will live with it. But I can still ask. Thanks for your time and consideration, Mykos
I think it's more a case that folks think the suggestion is a bit out there. When you make characters on the same account, it's a limitation of this game and of any other game that works with a '1' char per account. It's nothing new, so it's not an irritation that any of us believe SoE is going to fix. There are vendor and player made potions for SE (beastlord), clarity, haste (enchanter), use a cleric merc for certitude/symbol and a few others.
For the record I think your idea is reasonable in how you describe it, but limited dev time is truly an issue All I can offer are some suggestions on using a buffbot account. You already have a merc cleric and can buy clarity potions so initially just level a Shaman. Running multiple copies If your laptop is low on resource you may want to turn all settings down to minimum or even lose horses by using old models (I've done that previously). This may let you run two instances. I use [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], which handles running more than one copy (1 week free trial I believe) and seems to need less resource than just running the game twice. Levelling your buffbots You might want to buy a Krono and sell it for powerleveling. There's also an offer on for new recruited accounts that gives a set of goodies (see end of the post) An alternative is to pay for a character transfer to a second account for one of your characters (I think it's way overpriced though). Copied from Qest T Silverclaw's signature: FREE MOUNT, 8 SETS OF GEAR, 14 XP POTIONS, 20-SLOT BAG, and much more! https://recruit.soe.com/recruit/smlanding.action?iId=Q9SBVNK936F12XHGQXP8&gamecode=EQ Works for new (free and/or paid) accounts and accounts that haven't logged in in the past 180 days.
I once suggested that the devs implement an npc that you can trade pp or alternate currency for buffs in the guil lobby. I found it odd that players with enough plat were able to hire a "cleric" merc and receiving Rez, hp and spell haste buffs that are the equivalent to max group players along with all those free heals. Paying for cleric mercs diminishes the usefulness of paladins and clerics. I have felt for a long time that if another class say ranger should have access to cleric buffs then so too should a cleric have access to ranger buffs and so on. There could be multiple options for a "package deal" on buffs allowing you to purchase a raid buff equivalent rk1 buffs. They could also tie these bonus features behind a quest arc etc. as well as making the ability to purchase standard buffs separately. You used to be able to hail certain npcs in old eq for a heal or cure for coin and with the advent of mercs this seems fair, to the classes usurped by their Rk ii buffs. Dzarn also wrote a script that he used while beta testing VoA that allowed him to autocast all relevant raid buffs to speed up downtime while testing. I think this would make an excellent veteran reward useable every 2 hours or so only in a resting state. I don't think farming everything out is a great solution to the dwindling playerbase but I also do not appreciatee the double standards so prevelant in eq lately. Why should a zerker or Druid be able to cast cleric buffs by hiring the right npc but the cleric player cannot hire or pay an npc for a Druid buff.
Npcs that buff you (your group) are more than fine, but using toons from my account as buff bots is silly idea even for me - cleric, who hates boxing.
A decent idea in theory, but I'd rather the devs focus on more critical issues (and there are tons of them). I don't expect this to be a very popular reply, but oh well here goes. Buffs are a crutch. If I catch a drive-by MGB in the guild lobby, yay me. Otherwise I happily self buff with spells/clickies/potions, pop a merc for some cleric love, and off I go. For most classes, dare I say all, in everyday grouping, top-shelf buffs aren't the end all be all of my EQ livelihood. One unfortunate exception was my brief fixation with high-level mage DS in the 60s and early 70s, but I could have done without.
