'Blessed Advantage' Master boon bugged.

rockster · June 2021

@nitocris83 'Blessed Advantage' Master campaign boon is bugged and needs investigating. I've put in a ticket, but before that I also posted in the general section here to see if I could get some info on whether anyone else is noticing this problem but first I had to find some people who actually use the boon. I've had no responses so can't offer anything in that regard.

About 4 or 5 days back I got enough boon points to place the third one on the Master Boon and had gone with Blessed Advantage as a cleric heal spec, but since then I have not seen it proc even one time. And I've been taking careful notice and looking-out for it to show. I know from my past experience that the Master Boons are meant to show a red text when procced (you see it and all other party members also see it) I also know that the other Blessed Master Boon 'Blessed Resilience' is working as intended, proccing and producing the red text because I have been in a couple of trials over the last week with a second or third healer and have seen it happen. But this Master Boon is either not working at all, or just not showing the text. I have high heals and routinely heal for far more than the 10% you need to proc it, but I have not seen it proc one time in a huge amount of grinding since enabling it as a healer in groups. I understand it's only a 'chance' at proccing but I would have seen at least one instance of it happening by now so it's definitely bugged in some way. Thx.

nitocris83 · June 2021

I'll check with the rest of the team for investigation.

rockster · June 2021

ty @nitocris83 . Btw, I haven't yet posted a similar bug report, but the master boon I chose on the dps spec on the same character ('Deathly Rage') I also have not yet seen proc even once (I put the third and final point on that at the same time as I did on Blessed Advantage as I was moving both specs up the boon tree simultaneously). This is akin as you would know to 'Blood Lust' which you do see proc all the time in groups as it is probably the most used master boon for dps specs, and you see the red text etc. The difference between both is that Blood Lust gives a chance at proccing on encounter use (and I see it proc/appear on the screen quite a lot when in parties) and Deathly Rage has a chance on proccing only on a kill. But it's really the exact same situation as Blessed Advantage where I'm routinely healing for more than 10% and should have seen it appear at least once by now, because as a solo dps grinding out run after run I am killing everything I find, and similarly, I have not yet seen that text on my screen even one time yet since enabling it. If I'm killing enemy after enemy all on my own and there is a constant supply of kills happening, you would expect it would show at some stage, but no it hasn't appeared. And while the text doesn't appear, you cannot know it is even working. But in the case of this boon I was waiting a little longer to see if it finally appeared. After about a week more if I still do not see it appear one time I will of course post a bug thread on that one as well, but it's probably better to keep both separate on the forum. Cheers.

seekey · June 2021

My cleric has only 2 points on 'Blessed Advantage' but i also haven't seen the text. And i haven't seen it for other healers either lately, even when i'm with other character.
Also I heard about 1 year ago when I chose masterboon for my assassin that 'Deathly Rage' wasn’t used by many players because something wasn’t right with its activation for a long time and I was advised to use 'Blood Lust' instead.

rockster · June 2021

seekey#7769 said:
My cleric has only 2 points on 'Blessed Advantage' but i also haven't seen the text. And i haven't seen it for other healers either lately, even when i'm with other character.
Also I heard about 1 year ago when I chose masterboon for my assassin that 'Deathly Rage' wasn’t used by many players because something wasn’t right with its activation for a long time and I was advised to use 'Blood Lust' instead.

To my knowledge the red text never shows up until you have all three points assigned and the boon is fully activated. With regards 'Deathly Rage' which was the other one I have not seen, this is interesting info ty. @nitocris83 please refer to the comment quoted above fyi. I did mention this already and am still yet to post the thread on it.

lassor · July 2021

The Blessed Advantage Master Boon is working as expected, however as you said the pop-up text wasn't triggering as it does with other Master Boons. Rather than add the pop-up text for this boon, we've decided to remove said combat pop-up text from the Master Boons that had that functionality enabled to reduce combat text clutter and make their trigger behavior uniform. Master Boons all have a buff and associated icon that display on its intended target when the Master Boon is triggered.

While I was fiddling around with the Blessed Advantage and Blessed Resilience master boons I made a small tweak to how the percentage chance is evaluated to trigger. This could result in players that often heal for less than 10% of a target's hp with their healing spells seeing these boons activating more frequently when they do heal over the required threshold.

These changes are targeted to go live with the launch of M21.

rheylinsark · July 2021

lassor said:
The Blessed Advantage Master Boon is working as expected, however as you said the pop-up text wasn't triggering as it does with other Master Boons. Rather than add the pop-up text for this boon, we've decided to remove said combat pop-up text from the Master Boons that had that functionality enabled to reduce combat text clutter and make their trigger behavior uniform. Master Boons all have a buff and associated icon that display on its intended target when the Master Boon is triggered.

While I was fiddling around with the Blessed Advantage and Blessed Resilience master boons I made a small tweak to how the percentage chance is evaluated to trigger. This could result in players that often heal for less than 10% of a target's hp with their healing spells seeing these boons activating more frequently when they do heal over the required threshold.

These changes are targeted to go live with the launch of M21.

Personally speaking, I like the reassurance of the red text to indicate that the Master Boon is proccing. However, that's your call. Can you please confirm, @lassor, whether or not Deathly Rage is currently working as intended?

rockster · July 2021

rheylinsark#1888 said:

lassor said:
The Blessed Advantage Master Boon is working as expected, however as you said the pop-up text wasn't triggering as it does with other Master Boons. Rather than add the pop-up text for this boon, we've decided to remove said combat pop-up text from the Master Boons that had that functionality enabled to reduce combat text clutter and make their trigger behavior uniform. Master Boons all have a buff and associated icon that display on its intended target when the Master Boon is triggered.

While I was fiddling around with the Blessed Advantage and Blessed Resilience master boons I made a small tweak to how the percentage chance is evaluated to trigger. This could result in players that often heal for less than 10% of a target's hp with their healing spells seeing these boons activating more frequently when they do heal over the required threshold.

These changes are targeted to go live with the launch of M21.
Personally speaking, I like the reassurance of the red text to indicate that the Master Boon is proccing. However, that's your call. Can you please confirm, @lassor, whether or not Deathly Rage is currently working as intended?

yes please. does this mean i will no longer see blood lust?

wilbur626 · July 2021

Pretty please with sugar on top keep the master boon text @lassor , I need to know when I have Focused Retaliation up and can go full facetank 😅

rockster · July 2021

I think taking them away is a bad idea.

rockster · July 2021

lassor said:
The Blessed Advantage Master Boon is working as expected, however as you said the pop-up text wasn't triggering as it does with other Master Boons. Rather than add the pop-up text for this boon, we've decided to remove said combat pop-up text from the Master Boons that had that functionality enabled to reduce combat text clutter and make their trigger behavior uniform. Master Boons all have a buff and associated icon that display on its intended target when the Master Boon is triggered.

While I was fiddling around with the Blessed Advantage and Blessed Resilience master boons I made a small tweak to how the percentage chance is evaluated to trigger. This could result in players that often heal for less than 10% of a target's hp with their healing spells seeing these boons activating more frequently when they do heal over the required threshold.

These changes are targeted to go live with the launch of M21.

I've been thinking about this and it really seems a bad idea to remove all the texts which pop-up. It's just one more thing being deleted which has been part of the game for a very long time and people find value in. Anything which gives us information on what's going on is much wanted. Why force us to take our attention away from the battle to try to recognize some tiny icon (we won't even know what it is because you have no official lists or guides on icons for us to find out) on a target and which target was it, which one got it, trying to work all that out in the middle of a heavy battle etc. Not good. We already deal with wonky tooltips being often wrong and they removed many of the buffs from the top bar where we could see them at a glance during combat to know if they were still active or needed refreshing and now have to manually dig into a menu out of combat to see if it's still active for instance and even then it doesn't tell you fully what you want to know, we just keep losing at-hand information content we need. Please don't take away one more source of info for us. Why is it so hard to just put the text in to match what is going on with the other buffs which are already working as intended. Respectfully, please stop deleting content under the guise of making things better. This is taking something away which has been part of the game forever, just making things even more empty and hollow for the players.

lassor · July 2021

Thanks for those that shared their thoughts on the removal of the pop-up text for the Master Boons.

We have to be cognizant of how many power name triggers we are putting into the combat text pop-ups as it can quickly become unreadable. There are many powers that trigger in the game that are purposely set to not to have these pop-ups. One of the determining factors as to whether a power should get a combat text pop-up or not is whether it will potentially result in players altering their behavior as a result of it triggering. The Master Boons are currently constructed in a way in which they augment a playstyle rather than altering it, so we don't believe a notification is warranted in this situation.

If someone has a compelling argument to the contrary then we can talk about that specific instance, but my reading of the current replies seems to point to a lack of faith of the boons functioning which is likely due to the fact that half were set up for notifications and the other half were not. If there's an issue with the boons working then send me some info and I'll get it fixed. I certainly didn't do a deep dive into all of the Master Boons while I was making these changes but all of the ones I tested were triggering when they should, including Deathly Rage.

datarider · July 2021

replies seems to point to a lack of faith of the boons functioning which is likely due to the fact that half were set up for notifications and the other half were not.

Actually there is a lack of faith that anything works... you must be new here

PLease, dont remove what WORKS, fix what doesnt...

rockster · July 2021

@lassor Can you please provide us with a list of the icons for all the master boons so we know what we are looking for. Also, I would think that a player knowing when something is triggering and being able to verify that ingame for themselves without having to continually verify with the game developers (in a game full of bugs when so many things do not work and it's up to the players to monitor it and report it or else things do not get fixed) would be a compelling-enough reason to keep the texts which are there and add the ones which are missing so we can keep tabs on how our game is functioning. Also you said: "The Master Boons are currently constructed in a way in which they augment a playstyle rather than altering it, so we don't believe a notification is warranted in this situation." Yes, but this is a feature which has been in the game forever, you get your master boon, it is special and hard to get, takes an eternity, and when you do finally get it, one of the things you get is a notification when it triggers as part of that experience, it is not like other powers, master boons are in their own category where the user experience/extended journey to get them and the payoff/result of having one is concerned. We do not want this feature deleted.

lassor · July 2021

A few points:

The icons for the Master Boons are displayed on the boons page where you purchase them
Any player can do a very quick test to verify that their boons are working correctly. In the case of Blessed Advantage which started this thread, you can simply heal a target repeatedly for over 10% of their maximum hp and you will see the boon trigger in short order.
A trigger message on any power does not necessarily mean that it's functioning correctly, it simply means that the criteria to trigger the power was met.

While I can appreciate that some people found value in the trigger messages on the Master Boons that supported them, there will also be players that would prefer not to be notified about powers that have no bearing on their actions. We can't make everyone happy with every decision that we make but I think you will find that I gave you valid reasoning for the change, whether you agree with the decision or not.

oberonsghost · July 2021

deleted

rockster · July 2021

@lassor There are two things going on here, one relates directly to a single feature (which has been around for years and years as part of the game) which is being deleted, but the other relates to the larger picture where many things from the game which have been around for years and players find value in are being deleted and this is not a popular direction and is putting the game in bad standing with players and pushing them away. The accountants know this already. The larger picture is the continued deletion of things which make the game what it is and this is but one symptom/example of one small thing deleted from the game added-up to so many others which results in an ugly and unpleasant pattern and players have had enough. You may see this as one single issue relating only to the master boon texts but if you do you are being extremely myopic.

I assure you this master boon text deletion issue is one of those proverbial nails which go in a coffin as far as players go. You may see it as nothing but I am giving you one last warning that this will not be a popular move particularly with players who use the Blood Lust master boon (virtually every DPS in the game) and I don't really think you really understand the full impact of what you are intending to do and how it will upset players and once again make them feel resentful.
As a side note, the red bold text for the master boons is unique to them as you know and unlike any other text appearing in the game, it was designed that way to give a special quality and experience to the player once they got their much-valued master boon. It appears in the center of the screen but could be coded to appear in any position. If you were worried about text becoming illegible should the boons all display at once (not likely but anyway) all you need do is offset them so they do not overlap each other. Not hard. Finally, if you are unable or unwilling to rectify the missing texts, at least leave the existing ones alone. Deleting all of them to make it consistent with ones not working properly (which caused this bug report in the first place) is ridiculous.
Regards.

armadeonx · July 2021

I know it won't happen, but I'd prefer a visual display choice option where notifications are given categories and players can select whether or not they wish to see those categories.

It would help a lot with testing and if done with certain criteria in mind, roles could choose to prioritise types of buff such as healing, enemy debuffs, personal dps buffs etc.

datarider · July 2021

I trigger Blood Lust all the time on my DC healer

I dont have that boon picked on that loadout... is this a bug or a sudden feature... hmmmmm hamster hamster hamster

rheylinsark · July 2021

I find it amusing that the reason for the red text being taken away is screen "clutter," as a frequent early complaint about the combat rework was damage numbers being significantly reduced ("I miss my 1,000,000+ hits!") -- which created less clutter. So, I'm not sure to whom creating "less clutter" is aimed.

alquimistgg · July 2021

lassor said:
A few points:

The icons for the Master Boons are displayed on the boons page where you purchase them
Any player can do a very quick test to verify that their boons are working correctly. In the case of Blessed Advantage which started this thread, you can simply heal a target repeatedly for over 10% of their maximum hp and you will see the boon trigger in short order.
A trigger message on any power does not necessarily mean that it's functioning correctly, it simply means that the criteria to trigger the power was met.
While I can appreciate that some people found value in the trigger messages on the Master Boons that supported them, there will also be players that would prefer not to be notified about powers that have no bearing on their actions. We can't make everyone happy with every decision that we make but I think you will find that I gave you valid reasoning for the change, whether you agree with the decision or not.

First of all I would like to thank @lassor for taking the time to give us their point of view here, we are in need of more of this on the forum, if possible ask your co-workers to take a look at the dead threads from M21 pls.

Secondly, I need to defend some points that I think are important, information, we have a lack of in-game information, we have skills that don't explain well what they do, we have items that don't explain their effects well, we have companions with ACBs or even their skills with vague information , and its up to the player to test everything to try to find out, thatrs actually not cool.

I agree that there is no way to please everyone, but some things can be improved, and the removal of the red texts is not an improvement for me, as you yourself mentioned will have those who will find this removal beneficial, and I don't doubt you,
my proposal is to make things more informative and optional.

As mentioned by my colleague above, our buff bars today are largely hidden even when it's not the long-lasting effects. having to click on the purple arrows to know if any potion effects are active for example is not cool. We need more control over what's going on and while I agree with you that master boons aren't something that changes our gameplay decisions but rather empowers, it still seems to me a bad idea to remove them.

A question to you, if you feel like answering. Have you ever played FFXIV? there we have a very nice control over what is happening, the buffs and debuffs bar are divided into some individual parts and we can position them where we want, in addition, similar effects as in master boon it shows the effect name and icon making it easy to quickly identify what you're looking for, plus all the buff and debuff bar effects have a small numerical count of duration time and a visual fill effect similar to what we get when we use a skill and shows downtime simulating a clock, and you see, it may seem like a lot of information to some and that's okay, we can hide, resize, reposition each of these bars. I'm not trying to make an inevitable comparison, I recognize that they are very different games and I know that pleasing everyone is difficult, so we need choices. Whether or not to receive the master boon red text information should be a choice of each player and not something imposed on everyone.

I remember Neverwinter before M16 with its huge descriptions on skills and items, I loved reading it all. in M16 everything was extremely reduced with the excuse that it was to simplify things, something that was imposed on everyone, when a more inclusive and richer solution for the game would be to make a large and complete text of each thing, and another summarized text, when checking each item we would see the summarized text and those who wanted more information would click on a small button or hold a button with ctrl to display the full text.

Assuming that you had the patience to read all of my text, I would like to emphasize just that, we want choices, there is no way to please everyone, but it is possible for almost everyone.

'Blessed Advantage' Master boon bugged.

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