questions

When the global buffs system was introduced in December, I knew there would be some bots that didn't want to have the experience buff ever enabled (e.g. bots built for a certain level that don't want to outgrow their current level), so I added support for pausing them like regular buffs. I just checked out the usage data and was both surprised and not surprised:

• Number of bots that have global experience buff disabled = 1,269
• Number of bots that have global kudos buff disabled = 247
• Number of bots that have global battle speed buff disabled = 29

I'm not surprised at the 1,269 bots with experience disabled. This makes sense and was the main motivation for including pause support for global buffs.

The 247 bots with kudos disabled are mostly surprising. Maybe there's an argument for leaving it off if having more kudos on you can make you a bigger target?

The 29 bots with battle speed disabled baffle me. What am I missing there?

(For context, I'm working on making the daily energy exchange increase a global buff for better visibility. I was debating whether to make this pause-able for consistency or not pause-able because it's seemingly pointless to do so. I'm leaning towards just making it pause-able anyway (consistency + no special case needed in the code), which made me wonder about pause usage of kudos / battle speed buffs, hence me now asking for feedback about it here!)

No idea why anyone would want to turn them off unless by misstake, Xp one I understand though.

The logical example that comes to mind is if the player has already purchased a lvl 3 speed buff and doesn't plan on using all of those buffed battles. Then they might turn off the global buff just to have 1 active buff showing?

Many bot types are indifferent to having any type of kudo buff active (e.g. bots made to lose - only used to dump energy); so this one being slightly higher isn't too outlandish.

I've dialed them on bots I don't use because I don't like it active while the rest on the bar are disabled.

I mostly just pause because I generally have the Tier III buffs running anyway

XP - I don't own any levelers so this one is essentially detrimental for me. Instant disable on any bot I own. My kudo bots are at semi-specific intervals and I do not want them leveling faster. Dumpers the same, I will level them intentionally if it's ever required. Scorers ofc xp is taboo. For fresh bots I'm building, I will buy xp3 after AoE runs out as I would much rather spend the tps to spare myself both time, and from getting more losses on my ratios.

Kudos - If I need kudos, I will get kudos and don't need this. Also detrimental to me in the common use case of dumpers, only need enough for repair costs and this only makes me take far more than I need which makes me have to get them on my kudo bot (which I will use the tier 3 buff on because what else will I spend tps on?) more often. Could be useful if it ever lines up with when I'm camping gear for new dumpers, only feasible use case for me I think.

Speed - Combination of what the previous 3 have said. I will utilize the speed 2 sometimes, but a month like this for example I'm not going to slow myself down to save some tps when I have speed 3 available (mainly applies to dumpers). This is always useful for scorers that are doing the attacking since your buff purchases are limited, and is nice for leveling or making new bots that go through all of their AoE.

Most of my bots I leave the global buff off completely because it's a visual distraction since 2/3 of the time it's useless for me personally, and the other 1/3 is situational. I'll turn it on when I want the speed 2 basically.

Don't forget the Taiwan gambling circuit.

If the bots are equipped with 2 broken bottles then they're almost certainly part of the circuit and the speed buffs are gonna be disabled so there is more time for the crowd to gamble on the outcome.

So let's add the endergy (mistyped that but left it because it looked funny) one for the last day of the month moving forward (regardless of what day it falls on) and if it's falls on a weekend then have 2 running.

Petition to change it to Endergy

Very niche + naughty, and I doubt it happened this month, but you'd want to disable a battle speed buff if you were onlining someone

Thanks for the replies, I learned a lot! Sounds like there are valid use cases for each global buff type after all:

• Experience: Bots targeting a certain level that don't want to push outside of it.
• Kudos: Not wanting to take more kudos than you need off a dedicated kudos bot.
• Battle speed: Onlining someone.
• All: Less visual clutter if having the buff enabled doesn't matter to you.

Based on this:

• This reaffirms my "leaning towards just making it pause-able anyway" thinking for the buff-ified daily energy exchange increase.
• This reaffirms that game designers can never predict the creative/unpredictable ways in which features will be used.
• I'll think about how to make global/time-based buffs visually distinctive from count-based buffs. I assume (let me know if this isn't the case) that a big part of the "less visual clutter" motivation is wanting to avoid the question of "oh wait, am I using up a regular count-based buff?".

The monthly crescendo buff has just exacerbated the visual distraction I mentioned before. Could we get some kind of gap, spacing, or separation of global/weekend buffs from the regular ones? I do appreciate having the option to toggle it though.

I'll think about how to make global/time-based buffs visually distinctive from count-based buffs.

I'd given global buffs a 1 pixel gold border, but it was pretty subtle and hard to see. I just changed it to a 2 pixel gold outline (outline = extends outside normal rendering area), which definitely pops out more. Let's see how folks like that.

Looks good IMO. I don't see why you would want to disable though, maybe if you want to get your energy to an exact number or something I guess.

I meant positioned away from the others more, but this might work too. I'll try to remember and come back here if I have more thoughts after playing with it some

A separate place or space for Server wide buffs, vs player purchasable ones? Why would we do that when we can just make the buff bar long, ugly and overpopulated. :D

I'd considered visual separation. Vertical separation would increase the header height, which I think would be a net-negative for most players. Horizontal separation is potentially an interesting direction, but the buff bar can already get pretty wide.