Passive Buffs/Debuffs abuse...

I honestly feel that making champs with abilities to stop “unstoppable” or shrug off “bleed” is cool, until they become useless by the over abuse of “passive” buffs/debuffs.
It’s like having an account with money and a bank card to access that money, then after the fact saying “this bank card doesn’t work to access this money because we moved the money into a no-withdrawal account.”
I don’t mind “passive” occasionally, but it seems to be becoming the new “normal” and it’s deteriorating the value of champions with special abilities.

Comments

Eb0ny-O-M4w

You mean, passive abilities. Since passive buffs/debuffs don't exist.
Passive abilities exist in the game since the very beginning. Nothing new, nothing to complain right now

belli300

You mean, passive abilities. Since passive buffs/debuffs don't exist.
Passive abilities exist in the game since the very beginning. Nothing new, nothing to complain right now

Lol if you seriously believe what you just said you don’t know much about this game. I 100% agree with the comment. Yes passive abilities have always been around but they were very different in the early contest. There were no icon to dictate a passive ability now we have passive fury, passive armor, and passive unstoppable. Now if you don’t identify these as passive buffs then idk what they are 🤣

Eb0ny-O-M4w

You mean, passive abilities. Since passive buffs/debuffs don't exist.
Passive abilities exist in the game since the very beginning. Nothing new, nothing to complain right now
Lol if you seriously believe what you just said you don’t know much about this game. I 100% agree with the comment. Yes passive abilities have always been around but they were very different in the early contest. There were no icon to dictate a passive ability now we have passive fury, passive armor, and passive unstoppable. Now if you don’t identify these as passive buffs then idk what they are 🤣

They are passive abilities, not passive buffs.
Buffs are active abilities and they can't be passive while being active at the same time (if that makes sense).
Just because they just do the same as some buffs that previously existed doesn't mean they are "passive buffs"

Robertko

Putting aside the grammar police, I get your point @belli300 but this is an inevitable facet of game development and design. Game developers need the game to remain challenging, almost to the point of frustration. Why don't people pay tic tac toe? It always ends in a tie, it is too simple. That game is easily beaten. If you could just bring scarlet witch or black widow and nullify or keep buffs from proccing, this game would get stale fast.

Passive abilities made more sense in the beginning. Groot and Ultron did not have blood, and therefore were bleed immune. Now Sabretooth can convert a fury buff into a fury passive. WTF? That makes no sense, except as a game mechanic. Kabam will continue to explore all of the combinations that they can program. They added persistent charges first. Now, the Human Torch has different modes that you can select before the fight, and I am sure we will see more champs with this option in the future. The game has to get harder or will get "beaten."

belli300

You mean, passive abilities. Since passive buffs/debuffs don't exist.
Passive abilities exist in the game since the very beginning. Nothing new, nothing to complain right now
Lol if you seriously believe what you just said you don’t know much about this game. I 100% agree with the comment. Yes passive abilities have always been around but they were very different in the early contest. There were no icon to dictate a passive ability now we have passive fury, passive armor, and passive unstoppable. Now if you don’t identify these as passive buffs then idk what they are 🤣
They are passive abilities, not passive buffs.
Buffs are active abilities and they can't be passive while being active at the same time (if that makes sense).
Just because they just do the same as some buffs that previously existed doesn't mean they are "passive buffs"

Semantics end of story. Wether passive or not they “buff up” your champion

Eb0ny-O-M4w

You mean, passive abilities. Since passive buffs/debuffs don't exist.
Passive abilities exist in the game since the very beginning. Nothing new, nothing to complain right now
Lol if you seriously believe what you just said you don’t know much about this game. I 100% agree with the comment. Yes passive abilities have always been around but they were very different in the early contest. There were no icon to dictate a passive ability now we have passive fury, passive armor, and passive unstoppable. Now if you don’t identify these as passive buffs then idk what they are 🤣
They are passive abilities, not passive buffs.
Buffs are active abilities and they can't be passive while being active at the same time (if that makes sense).
Just because they just do the same as some buffs that previously existed doesn't mean they are "passive buffs"
Semantics end of story. Wether passive or not they “buff up” your champion

Yes, but they are still not buffs and will not interact as buffs in the mechanics of the game

Tyger87

*Sigh* While I do not particularly agree with will-o since they often like to shut people down quite rudely, while giving terrible explanations, I did receive a response a while ago in regards to the GHulk and his face me with this whole passive nonsense. Here was what was explained to me, and I hope this makes sense:

1. There are buffs, and they can only be on or off. These are ALWAYS denoted as a circle with a slightly white-ish border of the same color. These can always be interacted with/countered/removed. Buffs can NEVER be passive.

2. Abilities are different than buffs, and can absolutely be passive. We as a player base mistakenly think these are “Buffs” because they can either provide a benefit (or detriment). The simple truth is the developers need a way to display that certain things are happening in the fight, but they are extremely limited in how to display them. The wording in the descriptions of characters will very cleverly never use the word buff, but rather something like the word "effect."

Thus we have to check the in-game wording very carefully.

Example 1: Ghost Rider Lifesteal. “Gain a lifesteal passive effect.” Notice, nowhere does it say Buff.

Example 2: KM has a Passive armor to start the fight. Notice the wording here? It does not state buff, but rather it’s a passive ABILITY. I know, I know it’s very dumb, but since it is a passive ability, it has its own unique rules on how it can be interacted with. In this case, you cannot nullify it, but you can break it.

Example 3: GHulk’s Adoration of the Crowd (or more specifically SMASH). You have in the upper corner the crowd excitement. This is a passive ABILITY that has specific rules for interaction, getting hit or delivering a hit. SMASH, while it does provide an attack boost, is also not a buff, but a passive ABILITY.

Easiest Example: Hyperion. You will notice his wording says “Buff” all over the place, except when you get to his cosmic charges, then the word “Buff” is never used to describe the cosmic charges.

The biggest issue here is not so much the wording used in the game, because once you dive into it, you will notice Kabam (with a bitter taste in my mouth) has done a good job. (Man that hurt to say). HOWEVER! The massive inconsistency with DISPLAY, is a problem, but there is no way around it.

While it might not make you feel better, I know it doesn’t make me feel better, I do hope that this helped to clear up confusion.

LucasBishopX

I considered the term buffs for “unstoppable” or “physical resistance” (green shield). Debuffs such as “poison” or “bleed”...etc.

When these are outlined with a white border on the top and bottom, they are considered to be “passive.”

Passive buffs and debuffs are exempt from manipulation by a champions special abilities to negate them.

For instance, if I used my CapIW with kinetic charges to nullify a passive “unstoppable” it would not work. Even though his abilities state that he can do so while kinetically charged.

I hope this clarifies the confusion from my previous statement.

Eb0ny-O-M4w

For instance, if I used my CapIW with kinetic charges to nullify a passive “unstoppable” it would not work. Even though his abilities state that he can do so while kinetically charged.
.

It doesn't, actually. His ability is clear on this scenario.

"As long as Captain America has at least 1 Kinetic Potential, he’s is considered to be Kinetically Charged, and gains the following bonuses as Passive effects:
[...]
100% chance to Nullify Unstoppable Buffs on hit."

They keyword here is "buffs". In his abilities, it says he can nullify an unstoppable buff from the enemy.
Nowhere does it say he can remove an unstoppable effect, which would include the passive unstoppable. Passive unstoppable wasn't created to counter Cap IW, since that exists in the game way before he was introduced

belli300

*Sigh* While I do not particularly agree with will-o since they often like to shut people down quite rudely, while giving terrible explanations, I did receive a response a while ago in regards to the GHulk and his face me with this whole passive nonsense. Here was what was explained to me, and I hope this makes sense:

1. There are buffs, and they can only be on or off. These are ALWAYS denoted as a circle with a slightly white-ish border of the same color. These can always be interacted with/countered/removed. Buffs can NEVER be passive.

2. Abilities are different than buffs, and can absolutely be passive. We as a player base mistakenly think these are “Buffs” because they can either provide a benefit (or detriment). The simple truth is the developers need a way to display that certain things are happening in the fight, but they are extremely limited in how to display them. The wording in the descriptions of characters will very cleverly never use the word buff, but rather something like the word "effect."

Thus we have to check the in-game wording very carefully.

Example 1: Ghost Rider Lifesteal. “Gain a lifesteal passive effect.” Notice, nowhere does it say Buff.

Example 2: KM has a Passive armor to start the fight. Notice the wording here? It does not state buff, but rather it’s a passive ABILITY. I know, I know it’s very dumb, but since it is a passive ability, it has its own unique rules on how it can be interacted with. In this case, you cannot nullify it, but you can break it.

Example 3: GHulk’s Adoration of the Crowd (or more specifically SMASH). You have in the upper corner the crowd excitement. This is a passive ABILITY that has specific rules for interaction, getting hit or delivering a hit. SMASH, while it does provide an attack boost, is also not a buff, but a passive ABILITY.

Easiest Example: Hyperion. You will notice his wording says “Buff” all over the place, except when you get to his cosmic charges, then the word “Buff” is never used to describe the cosmic charges.

The biggest issue here is not so much the wording used in the game, because once you dive into it, you will notice Kabam (with a bitter taste in my mouth) has done a good job. (Man that hurt to say). HOWEVER! The massive inconsistency with DISPLAY, is a problem, but there is no way around it.

While it might not make you feel better, I know it doesn’t make me feel better, I do hope that this helped to clear up confusion.

Very well put together and respectful post! Thank you

Skkc

New Passive buff : Cashgrabber

DNA3000

1. There are buffs, and they can only be on or off. These are ALWAYS denoted as a circle with a slightly white-ish border of the same color. These can always be interacted with/countered/removed. Buffs can NEVER be passive.

2. Abilities are different than buffs, and can absolutely be passive. We as a player base mistakenly think these are “Buffs” because they can either provide a benefit (or detriment). The simple truth is the developers need a way to display that certain things are happening in the fight, but they are extremely limited in how to display them. The wording in the descriptions of characters will very cleverly never use the word buff, but rather something like the word "effect."

Thus we have to check the in-game wording very carefully.

This is not how the game originally used those terms, and in fact it isn't how the game engine itself used the terms internally. It was only after passive effects became more common and the devs realized that this was a point of confusion that they decided to try to use this terminology to distinguish the effects. But the wording can still be wrong, because this isn't something that's been completely made consistent.

Also, this isn't the correct usage of the word "ability" either. What you're referring to as an ability the game refers to as an effect. Effects can be designated as a buff, as a debuff, as a passive, or as something else entirely. "Passive" is a type of effect, not a Description of an effect; for example, there's no such thing as an "Active" effect in the game, except what players colloquially call active effects. But the problem here is thinking that "active" is the opposite of "passive" and thus anything not a passive effect must be an active effect: i.e. either a buff or a debuff. But that's not the case.

For the purposes of consistency, the devs are trying to use the terms in this way. There are effects. These are things in the game that get applied to a target. An effect has a type. This type can be "Buff" or "Debuff" or "Passive." It could be something else entirely. These words are labels, not descriptions. You can have "Buffs" with a capital B that don't buff the target in the colloquial sense. Loas, for example, are "Buffs" that don't "buff."

Because those words are labels that define the type of the effect, all effects can only be one of them.

unknown

This content has been removed.

DNA3000

I feel like a lot of people are missing the point of the OP. He knows that these aren’t technically “buffs”. That’s exactly his complaint. Instead of buffs, new “passive abilities” are becoming very common, making champions with nullify capabilities much less useful for new content.

Scarlet Witch shreds opponents who are buff-reliant. This is one of the main reasons she would be ranked up. But now that these passive abilities are being used to give new champions damage or armor increases instead of buffs, Scarlet Witch is less useful than she once was. It’s the same problem people had with the absence of the “villain” tag from many champs. This meant Blade was a less viable option than he was. It isn’t a “nerf” per se, but these new forms of abilities make champs less valuable than they were when we invested resources into them.

This really comes down to the question of whether players are entitled to believe that any game effect is "absolute." They aren't. As long as the game exists, the developers are going to make counters, and counters to the counters, and counters to the counters to the counters. There are buffs. You don't get to always keep those buffs, because some things will nullify those buffs. You don't always get to rely on those nullifies either, because some "buffs" will be immune to nullification. And you cannot even rely on passive effects being impossible to negate, because we already have that effect in the game on a small scale: applying armor breaks on IMIW causes him to lose passive armor effects. You have to presume that the ability to somehow eliminate the benefits of passive effects will be added in larger measures eventually.

Basically, you never get to have a "top level" effect that supercedes all others. The devs will keep making more top. Even effects like passive degen have their counters in abilities like Face Me. The only thing that is never going to change is the fact that things are always going to change.

It really is just this simple. You can't expect or demand or really even complain to profitable effect about things changing value up or down in a game like this. You can lament, but not to any effect. And resource depreciation is fundamental to games like this. It is what allows them to even exist for any length of time.

unknown

This content has been removed.

LucasBishopX

I thank you all for your constructive feedback

I hope a moderator will chime in on this discussion too.

DNA3000

I feel like a lot of people are missing the point of the OP. He knows that these aren’t technically “buffs”. That’s exactly his complaint. Instead of buffs, new “passive abilities” are becoming very common, making champions with nullify capabilities much less useful for new content.

Scarlet Witch shreds opponents who are buff-reliant. This is one of the main reasons she would be ranked up. But now that these passive abilities are being used to give new champions damage or armor increases instead of buffs, Scarlet Witch is less useful than she once was. It’s the same problem people had with the absence of the “villain” tag from many champs. This meant Blade was a less viable option than he was. It isn’t a “nerf” per se, but these new forms of abilities make champs less valuable than they were when we invested resources into them.
This really comes down to the question of whether players are entitled to believe that any game effect is "absolute." They aren't. As long as the game exists, the developers are going to make counters, and counters to the counters, and counters to the counters to the counters. There are buffs. You don't get to always keep those buffs, because some things will nullify those buffs. You don't always get to rely on those nullifies either, because some "buffs" will be immune to nullification. And you cannot even rely on passive effects being impossible to negate, because we already have that effect in the game on a small scale: applying armor breaks on IMIW causes him to lose passive armor effects. You have to presume that the ability to somehow eliminate the benefits of passive effects will be added in larger measures eventually.

Basically, you never get to have a "top level" effect that supercedes all others. The devs will keep making more top. Even effects like passive degen have their counters in abilities like Face Me. The only thing that is never going to change is the fact that things are always going to change.

It really is just this simple. You can't expect or demand or really even complain to profitable effect about things changing value up or down in a game like this. You can lament, but not to any effect. And resource depreciation is fundamental to games like this. It is what allows them to even exist for any length of time.
Yes, I understand that. I’m not saying I necessarily agree that passive abilities shouldn’t be used, but many seemed to be confused about what was being argued.

Part of the issue is *how* it is often argued. The argument focuses at least on paper on "passive effects" as if they were the cause, and not just an unimportant detail. Arguing against passive effects is making the presumption that if we magicked away passive effects from the game engine, these move-countermove design elements wouldn't arrive in some other way.

Passive effects is just the how. The core of the argument isn't about passive effects but about what they do. They "break" the rules of effects like nullification, by being immune to those effects. And it is that "override" that is both the source of the complaint, and the reason why the complaint won't change anything. You can argue against passive effects, but that's just a technicality. You can't argue for nullify always working against everything forever and ever.

Except some people do argue for that while trying to avoid stating it directly, because they believe if they rank up a champion because that champion does something, introducing new champions or effects that the champion they ranked up doesn't work on is somehow cheating, because the game made them an implicit "promise" to not change things once a decision is made upon them by the player. But this gets to the root of the problem: the game makes no such promise, never will make such promise, and players have to work within an environment where anything they do with anything they have can change over time.

unknown

This content has been removed.

DNA3000

I feel like a lot of people are missing the point of the OP. He knows that these aren’t technically “buffs”. That’s exactly his complaint. Instead of buffs, new “passive abilities” are becoming very common, making champions with nullify capabilities much less useful for new content.

Scarlet Witch shreds opponents who are buff-reliant. This is one of the main reasons she would be ranked up. But now that these passive abilities are being used to give new champions damage or armor increases instead of buffs, Scarlet Witch is less useful than she once was. It’s the same problem people had with the absence of the “villain” tag from many champs. This meant Blade was a less viable option than he was. It isn’t a “nerf” per se, but these new forms of abilities make champs less valuable than they were when we invested resources into them.
This really comes down to the question of whether players are entitled to believe that any game effect is "absolute." They aren't. As long as the game exists, the developers are going to make counters, and counters to the counters, and counters to the counters to the counters. There are buffs. You don't get to always keep those buffs, because some things will nullify those buffs. You don't always get to rely on those nullifies either, because some "buffs" will be immune to nullification. And you cannot even rely on passive effects being impossible to negate, because we already have that effect in the game on a small scale: applying armor breaks on IMIW causes him to lose passive armor effects. You have to presume that the ability to somehow eliminate the benefits of passive effects will be added in larger measures eventually.

Basically, you never get to have a "top level" effect that supercedes all others. The devs will keep making more top. Even effects like passive degen have their counters in abilities like Face Me. The only thing that is never going to change is the fact that things are always going to change.

It really is just this simple. You can't expect or demand or really even complain to profitable effect about things changing value up or down in a game like this. You can lament, but not to any effect. And resource depreciation is fundamental to games like this. It is what allows them to even exist for any length of time.
Yes, I understand that. I’m not saying I necessarily agree that passive abilities shouldn’t be used, but many seemed to be confused about what was being argued.
Part of the issue is *how* it is often argued. The argument focuses at least on paper on "passive effects" as if they were the cause, and not just an unimportant detail. Arguing against passive effects is making the presumption that if we magicked away passive effects from the game engine, these move-countermove design elements wouldn't arrive in some other way.

Passive effects is just the how. The core of the argument isn't about passive effects but about what they do. They "break" the rules of effects like nullification, by being immune to those effects. And it is that "override" that is both the source of the complaint, and the reason why the complaint won't change anything. You can argue against passive effects, but that's just a technicality. You can't argue for nullify always working against everything forever and ever.

Except some people do argue for that while trying to avoid stating it directly, because they believe if they rank up a champion because that champion does something, introducing new champions or effects that the champion they ranked up doesn't work on is somehow cheating, because the game made them an implicit "promise" to not change things once a decision is made upon them by the player. But this gets to the root of the problem: the game makes no such promise, never will make such promise, and players have to work within an environment where anything they do with anything they have can change over time.
There is a difference between “the argument” and the unique views held by different people. I, for instance, believe that passive effects are a good way to counter abilities such as Nullify. There should be lots of ways to counter abilities such as Nullify, and this is one of those ways. But I can’t disagree with the idea that these effects are becoming overused. If every champ overrides a certain ability, that ability is useless. That’s why I’m concerned with the fact that the majority of new champions all have these passive effects. They should be applied in moderation, in my opinion.

The problem here is this ignores the practical realities of game development. Game development is not really anything like software development in general, at least as most people understand it. Even this is a massive oversimplification, but you have content developers and you have mechanics or "engine" developers. Content development is 99% fill in the blank stuff that happens in Excel or similar (setting aside things like art and sound asset creation, because as I said, this is oversimplified or it would be impossible to discuss). Think of creating a champion as making a row in Excel. All the columns represent game properties or mechanics the champion could have or could use. You're just filling in numbers or flags in those cells.

If the content developers make rows, it is the tech developers - the "engine guys" that make the columns. And every column is extremely expense to make, relatively speaking. The technical expertise to make a column is extremely high, and the risks associated with altering the game engine to make a column are also very high. So making a new column is not a trivial exercise. And an important question that gets asked whenever a dev team decides whether to invest in making a column is: how often will it be used. A column intended to be used for one champion, and that's it, is simply not worth making most of the time. That column has to be used many times to justify its existence, and to pay for its costs to implement.

There's lots of ways to implement counterplay against buffs. But the game team isn't going to make fifty of them. They are going to make one, and use it as many times as possible in as many ways as possible. Because if the content developers don't promise to use the column a hundred times, the engine developers won't waste their time making it in the first place.

Again, this is tremendous oversimplification and there are always exceptions and alternatives, but I think this is at least generally recognizable for anyone that has worked in this environment in the past.

KattohS

You can’t “stop” this train and if you try to “block” it, we just go “passive.

Championcritic

I think the point of the post is that after kabam introduces a champ that can nullify buffs, they seem to make future champs use the "passive" versions of the abilities that the champs introduced prior are supposed to counter, thats what the OP is complaining about, that even after we spend time and money to get the champs that for example nullify unstoppable buffs because they'll be a solid investment for future content involving unstoppable buffs, kabam just introduces champs with unstoppable passives which makes our investments not worth it.

winterthur

This is a gem!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZlDQ7HKWw