Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So CCP, you wanted to change drugs for Crucible, but decided to hold back for reasons that I think were good. The desire to change them I can understand, though I think the particular implementation chosen would have had unfortunate consequences. I do think they could do with a change, though.

Currently boosters are either fantastic to the point they are near mandatory (few undock a Sleipnir or even a Cyclone without blue pill) or distinctly underwhelming, and this is due to the current system of penalties. To use the Blue Pill example. you get shield boost amount, you risk cap capacity, cap recharge, explosion velocity and optimal range. In an active tanking Cyclone or Sleipnir, you have no sustained tank and are totally cap booster dependent so neither cap capacity nor cap recharge penalties matter much, explosion velocity penalties don't make me lose sleep when I'm using autocannons and your guns depend on falloff so optimal penalties don't matter. This makes blue pill consumption simply a question of "Do I need to tank more in this fight?". There is no reason not to take it except that you're about to run out of the booster. Not good.

A lot of boosters are borderline useless because if the penalties hit they leave you net neutral (frentix and sooth sayer in most situations) (blue pill if say you're in a Tengu and you're being swarmed by AFs) or worse off (Crash, Frentix and Mindflood. Especially Mindflood, to the point where the only times it is used are when in a ship that cannot be affected by its penalties) and the consequences can be disproportionate to the penalties. That said, I don't think boosters should be without penalties.

So what to do?

I think delayed penalties - either in the form of 'addiction' or a 'comedown' would be best. So for 'addiction', if you pop pills over a certain regularity threshold (could be once a week, once a year, maybe once ever), the effect of a given dose starts to reduce, and being off the pills has a slight penalty to base stats, both effects growing with addiction - the more you use them, the greater the addiction effect becomes. The addiction effect decays with time.

For comedown, you pop a pill, you get the benefit. Once the pill runs out, you get (a chance of, or perhaps definitely get) the penalties, or a reduction to whatever the pill boosted, or even both. You can then pop another pill straightaway, but if you keep doing it the penalties stack, then decay with time.

I like the idea of boosters, and like using them in game, but I want them to be properly situational, the choice to use them should be a considered one, one with benefits and drawbacks.

This will change demand (hopefully in a good way) and then the nature of the supply chain might be looked at (I know enough about the supply side to know that I'm far happier handing isk over for them than making them myself with the current state of 0.0, but not enough to suggest informed changes)

I think moving the penalties to a come-down period would be a great way to improve them.
Pop a booster, get the benefit, and at the end of the boosting period, you either have to pop another to delay the effect again, or take the come-down.
Ofcourse popping them in a row would make the penalties larger/longer, and the 2nd/3rd booster you pop should have it's duration/effect reduced as you're already running high.

long term addiction effects might be bad, unless you can temporarily cancel them by popping one, because then you'd have to weigh the effect of 'now I need it' to 'if I take it, I'll be messed up for a week' and no way to avoid the 2nd part..
The addiction should also not reduce the effectiveness of using a booster itself though.

I'd love seeing people addicted to boosters though.. especially if they get to the point where they either fly high as a kite, or they don't fly anymore due to the comedown/addiction effect.

I agree, penalties must be kept but they need to be reworked. Delaying them so they come when the positive effect expires is the most obvious way. This however must be carefully balanced, as one could potentially just keep taking those pills until they log off for the day. But I wouldn't want the duration of the negative effects to be so over the top that they make booster use foolish unless you only fly one type of ship and thus use those boosters endlessly. So I'm thinking a 23 hour base penalty period after the positive effect ends. This period would be reduced in length as per the current skill bonus. Ditto for the severity of the penalty.

The idea here is with some booster skills, you might be stuck popping that pill every hour for the rest of the day, but the negative effects should be gone by the following evening. It would interfere with weekend play where you may be up late and log in the next morning. But hey, that's the point is it not? I'm a chronic blue, drop and exile user btw.

Fewer side effects and negative after effects.

I would like to see fewer side effect with less chance of happening BUT
instead they could penalize when the drug wears off for a period of time.

So you use your Blue Pill during combat. You are super and kill everyone.
Blue Pill wears off and you are out of boosters. A second wave comes.
You are useless and you die.

I like the idea of a come-down. Long term effects sounds a little bit

+1 for come-down (delayed effects)