What happens when I share duplicate perks?
In the new fallout 76 game its possible to share perks with your teammates. As taken from an interview with developers:
Sharing perks
Once you put at least three points in Charisma, you'll have the opportunity to share active perks with the rest of your team. As long as your Charisma is three times the point cost of a perk card (for example, Rank 1 of Green Thumb costs 1 point, so you could share it with 3 Charisma. Rank 2 costs 2 points, so you would need 6 Charisma, and so on) you'll be able to let your team reap the benefits of your card, and use it to plan effective strategies to synergize available perks.
What would happen when I, for example, take a perk like "Shotgunner". Which at level 3 adds 20% to my damage done with shotguns. Let's suppose I'm playing in a 4 man squad, I convince everybody to get level 3 shotgunner and to share that perk with the team. Would those effects stack? Would the entire party now deal + 80% damage with shotguns? If this stacking of perk cards is allowed how would that be calculated?
Let's say I have a shotgun that has a base damage (without perk card) of 100. I slap on my own perk card that increases its damage from 100 to 120. If my teammates share their own perk card would that stack on to the base damage of my shotgun? So + 4*20%? The way I see it (all assuming the cards stack) are as follows:
100 Base damage + 80% of all perk cards -> 180 damage
100 Base damage + 20% for my perk card -> 120 damage + 60% for shared perk cards -> 192 damage
100 Base damage + 20% for my perk card -> 120 damage + 20% -> 144 damage + 20% -> 172.8 damage + 20% -> 207.36 damage
Tldr: Is it possible to stack multiple perk cards when shared with your team and if so how does the calculation of the stacked bonuses work?
According to this Reddit post, they do not stack, primarily because when a teammate shares the perk, you have to equip it. The game already prevents you from equipping multiples of the same card, thus if you have to manually equip the shared card, you won't be able to stack any.
If you[r] teammates share a perk that you have already equipped you wont be able to equip the perk they are sharing unless you unequip yours, if your perk is lower rank simply un[e]quip it and equip the shared perk
It seems the idea behind sharing perk cards is to allow you to:
- Use a perk that you do not have yourself but a teammate does
- Use a higher level perk from a teammate that you have already but is of lower level
If you think about it, it makes sense to do it this way, because if it worked the way that you stated in your question, it would be pretty overpowered in some cases.