Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Item degredation and repair

    • 238 posts
    April 24, 2016 6:16 PM PDT
    Thought it was weird that a 500 year old "magical" sword thats been in the hands of a mad king all of a sudden needs to be repaired after a couple hours of use by an adventurer.
    • 53 posts
    April 29, 2016 12:54 PM PDT

    Xonth said: Thought it was weird that a 500 year old "magical" sword thats been in the hands of a mad king all of a sudden needs to be repaired after a couple hours of use by an adventurer.

     

    Thats a damn good point but then you can also say why are there 50 of them on the server ;) .

    This brings up another question maybe it would be nice to see some very rare one time items that drop in game it certainly would add to that renoun some players were asking for it would give players even more incentive to get out there and adventure.

    Can this same approach be added to the crafting world where an old mythical recipie drops ? Then a player would have to seek out the highest level crafter on the server to build such an itrem and trust said person to do so ? Talk about social gaming in that scenario :)


    This post was edited by Crypton at April 29, 2016 12:55 PM PDT
    • 613 posts
    May 2, 2016 10:25 AM PDT

    This brings up another question maybe it would be nice to see some very rare one time items that drop in game it certainly would add to that renoun some players were asking for it would give players even more incentive to get out there and adventure.

    Can this same approach be added to the crafting world where an old mythical recipie drops ? Then a player would have to seek out the highest level crafter on the server to build such an itrem and trust said person to do so ? Talk about social gaming in that scenario :)

     

    I am on board with this. It makes for a very interesting engagement on several levels. Throw in some quests to find the recipe and then what and how to improve said weapon or gear.   Even a spell would work here.

     

    Possibilities are endless.

     

    Ox

    • 70 posts
    May 2, 2016 2:37 PM PDT

    I dont know how well or fairly this can be implemented but I hope it is strongly consider before it is put into the game. Honestly I hope it is not. Think about who all gets hit the most in a group or raid setting. Think about it. We know the tank will be hit with the brunt of these costs as they are hit the most. Dps nearly just weapon repair? Casters... pay rent for robes? Before you say well they have reagent costs they also can turn mana in to $ by buffing or imbuing things and have pets that can tank?. So in comparison to the rest of the classes that might make up any group the tanks repair is going to be significantly so much more then anyone elses! That is if the tank is doing the job correctly then idealy no one will have repair costs but the tank? That just does'nt add up...well actually it does add up... trust me you dont what to raid with a poor repaired or geared tank! Making the repair costs only the tanks would be a mistake in my opinion. Alot of games have made this unfair mechanic. I've roll tanks in games I play and I havnt seen this done correctly yet. If there is a solution to this problem I havnt seen it posted on this forum yet or anywhere else. This is a scary mechanic for breaking a game if not dont properly. Please be very careful if considering it.


    This post was edited by Leowna at May 2, 2016 2:38 PM PDT
    • 428 posts
    May 4, 2016 12:05 PM PDT

    Im pretty sure Brad has already said no Item degredation 

    • 613 posts
    May 4, 2016 12:43 PM PDT

    Kalgore said:

    Im pretty sure Brad has already said no Item degredation 

     

    I think he did too but its fun to discuss and dream a bit though. 

    Ox

    • 428 posts
    May 4, 2016 1:21 PM PDT

    I always hated it.  But in EQ2 I had thousands of plats so a 1 plat repair bill really didnt matter just annoying.  I spent much more on potions food and drink. 

    • 264 posts
    May 5, 2016 4:14 PM PDT

    Kilsin said:

     

    What's more natural than walking down into a dungeon, all nice and shiny and reemerging all banged up and in need of cleaning/polishing your armour and repairing your blunt/damaged weapons after battle?

    It plays a vital role in the economy too which is a lot more important than I think people realise. My view is that if you use something or get attacked it gets dirty or damaged and requires cleaning or repairing. I would hate to walk into a dangerous dungeon for hours, killing tons of mobs and a few boss battles to walk out not only with extra loot and money but also just as shiny as I walked in as if I am in god mode, it makes not sense and is more natural to me.

    I understand that a handful of people here don't like repairing for whatever reasons but I think if we ask for challenge and realism in some aspects we need to also follow through with what can be little annoyances like repairing too since it plays a bigger part in the game than most realise. I personally do not mind it at all and would welcome it as it not only stimulates the economy but can also be tied in with Crafting and Npcs, like I mentioned in a previous post.

    It's all about risk vs reward for me, if you take more risks, you get rewarded more often but you also will need to repair your gears and weapons from being used so much, someone who doesn't dungeon crawl as often will not have to repair as often, so it balances itself out.

    What if you had one or two particularly viscious raids, and the guild's craftspeople had to also come on the raid with portable equipment to provide repair and support to the raid in order for it to be succesful? Or maybe a nasty Necromancer had a dungeon where everything rotted at a really high rate.


    This post was edited by Skycaster at May 5, 2016 5:31 PM PDT
    • 38 posts
    May 6, 2016 1:32 PM PDT

    I do think having items wearing down and needing to be repaired is nice for immersion and could present some nice opportunities for crafters to profit from it, by having specific skills tied to different armor and weapon types (can't fix it all by myself).

    I take it we will not see this unless Brad changes/changed his mind, no big deal.


    This post was edited by Coldlight at May 6, 2016 1:33 PM PDT
    • 178 posts
    May 10, 2016 1:03 PM PDT

    Clickies. I would support all items having only a certain number of clickies available (even if it's an insane number of clickies like 255 as opposed to simply just 5 or 10, although I hope there are items with limited charges). They either have to be replaced if a player wants more clickie effects or a crafter can repair them to add to the clickies. Perhaps they can't repair it to the extent of the original piece but perhaps a method to regenerate (give back) some of the charges of said item. The only change would be the loss of infinite clicky items. This could imply different crafters required for different charge effects.

    I never had a plethora of clickies and it never made up a large part of my gaming experience. A couple of pieces of Singing Steel armour on my bard and Mrylokar pieces and Mask of Deception and J-boots on my rogue were about the only clickies I had. I liked having them and did use them but it wouldn't have been a game changer to me if they were limited clickies and had to be repaired to get the clickies back (or even discarded if all charges were used up).

    • 2 posts
    June 13, 2016 7:35 AM PDT

    I'm not against item degredation, bu to me the answer seems fairly simple and thats to have the item degrade by upto a certain % of effectiveness.  So a group could always continue to play/adventure all be it a bit slower.  ie maybe the maximum degrade for an item could be 30% (ie a BP with an AC factor of 30 could over time drop to 20 untill its repaired).  Possibly make temporary field repairs by the reevant crafter to restore it to 90% effectiveness, but would need a crafter at a outpost to bring it back to 100%

    • 38 posts
    July 3, 2016 2:53 AM PDT

    IanS said:

    I'm not against item degredation, bu to me the answer seems fairly simple and thats to have the item degrade by upto a certain % of effectiveness.  So a group could always continue to play/adventure all be it a bit slower.  ie maybe the maximum degrade for an item could be 30% (ie a BP with an AC factor of 30 could over time drop to 20 untill its repaired).  Possibly make temporary field repairs by the reevant crafter to restore it to 90% effectiveness, but would need a crafter at a outpost to bring it back to 100%

    I really like this idea, maybe do not have item degrade but allow crafters to 'sharpen', 'reinforce' and 'enchant' them beyond 100% effectiveness but have these improvements wearing down after many fights.

    • 70 posts
    July 3, 2016 8:26 AM PDT

    Wow has a broken economy, and it has item repair.  People have hundreds of thousands of gold if not millions.  You'd have to make the cost so prohibitive to have any sort of effect on the economy that it would be brutal to most players.  It would also foster an atmosphere for gold farmers for those who don't have as much time to play.  Wow even legitimized gold farming by putting that coin thing in where you can buy it for in game gold so you can then get a month of game play.

    Albion Online implemented a severe item repair/degradation model in its game, and it is a never ending source of complaints.  It DOES break up groups.  Some suggested a bot to repair gear in the field.  Would that also include gear that outright breaks and can't be used.  Someone forgets their repair bot, and boom, the group has to wait for them to get repaired, breaks up, or replaces the person who forget with someone ready to go.  Very negative.

    Current EQ has plenty of ways to remove gold from the game.  The tradeskills are challenging and provide a good money sink.

    Regardless, I've yet to see a game where people did not become filthy rich over time, no matter how many things are put in to drain cash.

    I prefer to have a housing system that is very beneficial to have, but it costs montly fees to maintain.  That way, you can drain game money out of peoples' pockets without harrassing a group whose tank just lost his gear due to dying.  And yes, tanks will be the ones hit hardest with this repair/degradation aspect since they are the ones getting hit constantly, and they tend to die more.  Just like in WoW where the repair costs for plate armor are stupid expensive compared to a cloth wearer.

    • 169 posts
    May 16, 2017 4:52 PM PDT
    I really hope item degradation is eventually put in the game as we test it. Gear you craft or obtain should never last forever when you are in a group or dungeon.
    In eqoa your gear lasted for hours as a tank before you needed to go to the blacksmith to repair, and as a tank you had several options for the gear you wore...i usually just grabbed my heartsblood alloy armor out of the bank and grinded for hours upon hours because it had really high durability.
    If grinding for 2+ hours before taking a break to repair is considered group breaking that is a little absurd (especially if the outposts are 10m round trip).
    If the breastplate you are wearing has a durability of 80 and 100 item hp...you should be able to grind for hours with gear with those stats...
    The simple answer would be to get your ginding gear crafted (gear with high durability and item hp) and slightly lower stats, then have your raid set of gear.
    Also the gear would let you have 100% of its stats from 100 to 80 item hp...and gradually drop until you hit 1 item hp where it will stop losing points but you would no longer receive stats for having it equipped.
    That would keep players from losing gear forever but make you repair eventually.
    Gear decay should not be attached to a death penalty...that should only be exp loss or debt, and a nice corpse retrieval party.
    • 1468 posts
    May 17, 2017 1:11 AM PDT

    What made crafting in EVE Online so good was that was a constant need for items and equipment of all levels because they kept getting destroyed either in PvE or PvP. This meant that people who made new ships, items and equipment had a full time job keeping up with replacing lost items. Add into that the amazing economy which lent itself very well to managing with a spreadsheet or two it was really immersive.

    If items in Pantheon permenently broke and needed to be replaced by crafters it would give them a job keeping the server population well equipped no matter what and would make crafters highly desired by all players on the servers. If you combine that with my idea of crafters being able to make any item (there is a thread in this forum about it) you would have a crafting profession that would be useful at all levels of the game and that would be able to make decent money.

    The problem with crafting comes when items don't get destroyed and crafters keep churning out the same items. Eventually there are so many items of a specific type that the value just tanks and crafters lose the ability to make money off that item because supply far exceeds demand. Because of this I think that having be destroyed and leave economic circulation is essential otherwise eventually crafters won't be able to make any money because supply will always outstrip demand.

    • 25 posts
    May 19, 2017 10:30 AM PDT

    Zircon said:

    My opinion...

    Repairing gear isn't a real challenge it only adds nuisance to the game. 

    Whenever you want to add something that was in WoW but not in EverQuest, it should be a red flag.

    Adding to what Curlok said, I believe there will also be way too much temptation to replace death penalties with some monetary penalty. I like the idea from a standpoint of building more social aspects into the game and promoting a tradeskill, but I just think there are better ways.

    But you can consider me a classic purist.

     

     

    I agree. I find item degradation to be an annoyance that adds no fun to the game. I say no item degrading.

    I really, absolutely despise item degrdation mechanics. I'd seriously reconsider playing entirely. EverQuest was a lot of fun because you really had an attachment to your character and your gear, and your gear often had a lot to do with how your character's performance and goals were. If the game would turn into item recycling with constant replacements, even after spending a lot of time gaining pieces, then that's a load of no fun.

    Also, item degradation means no more fun loot that's difficult to obtain. What's the point of spending months of time trying to get that really cool piece of gear if you're going to just permanently lose it after using it for a few days? Gear balance would have to change to everything being easy to get since gear would come and go so fast. No thanks!

    If you spend a significant amount of time trying to obtain a piece, your reward should be that piece. It's yours - you earned it, and you can utilize it as much as you want...enjoy! Item degredation? Sorry, you can't use that anymore, farm for another 4 months to enjoy it again. Insert two more quarters.

     

    As for repairing refilling full functionability (as in, items don't permanently degrade), that just becomes a hassle. Y'all ready to go on an adventure? Nope, hold up, every one has to go run around and find their nearest repair areas...see y'all in about 30 minutes or so. All right, we're in a dungeon! Been going strong for a good 20 minutes, hold up, puller has to stop and go repair, we'll continue in about 15 minutes once he gets back. All right! Let's go! Hold up, now the tank has to go repair, see y'all in 15 minutes or so.

     

    All repairing does is cause disjointed gameplay. It never added an element of fun, and all it did was distrupt group play in my prevous experiences with the mechanic in other MMO's. Very annoying and very frustrating. The game should promote groupplay, not encourage groups to have to break apart.


    This post was edited by RpTheHotrod at May 19, 2017 10:43 AM PDT
    • 1468 posts
    May 19, 2017 11:58 AM PDT

    RpTheHotrod said:

    Zircon said:

    My opinion...

    Repairing gear isn't a real challenge it only adds nuisance to the game. 

    Whenever you want to add something that was in WoW but not in EverQuest, it should be a red flag.

    Adding to what Curlok said, I believe there will also be way too much temptation to replace death penalties with some monetary penalty. I like the idea from a standpoint of building more social aspects into the game and promoting a tradeskill, but I just think there are better ways.

    But you can consider me a classic purist.

    I agree. I find item degradation to be an annoyance that adds no fun to the game. I say no item degrading.

    I really, absolutely despise item degrdation mechanics. I'd seriously reconsider playing entirely. EverQuest was a lot of fun because you really had an attachment to your character and your gear, and your gear often had a lot to do with how your character's performance and goals were. If the game would turn into item recycling with constant replacements, even after spending a lot of time gaining pieces, then that's a load of no fun.

    Also, item degradation means no more fun loot that's difficult to obtain. What's the point of spending months of time trying to get that really cool piece of gear if you're going to just permanently lose it after using it for a few days? Gear balance would have to change to everything being easy to get since gear would come and go so fast. No thanks!

    If you spend a significant amount of time trying to obtain a piece, your reward should be that piece. It's yours - you earned it, and you can utilize it as much as you want...enjoy! Item degredation? Sorry, you can't use that anymore, farm for another 4 months to enjoy it again. Insert two more quarters.

    As for repairing refilling full functionability (as in, items don't permanently degrade), that just becomes a hassle. Y'all ready to go on an adventure? Nope, hold up, every one has to go run around and find their nearest repair areas...see y'all in about 30 minutes or so. All right, we're in a dungeon! Been going strong for a good 20 minutes, hold up, puller has to stop and go repair, we'll continue in about 15 minutes once he gets back. All right! Let's go! Hold up, now the tank has to go repair, see y'all in 15 minutes or so.

    All repairing does is cause disjointed gameplay. It never added an element of fun, and all it did was distrupt group play in my prevous experiences with the mechanic in other MMO's. Very annoying and very frustrating. The game should promote groupplay, not encourage groups to have to break apart.

    The problem with items never getting destroyed is that pretty soon supply always outstrips demand and the value of gear made by crafters plummets and they can't make any money from their craft. If you have item degradation and destruction then items will not last forever and players will need to get new items from crafters to replace what has been lost or what has been damaged.

    In EQ quite a lot of crafting services were pretty much useless because players just churned them out and the value dropped because those items never got destroyed and the marked was just flooded. The only ways for an item to leave the economy in EQ were if a player manually destroyed an item or if a player quit the game.

    • 25 posts
    May 19, 2017 12:31 PM PDT

    Cromulent said:

    RpTheHotrod said:

    Zircon said:

    My opinion...

    Repairing gear isn't a real challenge it only adds nuisance to the game. 

    Whenever you want to add something that was in WoW but not in EverQuest, it should be a red flag.

    Adding to what Curlok said, I believe there will also be way too much temptation to replace death penalties with some monetary penalty. I like the idea from a standpoint of building more social aspects into the game and promoting a tradeskill, but I just think there are better ways.

    But you can consider me a classic purist.

    I agree. I find item degradation to be an annoyance that adds no fun to the game. I say no item degrading.

    I really, absolutely despise item degrdation mechanics. I'd seriously reconsider playing entirely. EverQuest was a lot of fun because you really had an attachment to your character and your gear, and your gear often had a lot to do with how your character's performance and goals were. If the game would turn into item recycling with constant replacements, even after spending a lot of time gaining pieces, then that's a load of no fun.

    Also, item degradation means no more fun loot that's difficult to obtain. What's the point of spending months of time trying to get that really cool piece of gear if you're going to just permanently lose it after using it for a few days? Gear balance would have to change to everything being easy to get since gear would come and go so fast. No thanks!

    If you spend a significant amount of time trying to obtain a piece, your reward should be that piece. It's yours - you earned it, and you can utilize it as much as you want...enjoy! Item degredation? Sorry, you can't use that anymore, farm for another 4 months to enjoy it again. Insert two more quarters.

    As for repairing refilling full functionability (as in, items don't permanently degrade), that just becomes a hassle. Y'all ready to go on an adventure? Nope, hold up, every one has to go run around and find their nearest repair areas...see y'all in about 30 minutes or so. All right, we're in a dungeon! Been going strong for a good 20 minutes, hold up, puller has to stop and go repair, we'll continue in about 15 minutes once he gets back. All right! Let's go! Hold up, now the tank has to go repair, see y'all in 15 minutes or so.

    All repairing does is cause disjointed gameplay. It never added an element of fun, and all it did was distrupt group play in my prevous experiences with the mechanic in other MMO's. Very annoying and very frustrating. The game should promote groupplay, not encourage groups to have to break apart.

    The problem with items never getting destroyed is that pretty soon supply always outstrips demand and the value of gear made by crafters plummets and they can't make any money from their craft. If you have item degradation and destruction then items will not last forever and players will need to get new items from crafters to replace what has been lost or what has been damaged.

    In EQ quite a lot of crafting services were pretty much useless because players just churned them out and the value dropped because those items never got destroyed and the marked was just flooded. The only ways for an item to leave the economy in EQ were if a player manually destroyed an item or if a player quit the game.

     

    I'd say EQ survived just fine without degradation. If you really want that though, then make crafted items have degradation - perhaps with a rare drop component removing degradation. If you want to have an easy gear grab, then you can buy outright from players...at the cost of having to replace them eventually. If you spent time and effort in finding a piece of gear yourself that's not crafted, then it doesn't degrade. I'm seriously not going to be too happy if items I've worked hard for end up just dissappearing. Items are a key thing in this kind of game. Making them "throw away items" takes away from that. Items don't have personality any more. There's no such thing as ancient or mysterious items. You can't have stories relating to items. No history behind them. Everything is just taped together with duct tape and glue and falling apart at the seams just isn't very fun, imho.

    Again though, this is in regard to the conversation earlier that items should continue to degrade even after repairing until the item ceases to function, in which you have to find a replacement.


    This post was edited by RpTheHotrod at May 19, 2017 5:31 PM PDT
    • 169 posts
    May 19, 2017 2:20 PM PDT
    I dont want items to dissapear, i just want ppl to have to repair them. If you go hacking and slashing trees in your back yard with your chain saw, do you not have to go and get it sharpened eventually?
    If your a knight wearing armor and go into a melee your equipment would need repaired afterwards?
    If you craft, find, or raid for items they should wind up in bad shape at some point as you wear those items to beat down creatures across the world.
    I am not advocating for gear to become completely broken and useless, but item hp should degrade during use, and it should have to be repaired after some time or it will be a useless piece of trash in your inventory until you take it to the local blacksmith for repairs.
    Saying that, it would require VR to put small outposts near spots that they expect most grinding to takd place and give the armor or weapon smiths the ability to make a camp in the field for some field repairs of gear.
    When crafting the items for raiding or grinding you should pick the materials best for you. For example heartsblood alloy gave superb item durability and kinda low stats for armor..while ankther alloy would give superior stats but inferior durability.
    This should be the mentality and it would give all crafters the ability to generate more income because they could craft a raid and grind pieces.
    • 31 posts
    May 22, 2017 1:38 PM PDT

    Kilsin's quote about having an item or summoning in someone to repair items, my first thought was a wizard summoning in a Blacksmith to run around and repair everyone's armor, weapons, Etc.... that would be a riot. I would laugh my arse off!

    • 1468 posts
    May 22, 2017 2:43 PM PDT

    RpTheHotrod said:

    Cromulent said:

    RpTheHotrod said:

    Zircon said:

    My opinion...

    Repairing gear isn't a real challenge it only adds nuisance to the game. 

    Whenever you want to add something that was in WoW but not in EverQuest, it should be a red flag.

    Adding to what Curlok said, I believe there will also be way too much temptation to replace death penalties with some monetary penalty. I like the idea from a standpoint of building more social aspects into the game and promoting a tradeskill, but I just think there are better ways.

    But you can consider me a classic purist.

    I agree. I find item degradation to be an annoyance that adds no fun to the game. I say no item degrading.

    I really, absolutely despise item degrdation mechanics. I'd seriously reconsider playing entirely. EverQuest was a lot of fun because you really had an attachment to your character and your gear, and your gear often had a lot to do with how your character's performance and goals were. If the game would turn into item recycling with constant replacements, even after spending a lot of time gaining pieces, then that's a load of no fun.

    Also, item degradation means no more fun loot that's difficult to obtain. What's the point of spending months of time trying to get that really cool piece of gear if you're going to just permanently lose it after using it for a few days? Gear balance would have to change to everything being easy to get since gear would come and go so fast. No thanks!

    If you spend a significant amount of time trying to obtain a piece, your reward should be that piece. It's yours - you earned it, and you can utilize it as much as you want...enjoy! Item degredation? Sorry, you can't use that anymore, farm for another 4 months to enjoy it again. Insert two more quarters.

    As for repairing refilling full functionability (as in, items don't permanently degrade), that just becomes a hassle. Y'all ready to go on an adventure? Nope, hold up, every one has to go run around and find their nearest repair areas...see y'all in about 30 minutes or so. All right, we're in a dungeon! Been going strong for a good 20 minutes, hold up, puller has to stop and go repair, we'll continue in about 15 minutes once he gets back. All right! Let's go! Hold up, now the tank has to go repair, see y'all in 15 minutes or so.

    All repairing does is cause disjointed gameplay. It never added an element of fun, and all it did was distrupt group play in my prevous experiences with the mechanic in other MMO's. Very annoying and very frustrating. The game should promote groupplay, not encourage groups to have to break apart.

    The problem with items never getting destroyed is that pretty soon supply always outstrips demand and the value of gear made by crafters plummets and they can't make any money from their craft. If you have item degradation and destruction then items will not last forever and players will need to get new items from crafters to replace what has been lost or what has been damaged.

    In EQ quite a lot of crafting services were pretty much useless because players just churned them out and the value dropped because those items never got destroyed and the marked was just flooded. The only ways for an item to leave the economy in EQ were if a player manually destroyed an item or if a player quit the game.

    I'd say EQ survived just fine without degradation. If you really want that though, then make crafted items have degradation - perhaps with a rare drop component removing degradation. If you want to have an easy gear grab, then you can buy outright from players...at the cost of having to replace them eventually. If you spent time and effort in finding a piece of gear yourself that's not crafted, then it doesn't degrade. I'm seriously not going to be too happy if items I've worked hard for end up just dissappearing. Items are a key thing in this kind of game. Making them "throw away items" takes away from that. Items don't have personality any more. There's no such thing as ancient or mysterious items. You can't have stories relating to items. No history behind them. Everything is just taped together with duct tape and glue and falling apart at the seams just isn't very fun, imho.

    Again though, this is in regard to the conversation earlier that items should continue to degrade even after repairing until the item ceases to function, in which you have to find a replacement.

    Actually EQ had a massive problem with crafting. Most people just didn't bother to do it and those that did couldn't keep up with raid loot so the highest level players almost always had items dropped by raid mobs rather than crafted by the highest level crafters in the game. That hopefully will change and the highest level raiders will have say 50% of items dropped from raid mobs and 50% of items crafted by high level crafters.

    I'm hoping Pantheon will allow crafters to keep up with raid loot. Also because items never got destroyed the value of items crashed pretty quickly. How many absolute best in slot items in EQ can you remember that were made 100% by crafters? Not many I bet. That really needs to change to make crafting a viable profession.

    • 14 posts
    May 22, 2017 5:26 PM PDT

    Kalgore said:

    Im pretty sure Brad has already said no Item degredation 

     

    That's sadly shortsighted if VR wants crafting to be an enduring part of the game. Consider the following:

    • Items do not degrade
    • Items are not "soulbound" but are instead tradable

    This means that as players adventure and accumulate gear only the highest end gear will retain value. The market for low end "green" gear will rapidly become saturated between crafted items and item drops meaning that value plummets and there is little demand for newly crafted gear once the market is saturated. As the game progresses this will slowly begin creeping up the ladder as the number of high quality items in game increases as well. In a year we'll log in to the auction house equivalent and scroll through pages of rare and potentially epic level items that people are trying to offload since its no longer BIS for them or they got a drop they can't use.

    Just as economies need inputs, they also need sinks. Here in the real world, wear and tear takes care of that for us but in an MMO the sinks need to be built into the game. 

    • 1468 posts
    May 22, 2017 7:25 PM PDT

    Ashkelon said:

    Kalgore said:

    Im pretty sure Brad has already said no Item degredation 

    That's sadly shortsighted if VR wants crafting to be an enduring part of the game. Consider the following:

    • Items do not degrade
    • Items are not "soulbound" but are instead tradable

    This means that as players adventure and accumulate gear only the highest end gear will retain value. The market for low end "green" gear will rapidly become saturated between crafted items and item drops meaning that value plummets and there is little demand for newly crafted gear once the market is saturated. As the game progresses this will slowly begin creeping up the ladder as the number of high quality items in game increases as well. In a year we'll log in to the auction house equivalent and scroll through pages of rare and potentially epic level items that people are trying to offload since its no longer BIS for them or they got a drop they can't use.

    Just as economies need inputs, they also need sinks. Here in the real world, wear and tear takes care of that for us but in an MMO the sinks need to be built into the game. 

    Exactly. If there is no way for items to leave the economy there will just be massive hyper-inflation and the value of the currency will fall through the floor. Making items break seems to be a sensible and realistic way to counter massive hyper-inflation in the economy as well as keeping crafters in their trade.

    Using EverQuest as an example is a really bad example because that economy is ridiculously bad. You go to the Bazaar and people are charging 1 million plat or more for items! Crafters are basically useless and no one really buys crafted gear because they get it all from raids. So I'd like a system that was completely different from EverQuest that can fix many of the problems that EverQuest suffers from.

    Edit: Forgot to add. With the massive hyper-inflation caused by money entering the system but having no money sinks to consume money and the fact that crafted gear never gets destroyed means that the real world value of crafted gear drops while the value of the currency is also dropping so crafted gear is pretty much worthless. For instance lets take a crafted item that costs 100 plat at launch. Maybe 6 months in it is only worth 50 plat and because people have been farming money for 6 months there is so much plat in the economy that a normal item costs 500 plat. So not only has the crafted gear dropped in real world terms the value of the currency used to buy the crafted gear is also worth less so crafters have less spending power once they have sold their goods.

    The only way to stop that is to a) make crafted gear disappear from the economy some how so that there is constant desire for it b) make sure that people have money sinks in the game in order to combat hype-inflation and c) make sure that crafted gear at least matches some of the best gear that can be obtained from raid mobs (I'm not saying all crafting gear should equal that but at least some of it).

    Sorry for the edit but I didn't explain myself very well in the original post.


    This post was edited by Cromulent at May 22, 2017 10:52 PM PDT
    • 29 posts
    May 23, 2017 8:35 AM PDT

    Crafters could restore the max durability of an item while a Blacksmith would only repair the current durability while lowering the max durability.

    That way, people are bound to seek each other for crafting needs amongst other things.

    • 174 posts
    May 23, 2017 1:23 PM PDT

    One of the arguments being presented is that there won't be any way for items to leave the economy.  I believe there will be a mechanism in place to sacrifice items, to your deity of choice, for long term buffs, if I'm remembering correctly.  Still if the developers wanted to I'm sure they could come up with a system for item degredation that wouldn't be too onerous, and might actually be entertaining...