@oneADseven
I completely agree that keeping items scarce and valuable is vital to having a balanced economy, some of the proposed items sinks to me seem great others not so much. My biggest problem with items being a currency is that you need to carry them in your bags, that’s going to be annoying as ****, because you’ll already carry your resistance and situational gear.
1 gatekeepers – I think this is too much, I don’ want to carry shitty items in my bag just to be able to enter in a dungeon. Maybe one of the dungeons has a fee to enter, but not all of them.
2 teleport spires – to me this seems more like a gold sink system, where you need to buy some mat to keep using the spires, instead of an items sink, but I guess items would have the same effect.
3 events – can’t agree with this, events are supposed to be something you do for fun, not an item sink, just my opinion.
4 deity sacrifices – I think VR already confirm something similar on the streams.
5 Disenchanting – this is a great one, I also have an idea to make DE interact with soulbound items and use it as a major item sink, I will write it down in my post.
6 Faction – It’s a cool one, but it needs a limit of how much faction you can get through this system, maybe you can complete half of the faction with it.
My item sink idea:
The problem with items becoming “soulbound” when you enchant or modify them is that you can’t revert the “soulbound” process.
My idea is making inherently magical item salvageable for 2 types of crafting components, “disenchant shards” and “enchanting shards”. When you salvage the item you can either choose to break it for “disenchant shards” or disintegrate it for “enchanting shards”. Both processes destroy the item.
“Disenchant shards” are used to revert the “soulbound” effect and make the item tradable again
“Enchanting shards” are used to enchant or modify items trough tradeskills.
The amount of “shards” that an item yields when salvaged is dictated by the level of the mob that drops the item. This discourages high levels farming low level content.
Stronger enchants or modification to items require more “disenchant shards” to revert the soulbound effect
The “enchanting shards” are base crafting components, you’ll still need other crafting components to enchant or modify items.
Inherently magical – items that are already magical when they drop, so non-magical items that are enchanted can’t be salvaged for “shards”
Honestly I don't really like any of these ideas.
Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room imo... Item durability.
If properly balanced it could solve all the economy issues but I think it scares some people.
Personally I would like a world where mundane weapons wear out and break eventually and magical items are much rarer yet retain durability much longer(but still eventually wear out).
I don't want to see magical stats on an item til towards the end game.
Disclaimer: I'm probably a masochist ;)
Thanks again,
Kiz~
I don't want to see an auction house loaded with dungeon drop items that just sit there, having their price lowered continually Over time because of their limited demand.
I had suggested this before on a prior post, but I would like to see a system where all items hold some kind of value. If you think about it, a piece of armor still has raw resources. It could be traded in to trade vendors to get back raw resoures (with a % chance for a rare bonus), traded for faction purposes, or for status points that add up to cool things from a particular vendor. I would just like to see ways that limits these dropped items from piling up. If you open up this concept to a vast amount of drop items, you won't see over camping either.
I am also a sucker for no drop items. I do like that some items you will have to work hard to get and or fend off the competition to get it. A combination of all of this is what I was hoping for. I just can't stand it when you see 20+ banded girdles for sale and the price tanks to hardly anything.
Pyye said:I don't want to see an auction house loaded with dungeon drop items that just sit there, having their price lowered continually Over time because of their limited demand.
I had suggested this before on a prior post, but I would like to see a system where all items hold some kind of value. If you think about it, a piece of armor still has raw resources. It could be traded in to trade vendors to get back raw resoures (with a % chance for a rare bonus), traded for faction purposes, or for status points that add up to cool things from a particular vendor. I would just like to see ways that limits these dropped items from piling up. If you open up this concept to a vast amount of drop items, you won't see over camping either.
I am also a sucker for no drop items. I do like that some items you will have to work hard to get and or fend off the competition to get it. A combination of all of this is what I was hoping for. I just can't stand it when you see 20+ banded girdles for sale and the price tanks to hardly anything.
Well said.
I think maybe the sacrificing/destruction of weapons to enter a zone could work out if it instead were a communal effort and a specific magical zone would unlock for the server after x amount. But that would be a one time deal, maybe they could put it in later in the servers life.
I get the idea, but how I see it working is: itemization on a very granular scale and I am not sure if such iutemization is feasible.
In my example of the FBSS being worthless ot the mage, yet in order to keep the- enforced- value of the FBSS, allow a breakdown of the FBSS into component parts. In this case the most valuable granular itemized value is the regen. Crafting can break down the regen piece to somehting mage can use and value is preserved. There maybe seperate bits not so valuable, like AC, or STA but are also seperated that can be rconfigured./
To make it fair I see the need to then itemize all stats, resists, to the point of 1 degree of regen and put a price/ value on all. Such granular itemizaiton would take alot of work. However I believe the spirit is: to the mage, the FBSS is worthless, so the mage gives it away with no cost.
Itemising each benefit with cost I feel moves it away from the contested concept of "need before greed", to internalizing in each player a "greed before need". Example: 1.Mage has the FBSS, cannot use it, gives it free to the warrior- warrior dances. 2. Mage has FBSS, and realizes mage can use the regen bit. In its pure/ dropped form the item can only be used by the warrior- mage then looks at warrior out of the side of half-lidded eyes anticipating or looking for an offensive, accusatory, remark or jealous behavior from warrior and does not stop until group is ended. Warrior offers to pay for FBSS. Mage becomes gollum.
And this is where I get stuck. Because I also see the OP idea of taking items out of the game to prevent over-value in one class by creating a mechanic to spread value across all classes. Which to prevent dilution to worthlessness would need a listed common value and be an aid to the general player .3 Both mage and warrior cheer that mage got the FBSS. Warrior could do without regen because he has more HP whereas the mage is frail. Like Capitalism and Socialism sort of where capitalism would say, the more of the item the less its worth but encourage lock downs(constant camping) of an item to preserve/inflate its value.(giving rise to macro-quest, bots, etc) Whereas socialism would say, the benefit is good for all no matter who uses it and therefore- has value across ALL classes, even to the point of outside uses like faction.
Manouk said:I get the idea, but how I see it working is: itemization on a very granular scale and I am not sure if such iutemization is feasible.
In my example of the FBSS being worthless ot the mage, yet in order to keep the- enforced- value of the FBSS, allow a breakdown of the FBSS into component parts. In this case the most valuable granular itemized value is the regen. Crafting can break down the regen piece to somehting mage can use and value is preserved. There maybe seperate bits not so valuable, like AC, or STA but are also seperated that can be rconfigured./
To make it fair I see the need to then itemize all stats, resists, to the point of 1 degree of regen and put a price/ value on all. Such granular itemizaiton would take alot of work. However I believe the spirit is: to the mage, the FBSS is worthless, so the mage gives it away with no cost.
Itemising each benefit with cost I feel moves it away from the contested concept of "need before greed", to internalizing in each player a "greed before need". Example: 1.Mage has the FBSS, cannot use it, gives it free to the warrior- warrior dances. 2. Mage has FBSS, and realizes mage can use the regen bit. In its pure/ dropped form the item can only be used by the warrior- mage then looks at warrior out of the side of half-lidded eyes anticipating or looking for an offensive, accusatory, remark or jealous behavior from warrior and does not stop until group is ended. Warrior offers to pay for FBSS. Mage becomes gollum.
And this is where I get stuck. Because I also see the OP idea of taking items out of the game to prevent over-value in one class by creating a mechanic to spread value across all classes. Which to prevent dilution to worthlessness would need a listed common value and be an aid to the general player .3 Both mage and warrior cheer that mage got the FBSS. Warrior could do without regen because he has more HP whereas the mage is frail. Like Capitalism and Socialism sort of where capitalism would say, the more of the item the less its worth but encourage lock downs(constant camping) of an item to preserve/inflate its value.(giving rise to macro-quest, bots, etc) Whereas socialism would say, the benefit is good for all no matter who uses it and therefore- has value across ALL classes, even to the point of outside uses like faction.
I'm a bit confused by this because the FBSS I know is ALL/ALL and the only thing it offers is haste, but it seems like the basic idea is so that the items can be broken down by their stats? And then these little stat pieces can be used by crafters to make new items? Am I following? Or way off?
I guess I am probably one of the few on the opposite ends of the spectrum that wants there to be as much BoP and BoE gear as possible. I feel like half the fun of the game is going out on an adventure to find your items and materials. Specialist behavior is not really a good thing in an mmo economy to me, it promotes monopolization of content because you only have to find one thing to be good at to accelerate yourself to power.
Make game where each item is signifigant
Make content challenging for groups
Make most items tradable
Allow twinking (with a caveat of stats scaling perhaps)
Need to sac gear for some buffs
With this formula you are basically saying to the players, go perma camp every long spawning mob in a dungeon, and when you are done, pass the camp off to your other camping friend or guildie. This is basically suiciding dungeon content imo. If most dungeons become camped a few months after launch by level inappropriate players, exp groups will gravitate towards safer outdoors grinding because they either will have bought said items from farmer(s) or don't want to crawl through a bunch of trash when there is no nameds to speak of.
By allowing almost all items to be traded you also disincentivize players from getting their own new items. If your friend give you 10p to start the game 3 months after launch and you get some bags and a notoriously good lvl 40 twink sword, where is your incentive to replace that item by doing level appropriate content? What if you get a full set of items, or are an alt that you got a bunch of gear for on your main. This promotes power leveling more so and is not healthy for the lower level population 3+ months after launch in my opinion.
torveld said:With this formula you are basically saying to the players, go perma camp every long spawning mob in a dungeon, and when you are done, pass the camp off to your other camping friend or guildie. This is basically suiciding dungeon content imo. If most dungeons become camped a few months after launch by level inappropriate players, exp groups will gravitate towards safer outdoors grinding because they either will have bought said items from farmer(s) or don't want to crawl through a bunch of trash when there is no nameds to speak of.
By allowing almost all items to be traded you also disincentivize players from getting their own new items. If your friend give you 10p to start the game 3 months after launch and you get some bags and a notoriously good lvl 40 twink sword, where is your incentive to replace that item by doing level appropriate content? What if you get a full set of items, or are an alt that you got a bunch of gear for on your main. This promotes power leveling more so and is not healthy for the lower level population 3+ months after launch in my opinion.
They could be heavy handed with the lore items, so you can't sit and farm up multiples of things and if you want to sell the high end loot you would have to sacrifice your own equipped version if you wanted to profit from said item. I don't know how they plan to combat guilds locking down the best rare spawns.
Twinks may have zero incentive to replace any of their gear but it won't hurt things very much. They still have to group to level and they won't likely be able to do much against red con mobs regardless of how twinked they are (especially if the items scale down based on level), so they will be doing level appropriate content with non-twinks the same as they did back in EQ.
Can do when i am home will DM you with the Details. I know our economics and faction shows had talk about this and 1 or 2 of the crafting shows.
Making item protection dependable on seasons would also be a driving factor for NPC/player loot demand.
As NPC's would demand items based on climat,weather and season
This would have a huge impact on item value, based on the protection the current environmental circumstances demand.
If players could swap their summer items for winter items and vice versa,the items would almost be like vegetables obtainable only during certain seasons.
It would make for a better version of the gatekeeper idea to sacrifice items.
You'd have to collect items to swap them for an item of different season.
Example: 3 common summer items can be swapped for 1 new common winter item.6 summer items can be swapped for new 1 special winter item
3 special items can be swapped for 1 new treasured item and so on.
Yea,but there is a lot more to it.
It is not the sole purpose to let everyone change items every season.
It helps to maintain a good flat value for items because there are always circumstances they can be useful in.
I think it would actually bring true value to items,for other reasons than power;environment becomes an important factor in item value.
Just like wool is valuable because it offers a lot of protection under extreme cold conditions
This also helps to create a believable setting where each item has a value for a good reason;it is needed to brave a certain harsh environment.
Helping to create that right atmosphere in the right environment too;eg like snowy area > thick winter coat (not everyone naked like in summer)
Npc item demand would be based on true environmental circumstances & in turn I believe this would make the world seem real as NPC's would adapt their item demand according to the local environment
+ players would need to plan and prepare a bit in advance before they go on a journey.
And this also invites players for a courteous gesture,e.g. offering a winter coat to players in trouble on the journey
This way,items could be used as currency & they would mean so much more to us in a social setting too
The fact that we will need to have situational gear should help with the flow of items coming in and out of the economy. So checking off every bullet point in the OP shouldn't be necessary.
I'm definitely a fan of trading items for faction tho for sure. Donating to deities is already being discussed.
I would like to see a deep complex system for breaking items down into materials and resources as well as a nice robust disenchantment system. These types of systems always give crafting a healthy bump of activities to do while also helping the flow of items.
I also wouldn't mind item durability. To me, it doesn't make sense NOT to have durability in game because items have to wear down as they are used. Weapons wear down as you beat things with them and armor wears down as things beat you. I'm pretty sure this won't be in game but it could be one way to assist the flow of items. It would simply have to be a system where you can't keep the durability at a 100% forever, eventually the items will break if you continue to use them.
NoobieDoo said:I also wouldn't mind item durability. To me, it doesn't make sense NOT to have durability in game because items have to wear down as they are used. Weapons wear down as you beat things with them and armor wears down as things beat you. I'm pretty sure this won't be in game but it could be one way to assist the flow of items. It would simply have to be a system where you can't keep the durability at a 100% forever, eventually the items will break if you continue to use them.
I think my ideal scenario would be where items get worn but never completely broken. For example a weapon gets dull over time so it deals less damage, but it never completely breaks. So you don't have to worry about permanently losing the item, but it's still a money sink because you're going to want to keep it as sharp as possible to maximize your damage potential. I do think that most if not all weapons should be pretty durable - wearing out should be a pretty slow process. It's not the sort of thing that's fun to have to maintain every hour or something.
Or they could make it so that items can be completely broken, but when they are broken they just become temporarily unusable until you can get back to a blacksmith/tailor/etc. to repair it for you. They don't disappear completely - just sit in your inventory with a big red X over it or something to show that it cannot be equipped until it's fixed. It doesn't make sense that when a weapon breaks, the pieces just vaporize into thin air. No, you pick up the pieces, put them in your bag, and take them back to someone that can put them back together again. Problem solved.
Seems like the best of both worlds to me :)
I really hate the idea, as most do, of items ever breaking entirely. You spend hours/days/weeks trying to get some drops and the thought of them going away forever blows hard. I imagine it would also have a far reaching net negative effect on the economy. It makes sense in the real world that items are breaking down etc, and to a degree in fantasy worlds. But when you have magically imbued armors, it seems there is fair room to argue that deterioration doesn't apply.
I even hate item repair as it is. It is fine in games like WoW etc but if you added repairs to the tab in something like EQ it would be completely awful. It was bad enough with corpse runs/vendor runs. Adding repair runs is bleh. If there were such a system then I think Bazgrim's idea would work best. It never fully breaks/vanishes but can be fixed with some crafting method.
Iksar said:they already have a climate system that you will need different gear for
I'd be happy enough with that whiiiii
As NoobieDoo mentions, situational gear helps with the flow of items going in and out of the economy.
When we need different gear to brave different climates,it sees to it that items always have value to us.
It is not like with damage potential;anything less than the maximum damage potential turns irrelevant.
When climate enters the game,items will always maintain purpose and value.
On the durability part mentioned above: I was thinking about some kind of temporary ancienity quests.Almost like the living stories in Guildwars .
These epic quests links a level of ancienity gain to item durability while players are on the quest.
Item durability having a positive effect sounds crazy ?
To prevent ancienity bot farming we can't have fixed mobs providing ancienity to items.
Thats why they need to be temporary,linked to an event,a capital quest or something alike
Iksar said:I really hate the idea, as most do, of items ever breaking entirely. You spend hours/days/weeks trying to get some drops and the thought of them going away forever blows hard. I imagine it would also have a far reaching net negative effect on the economy. It makes sense in the real world that items are breaking down etc, and to a degree in fantasy worlds. But when you have magically imbued armors, it seems there is fair room to argue that deterioration doesn't apply.
I even hate item repair as it is. It is fine in games like WoW etc but if you added repairs to the tab in something like EQ it would be completely awful. It was bad enough with corpse runs/vendor runs. Adding repair runs is bleh. If there were such a system then I think Bazgrim's idea would work best. It never fully breaks/vanishes but can be fixed with some crafting method.
Yeah it's just yet another Practicality vs. Realism debate. Repairs are one of those things that I hate to endorse, yet I do it anyway. Because it does actually add more to the game than you'd think. For one thing, it's a good plat sink and it does just "make sense." And it also potentially opens up a new type of situational gear. D&D has rust monsters that chew up your items faster, so if you anticipate fighting mobs that wear out your gear faster, you should bring special gear that is more resistant to wear. But like I said, I think items wear out way too fast in a lot of games. So those types of mobs should be pretty rare and overall on a day-to-day basis, degradation should be very gradual so repairing doesn't just become a chore.
And to clarify, giving player crafters the ability to repair weapons and armor opens up an opportunity for more business and player interaction, but there should also be several NPCs in any big city (and probably at least one in most smaller towns) that can repair for you as well, so you don't always have to look for a crafter. Although perhaps a crafter would be able to do it for less money.
Bazgrim said:Iksar said:I really hate the idea, as most do, of items ever breaking entirely. You spend hours/days/weeks trying to get some drops and the thought of them going away forever blows hard. I imagine it would also have a far reaching net negative effect on the economy. It makes sense in the real world that items are breaking down etc, and to a degree in fantasy worlds. But when you have magically imbued armors, it seems there is fair room to argue that deterioration doesn't apply.
I even hate item repair as it is. It is fine in games like WoW etc but if you added repairs to the tab in something like EQ it would be completely awful. It was bad enough with corpse runs/vendor runs. Adding repair runs is bleh. If there were such a system then I think Bazgrim's idea would work best. It never fully breaks/vanishes but can be fixed with some crafting method.
Yeah it's just yet another Practicality vs. Realism debate. Repairs are one of those things that I hate to endorse, yet I do it anyway. Because it does actually add more to the game than you'd think. For one thing, it's a good plat sink and it does just "make sense." And it also potentially opens up a new type of situational gear. D&D has rust monsters that chew up your items faster, so if you anticipate fighting mobs that wear out your gear faster, you should bring special gear that is more resistant to wear. But like I said, I think items wear out way too fast in a lot of games. So those types of mobs should be pretty rare and overall on a day-to-day basis, degradation should be very gradual so repairing doesn't just become a chore.
And to clarify, giving player crafters the ability to repair weapons and armor opens up an opportunity for more business and player interaction, but there should also be several NPCs in any big city (and probably at least one in most smaller towns) that can repair for you as well, so you don't always have to look for a crafter. Although perhaps a crafter would be able to do it for less money.
This is exactly how I view item repair, as much as people say they hate it, it adds so much to the game and keeps the economy ticking over, as long as the rate as which things deteriorate and the cost of repair is balanced correctly it shouldn;t ever be a worry, just something you do.
Allowing crafters to repair with maybe an added bonus of time before the weapon needs repairing again or a maybe an immunity for a set time would help encourage hiring a crafter or taking up crafting themselves, little things like this mixed in with all of our other systems, mechanics and features just add to the world and encourage socialisation and interactions. :)
Kilsin said:This is exctly how I view item repair, as much as people say they hate it, it adds so much to the game and keeps the economy ticking over, as long as the rate as which things deteriorate and the cost of repair is balanced correctly it shouldn;t ever be a worry, just something you do.
Allowing crafters to repair with maybe an added bonus of time before the weapon needs repairing again or a maybe an immunity for a set time would help encourage hiring a crafter or taking up crafting themselves, little things like this mixed in with all of our other systems, mechanics and features just add to the world and encourage socialisation and interactions. :)
I hope we won't require use of specific in-town only tools to repair. If we don't I will master all trades so my groups never have to break up the pulls for a repair run. :P