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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Proposal: No Repairing Gear
Xenantaya
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I took a look at the Wiki, and there aren't too many details on repairing gear, but it seems like gear repair will be in game. I suggest removing gear repair, meaning that all gear eventually will break from losing durability and have to be replaced, for the following reasons:
1. Gear destruction seems necessary for a vibrant economy and for crafters to have a market for their wares. Games like WoW don't have much of a gear economy because there's no point in buying new gear once you have the best you can get and can just keep repairing it. By contrast, Albion Online has an active economy because gear is constantly being lost and destroyed in full loot PvP. Since AOC won't be full loot or have gear destruction through PvP (for non-corrupt players) some alternative gear destruction is needed for the economy, which can be durability losses that cannot be repaired, eventually resulting in having to buy new gear.
2. Gear destruction means that crafters will be active and have a market for their products, which in turns means that refiners and gatherers will have a market as well. By contrast, without gear destruction, crafters aren't selling, meaning they aren't buying from refiners, refiners won't buy from gatherers, and gatherers have no reason to collect resources. Without gear destruction, a large portion of the game eventually will have no purpose.
3. Having gear with durability losses that is not repairable will give greater significance to raids, world bosses, and other challenging encounters. In a game like WoW, if you die then you just lose time, and occasionally some gold from repairing. If gear has permanent durability losses, then each encounter is more meaningful and puts more emphasis on performing well each attempt instead of just racking up attempts. If players keep dying, they've not only spent time but also will have to buy new gear (again, giving more of reason for players to be active in crafting, refining, and gathering).
4. The amount of durability each piece of gear has should scale with its power, rarity, and difficulty to make. Drops from the most powerful raid boss in the game or epic crafting sagas should last a long time. But even those should eventually break to give players an incentive to keep doing those encounters to maintain their gear levels. By contrast, more common gear -- including common level 50 gear -- should break more frequently, as replacing such gear will be the bread and butter of gear crafters.
In sum, I'm concerned that allowing gear repair with cause AOC not to have an active gear economy. A simple way to solve this problem without changing major mechanics of the game (e.g., gear destruction from PvP) is to get rid of gear repair so as to have a gear destruction mechanic.
1. Gear destruction seems necessary for a vibrant economy and for crafters to have a market for their wares. Games like WoW don't have much of a gear economy because there's no point in buying new gear once you have the best you can get and can just keep repairing it. By contrast, Albion Online has an active economy because gear is constantly being lost and destroyed in full loot PvP. Since AOC won't be full loot or have gear destruction through PvP (for non-corrupt players) some alternative gear destruction is needed for the economy, which can be durability losses that cannot be repaired, eventually resulting in having to buy new gear.
2. Gear destruction means that crafters will be active and have a market for their products, which in turns means that refiners and gatherers will have a market as well. By contrast, without gear destruction, crafters aren't selling, meaning they aren't buying from refiners, refiners won't buy from gatherers, and gatherers have no reason to collect resources. Without gear destruction, a large portion of the game eventually will have no purpose.
3. Having gear with durability losses that is not repairable will give greater significance to raids, world bosses, and other challenging encounters. In a game like WoW, if you die then you just lose time, and occasionally some gold from repairing. If gear has permanent durability losses, then each encounter is more meaningful and puts more emphasis on performing well each attempt instead of just racking up attempts. If players keep dying, they've not only spent time but also will have to buy new gear (again, giving more of reason for players to be active in crafting, refining, and gathering).
4. The amount of durability each piece of gear has should scale with its power, rarity, and difficulty to make. Drops from the most powerful raid boss in the game or epic crafting sagas should last a long time. But even those should eventually break to give players an incentive to keep doing those encounters to maintain their gear levels. By contrast, more common gear -- including common level 50 gear -- should break more frequently, as replacing such gear will be the bread and butter of gear crafters.
In sum, I'm concerned that allowing gear repair with cause AOC not to have an active gear economy. A simple way to solve this problem without changing major mechanics of the game (e.g., gear destruction from PvP) is to get rid of gear repair so as to have a gear destruction mechanic.
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Personally in games like bdo and eso I didnt like it, but I am curious to see how it can properly be done.
That does not make any sense.
Might as well make apartments purchasable but you cannot enter them.
If you wish to disallow repairing of gear altogether, due to various reasons of your own - I am not going to take time to divulge - then there needs to be no system for gear damage period. This is the only way.
Why would this be the only way?
If a game has gear degredation but no repair (or limited repair), then all that means is that you eventually have to replace your items.
While this could be considered harsh in a game with one off quest rewards and raid drops that are quite rare, Ashes is a game where either most or all of the gear is player made, and so can be replaced like for like.
Every game needs a way to take items out of the economy. Many games use binding, which is not a very good system at all. This is because it only takes gear out of the game as players get replacements - if you are not actively replacing your gear, you are no longer participating in the economy.
Making it so gear degrades and is eventually in need of replacing means that if you are playing the game, you are participating in the economy.
I can't see how this could be considered anything other than a good thing.
Even "higher tier" items are hard to find and can take months of gameplay. Also rare crafting components, which affect items because it takes months to acquire them only to craft a weapon or armor and have it break in a few days after selling it. Is it worth it to craft another?
The economy will be under inflation, because it is so hard to craft higher tier arms and armor. The list of demand is off the rooftops, because once an item is sold it breaks forever. NPC merchants will have to sell mastercraft quality equipment for 1/2 value, due to short shelf-life.
Then what will gameplay be focused on? Real Estate. Not that real estate is bad, IMHO I love it (more than some may know), but there needs to be /balance/. Not being able to overturn disintegrated items takes out purpose of battle. Unless ye just wish to slay people or monsters, what about the one in the mirror, ye see it too.
NPC merchants will never be selling top end gear. Top end gear will come from either crafters or raids clears. It seems a safe assumption that a one-off weapon will last far longer than a lvl5 Iron Sword you bought from an NPC, but why should it last forever?
Youve come in thinking gear degradation means you get hardly any time with an item, but we haven’t even seen it in practice. If the general consensus says gear breaks too fast during Alpha, Intrepid can adjust the system. It’s not like “unbreakable” and “made of glass” are the only two options.
You seem to be literally just assuming everything from a game you have experience in (presumably WoW, people that do this have almost always only ever played WoW), but with just one change.
If Intrepid took a full itemization system from another game - including drop rates - and added item degradation, then that would clearly be dumb.
On the other hand, if they design it from the ground up with the idea that players need to replace items as they play, and set the rate of materials acquisition to match, then there is no reason at all to assume it won't work.
Your statement about not being able to overturn disintegrated items takes out purpose of battle makes no real sense. Care to elaborate and/or explain your thinking here?
It's been repeated multiple times you can repair your gear, you just can't do it indefinitely. Everything has its limits, as it should to ensure crafters are needed for more than just the once-a-player gear crafting. Your legendary sword should be for difficult content. Other raids, seiges, dungeons. It shouldn't be your perma-equipped weapon when you're doing a quest for a religious node or when you're out in the wilderness just gathering materials.
Legendary sword, legendary tasks.
Mundane tasks, mundane gear.
It's also worth pointing out that legendary items will be restricted to either very few per server - or in some cases simply one per server.
The chances of any one person having one are miniscule. The chances that the kind of person that would not play a game due to degrading items is essentially zero.
Which then raises the question, what’s the point of making something break if odds are that someone is probably going to ditch it anyway for the next shiny? It does make it seem redundant. I guess maybe it might just serve to keep players from being unrealistic hoarders, or too stubborn to upgrade, which isn’t a bad thing.
At least gear is wearing out from use. I’ve played a few games where gear is essentially “rented”, and expires over time, which makes you feel obligated to play the game more to “get your money’s worth”. For example, in the game APB, you could rent a legendary gun and it lasts a week before you need to replace it. There were ways to earn a weapon permanently (or a random chance to have it happen) but mostly they went away over time. That’s definitely worse than degrading from use/death penalty.
From the sounds of it you're seeing the word legendary in a WoW sense. As in a Yellow. When They refer to Legendary, think more of an Artifact. If you get one of those, depending, you might have the only one on the server. Those ones will need repair, and it might take some good mats to do so, but can always be repaired.
Hmmm now that you mention it, maybe focusing on something new would be a change for the better. It has been so long I have had nothing but this sword, perhaps no turnover would be a whole new avenue for me. Thank you for this piece of advice. If there is no repair, I'll still play. Let us see what Intrepid has to say about this.
I don't know about all the stuff people write about here but this is from the wiki with official source:
"There is durability in the game... It's not going to be a trivial durability. There is a potential to destroy gear (weapons and armor), but there is also an ability to reforge that destroyed gear using a portion of the materials necessary as well as finding an item creator who can reforge it."
Most here are just puking out words from their fantasies.
Could you give me a source that you can't repair forever? Could not find it on wiki?
Gear repair, and gear destruction is exactly the same thing if the developers make it the same thing. They are useless definitions. Let me explain:
Scenario 1 with gear destruction:
Your item goes to 0 durability and it turns into useless scrap, you open chat and find a new crafter and give him 5 Steel bars and 2 leather and he makes new a new item.
Scenario 2 with gear repair
Your item goes to 0 durability and it now needs repairing to be effective, you open chat, find a crafter, and give him 5 Steel bars and 2 leather and he repairs your item.
Let me tell you this and keep it for the rest of your life:
It is never what you do. It is always how you do it.
I don't think this argument holds up for a lot of games.
It would depend on the type of person required to perform a craft VS a repair as well. Not speaking directly about this game, but in general, in many games any player regardless of crafting level can repair their gear at forges or shops without the need for player intervention. However, if the player needs a piece of gear created that's usually a crafting matter. Other games make repair a different skill completely compared to crafting.
So if developers make them the same thing then, with the same quantity of materials, yes the nomenclature doesn't matter. However, most games either make these two things separate or require less materials for repair over creation. Some games even go as far as to scale the amount of materials needed for repair vs the amount of durability.
So in very niche situations the definitions might be useless, but in most situations they are very important.
I'm in the same situation.
I distinctly remember it from discussions in 2017 and 2018, but I can't find reference to them.
I remember that as well
Virtue is the only good.
I haven’t been able to go searching through all the transcripts, but generally the current known ways that armor is destroyed is overenchanting, and dying while at high corruption.
I’m pretty sure some degradation of gear was meant to be permanent in that you wouldn’t be able to repair items to full durability after a while, but I haven’t been able to find those sources yet.