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Will Our Gear Lose Efficiency With Damage? Should it?
Tyranthraxus
Member
The present wiki page doesn't appear to directly address this - or maybe I'm not seeing it?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Item_sinks#Item_durability
To clarify, in some games your weapons and gear begin to lose efficiency, when damaged/when their durability is lower. Do we know yet if this will be the case in AoC? Yours truly prefers a system where your efficiency is NOT impacted, until durability hits 0%. This is because it's quite discouraging to continue something like a big raid where the party has wiped 5 times, and with each successive attempt, your gear is less and less effective.
Or SHOULD it be the case that gear efficiency goes down with lower durability, in order to make death penalties more impactful?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Item_sinks#Item_durability
To clarify, in some games your weapons and gear begin to lose efficiency, when damaged/when their durability is lower. Do we know yet if this will be the case in AoC? Yours truly prefers a system where your efficiency is NOT impacted, until durability hits 0%. This is because it's quite discouraging to continue something like a big raid where the party has wiped 5 times, and with each successive attempt, your gear is less and less effective.
Or SHOULD it be the case that gear efficiency goes down with lower durability, in order to make death penalties more impactful?
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I prefer it didn't. I'd like gear to be at 100% performance until they break, at which point, they become un-usable. Death will still have the same material cost, it just means you don't feel pressured to repair after every single death.
Seems we agree on this Tyranthraxus
It helps the economy when you have to purchase materials to sink to your weapon or armor, but not to extreme measures like BDO.
It's also a nice organizational feature.
"Ok ppl in 10 mins we are heading for the Forrest of Mirrors. Make sure to repair your gear" and you see a whole group of players going around town to buy materials or get them from their chest.
So for a good 4-5h of combat the gear should perform fine. Then the players either need to headback to town or use "Gear repair items" that consume the required mats and repair the gear (if you will).
However I think the devs should take 2 things in consideration.
The gear shouldn't lose effectiveness for every % of damage taken.
I think the gear should remain fully effective until it receives 40% or so gear dmg, then lose stats.
At 70% dmg it should be near useless and at 90% dmg you risk losing the item (if you will).
The other thing is that I believe the gear dmg system should be more forgiving at lower-mid Lvs and not punishing at high Lvs.
Every time I left the towns I wanted to have 4-5k soulshots on my char for the next 4-5h of combat. These consumables were used with every attack and improved my atk speed and dmg.
In order to craft these consumables you had to find a crafter to deconstruct weapons and armors (the higher your weapon was, the higher the gear you had to break for the soul shots craft, use the returns and craft shots.
A 50lv weapon could produce nearly 100k 50lv shots if I am not mistaken.
Needless to say, selling these shots would bring you good money.
Most games have some short of gold sink. It's always best to get real materials and crafters (community) involved.
Spirit shits indeed. I hated the consumables. Consumables required for every fight are naff. Potions should be the only consumables required and potions should bolster the proficiency, not be required for basic proficiency.
I hated them too at the time. I still think they look ugly. But now I understand the value they placed in the economy.
The repair gear system of AoC achieves the same thing.
Unlike bdo, where you need an extra weapon every day or ESO that you give gold to npcs.
I am leaning towards no stat degradation though, or at least only a very minor one past a certain threshold like 50% durabilty. I also don't want to see any loss during themed PvP like sieges. If they have to put durability loss for themed PvP, make it apply after the event is over at least. Missing out on fights because you have to repair your gear would just suck IMO.
However at 0% I would prefer a massive drop in efficiency rather than straight up lose that item (like in a Breath of the Wild situation).
Another possible added idea is overcapping the durability by some crafting or enchanting means. This would add an extra bonus to the efficiency until its durability dropped below 100%. This could be a service that many high end raiders would seek out and it would further balance the economy if you want to over prepare for a fight.
Based on that, your equipment would be at 83% max ability when your durability is at 25% and at 54% ability at 1% durability.
You could even break it down further and do something like:
100% ability up to 88% durability.
- 1% ability every 3 durability to 65%
- 1% ability every 2 durability to 40%
- 1% ability every 1 durability to 20%
- 2% ability every 1 durability to 0%
lots of different ways to do it.
This would help keep crafting materials in higher demand by requiring items to be repaired, keep players more engaged with the economy and professions as keeping gear in good repair would reward them with more efficiency.
Perhaps skilled crafters could "polish" gear, giving it up to 110% durability and reducing the effect of Durability loss by a small amount.
It's not exactly the same, but Monster Hunter's weapons have a Sharpness bar, that deteriorates as you fight:
At Purple sharpness, raw damage is 139%
At Red sharpness, raw damage is 50%
Different weapons would have different bars:
You could do something similar but for equipment durability instead
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
That way, a person with only 30% left on their gear is still 100% effective, but one more death in either PvP or PvE and they will not be.
This prevents the need for players to always have gear repaired to 100%, but also provides a buffer for players between "everything is fine" and "you're basically naked now".
If that system were in place it would completely screw over players using rare or higher value items. It would make repairing them cost too much. Also, this would require a whole scaling system on damage and effects to persistently calculate the durability of your item in real time, causing it to constantly fluctuate and quite possibly cause a ton of issues on the system's end.
Assuming there is no effect scaling in place already (there may well be to facilitate crafting), it wouldn't be that hard to only scale stats, and not effects.
As to rare items costing more to repair, this is something Intrwpid would have 100% control over, so if they don't want more expensive items to cost more to repair they will cost more,but if Intrepid dont want that, they dont need to.
I don't think they will have actual control over the value players put on the items. When they say gold and material sink, I believe they mean the gold will be payment for the crafting of the items to other players, not as a material component required to craft such items. It would be too weird and forced otherwise.
The only control I could see them having is on how rare the materials would be for such items, but then they would lose value as rare items.
It is worth pointing out that Steven has in the past said that item repair is both a good sink and a material sink. That means that each repair needs to have an amount of gold leave the server, not just move from one player to another.
They could easily set crafting up so that you have a primary component, and as many secondary components as the developers like.
The primary component would be something that drops off a mob, be it some, group or raid.
The secondary components could be simply basic raw harvests, or could be refined versions of raw harvests, as Intrepid see fit.
From there, they could say that the repair of an item is based on the secondary components, not the primary component.
If they opt for refining raw harvests,they could add a purchased reagent to the refining process,which would then be a fixed cost associated with that refined material, and while the rarer an item is, the more expensive it will be to fix, such repairs will never need to use the rare item that was used to craft it.
On the other hand,Intrepid could, if they want, make it so you do indeed need those rare items to repair gear. This is a perfectly valid way to do things, but it would mean the acquisition rate of those materials would take in to account the fact that they are needed for repairs. Intrepid wouldn't just set their drop rate at that suitable for only creating the item like other games have, if the item is also needed for repairs.
I would agree though, that if Intrepid set the acquisition rate of these raw materials without taking in to consideration the need to use them for repairs, that would be a monumental screwup on their part.
Ok that would make more sense and would explain the gold sink in a proper way. If that is the case I am satisfied. What I do not want to see is the literal ritual sacrifice of gold coins as they fuel crafting an item. It sounds metal but makes no sense unless the god of wealth needs to be paid every time you craft something XD.
100% agree.
Played a few games like thta (Archeage, in particular), and I'm not a fan.
That is the risk vs reward Steven wont shut up about.
Sometimes you have to put on a worst set if you know you are going to be out making YOLO decisions.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Items should very slowly take damage from use.
here's my contribution / idea...
There should be a band of item durability damage that results in no performance loss.
This might be 70%- 100% of perfect condition.
At 50% and below the item linearly drops it's effectiveness down to zero.
Basic maintenance can put a 10% buffer on item damage, allowing for players to look after their gear, clean, polish, etc. after every battle, without needing crafter support after minor skirmishes. That buffer is damaged first, before any real durability loss is counted.
When an item drops below 70% durability then half the damage it takes below 70% can never be repaired.
So look after your gear!
Another cap would apply that says any repair can't do better than double the %age durability that is left
durability max repair
90% 100%
80% 100%
70% 100%
69% 99.5%
68% 99%
60% 95%
50% 90%
40% 80%
30% 60% consider scrap value!
20% 40% consider scrap value!
10% 20% consider scrap value!
The above also assumes that the repairing crafter has a high enough skill and materials to achieve a maximum repair, which obviously depends on a number of variables.
Edit: Such a system would prevent over-enchanting too. We do not know the amount of durability loss through over-enchants or if you must be at 100% durability to over-enchant, but, I do not want the current iterations to be changed without tests.
There must be balance between action and crafting. The current system appears fine on paper.
Edit: The Current System.
There is item durability (item decay) in Ashes of Creation.[3]
Item durability loss occurs on death.[1][5][8]
Gear stored in a player's inventory (that is not equipped) does not lose durability when that player dies.[9]
Over enchanting an item comes with the risk of durability loss.[5][10][11]
Materials are required in order to repair restore the performance of decayed items.[1][5][6][2]
Zero percent durability will unequip an item, increasing its repair costs.[4]
The decay system is not going to be some worthless "Oh I'm just going to throw some gold into this and it's a simple gold sink". It's actually going to require some base materials in order to repair decayed items; and decay occurs from death and also the destruction and disable system. For the weapons over the over-enchanting will require those materials as well. So creating that dependency I think is healthy for the crafting economy.[5] – Steven Sharif
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.[3] – Steven Sharif
This does not mean that you always have to maintain 100% durability value.
I like to be asked to make a decision on whether to take a risk, like when playing a soul-like game and wondering whether you should go further or turn back as your HP is lost.
At what point to repair would be determined by each player's preference.
Maybe there will be some interesting players who dare to play with a battered armament and spend a long time slaying dragons !
I would like to repair my armor while listening to the boastful stories of such players
It would be interesting if gear gets "dirty" over time (weapons covered in blood, armor dirty) and if we want to clean it we can. Maybe the dirt/oil/blood makes us a little brighter and easier to be seen on the battlefield. We would have a tactical advantage to stay clean lol. Even then it is just a time sink. There are new and unique ways to keep us in the game than just a natural waste of money over time for playing the game IMO.