Will Our Gear Lose Efficiency With Damage? Should it?

Tyranthraxus

Yours truly is still in favor of a lack of efficiency-degradation via equipment damage - but if we do see it in AoC, some of you have some good ideas in regards to loss of efficiency only after a certain point of damage; I much like this idea or notion, versus any formula that reduces efficiency that matches the present durability of equipment (i.e. efficiency loss after something like 50% durability, versus a system wherein 94% durability = 94% efficiency).

Thanks for the insight into other systems, gang! Too many MMOs out there to have played them all. Most of them have some good aspects or ideas behind them, and Intrepid is really in a position to get to cherry-pick the best ones!

Honshu

Before the spergy supporting argument, in short, hell to the fucking fuck no. Durability decrease = less item effectiveness is garbage because it will be annoying, but more deeply it will be bad for the proposed interconnectedness of the economy and the game, because it will incentivize self sustaining characters to the point where anything else would be foolish.


Consider the following; by creating a system where durability is linked to performance in a granular (performance steadily decreases) instead of a binary way (durability goes down but doesn't matter until it suddenly matters very much), you make players want to be self sufficient. You make them want to repair all their own stuff, because they are going to need to repair their own stuff VERY often to maintain optimal effectiveness. In fact, I would argue that an inability to repair your own stuff (which will influence your class/tradeskill/gathering choices to an extreme degree) will make you so much less effective that there will be basically no other way to play.

Picture an average adventuring day with this granular system; you're all repaired up, you have all your gear ready, you have any consumables or materials you may need, and you head out from the most local town or node or whatever and start doing some quests and killing some monsters. You kill a pack of monsters, then you repair, because if you don't, you will be noticeably less effective (and if you aren't noticeably less effective, if it's barely noticeable, why would you have this system at all?). Then you do some quests, then you have to repair. Then you may notice you're starting to get low on raw materials you need to use to repair your gear or not. If you run out, your effectiveness becomes reduced to the point where you can't really quest and fight effectively anymore. You go back home, start gathering or otherwise acquiring the materials you need to repair your own gear again, and rinse repeat tomorrow.

Contrast this with a binary durability system, where effectiveness is not reduced based on durability. Suddenly, you do not have to have those skills and materials ON HAND to maintain combat effectiveness. You can probably save that repair work for when you're at the end of your adventuring day, and maybe when you get back to town you can go through the market system or something to get your gear repaired. This difference means you now FEEL like you have the freedom to pick the tradeskills you want instead of just the ones that will most effectively keep your character at maximum effectiveness, and are therefore more likely to outsource your gear repair needs.

TLDR: A system that directly incentivizes self sustained play (and durability being linked to gear effectiveness DOES incentivize self sustained play, because the desire to be at peak effectiveness at all times is VERY STRONG) will actually hurt the interconnectedness the devs seek to achieve. If a full adventuring day can be achieved without necessarily having to worry about repairing (but obviously maintaining it as an "eventual necessity,"), you remove the desire/requirement for having those skills necessarily be on your character, therefore a player is actually more prone to outsourcing his repair needs to other players, allowing people who desire to focus on that gameplay to have their skills and efforts desired and rewarded, and therefore increasing the chance of interconnectedness.

Songcaller

To be blunt, if there is a PvP Spiral other than Corruption (Namely, stat dampening based on item durability) the crafters will find less people willing to protect the nodes, the crafters and the supply lines. If no-one is paid to protect the nodes, the crafters and the supply lines then why the hell would they risk 100% Effectiveness to protect other people.

WhitneyHagasMatsumoto

I see!
I've never played an MMO, so once again, I've got a better idea of the sort of "game experience philosophy" regarding MMOs!

So what Honshu-san is saying is that "imposing a certain level of restrictions on the damage system for weapons and armor will inevitably encourage interaction between players"!
(If I'm understanding this wrong, I hope the translation AI evolves lol)

Damn, I was slow to understand! The logic should be very easy to understand once you put it into words, but I tend to rely on my senses too much and lose sight of the essence ……

Constraints that encourage other players to help me.
And not too stressful. ......

Wow, this is a tough one.

As a matter of fact, a big reason I don't really like systems that don't affect efficiency until durability reaches 0% was because I feel uncomfortable with the sudden and drastic loss of efficiency.
"It was doing so much damage just now, why is it suddenly like a twig?! " And so on. ...... lol

However, I realized that it's not that simple a problem.
This will need to be carefully considered based on a series of game experiences, including supply and demand in the alpha test.

Now I'm more motivated than ever to get into alpha testing!