Enchanting should be temporary

Hutchy1989

I just had this thought, how to make crafting forever relevant. They have said that you can repair weapons infinitely but it requires materials so this sort of helps but they have also said that enchanting weapons will also be how weapons are potentially destroyed. So my thought is this, what if enchanting is temporary. I don't know how long of a time frame is fair but I would think that the higher level you get a weapon the more time it has before the enchant wears off. Maybe it even degrades a level vs just completely wearing off.

Thoughts?

Azherae

I would not like a game where proper enchantments wore off. I've thought about this one a lot. There's a gameplay loop where it works for my enjoyment, but I don't think it fits Ashes.

I would be happy if Enhancement wore off like durability instead, but only if the Enhancing system was basically a direct copy of the one currently in Throne and Liberty.

The main reason for this is that I don't like when Enchantments are tied to 'Time' but most Enchanting of gear would be horizontal or 'diagonal' progression, I'd hope (and that's the stated intent of Ashes). Also because if Enchantments were somewhat rare, it creates what I consider to be the wrong 'kind' of conflict in a world like this, with top players more able to just suppress everyone else.

Enhancement 'wearing off' is closer to the opposite. It promotes a situation where the top players are more pressured to use methods other than oppression to stay at the top.

But this is also part of my bias, I don't like Enhancing systems where RNG affects anything other than how long it takes to get there, and that would fit well with a system where your +9 Sword becomes a +8 sword after enough use and you have to 'Sharpen it again'.

For Enchanting, I wouldn't like this even if the Enchantments were fairly simple, because it's too binary. A +8 weapon and a +9 weapon are close enough for the person to play the same. Any Enchantment with such a small effect wouldn't even feel like an Enchantment to me.

Ludullu

I had somewhat of an inverse suggestion here.

Instead of the enchantment being temporary, I thought making the item itself "temporary" would be better, because it would add strain on the economy from the gearing pov rather than purely from the enchantment side, especially cause I wanted enchanted gear to pretty much make you recraft the entire item piece when it broke.

I think that temporary enchantments would require enchantment methods to be more abundant, cause a lot of people would need to reup their enchantment. But this then means that those who can control the source of enchantment methods would be able to amass it and become way more powerful, unless said methods are very varried while giving the same result.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

I had somewhat of an inverse suggestion here.

Instead of the enchantment being temporary, I thought making the item itself "temporary" would be better, because it would add strain on the economy from the gearing pov rather than purely from the enchantment side, especially cause I wanted enchanted gear to pretty much make you recraft the entire item piece when it broke.

I think that temporary enchantments would require enchantment methods to be more abundant, cause a lot of people would need to reup their enchantment. But this then means that those who can control the source of enchantment methods would be able to amass it and become way more powerful, unless said methods are very varried while giving the same result.

And to go even further into this, when we're dealing with real enchantments or real progression such as the higher weapon choices/Traits/Gems in most similar MMOs, if your Enchantment wears off over time, it incentivizes some things that might be bad gameplay flows. Again I must use TL as an example, so bear with me (it's more recent than Onigiri or whatever anyway).

If I have a dagger that specializes in killing Undead, and has some Enchantments/Traits to make it better at doing that, I want to have this all the time because I personally made that part of my playstyle/character. I have an incentive to never 'lack' a Dagger that has near-full Enchantments, so in the case where Enchantments wear off, I want two or three, and I'm going to leave them in my storage. If I have enough money, I'll just keep doing this.

If instead, my +9 Dagger of Undead Severing never loses its traits, but loses its power, I only 'need to' stockpile the Enhancement Stones or whatever to raise it when it falls. I might even 'let it fall to +7' if I don't plan on doing very high content, or I might work around it, but I won't constantly inflate the demand for these Daggers or their materials.

If my Traits wear off, though, it makes the daggers themselves less available in a way that causes higher market volatility, and in my experience, some behaviours from players that might be quite bad for MMOs in general, on top of the fact that they're frustrating for many people.

Making the top pay a cost to maintain power is fine. Making everyone pay a cost to maintain style leans a bit too hard into feudalism, for me, but I won't complain much if Ashes actually did that (I'd complain if TL did that, because TL's economy is already going in the right direction for me personally, whereas Ashes' isn't fleshed out yet so they have more flexibility).

Depraved

pls no q.q

Lodrig

I also think their is a danger in the current design of a stockpile of gear to be accumulated which never disapears and effectivly eliminates the need for any more new item creation. So the OP is going in the right general direction trying to raise 'gear sinks'. But I've also never liked RNG enchantment systems and Ashes concept seems to be short sighted in that it dose not create a permanent gear sink, it just makes a very high gear consumption rate for the initial creation of the final legacy gear.

I would propose that we do away with perfect item repair, each repair should subtract slightly from item stats, eventually resulting in an item that is worth more to scrap and recycle its materials for then to continue to repair it. Maybe something like each repair causes a lose of 1-2% stats then your replacing an item after the point when it drops below 80% of original stats. That would leave crafters doing 10-20 repairs on an item before its replaced.

UNLESS
The repair is done by the items original creator who has attached their name too it, if they repair it then a perfect repair will occour and the items can truly last indefinitly. This encourages a long term economic and social relationship between crafter and gear user and distributes repair work to all crafters. Eventually crafting players retire or change proffession and THAT is when new crafter step up with new items, by linking gear lifespan with the player that creates it you naturally create a turnover exactly at the time it's needed.

It also naturally leads to 'heirloom' gear for crafters that are not available anymore and are thus fleeting.

Kilion

Hutchy1989 wrote: »

I just had this thought, how to make crafting forever relevant. They have said that you can repair weapons infinitely but it requires materials so this sort of helps but they have also said that enchanting weapons will also be how weapons are potentially destroyed. So my thought is this, what if enchanting is temporary. I don't know how long of a time frame is fair but I would think that the higher level you get a weapon the more time it has before the enchant wears off. Maybe it even degrades a level vs just completely wearing off.

Thoughts?

There are a few more things that are planned/supposed to keep crafting relevant, that we probably need to look out for to see whether the cycle actually works.

• The repairing you mentioned also can require materials that are only obtainable by deconstructing a piece of gear. So maintaining gear means funneling other gear into it. I would guess this becomes more relevant at higher levels.
• When a siege against another Node is declared the storage houses are said to be locked until after the siege, meaning gear in storage will be lost if the Node falls. Only after the successful destruction of a high tier Node will the are turn into an open PvP field where part of the things of that Nodes storage can be retrieved, but obviously at a high risk.
• There is also the crafting itself. As mentioned on the first point, Intrepid plans to have unique components to be created from deconstructing gear. These will also be necessary to create higher quality / higher level gear. So it might be that with higher level, the portion of components from deconstruction also increase significantly.

Lastly, I'll say on a sidenote that longer lasting events, story turns, changes in nodes, the economy and season all can lead to changes in the challenges that players may face. All of that can mean different gear requirements. If that holds true, it would mean that we have many different gear sets that are "best in slot" for certain situations at all times, this means far higher demand for crafting than in other games to begin with but also much higher maintenance costs and much more gear in Node storage... which makes Node Sieges all the more worthwhile to loot their bank.

As for the temporary enchantments - the idea is super cool! I'd add that as an option, where you can either choose a permanent enchantment ooor with the same materials get a temporary enchantment with a higher efficacy. That would be neat! If we were to switch the entire system to be temporary, I'm not sure how long prep time for big raids and such would become, what I am more confident in saying though is that it would probably require adjustment to the material costs.

JudgeMentalOne

I have only followed this game on and off since it was started. Maybe I am completely wrong here, but this is my understanding of how things are supposed to work based on what steven has said in a few differant videos. Maybe discord chats or video's I haven't watched over the years have watered this down or invalidated it.

ALL gear is consumable. Not just armour and weapons but your gathering tools etc. You can repair your gear but it costs mats and money. Every time you repair it the MAX durability will decrease. Sure you can repair your "super killy sword of killing" infinately, but sooner or later it's max durability will get so low that running in and hitting a mob (or player) will break it. Taking your gear to a player with the required skill level to repair it will take more matts (and a negotiable price, hope u in a good guild!), but the max durability loss will be lower. An npc will take mostly just money and less matts but the max durabilty hit will be higher (probally MUCH higher since they want people to go to players for everything, player driven economy and all).

This makes it so no one will ever be at a point where they will no longer need gear. All crafters will have a constant and steady demand for thier wares, since even the top guilds with the best gear will sooner or later need replacements. Of course their own crafters should make it for them but maybe they just focused on people who could kill stuff and neglected the crafting? Suddenly "Awesome Server Rulers" find themselves completely beholden to "casual crafing masters" to do any form of end game content.

If I am wrong and it's not how it works, kinda seems like it is how it should.

Kilion

@JudgeMentalOne I think you got it all right. A notable information would be that max durability loss doesn't seem to lead to complete gear descrution, "just" a sped up reparing cycle. So I would assume that there is a cap on how much maximum durability a piece of gear will lose. Though there is also the possibility that gear can actually reach a maximum of 0% durability, which would make it permanently unequippable and only useful for deconstruction. The Wiki (source) doesn't seem to be completely clear on that, at least to my understanding.

Veeshan

What if every death has like a 1-5% chance for the enchantment to break/delevel, at max level xp dept isnt usualy as relevant so this would help keep death relevant after hitting max level

Tbh each repair on equipment should have a chance to reduce the max durability so there always a slight need to replace gear even when in BIS equipment, you could have some way to repair max durability using crafted gear i suppose aswell since there no gear decaay once everyone eventually gets BIS or close to it crrafters start to loose relevancy and this would also help alleviate this aswell.
mounts should probaly get a lifespan aswell seeing as they seem relativly easy to obtain atleast atm.

if you want player run economy you need to keep a demand for crafted good otherwise it will stagnate as people hit endgame and start to aqcuire those end game BIS items

Mordune

A much more rewarding system is to cap the enchantment process at 5 total enchants per item. Back in the 90's a game called The Realm used a similar system to great success. This concept would also fit nicely into the risk reward system.

1st enchant 1 % chance the item is destroyed in the enchantment process.
2nd enchant 15% item destroyed
3rd enchant 30% item destroyed
4th enchant 60% item destroyed
5th enchant 90% item destroyed

If 5 is too many enchants per item you could do a similar system with 3 enchants.

In practice this system did several things .It kept items flowing as people always want to push the meta game and have the very best, thus risking what they have in the enchantment roulette. It kept enchanters VERY busy. it also smoothed out the curve on item power a little. People are less likely to risk higher tier gear with enchantments. So mid tier item that you have 5 enchants on would be a little closer in power to a higher tier item that a person is afraid to risk having enchanted. Lower/mid tier gear can have really good resale value if it has the max number of enchants on it.

It also kept the item scene from getting stale. Yes, a person might have an amazing legendary but do they have an enchanted legendary? Do they risk blowing it up and returning that item to the drop table for a chance to increase it's power?

It was a very fun game loop and really enhanced the other systems in the game. This system also takes into account player agency because they are choosing to risk, rather than being mandated cumbersome game play that diminishes their gear and hard work.

JudgeMentalOne

chance to destroy gear that you spent weeks running around trying to find and pay the 3/4/5 (maybe moresince it's intentionally inter related) differant grandmaster crafting professions to get made does not sound fun.

Lodrig

JudgeMentalOne wrote: »

chance to destroy gear that you spent weeks running around trying to find and pay the 3/4/5 (maybe moresince it's intentionally inter related) differant grandmaster crafting professions to get made does not sound fun.

Has Flashbacks of Raid ShadowLegends *Shudders*

Agreed, I've never like random success based sysems to 'mill' up higher tier gear. I'd favor something like a combining system (sacrifice 2 swords with 1 enchantment each to get 1 sword with both enchantments, combine 3 swords with 2 enchantments each to get 1 sword with 3 enchantments etc), as they can consume gear items without RNG. RSL used this system to combo champions together and it had no RNG elements but consumed a lot of material.