Proposal: No Repairing Gear
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.
