Increasing Item Repair costs

Increasing Item Repair Costs have a side effect. If you think about it the side effect is exactly the same as if you had enabled full loot in PvP.

Side Effect: People will not always use their best items because they don't want to incur the higher resource repair costs later on.

All of the players PvP and PvE will likely use a second best set of items, unless they are going out to fight epic creatures, or in PvP mode fighting a special guild war.


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EDIT (from later in this thread):
what do people think of this alternative...???

So basically the item doesn't break and you can repair it for a normal fee a certain number of items then it loses one of it's refinements/enhancements. In order for it to be reforged to its former glory, it must be reforged from scratch using all the materials needed for every level of refinement again (but using the original item as the base ingredient).

This way It is as if a crafter crafted a totally new item from scratch, but it keeps the full history of the item. This will allow a crafter to charge full price for such a repair (or more due to sentimental value)!!! Because it's basically making the item from scratch, but you keep the same item history that's all.

 

It is hard to say repair costs need to be higher when we haven't really seen costs or what the economy will be like.

That being said, I think they'll make repair costs a serious factor in the game to facilitate people going back to crafters.

 

Remember the whole reason they came up with increasing repair costs was to get people to eventually stop using their stuff and replace it with new stuff. Apparently because they don't want stuff to break. I don't think they've fully explored the possible long term consequences. Stuff I've been going on about for oooh.. almost a year now? Or at least every time it comes up.

This is one issue we can't give up on. I wish more people would start discussions about this. At least I got Chris to say a few weeks ago that this idea might "go away".

 

What would/could go in its place?

 

I think there's a million things we don't know. Most importantly: what's actually rare? Perhaps some level of repair work is a gold sink. But some other level cost mats.

I like the idea that there's some gear which can only be made in an uber forge of sorts. (e.g. the center of the underworld, upon staying a dragon or capturing the top castle in the land) And I'd get it that items forged there should slowly lose their potency and have to be refreshed there after some period of time.

But again, it all depends on what's rare and why? What type of behavior are they trying to encourage? There's a zillion possibilities if you include factions and PvP but we don't even know where they're going with this.

 

To answer that you have to look at the design goal it's meant to accomplish.

The thinking we've been presented with very early on.. and to the best of anyone's knowledge that I'm aware of hasn't changed.. was that players will eventually "retire" their items in favor of new ones because they had planned for nothing to be lost through breakage. This is meant to maintain demand for new items so players will go to crafters to have new stuff made.

I advocate a system with what I'll describe as controlled breakage. So long as you keep your stuff properly maintained, the odds of breakage is slim to non-existent. This would provide items the longevity the team wants for items to develop their 'history' but at the same time allows for items to be removed from the world economy. The idea being that a lot of players will be slack in their maintenance and take the risk of allowing their item's durability to fall to the point where breakage is a risk. It's a balancing act between risk and cost with several different ways you can tweak it.. such as actual breakage odds at what durability levels.. how much durability is restored at repair for what level of skill etc.

Repair costs should be determined by the market.. that is the crafter's themselves should decide the cost of their services rather than having it forced on them by an artificial system.

Indirectly encouraging players to not use their best gear is just one of the big problems with increasing repair costs.

 

I think you are still thinking SotA is another UO lottery system for crafters, and if those are the odd's, then I would have to agree with the OPer.

But IF it is easy to replace gear (craft new gear), then I would say that item wear/repair is going to be great... A lot of ppl think that SotA is just another MMO, which means they are sadly mistaken...

 

I agree with Bowen about a possible breakage. Possible breakage if you are careless with your items can replace massive increases in repair costs. If it costs too much to repair an item after say repairing it 10 times then who's going to wear their best stuff to fight normal things?
I would rather run the risk of destroying an item of mine, than run up repair costs for items. If the system is like what Bowen proposes then the item will be lost only if you're careless. Also if you are in battle against a bludgeon fighter in PvP you better be watching how much damage your items are taking.

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Also I'm an advocate for them to keep their proposed mace fighting skill set because it's awesome! The ability for Mace fighters to damage items should be a real threat and not nerfed to protect the item system, but also ballance in such a way that people don't ever want to fight them... or worse everybody in PvP is a mace fighter.

So there needs to be some ballance with items and their importance in the game. There is a good potential we will have to expect people will not be using our best gear... Nobody fighting a macer is going to use their rare Oar item that can only be obtained in a PvP area, and only crafted in a PvP area (that is extremely expensive) because it will take only a few big hits and that item is trashed and the repair costs might be so high that it might turn into a wall ornament. It would be nice to keep using that awesome shield forged in a PvP zone, and not have to worry about the cost to repair it costing more than it is worth for combat productivity. Providing the item is not destroyed the increasing repair bills are reason enough to not use it.

However if repair costs don't increase too much, but there is a chance of destroying an item, then I bet people might use those items but watch their durability and unequip the item before destruction. (still might be a learning curve but some items should be destroyed). Although if the repair costs are always reasonable, then they don't have to nerf the mace fighter either.

 

Yeah not a fan of the increasing repair cost as a way to make people want new gear either. In addition to what has been said before I would also recommend they allow us to break armor down and get some of the materials used to make it back. Also maybe a chance that instead of your armor being recycled back through the system when you sell it to a npc it would just be "destroyed" by the npc. You could say that maybe the npc decided to scrap it because they found it in too bad of shape to sell or something like that,

 

A quote from this thread https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ade-vs-game-made-items-idea-dev-replied.1650/

This was an old post by Lord British. He mentions recycling items or salvaging them as a reason because of the repair costs getting too high.

That's a good point, but I think what we've discussed in this thread opens up some problems for the increasing repair costs, like people not using their best gear out of fear that this big investment will get wrecked. It's better to use less expensive gear, and save the good gear for special events.

Bowen's controlled breakage concept is a better option in my opinion.

 

Something Kaisa said gave me an idea. What if certain NPCs also salvaged old gear? You would sell them stuff and they'd break it down and sell raw materials and crafting parts.

Ideally of course you want as much of that to be handled by the players as possible but it would be one more possible outlet for old gear.

The further thought occurs to me that not every last single piece of gear is going to achieve a great history. Not every blade is going to slay 1000 elves. So any properly balanced mechanic that removes excess from the economy will be a good thing.

 

beginners will need weapons. Maybe a cheap used sword would be a good fit for them. I like the salvaging and stuff (as long as we don't get a broken down POS weapon from killing an ancient dragon. Hopefully the items we find are restored.

 

In theory.. there is always a chance a worn out weapon that is lost will reappear repaired.. They could say it was repaired at some point by an NPC before it found its way into the loot tables. However, this presents further problems with their current thinking. Instead of the world economy being overloaded with worn out items that no one can afford to fix.. it could end up being overloaded with new items. Further diminishing the value of crafters over the long term. Why buy a brand new sworn with no 'history' when you just found a nice new elf slayer in the last dungeon you visited?

I really hope they adjust their thinking before launch. I don't want to be sitting here 18 months from now saying "We told you so". As cool as the 'items have a history' idea is.. and I really do like it.. not allowing things to break at all and expecting players to 'retire' old gear in favor of new.. is just asking for all sorts of problems.

 

They made it pretty clear that the economy is meant to be player-driven. When R4 came and players asked why the elves they killed only dropped 30g, Garriott said it's for two reasons. One, the loot tables aren't complete yet, but two, more importantly, the big idea is to not have NPCs drop arms and armor except maybe of basic types. It has been said many times that the best items available in the game will come from player crafters.

The model requiring item deterioration to the point of destruction is an important aspect of this. If a player is able to continue using the same sword forever, the market for weapons will slowly stagnate, and prices for weapons will inflate dramatically. The trick the developers face is finding an equilibrium point where item decay rates roughly match item production rates, such that the awesome sword you just broke can be replaced fairly easily, albeit not with the previous sword's history attached to it. This notion actually lends itself to the housing system and the rares market quite well. When your sword is weakened to the point where it cannot be repaired, it can be retired, or perhaps a process far more expensive than simply buying a new sword can be employed to "reforge" the weapon, retaining its history but restoring its maximum durability.

Items need to be removed from the game somehow to accommodate a more player-driven economy. That's a plain and obvious fact. There are definitely ways to make that fact play nice with the item history system that is being planned. If you're going to keep that sword forever, though, it should be much more expensive than simply buying new swords when the old wears out. Maybe even require the same type and quality of sword as an ingredient in the reforging process.

 

That's a good point. So if you have a great item and it gets destroyed in combat... perhaps your character views it as destroyed and discards it, and it then gets picked up by the server and regenerated for people to find as loot.

 

The idea behind item deterioration is to remove those items from the game. It's a wealth sink. That idea goes out the window (and a lot is done to harm the player run economy) if lost items eventually reappear as monster loot.

 

Actually not true. The game would have to spawn a weapon to be found as loot anyway. That's the point of finding player made items.

The point I was inferring was that instead of perpetually increasing item repair costs, have the item have a chance to be destroyed in combat.... thus removing it from the player's inventory... and then an imaginary NPC or monster finds the junked item on the battle field and repairs it for whatever reason and it ends up as loot for somebody else.

How else are we to find high end loot on monsters? The high end items will not be parted with easily. People will either repair them or hang onto them. However if the repair costs do not increase dramatically people might be more likely to use them in combat, then also the likelihood of them losing that item to damage will also increase ... thus a new item is now discoverable as loot.

A high end item is great to have, but one found as loot would also be just as good if not better because it didn't cost you any resources to make it or buy it.

Crafters still crafted goods and repaired goods in UO even though items were found as loot.

I'm just talking about this subject because I think people will not use their best items if repair costs increase by insane amounts. It's easier to keep track of your items and unequip them before they Blow Up or break than it is to know for certain your item will be to expensive to repair.

If somebody can come up with a better system to manage weapon upkeep and damage, that also gives us the incentive to use our best items all the time... please post your ideas.

 

From my UO experiences I tend to cling on the equipment I carry - even if its not in the top level.
Repair costs can play a role - but these costs and the failure chance should only depend from the wear and tear the item experienced from it' s100%, influenced by the skill of the repairing person and be capped at the potential repair cost of a broken/zeroed item (which might require an equivalent new crafted item and some ritus to transfer the "spirit" of that old item into the new one).
That way you would have both - worn out items, but keep a history, a kind of soul to that item.
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

Maybe reforging an item could be introduced. Hypothetically speaking ...

(we also don't know everything about the system yet)

Another alternative is to have a number of repairs to an item then it drops down a level to a less refined version of the item... requiring it to be re-refined... or reforged... for it to regain it's former glory, but the history of the item remains intact. I wouldn't mind seeing this in game rather than massively increasing repair costs.

Let the item lose it's refinement levels after a certain number of repairs causing the player to have it be reforged by an extraordinary crafter, and use the same materials it would normally cost to enhance it again FROM SCRATCH. (Keeping the value of the crafting profession in tact). So regardless how many levels of refinement is lost (one level, two levels ... whatever) it still costs a full reforge to keep that same item's history intact but return it to it's former glory. Maybe even a reforge could allow for different types of enhancements to be made this time around (keeping the same item type).

EDIT: I believe this might actually mitigate the issues of people not using their best items all the time, and also be used as an increased repair bill (a total reforge to regain it's full potential).

 

We're not supposed to find high end loot on monsters. That was Garriott's implication in both the Combat, Skills, and Magic Deep Dive and the Crafting Deep Dive.

The logic here is pretty simple. Under your plan, that item is not destroyed. It's simply taken out of play for a time, then reintroduced at no cost to any player. While the player who lost the sword would have to commission a new one, the player who finds the sword gets one for free. In this way, that sword does not leave the economy, and there is no net removal of wealth.

As for repairs in UO, two things. One, this isn't UO. There are many differences between this game and that, including the ability to enchant and enhance items to make them more powerful. UO had no such system, and players were happy to wield standard arms, since like as not you would lose them within the hour anyway. Two, this game does things backward in this respect. In UO, player crafters could only craft basic items, while GMs could make exceptional versions of those items. Monsters, on the other hand, could drop magical weapons and armor that were markedly better than anything any crafter could make. In this game, crafters are meant to produce the game's best arms and armor, and monsters, as previously noted, aren't supposed to drop any such items except in their most basic forms.

In other words, it's fine if a kobold drops a longsword. No one cares. But when the King of the Kobolds drops the Epic Warhammer of Doombringing, crafters get a straight smack in the face because that hammer, which can be attained simply by farming that rat monkey man for a few hours, is almost as good as and waaaayyy easier to get than the player crafted Totally Wicked Katana of Facemelting. To succeed in creating a player-run economy, careful thought has to be put into the regulation of resource distribution and the roles players play in assembling those resources.

I suggested a better system in a previous post. Keep the repair system the way it is, but include reforging techniques that can restore the maximum durability of an item at a high cost. You can thereby keep your kobold slayer greatsword while sticking to the wealth sink.

As for looting items off of mobs, it has been proposed that one exception to the above thinking might be allowing the monster that kills you to loot an item off your corpse, only to be added to that monster's loot table. This idea has intrigued Garriott and Long, and hopefully we'll see it eventually. This is fundamentally different from what is being discussed, though, because apart from a monster stealing something from your corpse, you otherwise won't lose really anything when you die to an NPC (from what I understand). Item deterioration, however, is meant to really destroy items as a way of removing wealth from the economy, and that system should stay right where it is.