Durability, Crowns Etc. Feedback/Opinion

I'll make it short and not so long winded.

Crowns should be used for boosts/equipment skins/glowy effects/other cosmetics/etc.

Durability and equipment:

• Crowns shouldn't play any role in durability fixes for equipment, that role should be purely for crafters.

• When enchanting an item, crafters risk the breakage and loss of a piece of equipment (not to mention the time it takes to gather those resources or farming gold coin to buy them from other players), so that risk should make the item more durable not less.

• Either gathering needs more yield per node or crafting resources need to be reduced per item. Somethings gotta give on this. It takes entirely too much time and resources (hours/weeks depending on your playtime) to create a suit of armor, the average casual player just won't ever be able to keep up with people that can grind out 4-8 hours a day at it, and this will make this game less appealing to them. They'll be reduced to wearing the cheapest npc vendor bought items they can get instead of being able to buy from crafters because crafted item cost will be outrageously priced.

Focus regen out of combat takes too long atm. Perhaps it's being adjusted for boosts?

 

I read your entire post, point by point, @Ice Queen and can't for the life of me find anything to disagree with....
But then I wasn't trying that hard.
I agree with everything you said.

 

I agree with you, but I doubt that anyone is going to budge on this if it's been decided that it's necessary for funding. It bothers me that item breakage was presented as a way to sustain demand for crafted items when its purpose was actually to raise money in a way that lowers demand for crafted items.

 

The attempt to use funding as a way to restore item max duration was horribly presented and needs to be removed. Only master crafters should be able to restore an item fully and it should be done with in-game resources not pay to play tokens. I've been so focused on max duration decrease rate that the implications of buying tokens to repair items did not fully sink in until now. I am completely against this system. It has NO place in a player based economy.

Master crafters need to be able to fully restore our most treasured gear and good gear needs to last long enough that it is not viewed as a chore to keep up with max duration restore. Repairs should be frequent, but not max duration restores. Max duration should only fall when a player repairs an item and never at any other time.

 

And here I am again, agreeing completely with @Bluefire .

At this point, what they need to do - is find a way to dig themselves out of the hole they put themselves in - when they tied a very necessary item for everyone who wears armor and/or carries a weapon (and puts them to use), to an item that sells for $$ in the store (or the ludicrous ingame 1:1000 drop rate for ONE of them).

So... I think a more constructive path for US, at this point, would be to focus on coming up with constructive alternatives for them to consider - as I'm sure they themselves are currently contemplating - given the almost universal dislike for the role that they have placed store purchased COTO's in the current scheme of things.

The items (COTO's) are already for sale in the store, so I'm not sure how they take them out at this point.
No doubt all the perspective "gold sellers" have already purchased a large supply of them, as they wring their greedy little hands with anticipation of piles of ingame gold.

So how would Portalarium change their mind on this and make these "gold sellers" whole again ?
I mean, how do you prove that someone who just bought 1000 of them in the store wasn't just doing it as a "hedge against inflation" and not to make a tidy "gold seller" profit at some future date ?

If you "devalue" them by making them WAY less needed than they currently are for armor/weapon longevity, then what do you tell all the "gold sellers" customers who've already bought them regarding their ingame value ?
Would they have purchased them if their ingame value had been initially set at 250 gold ?
(Remember they are simply customers purchasing, albeit in large quantities, an instore item for sale by Portalarium).

So what's Port's way out of this ?

They most obviously need to continue to think of ways to raise capital, to keep Shroud thriving moving along into the future with even more devs for more and better content.

I'm tired of thinking....
How do they extract themselves from this sticky mess and do it leaving the large portion of us happy ?

What else could they sell in the store to make up for the loss of COTO profits ?
The mission of the store, IMO, should be to come up with stuff we WANT to buy, and not for stuff we NEED.

 

Tbh it wouldnt matter if the durability drop was like its been suggested and max only dropped on repairs, and amount dropped based on repairers level, ie 5-10 max Dur drop per repair.

As is its totally Fubar. Current system, I made meteoric chain boots and gloves lastnight, masterworked and enchanted them once, that leaves them with 30 durability, or about 3 hours use before totally broken, and they want me to pay 1$ to repair, that is just never going to happen.

With the system as is the more value you put into an item and risk breaking with each enchant or masterwork actually
Removes value from the item (max Dur), this again could work IF max dur is only lost on repair not in hunting.

 

My thoughts:

Key for durability short-hand: Current durability/current max durability(full max durability)

Code:

A. Current Max Durability Decay
   1) should typically drop only 1 point during a full repair.
      a) Example: 3/50(100) -> 49/49(100)
   2) Drops two points on mild fail
      a) Example: 10/90(100) -> 45/88(100)
   3)  Drops three points if not repaired at a crafting station (convenience versus cost)
      a) 10/90(100) -> 87/87(100)
   4) Zero point drop on a critical success repair or when repaired by a master in the crafting skill required to make the item.
      a) 3/50(100) -> 50/50(100)
   5) Zero point drop on a standard repair if repaired very early - reward for keeping gear pristine:
      a) Current duration above 50% of current max = 1% chance
      b) Current duration above 75% of current max = 50% chance
      c) ...above 90% = 90%
      d) example: 40/50(100) -> 50/50(100)
   6) Zero point drop on a critical fail repair (<1% chance at crafting station, <10% in the field), however the items current duration is negatively affected which could result in current max drop
      a) For example item at 3/50(100) and critical failure on repair results in loss of 3 points to durability = 0/47(100).
      b) Another example same item at 3/50(100) and critical failure on repair results in loss of 10 points to durability =  0/49(100)
        i) Breakdown: 3-10=-7, borrow 7 from next max of 49 results in 42 durability so no additional direct hit to current max durability but still at zero durability until repaired successfully.
      c) Another example item at 2/4(100) and critical failure on repair results in loss of 10 points = 0/2(100)
         i) Breakdown: 2-10=-8, borrow 3 from next max=-5, borrow 2 from next max=-3, borrow 1 from next max=-2 ===> broken 0/0(100)
   7) An item that falls below zero durability should directly affect the max durability of the item if continued to be used
      a) For example an item is at 1/100(150).  This has obviously been fully repaired at most 50 times.  Now it is used long enough to loose two points  the item should then be 0/99(150).  Another point loss and it is 0/98(150)
      b)  The entire time this is occurring the player has the warning that the items is going to soon break and needs to be repaired immediately.

B.  Natural lifespan and duration decrease of an item
   1) An item should be good for 150 repairs (major items) or 100 repairs (minor items) following the Max Duration Decay
[B]   2) An item should be durable enough to last at least 8 hours of game play when down to half it's original max duration. [/B]
   3) Item should not have duration negatively affected when not being directly used.  A ranged player should not see duration decrease from combat where an enemy never hits them.

C. Broken items
   1) If durability falls to 0/0(150) then it is broken and the only fix would be to use a crown to buy an item that along with some resources originally used to make the gear gives a master crafter the ability to restore 50%+ of the original max durability with each use.  Requiring no more than two crowns to completely restore an item.
      a) If the item had been well maintained then this item has most likely been around for months in game and would likely be worth saving.
    2) Of course we have the option to either buy another item like the one that broke in game from a crafter or replace it with something of less value else until we can save up crowns in game, buy them from the store, or afford a new high-end set.

The behaviors 5.b and 5.c will spur us to repair before current durability drops below ten and realize that repairing an item with less than 10 current max durability is rather futile.

I see other pros and cons with these ideas. For one repair kits would be in even higher demand.

One key to consider with any system like the current or this proposed system is making it simple to understand the benefits and risks.

 

Ok let's completely forget the coto part for a moment.
If only Master crafters could repair Items to Maximum we would heavily depend on people that aren't online 24/7. I wouldn't want to find Master crafter every time I need to repair something. That's not good for the playability of the game.

 

Dunno, but in UO it worked quite well imo. Atleast in 1997 - 2000.
As soon EA got its hands on the awesome game everything was destroyed with one super stupid thing: Trammel.

 

Yeah but it's not 1997 anymore.
I am all for supporting crafters but that's too old school for my taste.

 

Well new school mostly fails for some reason in pretty much all modern MMOs, expecially when it comes to crafting system...

 

True but repairing isn't there same as crafting. At least not for me.
But than again I will anyway need 4 Sets of everything because of the recent changes.
I guess it wouldn't matter anymore if we add a GM crafter to the mix.
Doubt it would be adventurer friendly but hey.

 

To be honest, don't really care so much anymore what happens to SotA.

But hey...
Look at Dofus, an flash based MMO game from 2004.
Super A+++ crafting system, makes tons of fun and is very very addicting.
Never had so much fun with crafting & repairing like in UO or Dofus in any modern MMO.

Damn even Asheron's Call 1 was fun, but the controls and the UI sucked big times.
Dark Age of Camelot & Earth and Beyond wasn't bad either.

Ok EVE Online wasn't really bad either, but that system there is totally hardcore.

Following is a list of MMOs that imo totally suck/sucked with crafting/repairing:
- World of Warcraft
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- Guild Wars 1 & 2 (2 was really bad)
- Age of Conan
- Aion
- Allods Online
- ArcheAge
- Blade & Soul
- Cabal Online
- Dungeons & Dragons Online
- Everquest 1 (awesome game but the crafting )
- Final Fantasy XIV (cool crafting mechanics, but overall still useless)
- Lineage
- Neverwinter (what an bad game... would like a Neverwinter Nights 3 instead)
- Rift
- TERA
- Warhammer Online


Prolly missed a few...

 

I get your point and I 150% agree on the crafting part.
But not on the repairing part.
Crafting should be complex to give dedicated crafters their Gameplay.
But repairing is something EVERYBODY has to do at some point. The more complex it is the more you annoy players that have 0 interest in this kind of Gameplay at all.

 

Nah...
Look at EVE Online, super hardcore complex crafting & punishing repair mechanics.
People "love" it, big times!

However, a system like the COTOS/Crowns thingabobby is something a lot will hate , if not the majority of the playerbase.

 

Well we may have different views on this, and that is ok.
But imo a repair system should be fully integrated/melted with the crafting system.

If you throw some wierd thing like an "Crown of the Obsidian" into the mix, the system becomes akward and imo not fun at all.
I would maybe understand the requirement for an "COTO" for magical enchanted items only, since they are then considered magical items.
But every non-enchanted stuff a crafter should know how to repair theese things without the requirement of an COTO.

To me, the COTOS just make no sense, haven't seen such an wierd repairing system at all the past 2 decades i have been playing MMOs (and i have played tons of MMO titles...).

 

I looked at the prices of the COTOs and took a good look at the potions... to be honest I would have to have a lot of expendable income to repair my items all the time ans still get the benifits of the potions.

Keep in mind the people who want to support this game are not just going to buy crowns. They are offering packages with stuff I would like to have. My guy character style isn't the right fit for a viking and I don't need a rent free house because I have one.

However if they have a package that fits my play style better that is just as cool as the viking pack I might buy the bundle...


Now I'm only going to buy what I believe I can afford for my hobby. If I need to repair my items with coins I will only buy coins not the packs. The fact remains I'm likely to buy packs from time to time (which come with a reasonable number of coins but not a moths supply of repais and potions)... for that I would need to buy more coins. Costs that cannot be justified for a hobby when I have real needs like food, car, date nights, child care, house payments etc.

With all of these expense in mind those coins better be able to repair an item because all things considered this is a big expense over time and if this is going to be an effective fundraising tool, if these COTAs are weak people will stop buying them.

So honestly I think the coins need to be able to repair items because over time people will likely realize they are spending lots of money and figure out where to cut spending. If it causes an exodus then then I can see them removing that but the convince of the repair is good. The increased number of coins per repair will eliminate people from repairing one item indefinitely, but the value of the coin increases dramatically for the sake of a guy being too busy and just needs a quick fix to go out on an adventure with the guild. Buy a $10 pack of coins and use one or two to fix your stuff and then play like normal the rest of the time. You see how the quick fix is a reat fundraising tool? The potions are not needed in a pinch, however the time a person really needs a quick repair and would be likely to use some expendable cash is a scenario like the quick repairs before a guild dungeon crawl.

I see this as a convince thing not a forced or indefinitely cost effective thing.


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SO in the long run people will get tighter with their cash because they never know when an awesome bundle will be offered where they might want to shell out a load of cash for their fantasy outfit and accessories. So the player who is buying 100 coins a month will likely pay for 20 coins a month after he or she realizes they might want a bundle or two. Also people who buy cins might realize the potions are expecive over time and concerve them more instead of keeping the buffs up all the time.

 

Agree with the OP 100%.