R29 postmortem saddened by...

If the need for repair and replace is starting to become another grind mechanics, people may have no motivation to play the game much longer. Those with low time will stop because it is as much fun to run for repairs like waiting for patches to complete, those with much time will find it nasty, if the sword needs to repaired after 30 minutes of self defense against skeletons. Less players ... less sales for crafters, less success for the game itself.
In UO we have durability, but we have also mechanics such as Self Repair for some items or Powder of Fortification to upgrade permanent durability making the items last longer before they need to be repaired again and creating a higher durability than the initial item had. Works not on each gear.
In WOW we have the phase out by getting level dependent stuff. This makes crafters very obsolete, since almost all I need I can loot somewhere over time, unless I need to be the first.
And for lower level characters: Why spend gold in items, if they are obsolete 3 levels later?

Pledge and store items and some rewards like the GT hats should be indestructible skins, which (and their unique properties) can be merged and unmerged with an equivalent item for a price. (Did you ever wonder, why the admirals chest armor is labeled as armor, even if it offers no protection at all?)

Repair kits could continue to repair a lower amount of durability. If you want to repair an item with a single repair kit, you need another (crafted) base item of the same kind with at least a durability coming up for the difference. So you still have to decide to keep and repair the old sword (it may have its benefits over the base weapon) or replace it with the new one. The success chance by skill could determine, if the full amount is repaired or only a value between the repair kit base capability and the max.

Back to the OT - I am also against hitting the max durability in a way, which cannot be restored (and my UO characters only carry equipment, which may not be the best, but is easy to maintain without durability loss.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

Im baffled by all this, in OP example a piece of gear might last 4 months but take 30 mins to make. How on earth is that a grind? Ive played grinds and that sir is on the far end. Its important to have a circular economy and this is a crafting game. Crafters are rewarded with the best gear in the game yet current mechanics do not promte crafting SMH.

If this game has no challange and growth opp. Its dead in the water. And the grind thing makes me laugh its called play the game, its only a grind if being at the top is your goal. Slow down and enjoy the game imop.

 

If gathering wasn't so annoyingly grindy it wouldn't be as big a problem. It takes so long to even put a suit together, the thought of just it wearing down completely is exhausting. I have 81 swift gathering for mining atm, it is just way too slow still. I crafted true bronze engraving kits and put it on gathering tools just to make it feel normal. I don't know if the gathering is made so painfully boring and exhaustingly slow and not rewarding because it hasn't had any attention given to it in such a long time, or it's set up so we're going to need buy potions/buffs/engraving kits in game or buy from the add-on store to just make it feel like it should be all along. If gathering wasn't so horrible, I would be with you on this one @PK U

 

Why does gathering have to be difficult? Cant all that be adjusted to support the economics?

 

Yea I hear ya, I assume they will ballance more as we close to r32. I belive we want a game that lasts years in a "crafting" game and not promoting crafting will be counter productive to the games design. Im not suggesting a grind but an opportunity to utilize the intent of the system.

Anyways PK U out.

 

400 animals is a lot of death for one set of armor I think that needs to be looked at.

 

I had over 1300 wolf heads in my chest by the end of R28. I didn't even farm wolfs, I'd cut down 25x that in Cultists and sometimes a wolf that jumped in. All in the same Bronze chain armor lol.

I think the system now is perfectly fine, they just need to make max dur lower over time permanent with use like it does now. If they slowed down the core durability loss by about 3x aka 100/(100)... 100/(99)... 100/(98) then I would have probably had to replace my bronze armor once between R26-R28 and I did a lot of farming (went from lvl 20-74 without any exp bonus).

I dont find the game grindy right now at all, it took me 1 hour to get enough copper to make a bronze chest chain piece yesterday (what was that about 40 copper nodes). Its going to take me about 3 to build a whole set to sell at the violation auction next week.

In the current scenario... Im done with crafting for years.

In my scenario, those pieces would probably last a good 500 hours of actual leveling and then I need to spend 3 hours making new gear (or just buying it with the 500,000 gold Ive made at the same time). Thats hardly "grinding" for gear.

 

If they go the reduced max durability route, they have to give up on all the "attachment" and "naming" mechanics that go with holding onto gear for months or years. That will be unpopular.
Currently, you can watch weapons and armor drop in durability PER FIGHT. The current damage rate is insanely fast, especially for weapons.
IMHO, It would have to be reduced by a factor of 4-10 times to make it palatable for casual gamers. (1 hour per day playtime) When I played in full plate, I would have to repair every 2-3 days, as in, every piece was below 11. It cost me thousands of gold to keep that armor.
Yet, again, if they adjust the damage rates, they have to throw out a few mechanics already in game that affect reduction of those rates.
Ultimately, it comes down to frequency of the gold sink. Right now, it's quite high. Small hits in repair kits more often vs. buying a new set entirely, less often.
Given the two choices, I would prefer the tiny, more frequent gold sinks.

As others have said, and better, adding to the above is the epic problem of harvesting time, but I think engravings are going to address that, as long as they stick to their design goals and don't nerf them to hell.

 

Yup true! maybe "naming" mechanics should be associated more with peoples actual titles that they can wear vs their wep.

 

Disposable gear is not going to increase your sales, its going to make them worse because players like myself will just make there own gear. I don't see how they can make it so that it isnt in the players best interest to make there own gear if its breakable.

 

I guess it would depend on how they handle soft caps on crafting experience and benefits from mastering processing skills. It doesn't seem realistic for someone to be a master carpenter, master tailor, master tanner, master miller etc etc etc. Making the processing skills more dependent on the overall success on finished product will create the opportunity for players to specialize in gathering and processing, and then selling to the masters of the finished products. There needs to be more interdependency in crafting so it is worthwhile to see out others.

 

i also have to laugh a little, like crafters arn't going to get rich in this game lol.

 

I'll accept not being able to master everything the exact moment I can create more than one character per account.

 

and there you have it, skill limitations don't stop people.

 

I'm for breakable gear but i do agree with your statement. Same thing happened in UO at some point everyone just created their own crafter because it was cheaper in the long run. I think one of the only exceptions to this was the newer skill Artificing because it was so complicated very few would put the time in to figure out how to make the best gear etc. People who mastered that skill were pulling in BANK for custom gear.

 

And I'm not even saying it should be impossible.. but it should be highly time prohibitive. If you want to be a master at all things crafting, it should be hard... not the default that everyone does. If everyone is master at every crafting skill, then that is a whole other problem.

 

with the way things are now, i spend alot of time gathering the resources for what i want, i even need to get things from other gatherers and i need someone to put it all together for me, i pay them , i pay them gewd.

 

It already is highly time prohibitive. It takes hours just to get the raw materials to make one item, in some cases.

I learned this in EQ1. When I learned one guy had every single tradeskill covered by all this characters. I'm like... why? Why would you ever do that? He said he was tired of paying 1000g for something that costs 10g to make. And he was completely right. Since then, I do it all myself. 5000g per gem? Sure, let's do that. NOT. smh.

 

THIS is the fundamental issue in my opinion. NPCs don't pay enough to be worthwhile... however, that is one of the absolute vital aspects of the crafting community per design. NPCs buying stuff to populate loot table is what they have talked about from day 1 pretty much. By making it undesirable, then you are losing the biggest aspect of player driven crafting for the game. Crafting was never supposed to be just the highest end pretty items for players. It was supposed to run the full gamut of the crafting spectrum so the world would be populated with items. Current design is pushing away from player crafted goods populating the loot table and making it so crafters are competing solely for the high end sales. Perma-death gear kills one of the aspects of items gaining affinity over time.

Gear needs to NOT be a losing proposition for crafters when selling to NPCs.

 

I see where your coming from @SeleneNoctua . I dont like the no skill caps either(and not just for crafting), its kind of ridiculous to think that one character can basically GM+ every skill in game. Its going to really take away from the competitiveness of the game in the long run. Sure when game first launches it will be ok because everyone is trying to master all their skills but as time goes on and more and more people get multiple gms eventually its prob going to cut people off from trying the game new when you have a 40X something GM running around, and guilds like the BMC running everything.(Nothing against them by the way just saying do the math on their member population versus total population).

In my opinion i don't think characters should be class limited they should be able to choose skills, but they should be skill capped to keep them from becoming the equivalent of GODS in the game. A very select few will run everything. Skill caps keep people on even playing fields and encourages people to be more selective on character builds.