Originally posted by Druid_UK +1 for item decay. Every economy should be fully player based, to encourage both interaction and player immersiveness. Item decay just adds to that, and should be viewed as an integral part of the game to anyone but the hardened 'instant gratification' crowd.
And as it was pointed out already, while item decay is a beneficial as item loss mechanics, it is pain in the ass for asset management and trading.
Imo, it is not worthy to implement unless you come with very clever idea how to overcome major issues item decay represents and that I have not seen yet.
Item Decay is a "Virtual World" mechanic and in a "Virtual World MMO" highly apreciated imho. Even MMOs like DAOC had item decay and you had to repair your stuff now and then but it also had a counter that did count down with each repeair eventually it was so low the item would fall into pieces no matter what you would do. Its all about the speed of decay and some games do it right and some games have turbo decay which is unfavourable but as anything in a game its more of a matter how and not so much if.
That today many people would cry about this is only a matter of how they where treated in the near past and what they do know about item decay and a developer sometimes has to know not from they outcry of a mislead comunity what game elements enrich a game but from deep thoughts, years of experience and past successes and failures.
But knowing your comunity and judging the reactions of the players, the silent majority and the loud minority, what type of player contains each group, what sort of feedback will every of your decisions generate is a task of deep science or rich epxerience and in the end a speculation backed up with more or less accurate data.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
A few select human beings had made the argument of a free economy after they had "Contrrolled" or found ways to take advantage of the system to the point in all forms of government, the government had regulated its economy in order for the majority to be able to survive.
Human Nature does not disappear simply because its an online game. In fact it intensifies...A place without official rule or law, where human beings can use their greatest instincts, where opinion outweighs fact and philosophy within power outweighs all...
Its kind of amazing how much of a frontier these MMOs are...and how players can shape a server, but all share the same theme where anyone with difference or a poor majority always grovels at the feet of the few influencials who control and dominate a server.
Thats an interesting arguement. Can you please list some examples that have lead to you having this opinion. Im sure there are many, so no need to list them all. Just a few so I can understand your point better.
Communism is what he's referring to. In this case, it would be a economy controlled entirely by a governing body to put a hardcap on how successful individuals can be, with the assumption this will prevent the successful few from controlling the economy. This type of system intentionally removes freedom from the individual and does not allow the individual to influence their own success in a substantial enough way to influence others around them. In essence, everyone remains "equally poor", with the governing body providing "equally for all", with little or no options for personal direction, growth, or financial success.
+1 for item decay. Every economy should be fully player based, to encourage both interaction and player immersiveness. Item decay just adds to that, and should be viewed as an integral part of the game to anyone but the hardened 'instant gratification' crowd.
And as it was pointed out already, while item decay is a beneficial as item loss mechanics, it is pain in the ass for asset management and trading.
Imo, it is not worthy to implement unless you come with very clever idea how to overcome major issues item decay represents and that I have not seen yet.
I'd think the best way would be the following:
Crafters craft weapon kits instead of weapons. IE a sword kit, axe kit, shield kit etc.
Kits can stack in inventory and don't weight a lot. Using one kit on another kit creates a 100% item ( consuming both kits. ) Using a kit on the matching item adds 50% to it's durability.
An item deals 100% damage ( or protection etc. ) while it's got over 0% durability. At 0% durability it deals 50% damage ( or protection etc. )
A weapon of exactly 100% durability can be deconstructed ( using a deconstruction item or just a menu option ) to 2 matching kits. 50%-99% is deconstructed to 1 kit. 0%-49% can not be deconstructed, only destroyed.
On the market you can only buy/sell these kits. Actual weapons first have to be deconstructed.
Using this system you can easily repair your gear in the field ( as these kits stack and should be easy to carry. ) and if an item runs out of durability and can't be repaired then you're still getting 50% effectiveness out of it.
We are the bunny. Resistance is futile. ''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\ ( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o) (")("),,(")("),(")(")
A few select human beings had made the argument of a free economy after they had "Contrrolled" or found ways to take advantage of the system to the point in all forms of government, the government had regulated its economy in order for the majority to be able to survive.
Human Nature does not disappear simply because its an online game. In fact it intensifies...A place without official rule or law, where human beings can use their greatest instincts, where opinion outweighs fact and philosophy within power outweighs all...
Its kind of amazing how much of a frontier these MMOs are...and how players can shape a server, but all share the same theme where anyone with difference or a poor majority always grovels at the feet of the few influencials who control and dominate a server.
Thats an interesting arguement. Can you please list some examples that have lead to you having this opinion. Im sure there are many, so no need to list them all. Just a few so I can understand your point better.
Communism is what he's referring to. In this case, it would be a economy controlled entirely by a governing body to put a hardcap on how successful individuals can be, with the assumption this will prevent the successful few from controlling the economy. This type of system intentionally removes freedom from the individual and does not allow the individual to influence their own success in a substantial enough way to influence others around them. In essence, everyone remains "equally poor", with the governing body providing "equally for all", with little or no options for personal direction, growth, or financial success.
Well that sounds like most if not all themepark games.
I thought he was referring to players creating this enviroment in games with player economies. I was looking for examples of this happening, and what games.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
When I played UO my weapons wouldnt decay but it was full loot. Always had some spare sets of armor in the bank and in my tower. If my armor and weapon supplies ran low I would just run over to a few of the blacksmiths that I knew always sold the Black Iron armor I wore and kept giving them my buisness. It was all good.
Loved the UO item decay, what I think to some degree it influenced how it was introduced into SWG (and many other games, sadly some elements haven't been learned by games though even today).
I'm actually a much greater fan of item decay (or more of it) for death etc than death penalties. But the old UO item decay I used to remember was again an element of economy and skill. When my sword used to get damaged, I would need to find a good smithy who I trusted if it was a rare high quality item. As I had to first hand over my rare to someone else (no bound items back then) and they had to be good enough as probably was a major element for each repair, if they fouled up, your rare could become ruined. It was a gamble which made you search for the best of the best smithys and get to know them. They charged a fortune to fix things, but that was a gamble.
I've played in games with timed decay, and I don't like it. It's really only for hardcore full time players on the repair/replace grind. For anyone else, you go away for a while (job, vacation, flu, whatever) and when you get back, your character might just be naked and gearless, and if you happen to be low on cash, your only option is usually to beg and hope, or make a new character.
I've had it happen to me numerous times, and it sucks royally.
I like the idea where gear goes through a predictable usage based decay until it reaches a state of reduced functionality. Then you have to get a sufficiently skilled crafter to do the repairs, either in person, or via a sold repair kit (x).
In that kind of situation, you might have normal gear undergo tiny decay from normal use, but special actions/attacks might have higher values. For a wild example, lets say defending against a foe in a battle causes only 1 point to armor when the fight ends, but getting hit with a Rend Armor effect causes 4 immediately, and maybe if you used an Armor Spikes (damage shield) you cause 6 points to your own armor. You can extrapolate that idea across all types of gear in one way or another.
Well, that's the short version of my two cents on this, maybe a half-cent worth
Dark Age of Camelot had item decay. Artifacts were a bit expensive to repair, but the player crafted stuff was not. The way they did gear was pretty great. Most of the armor you would wear would be player crafted, with maybe 2 out of 6 being dropped items.
In the days before Toa everything was made by players. Except jewelry, which dropped from mobs.
I think i only wore out 2 suits of armor in the 9 years i played, and those were suits i had on low level battlegrounds toons. At 50 you would almost always make a new template before the old suit wore out.
Games have gone downhill since. They are now single player games, trying to be mmos. but when everyone is wearing the same gear, and everyone is in an instance, thats not an MMO.
Player run economies should be the norm not the exception. Like someone else said if the players make everything, that leaves no room for gold farmers, because they cant inflate the economy by farming loot and selling it for crazy prices, like they did in Daoc when TOA came along, and every game since.
I've played in games with timed decay, and I don't like it. It's really only for hardcore full time players on the repair/replace grind. For anyone else, you go away for a while (job, vacation, flu, whatever) and when you get back, your character might just be naked and gearless, and if you happen to be low on cash, your only option is usually to beg and hope, or make a new character.
I've had it happen to me numerous times, and it sucks royally.
I like the idea where gear goes through a predictable usage based decay until it reaches a state of reduced functionality. Then you have to get a sufficiently skilled crafter to do the repairs, either in person, or via a sold repair kit (x).
In that kind of situation, you might have normal gear undergo tiny decay from normal use, but special actions/attacks might have higher values. For a wild example, lets say defending against a foe in a battle causes only 1 point to armor when the fight ends, but getting hit with a Rend Armor effect causes 4 immediately, and maybe if you used an Armor Spikes (damage shield) you cause 6 points to your own armor. You can extrapolate that idea across all types of gear in one way or another.
Well, that's the short version of my two cents on this, maybe a half-cent worth
I dont think anyone is advocating for timed decay on gear while offline. So no worries. I would only imagine something like that would be for time spent in game and would depend on the gameplay. Maybe structures would use timed decay while offline, but solutions are available for that sort of thing.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
I agree with Isabella. Those first couple years of SWG I look back on often and with a special fondness. The crafting and player driven economy was second to none of the two dozen or so MMO's I've played. Item decay was part of the reason it worked so well.
Much like a player can get server renown for being skilled at pvp or a successful raider, you had some big name crafters that were known by the populace for their top notch goods/service. If you are capable of making the best weapons on your server for instance, you can pretty much name your price. Even if its only minimally better than what a lot of other people offer, there is always that lucrative market for the very best.
I can't even count the hours I've spent in the stores/homes of crafters that started out as customer/seller relationships that blossomed into great friendships because I needed to go see them again. I would help out my crafting friends by hunting up rare mats, using my harvesting lots to gather resources they need, etc. In return they would send some useful goodies my way for free or at a much reduced cost. I dunno... there was just a one hand washes the other mentality with the early SWG community that I've yet to run across since.
you know...I think that item decay shouldn't be about the money, and I don't think that it has EVER been done right in an MMO.
Personally, I would like to see a system in an MMO where you have to clean and maintain your blades frequently, and where your weapons aren't just stat sticks...otherwise, just say that its magic and be done with item decay...these things should be done by half measures, and what use to be standard must be expanded upon as gaming progresses, each generation of gaming 1-uping the last.
but what do I know...
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
It was nice reading this. I found that item decay worked really well in the old MMO Neocron because it also brought a character role of a repairer to repair damaged or broken items. The items didn't even break down that often so that if your gun was down to 30% condition you knew you'd needed to get it repaired in the next day or two of use. Item decay was just another player interaction feature.
If you don't like item decay then I suppose a virtual world type MMO may not be your thing. Or maybe you had a bad experiance of poorly done item decay but hopefully you don't shut the door to the idea completely.
No thanks. Its one of those realistic things I dont want to see in a game. I dont need more mandatory trips to npc cities or players. The having to sell junk is already bad enough.
not really a realism thing, more a way to keep drops or crafted items worth anything, EvE would be completely worthless if it wasnt for item decay, if you die in that game items break and the ship, which mean everything you gather in game will always have a value.
also with item decay its easier to avoid making silly stats when your game gets old, like in EQ2 they came up with several new stats over time and you need to get more than 100% of some stats which really is just stupid.
Yeah and I quit playing EvE BECAUSE the decay (losing ships, cargo, mods, etc) was too costly. That's why EvE is so boring. I have a life, with a job, a relationship, a REAL social life. I don't have time to sit around mining roids or ratting in order to make the millions it takes to get a good ship and outfit it properly, only to lose it in 5 minutes because of some 12 year old gate camper with no life.
If I wanted to lose everything I had, maybe die, and get a rush from it, I could easily do so by driving over to a bad part of town at 2am. I'm not going to PAY someone for that same experience.
Decay would be fine, but not destroying everything. No, not cool.
I am not a fan of item decay, as it feels like an artificial way of forcing players to work with crafters. I would prefer games make the equipment made by a player crafter be 10-20% more effective than store bought and itemized for EVERY level. It is frustrating to only have recipes to support players every 5 levels or so (for a certain equipment profile) but have shops that sell equipment that spans in between. As a compromise, perhaps the game could allow the ability for crafters to provide a buff (on crafted equipment only), increasing the effectiveness beyond the base level (to the 10-20% improvement) that has a "decay" over a certain time period.
IMHO, for crafting every item should have a base level (let's say level 10), and then allow it to scale to level 11-14 by adding some extra ingredients or comparable, thereby increasing the difficulty but also effectiveness. This would then be replaced by the level 15 recipe, which would scale again across X number of levels.
In EQ2 a veteran player could be self sufficient with crafting, this is what controls the EQ2 economy. IMO there is no difference between EQ2's economy and WoW's. I loved item decay in Pre-NGE, it cleared away ghost towns. But when crafter talk about wanting to be renown for their crafting, what they are truly saying is the want to Monopolize crafting on their servers. SWG limited the number of crofters by allowing 1 or 2 characters per account per server. With that one character you could either be a master crafter on one or two professions, a master at PVP with two combat masteries, or a mix of combat and crafting (few did this).
How would I like to see Item Decay and crafting handled? All items decay, and max durability diminishes with each repair (3 to 6 month max item duration). As for items and gear Player crafted would be the best.
10 Player crafted Epic
9.
8. Raid loot Epic
7. PvP reward
6. Player crafted rare
5.
4. Quest reward
3. NPC loot drop
2.
1. NPC Vended
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
My lack of comprehension of how SWG's economy functioned seems to have caused my premature flight from that game. Looking back I wished I stuck with the game a bit longer.
DAoC's item decay worked nicely, but as mentioned by others, it was the need for new templates that drove the crafter economy. A well-balanced system design where loot had to be matched with crafted gear to maximize your stats.
In LotRO and AoC, there was just too many quest rewards and loot drops to make crafting viable. I pretty much replaced my gear every other level and sold off tons of equal quality as junk.
Item decay can be annoying, but if done right, can help a gaming community. In DAoC, crafters could repair items, so if your sword's edge became dull during a raid, there was always someone around to fix it. These days, most people just let their vendor repair their gear while they sell off junk. In such a setting I can see decay being more of a pain than an useful tool.
This is a great article. I am for item decay overall and a robust crafting system, even with some interdependance.
I think that ingame economies can be such a complex subject that a lot of devs avoid it as best they can. It's very easy to implement a system like WoW's but the economy is terrible. There is so much inflation, it rewards all of the old players, makes it very hard for new players to get their foot on the ladder, and fuels demand for goldsellers. The crafted gear is so poor in comparison to item drops that there's no real point to level up a craft. I've leveled up a few crafters and never made much money with them. The closest I came to making any sort of ingame income was with a scribe.
That is where I am mostly disappointed with Rift because I think that aspect has not been developed at all.
In many games, it seems that crafting has taken the third seat, not even the second seat in development. It's a shame because healthy ingame economies can be just as engrossing as questing, storylines, etc.
After many months of travel and a river of blood splilled by me and my foe. After tracking down ancient texts which reveal the secrets of a treasure beyond compare. After days unending, in the deep dark lair of the most fearsome creatures. At last I possess the item of my legendary quest. I hold in my hand a sword forged from the most magical of elements, a blade so sharp, so strong that even the the Gods fear its bite...
...your sword of amazingness has deteriorated and must be repaired...
I'm glad someone else brought this up. When they removed item decay from SWG, it made me sad (among the many other horrible things that were done to that game, but i digress). I'm in a long-winded mood right now, so bear with me.
Another way to look at item decay, especially for those who don't understand how not having some type of item decay is bad for crafters and ultimately the game, if the devs cared enough to include crafting, is the idea of monster spawning.
Imagine, if you will, a MMO where there was a finite number of monsters in the world, i.e. monsters didn't respawn. Let's be fair and let the low-level monsters respawn, but none of that for mid to hi-level baddies. Sure, it wouldn't be an issue at first; there would be plenty of monsters to kill for all the monster-killer PC's. But as time progressed, the well dried up, and fewer and fewer monsters could be found for killing, making the monster-killers less and less useful. New monster-killers always had something to do, grinding through the constantly respawning low-level monsters, but as they leveled up, they found they had nothing to kill, nothing to do. It all had already been done.
Now, back to this world. In a backwards sort of way, this "respawn-less world" is what lack of item decay holds in store MMO crafters. As the market tends towards full saturation, the usefulness of crafters tends towards zero. In an era when games are applauded for their "dynamic worlds," this is a very static situation. Properly implemented item decay can help. There is an exception concerning new players and the crafted table scraps they acquire, but that is wholly dependent on the degree to and rate at which the game attracts new players. And note, this doesn't apply to games where crafting is designed to play a minor role.
The challenge to the developers is to not half-ass it. If you care enough about crafting to make it a class/occupation, then care enough about it not to short-change the crafters and cripple your game. Else, you should look crafters in the eye and say "There will come a day when what you do in our game becomes pointless because we are afraid of economics."
I've always felt that a communities dislike of decay was linked to what they had to do to "cure" that decay. If the cure is a dreary grind, players will hate it. If the cure is to particiapte in fun game play, players won't be as likely to dislike it. Simple as that.
Comments
And as it was pointed out already, while item decay is a beneficial as item loss mechanics, it is pain in the ass for asset management and trading.
Imo, it is not worthy to implement unless you come with very clever idea how to overcome major issues item decay represents and that I have not seen yet.
Item Decay is a "Virtual World" mechanic and in a "Virtual World MMO" highly apreciated imho.
Even MMOs like DAOC had item decay and you had to repair your stuff now and then but it also had a counter that did count down with each repeair eventually it was so low the item would fall into pieces no matter what you would do.
Its all about the speed of decay and some games do it right and some games have turbo decay which is unfavourable but as anything in a game its more of a matter how and not so much if.
That today many people would cry about this is only a matter of how they where treated in the near past and what they do know about item decay and a developer sometimes has to know not from they outcry of a mislead comunity what game elements enrich a game but from deep thoughts, years of experience and past successes and failures.
But knowing your comunity and judging the reactions of the players, the silent majority and the loud minority, what type of player contains each group, what sort of feedback will every of your decisions generate is a task of deep science or rich epxerience and in the end a speculation backed up with more or less accurate data.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Communism is what he's referring to. In this case, it would be a economy controlled entirely by a governing body to put a hardcap on how successful individuals can be, with the assumption this will prevent the successful few from controlling the economy. This type of system intentionally removes freedom from the individual and does not allow the individual to influence their own success in a substantial enough way to influence others around them. In essence, everyone remains "equally poor", with the governing body providing "equally for all", with little or no options for personal direction, growth, or financial success.
I'd think the best way would be the following:
Crafters craft weapon kits instead of weapons. IE a sword kit, axe kit, shield kit etc.
Kits can stack in inventory and don't weight a lot. Using one kit on another kit creates a 100% item ( consuming both kits. ) Using a kit on the matching item adds 50% to it's durability.
An item deals 100% damage ( or protection etc. ) while it's got over 0% durability. At 0% durability it deals 50% damage ( or protection etc. )
A weapon of exactly 100% durability can be deconstructed ( using a deconstruction item or just a menu option ) to 2 matching kits. 50%-99% is deconstructed to 1 kit. 0%-49% can not be deconstructed, only destroyed.
On the market you can only buy/sell these kits. Actual weapons first have to be deconstructed.
Using this system you can easily repair your gear in the field ( as these kits stack and should be easy to carry. ) and if an item runs out of durability and can't be repaired then you're still getting 50% effectiveness out of it.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
Well that sounds like most if not all themepark games.
I thought he was referring to players creating this enviroment in games with player economies. I was looking for examples of this happening, and what games.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
When I played UO my weapons wouldnt decay but it was full loot. Always had some spare sets of armor in the bank and in my tower. If my armor and weapon supplies ran low I would just run over to a few of the blacksmiths that I knew always sold the Black Iron armor I wore and kept giving them my buisness. It was all good.
My theme song.
Loved the UO item decay, what I think to some degree it influenced how it was introduced into SWG (and many other games, sadly some elements haven't been learned by games though even today).
I'm actually a much greater fan of item decay (or more of it) for death etc than death penalties. But the old UO item decay I used to remember was again an element of economy and skill. When my sword used to get damaged, I would need to find a good smithy who I trusted if it was a rare high quality item. As I had to first hand over my rare to someone else (no bound items back then) and they had to be good enough as probably was a major element for each repair, if they fouled up, your rare could become ruined. It was a gamble which made you search for the best of the best smithys and get to know them. They charged a fortune to fix things, but that was a gamble.
I've played in games with timed decay, and I don't like it. It's really only for hardcore full time players on the repair/replace grind. For anyone else, you go away for a while (job, vacation, flu, whatever) and when you get back, your character might just be naked and gearless, and if you happen to be low on cash, your only option is usually to beg and hope, or make a new character.
I've had it happen to me numerous times, and it sucks royally.
I like the idea where gear goes through a predictable usage based decay until it reaches a state of reduced functionality. Then you have to get a sufficiently skilled crafter to do the repairs, either in person, or via a sold repair kit (x).
In that kind of situation, you might have normal gear undergo tiny decay from normal use, but special actions/attacks might have higher values. For a wild example, lets say defending against a foe in a battle causes only 1 point to armor when the fight ends, but getting hit with a Rend Armor effect causes 4 immediately, and maybe if you used an Armor Spikes (damage shield) you cause 6 points to your own armor. You can extrapolate that idea across all types of gear in one way or another.
Well, that's the short version of my two cents on this, maybe a half-cent worth
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
Dark Age of Camelot had item decay. Artifacts were a bit expensive to repair, but the player crafted stuff was not. The way they did gear was pretty great. Most of the armor you would wear would be player crafted, with maybe 2 out of 6 being dropped items.
In the days before Toa everything was made by players. Except jewelry, which dropped from mobs.
I think i only wore out 2 suits of armor in the 9 years i played, and those were suits i had on low level battlegrounds toons. At 50 you would almost always make a new template before the old suit wore out.
Games have gone downhill since. They are now single player games, trying to be mmos. but when everyone is wearing the same gear, and everyone is in an instance, thats not an MMO.
Player run economies should be the norm not the exception. Like someone else said if the players make everything, that leaves no room for gold farmers, because they cant inflate the economy by farming loot and selling it for crazy prices, like they did in Daoc when TOA came along, and every game since.
I dont think anyone is advocating for timed decay on gear while offline. So no worries. I would only imagine something like that would be for time spent in game and would depend on the gameplay. Maybe structures would use timed decay while offline, but solutions are available for that sort of thing.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
I agree with Isabella. Those first couple years of SWG I look back on often and with a special fondness. The crafting and player driven economy was second to none of the two dozen or so MMO's I've played. Item decay was part of the reason it worked so well.
Much like a player can get server renown for being skilled at pvp or a successful raider, you had some big name crafters that were known by the populace for their top notch goods/service. If you are capable of making the best weapons on your server for instance, you can pretty much name your price. Even if its only minimally better than what a lot of other people offer, there is always that lucrative market for the very best.
I can't even count the hours I've spent in the stores/homes of crafters that started out as customer/seller relationships that blossomed into great friendships because I needed to go see them again. I would help out my crafting friends by hunting up rare mats, using my harvesting lots to gather resources they need, etc. In return they would send some useful goodies my way for free or at a much reduced cost. I dunno... there was just a one hand washes the other mentality with the early SWG community that I've yet to run across since.
...a pic from dark cloud...
you know...I think that item decay shouldn't be about the money, and I don't think that it has EVER been done right in an MMO.
Personally, I would like to see a system in an MMO where you have to clean and maintain your blades frequently, and where your weapons aren't just stat sticks...otherwise, just say that its magic and be done with item decay...these things should be done by half measures, and what use to be standard must be expanded upon as gaming progresses, each generation of gaming 1-uping the last.
but what do I know...
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
very good article
It was nice reading this. I found that item decay worked really well in the old MMO Neocron because it also brought a character role of a repairer to repair damaged or broken items. The items didn't even break down that often so that if your gun was down to 30% condition you knew you'd needed to get it repaired in the next day or two of use. Item decay was just another player interaction feature.
If you don't like item decay then I suppose a virtual world type MMO may not be your thing. Or maybe you had a bad experiance of poorly done item decay but hopefully you don't shut the door to the idea completely.
Yeah and I quit playing EvE BECAUSE the decay (losing ships, cargo, mods, etc) was too costly. That's why EvE is so boring. I have a life, with a job, a relationship, a REAL social life. I don't have time to sit around mining roids or ratting in order to make the millions it takes to get a good ship and outfit it properly, only to lose it in 5 minutes because of some 12 year old gate camper with no life.
If I wanted to lose everything I had, maybe die, and get a rush from it, I could easily do so by driving over to a bad part of town at 2am. I'm not going to PAY someone for that same experience.
Decay would be fine, but not destroying everything. No, not cool.
I am not a fan of item decay, as it feels like an artificial way of forcing players to work with crafters. I would prefer games make the equipment made by a player crafter be 10-20% more effective than store bought and itemized for EVERY level. It is frustrating to only have recipes to support players every 5 levels or so (for a certain equipment profile) but have shops that sell equipment that spans in between. As a compromise, perhaps the game could allow the ability for crafters to provide a buff (on crafted equipment only), increasing the effectiveness beyond the base level (to the 10-20% improvement) that has a "decay" over a certain time period.
IMHO, for crafting every item should have a base level (let's say level 10), and then allow it to scale to level 11-14 by adding some extra ingredients or comparable, thereby increasing the difficulty but also effectiveness. This would then be replaced by the level 15 recipe, which would scale again across X number of levels.
In EQ2 a veteran player could be self sufficient with crafting, this is what controls the EQ2 economy. IMO there is no difference between EQ2's economy and WoW's. I loved item decay in Pre-NGE, it cleared away ghost towns. But when crafter talk about wanting to be renown for their crafting, what they are truly saying is the want to Monopolize crafting on their servers. SWG limited the number of crofters by allowing 1 or 2 characters per account per server. With that one character you could either be a master crafter on one or two professions, a master at PVP with two combat masteries, or a mix of combat and crafting (few did this).
How would I like to see Item Decay and crafting handled? All items decay, and max durability diminishes with each repair (3 to 6 month max item duration). As for items and gear Player crafted would be the best.
10 Player crafted Epic
9.
8. Raid loot Epic
7. PvP reward
6. Player crafted rare
5.
4. Quest reward
3. NPC loot drop
2.
1. NPC Vended
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
My lack of comprehension of how SWG's economy functioned seems to have caused my premature flight from that game. Looking back I wished I stuck with the game a bit longer.
DAoC's item decay worked nicely, but as mentioned by others, it was the need for new templates that drove the crafter economy. A well-balanced system design where loot had to be matched with crafted gear to maximize your stats.
In LotRO and AoC, there was just too many quest rewards and loot drops to make crafting viable. I pretty much replaced my gear every other level and sold off tons of equal quality as junk.
Item decay can be annoying, but if done right, can help a gaming community. In DAoC, crafters could repair items, so if your sword's edge became dull during a raid, there was always someone around to fix it. These days, most people just let their vendor repair their gear while they sell off junk. In such a setting I can see decay being more of a pain than an useful tool.
This is a great article. I am for item decay overall and a robust crafting system, even with some interdependance.
I think that ingame economies can be such a complex subject that a lot of devs avoid it as best they can. It's very easy to implement a system like WoW's but the economy is terrible. There is so much inflation, it rewards all of the old players, makes it very hard for new players to get their foot on the ladder, and fuels demand for goldsellers. The crafted gear is so poor in comparison to item drops that there's no real point to level up a craft. I've leveled up a few crafters and never made much money with them. The closest I came to making any sort of ingame income was with a scribe.
That is where I am mostly disappointed with Rift because I think that aspect has not been developed at all.
In many games, it seems that crafting has taken the third seat, not even the second seat in development. It's a shame because healthy ingame economies can be just as engrossing as questing, storylines, etc.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
After many months of travel and a river of blood splilled by me and my foe. After tracking down ancient texts which reveal the secrets of a treasure beyond compare. After days unending, in the deep dark lair of the most fearsome creatures. At last I possess the item of my legendary quest. I hold in my hand a sword forged from the most magical of elements, a blade so sharp, so strong that even the the Gods fear its bite...
...your sword of amazingness has deteriorated and must be repaired...
I'm glad someone else brought this up. When they removed item decay from SWG, it made me sad (among the many other horrible things that were done to that game, but i digress). I'm in a long-winded mood right now, so bear with me.
Another way to look at item decay, especially for those who don't understand how not having some type of item decay is bad for crafters and ultimately the game, if the devs cared enough to include crafting, is the idea of monster spawning.
Imagine, if you will, a MMO where there was a finite number of monsters in the world, i.e. monsters didn't respawn. Let's be fair and let the low-level monsters respawn, but none of that for mid to hi-level baddies. Sure, it wouldn't be an issue at first; there would be plenty of monsters to kill for all the monster-killer PC's. But as time progressed, the well dried up, and fewer and fewer monsters could be found for killing, making the monster-killers less and less useful. New monster-killers always had something to do, grinding through the constantly respawning low-level monsters, but as they leveled up, they found they had nothing to kill, nothing to do. It all had already been done.
Now, back to this world. In a backwards sort of way, this "respawn-less world" is what lack of item decay holds in store MMO crafters. As the market tends towards full saturation, the usefulness of crafters tends towards zero. In an era when games are applauded for their "dynamic worlds," this is a very static situation. Properly implemented item decay can help. There is an exception concerning new players and the crafted table scraps they acquire, but that is wholly dependent on the degree to and rate at which the game attracts new players. And note, this doesn't apply to games where crafting is designed to play a minor role.
The challenge to the developers is to not half-ass it. If you care enough about crafting to make it a class/occupation, then care enough about it not to short-change the crafters and cripple your game. Else, you should look crafters in the eye and say "There will come a day when what you do in our game becomes pointless because we are afraid of economics."
Vote Item Decay in 2012!
I've always felt that a communities dislike of decay was linked to what they had to do to "cure" that decay. If the cure is a dreary grind, players will hate it. If the cure is to particiapte in fun game play, players won't be as likely to dislike it. Simple as that.
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10