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Importance of Item Decay for Arche Age (poll inside)
Hi everyone.
I am here to talk about Item Decay, the benefits of having it, and the cost of it.
Item Decay was part of Arche Age during CBT4 and was removed in CBT5 and is not currently in game.
The answer why they removed item decay is rather easy, they thought most players would not want it, to lose there stuff, so they removed it. All good, right?
No, not really. Because item decay is a very important mechanic for a working ingame economy, and for a meaningful crafting experience. Because as a crafter you need a steady demand for items and resources you will craft or gather.(like woods from your plantation ) And you can only realize this demand of items and resources if you implement a healthy drain of items and resources. And the best and easiest way(and well proofed, like in EvE Online, SWG, and so on) to do this, is to implement item decay, so that any item, any ship, any house will decay over time. It should be repairable, but with the cost of resources(for repairing) and durability(so it will break at one point).
The problem of it, or the price tag, is that all items you may get (either from crafters or instances) will break at one point and be gone forever. On the other side everyone will have to buy from time to time a new armor, new weapons, a new ship or invest resources into their houses and castles, and with it crafters, resource gatherer and farmer will have a steady demand for items and resources and the prices will be more or less stable. (under the rule of the market)
What happens without it? Deflation of all items and resources as we can see at the live server in korea or any other game with similar mechanics. Look at GW2(as example), where all resources went down at the auction house, where crafting is rather irrelevant, because once obtained never ever needed again.
I personally think as a more sandboxy game as ArcheAge is you need a healthy and working ingame economy. It will reduce the gold inflation, it will make crafting and trading a source of income for warfare (conquest game). It will make plantation more interesting and worthwhile.. and i think it is worth that you have to buy every few weeks/month another weapon. ArcheAge is not a raid tier game, so that is not really the problem.
Another question would be how fast should be the item decay. But that is at least for me just a question of balancing to get a right balance between how much time you need to invest for a item, and how long should it hold for that invested time.
So, what do you think about it?
I really cant stress this enough.. Trion and XLGames should think about it, and consider to reimplement it again for a better gaming experience. And maybe a petition of some kind could arise out of this. And for that reason i included the poll to see what all other potential players think of it.
Comments
If it doesn't have item decay I cant see how the game can work as a sandbox .
DAOC was awesome because it had item decay . It made things more interesting .
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
THIS.
Plus that game had various resource spawns over time, all different stats so crafters always had a need for the best resources, armor/weapon stats were never the same and it adds to the game too.
Ppl were going oooooh and aaaaaah if you had a certain topnotch weapon from the best crafter on the server who had the best resources xxxx years ago.
Such weapons became relics and some were actually holding on to them as the value increased and some didn't dare to use them because they would break down in the end.
Then they introduced anti-item decay kits which obviously prevented any decay on the item it was attached to and later on the 'dropped items > crafted ones', which destroyed a whole economy and class for many in that game.
Item decay really is a must in a thriving MMO, how harsh it must be on the players that are used to having items that don't break down permanently.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Item decay is a must if you want your crafting to be permanently relevant for something other than producing consumables and the absolute best equipment.
If we're talking weeks of played time instead of RL weeks, then it should be the target time.
I voted for the slow item decay as I believe it would be good to have to slowly decay over a longer period of time. A couple of weeks feels too short for me considering you have so many pieces of armour and it may be problematic for people who are used to no item decay at all and might end up having people quit.
So a compromise is best, not too long and not too short and would cover for general overall population and economy.
Back in SWG you had smugglers who could slice weapons and armor to extend their life or improve stats.
(all at the risk of ruining the items ofc)
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
That actually sounds fun, I would love for something like this to be implemented. A little randomness would certainly go a long way in making a game better.
What is the point of binding an item when there is decay and the best items are made by crafters? I vote for no binding.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
do you really want to see million's of weapon/armor pieces with 1%durability left clog up any auction house or similar setup from people hoping to scam the unwary. Plus hand me downs are just as bad for the economy as no decay
Ya'll should dig out the Shadow World rules.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I will try to answer some of your question, i will quote most of them from feedbacks around:
1. Recently a new item upgrade system have been added. Similar to Ragnarok Online and others. You can upgrade your gear from lv50 onwards, but theres a chance it breaks and you lose it. (not much sources about this process, since it a new addition).
2. As now the crafted gear is the best, a new raid instance have been added lately where the drops are equal to a Tier2 crafted item.
The crafting process is the follow:
After you've collected the needed materials you make the level 20 set and upgrade it gradually up to level 40 (20->24->30->34->40). From levels 20 until 40, there are 5 sets for each armor type (robe, leather, plate).
Hardcore crafting starts with the crafting of the level 44 set, followed by the low level 50 sets, middle level 50 sets, and high level 50 sets.
In order to craft the lowest level 50 set you'll have to get a certain level 44 set, meaning that out of the 4 type of level 44 sets, only one can be upgraded to level 50. There are 7 type of low level 50 sets, only one of which can be upgraded to it's middle level 50 counterpart, of which there are also 7, out of which also only 1 can be upgraded to the high level 50 set.
But the complications don't end there. It is also important that the crafter has a high enough crafting skill level so that the set items are at least blue, or preferably purple or gold, the best being the orange (item rarity), there are also 2 hidden stats on the items which can have a value randomly from +1 to +9.
3. As you have seen earlier AA has a hardcore crafting system highly depending on RNG, which makes hard to obtain the "best" items. Now we are nearing to the 6th month of the Korean release and i don't believe anyone is even close of heaving the full high level 50 set in orange color (rarity), there are a very few who have it in gold colors, some more with purple colors... but still most of the players are running with level 44 gear.
They was no binding in old SWG and we never had those issues. As long as the decay rate is reasonable and not too slow, it didn't cause any problems. The economy was the best of any game I have seen.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
This
Decay always runs into the wall of practicality at some point. You cannot consider it without also considering trade.
Well some equipment are "bind to characters" after looting/getting/winning them (quest items and drops from instances), while the crafting items are all "free" to trade, and there is was a good move to make the drops from instances "bound" otherwise it would screw up the economy even more.
A new item rarity improving system have been added recently and its called "Sharpening", i will try to explain it, and after reading it, decide if the game still needs an item decay or not.
1. The item rarities in game are the following (starting from common to most rare): General, Advanced, Rare, Ancient, Heroic, Unique, Relic, Wonder, Epic, Legendary, Mythical (PS. keep in mind that the names can differ depending on the sources).
2. Through crafting the highest rarity obtainable is Unique (orange). Drops from instances can be up to Heroic (yellow).
3. The rarity of the crafted items can be improved (i don't think that its possible to do it with the instance drops too), only possible to improve the level 50 items, from feedbacks players are saying that it costs a lot to try to improve the items rarity and statistics says that there is a 30% chance to succeed (if the process fails the item should break). Through this improving process it should be possible to reach the Mythical rarity for the lucky ones.
4. The stat/damage differences between the rarities are not that huge, here is a chart about the stat multipliers:
I could handle item decay if it utilized a really good system,but i doubt that would happen,so no i don't want it.
It is not essential what so ever to a game economy,that is done by keeping RMT out and creating RARITY.
I cannot think of any system to create a realistic item decay that wouldn't involve a very in depth system.I prefer if ideas can't be done right,i don't want them done at all.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
ragnarok online (and i guess other games made it like that too) made a good system
u can upgrade ur eq by using rar ingredigents +4 safe +5 10% chance on break +6 30% and i guess +10 is only 10% chance of succes afaik
liked that cuze u dont farm for that one item and ur finished ur farming simply the whole time
Item decay is always better solution than rng crafting. Item decay would keep crafters busy a lot better plus would help the game economy that is quite horrible at the moment, because there isn't really any material or gold sinks. (Except the race car is quite valuable). Crafting was a lot easier when the item decay and there wasn't 95% of rng involved compared what it is now. But again this kind of gear progression is just what the masses want now so they are taking this route because of it.
I guess they didn't think it through removing item decay.
ArcheAge, Black Desert and Bless videos InporylemQQ Youtube
For the love of the MMORPG genre, this shouldn't be up for question.
You either have a serious game up with item decay or you just suck at designing games.
The reasons are too obvious to name again especially if you claim you design a game with sandbox features.
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Um.. you forgot an option item decay with the ability to repair that is the only way I would want it.
Maybe depending on the skills of whoever repairs it the stats will vary which would make someone want to seek out a high level smither for example.