Repairing? Kind of.
-
Yet another thread by me on durability balance! (Guess that I was envious that Olive got the Harbinger of Famine title, and now I want the Harbinger of Ruin one)
This game has no repairing system, items will be eventually destroyed, and I have personally opposed any proposal of introducing it.
That said, I have come to consider a possible alternative to it, which is dismantling.
Current issues:
-
The current item durability for t2 items is based on the difficulty of gathering those rare components like soul shards, and the difficulty of performing t2 enchants. This is fine, but at the same time it isn't balanced toward the value of the cloth/wood/leather/metal component of those items, which is a lot lower. This means that if we want to preserve the market value of t2 reagents, we sacrifice the market value of the "regular" resources.
-
Even after the increase to 5 per enchant, the market request of common enchant reagents is low, because they are used on long lasting items.
-
Uncommon reagents that are used in the crafting of t2 equipment (like sparkle of life) will never be used for enchanting, their value is too high.
In general it could be said that since the value of an item is composed by regular materials + uncommon reagents + enchants, it is very hard to balance all the resource values with a single durability value.
I propose the following (hopefully easy) changes to address this:
-
Triple the drop rate of the uncommon reagents, while also tripling the quantity needed for each craft. So for example a ranger armor would require 6 seer stones for the chest piece and 3 for the other pieces. The overall balance here is unchanged, since you tripled both need and drop rate.
-
Add a crafting tab to all crafting stations, which is the dismantling tab. This tab simply offers to "craft" the uncommon reagents using armor pieces as materials and would return 2/3 of the uncommon reagents used in the craft. So for example you would have a "Dismantle Ranger Armor" craft which crafts 4 seer stones and requires one ranger armor. This would be a way to recover a large part of the rare components of an armor when its durability is low. You don't let items reach zero durability, when they are low, you dismantle and recraft them.
-
Lower the durability of items to one third of the current values (maybe we can keep chain and plate durabilities a big higher, because right now they break a little bit too fast).
-
In the same way that we currently need 5 reagents of a type for enchanting and only one for the legendary reagents, we should need only
2 uncommon reagents for an enchant. -
When an item receives a tier 1 enchant, it's durability increases by 5%. 15% for T2, 100% for T3.
What would this achieve in total?
-
The balance of rare items is the same. You get triple the amount, you use triple the amount and lose 1/3 every 1/3 of durability instead of losing it all the end of one 3/3 of durability. At the same time though the single item is less valuable, so we could start seeing them used in enchanting.
-
The consumption of regular materials (cloth, leather, wood, metal) is now faster, preventing the saturation that we are currently experiencing.
-
The consumption of common enchanting reagents is far higher. This creates a demand for low level items, which is usually expressed in buy orders in marketplaces. Those buy orders for common reagents greatly ease the life for new players.
-
By increasing the durability of items with enchants, and reducing the cost of uncommon reagents to 2, the impact on uncommon and legendary reagent availability should be close to null.
-
It increases the dynamism of equipment. Since you now recreate it a lot more times, you also have more chances to change its materials and enchants, instead of being locked in it for 3 weeks if you don't make a new set.
-
-
I think some kind of repairing should be introduced, but it should consume mats used in crafting the item as well as gold, and it should furthermore consume lower level mats in higher quantity (like 50 from some weed or so), so the demand for this stuff would also increase. Repairing a set should also be more expensive then crafting new - think of it like a continous ressource sink, which has lower entry level then crafting (so you dont need as many mats at the same time), but over all more mats.
An example:
An item costs 10Y and 20X for crafting and has 100 durability. Repairing 25% of the durability costs now not 2,5Y and 5X, but 3Y and 7X + some amount of gold + some low level mats like weeds or shrooms...
Effect: You create an additional sink for mats, as it is more conveniant to repair, because you have an lower entry, then to craft new...Also, in general, I think crafting items should always need some amount of low level materials, so new player can make gold by farming flowers and such.
-
I also think a dismantling system would be nice because it would create dynamism and furthermore, it would allow us to utilize damaged items instead of waiting them to be destroyed. One small addition I would add to the dismantling system would be the return ratio depending on the durability. For example, assume you need 6 seer stones for crafting ranger armor and you wish to dismantle it after using it for some time. The amount of materials you get should depend on the current durability in percentage: above 60% durability returns 4 stones 30%-60% returns 3 and below 30% returns only 2 reagents.
I also agree with the need to increase the drop rate and also reduce the number of required reagents for enchanting. I think the balance between T1 and T2 enchants at this stage of the game is not so good. It is possible to get a T1 enchant materials in 5 mins whereas to get a T2 enchant(for example T2 health regen), one needs to kill around ~1500 mountain trolls to get enough hardened skin.
-
The hardened skins are a completely different issue XD
By the way, I didn't propose a dismantling system based on durability, because it would require something new and specific for this.
The way I proposed instead it is literally just a craft. Raw materials go in (t2 equipment) product comes out (t2 reagents).
-
@spoletta It is not just hardened skin, most of the uncommon reagents are like this(treant sap, replicating tissue, sparkle of life, shard of corruption, etc)
I understand you point but if there is a fixed amount of reagent return, then again it would hurt the economy because effectively, you do not need to farm too many reagents anymore and demand will be lower in the marketplace.
-
No, the demand is exactly the same.
Currently you have an item which costs x rare items, and it gets destroyed when it reaches the end of its durability.
With the changes proposed, the item still costs x rare item, but it lasts only 1/3 as long and when it "breaks" you lose only 1/3 of the rare items.
The demand for those items remains exactly the same.
-
I'm not a fan of the system, I'd rather we are just unable to repair, and get destroyed, and have durabilities get more hits when downed/death.
-
I mostly tend to agree with @spoletta on things, but I still don't want a dismantle system in the game.
Even the proposed system isn't straight X+Y+Z=Q math...there are changes to the overall material economy that being able to recover any part of a craft will implement that in effect will make material glut worse, not better.
True, the proposal is for uncommon or rare mats, but by also tripling drop rates, you effectively increase their glut, giving them back with dismantle brings more into the mix, and you still might not see this increase their net use in enchanting, you just see far less demand for those pieces overall.
Durability is a number that hasn't hit its sweetspot yet, so until they get that right, judging things by adjusting it seems like robbing peter to pay paul mentality. Once the sweetspot for durability is reached on most gear, then may adjusting it for other situational things, like a dismantle system might be productive, but really, I'm hardcore into the No Repair/No Dismantle-and-recover camp.
-
My worry is that it will be impossible to manage the correct degradation rate of rare resources, enchant materials and common materials at the same time.
-
As someone who is mainly focusing on economy, I am personally against both repair and dismantle.
In some games I don't mind those options, but at the moment the Fractured world is already suffering greatly from inflation, due to too few gold sinks.
If anything I feel we need more reason to replace gear.
Since release of the Beta, I have only replaced my gear ONCE due to durability, and that was mainly because of a change in build.
Just my two cents, but I don't think this game needs it.
-
I think that I did a very bad job at explaining the system.
What I proposed INCREASES the need to replace equip.
-
Depends on the gear/availability of mats. It would need to be a tiered type system
Replace Cloth based sets, yes, should be more often. Partly because cloth is inherently weak and mats so readily available.
Replace leather/hide ..a little frequently.
Replace Plate, again, a separate tiered system. Iron more often than mithril for example.
-
The problem there is that you are not paying 'repair' costs for the enchantments you have placed on the armor.
Unless you -also- have a system where enchantments degrade off of armor and have to be re-applied after a time. -if doing this system it might be good to bring back gem imbuing and have those socketed gems take damage-
-
IF the economy will work with the durability then repair system is not necessarily needed.
Currently the game sinks resources and gold from the game too slowly, in general speaking. They can ofc balance the durability by making the gear break faster. However, making it break too fast might be good for game economy functionality point of view but increases player frustration if they need to constantly replace their gear. I hope they start with the idea that knockdown and death causes some extra durability loss, not too penalizing though, but this would at least accelerate the resource sinking.
The best part of repair system is that it sinks gold effectively from the game and because of that it is used in many games. This of course slows down resource sink because gear will not break. There is different kind of options to help sink resources, which some needs (or can) to be used at the same time.
-
Repairing gear decreases the max durability.
-
Repairing costs gold and resources.
-
When loot drops, a portion of items is destroyed.
-
Gear pieces can be sacrificed (as research) to advance in crafting.
-
Items can be salveged to get a portion of resources back. This can take consideration durability state and scale down the gain of resources.
At least these are options which can be used with repair system, however, all can be combined with durability system as well.
-
-
That's why I proposed an alternative to the repair system, which costed only resources.
A repair system is meant to INCREASE the resource sink in the game, not decrease it.
-
@spoletta said in Repairing? Kind of.:
That's why I proposed an alternative to the repair system, which costed only resources.
A repair system is meant to INCREASE the resource sink in the game, not decrease it.
I was talking in general about the topic and possible options, and I understood your point but I am not personally sure what would be the best option tbh.
You talked about dismantle option and I think as well that some kind of salvage system would work, regardless is there repair or durability system in use because it simply removes resources from the game. This should be implement without questions imho.
-
@spoletta said in Repairing? Kind of.:
That's why I proposed an alternative to the repair system, which costed only resources.
A repair system is meant to INCREASE the resource sink in the game, not decrease it.
Another game did this and switched to a currency sink due to player feedback. Ultimately it was a more of a time sink than a resource sink and players did not enjoy the mechanic. Asking the player to pick up odds and ends to repair their gear quickly became a back and forth chore.. Cherry pick the resources to place them in your inventory for repair at a station is just a big ask. The developers converted it to a currency sink and never looked back.
Repair in any form, if introduced.. must to be part of a larger economic vision. IMO.
-
On the subject of Dismantle/Salvage, here's the thing...
People think it is a resource sink, but it really isn't, and here's why:
When you craft something, you eliminate a resource to make a product, like 20 Leather turns into a Leather Body Piece, with a finite Durability. Now, that 20 Leather is gone out of the system, and that Body Piece is there, but slowly degrading as you use it.
If you can Salvage/Dismantle the damaged body piece for even 1 piece of the leather that went into it, now there is +1 Leather resource in the game again. Yes, you lose the Leather Body, but at the time most people get ready to Salvage/Dismantle a piece like that, they are already not planning on wearing/using that Leather Body, ,effectively making it 'out' of the active system. Sure, they could continue to use it, but it will eventually run out of Durability anyway, but you now got rid of it and brought back some leather, even if it is only +1 piece. If there is no Salvage/Dismantle system, however, when the Durability gets low enough, OR when the user plans to go to a new set of armor for any reason, they either set that piece aside as an emergency backup piece, or they destroy it, effectively sinking its material cost out of the game. Either way, We're basically adding to material glut with a Salvage/Dismantle system.As to a Repair system, you would have to carefully balance the requirements to repair something in order to make it not also screw up the Resource Economy in the game. By repairing equipment, you do 2 things, 1, you make current equipment last longer, effectively stretching its durability, meaning you can go longer without replacing it, AND all the enchantments you may have put on it, and you give Players a cheaper (in materials) way to craft, essentually using up less materials overall and perpetuating the use of favorite armor pieces, weapons, etc... instead of motivating them to try different configurations when something's durability gets low.
If you made repairs cost in gold and mats enough to counterbalance this, you might be able to stabilize the economy, but then would the repair system really be worth it?
-
@GamerSeuss You have so biased opinion how salvage system works and affects to the economy. It is very basic resource and item sink system used in various games. It is great tool to remove items from the game which otherwise will overflood storages, banks and market places. It is also great tool to get rid of unwanted items because salvaged materials can have some value to craft something else, more approriate stuff that is needed. The system also bases on pure math, for example, if the return rate is 25%, you need to salvage averagely 4 items to craft 1 new piece.
-
@Vortech said in Repairing? Kind of.:
@spoletta said in Repairing? Kind of.:
That's why I proposed an alternative to the repair system, which costed only resources.
A repair system is meant to INCREASE the resource sink in the game, not decrease it.
Another game did this and switched to a currency sink due to player feedback. Ultimately it was a more of a time sink than a resource sink and players did not enjoy the mechanic. Asking the player to pick up odds and ends to repair their gear quickly became a back and forth chore.. Cherry pick the resources to place them in your inventory for repair at a station is just a big ask. The developers converted it to a currency sink and never looked back.
Repair in any form, if introduced.. must to be part of a larger economic vision. IMO.
This can easily be the issue that repairing with resources adds only extra management for the players. Repairing with currency can be considered as QoL feature because it is nice and easy to play with.
I tried to thought this resource repairing a little bit more and I am not sure if it would actually work so it would increase resource sinking... Because increasing would mean that the repairing should cost more than craft a new gear piece but who would then repair if it is cheaper (resource wise) to craft a new one and just let the old one decay?
