An opportunity to phase out equipment in pvp with the new loot rules
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One of the core concepts of the equipment design in Fractured, seems to be that it WILL break. Period. Nothing is permanent.
This is done to make sure that the player driven economy has a need for a constant influx of new equipments and that it isn't possible for the economy to "saturate".This currently works quite fine in PvE, where the durability of items decrease at an acceptable rate and requires a constant refresh of the equipment.
In PvP though, Fractured has the same issue of many other games of its kind. Since the equipment loses durability based on the amounts of times it is used (hit/being hit), in PvP the durability goes down really slowly, since you are exchanging a lot less blows than in PvE. High grade equipments will likely be used only for PvP, not surely to hunt goblin heads, and will last almost eternally. They will change hands, but they will not decay.
Equipment in PvP simply does not phase out.This could technically be fixed by changing the durability degrade to be based on some other factor, but it would require too much work. Instead, I think that the new pvp loot system provides a good way to include a bit of phasing out.
According to the roadmap, blue players lose 1 or 2 items on death, and neutral players lose 3 or 4.
What I propose is this:
If the blue players drops only one item, then another random item breaks (or suffers severe durability damage).
If a neutral player loses only 3 items, then another random item breaks.
When a Red gets killed, one item has a chance to break.In this way, a blue player killed will always "lose" 2 items. Be it because they dropped them or because one was looted and one broke.
Same for the neutral player. He will always "lose" 4 items. Either 4 dropped or 3 dropped and one broken.
Red players already lose everything on death. It doesn't really matter if one the items actually breaks.This should provide a certain quota of items phasing out during pvp activities.
Note: We are talking about KILLS, not Knock Outs.
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I think Albion Online did a good job regarding the money and equipment sinks. When you die in AO, you lose all your inventory and the gear you are wearing. Furthermore, some items become "Trash" which are unusable. DS should make necessary tests to see whether their current system provides good enough money/equipment sinks and if it is not good enough, they can consider what AO does.
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I agree that sinks need to be robust to keep player engagement.
I would like to do some testing to see how fast armor/equipment degrades normally in pvp activity.
If, say, by the time you shoot me down your bow has lost 1/10th of its durability and my armor has lost 1/10th (from damage taken) then that may be considered a slow degradation rate and may be warranted to be increased -shrug-
Having equipment that a player was using become unuseable at death sounds like a tricky thing especially if there are different ratios if a player dies to mobs or pvp. You could see pvp and train activity combined to 'farm' players more effectively.
But not giving some reward to the pvp er -other than removing the opponent from the immediate area- is going to be a sticking point as well.
I agree that this is an important ballancing act and that your idea certainaly has merit.
I would like to see, and do, more testing and data acquisition to help find that sweet spot.
At the moment I pve farm with 8 items - 4 armor, 1 shield, 2 weapons, 1 tool. I generally use lower quality materials in these than in my 'top' set but still enchant them. I hope to gather/farm/hunt the materials to replace them by the time the pieces are at 2/3 durability as that way I should be able to produce a surplus of materials with which to trade or benefit my guild. Sadly I did not keep track of this data last alpha : / . Having 1/4 of my items lost (through drop and proposed breakage) should not be a huge issue as I still have a net gain -if smaller-. Loosing 4 times (50%) would he a huge loss -but- if the above ratio is still sound then I would still be making a net gain on the long run -just much less and possibly frustrating which might encourage me to go hunting/gathering/farming with guards or friends = playing scheduling roulette.I like the idea, lets test what the system currently is in the new alpha, pretend we are loosing the proposed amount, and see how it affects the economy ballance.