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SWG armor/weapon degradation
Hardlinemonk
Member Posts: 67
Why is it that MMO's I see no longer have armor and weapon degredation with NO REPAIR. I actually thoroughly enjoyed the hunt for a new set of nice armor and weapons once fully degraded. It's such a basic idea but so brilliant IMO. Actually made weaponsmiths and armorsmiths valuable in the game. Also the idea of having to find the armor etc. in somebody "shop," pre bazaar was just awesome. Basically word of mouth was how you would find good armor, guns, stim packs. etc. Or at least that's how I remembered it when I was around 11 years of age.
Thoughts?
Comments
no thoughts?? okiiiie
Lack of meaningful player crafting.
Considering that the vast majority of MMOs out today feature item upgrades obtained primarily through raid-esque, or otherwise extremely grindy mechanics, it doesn't make sense to have item decay. It would be very frustrating to spend hours upon hours raiding to build up an equipment set, only to have it break beyond repair later.
Of course, for MMOs where item upgrades are based around player crafting, rather than by random drops, item decay makes sense. In these MMOs, the better armor is not overly expensive or difficult to obtain, as to offset the problem of items decaying after than you can 'earn' replacements. Furthermore, item decay creates resale viability for player crafters, to keep the player economy churning. This is contrary to item drop models, where even the minority of craftable items that are actually desireable, have little market to begin with, and even less over time as people obtain crafted items that they only ever have to buy once.
Long story short, there's no reason have item decay unless you're aiming for a player crafting driven economy, which is apparently ignored these days.
Which make MMO's no fun.
A long time ago before they screwed the game and tried to copy other MMOs SWG had a AWESOME player economy the best Ive ever seen to date your armor decayed from pve and pvp you could repair said armor a few times but the condition max would always go down and the stats would degrade. Now it seems most MMOs will follow the theme park motto and give people fat loots via some kinda grind PVE, PVP w/e. SWG pre Cu and even CU (it wasnt perfect but it was getting better till the NGE) was the best MMO Ive played and Ive played almost all of them.
I've always felt that making one's armor and weapons completely rot away, while "realistic," is a lazy game mechanic.
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That makes no sense.
What, exactly, was lazy about it? It was very realistic and it helped the player-based economy thrive. What good is a system where someone can buy or loot gear that lasts forever? It certainly doesn't stimulate the economy in any way.
I think you have it backwards. Having gear that does not degrade is a lazy design.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
You can only fix something so many times, until it's no longer fixable. Software excluded.
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I think some kind of voluntary decay system could work, perhaps tied to Smuggler Slicing of armour and weapons.
You get a bonus to your armour and weapons with a slice at the cost of the weapon starting to decay. That way you can opt in and get bonuses but not have your very high end equipment trashed, just make mass produced slightly lower power versions and slice those. You could of course slice your multi-million credit weapons and armour if you wanted to though...
This is an interesting idea, however I don't feel there was anything wrong with a forced decay system. The elite players would all just buy loads of the best and have them sliced and waiting in the inventory.
Yup, that's what I did. Decay is a rather hardcore game mechanic in todays MMORPG world and tends to be unpopular with casual gamers. An "Opt-in" system allows more advanced gamers to risk their items for extra bonuses.
Now that they have A-tab, a lot of issues "I" had with decay are removed - namely not being able to wear my Mando. 35's are still an issue, but only because of their cost. What if you could remove 35's from a decayed suit and add them to a newly crafted suit?
Weapon decay, as much as I dislike it, would force the economy to spark to life again. I may not want to grind my Restuss coms for the M-XX, but I could always buy them from someone.
Heroic Jewelry decay? Now that it's all tradeable, I guess I don't see too much of an issue with much decaying.
TCG loot? Would TCG vehicles decay? VRK's needed or garage?
One suggestion though...NEVER EVER add an ADK of any sort. ADKs were a horrible idea IMO.
I agree with this statement. Anti decay kits were a very bad idea... Always need the decay continuing for the economy to be lively.
Consumable items such as +35s are almost as effective as decay in adding repeatable content to systems, I think 35's should stay as is.
Consumables? 35's aren't consumable Badger...nor do they currently decay.
Right now they're fully removable, just destroyed upon removal. Instead of that, I'd suggest decay on the actual armor would be a better option, while allowing the bits to be removed without destruction. Making 35 bits is already AFK'd and boring enough. Let Armorsmiths make ARMOR...not mod bits. Crafting armor is what I bet the bulk of the AS community would prefer too.
My block suit has never changed. The 35's were a once & done deal for me. Leave that as it is for people, but make the armor they wear for stats (not A-Tab) decay at a preCU rate.
New armor would be a much better business than 35's.
But tbh, it's not something they could/should add at this time. Not until population issues are addressed.
I liked the ADKs as were in limited quantity, and needed to use a bit of thought which item you wanted to protect, which were ones that obtained via quests or something and couldn't get again.
I think ADKs would need to be brought in if decay was brought back, as people have now gotten used to no decay, but would need to be crafted with a load of awkward resources, like several different 10K Mustafar resources, and add in a load of space resources too, which would keep the ADKs limited and expensive.
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Nah. All you needed was enough $ (either RL or IG) and ADKs allowed you to bypass the mechanic altogether. If you add it, but then allow people to bypass it, doesn't that negate adding it in the 1st place? ADKs were a Pandora's box that should never be opened again.
And adding an IG way to "craft" them would be horrible!!! They wouldn't be "rare", just AFK mined.
You've got to spend the credits somewhere, so it is either spending it on ADKs or spending it on repair kits or replacement gear.
Space resources are hard to do ATK, let alone AFK, and have nevr heard or seen anyone AFK mining space resources. VRKs are quite rarish, and crafting replacement vehicles is usually the preferred method, as the VRKs cost way more than the actual vehicles themselves
But I don't think anything will be done now, too late
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If decay was reinstated, I would re-sub and slice every item I owned just to support it. When decay was removed, the economy died - along with my interest in paying them to turn it into Star Warcraft Galaxies.