Originally posted by gaeanprayer

Item decay solves nothing.

With item decay you constantly farm to remake equipment before it eventually is destroyed.

Without item decay you constantly farm to make new different equipment entirely.

 

The only difference is without item decay, at the very least the equipment you farmed hard for will always be there. In the end, they both lead to the same issue. The economy is a lot larger than this one problem, and frankly you're all looking at the problem from the incorrect perspective in the first place. Crafters will always be left on the outside as long as there are things like raid gear or equipment dropped from monsters that are better or equal to what can be crafted. I know you guys think crafting is some great thing, but the reality is that you are all in the minority. Crafting is not a big thing to players by and large, what is important is getting stronger, and if you give players an easier way to get stronger than crafting, they are going to take it. Period.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Everyone listen to this guy. It's like somone said earlier in this thread, I believe: if the game sort of revolved around crafting, it would be fine. Instead of having gear drop in dungeons, you should be fighting for crafting materials, and then you can either use those materials yourself if you like to craft, or if not, pay someone else who crafts to make gear for you with it.

Crafting seems to be generally added as an afterthought with no regards to the other systems in place. For crafting to be useful, the game needs to be built from the ground up with crafting in mind, and all the other systems need to support it in some way.

But as is also said, no developers are going to try this route (at least not AAA) because the people who truly enjoy crafting in MMO's are definitely in the minority. Most people just wanna kill stuff/do quests and get stronger by doing it.

There is no 'magic bullet' for fixing games. Nearly every aspect of a game ties into every other aspect of a game in some way. Item decay is a feature, but it's not going to magically make crafting more important or even necessary. For instance, you can use item decay to make raiding more important because your items decay as you raid, meaning you have to raid some more to replace the items before moving on to harder content.

Making a game better or more involved requires a whole series of mechanics all working together to create a single experience for a game.

Originally posted by lizardbones

There is no 'magic bullet' for fixing games. Nearly every aspect of a game ties into every other aspect of a game in some way. Item decay is a feature, but it's not going to magically make crafting more important or even necessary. For instance, you can use item decay to make raiding more important because your items decay as you raid, meaning you have to raid some more to replace the items before moving on to harder content.

Making a game better or more involved requires a whole series of mechanics all working together to create a single experience for a game.

Really, really wish this site had an upvote feature.

If people understood this, there would be a lot better discussions going on on this site.

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Originally posted by BadSpock

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Originally posted by lizardbones There is no 'magic bullet' for fixing games. Nearly every aspect of a game ties into every other aspect of a game in some way. Item decay is a feature, but it's not going to magically make crafting more important or even necessary. For instance, you can use item decay to make raiding more important because your items decay as you raid, meaning you have to raid some more to replace the items before moving on to harder content. Making a game better or more involved requires a whole series of mechanics all working together to create a single experience for a game.

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Really, really wish this site had an upvote feature.

If people understood this, there would be a lot better discussions going on on this site.

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Originally posted by lizardbones

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Originally posted by BadSpock

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Originally posted by lizardbones There is no 'magic bullet' for fixing games. Nearly every aspect of a game ties into every other aspect of a game in some way. Item decay is a feature, but it's not going to magically make crafting more important or even necessary. For instance, you can use item decay to make raiding more important because your items decay as you raid, meaning you have to raid some more to replace the items before moving on to harder content. Making a game better or more involved requires a whole series of mechanics all working together to create a single experience for a game.

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Really, really wish this site had an upvote feature.

 

If people understood this, there would be a lot better discussions going on on this site.

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Not sure about other countries, but I suspect it's a cultural bias in the U.S. "If we could only fix this one thing, then everything else would be better." It's probably because all our movies and television shows have one bad guy that gets killed and the entire world gets better as a result.

When you're talking about complex software, fixing "this one thing" almost never works. MMOs are definitely complex software systems.

Anyway, thanks. :-)
 

That is a great point.

Most people in this country (USA) point and scream at one thing like it is going to fix everything. Tax the rich! That'll fix everything! No, not it won't. Take away assault rifles, that'll fix everything! No, no it won't. etc. etc.

My favorite - "Just balance the budget! Stop spending more than you take in!" They make it sound so easy. They have no idea what kind of country that would look like.

I don't think the vast majority of people on this planet are capable of critical thinking and understanding complex systems at any kind of logical level.

Originally posted by adam_nox
To say its not the answer to all problems is to implicitly make a strawman argument. I never said magic bullet. Learn some reasoning phrases. SMH

"Do you want crafting to play an important role in an mmo?

 Do you want to be able to give items to your friends?

 Do you want your mmo to have a functioning economy?

 If you answered yes to all three (or maybe just 2), then there is only one solution.  Item Decay."

You did, however, say that if you want 3 or even just two of the items on the list you gave, there is only one solution.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by adam_nox
To say its not the answer to all problems is to implicitly make a strawman argument. I never said magic bullet. Learn some reasoning phrases. SMH

"Do you want crafting to play an important role in an mmo?

 Do you want to be able to give items to your friends?

 Do you want your mmo to have a functioning economy?

 If you answered yes to all three (or maybe just 2), then there is only one solution.  Item Decay."

 

You did, however, say that if you want 3 or even just two of the items on the list you gave, there is only one solution.

The funny part of this whole topic is the OP is completely wrong. Only the 1st one would be changed by his supposed item decay change. I am glad he is full of himself though.

In MMOs I give crafted gear to my friends quite often. Actually yesterday gave out 2 sets of armor to a friend and a bunch of bags to our guild. And our economy is fully functioning as I just made a few 100pp off my broker.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Iselin

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Iselin

MMOs are about fighting the bad guys. Sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of varying sizes, sometimes here and sometimes there...that's it

Everything else... crafting, buying and selling, cooking, fishing, building and outfitting houses...those are just side activities that, at best, can support the "fighting the bad guys" part and at worst are just time-sinks to keep you from looking too closely at the defficiencies in the core gameplay.

The EQ/WOW design is one way to build an MMO, not the only way.

 Technically, you're correct. World of Ping-Pong is yeat another way...you could even craft your own decaying paddles.

You really don't know that MMOs outside of the EQ/WOW formula exist? Really? Here are a few.

• ATITD
• Tales Runner
• Project Powder
• Crazy Kart
• Free Realms
• Gaia Online
• IMVU
• Muxlim
• HKO
• Furcadia
• OnVerse
• Red Light Center
• Sociolotron
• Garden Party World
• vMTV
• Kaneva
• Second Life
• There
• Habbo Hotel

 

 

There's a difference between knowing and not giving a shit. Some people enjoy collecting shovels...good for them!

There's a real problem when the secondary, optional parts of MMORPGs become the dominant topic for discussion...a phenomenom seen here every day.

And then there is the seemingly egalitarian philosophy of this and many other discussion forums of including everything that remotely resembles an MMORPG due to having an online component in the description.

Btw, that's quite the lists of time-wasters I would never willingly have anything to do with you have there.

I play MMOs to adventure, explore, kill and loot. In real life I fish, cook and even do a bit of leather crafting. I want to simulate that in an MMO about as much as I want to simulate actuarial risk assesments there.

I think all of us are getting a bit too big-headed. I stopped coming to mmorpg.com and even posting in general due to the insignificance of starting a discussion in the first place.

We all have our opinion on what a MMORPG should be (KEYfuckingWORD "a mmorpg", not all of them). An opinion on how realistic the economy should be, how it will churn and work like SWG, UO, EQ, RYZOM (people have forgotten this one). Maybe a mmo's community could be able to come  up with something like in PoE, AC, Bonetown, whatever...their own currency style. Maybe the devs want the economy somewhat enclosed like how most themeparks are today (not saying that's bad either okay?)

Maybe. JUST MAYBE.......We could discuss this with a bit more weight than we currently are. Half of us are  posting with our heads up our asses and the other half seem to want to say "hey how bout this idea, hey wuts ur idea? eh not bad it sounds like a solid concept. not my cup of tea but ok". A DISCUSSION.

We are talking about Item decay (or the worth of items in an mmo) which is a game mechanic.  To say whether it is boring/stupid/crafting is homosexuality with an anvil is shoving your head in the ground and acting like an emu.

----

Most of us here can agree that something is terribly off on how MMORPGs are being developed and handled nowadays. To say "well the market is changing so thats whats made" is basically saying "ya well wut u gonna do bout it"  Well fuck you, we're trying to help developers with what alot of us want. Okay maybe not want, but just freaking consider something different since we cry for something different all the damn time.

Originally posted by Iselin

There's a difference between knowing and not giving a shit. Some people enjoy collecting shovels...good for them!

There's a real problem when the secondary, optional parts of MMORPGs become the dominant topic for discussion...a phenomenom seen here every day.

And then there is the seemingly egalitarian philosophy of this and many other discussion forums of including everything that remotely resembles an MMORPG due to having an online component in the description.

Btw, that's quite the lists of time-wasters I would never willingly have anything to do with you have there.

I play MMOs to adventure, explore, kill and loot. In real life I fish, cook and even do a bit of leather crafting. I want to simulate that in an MMO about as much as I want to simulate actuarial risk assesments there.

Why should your reasons to play a mmorpg mean more than mine? Because they are shared by the arcade mob that plays these games by accident? The populist shouting "catch the egalitarian!!!" ? :)

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by MajorBiggs

I think all of us are getting a bit too big-headed. I stopped coming to mmorpg.com and even posting in general due to the insignificance of starting a discussion in the first place.

We all have our opinion on what a MMORPG should be (KEYfuckingWORD "a mmorpg", not all of them). An opinion on how realistic the economy should be, how it will churn and work like SWG, UO, EQ, RYZOM (people have forgotten this one). Maybe a mmo's community could be able to come  up with something like in PoE, AC, Bonetown, whatever...their own currency style. Maybe the devs want the economy somewhat enclosed like how most themeparks are today (not saying that's bad either okay?)

Maybe. JUST MAYBE.......We could discuss this with a bit more weight than we currently are. Half of us are  posting with our heads up our asses and the other half seem to want to say "hey how bout this idea, hey wuts ur idea? eh not bad it sounds like a solid concept. not my cup of tea but ok". A DISCUSSION.

We are talking about Item decay (or the worth of items in an mmo) which is a game mechanic.  To say whether it is boring/stupid/crafting is homosexuality with an anvil is shoving your head in the ground and acting like an emu.

----

Most of us here can agree that something is terribly off on how MMORPGs are being developed and handled nowadays. To say "well the market is changing so thats whats made" is basically saying "ya well wut u gonna do bout it"  Well fuck you, we're trying to help developers with what alot of us want. Okay maybe not want, but just freaking consider something different since we cry for something different all the damn time.

Damn straight!

There's only so much item decay that will work and so much that will not.  Item decay will work in games like DayZ and DOTA2 because you can purchase new items and you don't exactly have a lot of items anyway.

The idea that you have to regularly replace 20 item slots does not entice people.  Generally speaking crafters end up being pretty powerful in games like World of Warcraft.  Since gear is so easy to get it becomes those enchants, gems, leg stitchings, and whatever other thing they've come up with in the mean time that are in high demand.

I can't really remember a time when professions were more important than they currently are... and I raided in vanilla.  If I remember correctly the only "real profession" in vanilla WoW was.... alchemy.  All the other professions went to the wayside.  Blacksmithing had it's cool legendaries but only if you are a weaponsmaster!  The remainder of the profs were useless junk (except enchanting).

Originally posted by Banaghran

Originally posted by Iselin

There's a difference between knowing and not giving a shit. Some people enjoy collecting shovels...good for them!

There's a real problem when the secondary, optional parts of MMORPGs become the dominant topic for discussion...a phenomenom seen here every day.

And then there is the seemingly egalitarian philosophy of this and many other discussion forums of including everything that remotely resembles an MMORPG due to having an online component in the description.

Btw, that's quite the lists of time-wasters I would never willingly have anything to do with you have there.

I play MMOs to adventure, explore, kill and loot. In real life I fish, cook and even do a bit of leather crafting. I want to simulate that in an MMO about as much as I want to simulate actuarial risk assesments there.

Why should your reasons to play a mmorpg mean more than mine? Because they are shared by the arcade mob that plays these games by accident? The populist shouting "catch the egalitarian!!!" ? :)

Flame on!

:)

 

Did he say that? He is just stating his preference. And at the same time, your reasons do not mean more than his or mine. Not in a fundamental way.

And the market decide which demand is filled depending where the money is.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Banaghran

Originally posted by Iselin

There's a difference between knowing and not giving a shit. Some people enjoy collecting shovels...good for them!

There's a real problem when the secondary, optional parts of MMORPGs become the dominant topic for discussion...a phenomenom seen here every day.

And then there is the seemingly egalitarian philosophy of this and many other discussion forums of including everything that remotely resembles an MMORPG due to having an online component in the description.

Btw, that's quite the lists of time-wasters I would never willingly have anything to do with you have there.

I play MMOs to adventure, explore, kill and loot. In real life I fish, cook and even do a bit of leather crafting. I want to simulate that in an MMO about as much as I want to simulate actuarial risk assesments there.

Why should your reasons to play a mmorpg mean more than mine? Because they are shared by the arcade mob that plays these games by accident? The populist shouting "catch the egalitarian!!!" ? :)

Flame on!

:)

 

Did he say that? He is just stating his preference. And at the same time, your reasons do not mean more than his or mine. Not in a fundamental way.

And the market decide which demand is filled depending where the money is.

Yes, he did say that, he called ingame economy and other areas secondary, optional and not worth discussing, hinting that if something does not focus on the things he likes, it is not an mmo, bad or a time waster.

(And he may clarify that at any time and i will stand corrected if that is not the case.)

There is the difference, you are usually more carefull.

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by adam_nox

Do you want crafting to play an important role in an mmo?

Do you want to be able to give items to your friends?

Do you want your mmo to have a functioning economy?

 

If you answered yes to all three (or maybe just 2), then there is only one solution.  Item Decay.  Now just hold that rage inside for a moment.   I know the thought of losing your epic purples from use might seem distasteful at first, but please consider a couple things.

 

1.  In most modern mmo's crafting has lost most it's significance.  Blizzard has in two different games introduced special items that you can craft, but if you don't care about them, then there's no point to crafting except something to do.

 Crafting can potentially decrease raid grinding and rolling against 39 other players.

2.  Similarly, we now have the concept of soulbinding, where we cannot freely trade or gift items around.  Even if in practice it doesn't infuriate you, how do we tolerate something that makes so little sense?  Oh yeah...

 Great! you gave me a sword that will dull and break before reaching the boss. - Not all epics are bind on pickup. Will people be so charitable and make such gifts with their gear breaking?

3.  Economic inflation.  As more and more gear floods the economy, currencies crumble and gear acquisition and ownership become pointless. 

 It's pointless to grind raids weekly AND roll against 25 people (some of which are friends) for another Masamune because yours has degraded by 15%. Who goes into boss fights with 85% power? It's redundant to hoard 4 Excaliburs (aren't they unique?) just because they'll all break. Will you share your guildies's joy when they roll against you and win a 4th Gungnir and you have none?

Unfortunately, the bandaid of soulbinding hasn't fixed the issue, while it creates it's own problems.  Now let me sell you on Item Decay.  First off, in at least WoW, you don't keep the same gear because blizzard releases new expansions that raise the cap and introduce new epic tiers, thus creating a gear treadmill that can lead only to OVER 9000 syndome.  You become more powerful, enemies match you, doesn't it all get a little old?

 It gets more old to collect one item 10 times then enchant it 10 times. Imagine killing Ultimate Evil 10 times over 10 weeks to get 10 Essences to forge 1 Godly Weapon but it disappears after 20 melee swings. With decay, I'd say: "I won X last week, why am I here for it again this week? What if I don't get it??" It's better to grind new content for new gear than the same content for duplicates. Why are you fostering hoarding? Devs have to release new content anyway because sameness breeds boredom. Grinding for duplicates is also a treadmill. You can still run this treadmill without gear degredation.

Secondly, do you really want to wear the same gear month after month, year after year? 

Yes, if it's the best. But you won't have to due to new content being released. With decay, you're still wearing the same thing, just literally crappier every week or an identical duplicate of it.

With Item Decay, acquiring backup weapons and gear becomes interesting and necessary, and your game experience becomes more varied as you switch things up.

 How does your statement make sense? Acquiring backup weapons and gear is not interesting. How is your game experience more varied and what are you switching up by repeating the same content for duplicates? Great, my limited inventory space just became premium.

This can also alleviate a little bit of gear stingyness on the part of devs who want people to keep playing, and are afraid once they have the gear from a dungeon that it will no longer appeal to them. 

So people will quit due to repetition and that rares aren't rare. Are you suggesting that devs can keep players without delivering new content?

For crafting, some kind of reverse engineering process can help crafters put together weapons and armor that mimics the power of that found in dungeons, and better yet, custom made with the stats and effects the player wants.  A penalty to this might be a faster decay rate.

 So you want the same but have it not the same? What the.....? Yes! Allow me to gather rare and expensive mats to forge an epic One Hit Chestplate! Allow me to state the obvious, two helms with different stats are considered different helms. What you seek is WoW's transmog system.

You could also modify soulbinding to attunement, where once a weapon has been used (or picked up in some cases) for the first time, it's attuned to that owner, and suffers half the normal decay rate (which would be somewhat fast).  So tossing used items at friends won't be quite as good as finding it themselves.

 So you want unused backup gear from my inventory to decay twice as fast as the gear that gets bashed on my chest? What will i use When my equipped axe breaks? When a friend gives me rapidly deteriorating gear, I'll tell them to keep their garbage. Why are items soulbound when your decay system is supposed to facilitate gear sharing?

If you don't want to forget about that time you had that great weapon with super rare stats, when it's become unusable, it could go up in some sort of trophy room.

Why? You'll grind for a new one weekly. You'll find yourself shouting with glee as you slaughter demons with a mundane toothpick on accont of Epic Sword not dropping again; but at least the broken version reminds you of good times as it takes up space in your Hall of Fail Gear. .People will keep decaying, backup, and broken gear because it's more fun to look at than wield.

Your post contains no discernable logic.

Obviously item decay should be a key component of any deep MMO.

As you can see half the people here don't want a deep MMO.

I'm more than happy to play in a deeper sandbox world.  But what you want is a sandbox feature, and sandbox non-treadmill ideas are scary to many developers.

Just like looking at Neverwinter Nights beta.  What a POS.  Lol.  Just the same old crap for the last decade.

Originally posted by Dexter2010

Originally posted by adam_nox

Do you want crafting to play an important role in an mmo?

Do you want to be able to give items to your friends?

Do you want your mmo to have a functioning economy?

 

If you answered yes to all three (or maybe just 2), then there is only one solution.  Item Decay.  Now just hold that rage inside for a moment.   I know the thought of losing your epic purples from use might seem distasteful at first, but please consider a couple things.

 

1.  In most modern mmo's crafting has lost most it's significance.  Blizzard has in two different games introduced special items that you can craft, but if you don't care about them, then there's no point to crafting except something to do.

 Crafting can potentially decrease raid grinding and rolling against 39 other players.

2.  Similarly, we now have the concept of soulbinding, where we cannot freely trade or gift items around.  Even if in practice it doesn't infuriate you, how do we tolerate something that makes so little sense?  Oh yeah...

 Great! you gave me a sword that will dull and break before reaching the boss. - Not all epics are bind on pickup. Will people be so charitable and make such gifts with their gear breaking?

3.  Economic inflation.  As more and more gear floods the economy, currencies crumble and gear acquisition and ownership become pointless. 

 It's pointless to grind raids weekly AND roll against 25 people (some of which are friends) for another Masamune because yours has degraded by 15%. Who goes into boss fights with 85% power? It's redundant to hoard 4 Excaliburs (aren't they unique?) just because they'll all break. Will you share your guildies's joy when they roll against you and win a 4th Gungnir and you have none?

Unfortunately, the bandaid of soulbinding hasn't fixed the issue, while it creates it's own problems.  Now let me sell you on Item Decay.  First off, in at least WoW, you don't keep the same gear because blizzard releases new expansions that raise the cap and introduce new epic tiers, thus creating a gear treadmill that can lead only to OVER 9000 syndome.  You become more powerful, enemies match you, doesn't it all get a little old?

 It gets more old to collect one item 10 times then enchant it 10 times. Imagine killing Ultimate Evil 10 times over 10 weeks to get 10 Essences to forge 1 Godly Weapon but it disappears after 20 melee swings. With decay, I'd say: "I won X last week, why am I here for it again this week? What if I don't get it??" It's better to grind new content for new gear than the same content for duplicates. Why are you fostering hoarding? Devs have to release new content anyway because sameness breeds boredom. Grinding for duplicates is also a treadmill. You can still run this treadmill without gear degredation.

Secondly, do you really want to wear the same gear month after month, year after year? 

Yes, if it's the best. But you won't have to due to new content being released. With decay, you're still wearing the same thing, just literally crappier every week or an identical duplicate of it.

With Item Decay, acquiring backup weapons and gear becomes interesting and necessary, and your game experience becomes more varied as you switch things up.

 How does your statement make sense? Acquiring backup weapons and gear is not interesting. How is your game experience more varied and what are you switching up by repeating the same content for duplicates? Great, my limited inventory space just became premium.

This can also alleviate a little bit of gear stingyness on the part of devs who want people to keep playing, and are afraid once they have the gear from a dungeon that it will no longer appeal to them. 

So people will quit due to repetition and that rares aren't rare. Are you suggesting that devs can keep players without delivering new content?

For crafting, some kind of reverse engineering process can help crafters put together weapons and armor that mimics the power of that found in dungeons, and better yet, custom made with the stats and effects the player wants.  A penalty to this might be a faster decay rate.

 So you want the same but have it not the same? What the.....? Yes! Allow me to gather rare and expensive mats to forge an epic One Hit Chestplate! Allow me to state the obvious, two helms with different stats are considered different helms. What you seek is WoW's transmog system.

You could also modify soulbinding to attunement, where once a weapon has been used (or picked up in some cases) for the first time, it's attuned to that owner, and suffers half the normal decay rate (which would be somewhat fast).  So tossing used items at friends won't be quite as good as finding it themselves.

 So you want unused backup gear from my inventory to decay twice as fast as the gear that gets bashed on my chest? What will i use When my equipped axe breaks? When a friend gives me rapidly deteriorating gear, I'll tell them to keep their garbage. Why are items soulbound when your decay system is supposed to facilitat gear sharing?

If you don't want to forget about that time you had that great weapon with super rare stats, when it's become unusable, it could go up in some sort of trophy room.

Why? You'll grind for a new one weekly. You'll find yourself shouting with glee as you slaughter demons with a mundane toothpick on accont of Epic Sword not dropping again; but at least the broken version reminds you of good times as it takes up space in your Hall of Fail Gear. .People will keep decaying, backup, and broken gear because it's more fun to look at than wield.

Your post contains no discernable logic.

QFT