You made a good post - it's well thought out and has always been a grand idea in theory.

The reality of it is (SWG was the first to attempt it if I recall) is the system quickly becomes an unbelievable annoyance. You ended up putting your good items away so they didn't decay and using lesser stuff, thus circumventing the entire system at your own expense. When you did use your items, yeah, you eventually lost them.

It irritated on a few levels:

1. You felt like you were constantly wasting your time hunting the SAME items. Not upgrades, the same ones.
2. You felt relegated to lesser gear to protect your 'good' stuff.

Originally posted by SuperNick

You made a good post - it's well thought out and has always been a grand idea in theory.

The reality of it is (SWG was the first to attempt it if I recall) is the system quickly becomes an unbelievable annoyance. You ended up putting your good items away so they didn't decay and using lesser stuff, thus circumventing the entire system at your own expense. When you did use your items, yeah, you eventually lost them.

It irritated on a few levels:

1. You felt like you were constantly wasting your time hunting the SAME items. Not upgrades, the same ones.
2. You felt relegated to lesser gear to protect your 'good' stuff.

I couldn't tell you another solution as i'm not a designer but yeah I agree crafting has taken a real nosedive in MMOs these days.

Actually UO and SB both had item decay.

UO when you repaired an item it would lose some of its max durability. SB also had durability on your gear so if you died too much before getting it repaired it was gone.

Originally posted by SuperNick

You made a good post - it's well thought out and has always been a grand idea in theory.

The reality of it is (SWG was the first to attempt it if I recall) is the system quickly becomes an unbelievable annoyance. You ended up putting your good items away so they didn't decay and using lesser stuff, thus circumventing the entire system at your own expense. When you did use your items, yeah, you eventually lost them.

It irritated on a few levels:

1. You felt like you were constantly wasting your time hunting the SAME items. Not upgrades, the same ones.
2. You felt relegated to lesser gear to protect your 'good' stuff.

I couldn't tell you another solution as i'm not a designer but yeah I agree crafting has taken a real nosedive in MMOs these days.

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

Originally posted by gamesrfun

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.

 

 

Obviously LFD should be  key component of any fun MMO.

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

... Gosh .. see the issue ... assertation based totally on your opinion. Item decay should not be a key component of anything.

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 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.

+1

I like your style, Dexter.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by gamesrfun

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.

 

 

Obviously LFD should be  key component of any fun MMO.

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

... Gosh .. see the issue ... assertation based totally on your opinion. Item decay should not be a key component of anything.

ouch sick burn! i think you may have won the thread! 

yeah sure, lets just settle with item decay not being even a component , and uh lets go get some heroin and some new WoW games er EQ games shit uhh themepark! Themepark was the word i was looking for. Nm, i think the word was 'crap'.

Thank god fun isnt subjective at all and is something that everyone can measure. Like beauty. Or their rectum size - which seems to be a pretty popular thing so it must be good!

First of all, you do NOT need a good economy in games, not even MMOs. Its nice to have, certainly - but its a feature, not a requirement. Plenty of games have a screwed up economies and yet they are still fun.

Second, there are three mechanisms I know of to assert people need new items:

- Item Decay. You use an item, it starts an counter. Once you reach zero, byebye. A typical case of treadmil gaming - you have to work to stay at the same point. The only way to have this kind of mechanism is if you have really shallow kinds of crafting - i.e. quick and fast and dirty - and items arent too powerful.

- Soulbound. Now this is the same in the end, but you can play one and the same character without end. The appropiate mechanism for quest rewards. Otherwise, highly annoying for people who love playing many characters, but completely neutral to people who only ever play one character.

- Overenchanting. This is definitely my favorite. You can craft items, and you can improve them endlessly - but every time you do, there is a chance of breaking the item. Players with excess items will simply try to enchant them, thus thining the market. Also, you can get better and better with your equipment, without limitations.

So in the sum, item decay is the worst mechanism. It makes elaborate crafting impossible and it makes powerful items impossible. Overenchanting is the best, its an already eloborate form of crafting in itself.

Third of all, there are three things that are absolute no-gos for me:

- Pay to win

- First person perspective

- Item decay

If you have any of these "features", well you wont get me as a player, end of story.

Originally posted by Iselin

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.

No one is contesting your personal playstyle. No one is saying your particular view of what you want an MMO to be is wrong or bad.

Iselin, it's one thing to be incorrect. It's another to know what is correct and then take the stance of "I don't give a shit" because it conflict with what you personally like. You're not really contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way at that point.

There's your real problem, Iselin, and it has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

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.

 

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...

 

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

 

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?

 

Secondly, do you really want to wear the same gear month after month, year after year?  With Item Decay, acquiring backup weapons and gear becomes interesting and necessary, and your game experience becomes more varied as you switch things up.

 

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. 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

amen

Originally posted by craftseeker

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

^^This. It's right up there with the solo vs. "forced" grouping. The pandering to the squeaky wheels practically guarantees that mmoprgs are doomed to be single-player-gratuitously-sharing-a-server games.

No.  Due to player churn, item decay is not neccessary, only item binding. 

That way people feel true character development when they get a new item, and not the 'well its charged so who cares'.

And, there always be a demand for the product  ( as 5% new players come in every month)

-Blitz

Originally posted by Scottgun

Originally posted by craftseeker

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

^^This. It's right up there with the solo vs. "forced" grouping. The pandering to the squeaky wheels practically guarantees that mmoprgs are doomed to be single-player-gratuitously-sharing-a-server games.

If that is what a lot of players find fun, what is wrong?

if "pandering to the squeaky wheels"="listening to your customers", then yeah, why not.

Originally posted by craftseeker

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

Decay is durability. It is wear and tear. Most MMOs already have it.

Originally posted by Sijjistoryus

There is a big problem with item loot.

When it comes to raiding, instead of huge monsters dropping epic swords and shields, they should drop crafting schematics and skills / abilities.

there cannot be a   recipiee only drop is everyone has to be a crafter not everyone wants to be and if everyone is a crafter prices go crazy

and also not everyone wants to kisss the butt of  someone to make something for them there should be a mix with t he crafting stuff being the best or at least more customizeable

Dont get me wrong i do  want crafting to be  important just not the only option.

Here is a  good choice in between  both crafter friendly and  loot n go crowd have generic armor drop but able to customize and upgrade it via crafting

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by craftseeker

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

Decay is durability. It is wear and tear. Most MMOs already have it.

We talk about item decay here, not item durability.

Item decay is permanent.

Durability is repairable. Personally I would leave it out as well, but meh, its not killing anything. While item decay kills itemization.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by craftseeker

While I never felt this, and in fact like the idea of Item Decay, you have to recognise it is not going to happen.  Too many people would scream and stamp there feet about it.  As a consequence the developer would either abandon the idea or pretty soon the game would be reduced to a slowly dying niche game.

Decay is durability. It is wear and tear. Most MMOs already have it.

We talk about item decay here, not item durability.

Item decay is permanent.

Durability is repairable. Personally I would leave it out as well, but meh, its not killing anything. While item decay kills itemization.

Item loss is permanent. Item decay is wear and tear. It is one of several possible paths to loss. 

"Durability is repairable" is a false assumption, as well, as UO and other older MMOs had durability that ended in loss.

OP, I'm sure there will be alot more pages to follow in this thread, but good luck.

The time of multi-faceted MMORPGs died in 2005.  The time of aspects of gaming outside of NPC-Whack-A-Mole combat is long gone.  The idea of 1 trick pony, always online required SPRPGs (i.e. modern MMORPGs) has long been a fad and will not let up.   Hell, the idea of reinforcing ANY gameplay outside of combat will be met by hostile fire from today's "Massive Multiplayer Online" RPG populace.  [Unless you're talking about PVP.  There's been a trend of PVP going the way of Crafting by developers increasingly marginalizing it.]

This thread proves that point.

OP, I hear where you're coming from, but that day will not come.  Not the way the currents have been moving in the genre, which has been going on for almost 10 years now.

The chances of you seeing this type of play, especially from a big-name developer and publisher, is remote.  The chances of this happening in AAA releases is smaller than me getting off work today, winning the lottery and becoming a multi-billionaire, and coming home to find both Scarlett Johanssen and Kate Upton eagerly waiting for me at home in lingerie... with a wonderful, well cooked meal.

In short... it's not happening, no matter how much I'd like it to.