Originally posted by metalhead980

There's something about a MMO that lets players share gear, older players passing on older armor sets and weapons to newer guildies just gives me that fuzzy feeling.

what do you guys think? do you like the idea of a non player bound system where you can share old armor and weapons?

Would you rather items be bound to character? Or maybe your in the middle where you think level up items could be shared and the hard to get items should be player bound.

I personally feel all items should be shareable. why have a old armor set that you no longer have use for sitting in a bank? hand it to a buddy thats new to the game or one that just can't dedicate the amount of hours to the game as you.

What do you guys think?

 

 

The problem with everything being sharable is then everything can be bought which makes the game an ideal market for RMT.

There is a system tho that could acheive what you want to accomplish. Instead of gear being droped to a person. Its dropped into a Guild bank. And anyone in the guild can wear it. If a guy got the gear and left the guild it would un-equip and be put back in the guild bank, so no gear could ever leave the guild. Of course there is all kind of other issues that this type of sytem would bring up, but you could share gear like you wanted. 

There is no single answer to this.

A game must have tradeable items that are desireable to generate an economy.

High end items need to be restricted to those capable of obtaining them, or having them looses meaning.

A means must exist to decay older objects, or the markets become saturated, causing low and mid-tier equipment to become valueless. (Soulbound is one means of accomplishing this)

Originally posted by Illius

I liked what DAoC had done with their items.  None was bound to you and you'd be able to give it all away to anybody you choose.  The kicker was that a newbie could equip the highest level items but they'd degrade at an astronomical rate when compared with items his level.  If the difference between item level and player level was great enough you might get maybe 5 minutes of use out of a weapon and it would be damaged to the point that it gave no bonuses and did pathetic damage.  Also your items had a sort of "hit point" for repair.  Every time you repair the item these "hit point" would go down.  Once they reached about 70% the item was more or less useless because once again it would stop providing any kind of bonuses.  Assuming you're using items that are level appropriate to you, you could fight for days and not have to repair them.  Since repairs were few and far between at that point your item would last more then enough for you to outlevel it and get newer drops or in most cases if you had the money for it crafted items.

In short, I think the "soul" binding is something that only fits games like WoW where you are measured by the gear you wear.  Any other games should work on abolishing this mechanic... if you ask me.

  Couldn't agree more. DAoC other than botters was easily one of the best mmos ever made.

Most of the games i've played that have no item bound system have some way to lose items. Either through full loot pvp or some type of decay system so crafted items will still be needed.

I agree with alot of you that say not having item bound gear in games where items are the only progression is bad. It would kill crafting and make content worthless if people could just buy everything.

In games like Ryzom, Eve and other games with either Decay or item loss on death bound items arent needed.

Honestly I really like being able to pass on items, it kind of makes sense. I mean if I find a Bow of Acid and upgrade that later on shouldn't I beable to give it to someone who needs it? 

The fact that a system like this wouldn't work in most of todays Item centric mmos makes me wish developers would look beyond 100% progression through gear.

Bind on pickup is a showstopper for me, and I won't play games that use the mechanic.  However, bind on equip is fine and can strike the right balance to diminish gear inflation, possibly along with an item decay system.  A mmo must be designed with a number of special factors in mind when removing bop, because bop is a strong mechanic to keep economies in check. 

Personally i can't stand games where things are bound as it ruins the economy for me.  The chance of finding some ultra-rare item that you then can sell is a very thrilling experience and it's usually what makes me distinct good mmo's from bad ones 

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Originally posted by metalhead980
There's something about a MMO that lets players share gear, older players passing on older armor sets and weapons to newer guildies just gives me that fuzzy feeling.

what do you guys think? do you like the idea of a non player bound system where you can share old armor and weapons?

Would you rather items be bound to character? Or maybe your in the middle where you think level up items could be shared and the hard to get items should be player bound.

I personally feel all items should be shareable. why have a old armor set that you no longer have use for sitting in a bank? hand it to a buddy thats new to the game or one that just can't dedicate the amount of hours to the game as you.
What do you guys think?
 
 

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I remember Diablo 2 already had a huge second market for items. From Soj to Epic, pretty much everything was sold with RL money. EQ had a similar problem with the secondary market.

I like the new heirloom system from WoW (dunno if it's old), where items are bound to the account. I would like to see this work for all items but that won't happen because of the timesink.

Personally I feel that Player bound items should make sense in terms of lore/story.  Right it it's just a game mechanic that are there.  I think binding items can be made into a more meanful way when it is incorporated into the lore of the game.

Example:

I've read many Chinese onlien novels, and in them there is this concept.

item ranks, and that if the item is of a certain rank, then it's boundable/unboundable.

let's say there are the following ranks: Normal grade, Improved grade, High grade, Master grade, and God grade.  And only Master grade and God grade items is boundable, due to the fact that the only way to get God grade items is to have the master crafter to craft it and/or have Master grade items to "level up" into God grade.

But since it is unboundable, you can still trade it if you want, but it may require the other guy to "prove his worth" to use such weapon (since the idea is that the weapon is now sentient and will pick its master).

It's an idea, but I think it can make it so that the player-bound items make sense to the lore, and actually help player to feel immerse into the game than just a game mechanic.

To sum it up, I believe in the idea of 100% tradable items but with mechanics such as sentient items that can in some ways pick its master/user (lets say player A holding a God grade weapon does 100 damage, and he trade the weapon to player B, who prove to be more qualify to use the weapon, and now the weapon does 110 damage.)

Anyway, just some thoughts.