GW2 and Item Decay -- Yay or Nay?

Nothing To Add.

Realism should stay in games that actually use it like Rainbow Six and the like.
It has no place in fantasy games IMO because it detracts from the overall feel of the game if you try to stack it in along the things that make fantasy games fun. anyways just my 2c worth

Yes. I agree... item decay/durability looks more like a bother than actual contributing to gameplay...

It would be really annoying if i have to go to the nearest town after each mission to repair my weapon or armor...

Even more annoying is that if we forget to repair it, we have to restart over if our weapon suddenly breaks near the end of a mission... That applies to PvP too... Getting ready to spike a player and that at that very moment, our weapon snaps.. No Thank you! That seems too annoying to be taken into consideration... I got other things to worry about...

Even though that is a decent attempt at a goldsink, i think that there are better options for goldsinks than weapon/armor durability/decay (and which would be less annoying)...eg. hair stylist, etc...

Yay.

Guild Wars is about taking the old, and making it better. Here's my take, on how that could be accomplished. One thing however, is that this would be a PvE only system.

Instead of an old school decay system, impliment a quality percentage representing the weapon's ability to perform well. This percentage need not be capped at 100% either, and represents a new revenue for skills to fiddle with. In addition, the percentage can not drop low enough to warrant the item's deletion.

More importantly, as I said, this concept introduces a new mechanic into the skill system. Spells that rust a weapon, dulling it? Or how about spells that sharpen and enhance the sword your buddy is holding? There's alot of potential there, especially if material statistics are introduced to further diversify the "quality" of equipment. This also introduces another equipmental statistic, allowing weapons to be categorized into varying tiers of quality - poor, cheap weapons having a low statistic, and high quality expensive weapons having a very high statistic that degrades slower. This method also fits in nicely with how player leveling functions in the early levels, mid, and later levels.

Players themselves also need to be capable of improving a weapon. I don't use the word repair, because they wouldn't break. This is merely an extra venue for wealth to travel, adds another aspect to the gaming mechanics and skill mechanics, and adds to diversity of in-game inter-player commerce and sales.

I wrote this up as I thought, so it may be a little cluttered - but the point is there.

I would also like to remind all of you, that discussion on item "decay" (and I use that term loosely) is judgemental at best. What's important, is how this system interacts with the other elements of play - and more importantly, how the system interacts with the players using it. The arguement is not about the concept of this mechanism, but the implimentation. Please keep that in mind.

Well imagine decay and FOW and alike armor. People would fight wearing the cheapest armor that offers best protection, and wear their best looking armor when they stand around town. So adding decay is really pointless, and would result in lower sales.

The arguement is not about the concept of this mechanism, but the implimentation.

I say nay!
1. It's ok in Oblivion, it makes the game a little more realistic. However, Oblivion is a SINGLE PLAYER game, which is much more slow placed than Guild Wars, and in Oblivion, items are MUCH less about stats. A game like Guild Wars with all of its clear maximums and minimums of weapons that have become an almost obvious standard would be nearly destoryed by something as crippling as an item decay.

3. NO NO NO! Item Decay should not be put in Guild Wars 2! Especially if guild wars 2 is going to be at all like Guild Wars 1.

NAY NAY NAY!

Nope, don't want to use my money to fix my armor/weapons.

DIABLO TTWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!SH1FTYS11!!!

....

No thank you, I do not like weapon decay

No, not at all (assuming that GW1 no longer gets expansions and such). If they separate them into two tracks then I guess I do not care what happens in GW2.

There are two basic elements to online gaming - hardcore and casual. For hardcore gamers things like weapon/armor decay, permanent death penalty, inability to solo, and a whole host of other things are irrelevant - even good to some extent. For a casual gamer they are death. I remember one skill rebalance in Dark Age of Camelot that made my ranger type character (too long since I played it to remember what class they called it) mostly useless - for me four months down the drain. I was told to suck it up as one could get my level in a week or so - right now GW works at my level and the more hardcore. I hope we do not move more towards the hardcore too much (for one thing WoW wins there and I think they will continue too).

For me, weapon decay means one of four things:

First is that I spend an enormous percentage of my online time grinding out levels of a crafter to "fix" weapon decay. This is ok, it just means it takes me (normally) about a year or so to see any mid to high level areas. I do not mind so much, others do. This depends on other factors, I did this in Dark Age of Camelot but then a single day of bad luck on death penalties set me back about 3 months so I quit. If this is the *only* concession it is workable, but I would suppose it is enough of a change that other things will work their way in.

Second is that drops are so common I do not care. None of the hardcore players will even remotely accept this - not at all as there is no more economy other than "all drops" and "extreme high end". For a casual player it is quite nice though.

Third is decay is so slow I do not care - but at that point why even have decay? I currently find enough stuff that if they decayed at a rate of once every 100 hours that would be OK - but then what is the use other than irritation (on both the hardcore and casual players end)?

Fourth is I will not waste my time playing, even with no monthly fees. Too many casual players will go this way and hardcore are most likely going to be someplace other than GW2.

If Anet wants to drop casual players then it is a good move, otherwise it is horrid.

I don't really like item decay in RPGs / MMOG type games. It tends to be more of an irritation than anything, and I believe that if devs were wanting cash sinks they could probably find less inconvenient ways of doing it.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I don't feel that item decay adds anything to my gaming experience, or any immersion which isn't eclipsed by the inconvenience of having to find extra cash / time for repairing items.

NAY!

Many reasons, most have been already said:

1. People spend much time and money getting their favorite items and stats. Decaying/Destructable items would only turn people off from playing the game. It would still be managable, but heavily hated...

2. PvP and PvE seperation will become that much harder. As we are not totally clear if GW2 will keep PvE and PvP skills seperate. Item decay would ALSO have to be limited to PvE only... just another factor Anet would have to program/control/limit. Not necessary.

3. It is one of the biggest MMO stereotypes out there. GW games are aimed at being set apart and completely different then all its genre of games... lets keep it that way.

4. I bet my life on it, that Anet would NOT introduce such a silly mechanic into the GW universe. Since this game involves as LITTLE micromanagement is possible... it would start to tilt this fact in the wrong direction, something i bet they will not do and KNOW not to do.

5. Just an overdone, unnecessary, needless game mechanic that has not added "realism", enjoyment or joy to ANY RP game...


Mmm thats about it. Reasons are opinion, but as i have repeated several that others have already said, seem justified, eh?

cheers.

I say nay to item decay.

I say nay to item decay.

What you are implying are

a) "Life skills" - eww.
b) "Uber Weapons" - high quality expensive gear that offers clear advantage to their owners
Both of which are not missed at all, and where anet did good job of getting rid of.
c) a and b to support Decay existance. It is oh-so-convenient to add decay as driving force for timesinks *thumbs down*

If you want to talk about implementation, stat off with game where decay added FUN, and tell us where it suceeded making it good gameplay element.

Dubby- the concepts of sharpening swords, axes and such is an interesting idea but how would you even begin to implement it? For example it would raise some questions like:

a] How is the sword dulled in the first place? Would it be because of use, time, PVP battles etc? Would it be caused by skills like "Dull Enemy Blade" or something?
b] Would the same be done to armor? Would we have to repair dent in sheilds or gashes in our armor?
c] How would you apply something like this to wands, focii, staves etc?

To me personally, this would just introduce a level of micromanagement into the game that is just plain unneccessary. It would get to a point where it would be time consuming and annoying. Interesting ideas, but just not for Guild Wars IMO.

If GW2 has any type of item "decay" I would just limit it to being a temporary effect like a skill. So like you could use a skill like "Dull Blade" on a warrior and it might reduce the swords base damage for X number of seconds. That, to me, would be a better way to have any sort of decay in GW. Make it temporary where the player doesn't have to spend gold to fix the item at all.

Item decay is a terrible idea.

I did take that in mind, thank you. Permanent effects have no place in Guild Wars, and should not be implemented in Guild Wars 2. Period.

No permanent death penalty, no "character age" effects, and no item decay!

Skills or Conditions that would temporarily (or even while in an Instance) reduce weapon or armor effectiveness are fine, as long as there are counters, and the effects would immediately disappear when you enter a Town or Outpost.

I'm against anything that causes more of an effect than that.

Since there is no permanent, or long lasting penalty I would like to see this implemented as a penalty for dying.

Each death incurs a 9% reduction from maximum stats, until it is repaired, or at the lowest value of 1% of maximum after 11 deaths in a row.

NAY!

and @Dougal, Survivor has already created a whole new class of leavers and leechers - people wanting to protect their 1337 pixels will just make the problem even worse.

I don't think item decay adds anything to the game.

In WoW, your equipped items take damage, not a whole lot, but some. So every time you return to a town or outpost you have to hunt up an NPC with a repair tab and pay a small nominal amount to get repaired. This gets old and tedious very fast.

Item dstruction due to decay is no a really good idea.
Item decay in PvP is a bad idea.

Item degradation in PvE is neither a good or bad idea, it's just a gold sink.

As long as the item just become unusable when 'enduarance' reaches 0, but you never lose it, it would be ok, the more you farm, the more the item decays, XD.

Decaying is good only for a group of players, but this game is played by many others who just don't want it. Surely it's good thing for those who want to play a complex RPG and want to "live" with their character, but as can be seen, there are too many people who are strictly against it.

Durability as in other games is absolutely unacceptable.

The only way I can see fit to implement this is making only rare item's special properties behave like this. So in time it's special bonus is weaker and weaker and you must recharge/repair it in order to get it into it's original strength. This way the rare item is still at least equal to it's normal equivalent so it will never be worse, but it have it's special ability on top of it which you can not get by upgrading, so it's rare.

I understand how decay makes sence. your armor is taking a beating so are your weapons. heres the problem. staves, you do not hit anything with them. you shoot your little ball of shmootz and stay way the hell back out of the action if at all possible. Why would this item decay? Also how would a normal smith repair a magic staff? Bows, Once a bow has become damage it is very hard to repair and for the most part you would make a new bow. Small repairs are one thing. but some asshat charr hits you with an axe your bow is toast.
Decay as an Idea is good. Decay once implimented is bad. esp with the way GW is set up.

/notsigned for decay

~the rat~

No sir, I don't like it!

No way. Decay doesn't contribute it only annoys.

Big nay

Durability on weapons/armors is something that I don't want to see be introduced in the GW series. It's a tedious and irritating system which can ruin your quests that you're about to finish, missions/dungeon parties that you're in the middle of doing. It can also be a huuuuge gold sink when you're trying to save that money for the armor/weapon that you really need.

When I was playing Silkroad I had a quest that said I had to kill X number of monsters, later on I was almost finished with the quest only three more to kill. At the time when I was fighting the first monster of the three, a message popped up saying my weapon and armor was about to break. So then I had to run all the way back to town (which was a long trek) while avoiding monsters just to repair the items, then run all the way back to my quest spot just to finish off the last three monsters. Finally, I had to run back again to town to get my quest reward...very frustrating and annoying. It also happened many more times in other mmorpg's I've played and were one of the reasons I've stopped playing them.

So yeah...not signed

Reading the many references to World of Warcraft, I am reminded of how I feel about ArenaNet's wonderful policy of no monthly fees. Everyone pays the same price regardless of time spent playing. That principle should extend to this matter as well. Item decay would add unnecessary pressure, and I would feel as if I were being penalized for playing.

If you mean the weapon's damage decays, loses effectiveness, and eventually breaks if not repaired, I say no. It's just a anoying gold sink that I don't want. And then, there is also the problem of not noticing that your weapon is so decayed that it will break any second and never be seen again. That is the worst, particularly when it is a extremely rare and/or extremely expensive weapon.

Now if it is like oblivion, where the item decays and loses effectiveness, but doesn't break, then it's not as bad, but still an anoying gold sink that I would rather not have.