Would economy improve if weapons/shields broke and armor AL decreased over time

The original Baldur's Gate, where swords and stuff would break before cleansing the taint from the Nashkel (iirc) Mines.

Added a gameplay/plot element which was pretty sweet, tbh. And because it didn't affect your +1 longswords and stuff, your phat lewts were fine (anyone else like Ankheg plate? )

Explain how it involves grind? loluranidiot.

/unsigned

Who would want to play the warrior profession and hold aggro for groups if their armor just needs to be replaced about 10x as much as anyone elses?

QFT.

/unsigned for all reasons seen in the thread

As people want games with item degradation, ask a TANK in World of Warcraft what he thinks about the repair cost for his armor compared to that of a mage after 10 wipes. :>

The game still works with that, but you cannot do this in GW, IMO.

/agree and QFT

/notsigned.

Current system: Get max weapon, use it indefinitely

Proposed system: Get max weapon, use it until it breaks or degrades, spend money/time getting new max weapon, repeat ad infinitum (or nauseum, meaning until you get sick of it and quit the game).

Having to continually do something you don't want to do (get money to repair a weapon you've already bought) is grind. "Realism" is the crappiest reason to add any change, ever. This thread fails on an epic level.

Yes, it would improve the economy

But /notsigned, because the majority of the community wouldn't like it, also, anet isn't going to do a major game change like that, and we must delete this thread before an admin sees it and puts it in GW2

In an MMO it sucks, I do enjoy it in games like Oblivion though.

It was fun in Oblivion, it was also not a big deal in Diablo 2, because the economy was ruined and everyone had 1 million+ gold and just used high runes to buy anything, which were probably worth about 900 million+ gold

It works sometimes, but only very rarely

No. One Thousand times no. I have seen only one game that implements equipment degradation without doing the same to the game, and that's Diablo. And that is only because decent equipment barely does so. Every other game I've played that uses it made things hell (I'm looking at you Drakan).

/unsigned

Anyone play system shock? You ended up using a wrench/lightsaber/piece of dead alien for 90% of kills just because every gun you have will break in 10 shots. Thank god you could lower the degradation rate with a cheat.

Normal weapons still broke after cleansing the mines. Magic weapons were immune to it, though. Normal weapons broke in the second game too.

I don't see how that negatively affected anything (not directed at the person I quoted, but at everyone else saying it is always a bad thing).

To everyone saying "what benefit did it add?" Does everything have to be beneficial? If that were the case, bosses wouldn't be able to cream a whole team in one hit. What a loaded question.

Oh, and to the person who was talking about gold worth in Diablo 2: Gold is worth nothing in that game, and never was. It drops easily from enemies, and can be quickly recovered if lost. Diablo 2's "economy" was always setup on items ("Stone of Jordan"s being the main thing).

For some games, item degradation works (Diablo, Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, these being the only games with it that I've played) and for others it doesn't. Seriously, it never made me angry or anything, I don't know where all of this "it sucks always" crap is coming from. It was part of the game, and you dealt with it.

Diblo II was the only one with 'good' degradation.
The effectiveness of the weapon didn't decreased, and the duretion of the weapon didn't too. Weapons could have 'indestructible' properties and once duration reached 0, the item didn't was destroyed (throwable items were, but that was fixed later on)

But in GW, items can only have 2..3 extra properties.
Unless they added another 'PvE' upgrade, for properties like indestructible, more damage to race or highly salvageable, or improved value and such, I seriously doubt thig should be implemented at all.

No, and everyone caring that much harder about not being damaged isn't going to help PuG's either. It's not so hard to have full-time 75% blocking and boost AL, but I doubt we'll do much killing.

GW wasn't designed with the concept of equipment degradation in mind, it would hurt in unexpected ways and some classes more then others.

No, just, please no.

I wonder how many players would quit if they did implement this?

FoW owners would start a riot, and I don't think the people with max gold crystalines would be very happy either.

Freelancer had you repair armor/weapons after battle or degen from radioacticve areas, that worked because it took a very short amount of time to get the best everything and have nothing else to spend money (not counting torpedos because I typically blew myself up with those and not my target)

/not signed

Yeah, 8 skills, 1 rez 4 defensive and 3 attacks would really make the game take ALOT longer to clear a mission/quest.

Plus it would do nothing for the ecomomy, each person would need more money, (for repairs or new swords) which means more farming/gold sellers.

In 20 months Ive only had more than 100k once, for about 30 mins. The AVERAGE PvEer realy doesnt need that much, but with this? He/she/it would need tons.

I think there are a few people taking this the wrong way.

When the term "equipment degradation" it doesn't mean, when your weapon's durability hits 0 out of 24 (or whatever), it is automatically, thrown out or unusable forever. There would be a "Blacksmith" (or whatever they would name it) NPC in town that would repair it to full durability for a small fee. When its durability lowers, to like, 19 out of 24, your weapon/armor has less effectiveness, and when it hits 0 out of 24, it is useless in any way shape or form.

Yes, it would be an amazing gold sink, but more people would farm because we all don't have 600k gold, and a large percentage of the community would quit, and thus more money would be held in the players hands that quit, and the economy would have much less gold in it. In the end, it would ruin the economy though, and the game, in theory.

Also, this would drastically effect PvP if put in to place. What if the warrior's hammer broke in the middle of GvG, they would be useless. And what if you have no money to repair equipment, and then you have to kill things to get more money, but you can't since you have no viable equipment? I can see a big "Game Over" screen happening in an MMO there.

Basically, it would single-handedly ruin the game.

/notsign

No, just no! /notsigned times infinity.

I don't want to have to repair my obsidian armor and nice weapons after the ridiculous prices I paid for them. I don't want to have to repair any other armor for that matter.

Also, how frustrating would it be for a newbie (with limited gold) to have to repair his or her only set of armor/weapon?

I lol'd and agree, after spending some time browsing this section. Well played.

Powerful bosses are a challenge that can be dealt with intelligently (ie, by interrupting them, or protting the warrior running in to take the first blow). Challenges in games are beneficial, because without them, you have a snorefest. Nuisances like constantly being asked to pay upkeep on your equipment is neither challenging nor fun, it's just - literally and figuratively - taxing on the player.

And...why should we have to "deal with it"? How about we just not add it, eh?

Games should not be something where you sit down at the computer and you sigh, and say to yourself "Goddammit, now I have to deal with this crap." I don't see where games should make you not want to play them.

Try that business model, and see how it works out for you.

say bye bye to PvE characters in PvP. hybrids - who needs them?

if by chance you did see a PvE character crazy enough to enter PvP with FoW or tormented or other high end armour/weapons. . .booyah! hammer him with cracked armour/etc - say bye bye to millions worth of armour/weapons.

awesome idea, this should be implemented immediately, then the OP should enter PvP with a PvE char (preferably one equipped with OPs best armour/wepaon sets). . .booyah!

Is there a reason to agree with this other than:

"I ahm teh Pee vee pee so I dun want P vee Ee nubs en my AB lulz, becuz I asuum I em teh betterz den them".

Oh, wait, that isn't a reason, partially because anyone can get into PvP by pushing /Roll level 20 character with no experience needed in the selection screen.

I don't think I need to point out why I wouldn't sign this, but I will. Even if armor degradation has been useful to any game, which is a highly debatable topic in the first place, it's a very low percentile, probably smaller than 1. This wouldn't help at all.

/Unsigned.

Item degradation is one of the dumbest "features" ever introduced into video games. Particularly irritating is the "you died so now your armor durability just dropped by x% too".

Lord of the Rings Online has one of the worst systems. I love the game, but man is it annoying when you die and, even after selling all the loot you picked up, you still wind up losing money because your repair bill is so steep.

Whoever thought up the concept of item degradation should be dropped on a deserted island with a butter knife and a pair of skivvies for the rest of their life...

GTFO, stop being a PvE elitist. Just because you can roll an auto-level 20 with any armor and weapons you want doesn't make you good by any stretch of the imagination. No one will accept you into a decent GvG guild if you have no experience. IMO, to consider AB "pvp" is a stretch when you compare it to GvG and HA and things like that. I can go in with a Coward warrior with None Shall Pass and other random crap skills and still get kills, when it's put that way, AB is more like PvE.

by the way, learn the difference between /notsigned and /unsigned.

Nope.
When people have an opinion on the game economy and say it's broken, there could be two reasons:
- They think 'stuff' is too cheap
- They think 'stuff' is too expensive

When people think stuff is too cheap, they are probably the wealthier players that want to keep their 'unique' items for themself.
It will probably be a small group of players that thinks like this.

The people that think stuff is too expensive are probably the majority of the two groups.
The question here is, how do we measure.
When looking at the most basic stuff, basic armor + stuff at the merchant, items have a (relatively) fixed price. The price of all basic crafting material has been around the same price, except feathers.
Meaning prices for those needs are fixed. Prices for skills are also fixed, cheap for the first, more expensive up to 1K for later skills.
So when looking from that perspective, there is no change in the economy, stuff did not get more expensive.

Next step, trader items.
Prices of 'craftable' materials are set in boundries by the basic materials.
So those have a relatively fixed price.
Rare materials that cannot be crafted have dropped in price or stayed about the same. From that perspective the economy has improved.
Dye same story. Scrolls same story. Runes vary, but in general they got cheaper. Except the major and superior vigor all are below 2K and most of the runes are even below 500g.
Again, that's an improvement.

So the only problem there could be is on the player to player market.
That market is mostly influenced by:
- inflations (same supply of items gets more expensive because more gold gets in the economy) and linked to that
- demand compared to the supply (sellers market/buyers market)

I get the impression that the amount of gold getting into the market is slowing down, most considerable change is loot scaling.
And the amount of 'rare' items is increased making them less wanted by the realy wealthy in the game (and thus lowering their price).

Introduction of item degeneration would have some impact on the spending side, but not as much as lowering the amount of gold getting into the market or increasing the amount of 'rare' items.

I think the economy is fairly balanced at the moment and does not need this kind of change.
It would improve it somewhat, but other ways are better and more efficient.

Have you noticed that within the last 6 months or so, weapons in general, particularly greens, have really hit the floor with prices? Kanaxai's Edge was about 100k+, even after Nightfall was released and Factions had been out 6-7 months. Then, suddenly, within about 2 months time, it dropped down to about 15k. And that's just one example. Items in general have gone down so far it's not even funny.

Oh, and by no stretch of the imagination am I a "wealthier" player. I have 76gold in my storage, none on any characters, and pretty much no weapons (besides one Urgoz's Longbow) for collateral.

So, your idea pretty much imploded?

The first sentance was enough for me to realize that arguing with you would be as pointless as trying to teach a horse to read, but since I have nothing better to do at the moment, I'll debate anyway.



Yes, it does not make you good. That's the point I try to get across. Yeah, I get bashed for running with FoW/15k armor in some GvG matches by other teams, but having a liking for PvE, does not, counter to common stereotypical misconception that that gives you the automatic inability to be competative in PvP, make you a bad player in that area of the game.

People will just stand and assume because a person is adapted will into one end of the game they have no clue about the others, and IMO, that's one of the stupidest minconceptions in the game. GvG and HA may be a step up from AB, but it's not out of reach to people that PvE a lot either. People can be good ad both ends of the game, regardless of what the idiot on the PvP bandwagon shouts from the back end.

I'd consider myself well rounded to both ends of the game. Sure, I PvE a lot more, but I've had no trouble competing in GvG and HA. No, I don't belong to any high end PvP guilds, so I don't win the halls regularly, but my friends and I, who also PvP with me occasionally, have gotten pretty far along.

I worked in one end of the game for an accomplishment. I worked very hard. Why should I have to sacrifice that because of some stereotype that people cannot be good at both ends of the game? Why should I sacrifice one end of the game to play the other? That's just idiotic.

The reason there are stereotypes like that is because in PvE, you don't need an elaborate or well-thought-out build to succeed. You mostly just have to be smarter than the enemy AI. Yes, there are PvE-ers that succeed at PvP, but it just seems so few and far between that no one really expects it. The common conception, at least what I gather, is that non-PvEers assume that most PvEers are still using Mending Wammos and tanking, and then they go to RA and try farm the opposing team with Triple Chop or something.

Basically, there are a lot of PvE-ers, usually ones that learn the game on their own, don't ask others for opinioideas, ns on and don't use community sites, and they go in and try to HA with Randomway, or try to RA/TA with bad builds. Although there are players like you that are good at both ends of the spectrum, the majority of people that PvE a lot, and scarcely PvP fail, in general, and people like you will get overlooked because PvP-ers have stereotypes that all PvE-ers are failures and should /uninstall. I'm sure PvE-ers have stereotypes also, and think strict PvP-ers think they're bigots or stuff like that, which, I will admit, is true to some extent.

The GW economy would greatly benefit from having an item sink, yes.

And the GW player population would greatly hate it, with a vengence and a passion.

Personally I don't really care about the state of the economy, it's no skin off my back that high-end gear continually deprecate in value, so I'm strongly against item wear - but the OP's got a point, Guildwars have fairly decent gold sinks, but no item sinks at all, and that has flooded the economy with gear.

It's just that the cure is worse than the disease.

From the perspective of a total economy, this is not bad, this is good.

Previous, someone had to obtain 100K for the sword. That would have meant either saving for a long time, get lucky or farm. Guess what most people did....
Now, people can obtain the item for about 1/7 of that price.
Meaning people have to farm less gold/ecto to obtain the item. And bringing less gold in the economy lessens inflation and thus is better for the economy.

This is observed on most parts of the economy, where only a few items stayed in the high price range and the rest decreased rappid.
The high price mostly related to a very limited amount of items in the game

You have to consider the following.
The fair price of a green is the time needed to obtain the item themself compared to the amount of gold one could earn elsewere in the same time.
Calculate the relation between demand and supply for the upper and lower bounds, which relates in average time to sell.
The item drops more often, pushing the price to the lower side.
There are fewer people that want the item, they want other greens now, pushing the price down further (since it takes longer to sell at the high price).

People can also farm less gold/hour now, so the fair price had to lower, since the time to obtain the item did not get longer.
It's even the other way, the time to get the item decreased. A lot.
The alliance record for Deep is below 30 minutes atm.

The price of 15K for Kanaxai's Edge is a fair price, considered the 100K+ price was set pre-lootscaling and the time to get the item now.

Don't get me wrong, my Kanaxai's Edge is a drop from the 100K+ period, I just wanted to keep it myself and not sell it to others.
The same is true for a lot of other items I have (I consider myself one of the not-so-poor though not extremely rich) which lowered in price a lot the last half year.

Also consider the economy is not just about me or you.
You and me might be hit, as are most players in my guild.
But a lot of other players did benefit from the change, at least Kanaxai's Edge is now in range for most active players (as Canthan/Elonian green items were supposed to be in my opinion).
Because of lootscaling, the correction on high priced green item prices should be about between 6 and 8, so the current price seems reasonable.
Low green item prices were set by low demand.
The prices on low-req gold items are not so closely related, since they are harder to obtain, specially the uninscribable ones.

It seems loot scaling works as intended

imagine spending a couple weeks(please, no one say it takes them less, i don't care lol) constantly farming for ectos/shards,to buy a sword, eg eternal, crstyline.... and then the god damn thing broke, imo that = quit gw for a long time.

When something breaks, I think they are talking about games like Diablo, for when it breaks, you take it to an NPC, pay a small fee, and get it repaired. By "broke" it basically means "unusable" not "a million useless shards"

As long as they had a weapon/armor repairer in town that would restore it to 100%, I wouldn't mind this. Having additional gold sinks in game is never a bad thing, as it keeps inflation (and the cost of items) in check.

lol, no one wants to lose anything for the good of the gaming culture, good lord, isn't that familiar.

To anyone just bluntly opposing this idea:

You guys don't even know the price to fix the item if it is broken, and there is no proposed suggestion.
Just because you do not want to lose anything and threat Anet with leaving the game, it won't work, because from business view you already paid your share to the game, please get that mentality out of your head.

no i dont wanna grind farm to repair/buy a new shield.

/notsigned

It seems like other games that introduced item degredation only did so to add "realism" rather than a benefit to the gaming experience. In my opinion, it only added an annoyance to the game. Even in games where you can learn the armor-repair skill and do it yourself for free, it was just more mouse clicks. I would definitely not like to see item degredation in GuildWars.

Alternatively, possibly you could add a new condition like "broken weapon" to correspond to Cracked Armor. I'm not saying I like the idea of a new condition, but it just came to mind while reading through this thread.

That's very true, we all paid our money for the campaign anyway, there's no more money to milk out of us, it's not like we're subscribers or anything.

But wait! There's GW2, if anyone leaves during the GW1 in disgust, there's a decent chance they won't be coming back for GW2, and they don't want to lose potential buyers. Once GW2 comes out, they're pretty much free to f*ck up GW1 as much as they please, because anyone who complains is just going get a response like "Just play GW2", meaning they will buy the game, maybe.