Decay.

How would the community like the idea of armour/weapons etc decaying slowly with usage?

The decay would be very and not cost much gold to repair after a day hunting etc. High end armours could take 50,000 hits before being in need of a repair or a bow firing 20,000 arrows before it becomes "damaged" and have to pay it's full price in repairs.
To repair, just go to an NPC to have it repaired at a cost. Repair it often and keep on top of it.

I think it would be quite good, even though it would take a tiny slice of my income. It's a great goldsink too... probably taking many thousands of gold out of the economy on a daily basis.

This sounds like a request but it isn't. I just wanted to ask you all if you would be up for a little maintenance and some new NPC's

Instead of that gold fellblade selling for 100k, you would be able to barter a better price for it if it was slightly decayed and in need of a repair.

What do you think?

I think it's a great idea all in all and a darned good gold sink as well. Let's face it: Weapons, specifically and armor more indirectly should decay over time. Weaponsmiths would then have a secondary use as a 'repair' shop. The more decay on an item, the more it would cost to fix.

But like all that hard work for getting that fissure armor and then it decays. How would you feel when your brand new fissure armor decays? Or when you are lazy (like me) and won't necessarilly repair it until it definately needs to be repaired, and you forget and poof, its gone? I think its a nice gold sink, but I wouldn't be for it anytime soon.

Also, what if you just spent all your money on something expensive, and only kept gold for ID + salvage kits? Then you wouldn't be able to play that character until you got gold from playing another character, which you may not be in the mood to play? Also in PvP scenarios how would one repair their armor without getting gold?

Personally, I would find it quite a nuisance, and furthermore, I don't make a lot of gold everyday. And what about spell casters? They don't really use their weapons... tooth decay for the win?

good idea

I think a good goldsink would be, well actually incorperating things into the game that we would actually want to spend our gold on. Armor decay would not make people very happy and would not add anything real to the game. GuildWars is feeling less and less like a real world and more static and controled, the only suprises to find are negative ones. Does anyone remeber when there was the possibility of Char skinn carpets on our guild hall floors? We were promised many things along the line that never came to pass. It just seems that GuildWars has gone dry, AreaNet has expended all its resourses.

I don't know about you but in the "real world" my clothes get old and tattered, my car's paint fades, the vacuum cleaner breaks, my silverware needs polishing. It adds MORE realism to have to 'fix' your things in the game. It doesn't have to be cost prohibitive either. It's just a way to remove some of the gold from the game.

Think, too, of the secondary benefit: Unless a real human takes the character to the weaponsmith, bots would, after a time, have no armor on and it would consequently shut down bot farming.........at least for awhile.

as i dont make alot of money i am against this idea.

lets say your so poor you cant afford to repair armor.then your armor goes away and you have no way of getting money for more armor because u get killed too fast.then your stuck armorless.

i thought gold sinks were ways to get money out of the game that were optional but worth the money for their fun value.i dont think a goldsink should be force i.e repairing your armor. maybe something people would like maybe emblems(like stuff painted on there)for your armor that fade and you have to buy a new one every 4 days.that way it is optional but still a gold sink

I'm sorry to be offtopic but...honestly, who the hell polishes their silverware?!? Washing it is a must, but polishing?

This is a terrible idea. It makes sense in a game like Ultima Online where your sword might only cost 100 gold and a platemail set is 500 to have crafted, especially considering demons are relatively easy to kill for a maxed out character and they drop ~500 a pop. Going up against a player/mob using a hammer causes rapid wear and tear in comparison to other weapon types (the damage done from hammers is so extreme that clothing, which takes forever to decay under any other circumstance, is at risk to be destroyed). Each time a weapon is repaired, it loses a point of durability, and will eventually be completely destroyed no matter how well you attempt to maintain it. No one in their right mind saw "decaying" weapons/armor or the need to repair them as a gold sink. In fact, only players could repair them and all of the blacksmiths I spoke to did them for tips only. Gold sinks were things like spending 500,000 gold to get neon green colored hair.

I *just* now completed my mesmer's 15k armor (I'm also 3/4 finished with my ranger's 15k armor). I bought the first piece almost 2 months ago. I would not have been impressed if my tunic decayed before I could afford the gloves.

Why do we need to be real world accurate for everything? This is a game, it's meant to be fun. Having to farm to keep your armor in good shape for the sake of realism is not adding anything fun or worthwhile to the game. I work 40 hours a week and play games to escape real world, why would I want the tedious parts of real world to be a part of my entertainment? Why don't we just make everyone be perma dead when they die? That's realistic, too, and just as "unfun" for a vast majority of people. Oh, and take out magic and dragons and everything else because they aren't realistic either. How about armor washing and bathing as a requirement to prevent stink clouds around you that disgust other people to the point where they won't group with you?

Why do we have to add stupid and unnecessary things like this just to stop botters? I think you seriously underestimate people who run bots. They'd just add the ability to repair armor to their bot routine.

Genuine silverware, as in made from real silver, must be polished to prevent/remove tarnish. These days, "silverware" is a generic term applied to forks, spoons, and knives, even though they aren't actually made of silver.

Not a good idea, it'll have no positive effects and several negative ones. If it's only a small amount of gold it'll be a useless goldsink and if it's a significant amount it'll cripple the non-farmers or people who aren't making a lot of gold. It won't stop botters as if they can program their bot to navigate and move slightly randomly getting the bots to trade with an NPC should be no problem. Basically it's going to be an annoyance at best, the only purpose it serves is "realism" or MMORPG style gameplay neither of which GW is designed for. Sorry but if you want to play a MMORPG with crafting and decay etc go buy one.

I think it was mentioned in another thread somewhere, but rather than have the armour decay, just make it get dull, and you can pay to have it cleaned and polished. That way there's no punishment for not doing it, just a pleasing gleam if you do.

I thought the point of this game was your personal skills, your character build and your teamwork determining your success. Having to keep your equipment in shape doesn't fit into that one bit. I already waste enough time in towns identifying drops in order to get a decent value for them, trying to fit all the collectible drops into storage somehow, you want to add another mundane task you're forced to perform between missions just so the game becomes more realistic?

Why not add toilet breaks while we're at it? Realism! Terrible idea. Go play WoW if you enjoy this kind of 'challenge'.

first of all, i think if decay was introduced, to repair you wouldn't have to pay full price of the armor, so 15k amorr you would only pay a few plat if it was horribly decayed. Also, amor and weapons wouldn't completely break so their gone forever, they'd probably just would be wieldable until you fixed them.

And if Pvp weapons and armor wouldn't decay, unless your using a weapon bought with another character and put in your storage

Also sorry to be off topic but my daily silverware goes in the dishwasher, my silver tableware has to be polished 4 times a year.

Amen! I inherited my grandmother's silver from the mid 1920's. It requires polishing at -least- four times a year....all by hand.

I dont think it would be an ABOLUTE horrible idea. i mean, dont lower the efficiency of the armor less then 75-50%.......when you enter a PVP arena its back to normal, and the cost to repair from the WORST damage could be 10-25% of the buying cost. so after a few hours of playing/farming whatever you go to the weaponsmith pay a little bit to get it done. but i am a novice at this sort of game, so i dont know what the norm is. of course thats 7.5 plat to repair all 5 pieces of 15k armor (which i will never get anyway! lol)

No thanks, I hate this idea. I don't want to have to be always repairing and replacing stuff. Things are expensive enough as it is. There are plenty of other ways to make gold sinks without this.

There is another way of doing this...

Instead of having items decay till they are destroyed, make it possible for the player to pay x gold to have the item given temporarily higher specs.

Something like this... You'd go to a "booster" or something, and pay:
1000 gold = 1 extra point damage with a weapon for 1000 blows, or
1000 gold = 2 armor points for one piece of armor for 100 hits, or
1000 gold = 2 extra energy for one week.

There'd be a maximum how much you could buff one item, say +10.

This way you can pay for an advantage, but if you don't pay you're no worse off than today.

In a competitive environment I'm sure this would be one mother of a gold sink.

However, as I've written in another thread, I don't think GW needs a gold sink, I think GW needs an item sink. The problem isn't inflation, it's mudflation.

actually i like the boost idea, but wouldnt that make runes less needed? i mean its hard enough to get rid of them now as it is! if people could boost performance of 1 stat or another for 1k.......... why would we need them?

Well, runes are permanent and the effect would stack with the purchased boost.
Also, I'm tired and a bit foggy, but offhand I don't think any runes add to damage, base AC, or energy?

*cringes and brings up the semi-hated D2 thing*

In Diablo 2 your items don't degrade to the point where they have to be -replaced- just simply -repaired-. It could work similarly here as well. Items/armor would not degrade and break permanently, just need repair occasionally. And, as said before: There is no need to make it cost prohibitive! As someone said, perhaps the maximum repair would be 10% of the merchant's price for any item. And, as armor comes in 5 pieces, each item would not necessarily need repair all at the same time. Thus, the most any repair cost for any piece of Fissure armor could be would be 1.5k. Also, there should be no "lessening" of an item's usefulness just because of degradation. A player should deal the same amount of damage with a weapon and armor should continue to offer the same amount of protection.

I also like the idea that item degradation disappears when one is in PvP arenas. There is no need for such things there.

Still, I don't see a particular necessity for this in GW unless the PvE side becomes more RPG-like. The more like an RPG the game becomes, the more need for "realism" in certain aspects of the game.

I inherited mine from my grandmother as well.

Ouch, silver polishing hand cramps - been there . . .

But when it's done, so beautiful and gleaming in the chest. It's worth it.


edit sry not trying to hijack the thread

I would just collect 50 minotaur horns or whatever and get 10 collector items of the weapon I wanted. Same with armor. This idea seems kinda pointless.