Gear Damage

[Darge]

Ever have an idea you consider fairly neat, yet in actuality is impratical, and/or useless? I do believe those 2 quirks are roll offs of what brad thinks might be a nice addition to drakkar, yet will serve to add nothing of real relevance.

[Necron99]

I once worked for a company that went through a massive reorganization and change of focus. Understandably, this upset the majority of the employees. The new CEO, as part of his introduction to the change, handed out pamphlets that basically said "accept the change or leave the company". The pamphlet was 15-20 pages long, full of platitudes about how change was necessary and even good, but that was the message.

I originally started playing this game because it was a technology updated clone to the old CompuServe Island of Kesmai game. Sure, the names have been changed to protect the guilty, but it is what it is...probably not much risk in it, now that Kelton and John are out of the gaming business. I have since found that Drakkar is unique in the MMPRPG world...not the game itself of course, but the community surrounding the game. No other game has such a strong sense of community and social support. Sure, we have our differences, but what group of intelligent, passionate people do not?

Brad, I urge you to reconsider these changes in the game. I understand that Drakkar is primarily the product of your vision. And that this change is part of your vision for the future of the game. However, I would like to think that you also listen to the Drakkar community...a community which makes Drakkar unique in its market space...a community that has spoken concerning this change.

Please dump this gear damage modification to the code base until the effects and ramifications of the change have been thoroughly tested. If you need assistance with comprehensive player testing, I can help. Send me an email to discuss.

In the mean time, does anyone know what WoW server Yeti, Funns, Odd, Simone, et. al. use? Perhaps we can attempt to recreate the community on a different Island.

Necron.

[Yeti]

me, funns, warning, and odd are all on LaughingSkull, dunno about sims or anyone else.

However, WoW doesnt and will never have the Drakkar community. Its full of bnet kiddies who are too busy with their leet speak to care about anyone else.

The WoW community is too large to ever hope to have the feeling Drakkar does/did.


-Yeti

[Ztinktoof]

I've often thought most death in the game was meaningless and led to kamikaze tactics for group play and solos of lairs and areas for which players were underleveled.

Best use of gear damage I have seen in games is as a death penalty. You can see this in WoW for sure, but it is used this way in other popular games. It makes it serve a real purpose other than another time and money sink.

I have a 3 deaths and I'm out rule when I tank WoW instances with PUGs, partly because of the repair costs I incur. (Of course, I may suck as a tank, but I prefer to think the rest of the party sucks. >g<)

Maybe remove the wear and tear damage from everyday hunting and leave in the penalties for death and being attacked by weapons and spells that are specifically designed to damage gear? Be a bit aggressive with the the death penalty on a RESTORE or rot, but not on a player's crit cure.

On a related note, why does a rot have bigger penalties than a restore? They seem functionally equivalent to me.

[Elessar]

Originally posted by Ztinktoof
On a related note, why does a rot have bigger penalties than a restore? They seem functionally equivalent to me.

At the risk of being off subject, I always figured the logic here is that if a player wants to try to sit there dead for an extended period waiting for someone to come get their corpse (either through luck or design) that they have to risk the increased penalty of a rot if the person doesn't get there in time.

[Fix]

I don't see why gear has to be damaged. These are magical weapons and armor. Frodo's mithril vest in lord of rings never needed to be repaired. Maybe the beginning gear could take some damage but by the time you get albron (Level 56 to wear) and lorsul and such it should take very little if any damage.

Gear damage has always been a nuisance and makes the game less enjoyable to play.

We are here to have fun and not laeve our party waiting to walk from nl to nork to repair our gear every 30 mins.

Fix

[landlubber]

Originally posted by Frozboz


Alright, so what's the reason he's adding it? And don't give me any roleplaying nonsense either, or weak reasons like "this is the way the game was intended from day one but somehow it got overlooked". I want a solid, well thought out reason WHY something like this is being worked on when other larger issues still exist and are seemingly being ignored.

Most changes that make no sense to players and make the game less fun for them eventually lead to the game's detriment.

Purely speculation, I'm certainly not privy to inside information but here's my guess:

Brad said he was going to turn back on some of the benefits for maintaining gear in exceptional condition (can find it in the quirks thread, too lazy to link). He can't very well do this if there isn't some means to have gear condition deteriorate. It would just mean everyone's gear improved. If the benefit is significant, there will be those who will opt for being able to do this. Choices with real consequences makes a game good.

Before, there are areas where one could sit for many many hours giving very little attention to the game and they could kill things. It didn't happen often, but occasionally I would see someone who was obviously not paying alot of attention to what they were doing for 5, 6 hours, sometimes more. This change makes it a bit more difficult.

[Freddie]

http://www1.drakkarzone.com/beta/quirks.rtf

That is the link.

Freddie__JIHAD (I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!)

[landlubber]

Originally uttered by Brad

Its a cascade of some pretty cool stuff. I can turn back on more of the bonuses for exceptionally well kept armor, and make a one stop item repair guy that you can go up and say "repair all" to. It will also let me have another penalty other than con/hp loss for deaths ( can just damage the armor ).

I'm planning on the skills being both retarding the rate of decay, but also at higher quirks adding a slow "upwards" movement of improvement to allow for some of the higher settings on condition. I think its gonna be fun.

From the first bit, you can infer than those who maintain their gear in better condition, will have their gear peform better than your armor/weapon did previously.

From the second bit, I understand that to mean that those players who decide to put a lot of points into this category will get some even greater bonuses to their gear. However, it's something that happens over time and each occasion that the player dies will reduce the bonuses. So, it's not just that they won't have to repair their gear but rather that they can improve their gear even more. This isn't something that has a lot of interest for me on my primary character but can see it being of interest on other characters who rely more heavily on gear.

All of that aside, the gear damage was initially out of whack and Brad put in a couple tweaks fairly quickly. In total, I dropped a few meg for repairs on my barbarian for spending a few hours zerking with a blast hammer. I didn't need to repair my healer's gear at all while I was skilling martial while wearing gear giving me uber agility in a fairly easy area. Of course it all varies between class, size, and gear so everyone had a different experience. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't seem like much to get upset about: coin is easily obtained and if players cannot afford the repairs on their gear maybe they shouldn't be wearing that gear. If Brad adds better loot drops in Nameless like he hinted, then it should easily counter this and it won't create further need to spend much time outside of your current favored hunting area (well, unless you're a psi type hunting zaps/roots/revits). Things that effectively neuter a class are more worth getting upset about. I'll save my ire for that.

[Crusher]

So far, I like the improvements. I was wondering if the following is intentional.
I just got back from hunting Mormar, I was there for around 3 hours. I went to cob to start coining and checked my gear to be repaired. I double clicked my armor, Average condition. Double clicked my Hally, Average condition. I went to the repair-woman, it cost 33k to repair my halberd, and 11k repairing my fur.

Will it be changed to, if you can repair it, it will show as Poor or Below Average, or something? Also, as an outcast, if it's not Above Average, why can't you repair it when it's Average.
Will you eventually be able to "list armor" or "list damage" to see any armor that is damaged?

[Drip]

Yes ty from me also, the "tweak" was far more than a minor adjustment from this players point of view.

[landlubber]

Gear damage from NPC's wielding curvy longswords still seems a bit high. All it takes is a 2-3 armor/weapon blocks to take an item from average condition to damaged condition. This could be what you're shooting for, I dunno.

[Bubolacteus]

hmmmm... does gear damage get transferred to npc's then too when using damage weapons/spells/foci? so you kill npc and have damaged gear to pick up? or at least gear stops protecting them too?