Should we have Decay on Tools and Clothing?

[Denkar]

Personally, I think the best way to go about this would be to have both tools and clothing decay as you use them, having perhaps a "durability" meter, which also dictates the effectiveness of the item, which you can restore by repairing the item. Better items would be more expensive to repair.
I dislike the idea of having items disappear because that means that basically every item is just temporary, no matter how good the item is. However if you can repair them, you can be sure that you'll always have it, even if repairing it is expensive.

Being able to "smelt down" items is a good idea, but you should also be aware that this discourages trading, and is not an item sink in any way (as opposed to decay). This could complement decay, but not substitute it.

[loftar]

For the record, it should be said with regards to durability, that there isn't necessarily a strict dichotomy between tools becoming temporarily broken and repairable or breaking permanently.

An idea Jorb and I have played with is giving clothes a "current HP" and "max HP", where both are mutable. The Current HP would decrease with decay/use/wear/whatever, and when it reaches zero, the item "breaks" into an unusable but repairable state. When repaired, however, there is a certain fixed or stochastic, small or large decrease to the Max HP. Thus, you can repair an item many times over its probably rather long lifespan, and it only breaks permanently once the Max HP finally reaches zero. It would probably be coupled with some mechanic that lets characters with a high value in some proficiency repair items with much less permanent wear.

[joshnpk]

For the record, it should be said with regards to durability, that there isn't necessarily a strict dichotomy between tools becoming temporarily broken and repairable or breaking permanently.

An idea Jorb and I have played with is giving clothes a "current HP" and "max HP", where both are mutable. The Current HP would decrease with decay/use/wear/whatever, and when it reaches zero, the item "breaks" into an unusable but repairable state. When repaired, however, there is a certain fixed or stochastic, small or large decrease to the Max HP. Thus, you can repair an item many times over its probably rather long lifespan, and it only breaks permanently once the Max HP finally reaches zero. It would probably be coupled with some mechanic that lets characters with a high value in some proficiency repair items with much less permanent wear.

I +1 this.

[alloin]

For the record, it should be said with regards to durability, that there isn't necessarily a strict dichotomy between tools becoming temporarily broken and repairable or breaking permanently.

An idea Jorb and I have played with is giving clothes a "current HP" and "max HP", where both are mutable. The Current HP would decrease with decay/use/wear/whatever, and when it reaches zero, the item "breaks" into an unusable but repairable state. When repaired, however, there is a certain fixed or stochastic, small or large decrease to the Max HP. Thus, you can repair an item many times over its probably rather long lifespan, and it only breaks permanently once the Max HP finally reaches zero. It would probably be coupled with some mechanic that lets characters with a high value in some proficiency repair items with much less permanent wear.

Great idea

For the rest being worried about noobs losing their tools too fast... How easy is it to make an axe ???? 1 branch & a flint, don't tell me that's too hard to replace !!!
Dev's should be adding a 'wooden sword' maybe, so the noobs don't lose too much iron when using a real sword for hunting those crickets...


Durability is a must in my honest opinion, in the last world, the candy gang had like 5 sheds full of perfect socketed/non socketed gear & 10 sheds of iron tools, just gathering dust

[Judaism]

On tools it would make sense but on your precious combat gear which already is so hard to obtain and make, rather not. (Unless that for some reason would change)

[Greb]

@Loftar I like that idea a lot

[simple]

I think u should focus on having a stable, complete and engaging slotting system for all tools, armor and weapons, before u add decay.
The durability/repair system should have more weight and meaning then, right?

But also +1 for what loftar said.

[Darwoth]

imo should have two values.

shovel: durability 200/100

200 is the shovels durability.

100 is the shovels integrity.



200 is the number corresponding to how long you can use the shovel before it breaks, it break completely at zero.

100 is the repair number and how many times you can attempt to repair the shovel, each successful repair burns 10 - 20% off of the shovel integrity rating.


this way you can use a tool for a long time, you can repair it several times etc but they still eventually need to be replaced. should also add random small durability events. ("2% chance to "chip" your shovel and lose 5 durability etc)



for weapons the same system could be used but additionally as the durability decreases the damage decreases as well by that percentage, so a sword at 100 out of 200 durability would only hit half as hard.


edit: nm looks like loftar pretty much said same thing

For the record, it should be said with regards to durability, that there isn't necessarily a strict dichotomy between tools becoming temporarily broken and repairable or breaking permanently.

An idea Jorb and I have played with is giving clothes a "current HP" and "max HP", where both are mutable. The Current HP would decrease with decay/use/wear/whatever, and when it reaches zero, the item "breaks" into an unusable but repairable state. When repaired, however, there is a certain fixed or stochastic, small or large decrease to the Max HP. Thus, you can repair an item many times over its probably rather long lifespan, and it only breaks permanently once the Max HP finally reaches zero. It would probably be coupled with some mechanic that lets characters with a high value in some proficiency repair items with much less permanent wear.

[agentlemanloser]

I agree with Darwoth regarding tool durability. As regards clothing durability, I see no reason that combat damage couldn't or shouldn't result in wear upon clothing, provided that repair was possible in roughly the same manner Darwoth and/or Loftar suggest. If nothing else, it would encourage people to develop multiple sets of clothing for multiple uses - a hunting outfit slotted accordingly, etc.

[Spazzmaticus]

On tools it would make sense but on your precious combat gear which already is so hard to obtain and make, rather not. (Unless that for some reason would change)

My humble opinion is that it should be the other way around. Making valuable pieces of clothing break adds a lot to their value. Tools that have no quality and are easy to mass produce? Having axes and other things degrade just makes things tedious and doesn't add any real sense of scarcity.

FOnline Reloaded has the system that loftar describes with degradation occurring in armors and weapons as a current/max durability affair with the maximum being reduced if repairs are done poorly. That game doesn't have degradation of things like axes and sledgehammer, however.

If slotting and quality of weapons and tools gets implemented I might change my mind on the issue but right now the game is not in an optimal place to introduce item decay.