Things you would like fixed on FFXI

[Aksannyi]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

Elder Scrolls probably had the most reasonable system of weapon degradation where if the condition of a weapon or piece of armour dropped to 0/100 it was still usable but you would lose all combat bonuses from it until it was repaired again.

Pretty much how it works in WoW. You can wear and look at the equipment but any and all bonuses from it are null when it's completely broken.

And breaking items and making them disappear completely? Better do away with HQs then, there is absolutely no way in hell I will purchase an HQ staff more than once. I'm all for giving the crafters a bone, but I can't afford that 3m every few months. In fact, I have a lot of HQ stuff. I worked my ass off, saved up, and bought all of it, knowing full well that I'd bought the best piece for that slot and that I wouldn't have to replace it again. And it took me a LONG FUCKING TIME to get my gear. I'm not going through that again.

Repairs yes. Broken and unusable but in inventory yes. Broken but goes poof? No.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

I think you missed my point, there doesn't need to be players that can fix weapons and armor when an NPC smithy could do the same thing. Weapons degrading would make players carry more of them so they'd last longer in combat, thus some weapons would eventually break and crafters would be able to sell more.

As FFXI's system stands, no crafted weapon or armor leaves the system unless the player NPCs it, so it just goes back on the AH in time with al the others that are recirculating, which brings the value down. If supply is high, but demand is too low, things become lesser in value. Prices have to drop for an overabundance of stock to move at all.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

If the NPC price was fairly high, then it would encourage the players to do it. Much the same as we've suggested that they make Teleport NPCs, since sometimes there are just no players around to do it. Pay 5k (which is quite high) and you're on your way. Same concept here. Make the repairs 10k at the NPC, which gives players a chance to charge 1g-9999g and still save people money. And I'd guess that most players wouldn't charge that much for repairs. 5k is probably reasonable, maybe even less.

It would give a reason for crafters to level their craft, and on top of that, it would give them a bit of extra change so that they could gather materials for actual crafting.

I just have to say that I'd be really mad if my signed Aristocrat's got broken and I had to get rid of it. First of all, because the signer left the server, and this is my souvenir from her. Second of all, because they're expensive. Not exceptionally so, but enough to make a dent. I understand what you're saying, that you think items need to be taken out so that the prices can remain stable - or even recover, but the entire crafting system would have be overhauled in order for this to work, or people with a lot of HQ gear (like myself) or just nice signed stuff will be upset about the loss of these items. Something would have to change. And I'm not interested in NQing myself because there's no way to repair my high priced items that got broken and were left to be discarded.

[Vyuru]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

It should be noted that this is a system for something that I am working on, where the planned method of combat would roughly allow you to hit just about any part of your opponents body that you want to. Some things would probably have to be changed due to FFXI's combat system, since you can't just hit someone's hand for instance.

Even there I'm thinking of changing it though. I've been toying with the idea of instead of having individual armor health points that you work on individually (ex, people hit your body area alot, so only your body armor's health depletes) making the armor health count in total of all the pieces (head, body, hands, pants, feet) You get to choose what pieces you want and you get to customize your armor to look/be how you want it, but it's counted as an armor set which instead of individual armor hit points that degrade as they are individually hit, has a total amount that degrades regardless of where you are hit.

Dunno, still working on it.

What I'd like to see in terms of equipment degradation:

Weapons and gear have health points. In general they lose one point when armor is struck or when you hit something with your weapon.

Certain armors and weapons can "resist" losing health depending on the materials. For instance in general metal armors are more durable than cloth. Steel is better than bronze, and mythril is better than steel, they work in tiers like that. Same with various leathers and other things too.

Different weapons and armor will affect each other differently. For instance if you have some super hard abrasive armor, then it is going to take more health from the weapons that hit it. If however you have some high tier metal weapon, let's say mythril, it's more resistant to this effect. Basically an armor made with a higher tier of materials will have more of an effect on a lower tier, either in damage reduction, or armor/weapon health lost.

There would be some sort of balancing act that'd need to be carried out for the various kinds of weapons vs armor that I have not worked out yet. In general, piercing weapons are good at bypassing armor defense and dealing more damage to the person, while crushing weapons are good for reducing armor hit points.

Bows, crossbows, and guns also require maintenance, however at a lower rate than melee weapons do, which I think is fair since they pay to shoot ammo.


I think how I'd handle it is that broken weapons can only be fixed in town, possibly only at a blacksmith's shop. NPCs or crafters can do this. I'd also have some kind of ability that allows crafters to repair items in the field, as well as repair kits that noncrafters could use. There would be some kind of system in place so that, and using FFXI as an example, if you were a Blacksmith who could make Iron, but not Darksteel yet, you could repair Iron weapons and armor just fine, but either you wouldn't be able to fix Darksteel weapons and armor, or else you were less effective at repairing darksteel weapons and armor.

I might even consider that say your weapon has 500/500 hit points. You have it repaired in the field or in general reduces it's total hit points to 480/480 or something like that. If I have system like that, then there would be some option where if you take it to a crafter in town, or a blacksmith NPC in town (basically using the town facilities though) lets you get the weapon's hit points back to the 500/500. The main idea is that the more you rework something, the less durable it gets so I think you ought to lose some durability, but I also want to give players some way to regain that durability. It might involve bringing materials in to the blacksmith for the repair/patch job instead of just paying money for a repair, but something along those lines.

If a weapon or armor breaks, then it becomes unusable but still in your inventory, or else maybe it's still usable, but with an armor/damage rating of 1 or even 0.

For hideous amounts of gil or exp (my augment system was to use exp instead, like merits), you can get an coating on your weapon that will make it unbreakable, however this cannot be removed and you cannot enhance/augment your weapon/armor with this coating on anymore. So if you want an unbreakable kickass weapon you have to fully enhance/augment it first, then get the special coating. Once you have the coating, then no more changing the weapon or armor.

I'd have to dig up my notes to see if I'm forgetting anything, but I think that's roughly it.

[DakAttack]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

People wouldn't flood the market with the usual fare for skilling up if they could do the same repairing weapons and armor. If they can make it, they can repair it, and in the case of Rare/Ex item there might be an NPC, but that's still a little tricky.

Automating everything with NPCs takes out the face-to-face interactions.

[AzureDemon]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

my rambling about accuracy and hitting jnuns really went a long way xD

[Armando]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

Weapons degrading would make players carry more of them so they'd last longer in combat, thus some weapons would eventually break and crafters would be able to sell more.

Here's the thing: one, I don't want my weapons to be temporary, and two, I don't want to be carrying multiple weapons for the sole reason that they're temporary. Plus, like Aks said, you're pretty much restricting the player to cheap weapons. Who wants an expensive HQ if you can't keep it for good? It seems to me that if you're willing to go that far to fix a wholly unrelated issue (the economy), the crafting system needs to be re-evaluated.

If you think about it, weapons and armor should not yield an equal chance of skill-up as producing or refining materials; both for gameplay reasons and logical reasons. At the same time, the rich minority shouldn't be able to spam equipment just to powerlevel through the crafting process. As a solution, there could be an in-game system, with time-based restrictions (similar to Assault tags) which allows players to produce a particular weapon or armor for "extra credit" towards your crafting skill.

Besides that, like Dak suggested, repairing weapons and armor could also count towards crafting skill-ups. Since repairs are a service to others, and it's a continuous strain on players' wallets, chance of failure should be next to none if the appropriate skills are met. So, the system could work something like this: to repair a weapon which caps at crafting level 60, your crafting needs to be at least 60, but repairing the weapon can yield skill-ups up to, say, 65.

Finally, there's an obvious need to remove equipment from the market periodically. I think that could be fixed simply by not making desynthesis a fucking failure fest 90% of the time. Maybe introduce an extra time-restricted, guild-based system to remove equipment from circulation, with rewards that are continuously relevant unlike guild armor and lolsigningcrystals.

@Vyuru. Sounds like a good system, but the numbers should be kept as simple as possible. I'm not keen on having all these different "armor degradation resistance" ratings. Keep it simple; if anything better materials imbue more "HP" to the armor. I'm also not keen on the idea of different armors degrading weapons differently. Unnecessarily convoluted, and if this system applies to mobs (where else would it apply?) then you're introducing an unnecessary gil-based factor into combat. "Let's not fight Quadavs, their armor degrades my weapons too quickly. Let's fight some birds." In addition to that, armor HP shouldn't be degraded on a blow-by-blow basis. What happens when you run into Chigoe? Armor HP lost be lost according to the actual damage the mob is dealing to you, and possibly based on mob level as well depending on whether it's necessary to balance out degradation rates for solo vs party play.

I like the idea of repairing equipment in the field (possibly without any required crafting skill) with the trade-off being decreased max endurance until you get it "properly" repaired in town with a crafter though.

[DakAttack]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

With a more flexible system, crafters could desynth anything they make for a combination of different components. Other than that, they should have the opportunity to do something somehow profitable with what they make, rather than selling it to an NPC or putting it up for auction and hoping it sells.

Perhaps, trading it for an amount of CP based on it's level, or an amount of GP based on its ingredients. I think, if I remember correctly, that's already possible. Guilds allow you to trade different items in depending on the day, for a point reward, and you can trade armor into outposts to supplement your control of the area, but does it reward CP?

[Lmnop]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

I haven't read most of this thread, but lemme toss this out there:

How come whenever someone mentions a durability system, everyone immediately assumes durability 0 = break? The item becomes worthless, or even better: all base attributes are halved (and extra attributes, like +double attack or +62 poison damage over 4 seconds - whatever fits your game best - could be suppressed entirely) until it becomes repaired. Buy HQ weapons! Even when they become sub-par, they'll be good as new next time you come into town! Or earlier if you make sure you have a weaponer in the party!

Not to mention the Ranger thing. Before RNG got nerfed hard, I always whined that it wasn't fair to justify their increased damage just on the fact that they have to pay for it. Now that they're nerfed, it's hard to justify paying for damage that would come free with WAR. If everyone pays upkeep to continue to do decent damage, you maintain equality.

[DakAttack]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

Perhaps a higher quality may even mean more durability?

I know armor in WoW doesn't completely break when broken, but it is completely useless, isn't it?

[Aksannyi]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

Yeah. You can wear it and in your character screen it shows a red box around it, indicating it's broken. None of the stats on it are active when it's broken. It can have 1/80 durability and still work fine, but as soon as it breaks it's useless. But you can just repair it and it goes right back up to 80/80.

[Takelli]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

Even with the duribility thing though, you will have NuBs who wont even repair their gear, or even bother trying to fix it.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

They can sit right at home in the Gimp/Confused/WTF player threads on BG, where we will make fun of them along with the Blueberry PLDs and Domaru SAMs.

[Icemage]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

One way to get around the theft problem with repair is a dedicated "synth" interaction interface for other players.

Just as we have a Trade interface now, you could theoretically initiate a synth window (which, as we all know looks EXACTLY like a Trade window), and instead of Trading, you would just press Confirm and attempt to use your current crafting skill on the selected materials.

That way, the items never change hands, but the crafter can still apply their skills to the materials (for good or ill).


Icemage

[Aksannyi]

Re: Things you would like fixed on FFXI

That's basically what I said! MEOW! lol

I'm so fucking bored.