So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

[Dux]

Hi All

I read a number of times in the posts about weapon and armour degredation. Along the way a few crafters have popped up and expressed interest in fixing a long standing problem in FFXI regarding crafts that do not generate consumable/transitory items like Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing.

Being neither a great crafter and having only played FFXI and WoW I have no exposure to a good wear-and-tear system but I have seen the problem with armours/weapons never needing to be replaced making NQs break-even (or even worse a loss) and HQs becoming the only method of generating money.

From a purely personal point of view I am opposed to idea of making weapons break permentantly, or if it must happen make it incredibly difficult for it to do so. I know the crafters will be crying into the soup about now but my biggest issue with this is that I would be most upset if my Sword Of Ultimate Destruction which took me 3 years to get from "HardAsNails The Indestructible" with his 3 days spawn window and 0.01% drop rate requiring 18 people to bring down was stolen from me by S.E. because I forgot to repair it one day. People quit games over that kind of stuff.

So my first question is what solutions do the crafting community have for the persistance of items from their crafts and how do they feel their solution address's my concern?

Secondly, given that S.E has already stated that no armour or weapon will ever break totally do the crafters have ideas on how they can prevent crafting the market to death without a strict game mechanic from S.E?

[Durahansolo]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

I would be most upset if my Sword Of Ultimate Destruction which took me 3 years to get from "HardAsNails The Indestructible" with his 3 days spawn window and 0.01% drop rate requiring 18 people to bring down was stolen from me by S.E. because I forgot to repair it one day. People quit games over that kind of stuff.

I think this should be reason enough to learn to craft lol. Sorta like real war, I'm sure that Warriors didn't just run out into battle without first cleaning/polishing/sharpening their Generic Bastard Swords, letalone if they had a Epic Foolkiller Axe. If they did it'd either break or get stuck in somebody's neck instead of chopping it off.

Secondly, given that S.E has already stated that no armour or weapon will ever break totally do the crafters have ideas on how they can prevent crafting the market to death without a strict game mechanic from S.E?

I haven't really read too much into FFXIV's mechanics so this is the first I'm hearing about the weapons won't break totally. When they originally announced weapon degrading, I thought of Fallout 3, since that is the only game I've ever played that had it. The thing that sucked about fallout is that you could repair most of the weapons/armor, but there were some that can only be repaired by NPC since they were unique and could only be repaired by the exact same item. (Of course there was only 1 in the whole game though.)

I'm interested in how the system will work in XIV though. I think the problem will be how the prices of repairs are regulated, it would be extremely silly to be able to make repairs cost more than a totally brand new item. Since it is supposed to be a more casual game, I'm hoping that it won't take "Over 9000" hours to be able to get crafting skills to a decent level.

[Takelli]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

I highly doubt they will make it so that weapons will break. R/Ex wepons will even become warn down. It might be like WoW's system. When the weapon "breaks", it becomes unusable and must be repaired by a NPC. But, with the crafters, you might be able to use them as well to repair armor/weapons.

[pixiehawk]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

If they have something like rare/ex, they will not take them away through game mechanics. The only way to lose a rare/ex is if you drop the darned thing. We have no clue if they will have rare/ex stuff in FFXIV, but if they do, I'm sure it will be repairable somehow. Even if you have to get specific items and trade them plus the broken La Shang fishing rod to the guy in Rabao.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

The whole reason FFXI's non-consumable crafting system is a massive failure is that permanance leads to inflated amounts of particular items, which eventually will bring the value of gear down dramatically.

Ever notice how consumables keep a rather consistant value? If you're able to HQ, all the better because then you're making profit there. If fact, with the way the system is, its really the only way to make a profit on anything. And when you can HQ some of the better Armors, you essentially sit at the top dictating prices with little competition. This isn't a fair or competitive system due to item permanence. Oh, but when something gets slightly obsoleted, man those crafters will raise a stink - because as broken as the system is, they like it broken.

Also notice know players avoid levelling RNG and COR or just avoid levelling them properly? Players are addicted to the idea of permanence in FFXI. Were everything to be consumable or at least degradable it would be the norm for everyone and taking on such a job wouldn't be so scary to them. If everyone is operating at some degree of loss, they all have to buget with wear-and-tear in mind.

This also changes the party dynamic a bit. Need before greed would become a factors. This part will rely on SE's drop philosophy for FFXIV, but if they're seriously intending for wear-and-tear, then to keep parties going armor and weapon drops should happen over the course of many fights. This way a tank or melee could use that armor and weapons to keep things going. And when tanks and melee get armor and weapons they could sell, that means anything that drops for mage classes is garunteed loot for those presently mage and that crafting materials are fair game to all for lotting.

If SE opts to not be that generous with mob drops, maybe it will become commonplace to take breaks in between battle to do some repairs since we can change jobs anywhere. SE could opt to keep things a bit more sparse to help keep players in check initially. I prefer they have armor and weapon drops off mobs, though. So long as inventory is more generous this time around, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Also, it was also already stated that Rares would see the same wear and tear.

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

I highly doubt they will make it so that weapons will break. R/Ex wepons will even become warn down. It might be like WoW's system. When the weapon "breaks", it becomes unusable and must be repaired by a NPC. But, with the crafters, you might be able to use them as well to repair armor/weapons.

Yeah.. I don't get how people think we will lose the item lol. Scared thoughts maybe?

[Nuriko]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

Actually, at some point the item WOULD have to become "not worth using" or there's really no shift from permanent items to items needing replacement. Having an item need periodic repair via NPC would be a gil-sink and no particular benefit to crafters unless the price was excessive for most normal items. Using repair kits of some sort would only benefit the makers of the kits, and not the makers of whichever high-level piece of gear it's being used on.

In any case, I think there will need to be more in the way of gil-sources to allow for purchase of gear to replace things that wear out, and possibly an adjustment to drop rates (though that's far more up in the air) or another way to get mats to allow for sufficient gear to supply people. Oh, and probably more AH slots, or a whole different system...

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

If you're able to HQ, all the better because then you're making profit there.

Depending on the craft it's highly debatable whether you make a profit over the long term. I'm 100+3 alchemy and even on synths I'm HQ3 on I can still go 10+ synths without an HQ under optimum conditions. Factor in synths where you scrape HQ1 such as cursed armour and you stand to lose millions in gil before you can obtain an HQ which sells for 1.5 mil at most on my server. Even if you farm your own materials you're still better off in most instances selling them unless you can guarantee a decent HQ rate and invariably on those synths the market is consistently undercut by RMT and idiots.

I agree with you completely on the detrimental effect non-Bind on Equip items have had on the game economy though.

[Celeal]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

IMHO, there is a difference between maintaining (taking care) an equipment versus crafting an equipment (building from scratch). Like polishing a sword with oil to prevent rush, is different from crafting a sword by hammering steel.

If FFXI introduce item-wears-off-over-time system, they should also introduce skill set for repair items.

[Malacite]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

This also changes the party dynamic a bit. Need before greed would become a factors. This part will rely on SE's drop philosophy for FFXIV, but if they're seriously intending for wear-and-tear, then to keep parties going armor and weapon drops should happen over the course of many fights. This way a tank or melee could use that armor and weapons to keep things going. And when tanks and melee get armor and weapons they could sell, that means anything that drops for mage classes is garunteed loot for those presently mage and that crafting materials are fair game to all for lotting.

While I'm hoping XIV has better drop rates across the board regardless (XI is just obscene. It's not even fun to be honest.) I believe this is the reason you're able to become a smith in the field, and perhaps even the point of having high level crafters come to an HNM fight as a crafting job; so they can quickly fix up someone who's gear has taken a major beating to keep them in the fight.

It's a bit of extra hassle, but still kinda cool I think. We don't just have to worry about keeping people alive now in major battles, but in fighting condition as well. Should make for some interesting strategies. Maybe a blacksmith will be able to learn a unique AoE buff that lowers degredation for set period of time?

I'm amazed at 14. I've always hated degredation since I first saw it in Diablo, but in XIV I'm all for it after seeing how badly it fucked up XI. Let's just hope SE is more sensible this time around with the general cost of items (I'm looking at YOU Medicine, NIN & RNG)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

I think weapons well break, save for the R/E variety. SE did say that the R/E kind will degrade, though they never said a think about them breaking. Real weapons to wear-and-tear. We've seen swords break, often as an exaggeration of an opponent's strength, but it can actually happen. If they want crafting as integral as they seem to want it to be, your stuff will break, otherwise we face the same system as FFXI, only with a gilsink added on top.

If you're not a fan of a degradation system, you're not going to like FFXIV. SE tried their best to find a way to remove items from the system in FoV, but players are too conservative and too whipped on the existing system to let it go.

I like the notion that craft-based jobs here will actually be jobs, even if weaker than other combat-oriented profession.

It also makes the notion of Alchemist as a job a practical one for FFXIV.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

SE tried their best to find a way to remove items from the system in FoV, but players are too conservative and too whipped on the existing system to let it go.

S-E apologist bullshit aside, they failed hard with the FoV augments. If I'm going to have to earn 450 tags in order to pop a challenging NM I really don't want detrimental effects augmenting on to an item I can no longer sell. It's bad enough having an NM that can pop with en-petra, hi instant fail, but then receiving Agi -3, Int +3, Chr -1 on a Martial Gun really just makes you want to hurt the idiot that dreamed up the augment scheme.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

S-E apologist bullshit aside, they failed hard with the FoV augments. If I'm going to have to earn 450 tags in order to pop a challenging NM I really don't want detrimental effects augmenting on to an item I can no longer sell. It's bad enough having an NM that can pop with en-petra, hi instant fail, but then receiving Agi -3, Int +3, Chr -1 on a Martial Gun really just makes you want to hurt the idiot that dreamed up the augment scheme.

See, here's the other thing the FFXI community is weird about - they think a betting game should come with guaranteed results. Yet how many people have defender rings for all their camping of KB?

If you can gamble, you can lose. When you gamble, the game and reward is seldom consistent.

There's nothing "apologetic" about it, its how gambling works. All arguments about effort and reward fall flat when you make a bet.

[Armando]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

See, here's the other thing the FFXI community is weird about - they think a betting game should come with guaranteed results. Yet how many people have defender rings for all their camping of KB?

If you can gamble, you can lose. When you gamble, the game and reward is seldom consistent.

There's nothing "apologetic" about it, its how gambling works. All arguments about effort and reward fall flat when you make a bet.

It's not a gamble when the only outcomes are:
1) Negative effects
2) Small bonuses to already trivial stats
3) Large amounts of elemental resistance

That's pretty lose/lose to anyone not looking for elemental resistance =P And even if you ARE looking for elemental resistance, there's 8 elements and you probably only have an interest in 1 or 2.

Considering that you have to grind for that bullshit ON TOP OF having time restrictions between tries, there's no way you can cover SE's ass by diverting the blame to the players. I don't think we even know if there's any correlation to what you might get besides the level of the gear traded.

If they wanted people to gamble on their gear then they should've given stat bonuses worth taking a gamble for, or a way to pick a certain stat or two and gamble for that. Even something like 50/50 chance to get +3 DEX or -3 DEX is enough to persuade all the rich motherfuckers to try to get +1.5 Acc out of their Snipers, because E-peenery knows no bounds. In fact, the promise of eventual payoff will keep the losers plunking down more gil on Snipers. The really rich and greedy ones will probably try to go for 2 augmented ones.

As long as you're paying for a game of Russian Roulette with 5 bullets and 1 empty space in the revolver, no one's gonna use it.

[Mhurron]

Re: So how will weapon/armour degredation benefit crafters?

S-E apologist bullshit aside, they failed hard with the FoV augments. If I'm going to have to earn 450 tags in order to pop a challenging NM I really don't want detrimental effects augmenting on to an item I can no longer sell.

It's worse when you also consider that they already have a system to have things removed when placing things up for sale, signed items loose their signature. Would it really have been so hard to loose augments if you decided to sell the item?

See, here's the other thing the FFXI community is weird about - they think a betting game should come with guaranteed results.

Usually when you play a game of luck, you know what your betting on. You don't usually slap down money for what ever the lottery commission decides to give you that day.