Well i feel those costs are optimal because there is 13 different tool materials ingame now even diamond but so far i found only one diamond but i could not mine it with iron hammer XD (used debug info to look what it was)
I totally know and understand that the current implementation of durability is the first iteration. My post isnāt orientated to how it functions right now, but how it will function in the future. Special tools (enchanted, or super high quality) will probably take a while to make. So much so that making them in bulk, while a save in resources, will be a total waste in time. While a repair feature could help bring those tools back up to usable quality at a fraction of the time and resource cost, obviously money cost is left to the smith. I also just feel that adding a repairing feature opens up so many options economically for people that decide to make armor, weapons, and tools.
@Talathel you so lucky to have found any gem. I am still trying to find components and the most rare thing I have found is gold and silver. Well I saw titanium once, at least I think it was.
My experience has been a little different. I never felt like I was mining to find materials for tools but rather that while I was mining for building materials or to find rarer materials that I naturally found what I needed for tools. I generally fell into a rhythm of queuing up 10 hammers of whatever tier I wanted (usually copper) and then go to my mining place and mine until all 10 of my current hammers broke. Go back and queue up any building materials and hammers and repeat again. I would also maximize my time by queuing up a ton of materials when I knew I was going to be offline for a while.
I feel like with some tweaks the system will overall be in a good place. I do feel however that if magic/enchanted items are a thing then being able to repair them will have to happen. Once you get into items with special augments, players tend to form a bit more of an attachment to their tools and are less willing to throw them away.
The problem with alloing repairing tools is that the economy become one dimesnional. It takes some steps away from the economic flow of the game.
Currently it is possible to implement following proffesion just in a simple resource cycle:
Resource gatherer
Resource refiner
Tool crafter
Tool optimizer/enchanter (enchanter and crafter could as well be the same profession)
The gatherer sells to all the others
The refiner sells to the crafter and the enchanter
The crafter sells to the enchanter and gatherer
The enchanter sells to the gatherer.
If all people can repair their own tools, The tool crafting and enchanting professions stops being economicaly sustainable, or at least to a much lesser degree as people will keep their tools around instead of buying new ones, with fewer crafters the demand for materials go down resulting in a smaller need of materials being mined, hurting the miners economy.
In general every time you remove a step in a resource cycle the economy slows down and the players gets less to do other than building or mining/crafting just for the sake of having a chest filled with diamonds
isnāt repairing the tool with resources or making that tool again with resources basically the same thing? so you either sell tools or sell resources for that tool, so iām not seeing any downside that such feature would be in game or not. if repairing tools takes less resources and you lose the point selling tools then what happens when they add passive skills/advantages to miners/grafters like faster mining, more resources from 1 block, take less resources to craft certain things or even a skill to repair items?
If repairing would be the same as crafting you would need people with the appropriate skillset anyway so instead of just buying a new one you would need to give the tool pay for getting it repaired and then come back at a later point to get it.
Exactly^^ Now itās only a question of what seems more fun of those two options. And Iād say that heavily depends on how random it is to get a good tool.
If you can make one tool and know exactly what the stats are beforehand then it seems equally fun. But if thereās a random element to the stats then repairing seems proportionally more fun the more random it gets^^ (Unless the repairing also has a random element. That could balance the fun again.)
But yea, if you only look at the buying part then then both systems could be the same for some people. Because youād buy something anyway. Either a new tool or the repair of an old one.
I think the exact opposite is the case.
If you can acquire an item with exactly the stats you want right away and are able to repair it, then thereās absolutely no fun or economic flow in the system.(As to be seen in like 99% of current MMOs)
However, if there is ārandomnessā to the crafting but no opportunity to repair you stuff things get interesting, as you never know what youāll end up with (or what the weaponsmith next door ended up with). Which makes trading an important tool to get what you want.(It also makes shopping more interesting than just running to the same plinth as always, buying 2 stacks of the same weapon as always or buying 3 stacks of repair kits)
tl;dr
A bit of RNG makes everything more interresting
I think we have 2 different perspectives on this problem^^
I think itās less fun if you need a certain weapon but have to make thousands until you get it. Which makes it equally hard to get again and again because it wears out. If you can repair it then there is the ārandomness funā there.
You can split it into 4 cases:
-
no repairing and no randomness:
This makes the whole system pretty boring just as you said. But there are no real implications (better or worse) for the economy.
Letās take this as the baseline for the economy and fun level (I know thats subjectiv) and compare the other three possibilities to it. -
repairing and no randomness:
This makes it jus as boring as without repairing. Still no implications for the economy. (why? look further down at repairing and randomness -
no repairing and randomness
This is more interesting but can get pretty tedious depending on how much randomness there is. If you need to craft 1000 hammers for the perfect one thatās ok but not if you have to do it every week because they break. That, on the other hand, would make the perfect hammer even more valuable. Both for the one using it and the one selling it.
It also helps to distinguish more invested players because theyāll have a broader variety of items to sell.
Might help the economy because you get more trash while crafting and therefore need more materials. -
repairing and randomness
Just as interesting as without repairing but it wonāt get tedious because you have to make thousands of hammers just to have something decent to sell because you wonāt have to do it weekly. Once everyone has a perfect hammer you wonāt need to make much more of them, only repair the broken ones and maybe sell one or two to those who lost theirs.
It wouldnāt hurt the crafter professions either if implemented correctly. As described above, at first you would just sell the hammers and your business would gradually shift to a mix of repairing tools and selling some on the side.
Seen from the outside the crafters would need as much material and time. (Assuming that repairing needs about the same amount or more of the material as making a new one.) So nothing that inherently damages the economy.
And as in the system without repairing you might need more material because of the randomness and you can recognize more invested players because of their bigger lineup.
I hope I covered everything but feel free to add to it^^
TL:DR
As I see it nothing really damages the economy but randomness might increase the material flow and it might add fun if you can repair stuff but it can get pretty tedious if you have to replace every tool.
You donāt have to, simply trade, thatās what weāve got plinths for
(Chances are that someone else sells the combination you are looking for while you got the combination someone else wants)
Or you just settle for a combination that is not 100% what youāre looking for (thatās how Iāve spent my time in The Division so far )
Speaking of The Division, I think the Equipment-RNG over there would make a good template for how it could work in Boundless, but I guess thatās a topic for another threadā¦
This pretty much sums up my problem with repairing. Instead of experimenting with different combinations & mods Iād spend most on my mats on repair kits because itās the most demanded item that yields the most/fastest/reliable profit (this might especially be an issue once the game aged a bit and most players are veterans with 100+ hours playtime).
So generally speaking, Iām just not a fan of the idea of weapon-repairing in Boundless. Thus Iām fully supporting the devsā idea of not allowing us to do so.
.#TeamNoRepair
Yea but in the end there have to be on average a thousand hammers made to achieve the perfect hammer once. (Assuming the randomness is 1:1000^^) Thatās what I mean^^
Also just because your focus would shift to repairing items doesnāt mean you canāt or shouldnāt be experimenting. Not sure it should be done with repair kits anyway to be honest.
Even if you couldnāt repair anything, that wouldnāt make it more interesting to experiment (also more or less depending on the exact system which we know to little of^^) it would be just a necessity to let the game āexperimentā because itās randomness.
If you mean experimenting in the sense of making many random tools and letting the game āexperimentā then yes you would do that more without repairing but I personally wouldnāt call that fun^^
#TeamRepair
@KuroKuma, @Vastar: I think you both have good arguments and i can agree with most you both said. At the moment i canāt decide for a side but this is mostly because of missing informations from the devs side. As long as the āfinalā concept is not revealed to the community and only āslicesā (āno repairā, ārandomnessā) are known itās hard to get a look at the ābig pictureā. Maybe @gerryjacobs or @luke-turbulenz can explain the planed concept āin detailā so that we can better understand and judge/decide on this basis.
#TeamNoRepair #TeamRepair #TeamUndecided
Really offtopic and nitpicky I know but it bothers me somehow^^ (also @Vastar)
If you want to write a character without it being used for something else in this editor you can use the escape character
That turns bold into *bold* and is not visible. Written that would be \**bold**.
So instead of .#TeamEscapeCharacter you can write \#TeamEscapeCharacter and it comes out as #TeamEscapeCharacter^^
p.s. That post got longer than intended but I hope it helps^^
Thats nice info though for the # you can just make a space before it. Quitely starts preparing for actually updating the forum guide again
In truth I made this thread to raise awareness of the current durability for the tools(I got salty over the work and time I spent making iron tools that lasted so short). I do regret making this thread for that reason.
It was pretty fun recording the durabilities for wood>iron though. Iāll keep on waiting to hear what the devsā plans are for the tools.
Iāll be on neither team like @Heurazio too #TeamNeutral. I canāt judge something that isnāt implemented yet.
Iām neither judging nor concluding as well. In fact, I think that the devs are capable of making decent gameplay around a mechanic that allows repairing but also around one that doesnāt. So Iām just rooting for them to try the mechanic that wonāt allow us to repair weapons/tools as I think that it can yield some interesting and innovative possibilities.
I hope what I said didnāt sound like I was pointing fingers, because I really canāt speculate how one of the two would affect the economy in this game where trade isnāt controlled by a āGrand Exchangeā or āAuction houseā. Especially when Iāve been so used to it.
But yea, Iām still going to wait and see how theyāre going to balance durability before thinking that adding tool repairing or not is a good idea.
Thatās definitely a āLukeā one!
Hi everyone,
@KuroKuma @Vastar @Heurazio @Thorbjorn42gbf @Miige @Zerus @Talathel @UmbraVictus @Nyuudles @ishred11 @Saint_X @Smoothy @sikerow @TheBirne @Havok40k
Great topic and some really good suggestions here. Durability and breakable items was always going to cause a certain amount of conflict, because it completely goes against the norm. But this topic has certainly given us something to think about.
What is clear from this conversation is that the current durability values feel unfair to you. Weāll be monitoring this and look at where the system needs balancing or maybe make items a bit more durable. However, it is worth noting that not all elements are in place and this system will need further balancing once these features are added:
- Progression - Upgrades to make your character more efficient (item durability, crafting speed, mining speed, etc)
- Crafting Randomness - Crafted tools will have base stats which will be randomised in a limited range based on your crafting skill level.
This took a big weight out of my chest Thank you Luke!