[Dev] Repair system problems

[Colt47]

the ability to leave retainers up overnight in the mender ward is friendly to everyone

What do they wear on the field while the gear is on their retainer in the market ward, assuming their gear is in need of repair yet they still want to play?

[Mikita]

Ah, thanks for catching that in the last paragraph. That's definitely a strawman argument right there without some elaboration and a rewrite. I was trying to get to the point that the system isn't new player friendly as it depends heavily on being familiar with the community in order to function.

You're right that new players may have a harder time. I still remember my first 3 weeks in Eorzea. First MMO ever. Not knowing anyone or anything about Final Fantasy "ways". It was a bit difficult and I made a lot of mistakes, including mistakes with items and gil -- like buying and selling everything at NPCs because I didn't know about the market wards, etc.

That said:

- New players should be using gear that only takes Grade 1 or Grade 2 material to repair, which shouldn't cost them very much to get fixed.

- The Repair NPC also doesn't charge very much for low level item repairs. I used them a lot when I first started and didn't know anyone on my server. They will only repair to 75% and the cost is high, but it's still a viable option if you don't have the time to seek repairs from other players.

- If you use appropriately ranked gear, the degradation isn't all that fast (IMO -- my gear goes down maybe 2 to 10% after a few hours of battles) and you should be able to accumulate a decent amount of gil before repairs do become necessary.

- It is an MMO and I think they intentionally build in benefits for interacting with other players. It's not absolutely necessary, but there are definitely benefits to playing nice with other people.

[Deatheye]

- If you use appropriately ranked gear, the degradation isn't all that fast (IMO -- my gear goes down maybe 2 to 10% after a few hours of battles) and you should be able to accumulate a decent amount of gil before repairs do become necessary.

Aside from char lvl versus gear lvl death also plays a role. If you die your eqip takes a lot of damage. They implented it so that you are forced to play with a bit of brain and not just run into the mob till it dies from you running into it. So be carefull and fight stuff you actually can kill without dying.

[Colt47]

You're right that new players may have a harder time. I still remember my first 3 weeks in Eorzea. First MMO ever. Not knowing anyone or anything about Final Fantasy "ways". It was a bit difficult and I made a lot of mistakes, including mistakes with items and gil -- like buying and selling everything at NPCs because I didn't know about the market wards, etc.

That said:

- New players should be using gear that only takes Grade 1 or Grade 2 material to repair, which shouldn't cost them very much to get fixed.

- The Repair NPC also doesn't charge very much for low level item repairs. I used them a lot when I first started and didn't know anyone on my server. They will only repair to 75% and the cost is high, but it's still a viable option if you don't have the time to seek repairs from other players.

- If you use appropriately ranked gear, the degradation isn't all that fast (IMO -- my gear goes down maybe 2 to 10% after a few hours of battles) and you should be able to accumulate a decent amount of gil before repairs do become necessary.

- It is an MMO and I think they intentionally build in benefits for interacting with other players. It's not absolutely necessary, but there are definitely benefits to playing nice with other people.

Sounds like a self contradiction with the part about repair costs. They don't charge much because of the gear level, but the amount being charged for the gear at that level is still a substantial amount of the appropriately ranked players money. The best gil sink is one that people don't pay attention to and utilize out of habit. If people notice that they are losing a huge chunk of cash going to a npc, that isn't a good gil sink.

Gear is something else, though, and really they have to find some way to make the pricing for items scale better for appropriate ranks. I've seen rank 20 leather armor that sells for far more than rank 30 leather armor, yet the game still seems to expect people to wear armor of the appropriate rank. Once they get around to fixing the AH system in this game it probably wont be as much of an issue, but right now the marketing ward system is just painful to look at or use.

[SeleneVenizelos]

Annoyance, a gil sink, & a absurd reduction in character performance.

Many of us often come at a conflict of repairs due to the fact whenever it gets depleted it needs to get repaired. If the self proclaimed player with a low crafting skill can't repair it he or she might have to place it on bazaar having the item to get it repaired by a skilled crafter. Of course, this comes across problems of shouting for a repair to speed process up to get the game going. However, what's striking is most crafters might not help at all due to abundance of cost, thus the crafters are in control, and using repair NPC's rendering them useless since it only repair at a maximum of 75%

In addition to crafting, it is tedious and tireless time consuming gathering and remarkably a large basis of items needed just to make one thing to another. It's also a large investment as things stands since crystals are part of the source to making gil and high in demand for synthesis.

Reduction is another problem where if the % it would also effect the performance against fighting, party, or even solo'ing. Players want to fulfill their maximum performance as their job and their abilities in the long run.

That's my 2 cents, what's yours?

It doesn't seem overly unreasonable that crafters expect something out of repairing. After all, it was their time and money they put into levelling the craft, not the person seeking the repairs.

As a crafter myself, if I'm not in a rush to somewhere, I will happily browse through people's bazaars and repair where I can; providing I get the repair material back or make a small profit. If I'm going to effectively lose money by being offered less than the going rate for the dark matter, why would I repair it? It took lots of time, patience and money to level my craft and I certainly didn't do it to help other people.

I am not a selfish player, I enjoy helping others, and I have rare moments of charity where I help out somebody in need, sometimes at a personal loss. Somebody expecting me to pay 3,500g to repair their items is insulting.

[Auleirra]

ok here is the thing I'm not a dungeon runner but i do die a lot. like said before i would like to perform at my max potential the the leve difficulty adjusted i'm finding it very hard to do that. my gear is destroyed in a matter of a few tries on a leve or NM or monster of high rank.
the gear decrease for returning in my opinion is a tad too high perhaps a 5% decrease would still get the point across cause i truely feel like a useless character when before the patch i was able to do so much. also on top of the repairing issue for those of us High rank members or even people who prefer to use HQ items for their class the repair NPC is still highly priced for 75% but i will say the price drop is great for normal quality.

all in all it is too much of a hassel for High ranked DoW and DoM that have Low Ranked DoH to save up the gil For all these Repairs.
this is just my observation i like how they are trying to get all the classes involved in the game maybe make the repair NPC repair to 90% ^.^ might encourage people to use that source more often

[Kobushi]

I hate crafting i have little time to play everyday, i dont wanna do boring stuff like shouting for repairs and waiting around, i hate it but i already came to peace with using repairs npcs all the time, gil is easy to make anyway.

What i hate the most is the fact that i can't sell used gear in the markets and can't even give gear to a friend that isn't 100%, to me it's just stupid, ok fine they won't let me sell stuff that is not mint condition, but give to friends?! how ridiculous. oh and the repair npc won't fix my rings...really?
well anway i just sell to npcs my old gear and buy new stuff...it's a huge loss in gil but seriously i don't care anymore i know that i won't be playing this game if this system remains as is when monthly fee is aplied... to me this item condition, selling and reselling of gear is the biggest bone i have to pick with this game

[Fouluryu]

There are too many loop holes with the repair system to begin with. The dark matter is nice, and being a melee player as we speak, I got my smithing to 28 which is probably the greatest success for me as a crafter. I remember and thought to myself if I leveled gold smithing I would achieve making money and repairing my weapons, wrong. The reason is that the materials are logically too expensive, thus the dark matter saved the day from expensive of items.

However, this leads another array of problems: Getting it fixed. Retainers are slow, I'm sorry but it just doesn't work for me and it took two days waiting to get my entire junk getting fixed. Retainer market halls are primarily just to sell and seek junk there. People don't charge by the dark matter, they charge by the level required to be fixed. What else is there... The npc. Ah yes the npc... let's lower the price but get things fixed at 75%. Really? Why get paid to do a half lazy taru's work?

Also, multiple jobs means multiple craft jobs needed to cover all aspects of equipment and weaponry. The cost for gil investment in getting it all to 50 (except fishing of course) is roughly 20-40million gil, and the most I ever had was just 2 million gil selling fresh equipment from quests and crystals. Not to mention is takes non stop daily (one month) to get to 50 per craft. This kills the idea of being a casual player and forcing me to be a full time crafter on every other job just to play other jobs, I just can't do that.

High crafters, especially the rich ones, sometimes they don't bother to stop and help you even if you asked. Ask another player you say? Well, sure only when they're on at a different time 5 hours latter while I'm trying to get some sleep.

In short

Repairs are costly even if a player wanted to self invest in crafting.
Most players may or may not want to do it unless offered large forks of cash.
Level difference demand in price.
Npc total failure to fulfilling adventure's needs of repairs.
Time consuming even if dedicated.
Prevention of performance & a time sink of wanting to do other activities but cant.

Solution: Get rid of it.
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/29745.../page__st__120

A huge voting poll was made and several others want it gone too.

[Colt47]

There are too many loop holes with the repair system to begin with. The dark matter is nice, and being a melee player as we speak, I got my smithing to 28 which is probably the greatest success for me as a crafter. I remember and thought to myself if I leveled gold smithing I would achieve making money and repairing my weapons, wrong. The reason is that the materials are logically too expensive, thus the dark matter saved the day from expensive of items.

However, this leads another array of problems: Getting it fixed. Retainers are slow, I'm sorry but it just doesn't work for me and it took two days waiting to get my entire junk getting fixed. Retainer market halls are primarily just to sell and seek junk there. People don't charge by the dark matter, they charge by the level required to be fixed. What else is there... The npc. Ah yes the npc... let's lower the price but get things fixed at 75%. Really? Why get paid to do a half lazy taru's work?

Also, multiple jobs means multiple craft jobs needed to cover all aspects of equipment and weaponry. The cost for gil investment in getting it all to 50 (except fishing of course) is roughly 20-40million gil, and the most I ever had was just 2 million gil selling fresh equipment from quests and crystals. Not to mention is takes non stop daily (one month) to get to 50 per craft. This kills the idea of being a casual player and forcing me to be a full time crafter on every other job just to play other jobs, I just can't do that.

High crafters, especially the rich ones, sometimes they don't bother to stop and help you even if you asked. Ask another player you say? Well, sure only when they're on at a different time 5 hours latter while I'm trying to get some sleep.

In short

Repairs are costly even if a player wanted to self invest in crafting.
Most players may or may not want to do it unless offered large forks of cash.
Level difference demand in price.
Npc total failure to fulfilling adventure's needs of repairs.
Time consuming even if dedicated.
Prevention of performance & a time sink of wanting to do other activities but cant.

Solution: Get rid of it.
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/29745.../page__st__120

A huge voting poll was made and several others want it gone too.

You also left out that seeking repairs doesn't actually add much to the gameplay for the seeker. The individual giving repairs does get a benefit out of the act in the form of money and maybe some SP, but the only thing the person seeking the repairs out gets is the right to continue whatever activity he was previously interested in engaging in. It's not the same as seeking out a crafter to get an item produced, where gathering the components can be an adventure in it's own right along with the benefit of receiving a more powerful item.

It's pretty clear that SE has to do more than just change the cost of the NPC repairs: They probably have to change the role player driven repairs serve from being a mundane maintenance task to something higher up on the food chain. There are better ways to show that people playing DoH's are superior to the common fodder of the land than to make the common NPCs utterly incompetent at what they do. That is, unless the repair NPCs are really a part of an entire racketeering enterprise meant to rip off travelers, in which case: Adventure plot point!

[Kobushi]

There are too many loop holes with the repair system to begin with. The dark matter is nice, and being a melee player as we speak, I got my smithing to 28 which is probably the greatest success for me as a crafter. I remember and thought to myself if I leveled gold smithing I would achieve making money and repairing my weapons, wrong. The reason is that the materials are logically too expensive, thus the dark matter saved the day from expensive of items.

However, this leads another array of problems: Getting it fixed. Retainers are slow, I'm sorry but it just doesn't work for me and it took two days waiting to get my entire junk getting fixed. Retainer market halls are primarily just to sell and seek junk there. People don't charge by the dark matter, they charge by the level required to be fixed. What else is there... The npc. Ah yes the npc... let's lower the price but get things fixed at 75%. Really? Why get paid to do a half lazy taru's work?

Also, multiple jobs means multiple craft jobs needed to cover all aspects of equipment and weaponry. The cost for gil investment in getting it all to 50 (except fishing of course) is roughly 20-40million gil, and the most I ever had was just 2 million gil selling fresh equipment from quests and crystals. Not to mention is takes non stop daily (one month) to get to 50 per craft. This kills the idea of being a casual player and forcing me to be a full time crafter on every other job just to play other jobs, I just can't do that.

High crafters, especially the rich ones, sometimes they don't bother to stop and help you even if you asked. Ask another player you say? Well, sure only when they're on at a different time 5 hours latter while I'm trying to get some sleep.

In short

Repairs are costly even if a player wanted to self invest in crafting.
Most players may or may not want to do it unless offered large forks of cash.
Level difference demand in price.
Npc total failure to fulfilling adventure's needs of repairs.
Time consuming even if dedicated.
Prevention of performance & a time sink of wanting to do other activities but cant.

Solution: Get rid of it.
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/29745.../page__st__120

A huge voting poll was made and several others want it gone too.

Yes a thousand times yes, listen to this guy please ! xD

And to people that like the repair system because they don't want a simple mmo, repair system doesn't had anything to the game in terms of complexity, it's just unecessary, it's time you don't spend progressing but rather wasted time just to get to the point u were yesterday... it's a system only good if you have alot of time on your hands to level all your crafters, to people like me that have 1 - 2 hours to play a day, and sometimes none, do you think it's fair i'm forced to eaither level many crafters to repair all my gear or waste my precious time shouting for repairs?

I know there's alot of players who love it cause they have the time but i thought this game was fair for casual players too lol... anyway to all protesting about simplifying this system and therefore the game remenber it was Leonardo da Vinci who said:

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."