Recyclable Gears

[Mere]

For some time I been wondering, What happens to all those hundreds and hundreds of gears that people craft everyday?

I mean, like today I craft 20 rank 10 armors, and tomorrow another person craft another 50 of the same armors I crafted... and so people keep crafting more and more of the same armors with exactly the same properties (yeah... maybe a HQ here and there, but you get the idea).
So, people around rank 10 will buy one or two of those armors, but when they done with them, they will try to sell them back, right? Doesn't that create a surplus? or do they sell them to NPCs?

Either way... I personally don't feel too excited about getting high ranking DoH class just to craft hundreds of the same gears to flood the market with more of the same. The only gears worth to keep and resell are the HQ ones.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could enhance our gears further with a high risk of failure? Which would mean, total destruction of the gear pretended to upgrade/enhance. Like...

Lets say I'm R10 DoH and making low lvl gears for skill ups, I end up crafting 20 of the same gears, but I have a friend who is also the same DoH as me but higher ranking. He already "mastered" the recipe that I'm using for the gears I was crafting, so in this case, it would mean that he can upgrade them.

He could then take/buy the 20 gears I crafted, and attempt to upgrade/enhance them with a recipe available to him due to his ranking. He would need a different set of materials, which would be consumed upon attempting the upgrade/enhancement. It has a high risk of failure, but if successful, the gears would still be the same for the low ranks (or maybe a few ranks higher) and better than before.

The enhancements/upgrades could be anything... such as: added defense against an element, mob family, bonus on stats, piercing, elemental damage... etc, etc.

In the process... maybe 18 out of the 20 gears would been consumed and lost forever, only 2 where a success. Therefore, there would still be market for those gears. Whether by the players who intend to wear those gears, or the players who intend to upgrade them.

I don't know how to explain myself better... but for me, it would be interesting and encouraging.

Not only the low lvls benefit from it, as they would be able to sell the stuff they craft for lvling to the high lvls too. But also the high lvls would benefit that the "materials" they need are available, logically, the enhanced/upgraded products would worth more.

What do you people think ??

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

De-synth should be in the game. It worked great in FFXI, why not learn from that?

[Mere]

Umm... I didn't mean de-synth ... but it would be nice to get some materials back from stuff that you wouldn't use.

I meant it more like an odd way to further customize plain gears, that look the same but would do different stuff (while one has added defense against earth, other has defense against fire, but both looks the same and can be worn by the same class/rank/race/etc. as the original NQ one).
Someone else said something similar on a different thread, but the customization I'm talking about is not that random. Is more like an upgrade/enhancement... is a recipe and it always do the same. The cost for the added bonus is a very high risk of loosing the gears forever, but if successful it should worth a lot.

Or... how about if gears with durability 0 are totally broken and lost forever. So you should never let them reach 0 and if that ever happens, gotta buy a new one. Or is that too annoying ?? It wouldn't bother me though. I remember playing some game where the weapons would break if I melee too much to the point of shatter in pieces in the middle of the battle and have to flee or kill the monster with my bare fists. Can't remember what games was that... very old one.

[tymora]

Ultima Online did that. We had to bring bags of swords to a fight...

[Mere]

Ultima Online did that. We had to bring bags of swords to a fight...

"bags of swords" sounds funny... like if they where bread or something for a picnic lol.

I remember other game that had a similar idea to what I was trying to say (making gears disappear from the game). The game was Ragnarok Online.

In there you could use some special stone to upgrade armors or weapons which would then gain a +# at the end (eg. Armor +5). It could be enhanced multiple times and every success would add a +1. The more times you enhance the gear, the less chances of success it has. If the enhancement fails, the gear is lost forever, no matter how many successful upgrades it had before. For example, it was easier to get the gears to +1, +2, +3... but then it could break when you try the +4, if successful, you would think if you dare to try the +5 which is even more risky... and so on.

So lets say that you have a Sword +7, means it has survived the enhancement 7 times and is exponentially more powerful than a NQ Sword. And then you go and try to make it +8 and fail... the Sword with all its upgrades is now lost forever.
So an Armor +6 is several times more valuable than an Armor +5, and an Armor +2 is relatively cheap. Whenever someone said they had the bests gears, they would be +8 and up to +10 if I remember correctly. Extremely rare and expensive!
I remember having a few dozens of already upgraded armors at some +4 or so, then attempt to upgrade one by one to +5, and then try to upgrade the survivors to +6 until I was left with only one armor... which I would keep till I get a new dozen of +6s to try and repeat the process another day.

In other words, my point is... the enhancements/upgrades should be very high risk but very well worth it if success.

[MariyaShidou]

"bags of swords" sounds funny... like if they where bread or something for a picnic lol.

I remember other game that had a similar idea to what I was trying to say (making gears disappear from the game). The game was Ragnarok Online.

In there you could use some special stone to upgrade armors or weapons which would then gain a +# at the end (eg. Armor +5). It could be enhanced multiple times and every success would add a +1. The more times you enhance the gear, the less chances of success it has. If the enhancement fails, the gear is lost forever, no matter how many successful upgrades it had before. For example, it was easier to get the gears to +1, +2, +3... but then it could break when you try the +4, if successful, you would think if you dare to try the +5 which is even more risky... and so on.

So lets say that you have a Sword +7, means it has survived the enhancement 7 times and is exponentially more powerful than a NQ Sword. And then you go and try to make it +8 and fail... the Sword with all its upgrades is now lost forever.
So an Armor +6 is several times more valuable than an Armor +5, and an Armor +2 is relatively cheap. Whenever someone said they had the bests gears, they would be +8 and up to +10 if I remember correctly. Extremely rare and expensive!
I remember having a few dozens of already upgraded armors at some +4 or so, then attempt to upgrade one by one to +5, and then try to upgrade the survivors to +6 until I was left with only one armor... which I would keep till I get a new dozen of +6s to try and repeat the process another day.

In other words, my point is... the enhancements/upgrades should be very high risk but very well worth it if success.

Um no, that is a famous trick in F2P Korean + Chinese MMO to force people to spend cash heavily, because those things are very imbalanced, especially in a PvP-centric MMO. Most Western MMOs do not have this feature, though P2P Korean MMOs do to a lesser degree.

Disposable Gears maybe, like someone said that if the durability goes down to 0 it would literally break.

[Mere]

Um no, that is a famous trick in F2P Korean + Chinese MMO to force people to spend cash heavily...

You think so? I don't know... FFXIV is not one of those "micro-payments" games... we are supposed to pay a monthly fee... unless you are talking about gil sellers and botters... but then again, they do those things anyway, and even worse (like camping NMs using cheats and stuff).

And sorry, I don't know much about PvP or how to make it balanced... never been interested in that, because whoever has the higher lvl and the best gears wins anyway.

If everything is trivial to acquire then who cares. However, we all know there will be rare gear that is difficult to obtain.

Then maybe make it so "rare" gear never reaches 0 durability, but crafted gear would. And what would be good about crafted gear if it has a chance of breaking? ... That it could be enhanced/upgraded!

I do not agree that everything will eventually break, but I kinda like the idea of taking care of your stuff, giving it maintenance and stuff. I remember reading somewhere in the FFXIV website about a fisherman (or someone else) coming back home after a long day and giving maintenance to his rods? Or something like that. You would HAVE to be careful of your gears so they don't reach 0 durability, and if you neglect them, then they are lost and you gotta buy a new one.

Or maybe... broken gears could be used for de-synth!

[ministroni]

He could then take/buy the 20 gears I crafted, and attempt to upgrade/enhance them with a recipe available to him due to his ranking. He would need a different set of materials, which would be consumed upon attempting the upgrade/enhancement. It has a high risk of failure, but if successful, the gears would still be the same for the low ranks (or maybe a few ranks higher) and better than before.

This sort of works with some things already. It makes a higher level version of the item though. Decorated scepters, for instance.

[moatcarp]

I really dislike games where your gear has the chance to completely break forever. Imagine if you spent the time doing something like a Lu Shang quest and you didn't pay attention one day because you were watching netflix and it hit 0% durability & it was lost forever D:

If everything is trivial to acquire then who cares. However, we all know there will be rare gear that is difficult to obtain.

EDIT: This is actually one of the factors that drove me away from DAoC back in the day. All gear would eventually break if you used it long enough (there were 2 durability stats one that went down and up on repairs like we do in XIV and one that could go down every time you repaired it - when the 2nd one hit 0 the gear was toast).

[Vuen]

I liked the system in Mabinogi, everytime that you repaired your gear there was a chance that you would lose some of its maximum durability, if you used a higher quality means of repair that chance was lower. Eventually the item wears out to the point where its not worth using anymore, at which point it is completely removed from the economy.


The reason this worked so well was that the player that outgrew an item, could still turn around and sell it to someone else that needed it... but it would not fetch the price of a brand new synthed item.

Some special items had means of repairing them with a 100% chance at success (In FFXIV this sort of repair could be applicable to Relics/Lushangs sort of thing)