Expansion Ideas: Systems, Features, and Content Types - What would you add?

[Shurrikhan]

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If it's not too much trouble, could we please quote, at least in a <snip>, to whom we are responding? Just for future thread-browsers' convenience. This thread apparently gets weird surges of posts that can separate replies from the page of the one being replied to.

FATEs, Hunts, levequests (if you're still levelling or trying to fill the Challenge Log), Beast Tribe dailies, relic weapon quests... there's plenty of ways for gear to be degraded. And it should go without saying that instanced content accelerates the degradation rate, and especially if your character is KO'd (regardless if they are KO'd in instanced or open content, being KO'd degrades your gear even more, so if you're wiping over and over again, it's very easy to suddennly end up with badly worn gear.).

Marathon running instanced duties over and over again with little break will definetely also wear your gear down to almost nothing rather quickly. Getting into the habit of repairing your gear at a mender regularly can avoid that though.

And the reason for gear degredation is not just for it to be a gilsink (although that is definetely a major part of it). Gear degredation has been a part of the game since 1.0's launch, and it's main purpose was actually to provide a reason for Disciples of the Hand to exist - the idea was that SE expected you to level DotH classes to repair your own gear (and to switch to the required crafter class when you needed to do so), with npc menders being actually few and far between (and in 1.0 an npc mender would never repair it all the way to 100% condition, the best you could get was 99% - this changed in ARR though where npcs now repair all the way to 100%, but as in incentive to still repair your own gear you can double your gear's condition to 200% if you repair it yourself).

It also serves as FFXIV's equivelant 'death penalty' to FFXI's 'lose EXP on death', as a means of increasing challenge (the thinking is that you only really have to be concerned about it if you're dying a lot, if you're not then it's not really a problem, at least theoretically.). Basically, "there's no such thing as a free lunch": the 'free lunch' in this regard is doing content without some cost to the character, whether it be gil, EXP or something else, everything in life has a cost, and whether you are willing to pay it.

I think what Kabooa is emphasizing, though, is whether the element, while conventional, is effective or positive in the context of the current game. If not, and its removal would allow other elements of the game to be more effective and positive for the experience -- or just to allow more effective and positive areas of the game to be more often or deeply experienced --then it ought be removed or the context adjusted to improve it, assuming those changes, in turn, are likewise beneficial.

Personally, the only durability system I've found truly purposeful in a gameplay-changing manner is that of temporary (i.e. run-length) armor-break mechanics like that of Vindictus, where you gradually lose defense rating as parts of your body are beaten and battered into their relevant gear's destruction. However, even that tends to delay the average difficulty, which can be counter-intuitive for dungeon progression or the like. When the going is still easy, it's even easier, because (if negligent or reckless, especially) your armor is there and therefore potentially expendable. By the time you really need that armor, however, it's often broken, unless you've armor repair kits with you. While those kits can be capped, this ultimately turns into just the opposite side of potion expenditure / gold-sinking; when you abuse potions to survive, you have to further sink gold on armor repair kits, but with the addition of the time spent repairing. It is therefore just a more cumulative gold sink that helps to devalue its compliment (low-cooldown health potions).

I'd rather see the context for the durability system change than scrap it outright, but I've also long been of the opinion that crafting needs a massive revision to make it less purely vertical in its progression and more immediately accessible at relevant levels and more capable of integration with other areas of the game. I'd also welcome any and all QoL changes that would guarantee more crafter materials space or reduce inventory bloat as it currently stands. Honestly, I would have preferred that crafting materials other than just Dark Matter could be used (i.e. if you have level 56 leather pants in need of repair, you could repair that with dhamel leather), while Dark Matter itself would become more granular, and stored as currency or alike to a crystal rather than as an item, to be used when lacking the particular relevant material. At that point I'd find it appropriate and integral, rather than solely a gil sink mechanic of too little impact to make its reason for existing feel cogent.