Equipment Repair - Coin Sink
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 01:43
Currently we have no coin costs that are necessary to play like we do energy (elevators). I'd suggest a system where our equipment takes damage dependent on use and the severity of the hits we're taking. I'm not suggesting something that makes it unprofitable at all, just a system that requires you to sink crowns at a reasonable rate. Yes, this is done in other games, and the reason is that they need to pull money out of the economy. While people may balk at having to pay something, it's better in the long run to have various crown sinks (some mandatory) to balance out the energy sinks.
Below are a few details that would probably have to be implemented:
- 1 Star items take no damage. Thus you'd never be left without working gear.
- Damage is calculated when entering a town so you don't lose the use of something in the middle of an adventure.
- You cannot enter a gate with completely broken equipment equipped. You then can either repair it via the NPP or dust/trash it.
- Damage taken is higher when deeper because you're absorbing stronger hits. This also means that if you're at a lower level, the cost you have to pay isn't crippling.
- The cost to repair goes up based on the star level of the equipment.
- Equipment is only damaged by having it equipped when adventuring rather than aging by calendar or log on days. This way you're only paying based on how much you're using the equipment.
Some of the bonuses of this type of system:
- One of the unique variants could be a higher damage limit.
- You suddenly have a use for additional drops of an item if you don't want to sell it. Rather than repair your firebreak shield, you 'd be encouraged to let it break and then just use one that dropped from a treasure box. This helps sink some of those, or at least makes them more useful.
- It should pull coins out of the economy in a way that scales. Those who make more would be paying more without hurting new players.
- You can also require materials in addition to crowns for the repair. This also helps sink some of the common materials and creates a secondary market for them.
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 11:42
#2
No thanks for the repairing,
No thanks for the repairing, I've always hated that! Just my opinion though.
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 18:50
#3
A crown cost to repair
A crown cost to repair weapons will not solve anything, and will just cause annoyances.
If the goal is to simply reduce the rate of income, without making it unprofitable, then it still has to be a large net crown income rate.
If the deep dungeons pay too much, don't add repair, reduce payouts.
===
If the goal is to emphasize avoiding damage, that's one thing. If the idea is to say that as you take damage, your profits will go down, then fine. But that will encourage gun play instead of sword and bomb play. You gain health restores at a rapid rate -- why not assume you'll also get equipment restores at the same time?
A good crown sink will actually be a crown SINK, not just a reduction in income. Something to spend crowns on.
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 19:48
#4
hmm, actually..
i just agree with your last statment: a crown sink need to be something that players spend crowns on...
But, it would give players something to spend on, actually. i kinda liked the idea because it ads some realism (alright, alright, i know that chibi robots carrying swords with engines that can deliver blows of condensed energy and bombs that don't kill things with one shot are real enough to you), also, it makes sure that people will have something to spend on, even after they already got everything.
But, yeah, i need to agree too that it would make gun fight a more profit per energy system than swordplay...so, we are going to the wrong side them?
If it's repair, it need to be something cosmetic, you know...well, not so cosmetic, but you understand...let's compare with WoW (sorry that i'm doing this): they have the repair system, yes, at could be quite anoying, but, only the fact that they are training net them money enough to repair their entire armor and weapons more than 10 times fully, and they take a lot of time to need repair (unless you pitifully die a lot of times...but hey, it's your problem that you can't escape a pink jelly escape rush).
hmmm, i'm quite confused at this matter, and will wait till someone come with a greater idea.
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 23:49
#5
Crown sink? More like Crown wishing well!
The best sinks in any MMOs have always been: Vanity items, mounts and player housing.
Oh and Class Advancement quests to a lesser extent.
I think, for there to be an effective sink in this game, one or more of those need to be implemented.
Alternatively, there could be Crown operated mini-games and things. Like Poker Machines or Arcade Games.
Stuff that people could play while they wait for deals on the exchange to go through or for Mist Energy to come back, that don't suck.
Both would work.
I think, on a sliding scale, Equipment degradation would only sink money if people weren't changing equipment so quickly.
It would really only punish late game players for using a set of gear they're comfortable with and not those that are forever creating and upgrading new equipment.
Which isn't much of a sink, since it really isn't something everybody would partake in, unless they had OCD.
Sat, 11/13/2010 - 08:06
#6
Shoebox: The best sinks in
Shoebox: The best sinks in any MMOs have always been: Vanity items, mounts and player housing.
That's not necessarily true. Some of the best sinks are ones that are such a part of game-play that you don't realize they're a sink. For example, in YPP you have the merchant bots which are a *massive* sink. Yet people don't generally think of it when they think about sinks for that game.
Sat, 11/13/2010 - 08:59
#7
hmmmmmmm (-.-)
agree with vanity itens sink, disagree with mounts (it would not fit in this game, really), agree with housing...and we can't put a class advancement here, yet.
Actually, like cake said: god money sinks are those that you don't see when you're spending your money. Actually, purchasing itens that you use inside dungeons would be a sink, but, that would ruin the actual gameplay.
And, yes, shoebox, the repair system is to create a money sink to higher level players, that already have all their equips the way they want. Because of this, and nothing more to use their crowns into, they begin to buy energy at high prices, what makes energy to high priced over time. Of course is a money sink for high levels, because high levels that have most unused money in the game.
Sat, 11/13/2010 - 17:51
#8
Curly Fries.
My point is that at high levels, there's no guarantee that people are going to stick with the same items.
They're going to be adding new content all the time, provided they add new items there will always be things to spend your crowns on.
Besides, there's no guarantee that high rating recipes are going to be 2500~10000 Crowns to make, they could be millions of Crowns to synthesize.
I think synthesizing items would be one of the few good ways to sink crowns, especially if there was an option to synthesize items of a similar type with effects you've created before at a hugely inflated cost.
Guild functions are another good money sink.
Getting people to have to pay for the shops in their Guild, and the Alchemy machine there.
Maybe even Gates that people have been suggesting.
But really, the game is at an imbalance right now because there's not very many players and even less people buying energy.
Once people buy more and the exchange fills up with competition, the price of Energy will dip, people will be able to afford energy and not pay Three Rings for their effort and stop bitching on the forums every other thread about a non-existent economy.
All will be right with the world.
Sat, 11/13/2010 - 20:44
#9
> That's not necessarily
> That's not necessarily true. Some of the best sinks are ones that are such a part of game-play that you don't realize they're a sink. For example, in YPP you have the merchant bots which are a *massive* sink. Yet people don't generally think of it when they think about sinks for that game.
No. Do not think of the cost of raw commodities as a gold sink in YPP.
Yes, at first glance, that is what they do. Now, take another look.
You go on a pillage. You need rum and shot. You spend rum and shot, and earn poe -- in theory, more than you have spent.
Your "sink" is the rum and shot -- the poe cost of getting that.
Your "fountain" is the restock cut -- money taken from your jobbers to pay for the rum and shot.
Everyone complains that on ships larger than sloops (more accurately, ships bigger than about 10 players), the fountain so outpaces the sink, that the real effect is to give the bnavver a big huge pay increase.
That's not a sink. That's a pay increase for navigating.
===
What is a sink, on blue oceans, is housing and furniture. On green oceans, because of the larger doubloon costs, not so much (see the slides that OOO released discussing the doubloon model -- granted, dated a few years, but still relevant). Here you have something that will sink ** as much of your personal surplus as you wish .
This cannot be emphasized enough. It does not sink more than what you want to toss at it. It does not prevent you from accumulating large amounts of wealth and still getting a large decorated place.
The biggest sink of all is sinking ships. That is a true sink -- the cost of replacing a ship is large, larger than the reward from a typical run. (Even more so on doubloon oceans). But not so large that you can't make a profit by having multiple good runs per bad run, at least on blue oceans. And, on green oceans, it means that some people will have a constant desire for doubloons, and bad navigators might want to spend cash to earn the poe needed to replace ships.
===
Commodities and shops are strange. Yes, on one hand it looks like the shop is spending (sinking) poe for commodities. But, at the same time, they make back MORE than what they spend by selling stuff, and in general, people will spend less than what they make.
If you want a large demand for game coins to exist, then there needs to be some things to spend coins on that are more expensive than one person is likely to earn on their own. Now, maybe they can go into economic work -- crafting stuff to sell for a profit, for example. And, if there is support for player shops, that is far easier than if you have to spam the chat channels looking for someone who is on at the same time as you. But even then, you aren't likely to get all of these expensive vanity items. In fact, with a good design, you won't.
These should be guild-targeted items, at least in theory. Items that require people to pool their funds to get. Stuff that would make good sense in a guild hall, or for a really "Look what I have" person. Either your guild members make donations to afford these items, or your rich individual spends cash for the energy for the crowns for the items.
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Guild level activities: YPP's classic is blockades. Look at blockade pay on green compared to blue.
What are guild level activities here? What are guild level items / actions / buildings / things like here? What do we want them to be?
===
A good crown sink is something that will sink lots of crowns.
If it is only sinking some crowns, acting as a reduction in earnings, then it doesn't do the job.
Unless it is something that you buy lots and lots of -- for example, large amounts of furniture, assuming furniture is cheap enough that you'll buy lots of it . YPP failed there -- the cost in doubloons to decorate one room is so large that no one bothers to, even regarding the doubloon cost as just a poe expense. Yes, if there was a demand for good looking rooms, you'd see people spending the large collected amounts of poe on furniture and doubloons. You don't.
===
Bottom line: If you are looking at something that acts to reduce income from game play, then it has the same effect as reducing the payouts from game play. Unless it is an expense so large as to drive the income to negative , it cannot be regarded as a sink. That means it cannot be directly tied to the activities, and needs to be an optional. Desirable, yes, but still optional.
Look for a moment at "Game!" (http://www.wittyrpg.com). You have a relatively high-level activity that you can do over there, spending money at a vacation resort. This gives you encounters that always drop a special item, useful for the crafting over there.
This is a very expensive activity that never pays for itself. The amount you get from the activity is less than the cost, even taking the value of the crafting item into account. Yet it is a big activity, because it is the easiest way to get the ingredients for the crafting (and, you usually have to do a lot of trips to find the one item you need -- but then, there's an in-game market to try to trade for what you really want.)
With the setup that gate travel require energy, we can't really have "special encounter gates" as a crown sink.
But maybe we can have gladiatorial rings, where you can fight captured rare creatures for a crown fee?
Sun, 11/14/2010 - 06:41
#10
Unless you're able to repair
Unless you're able to repair your stuff, if so, it will work
Sun, 11/14/2010 - 13:50
#11
Repairing is not a sink! It
Repairing is not a sink! It cannot be a sink!
> Bottom line: If you are looking at something that acts to reduce income from game play, then it has the same effect as reducing the payouts from game play. Unless it is an expense so large as to drive the income to negative , it cannot be regarded as a sink. That means it cannot be directly tied to the activities, and needs to be an optional. Desirable, yes, but still optional.
Repairing is just reducing the income from creatures.
Worse, it is "the more damage you take, the more you lose". So players that are not as good at killing with minimal damage have a bigger expense, and those that can kill faster even with more damage still make more net.
That means: Distance Area of Effect, and high DPS classes, earn more and advance faster than others.
People without a high damage ability -- people who have to get in close and take lots of hits while dishing it out -- earn less and advance slower.
And people who are in over their head are penalized and sent back. Not people whose characters are in over their head, people who are slower to react or on slower computers.
If repairing costs are too expensive, what's the solution? Raise payouts.
Expected payouts and expected repair expenses are both under control of the developers, who look at income - expense . As long as income - expense is positive, then gold increases without a sink.
Sinks have to be a desirable optional to be effective.
They need to be large to be on a scale that will be effective.
That means something that require guild-level funding, or something that most people will only be able to afford one or two, and to get them all you gotta spend energy for the crowns.
And never underestimate the power of the dark side of the force of "gotta collect 'em all".
Sun, 11/14/2010 - 18:11
#12
Re: tMBtC
I'm not going to go too deep into this, because I know the devs know what Cake is talking about.
For everyone's reference, a sink is anything that removes something permanently from the game. A fountain is something that adds something to the game.
Something that transfers an item from one player to another is neither a sink nor a fountain.
Sun, 11/14/2010 - 21:40
#13
> Something that transfers an
> Something that transfers an item from one player to another is neither a sink nor a fountain.
What will drive a demand for coins, including a demand to sell energy for coins, does not need to be either, if it is a sufficiently large expense. Think "Blockade pay" on green oceans.
A large guild-level activity, with a high price, that involves redistributing rather than sinking, can maintain a healthy exchange. If there are other coin concentrators -- and shops are the classic concentrator -- then it's not enough by itself.
But the combination of large redistribution, plus small individual sinks (decorations), plus a large number of optional expensive sinks?
That might be the combination that works. How much of that can be through the cycle system, and how much has to be outside (purchase from vendors / palace shop / merchants)?
(... And EVE manages to have everything through a player economy. Despite the wealth concentration effect of shops, the ship replacement rate keeps the low end OK, and ... other than guild wars, what keeps the high-end OK? )
===
I guess the point is:
1. A concentrator makes it possible for some individuals or groups to afford these special items without earning the coins in-game.
2. Shops, PvP wagering, and the exchange are the three biggest concentrators.
3. Guild funding/donations are next, and are appropriate for guild-level special items; guilds that are not game-rich can use RL funds and the exchange.
4. Some form of sink is needed to prevent inflation. It's possible that these specials are sufficient sink by themselves.
5. Some guild-level activity that acts as an anti-concentrator is good; a guild-level special item that looks like an expense to the guild (and can drive the energy supply to the exchange) can work for this even if it is not a sink, as long as there are some that are sinks.
The one thing that is clear: The OP's idea of equipment repair cannot succeed. What ideas could fit this framework for this game?
Actually, it could make repairing to much dificult. I rather agree with a crown only cost to repair equips, and that they aren't gone forever when they break. Also, some rndom NPC at the dungeon could be willing to repair for a more friendly price if you find him on a dungeon (think as it as if he is a bonus: found me, repair will be less costly). Also, the repair should be based on actual selling rice..i think. Let's say that we can repair a fully downgraded weapon by a price of 10% of it's price in the NPC (a 2 star equip would cost 375 to repair). And we could make so that the 1 star equip actually downgrades themselves too, but rather them get unusable, they would only lose it's bonus, like charge time reduction, and would cost only 2 crown to fully repair. These prices could go to half if an Npc can be found at the middle of a dungeon, but the npc would repair only the equipped weapons.
For now, i don't think a armor repair should be good, unless we reduce the weapon costs to repair too, what would require a better balancing. Also, for armors, it could, instead of loosing it's defesive power to the max, instead, could lose all its upgrades got via heat. So, someone with a 3 star armor 1 lvl heat would not suffer at all, but a 10 lvl heat would surelly fell the diference. This would let people use their armor whenever they want, but the most high level ones surelly would need to be repaired, because of their high bonus when maxed.
About the material cost: i know that we're actually trying to find a sink to the extra material, but i don't think this is the right sink. For what matter, i think that the only material that could be used to do this are the jelly gel (polishing, huh?), and the shards, any of them, if you want to make that the weapon/armor get's useless when broken. If you want to make so more material kinds are used, them the weapon/armors cannot get useless, but rather weak when broken/damaged. Some materials are easy to find, but, even if you put only lvl 0 and 1 materials as req, some people would find it rather dificult to repair the weapons, because of rather bad luck (you know, when you really need that easy to find thing, you begin to get only the ones that you don't need...happen to me most of the time with minerals).
About broken equip: it could change its look whe it's damaged/broken >_<
About the durability: we need to come with a number (or %, if you like), to ensure better usefullness of this system. Of course, weapons on lower depths would consume pretty quickly, but not 1 entire weapon per un, though, unless you die a lot. Let's say that one could go, without dying, about 3 or 4 runs, at most, before needing to repair their equips, if they don't find a repairer at the middle of a dungeon. Making so you need to repair after each perfect run would be really lame and boring, because of loading times, and etc. Ya know, some people need to make a run to begin to warm up, and continue fighting.
One last word about repairing: NO ENERGY COST!..we are trying to do a money sink. not an energy sink >_<.