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.
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 >_<.