Repairs

[Woper_The_Black]

If the boot repairer in Cordor can fix magical quality boots, why can't the tailor fix clothes and the blacksmith fix armour and weapons ?

[Iceborn]

They are apparently to remain mostly-exclusive to PC services.

Now, if you ask me what's the point of durability as a whole and what positive element does it bring to the game... Well.
I think the same as Hunger/Thirst:
Annoy the players pointlessly.

[Wordless Truth]

I guess the point of repairs is mostly to make you stop grinding for a minute and find people to repair what you can't repair yourself, potentially inducing RP.

[Nitro]

I just dump 1 point in every tradeskill and fish for 20's on my repair rolls whenever I'm not crafting anything else for the IG day, usually get 1 or 2 successes for a full pool of crafting points, which tends to be enough to keep me going without having to actually find someone skilled at it.

I don't even know why durability is a thing as it stands right now, all it does is inconvenience you and occasionally break an item if you get careless and forget about it.

[Woper_The_Black]

My point was actually in character. My character doesn't quite understand that he can come to a shop that makes boots and the maker can repair them for him but then he goes to a tailor or blacksmith that makes items but neither of them can repair them ? I understand the OOC reasoning, just not the IC one ? Maybe all tailors and blacksmiths should be taken out as NPC's or just rename them all to clothes/armour sellers ?

[If Valor Were Inches]

If the boot repairer in Cordor can fix magical quality boots, why can't the tailor fix clothes and the blacksmith fix armour and weapons ?

Because the Blacksmith is too busy with other demands to offer the service, and because the Tailor has no interest in repairing your carelessness.

The whole point of repair/hunger/thirst is more for immersion. But if you're not looking for that, it can be annoying.

[Iceborn]

Not my kind of immersion, I have to say.

[Kimura]

Repairing for forcing people to rp in finding a skilled crafter. Immersion... It's faaaaaaaar from immersive. It has always been an inconvenience. Especially if you can just put the bare minimum in things and get some lucky rolls.

The durability thing is just really odd and very ancient. I don't think we really need it much.

[Gable Morninglord]

If the boot repairer in Cordor can fix magical quality boots, why can't the tailor fix clothes and the blacksmith fix armour and weapons ?

Wait......there is an npc that repairs boots?!

*mind blown*

Where is this!?!?

[Durvayas]

I can understand the repairing weapons and armor thing.

Ive never understood the point of the hunger/thirst system. No one has ever bought water from a PC. Likewise, food is occasionally sold, but the vast majority of time is is either taken off dead mobs or bought en masse. Very, very little roleplay is gleaned from the hunger/thirst system. All it serves to do is weaken the PC at inopportune times and break immersion when a meeting goes on too long and someone spams eating and drinking to top off the meters.

[Xerah]

Durability, hunger, and thirst are all those things that don't seem to function as well as one would hope.

It doesn't add to RP. I'm not sure how it adds to any immersion. How often to you see people bent over from being tired? And how often to you see people (on both side) RPing those effects? Is the system really that more immersive than spending 2 hours (real time) in a meeting in the game but 20h passing in game time? What about bathroom breaks?

There is too much gold that food/water isn't a tax on your wealth. Carry capacities were increased so weight isn't an issue either. It's very easy to find food/water in shops. Maybe if levels were really low and gold was hard to come by then these things would add to the feel of the module but a server with countless level 30 people around, it all seems unnecessary.

It is a nice theory that these things can lead to RP, but it just doesn't in practice. If the repair/durability system was gone, I'm certainly more likely to create a story of finding someone to repair my gear (even though it's completely unnecessary) than I am if I just have to go to the forge and pop it in there.

I can't imagine a good story coming out of going to the vendor and buying food rations.

Piety seems to be a really cool system though.

[One Two Three Five]

Still really like that post about the negatives being removed and eating/drinking giving bonuses instead.

[Mithreas]

Piety seems to be a really cool system though.

Thanks, that's the one I redesigned from scratch

I see where people are coming from on the "maintenance" tasks. It's something I considered a number of times when I was running the show.

One the one hand, almost everything is some form of maintenance task. People have been discussing the population script in the other thread (on quests) - while it's a reason for an adventure, it's *also* a maintenance task - keeping the wolves from the door, so to speak.

Repairs are very similar. It's essentially a repetitive mini-quest. The key difference is that while populations are a server-wide quest (anyone can contribute, and equally, the "burden" can be shared across loads of different people), repairs are your own personal timer, and hence not really possible to escape from.

I never really reached a conclusion on this. It doesn't really add a lot, but equally isn't much of a hassle... and opens up a small design space around unrepairable items which we've made a little use of. So it never got to the point where I was resolved to do anything about it.

[Durvayas]

I think the key difference, Mithreas, is that clearing out wolves and other mobs is actually fun. You gain something from it. Exp, gold, loot, a chance to build relationships through RP.

Repairs can be an economic opportunity for RP. It can be made fun and interesting. You can also build relationships through Rap with it. It can cause compelling RP down the line.

The food and drink system is not fun. They cause nothing but hardship and ARE a hassle 100% of the time. You spend gold to top off, you wait two hours, you top off again. Rinse and repeat. At low levels, your PC drinks from wells and gets diseased, it adds to your costs. Its a system with no opt-out function. If you refuse to play along, your PC dies, period. So you top off when you must. In the middle of meetings. In the middle of hostile RP, in the middle of literally anything, you eat 4 times in a row, and forget it for two hours.

Is it immersive? No. It is clearly intended to be, but on average you spend dozens if not hundreds of hours playing, some of us hit thousands eventually. The threshold between which emoting food and drink goes from fun to banal and repetitive is almost immediate. Far and away, it is my very least favorite thing about arelith as a server.

[DaddysLE]

I think Jim Sterling (Thank God for Him) expresses my thoughts on weapon durability systems in general pretty well.

Weapon Durability, Fanbase Fragility

Some harsh language (He's Jim Snuggybear Sterling, son), but I think it pretty much hits every point I could make. He also touches on thirst and hunger mechanics.

[Mithreas]

Whether it's immersive or not is clearly somewhat subjective. You clearly have strong feelings about it in one direction, but be careful about claiming your experience as representative of every single player.

That said, the food and drink system is something inherited from Giga. I never cared enough one way or the other to do much with it; at its heart it's an attempt to broaden the "economy" (less in a financial sense and more in an activity sense) - hence "cooking" being one of Giga's core craft skills. Given the lack of mechanical impact of it, it's clearly not been a roaring success, and the recent rebranding of Cooking I think reflects the gradual shift over the years towards redefining what Cooking actually covers.

So would food and drink be better as a bonus system - essentially potions with different appearances? Maybe. Mechanically I see the attraction, but the feel of it is totally wrong for me (a problem I have with MMOs, where food often becomes "instant healing" or some mechanical boon that feels totally disproportionate for a non-magical foodstuff).

I could certainly see the value of, say, restricting the thirst meter only to areas whose climate is set to "dry" or "very dry", such that you need water in the desert or you die. That way it becomes more of an environmental hazard tied to particular adventuring areas than a constant chore. Food is trickier, and if we're not happy with it, probably cleaner just to remove its mechanical effects and leave it purely as an RP thing. I'd be OK with, say, a long-lasting luck bonus to saving throws from being well fed, or something subtle like that, so your hunger "meter" essentially becomes "I've eaten recently & thus have a small save bonus, or I've not eaten recently and have a small save penalty", something like that.

Repairs I'd be tempted to keep hold of, however. It certainly opens up occupational RP in a way that cooking really doesn't. Edit in response to the previous post - Arelith is not an MMO. It's an interactive RPG, so arguments derived from other environments don't always apply here. I think this is one of those cases, though of course you may disagree.

(Usual disclaimer that it's not up to me to make any of these decisions any more ).

[DaddysLE]

Breath of the Wild is also not an MMO, nor is Dark Souls, so saying that Arelith not being an MMO means the arguments don't apply here isn't really valid, and the point that durability and rest systems provide a mandatory interrupt to existing gameplay systems still stands.

As for roleplay opportunities, further reworks to the crafting system which add meaningful items to the list of things that only players can provide is a much better idea. It provides options instead of obligations, and will not immediately screw a player over if they happen to be logged in while too tired to be watching a rapidly scrolling combat log to see, "Your sword is at x/10 durability."

The systems of rest/durability as they stand currently are management mechanics, and most of the successful management games that spring to mind for me are single player. Banished. Faster than Light. As much as I love those games, is that the kind of gameplay we're looking for on Arelith?

[Kimura]

The repair system could stand to use a rework if kept. As it stands. It doesn't provide much rp or actual value. Hell. When people say they need repairs I just do it for hell of it. Rather than a 50gp pay off.

Speaking of piety system... Torn on that. I think the deity system hurts the overall feel of the setting. This was a conversation recently. People are so cultured to treat the current system as law as if they are all monk, clerics, paladins, or etc. Rather that make characters who are not fixed to their faith and just know they exist.


EITHER WAY!! Fix the trickery domain. Just.... please.

[Trunx]

I think Jim Sterling (Thank God for Him) expresses my thoughts on weapon durability systems in general pretty well.

Weapon Durability, Fanbase Fragility

Some harsh language (He's Jim Snuggybear Sterling, son), but I think it pretty much hits every point I could make. He also touches on thirst and hunger mechanics.

Most of his complaints don't apply to Arelith. He's specifically complaining about "weapon fragility systems" that have your weapon break after five minutes of fighting. It can take a month+ until you need to repair your weapon on Arelith.

[DaddysLE]

The mechanic and disruption is the same. It's only really the timescale that's different, Trunx. Consider that it often takes a decent amount of effort to find someone willing to do the repairs (rather than a widely known and available NPC). Yes, It takes longer to wear out and be near breaking on Arelith, but depending on the article in question, it also takes longer to find someone with the skills to repair. And in either case, it provides a mandatory disruption to gameplay (and RP) in order to rectify.

[Trunx]

The mechanic and disruption is the same. It's only really the timescale that's different, Trunx. Consider that it often takes a decent amount of effort to find someone willing to do the repairs (rather than a widely known and available NPC). Yes, It takes longer to wear out and be near breaking on Arelith, but depending on the article in question, it also takes longer to find someone with the skills to repair. And in either case, it provides a mandatory disruption to gameplay (and RP) in order to rectify.

No, it's not the same. You don't have to constantly pause combat to repair your weapon on Arelith. There's a distinct difference between having combat constantly disrupted by a breaking weapon and doing gear maintenance once every couple of weeks when you're in a town.

[Mithreas]

Err, I thought it was obvious that comparing Arelith to a single player game really doesn't make for good arguments, especially when the main argument presented in favour of something is that it promotes interaction between players!

[Dunshine]

Some players have suggested repairkits items, which is high on our to-do list, this will boost repair RP and repair economy instead of removing it altogether.

[Manabi]

It would be neat if the food/water system worked as a resource type bag that decreased every tick. After 10 ticks, gotta refill the canteen and buy more Mcdoubles.

That's probably way too much trouble for what it's worth though.

Rest just kills me. I wish the arena had a "refresh" person so you didn't have to pound liquor til' rest to go another round. People used to get so mad when my rest was at 70-80 on a journey.

[gilescorey]

Rest just kills me. I wish the arena had a "refresh" person so you didn't have to pound liquor til' rest to go another round. People used to get so mad when my rest was at 70-80 on a journey.

I also dislike the rest system. Having to "juggle" how tired your spellcasting character is so you can be effective in a dungeon group feels pretty silly from an IC perspective.