Rapid gear decay

Juponen

ms.voorheesb16_ESO wrote: »

But serious, people need to stop whinge about everything and understand why they have things like this in-game.

Oh, I understand why there are bugs. I understand that human developers make errors in judgement, too. I understand the possibility of improvement though feedback.

Darzil

Ok, so the intended balance is that if you are killing things it is expected that you'll lose money if you don't sell the drops to NPCs, unless you get lucky and get drops you can use to replace broken armour. You can avoid this entirely if you just let your equipment break. You can also make it back by questing.

If you are killing things faster (eg grouped or ungrouped at a Dolmen) then you lose money faster. These quests (and Dolmens) don't give much gold, so don't make it back. (Note - the if grouped part of this is being reviewed)

I guess the moral is let your equipment decay to nothing and avoid other players, avoid monsters, avoid fighting where possible, hope you don't get decay bugs. My traditional playstyle of killing what you meet along the way, salvaging/researching the drops so I can craft to help others, and keeping your kit in good repair is clearly bad in this game. That's why I'm level 31 with no horse in sight.

Don't worry about dying if you have 5 monsters on you, killing them will cost you more than dying!

Fortunately, this is all working as intended!

Gillysan

Just realized my graphic is wrong, need to swap the x & y axis label. Fixing it now...

....and fixed. See my previous post. Looks like it got left behind on page 16.

ShintaiDK

Guizan wrote: »

ShintaiDK wrote: »

For the record I currently hold ~167000 gold. And I am to be considered a bit of a cheapskate.

ok I know you are V10 but at what level did you start adding up that kind of gold? I wonder as I am 49.5 and have saved 20k without buying a new horse, doing any respecs, and making my own armor and weapons as I leveled up. Usually my repair bills ends up close to what the quests yields as rewards and from loot.

I had around 30K at lvl50 plus an epic horse. So roughly 75K made for the first 50 levels.

Juponen

Darzil wrote: »

Don't worry about dying if you have 5 monsters on you, killing them will cost you more than dying!
Fortunately, this is all working as intended!

I must put this quote of the day next to the screenshot of nude jumpers in Final Assault

starkerealm

ms.voorheesb16_ESO wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Your wish has been granted; when you log in, your very own, personal, hostile, Vampire Knight will hunt you down and murder you constantly with batswarm. Enjoy.

Should i see this as a personal harassment threat?

Only if you have no sense of humor and are completely unfamiliar with the current PvP meta. Which, in case you missed it, is a pretty solid argument, on it's face, that "working as intended" can still be horribly broken all on its own.

starkerealm

Gillysan wrote: »

Also please stop with the emotional reply of "the current system will drive players to the gold sellers'. That comment is ridiculous drama queen crap.

"Drama queen crap?" No. It is hyperbole, but it does illustrate a legitimate frustration with the current system, and the fact that, at present, starting characters can easily end up trapped spending all of their gold on repairs.

Guldendraak

Darzil wrote: »

Don't worry about dying if you have 5 monsters on you, killing them will cost you more than dying!

The post by Darzil basically sums up the situation.. It sounds like no developer in their right mind would penalise you for killing an enemy mob, but this is exactly the mechanics implemented in ESO.

I can handle being penalised for death (all MMO's do that in one form or another) but penalising me for trying to complete quests or get to lore books seems counter productive to playing a class, in a game, that is designed around the concept of combat between myself and npcs.

I now understand why so many bots have stopped running public dungeons and are now standing in fields farming the same resource node over and over. They earn more money - unless they are running a trading guild and skimming the profits when you pay the guild tax for selling stuff.

starkerealm

Arsenic_Touch wrote: »

ms.voorheesb16_ESO wrote: »

But serious, people need to stop whinge about everything and understand why they have things like this in-game.

I don't know what this whinge is...

It's an archaic form of "to whine"... I'd be inclined to give her partial credit for knowing the word, but then there was also the whole "terrible wrong" thing... so... *shrugs*

Kyosji

lol, tested it for skill leveling, and I'm positive this decays armor as well. I started leveling my WW for the first time. I got my ultimate to 100%, went to Auridon to an extremely low level area, then checked my armor. Everything between 50-60%. I unleashed my ultimate and laid waste to as many NPCs I could in my time limit. I got it to level 3 in my first run. I check my armor, and it's all nearly broke. Seriously?

Regardless of what the GMs say, something is obviously busted here. I'm level 40 and having my armor break down that fast in a level 10 zone is stupid.

Korereactor

There's definitely something to this. The other day when I was running the cool public dungeon in Cold Harbor, the one where you jump off ledges, I was just hanging in the middle of the map by the two portals waiting for my group to catch up (they had to go back for something). All of a sudden I hear a "bing" and see "your gear is damaged" or something along those lines. I go look and all my gear was from 0%-3%. Now, I admit prior to that I died a few times to packs of six mobs because I was trying to rush back to them and was being dumb. But what was odd to me was the delay in notification and how much damage I actually took. 2K on the repairs (full cloth). Maybe the servers were just lagging which caused the normally gradual decay to just all of a sudden drop drastically?

Hrithmus

Well day 2 and nothing back yet about this...Something most of us knew and tested within 15 minutes....

starkerealm

Hrithmus wrote: »

Well day 2 and nothing back yet about this...Something most of us knew and tested within 15 minutes....

To be fair, their testing is to find out what's causing it; our testing was just to see what was happening.

mndfreeze

Guldendraak wrote: »

mark2472 wrote: »

No it's definitely xp gained (when you kill a mob) that breaks our gear.

But it's not just earning XP that damages our gear.. As I've posted already.. I've lost gear durability just using a Way Shrine after leaving town to travel to another Way Shrine that I've already been to.. There is definitely a bug in the system somewhere.

Durability loss occurs when you gain xp, not specific to battle. If you just discovered this wayshrine as a new one you would get XP for the discovery and there would be your loss right there. Now if both wayshrines were alrady discovered then it sounds like a bug.

tordr86b16_ESO

I aoe farm mobs and my gear is broken within 15 minutes... 3000 gold each turn, this is completely stupid.

mndfreeze

I have to say that the percentage does seem a bit harsh if you look at it from a straight gold drop to gold cost ratio not taking into account the loot you get, but honestly I decon a ton of stuff, and I always seem to come out positive gold as long as I sell a little bit of it. Perhaps players need to stop trying to decon EVERYTHING and plan to vendor some stuff, or vendor stuff from some of your runs. Me I just decided to pick 3 of the crafting types, clothier, enchanting, provisioning, and only decon cloth and glyphs, I also will sometimes decon smithing or woodworking items if they have the intricate decon bonus just because its free crafting xp to sit on in case I decide to pick it up way later. But I'm not having any problems going broke. I certainly cant afford to drop 20k for those primary motif's like a ton of people apparently can, so they must not be having the issue everyone in thsi thread is complaining about either.

The numbers could use to be adjusted a little bit, but not a lot IMO. I think to many players now a days want instant riches and satisfaction and will throw fits and complain any chance they get.

Belrim

brandondickenson_ESO wrote: »

It costs me 3g to kill an enemy, and he drops 2g. What is this I don't even...

Just tested this out of curiosity. Repaired all gear to 100%. Went out, sneaked behind a wolf and stealth-killed it with one blow. Went back to town and got 1gold repairbill, because my shoulderpads were damaged.

Working as intended? Yeah right.

edit: test no.2: went out and got killed on purpose. 63 gold repairbill. Very cheap in comparison.

so drop the kill-decay, and increase the death damage a bit? Or is the kill-decay in place to make mob farming annoying? I guess so.

mark2472

It seems that DPS gets the better end of the deal... DPS can still function fine with no armor. Sure, they may die easier but generally the mob is dead before it hardly gets the chance to hit them. They have the option of avoiding this unbalanced gold sink.

As a tank, I depend on my armor and therefore can't really quest naked like some people have been saying they do. I hardly die and still can't seem to get my armor to last the full two levels until I craft my next set of armor. I would think that crafting a set of armor should at least last you those two levels, unless you die multiple times. Without dying, I would expect my armor to be at maybe 75-80% after those two levels. With a few deaths, maybe a minimum of 50%.

Generally though, the reason I die is because my armor is nearly broken... =\

Seems to me like the equivalent of buying a brand new car and it becoming useless after two years unless you pay outrageous amounts to repair it or buying a whole new car every two years.

Cernow

mndfreeze wrote: »

I think to many players now a days want instant riches and satisfaction and will throw fits and complain any chance they get.

This tired old cliche keeps getting trotted out but it totally misses the point.

Few here seem to be bemoaning the need for appropriate gold sinks that make sense and are balanced. But this gear decay system punishes players for actually playing the game. And the huge amount of bots and gold sellers suggests that these businesses recognise ESO as a prime marketplace for their services, because the game has such punishing gold sinks.

Few here seem to be asking for instant riches. Most players are willing to put in some effort to make some gold. But players like to feel they are making progress and their efforts are being rewarded, not punished by some artifically cranked up gold tax.

Few are throwing fits. Most of the fits are being thrown by the L2P trolls.

But if you want to make a "players these days ..." comparison, it's still the case that no previous MMO has had this sort of rapid gear decay, even if you go all the way back to early titles like UO, DAOC etc. So if ESO's devs wanted to capture some of this 'old school' feel, they missed the mark. And if they think that a punishing gear decay system is a great new feature that makes ESO stand out from the MMO crowd, they again missed the mark.

It begs the question, if gear decay is essentially "working as intended" then what is this system intended to achieve? Does the word "FUN" factor at all?

mark2472

Cernow wrote: »

mndfreeze wrote: »

I think to many players now a days want instant riches and satisfaction and will throw fits and complain any chance they get.

This tired old cliche keeps getting trotted out but it totally misses the point.

Few here seem to be bemoaning the need for appropriate gold sinks that make sense and are balanced. But this gear decay system punishes players for actually playing the game. And the huge amount of bots and gold sellers suggests that these businesses recognise ESO as a prime marketplace for their services, because the game has such punishing gold sinks.

Few here seem to be asking for instant riches. Most players are willing to put in some effort to make some gold. But players like to feel they are making progress and their efforts are being rewarded, not punished by some artifically cranked up gold tax.

Few are throwing fits. Most of the fits are being thrown by the L2P trolls.

But if you want to make a "players these days ..." comparison, it's still the case that no previous MMO has had this sort of rapid gear decay, even if you go all the way back to early titles like UO, DAOC etc. So if ESO's devs wanted to capture some of this 'old school' feel, they missed the mark. And if they think that a punishing gear decay system is a great new feature that makes ESO stand out from the MMO crowd, they again missed the mark.

It begs the question, if gear decay is essentially "working as intended" then what is this system intended to achieve? Does the word "FUN" factor at all?

Agreed, I've been playing MMOs since UO, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, etc. I've played countless MMOs. Those games managed to give you a sense of accomplishment without punishing you for playing the game. You had to work hard for what you got, but it didn't just disappear at such a fast rate for no reason from grinding or running dungeons.

GamePlayer7

So, if we take durability loss from gaining exp, should I be getting naked before I turn in quests?

I've already got light armor leveled to where I want it.

Jirki88

GamePlayer7 wrote: »

So, if we take durability loss from gaining exp, should I be getting naked before I turn in quests?

Sure, why not? If the NPC thinks you're sexy you might even get more XP! Or none at all, if you're an ugly *** (orcs, beware!).

GamePlayer7

Also, just wanted to point out, the armor loss mechanic seems to punish melee characters more than ranged.

I play a caster dps/healer, so I'm not getting hit much, so armor really isn't a big deal for me. I can run around with my gear severely damaged and it doesn't affect me that much. If I was a tanky melee character, the armor loss on my gear would probably hurt me much more.

Thourne

On the off chance this info somehow helps:

I just took damage to equipment during the final conversation for the Mage Guild quest. This is long after any combat and after going outside to speak with the mage.

Then...

Immediately after, I went to Riften and used the Wayshrine to travel to Fallowstone and blam got hit with damage to gear again. No combat at all. No Experience granted at all. No falling, etc etc.

Cherryblossom

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

After thoroughly testing the armor decay system, we found that everything is working as it was designed. However, we did find that there were a small number of cases that may be generating more decay than was originally intended, and we will continue to investigate those situations. We’ve also seen your feedback and do agree with you that the durability was too severe under some conditions, such as while you’re playing in a group, and are testing these changes on the PTS now.

I would suggest your testing is inadequate, from the amount of peoples comments I don't think this is a limited number. You need to remember that the majority do not go on the Forum but we have an abnormally large group of people suffering this issue on the forum, so this must be hitting a sizable proportion of the player base.
There may be a certain amount of exaggeration in some posts, but to say all is working as intended, for me is concerning.

vyal

Just wanted to say, after yesterday's "working as it was designed" bombshell for this punitive mechanic, adventuring naked has been working just fine, for me.

Obviously not for anything that matters, but just for working up skills at veteran ranks, or harvesting, or questing, totally naked (no armor of any kind equipped) works just fine.

So, Zenimax, if that was your intent, mission accomplished. Costumes ftw!

b101uk

For some of us, it for the most part "working as it was designed" is NOT very surprising at all, as it matches our experience thus far.

Belrim

GamePlayer7 wrote: »

So, if we take durability loss from gaining exp, should I be getting naked before I turn in quests?

I've already got light armor leveled to where I want it.

Did not notice any armor decay from turning in quests.

SootyTX

Cernow wrote: »

mndfreeze wrote: »

I think to many players now a days want instant riches and satisfaction and will throw fits and complain any chance they get.

This tired old cliche keeps getting trotted out but it totally misses the point.

Few here seem to be bemoaning the need for appropriate gold sinks that make sense and are balanced. But this gear decay system punishes players for actually playing the game. And the huge amount of bots and gold sellers suggests that these businesses recognise ESO as a prime marketplace for their services, because the game has such punishing gold sinks.

Few here seem to be asking for instant riches. Most players are willing to put in some effort to make some gold. But players like to feel they are making progress and their efforts are being rewarded, not punished by some artifically cranked up gold tax.

Few are throwing fits. Most of the fits are being thrown by the L2P trolls.

But if you want to make a "players these days ..." comparison, it's still the case that no previous MMO has had this sort of rapid gear decay, even if you go all the way back to early titles like UO, DAOC etc. So if ESO's devs wanted to capture some of this 'old school' feel, they missed the mark. And if they think that a punishing gear decay system is a great new feature that makes ESO stand out from the MMO crowd, they again missed the mark.

It begs the question, if gear decay is essentially "working as intended" then what is this system intended to achieve? Does the word "FUN" factor at all?

I just don't understand at all where you guys are spending your money, or is it just some need to have hundreds of thousands of gold stored up 'just because' (not having a dig, I simply don't get what the problem is other than bugs and yours seemed to be an intelligent post to respond to).

As I've played through, I'm leveling multiple characters roughly simultaneously so I can craft literally everything. I sell no loot drops at all, haven't once - it either gets deconstructed, researched or is in storage for future use by another character. I don't do anything special to earn gold, I've sold a few of the motif books for maybe a couple of thousand total, and I've sold a few level 1 mats to a guildie for vendor price, so another 1K there.

I'm supporting daily horse feeding for 5 characters, increased personal storage for those five up to 80 base slots, plus bank is at 90. I've spent money on pretty much every possible money sink in the game. And I'm currently sitting at about 30k in 'spare change' at level 37.

What else is there to spend money on??

jimfopao2

I was away from home and couldn't play when this issue apparently got worse. Even before this happened I thought repair costs were ridiculous.

Not having crafters able to repair armour is just plain nuts. You can sew a robe from scratch but cant stitch a cut ? It's just silly.

I don't buy anything as I can't see much worth buying. My gold goes up just vendoring trash and looting gold but when an hours exploring and questing costs me more than a purple piece of armour for my level........... that's pretty nuts.

There are far less offensive ways of implementing gold sinks than this nonsense. Such as:
Player housing and all it's various fittings.
Very expensive NPC vendor only components used to craft very nice gear.
Saddles, bridles and horseshoes. Cosmetic and/or stat ones.
Dyes and tints.
So many better options than repair bills. blah.