Rapid gear decay

lioslinn

If you remove your armor before doing /stuck it does not decay...

Akhratos

So, today I came to the city after a dungeon run and repaired my gear fully (1300g for a lvl27 dungeon run).

Now comes the best part, as I was turning a mid-quest assignment (didnt receive any gold or xp)in the same city and kept being notified in the upper right corner of the screen that my gear had been damaged everytime I selected a dialog option to the quest npc.

After the dialog I went to the merchant again amd most of the pieces were like 90-95% durability...

But thats not the only thing. We made a dungeon run (the one in shadowfen) all being in the level bracket (i was 2lvls under mobs) and 3/4 people myself including were being rewarded 0xp for mobs/bosses and no drop. At some point, I even stopped building ult afyer my only dungeon death.

SootyTX

Archaon wrote: »

So, today I came to the city after a dungeon run and repaired my gear fully (1300g for a lvl27 dungeon run).

Now comes the best part, as I was turning a mid-quest assignment (didnt receive any gold or xp)in the same city and kept being notified in the upper right corner of the screen that my gear had been damaged everytime I selected a dialog option to the quest npc.

After the dialog I went to the merchant again amd most of the pieces were like 90-95% durability...

Yeah, that's the bug we've been looking at that causes the difficulties for some people. I happened to do EH last night on my then level 24 NB and, even though I died about 5 times (for some reason the Alit's in there targeted me 100% of the time, even when I wasn't even fighting and was standing 50yds behind the group changing my bar around) my repair bill was only about 750g.

But thats not the only thing. We made a dungeon run (the one in shadowfen) all being in the level bracket (i was 2lvls under mobs) and 3/4 people myself including were being rewarded 0xp for mobs/bosses and no drop. At some point, I even stopped building ult after my only dungeon death.

That's a new one - did you /bug report it? Not heard of that before.

SootyTX

starkerealm wrote: »

SootyTX wrote: »

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

Are developers that arrogant?

Game developers are people - and at this stage of release usually extremely tired, over-worked and over-stressed.

You're right, but you're also right, they're people. Both about the developers, and fan rage. Game developers come in both flavors, exhausted and arrogant. A good example of arrogance and rage kicking in at the same time would be Casey Hudson from the Mass Effect 3 launch. There's no question that the fans' vitriol crossed the line, but, at the same time, Hudson's response was to start screaming, "you just don't understand my genius!" ...and, pretty much, never stop.

Oh there's a few like that, no doubt - that's one of the results of highly creative people with A-type personalities being given a little too much power/control. It's the same as an artist screaming at people like me for 'not understanding' that his pile of trash in the middle of the floor is somehow a statement about modern society...or something

I want to believe that the decay system is being fixed, but at the same time, I'm a little afraid the system is actually "working as intended," and we won't be seeing a rebalanced this year.

Well, PTS currently has a build with changes to the grouping side of the decay system, I just can't get on it or see any results from testers that are there, so I think we can be sure they are looking. We just have to make sure we present realistic fact-based arguments that it needs changing or at least investigating further, which i think we are doing.

Akhratos

SootyTX wrote: »

Archaon wrote: »

So, today I came to the city after a dungeon run and repaired my gear fully (1300g for a lvl27 dungeon run).

Now comes the best part, as I was turning a mid-quest assignment (didnt receive any gold or xp)in the same city and kept being notified in the upper right corner of the screen that my gear had been damaged everytime I selected a dialog option to the quest npc.

After the dialog I went to the merchant again amd most of the pieces were like 90-95% durability...

Yeah, that's the bug we've been looking at that causes the difficulties for some people. I happened to do EH last night on my then level 24 NB and, even though I died about 5 times (for some reason the Alit's in there targeted me 100% of the time, even when I wasn't even fighting and was standing 50yds behind the group changing my bar around) my repair bill was only about 750g.

But thats not the only thing. We made a dungeon run (the one in shadowfen) all being in the level bracket (i was 2lvls under mobs) and 3/4 people myself including were being rewarded 0xp for mobs/bosses and no drop. At some point, I even stopped building ult after my only dungeon death.

That's a new one - did you /bug report it? Not heard of that before.

I did it for both of the bugs.

Ive been getting about 1k/hour repair bills while solo-questing with my lvl28 DK even when I die basically once every 10hours.

Notice the dungeon repair bills are MUCH higher, paying 1,3/1,4k gold average to repair the gear after a 30mins run.

As a level28 thats called bankrupcy. And now dungeons rewards me nothing...

Blackwolfe5

Can others fighting in your vicinity accelerate decay I wonder. Still curious what triggers the cases when people see decay from non-combat (such as crafting, between patches or using waypoimts)

OFC_it

I get the equipment is damaged ALL the time when I am not in combat. It started when I was about 10 levels ago at 34. Something happened and overnight armor started melting off of me like butter on a hot day. I can say this though, the armor that has the resist decay will outlast the others. I logged on this morning and out of all the fresh armor I had put on for this test the sturdy still had some value left. They usually do.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

this is why i quit game testing.... i got tired of debating with the devs on design. i ended up yelling at the dev cuz he didnt fix the bugs since the third revision when i came on, the revision he put out was clearly chop-shopped, and was ignored. good timing too because the whole tester department got laid off that very morning lol. it truly was a 24-hour shift to remember....

Are developers that arrogant?

it was a game of russian roulette. one project i was on the dev was pretty cool- if he couldn't reproduce the bug himself he would come ask you to show him if possible, if you complained about an aspect of the game in a rare feedback request he would listen (not always implement the change though), or if there was a bug he asked what kind of work around (if applicable) i would recommend as opposed to fixing the bug (you just cant always win over a bug). another dev i had was a ghost. for all i knew the datadyne was producing the game i was testing. the last guy i had was a joke. the last week he said "we are behind so we are going to have to work through the week with a new revision everyday." well we came in sunday for the first of the many revisions, which we played until Wednesday. then got a new one saturday, with essentially all the same bugs as the sunday and wednesday build. on sunday he said there would be a total of 3 builds so we may have to be here all night. we started work that sunday at 6 am and we didnt see another build until 3 am. when we got it and it was the same as all prior builds, i just lost it on him (think happy gilmore). after that it was working on that build until 7 am when they gathered the whole testing department to tell us we were out of a job since they fell behind on the projects and were going over budget (in other words the devs will do our jobs).

vyal

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

this is why i quit game testing.... i got tired of debating with the devs on design. i ended up yelling at the dev cuz he didnt fix the bugs since the third revision when i came on, the revision he put out was clearly chop-shopped, and was ignored. good timing too because the whole tester department got laid off that very morning lol. it truly was a 24-hour shift to remember....

Are developers that arrogant?

I had the privilege of being invited (and free paid travel, woot!) to an SOE fan faire a few years back, for one of their flagship MMO's.
The lead developer was one of the most arrogant, close-minded fools I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

He sat in a room with 12 community reps, the lead QA dev, and six other SOE developers and told everyone they were wrong, and there would be no significant changes to skills or spells. When asked specifically why certain abilities were in the game that appeared to have no point or purpose, he simply ignored the question and changed the subject.

Six months later, he was gone, and they finally made tuning and balance adjustments that allowed half of the classes in the game back into raid roles.

The worst part? He put a mechanic in the game, and left it there for over a year, which allowed the class he played, that he raided with, to completely avoid all AE damage. After he left, that class was gutted out of spite by the rest of the devs. (and they removed the AE immunity very soon after he was gone.)

Who suffers most, from arrogant devs? The players. The paying customers.

This rapid gear decay mechanic is similar. Zenimax, in their arrogance, finds nothing wrong with putting the most punitive repair costs in the history of gaming in their game. They feel it's working as intended.

Mark this post. Here's me crystal ball gazing...

Several months from now, after most of the initial flood of players has left due to developer apathy, some junior underpaid developer who actually plays ESO (not all the devs actually play the games they make) will finally get access to the files where the gear decay calculation function resides. According to the version control system, it will be the first time the file has been accessed since launch.

He'll discover the function is a horrible upchuck of spaghetti code crap, and fix it. Likely, he'll change it so it's simply damage on death, and remove every other aspect of gear degredation, as it should be. This will also lead to further improvements in overall performance for both the client and server.

The few remaining players who care or haven't bought gold to keep up with repairs will be happy. He'll be happy, because he still cares. He'll think to himself, there, finally, we are punishing stupid players, rewarding smart ones, and removing one more reason for people to unsubscribe.
Then he'll get fired the next day for actually fixing a problem.

Knottypine

Arwyn wrote: »

"As it turns out, there are a number of factors which are taken into account when determining item degradation, not just getting hit and taking damage. Were that the case, tanks and melee characters would be unfairly penalized for their role decisions."

Makes me wonder why they don't just restrict decay to a death penalty. Otherwise ESO really doesn't have a DP, since the penalty is happening at all times pretty well.

Decay on death, and that seems like a pretty easy way to balance it for everyone.

Asava

At least clarify it. Is it a death penalty or playing the game penalty?

Blackwolfe5

Feels like a "playing the game" penalty to me.

Akhratos

Im getting gear degradation by talking to npcs or while walking my minning route. Sounds fair.

tordr86b16_ESO

Archaon wrote: »

Im getting gear degradation by talking to npcs or while walking my minning route. Sounds fair.

"Working as intended"
/endsarcasm

starkerealm

Asava wrote: »

At least clarify it. Is it a death penalty or playing the game penalty?

It's a playing penalty. Death is actually less punishing than killing people and taking their stuff, in most cases.

Akhratos

After about 40mins spent in the Guild Store checking prices, my gear is degraded up to a 20-25% per piece. It seems I dont even have to chitchat with the npcs anymore.


Working as intended, obviously...

babylon

Asava wrote: »

At least clarify it. Is it a death penalty or playing the game penalty?

It's a PVE Tax on loot. They want to stop us making any gold, because as we all know the economy in this game is really balanced...

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

babylon wrote: »

Asava wrote: »

At least clarify it. Is it a death penalty or playing the game penalty?

It's a PVE Tax on loot. They want to stop us making any gold, because as we all know the economy in this game is really balanced...

i would say the biggest reason the game lacks an economy is because its one of the purest forms of capitalism (quests arent there forever). im probably one of the few that would argue forms of socialism in the beginning and capitalism in the end. the quests could be argued the "socialism" aspect of the game economy, but the farming/crafting/grinding is the capitalist side of the economy. i completely agree that this issue with gear repairs is essentially a very high tax and negates one entire aspect of the economy (questing vs grinding). extreme taxes lead to extreme poverty, in that it grinds the system as a whole to a snails pace. if you lose 50% of your income (which seems to be a trend for those not bugged) and you quested for it, you lose that part of the game. if you grind and lose half of that then theres no point to it. this leads to a weak and slow moving economy, that right now depends on repairs more than anything else, so those that have money wont spend money, and those that dont, wont earn money because those with money wont spend their money.

i see a major issue, and i typically would tell people to "learn to farm," but this is quite ridiculous all the way around.

Zershar_Vemod

I've been getting massive gear decay from nothing today in Coldharbour.

I travelled to a teammate 50% decay in my gear, been spending a few thousand today alone on repair costs so far...this is getting stupid. I had 100% gear, killed 1 npc that I out-leveled, had a stupid amount of decay from that too.

Something is clearly broken.

Arsenic_Touch

It's come to the point that I leave my real gear in the bank and only use the quest items or drops that I find and don't repair at all and replace it once it's broken, no matter what type of armor it is. When running groups with guildies, we run naked to avoid the ridiculous repair costs.

Arwyn

ZoS you have to do something about this. I ask you to do so because I have lost a few pals I have made ingame directly because of this, I count 5, ok thats only 5 people, but 5 x your sub.... thats a small sum of money....

PLEASE FIX THIS!!! PLEASE!!!!!!

Look thats a please in caps!!

(the beers i sensed in my future have come to pass, sorry)

Bolo_Bob

maybe we need more ingame naked boycotting

Arwyn

Bolo_Bob wrote: »

maybe we need more ingame naked boycotting

mmm Nak......I mean Boycotting, yes boycotting!

Arwyn

983 comments, seriously, if this is, as support has told me a way to get my message across, where the HELL ARE YOU?!

Greg on Support tells me you see this, is support full of crap?

starkerealm

Bolo_Bob wrote: »

maybe we need more ingame naked boycotting

Honestly, my apathy's getting to a point where it's hard to log in. I suspect the only real way to deal with this is just going to be to leave. Between this and the bots, anyway. Maybe resub in six months, when they have their "welcome back guys... please, we're so lonely here" promotion. But... I'm honestly losing faith that we can have any affect on the devs. I'm holding out for the 1.1 to see if they actually fix the issues, but I'm more than a little worried.

SootyTX

Arwyn wrote: »

983 comments, seriously, if this is, as support has told me a way to get my message across, where the HELL ARE YOU?!

Greg on Support tells me you see this, is support full of crap?

Hugs @Arwyn

Would be nice to see one of the community people poke their heads in here again. I think we've done more than enough to prove that, while the design may be 'working as intended' there are clearly several bugs in the system causing distorted repair bills for some players due to crafting, wayshrines or other non-combat activities.

ZoS - this issue isn't going to fade away.

SootyTX

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

i would say the biggest reason the game lacks an economy is because its one of the purest forms of capitalism (quests arent there forever). im probably one of the few that would argue forms of socialism in the beginning and capitalism in the end. the quests could be argued the "socialism" aspect of the game economy, but the farming/crafting/grinding is the capitalist side of the economy. i completely agree that this issue with gear repairs is essentially a very high tax and negates one entire aspect of the economy (questing vs grinding). extreme taxes lead to extreme poverty, in that it grinds the system as a whole to a snails pace. if you lose 50% of your income (which seems to be a trend for those not bugged) and you quested for it, you lose that part of the game. if you grind and lose half of that then theres no point to it. this leads to a weak and slow moving economy, that right now depends on repairs more than anything else, so those that have money wont spend money, and those that dont, wont earn money because those with money wont spend their money.

i see a major issue, and i typically would tell people to "learn to farm," but this is quite ridiculous all the way around.

That's a great way of thinking about it. SWTOR (I know I keep going back to it, but I love the game and the way the current dev team interacts with the players) produced a chart of credit levels in the game, i.e. how many players had how much money, as there was a perception that there was too much flying around and it was causing inflation. I would love to see a similar chart for ESO, as I think we'd see an interesting tale of the super-rich vs the living-hand-to-mouth.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

@SootyTX i tend to be private about my purse and in general. not sure if i would mind a chart showing my gold amount or not lol

Phantax

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey there, everyone. We're looking into this now, and will let you know if this system is working as designed as soon as we can. Thanks!

That's a scary thought that somebody could be so naïve as to have done this by design !

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

did another test rotation this time with a public dungeon boss filling 34 slots. repairs cost 303g after vendoring whites and below and doing my trade skill rotation. total earned after repairs 250g.

my abilities left to right on the action bar.
swap 1-dual wield: 1 single target, one aoe, one self buff DS, short range single target, and soul trap
swap 2- sword and board: 2 single target abilities, 1 aoe, 1 short range single target, 1 long range pull ability (chain whip/sword&board charge)

only about a 10g repair bill difference, so i guess mob types are out of the equation?