Rapid gear decay

babylon

Maverick827 wrote: »

I'm a professional software developer and I have no idea what you just said.

If the high repair costs were due to anything but intended design, then ZOS would have caught it in their testing. If it wasn't intended for your gear to be almost entirely broken after an hour or two of questing with no deaths, and if it wasn't intended for the cost to repair that damage to equal about as much as you earned, then they would have caught it.

But they said it was "working as intended."

A bug that causes unintended item decay in fringe cases doesn't matter when a lot of us feel like repair costs are too expensive in all cases. Whether or not ZOS cares (they don't) is another matter.

They will start to care when it hits them in THEIR pocket

They might need to read the boards to find out which issues contributed to this when they go all post mortem on it, though imo it's not hard to see what they need to do right now.

Asava

SootyTX wrote: »

Asava wrote: »

Well either ZOS fixes repair costs or we're all going to have to buy from the gold sellers just to keep up with the costs of repairs. Especially with Craglorn right around the corner. Who's going to be able to afford to raid except for crafters? I know that I won't be able to since I get to around 40k gold and have to waste it on more bank/bp slots.

Please at least attempt to read the thread before commenting....No, we are not "all going to have to buy from gold sellers" because we don't all have this issue. I don't, I make a ton of cash just regular playing with hardly vendoring any drops at all. I'm here trying to help the impacted players figure out what is causing the issue for them so we can all enjoy the game. These kind of chicken little posts add nothing.

I have been reading them. I've been commenting on them since I started leveling. It is a real problem. I'm VR6 now and once I get to VR10 all the quests will essentially be done already. So gear selling gives me 60g a pop now, quests 300-600g a pop. Repairs for said quest are around 1000-1500g. How am I supposed to support myself in Cragelorn then? Selling loot doesn't make you any money when repairs are so high. Also, no one ever answered my question as to why does it cost 1000-1500g to repair items that sell to merchants for 40-60g a piece? That's just incredibly stupid imo.

starkerealm

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

...you could receive damage on quest turn ins, which is thankfully not the case. so knowing its not quest experience leads you to look at mob experience.

Which is a hilarious coincidence, because there are a few reports back in the first 10 or so pages of that actually happening. Also, the reports of deterioration on gaining crafting XP.

Knottypine

starkerealm wrote: »

Knottypine wrote: »

Suggestion:

'Sturdy' currently has a % chance to avoid decay, what if it was changed to a % of slower decay rate all the time?

It actually does that already.

I was unaware of that... I interpret "% chance to avoid decay" as in it might avoid decay sometimes. And with a RNG it's more of an average, and the unlucky players gear might still decay normally. Could be wrong.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

Maverick827 wrote: »

I'm a professional software developer and I have no idea what you just said.

If the high repair costs were due to anything but intended design, then ZOS would have caught it in their testing. If it wasn't intended for your gear to be almost entirely broken after an hour or two of questing with no deaths, and if it wasn't intended for the cost to repair that damage to equal about as much as you earned, then they would have caught it.

But they said it was "working as intended."

A bug that causes unintended item decay in fringe cases doesn't matter when a lot of us feel like repair costs are too expensive in all cases. Whether or not ZOS cares (they don't) is another matter.

because for me the are not high, thats the bug or "bug." from my eyes people say after 1 hour of game play they receive 1k-1.5k repairs where as i see 200-400 over the same amount of time.

as far as you being a software developer, i dont care. i am a woodworker but i wouldnt tell a chip carver how to chip carve since i am a furniture maker- we both work wood but both work in a different expertise. as far as understanding, unless you are more specific theres no where to go with that.

traigusb14_ESO2

Yeah,that's why I'm still calling bug on this as well.

I'm just not seeing massive repair costs, and I'm making buckets of money. Either all these people are bugged, or I am (and I hope it isn't me).

I have seen some spooky damage happening rarely, but my normal everyday repairs are about 1/3 of most people complaining here.

Maverick827

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

I'm a professional software developer and I have no idea what you just said.

If the high repair costs were due to anything but intended design, then ZOS would have caught it in their testing. If it wasn't intended for your gear to be almost entirely broken after an hour or two of questing with no deaths, and if it wasn't intended for the cost to repair that damage to equal about as much as you earned, then they would have caught it.

But they said it was "working as intended."

A bug that causes unintended item decay in fringe cases doesn't matter when a lot of us feel like repair costs are too expensive in all cases. Whether or not ZOS cares (they don't) is another matter.

because for me the are not high, thats the bug or "bug." from my eyes people say after 1 hour of game play they receive 1k-1.5k repairs where as i see 200-400 over the same amount of time.

as far as you being a software developer, i dont care. i am a woodworker but i wouldnt tell a chip carver how to chip carve since i am a furniture maker- we both work wood but both work in a different expertise. as far as understanding, unless you are more specific theres no where to go with that.

Software development isn't really like that, but that's not important because this has nothing to do with coding. This is design. Someone decided that repair costs would be this inhibiting.

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

Yeah,that's why I'm still calling bug on this as well.

I'm just not seeing massive repair costs, and I'm making buckets of money. Either all these people are bugged, or I am (and I hope it isn't me).

I have seen some spooky damage happening rarely, but my normal everyday repairs are about 1/3 of most people complaining here.

What is "buckets" of money?

slayer7800

I'm also making plenty of gold. However, I haven't repaired one item in 3 weeks now since I noticed the high cost. That is leveling one character from 32-vr1 and another from 24-39. I replace my gear roughly every two hours of questing and deconstruct the old gear. Personally, I like to keep my armor around more than every 2 hours. It removes a lot of the excitement of getting new armor when I know I am going to trash it later on that evening.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

Maverick827 wrote: »

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

I'm a professional software developer and I have no idea what you just said.

If the high repair costs were due to anything but intended design, then ZOS would have caught it in their testing. If it wasn't intended for your gear to be almost entirely broken after an hour or two of questing with no deaths, and if it wasn't intended for the cost to repair that damage to equal about as much as you earned, then they would have caught it.

But they said it was "working as intended."

A bug that causes unintended item decay in fringe cases doesn't matter when a lot of us feel like repair costs are too expensive in all cases. Whether or not ZOS cares (they don't) is another matter.

because for me the are not high, thats the bug or "bug." from my eyes people say after 1 hour of game play they receive 1k-1.5k repairs where as i see 200-400 over the same amount of time.

as far as you being a software developer, i dont care. i am a woodworker but i wouldnt tell a chip carver how to chip carve since i am a furniture maker- we both work wood but both work in a different expertise. as far as understanding, unless you are more specific theres no where to go with that.

Software development isn't really like that, but that's not important because this has nothing to do with coding. This is design. Someone decided that repair costs would be this inhibiting.

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

Yeah,that's why I'm still calling bug on this as well.

I'm just not seeing massive repair costs, and I'm making buckets of money. Either all these people are bugged, or I am (and I hope it isn't me).

I have seen some spooky damage happening rarely, but my normal everyday repairs are about 1/3 of most people complaining here.

What is "buckets" of money?

exactly, hence the reason i called it "theory-craft." i know thats not the coding, its not about that until you find the root problem, the problem lies in the causes. in order to fix or adjust the coding, you have to know the causes or triggers.

so for example, above there is a post that quests DO render decay. what needs to be known about the system itself, would be "is it the experience gained or the income on the reward that triggers damage." the numbers i provided in my >theory-craft< based explanation, are pulled out of thin air.... because i don't know the actual coding. its to provide a basis of a concept based on a theory i have produced. for all i know decay is X+25%([Y][D]) where X= decay from mobs; where y= times you die: where d = item duribility. so add mob based armor decay and add 25% for the times you died, times the amount of durability for an item. without actually knowing the code (proprietary and probably considered trade secrets-has a non-disclosure agreement) theres no way of telling the coding.

i want this topic to stay its intended course. just because it effects others now, doesnt mean it wont effect me later. a solution needs to be found to an issue that people have found.

Maverick827

You're missing the point. The overall amount of equipment decay is intended. Apparently in a small number of cases there is unintended decay, but for the most part, what we're seeing now is what the developers think is a good for the game.

There is some disagreement on that point.

traigusb14_ESO2

I tallied it up in one of my previous posts. Feel free to read the thread.

Asava

Well if anyone knows where to farm Cult of Worms, Warlock, and dominion gear so that I can replace them every 2 hours instead of pay 1000-1500g please spill the beans.

starkerealm

Knottypine wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Knottypine wrote: »

Suggestion:

'Sturdy' currently has a % chance to avoid decay, what if it was changed to a % of slower decay rate all the time?

It actually does that already.

I was unaware of that... I interpret "% chance to avoid decay" as in it might avoid decay sometimes. And with a RNG it's more of an average, and the unlucky players gear might still decay normally. Could be wrong.

It was something that came up from testing. Either Sturdy simply slows decay, or there's a hidden dice roll whenever you kill something, and Sturdy reduces the chance of decay. Though, I don't think any of us know which it is.

SunfireKnight86

It started happening to me when I hit VR10. I went, did some quests, didn't die once, and went from full repaired to everything broken in maybe 2 hours. 3k repair bill.

This is clearly not working as intended, as it didn't start for me until today. Up until now I could fight for a day and die several times without literally every single piece of gear being totally broken.

CrimsonThomas

Don't you just love it when you're punished for just playing the game? Zenimax really does themselves no favors.

With the erroneous, rampant gear decay and the outrageous cost to repair, it's really not hard to ponder why someone would find themselves tempted to purchase gold (NOTE: I am NOT condoning this, and I think people who do should be banned permanently).

However, if the average player barely has enough gold to scrape by, then the game charges us another 1000 gold pieces to repair gear that never sustained a hit from an enemy, something is very, very wrong with that picture. For the casual player who doesn't have days to grind, repairing rapidly-decayed equipment is what the bulk of their gold will be spent on.

Seriously, my equipment should not lose durability the moment I let an arrow fly. That's asinine.

Another detail for Zenimax to read over when they're doing the post-mortem report for this game, I suppose.

SootyTX

Maverick827 wrote: »

You're missing the point. The overall amount of equipment decay is intended. Apparently in a small number of cases there is unintended decay, but for the most part, what we're seeing now is what the developers think is a good for the game.

There is some disagreement on that point.

No you're missing the point - that as many people have pointed out, some players are getting vastly inflated costs from doing EXACTLY the same thing as others, to the extent that two people playing together are having huge differences in repair bills.

We aren't talking 10% difference here or there, we are talking orders of magnitude differences in repairs and damage happening while taking actions that do not occur to the vast majority of us (e.g. wayshrine use or crafting)

That is not a problem in the design. Period. The design is not for the player to incur item decay on crafting, or using wayshrines. The design is for item decay to ccur when killing mobs that drop loot. And no, that not 'semantics', that's actually an important step in helping identify the issue - as a self-proclaimed software developer I'd have thought you'd be able to understand that at least.

There is a bug or bugs causing unintended and/or inflated decay. The decay that most of us see, i.e.the designed decay, is perfectly acceptable even to the extent that we make plenty of money without even vendoring much except trash loot. If I vendored all the drops I didn't need, instead of deconstructing, (from a quick back of the envelope calculation based on the last few hours of play) my little level 21 NB alt would be sitting on 30K+ even after buying backpack upgrades and a basic horse. And that's just from vendoring, not even selling decent items in guild store.

SootyTX

SunfireKnight86 wrote: »

It started happening to me when I hit VR10. I went, did some quests, didn't die once, and went from full repaired to everything broken in maybe 2 hours. 3k repair bill.

This is clearly not working as intended, as it didn't start for me until today. Up until now I could fight for a day and die several times without literally every single piece of gear being totally broken.

That is a really interesting observation. @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ is there anything that changes at VR10? - as SunfireKinight points out, this clearly isn't working as intended for him.

redwoodtreesprite

How about this for a question. How many levels should it take before I have to trash a set of armor when below level 20?

For me, on all my characters, it is less than one level. Ouch!

Sendarya

I am xtremely disheartened to hear that this is working as intended, aside from the occasional bug. I have suffered the bug once personally, while crafting, some (but not all) of my items broke entirely. I have also seen my husband suffer the bug once (I was healing and dps, he was DPS, both of us are ranged), where his gear was mostly broken after about 30 or 45 minutes of play, but mine was not.

Even without the bug, repair costs are stupid. I have lots of money, but I put a lot of effort into making money via crafting and trading. I also rarely repair gear, I usually just break it all down and make new gear instead. Sometimes I'll run around in mostly/totally broken gear for a few hours until I get to the next even level, so making new gear is more worth it. I do occasionally upgrade a piece to blue, and then I'll keep it around and repair it (and only it) for 4 levels instead of 2.

I make my husband gear now and then, but he has now outleveled me on both of his characters, so he tends to just play the game more...as intended. He uses quest rewards and loot drops, and I only make him new gear every 4 to 6 levels, so he end up repairing a lot more. He make no effort to make money aside form selling the occasional purple or recipe he finds, and just selling his junk to vendors. What with the cost of bag space upgrades, horse feeding and outrageous repair bills, he is always broke. He respecced twice, and both times needed to borrow money form me.

Long story short, if you are not a crafter, and are just enjoying the game in a casual way, questing and leveling, you will not have much money because of these stupid repair bills. Sure, some people will be fine, but many will (and are) not.

I've seen an awful lot of naked people lately......If this is as intended by Zenimax, as they have stated, I really think they need to rethink it. I've never, in 13+ year of playing MMO's seen such a stupidly implemented gear decay system. Really, this takes the cake!

vyal

They may think it's working as intended, but it's still broken, stupid, and is costing them customers.

It came up today in Glenumbra zone chat. Brand new players are wondering why all their gear is broken, and why they're paying over a thousand gold to fix it, and they have never died.

It's terrible.

It's horrific.

It's worse than ANY OTHER MMO EVER. EVER. Since 1996, no MMO has had even close to a gear damage/decay/repair system as punitive as ESO.

This is NOT, repeat NOT, how you want to distinguish yourself when you're in a genre with options.

SootyTX

Sendarya wrote: »

<snipped>

Long story short, if you are not a crafter, and are just enjoying the game in a casual way, questing and leveling, you will not have much money because of these stupid repair bills. Sure, some people will be fine, but many will (and are) not.

I've seen an awful lot of naked people lately......If this is as intended by Zenimax, as they have stated, I really think they need to rethink it. I've never, in 13+ year of playing MMO's seen such a stupidly implemented gear decay system. Really, this takes the cake!

I'm personally doing exactly what you say in the first quoted paragraph and I have tons of money (as are others in this thread). I think you are both bugged and experiencing the higher decay rates consistently, honestly, it was just really obvious a couple of times.

I am a crafter but I don't make leveling gear, I use drops then deconstruct it when done. So as I've said before, my income is from quest rewards, cash drops and trash loot and that's about it. I'm leveling 5 toons and deconstructing every piece of equipment I can find for the different craft professions.

Quick question - do you group a lot (either formally or informally)- do group dungeons, dolmens, tend to do solo dungeons with other people around? There are acknowledged edge cases with grouping that are being addressed in patch 1.1, so that may help both of you if so.

SunfireKnight86

It's not a matter of cost, it's bugged.

Ever since that one time I've been fine. So unless it's supposed to randomly break all my gear for no reason sometimes, and others have no visible effect on gear at all, it's bugged.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

Quick question - do you group a lot (either formally or informally)- do group dungeons, dolmens, tend to do solo dungeons with other people around? There are acknowledged edge cases with grouping that are being addressed in patch 1.1, so that may help both of you if so.

not intending to answer this for the player you posed the question for, but i do group. the wife and i quest in our group only, there are a few problems with fully answering the question, but ill answer for myself what i can. i do recall my gear fully breaking often when we grouped on non-grey quests. now that they have mostly gone grey, i havent noticed any breakage, however this last weekend i had a 96g repair bill for me, doing level 30 quests at VR1. i only currently wear white, crafted gear, and a blue (i think its blue) helm and shield, both are drops (i sword and board in groups).

being behind in quests and having not finished the main storyline (dont tell me how it ends), i dont even know what dolmens is.

i do solo dungeons a lot.... a LOT (cries). sometimes there are people sometimes there arent. but NEVER seen more than 400g repairs without having died. this also applies to outside of dungeons in the "world" environment. typically takes an hour to 40 minutes to fill my inventory on level 45-46 mobs.

edit: i play a DK with no group beneficial spells/effects currently.

update:just did a solo farm run focused on level 46 mobs:
26 slots filled in 20 minutes
total gold earned from vendoring all white and below items and cash drops 742g
repair cost 269g
total earned after repairs 473g

that is about the norm for me.

starkerealm

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

update:just did a solo farm run focused on level 46 mobs:
26 slots filled in 20 minutes
total gold earned from vendoring all white and below items and cash drops 742g
repair cost 269g
total earned after repairs 473g

that is about the norm for me.

That is... probably the intended behavior. With the bug, you'd be seeing a repair bill in the 1.5k to 2k range, roughly...

...and, with the way this thread tends to work, then some smug jackass would come along and troll you. *facepalms*

Anyway, if it is informal grouping, it's probably working off some kind of proximity to other players thing, to judge if you're, "in a group." That's the only thing I can see to explain why it randomly spikes, and why you'll see things like the party with mixed decay rates.

It could also create a situation where bot infested areas are actually resulting in decay increases, which might explain why people are seeing a spike in the high 40s that then drops off after VR1... but it wouldn't explain why that dropoff happens the instant you ding.

*shrugs*

Though, I'm just guessing here.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

@starkerealm thats what i was thinking. thats how i know something shaky is going on. i was talking to my wife who plays a templar healer, she was saying that her repairs are really high, and has a real hard time keeping a positive cash flow. i have no abilities that benefit anyone but me, where as she has heals that splash anything/everything in the area. formal or informal groups or just someone standing by may be a big contributor

kasain

Don't you know, eso owns a gold selling website. They won't ever admit it, but they won't bann a bot either. Just suspend and let th3m remake. And in any way to make a bots life ewsier vs players, they have done it. Drops off bosses, less books, prov items, crafr items /stuck decay armor among so many, many other feautures. Truth is they will make their 200m back, but buy selling gold not eso games or subs.

I got a second charater who lvl 26 with a 5k repair bill, all green gear. Really 5k at lvl 20.You have seen bots underground take our resources, Iinflate, repeat spam gold quest. Kill mqss mobs, walk around cyrodia. They would do the same for vet zones but really they dont need to bother questline.

Eso really has done nothing to make the player enjoy crafting, bot issue or pride in armor making or collecting. Just headaches and it turns people off. Its not a tripple aaa game. Tbose have repair skills in crafting and dont cha4ge tax on exp for crafti t or killing. Death only.

So go support eso gold store for cash

Darzil

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

@starkerealm thats what i was thinking. thats how i know something shaky is going on. i was talking to my wife who plays a templar healer, she was saying that her repairs are really high, and has a real hard time keeping a positive cash flow. i have no abilities that benefit anyone but me, where as she has heals that splash anything/everything in the area. formal or informal groups or just someone standing by may be a big contributor

That's very likely. You take a 1-2% hit on a random piece of armour each time you help kill a normal monster (higher on harder monsters, just a chance of loss on lower monsters - there is a threshold when several players do the kill below which you don't get the loss, or get any loot), but your income when ungrouped like that is reduced according to how many helped kill the monster. I think healing when ungrouped 'helps' kill monsters. Death penalty seems to be of the order of 1-2% on each piece of armour, plus 8-10% on one piece. Around level 40 with level 40 armour the gold drops from humanoids exactly balance the gold cost of repairs (3-4g), so against humanoids you profit due to drops. Against non-humanoids I've never had enough drops to break even. Questing is profitable, however.

That's without the bugs that seem to allow some to get damage whilst not fighting, or when using certain abilities, in addition to death penalty / killing monsters, which we haven't yet managed to replicate consistently.

SootyTX

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

Quick question - do you group a lot (either formally or informally)- do group dungeons, dolmens, tend to do solo dungeons with other people around? There are acknowledged edge cases with grouping that are being addressed in patch 1.1, so that may help both of you if so.

not intending to answer this for the player you posed the question for, but i do group. the wife and i quest in our group only, there are a few problems with fully answering the question, but ill answer for myself what i can. i do recall my gear fully breaking often when we grouped on non-grey quests. now that they have mostly gone grey, i havent noticed any breakage, however this last weekend i had a 96g repair bill for me, doing level 30 quests at VR1. i only currently wear white, crafted gear, and a blue (i think its blue) helm and shield, both are drops (i sword and board in groups).

being behind in quests and having not finished the main storyline (dont tell me how it ends), i dont even know what dolmens is.

i do solo dungeons a lot.... a LOT (cries). sometimes there are people sometimes there arent. but NEVER seen more than 400g repairs without having died. this also applies to outside of dungeons in the "world" environment. typically takes an hour to 40 minutes to fill my inventory on level 45-46 mobs.

edit: i play a DK with no group beneficial spells/effects currently.

update:just did a solo farm run focused on level 46 mobs:
26 slots filled in 20 minutes
total gold earned from vendoring all white and below items and cash drops 742g
repair cost 269g
total earned after repairs 473g

that is about the norm for me.

Thanks ahstin, that's really useful information. There really does seem to be a correlation between group buffs/heals (formal group or not) and these higher decay rates. I wish i could get onto PTS so we could run some tests under the new build there and see if the group changes have fixed, or at least reduced, these issues.

Dolmen are the anchors btw - you have probably done them without noticing what they are called :)7

Arwyn

Just got my first reply from support to my ticket, they said I was repairing broken gear I was carrying that was why......Took them 10 days to come up with that answer....

I have pointed out more examples to them and lead them to this thread too.

Seems this is another of those new MMO's where the game can be great but the support quality is going to kill it.

SootyTX

starkerealm wrote: »

Though, I'm just guessing here.

Smart educated guessing though mate

My templer test didn't cause any damage (healing a dolmen crew without actually engaging the mobs) so, since I don't experience this bug, I don't think its intended that simply healing without taking any offensive action at all would cause decay. Which makes sense, as healing someone else who's fightting but you aren't grouped with doesn't give loot either, as far as I know.

I'll see if I can figure out a way to run a similar tesr but with offensive buffs if I can find one suitable.

If anyone that experiences the bug on a regular basis is willing to test, go to a dolmen in your level range and try just healing/buffing those engaged without attacking the mobs in any way, and see if you get damage?