Rapid gear decay

Phantax

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

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?

Wait till you're paying over 2k per repair bill ! The upside to this IF your dungeon grinding to make any gold is to go in with basic(non-improved) self crafted gear. Then when you come out of the dungeon just deconstruct your worn out gear (maybe a few other pieces to make enough mats) Make yourself a new set of gear and then sell everything else. That way you remove the need to repair and your profits will be higher !

kasain

I had a repair bill for 3400 for lvl 50 green. I dont even bother. I would rather keep the gold.

starkerealm

SootyTX wrote: »

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.

Honestly, the lasting impression I had of TOR's dev team was truly epic levels of arrogance. Between Karpyshyn's constant tantrums at KOTOR 2, it's characters, and the fans that actually liked it, the "greatest achievement" comment in a press release, removing the option to unsubscribe a couple days before the first subscriptions were up, sending customer support on vacation just before launch and trusting all customer support to chat bots over the holidays, the PvP mechanics that allowed players to spawn camp a faction, with insurmountable numbers, and then the refusal to fix it... and, honestly a lot of other random minutia, I couldn't forgive it at launch.

Pack on F2P players not being allowed to equip dropped oranges, not able to obtain orange quest rewards (which is then lost forever), locking a hot bar off, restricting sprint, and a hundred other random petty, punitive, measures... and I still can't.

I'm glad you like it, but my experience was a level of contempt for players that I honestly have a hard time describing.

Razzak

kasain wrote: »

I had a repair bill for 3400 for lvl 50 green. I dont even bother. I would rather keep the gold.

I would really like an official person to comment on this.
How is such an expensive repair "working as intended"? If there is a valid reason they are basing such claims on, I would really like to hear them. Maybe it would convince me.

SootyTX

@starkerealm - not going to get into a debate here about SWTOR, as we clearly have vastly different views about it and I'm pretty sure we'll never see the other's side

Cathrin

Let's face it, this system is ruining the fun of playing, at least for me.
I was in a public (4 person) dungeon with fully repaired gear. Halfway through all my gear was at 0 %, thus a repair bill of over 2k gold.

If that is how it is intended, then some people have no idea about gaming. As said here before: We get punished for just playing.

So I keep running around with destroyed gear or swap to loot I found, till this also breaks. Not the best way, because I cannot adjust my equipment to my build, but better than paying thousands of gold every 30 minutes.

The real shame is, that ZOS doesn't seem to care one bit about this. And I was under the impression, that a game should be fun for its players... oh my!

starkerealm

SootyTX wrote: »

@starkerealm - not going to get into a debate here about SWTOR, as we clearly have vastly different views about it and I'm pretty sure we'll never see the other's side

Don't worry, I've got plenty of other MMOs to spray vitriol about. Sometimes, while remaining on topic, even.

Bioware has a serious issue with arrogance. It may not be the people working directly on TOR right now, but it's saturated. We're talking about the same devs that still employ, Casey "no, seriously guys, the Starchild was awesome" Hudson, and David "so help me, you WILL love Tallis and Leliana" Gaider.

Karpyshyn's character assassination of The Exile in TOR was just cheap, and it's something I'll probably never be able to forgive the game for.

EDIT 2: Yeah... I'm kinda generally pissed with the state of TESO right now, sorry, I don't mean to take that out on you.

Maverick827

BioWare tends to have very interactive developers. Go to the Dragon Age forum and pretty much every well thought out thread has a developer chiming in, explaining why they made a certain design choice or asking players what they'd like to see.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is still six months away, but I feel like I was able to discuss that game more with BioWare a year ago then I am able to discuss this currently launched game with Zenimax.

Zershar_Vemod

So...no response since April 29th about if this is working as intended (It's obviously not)....what the hell...I mean, I can't afford to cover my losses each day (say at least 4-5k, and I only make ~2k with the small amount of time I have).

Blackwolfe5

Well, something is not working as intended which is why they are fixing it. However it is just a small part of the bigger picture. The cases of extreme decay just makes the bigger picture so much easier to see.

Akhratos

Im gonna keep posting this until any ZOS come back to tell us again this is working as intended because fighting and advancing your character by questing (xp) both are supposed to produce gear decay.



It was of course a hardcore dialectical fight between me and the banker relating the total lack of useful subcategories in some of the guildstore item types and the ghost items in the bank.

Im happy some people are ok with paying 75% of their total questing/grinding income in bill repairs, but it has came to the place where Im having to pay like 200% the income I do while questing/grinding, and now, also for talking to the banker in a town.

Razzak

Today, I found out why gear is degrading even if player is not in a fight, like talking with a banker.
It depends partly on a zone player is in and partly on player's ability to retain sweat. Basically, if you are in a zone with high humidity and/or your char is sweating a lot (talking with a banker), your gear will not only degrade, it will melt.
Why?
Because light, medium and heavy armor is just an outer layer of our armor. Beneath it is the most important layer (it has to breathe) and this layer is made of ... sugar.
So, to all those that are experiencing rapid gear degradation ... before you engage in any kind of activity ... take a shower or at least scrub yourselves with towel. It's your sweat that does so much damage to your gear, not game's design.

SootyTX

@Razzak‌ - that made me chuckle, thanks

@starkerealm‌ - no worries mate, I know how you feel, just with different games (CoH, looking at you now)

Well guys, I'm taking a few days off and getting my geek on at the Dallas Comic-Con. Have a great weekend!

F7sus4

If this is really a sort of issue to you, why don't you bother wearing "X% chance to avoid decay" gear?

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO

EdonilTebaun wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Nope, no other MMO has tried to pull such a punishing decay mechanic afaik. They really need to tone this down a lot, and make the game more friendly to normal players.

Obviously you never played WoW before Burning Crusade came out. Melee and tanks especially were constantly scrounging for coin to make repairs because dropped coin was miserable and vendor trash sold for little. The current decay rates and the cost of them definitely reminds me of WoW and I'm not sure if that or what we have in ESO is worse.

Fortunately, my guild only ran MC on weekends. But I had to spend the rest of the week in pretty basic armor farming for anything I could get my hands on to repair my armor for the next raid. Not exactly fond memories.

You could also tack on the cost of consumables, enchants or whatever. Progressions was always a big time loss in terms of indivu

Archaon wrote: »

Im gonna keep posting this until any ZOS come back to tell us again this is working as intended because fighting and advancing your character by questing (xp) both are supposed to produce gear decay.



It was of course a hardcore dialectical fight between me and the banker relating the total lack of useful subcategories in some of the guildstore item types and the ghost items in the bank.

Im happy some people are ok with paying 75% of their total questing/grinding income in bill repairs, but it has came to the place where Im having to pay like 200% the income I do while questing/grinding, and now, also for talking to the banker in a town.

How'd you make 8grand with all the repair costs. Somehow I thought this was causing everyone to run negative values. Odd, that you can post profits?????

Maybe a lot of this is just subjective reasoning on what you feel is a viable repair costs. The image shows nothing of value other then your gear is damaged, there is nothing here to lead me to believe that you didn't have damaged gear prior to engaging the banker.

dennissomb16_ESO

Today I discovered the most silly thing about gear decay. Last night just before I logged out I did a full gear fix at the vendor (repair all). This morning I logged in, and before doing anything went to the vendor and had an 8 gold repair bill. Apparently the act of logging into the game causes armor damage LOL

vyal

starkerealm wrote: »

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.

I'd support a play naked day, just to raise awareness that paying 1k/hour or more, or paying gold just to fight, or paying gold to walk around the game world, or paying gold to quest, is "working as intended" from Zenimax's perspective.

Most people aren't waiting for 1.1. This rapid gear decay is just another nail in the almost finished coffin. Most of the people on my friends list are long gone after the first month. They just saw the bugs, the broken content, the horrific lack of balance, and decided to vote with their wallets. When the game is so broken that people bail on $15, you're doing it wrong.

When all my friends are gone, and I have run out of quests, how am I supposed to support being able to play, at all, when playing, at all, empties my bank of gold?

Attention Zenimax: You. Need. To. Fix. This.

CrimsonThomas

Ten minutes of grinding Worm Cult mobs. Ten. Minutes. I was hit maybe fifteen times in that whole time period. Also worth noting, I blocked every single attack landed on me.

All of my gear was at 0% durability. In ten minutes, I had a lovely 1395 gold fee to repair all of my gear.

Zenimax, your gear decay system, "working as intended" or not, is a broken, horrible, anti-player system. Seriously, the current gear decay system you have in place punishes players for simply playing the game.

I can't wait for the broken pre-alpha release of Craglorn...Not even the VR10 players will be able to foot their constant repair bills.

Do you want to effectively combat gold farming and gold selling, Zenimax? Maybe you should reevaluate this system, and determine if it truly is "working as intended."

Akhratos

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO wrote: »

EdonilTebaun wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Nope, no other MMO has tried to pull such a punishing decay mechanic afaik. They really need to tone this down a lot, and make the game more friendly to normal players.

Obviously you never played WoW before Burning Crusade came out. Melee and tanks especially were constantly scrounging for coin to make repairs because dropped coin was miserable and vendor trash sold for little. The current decay rates and the cost of them definitely reminds me of WoW and I'm not sure if that or what we have in ESO is worse.

Fortunately, my guild only ran MC on weekends. But I had to spend the rest of the week in pretty basic armor farming for anything I could get my hands on to repair my armor for the next raid. Not exactly fond memories.

You could also tack on the cost of consumables, enchants or whatever. Progressions was always a big time loss in terms of indivu

Archaon wrote: »

Im gonna keep posting this until any ZOS come back to tell us again this is working as intended because fighting and advancing your character by questing (xp) both are supposed to produce gear decay.



It was of course a hardcore dialectical fight between me and the banker relating the total lack of useful subcategories in some of the guildstore item types and the ghost items in the bank.

Im happy some people are ok with paying 75% of their total questing/grinding income in bill repairs, but it has came to the place where Im having to pay like 200% the income I do while questing/grinding, and now, also for talking to the banker in a town.

How'd you make 8grand with all the repair costs. Somehow I thought this was causing everyone to run negative values. Odd, that you can post profits?????

Maybe a lot of this is just subjective reasoning on what you feel is a viable repair costs. The image shows nothing of value other then your gear is damaged, there is nothing here to lead me to believe that you didn't have damaged gear prior to engaging the banker.

You sherlock must read the whole thing before making stupid assumptions. I have 8k gold at level 28 (no horse) because Ive spent the first 20levels simply not repairing anything.

Of course in the course of getting to higher levels I find myself unable to find a full gear replacement for all parts coming from drops every half of a level.

Im not to debate technical issues with you. I repaired the gear fully right before entering the bank. Im having overnight gear decay as others have reported aswel, and I dont give a single damn some nobody comes to doubt about my word. I could not care less about it.

Zershar_Vemod

CrimsonThomas wrote: »

Ten minutes of grinding Worm Cult mobs. Ten. Minutes. I was hit maybe fifteen times in that whole time period. Also worth noting, I blocked every single attack landed on me.

All of my gear was at 0% durability. In ten minutes, I had a lovely 1395 gold fee to repair all of my gear.

Zenimax, your gear decay system, "working as intended" or not, is a broken, horrible, anti-player system.

I can't wait for the broken pre-alpha release of Craglorn...Not even the VR10 players will be able to foot their constant repair bills.

Do you want to effectively combat gold farming and gold selling, Zenimax? Maybe you should reevaluate this system, and determine if it truly is "working as intended."

Sounds about right...

This is starting to remind me of SWTOR where if you walk into anything you get gear damage...or even when it launched and repair costs were beyond expensive before the tweak to make them just plain expensive.....

I can't play TESO in this condition, I can't afford constant losses each day; maybe I'll log in and take my armor off and just do research projects then log back off......

tawok

I had a rather rough spell trying to solo a delve last night. Wasn't aware I was being secretly *** by the enormous *** of armor repair... So much for saving up for my 5000g respec at level 26, I've got a 1500g repair bill to take care of. So much for "rewarding adventure".

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

last night doing farming and looking for potential causes for people's issues it dawned on me- this issue coupled with the weapon swap/ability/potion delay (there are two threads at least on this) the end game and future game play look bleak. i dont currently see me experiencing the repair decay issue, but i do get the ability delay issue 80% of my game time. that has been the number 1 reason i have died in this game.

weapon swap thread:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/836098#Comment_836098

tordr86b16_ESO

Gear decay seemed about normal from level 1 to 50, but as soon you enter Veteran areas, especially VR 8 to 10, it seems like they just yanked the gear decay like crazy on purpose.

ZOS, this is not the right way to create gold sinks. You've said you are adding housing to your game, let that be the insane gold sink. We should be able to grind for more than 10 minutes without doing a full repair.

Borondir

I am curious what was tested in the closed beta. I don't understand why bugs like this or exploits from some vampire skills weren't fixed before release.

aipex8_ESO

Since I started posting in this thread, my decay rate has been like a yo-yo. 1-40 it was totally manageable. 40-50 it suddenly became ridiculous. VR1-2 it was manageable again, VR3-4 it has jumped up to crazy again.

Like I stated earlier, while I think the decay rate is too high, I am actually able to net a small profit when questing (reward gold + not as much combat), but I just finished my last quest in the VR4 zone and don't want to move on to the next zone when I still need 500K VP to get to VR5. So I have to grind with no quests, and when I do that I lose gold, or break even if I'm lucky. I'm thinking of just not playing until Craglorn comes out to see if the upped XP for Vets will allow me to catch up if I move on the VR5 area now. So I'm at a point now where the decay rate has the potential to keep me from playing. That sucks.

babylon

Borondir wrote: »

I am curious what was tested in the closed beta. I don't understand why bugs like this or exploits from some vampire skills weren't fixed before release.

What was most likely tested in both the closed beta and on the PTS now are ways to exploit the game.

Knottypine

Probably mentioned it before... is intended also supposed to mean that my secondary shield that I don't use once also decays?

babylon

Knottypine wrote: »

Probably mentioned it before... is intended also supposed to mean that my secondary shield that I don't use once also decays?

I think at this point we're just lucky they don't get annoyed with us and make it so all the stuff we're carrying in our bags also decays...

CrimsonThomas

babylon wrote: »

Knottypine wrote: »

Probably mentioned it before... is intended also supposed to mean that my secondary shield that I don't use once also decays?

I think at this point we're just lucky they don't get annoyed with us and make it so all the stuff we're carrying in our bags also decays...

I would uninstall the game immediately, and tell every gaming friend I have about the situation, and to avoid ESO or anything ZOS creates. I didn't pay $90 for the Imperial Edition and an additional $30 for a 60-day Time Card to be abused by a developer high on their hubris.

Asava wrote: »

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

It's a penalty for playing the game. Don't worry though, guys! It's working as intended!

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

Borondir wrote: »

I am curious what was tested in the closed beta. I don't understand why bugs like this or exploits from some vampire skills weren't fixed before release.

as already stated, most just enjoy the free ride. the other problem i have in more modern MMOs, is that given their increased complexity, they need to start at the end and move to the beginning as much as they go from the beginning to the end. they limit progression to the "beginning" stages as that is the most important (first) content to be experienced. however, when you lay system upon system (example: level grinding-> VR grinding/PVP grinding), you begin to experience, an astronomical amount of branched variations of player experiences. i am a slow goer, that focuses on the story of the quests, level along with my trade skills, and don't mind mind numbing grinds. i wont experience or come across the same bugs/issues as the one that blasts levels, has no desire to read/listen/pay attention to quest dialogue, waits until end game for trade skills, and hates the mind numbing grinds.

when they allowed the character to be kept through out the duration of testing, i was hoping that it would address that issue. perhaps too few made it to end game or just didnt care about the game period; could be both. testers can be just as bad as the devs, when it comes to quality assurance.