Revisited - Equipment: Durability & Spawn Rates

[Targun]

Hey,

I'll try to keep it short. I did A LOT of testing in last couple months on durability of equipment compared to spawn rates and the conclusions are as follows:

Weapons
If it's DULL - unless it literally falls into your hands - it's probably never worth the effort. They wear down so quickly that, combined with spawn rates, time spent "hunting" for it just can't be justified.

Armours
1. Protective: If you're a tank without high evasion skill, the scrap yards and ogres love you.
1.1.: Cloaks, robes, pelts - they last like for 3 hours, before they're no good.
2. Shiny trinkets (rings, necklaces, etc): They break way too fast, especially if you're a tank.

SPAWN RATES
Bump them please. I'll give you an example. When my char was a monk, it broke Gilbert's ring within 40% of its lifetime. I killed that NPC around ~100 times after that to get a new one. Fun fact: my char couldn't function without it (or Benton's greaves); if I went as far as elevated pace, it would just drop to the ground panting, wheezing and spitting out its lungs within 20min.

It's really a bit meh experience, 'cos unless it's a magic trinket or no-dull, there's barely any incentive to spend your time on farming these NPCs. That weapon will be gone in 5 hours. Not to mention, you're never gonna imbue it.

Any chance to umm... improve the situation?

[Dan]

totally agree, spend 200+ swords while finding 25 new ones, finally gave up on swords.
Never spend my imbuement stones, as they'll just break after 10-15 hours and how cool is it to spend an intense stone that you have paid 28000 plats for (if made from scrap stones) ...
please fix spawn rates for dulling weaponry, and please make dulling happen slower!

[TaranGoatWalker]

Never spend my imbuement stones, as they'll just break after 10-15 hours and how cool is it to spend an intense stone that you have paid 28000 plats for (if made from scrap stones) ...

This... this is what non-dullings are for?

[Cherek]

This has been discussed many times, and I think if you use the forum search function you'll find the other threads, and our (admin/aob) position on it in more detail.

A quick summary, though:

- Yes, the difference between fragile and no-dull weapons is too big. Question is if we even should have no-dulls at all? And if we do, should they really be as good as they are? If I were to redesign things from scratch I'd probably make most dulling weapons degrade a bit slower overall, and I would make sure all no-dulls are clearly worse weapons than the best dulling weapons. So, players have to choose between durability and damage. Having some weapons that are both awesome damage and no-dull makes everything else feel inferior, and that's a bit sad in my opinion. From a game design perspective I think an upgrade to dulling weapons durability and a reduction to no-dull weapons power would be good. However, if I was to go through with this I would also have to endure the hate from the player base for nerfing no-dulls, and we'll likely have many upset players who think the admin is "out to destroy their fun", so that needs to be factored in too.

- Yes, how durable a piece of equipment is should factor into the droprate I think. It probably does, today, for many items, but perhaps not for others. Droprates are set by the creator / AoB at the time of creation (and sometimes adjusted later) but a complete review of droprates for popular stuff, to see if the droprate matches the durabiklity, would probably be good. If only the day had more hours than 24...

- The droprate discussion overall is a tricky one. We have many players who say "Please upgrade spawnrate, EQ hunting sucks", and we also have other players who say "The game is flooded with awesome EQ, this sucks". Who is right? Well, I'd say both are right, and this is a hard nut to crack. Let's say we have a 5% spawnrate on a good no-dull weapon. This means you need to kill it 20 times on average to get the weapon you want. But thats an average, sometimes maybe you need to kill it 50 times, or more, if you are unlucky. That's a frustrating experience for the individual unlucky player. However, a droprate of 5% on a no-dull weapon likely means we'll flood the game with copies of that weapon relatively quickly. And that's no fun either, since then all other weapons in that category becomes pretty useless. Whenever I hear this complaint I tend to do some quick checks to see how many copies there are of some of the top-tier stuff in the game, and usually it's quite a few. And that check doesn't count logged out player's inventories either. Many players say droprates are too low and it's not worth it to hunt for EQ. Yet our top-tier stuff bosses are constantly farmed and there is never a shortage of top-tier stuff in the game. I think we should be very careful with upping droprates, because it took a long time for the game to "stabilize" after the year when EQ saved forever, and there were huge piles of all top-tier stuff in the game. Which, in my opionion, is not very fun either.

[Targun]

This has been discussed many times, and I think if you use the forum search function you'll find the other threads, and our (admin/aob) position on it in more detail.

I know about it, but one thing is they're old, the other one - there were a lot of different issues discussed in them.

Yes, the difference between fragile and no-dull weapons is too big. Question is if we even should have no-dulls at all?

I'd rather question how easy it is to get some of no-dulls. IMO, it'd be much better if current dulling weapons lasted e.g. 1/5th of non-dulls, but were guaranteed this time. A lot of good equipment just falls apart in racks from the old age, because:
1. people can't be bothered with how quickly it breaks
2. it's in racks of people who already have a top notch 3-10k plats worth imbued no-dulls.

It's an easy solution and you get a guaranteed reward for your effort.

The droprate discussion overall is a tricky one. We have many players who say "Please upgrade spawnrate, EQ hunting sucks", and we also have other players who say "The game is flooded with awesome EQ, this sucks".

It's not all one and the same category though, is it?
Weapons:
The game is flooded with great dull weapons, because - as mentioned above - they rot-away in racks. With how short they last most players will go for an average no-dull and those who can, will spend a few thousand platinum and slap an imbue of choice on it, making it comparable or better than dulls. I see best in class weapons barely reaching 150-200PC on AH and great ones (e.g. corrupted mithril, glaives, katanas) are sold for as little as 20-50PC.

Armours
Situation here is generally OK, except for cloaks. You may see a lot of flowing-ermine robes in racks, but hardly anyone uses them for regular tanking, because they offer magic resi, and you'd kill it within 5-6 hours of grind. Not a big deal, as there are plenty of alternatives, but it is annoying, how quickly you kill a cloak. There are enough platemails in the game to have a decent one, and at least a few acceptable choices for other slots.

Rings, necklaces, etc.
They break too quickly if you're a tank. Often they won't even last 50% of their lifetime.

Whenever I hear this complaint I tend to do some quick checks to see how many copies there are of some of the top-tier stuff in the game, and usually it's quite a few.

I don't think it's a very good methodology. Where do those copies reside? These might just be stockpiled by a few super big, super active players. In my opinion the question here should be: what sort of experience I'm aiming for. Say, I have a player who wants to get some good gear. How long do I expect him to grind for it, and how long it will last for him? Right now time to grind exceeds time to live and I don't think this is desired design, or is it?

When you phrase the problem like that, I think it becomes obvious why so many chars will take "whatever is there" and just roll with it. It's just not worth the effort. Makes no sense to balance the game for 6 super active, super big players. Does it really matter that a few teams of uber myths that grind 12h a day, and swoop through every boss and piece of equipment on their way, will have 20 copies at their disposal? It's not like they'll start giving it away to their competition.

Take a look on gladiators that will just go with warped rust-red cleaver, despite having v. high two-handed combat skill, AA running with studded flails and mercs with holy blades and so on. You can buy really good equipment at AH, but people often still don't bother and stick with their average no-dulls. Not to mention prime no-dulls like rust-red, azure longswords, soh, scythe, fbb and so on.

If you have a dull weapon it's constantly: "it's smith time", "oops it broke", "do you have a replacement", "no, too heavy". When you put it all together (incl. time to hunt for it), the grind time with average no-dull is a few times faster than with a great dull weapon.

This means you need to kill it 20 times on average to get the weapon you want. But thats an average, sometimes maybe you need to kill it 50 times, or more, if you are unlucky.

Now, I haven't done anything related to probability in looooong years, but unluckiness in such events is much more rare than we think. If we have 5% chance, getting at least one item in 50 tries is about 92%, for 60 it's ~96%, for 80 it's 98.5% and for 100 it's 99.5%.

In general, I'd really stop worrying about how many copies of 'X' we have. It's much more important to think, how much time it will take a casual player to actually get such gear on their own.

[zelie]

When you phrase the problem like that, I think it becomes obvious why so many chars will take "whatever is there" and just roll with it. It's just not worth the effort. Makes no sense to balance the game for 6 super active, super big players. Does it really matter that a few teams of uber myths that grind 12h a day, and swoop through every boss and piece of equipment on their way, will have 20 copies at their disposal? It's not like they'll start giving it away to their competition.

Exactly. Thanks for articulating this so clearly, Targun.

[Thalric]

I think the idea of making nod-dull weapons worse than the dulling ones is great.
You shouldn't be able to get all the awesomeness in one neat package.

[Quantum]

I think Targun makes a point in the "Who actually has the top tier weapons?". How many of them are actively being used by players and how many are locked away in a backpack by someone who will never use it? Personally I don't see the game being flooded by super items. The monks guild as a whole has maybe 2 pairs of top tier boots. Amongst all its members. We're not flooded by top tier items. We do have a collection of ok items though.

Clearly the item distribution does not mean that everyone have access to top tier items. People keep telling me I'm one of the "big myths". But I never have too much gear. I barely get a replacement in the time it takes me to wear down one item. And some days I just don't have anything good but have to rely on average stuff while I hunt for better items.

That being said, monks also have a certain number of good weapons on our shelves. In a guild where no weapons are used. I think if you removed all items in guild racks and items on characters that are not logged in, then the number of items spawned in of any given top tier item, will be fairly low.

I don't see forced re-distribution as an option. And some people just hoard items to annoy others. Could you please raise the drop rate 20% for 30 days and see what actually happens?

On a personal note I would prefer that items are always there. I wouldn't farm Lyden 24/7 to gather 100 pairs of golden gloves. Just one pair, then move on and come back in a week when they break..

[Cherek]

Just want to make one quick clarification. Me checking how many copies of some random items there are in the game is only something I sometimes do just of curiosity, and it's not very useful data. First of all, like I said above, it does not factor in anything that is in player inventories on players thare are logged out. So, likely A LOT of stuff isn't accounted for. Also, just like you say it also depends on _where_ these things are, and also in which shape they are. As many things in bad shape or with short time left tends to fill up racks and not be used.

So, me doing a quick check like that is just out of curiosity for myself, and absolutely not something we use to make any sort of decisions. For actual decisions we need to use proper data, and that is something the AoB team and/or Cotillion can dig up much better than me. What I said above was just my personal thoughts based on anecdotal evidence from doing a quick check now and then, and from playing the game myself as a player.

Overall I think all of you make some good points, and it's something for the AoB team to consider when/if they decide to revisit droprates. Currently I am very busy with the Patreon project and the racial rebalance project, so droprates is not something I currently have time to look into. Knowing how much Zizuph and Ckrik are working on too, this is probably something that needs to wait until some of the big projects we currently work on are complete. I do agree that it is something we _should_ look into, though, at somt point. One of many things, as always. If only a day had more than 24 hours...

[Quantum]

Overall I think all of you make some good points, and it's something for the AoB team to consider when/if they decide to revisit droprates.

An additional thought for if/when you have time to look at it. Would it be possible for unused items to live shorter lives? I think we can all agree that a large part of the items currently spawned into Genesis are not being used. Racks, shelves, armouries, houses, secret drop rooms, backpacks...all filled with items that prevent new ones from appearing due to the number of them already in the game. So maybe if items didn't have 90 days of life, but only 10, it would solve some of the issues? Well, maybe 20, that number is not what we need to worry about now. It's more the fact that 90 is a very large number. We still get 4 days of use, so having 90 days of wasting away unused seems like it's too high.

From a "can it be done" perspective I'm wondering if all you need is to change the base code for an items life with a new variable and job done? Maybe not start at 10, but half so 45? See what happens? If items break faster, active players can get items faster. And casuals who only play once a week might also have a chance of getting something. Like Targun said, sometimes you kill someone 100 times and nothing drops. If we could lower that to 10, the game would be more fun. Not by raising the drop rate, but by limiting the lifetime of UNUSED items.

This is idea has been sponsored by OSAMC - the Ogre Society for Additional Magic Credits. (TM)