Item Durability

[SunBroSolaire]

Crafting [the action] is a one person skill. Only one person in the party needs to have Crafting to craft items. Points in Crafting on other characters do not affect the party's ability to Craft items.

 

Therefore the best person to do the Crafting is the person who benefits the most from the reduction to the rate of Item Degradation. Likely the Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin.

Not if there are other skills that would be more beneficial to the frontliners, which seems extremely likely.

[Ondb]

I just want to answer following question?

 

1. Will it be possible to disable durability functionality from the game?

2. If not, will it be possible to easily mod the game?

 

I am 100% positive i will not be playing PE with durability on. period. If i need to wait couple of days for mod, so be it. I am ok with that..

I am really wondering who get the idea that single-player game need gold sink in first place?

 

 

[Ieo]

The topic of item durability (in this form, anyway) is closed from the update thread:

 

 

 

A few points of clarification:

 

* "Crafting" is one skill, but the crafting system uses multiple skills.  I.e., the crafting system does not rely on the existence of the Crafting skill.

* Other than reaching the edge of a map to access the world map, there is no fast-travel in PE.  That said, we will likely avoid the IWD-style 5-level dungeons without semi-regular shortcuts back to the surface (N.B.: this does not mean Skyrim-style loops).

* Most items do take up space in personal inventories!  The party Stash is unlimited, but the Pack (made of personal inventories) is not.  Crafting items (and quest items) always go into (and come out of) the Stash.  We are doing this specifically to address common complaints about crafting items cluttering the inventory.  Since crafting is typically done at camps or other non-combat locations, allowing the items to come out of the Stash doesn't seem to create any problems.

 

As I posted on SA, Crafting (the skill) and its associated subsystems (like durability) were the elements I felt least confident about in our skill system.  I strongly believe that choices within an array should give the player reasonably balanced benefits.  Because certain fundamental skills (like Stealth) can clearly benefit from multiple party members taking them and can contribute to party effectiveness in combat, I believe that other skills should do the same in their own way -- enough to make all of them appealing choices on multiple party members.  This also has the benefit of making the uses of skills much higher-frequency than the individual uses that depend on designer content (e.g. unlocking doors or gaining a dialogue/quest option).

 

As an example, Medicine in its various Fallout forms contributes to the efficacy of stimpaks.  There are many other places were Medicine can be used in quests and dialogue, but it has high-frequency use with stimpaks (in or between combats).  It's a benefit that can apply to any character who has the skill, even if a character with a higher rating in a party may be "the guy" to perform the high-difficulty actions.

 

With all of the skills other than Crafting (specifically), those high-frequency benefits/uses were easy to come by.  Crafting presented some difficulties and, as I wrote previously, I was concerned about the lack of systemic drains in the economy.  Many people have mentioned a lot of potential uses for wealth.  Most of them are great ideas and ones that we plan to use, but the vast majority of them are not systemic, rather content-dependent or scripted instances (e.g. bribes).  However, it is clear from discussions here and elsewhere that the long-term balance of the economy is not a concern for most players who voiced their opinions -- and almost certainly not in the endgame.

 

Based on discussions on the forums and conversations I had with people on the team, we will be doing the following:

 

* Removing durability as a mechanic on items.

* Removing the Crafting skill (specifically).  The crafting system and its associated mechanics will remain, as-is.

 

Ultimately, solving skill imbalance and endgame wealth abundance problems is not worth what players perceive as uninteresting and unenjoyable gameplay.  I can still solve the skill imbalance problems by removing the problem skill.  As for endgame wealth abundance, we will continue to create places for you to use wealth in the economy: unique items, the stronghold, optional quest/dialogue gates, etc.  Ultimately, if those options go unused, I'll have to trust that the majority of players won't be significantly troubled by an excess of wealth in the late game.

 

Thanks for all of your feedback.

[TrashMan]

 

My experience has tought me that your experiecne is wrong.

 

Exceptions prove the rule. Including your rule that if you hate something on principle you will ALWAYS hate it in every instance.

People change. Tastes change. Perceptions change. Even preconceptions can change.

 

You say you hate something on principle - but why does a person hate something on principle? For lack of prior positive experience.

I never said I ALWAYS hate some principle everywhere. I said I hate it in RPGs.

Jagged Alliance - tactical strategy with minor RPG elements. Arcanum, New Vegas and upcoming PE - RPG. I like to see basic human body needs in survival game, but that doesn't mean I would be happy to see them in role-playing or racing game.

I KNOW I cannot see durability in Infinity-like RPG in a positive way, regardless of implementation. For example - you hate time limits, and in the next update Obsidian states that Project Eternity will have a time limit. That is enough for you to know that you would not like it. No matter how it will be implemented it is the same time limit. Remember how Bethesda said, "Fallout will be first person shooter now, you would all like it" - and to this day a lot of people consider that Fallout 3 is just an accident, just like Master of Orion 3, Star Control 3 or Duke Nukem Forever. It's not a matter of positive experience, it's just some aspect that you can't accept in any form.

 

 

That just proves you are either exceptionally close-minded or exceptionally prejudiced.

Nothing more.

 

You dont KNOW. You THINK you know. And that very mentality only digs you deeper.

Meaning, you have created your own prison.

[Cultist]

That just proves you are either exceptionally close-minded or exceptionally prejudiced.

Nothing more.

 

You dont KNOW. You THINK you know. And that very mentality only digs you deeper.

Meaning, you have created your own prison.

"You must try everything" is a flawed philosophy. I would not try drugs because i know they will screw me. Or go to ghetto to know that being robbed and beaten is actually makes me feel bad. So yes, I think that I know. My experience is based on interaction with various durability systems in various games. SO rather than go full Dragon Age 2 and trying things a lot of people hate, Obsidian decided to stick with traditional Infinity approach.

[teknoman2]

well the way i see it, they were unsure about getting it in or not, so they put it up for public discussion to see what their publishers, us, thought about it.

[Darji]

 

You could argue that there's a cost associated with not picking up crafting for frontliners, because they take the most abuse and therefore benefit the most from better degradation rates, which is a valid point, but there is also an opportunity cost for not picking up any other skill. I seriously doubt the small amount of cash you save by having to repair your equipment less frequently is enough of a benefit that it will overshadow other skills. That is only an ancillary benefit after all, while skills like stealth, or lockpicking or whatever are actually giving your character a primary advantage. So I would conclude that it is still suboptimal to have multiple crafters in your party.

I would counter this by saying; lets assume gear uses a 100% scale. Assuming players stay on the critical path they will encounter mooks that are within +/- 1-2 levels, which means they will land 95% of their attacks. If every attack/defense degrades armor/weapons by 1 point then I feel "repairs" will become quite the frequent and expensive endeavor. Especially as player progress to more expensive gear.

 

 

That is why you should do it differently. For example only certain types of enemies will damage your weapons but then it also depends on what weapon you will use. For example a rock golem would damage or even break your sword when you will attack it with that.  Same with fire elementals and wooden staffs.  And there you could integrate the crafting skill by being able to use some special methods you can learn at a higher crafting level to reinforce or even to prevent your weapons from breaking.  Same could be applied to armor.  For example Acid attacks will damage your leather armor.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Darji

[LordCrash]

Durability should have nothing to do with money mechanics. If you need crafting+durability for that you are just unable to implement a proper working money system....

 

Imo epic/rare weapons should never be available for purchase in shops. They should always be special craftable items or items you find by exploration. That's the reason why you don't need much money at all in the game. Many RPGs use lots of money and stuff you can find everywhere. But they do it because their systems are flawed or because the are too lazy to think about other solutions and implement them properly.

 

And I'm seriously worried about the "sinking money in the stronghold" line. That's just horrible. Another sign of a flawed money/economy system imo. Why don't you make that all part of quests and relationsships? There is no need to inflate the world with cheap money just because you have no better idea how to implement epic items and things like the stronghold.

 

Just look at Assassins Creed 3 for example. You can say much about this game (I liked it though) but the village part was perfectly executed or at least the idea was properly implmented without money inflation. You gathered people and rescued them in the world and they decided to settle at your place building a village over the time. THAT'S a good way to implement a stronghold or something like it. Let it be a part of a questline. Let epic weapons be a part of the questline or part of the environment for decent explorers, like Carsomyr and Lilarcor were implemented in BG2.

 

This whole money thing makes me seriously worried and annoys me. Please think it over.

Oh, and please think durability over. Make it at least a part of a difficulty setting for people who like "realistic" mechnics....

[teknoman2]

after rereading some stuff and thinking about it a bit, i think durability was the easy way out of the dilema: how do we make crafting skills useful to characters for more than just making items now and then. and they put it in an update to see our reaction to it, to know if they can use the shortcut or come up with something more intricate

[FlintlockJazz]

Well, durability is out it seems.  Shame, while others seemed to have conjured up the presumption that when your weapon ran out of durability you'd need to immediately return to town (the penalty seemed rather small, we won't know until we see the game but for all we knew the penalty would not have warranted immediate evac from dungeon, just a sign that your character was getting tired so to speak, and only when penalties from other sources that added altogether would you consider time to leave), to me it conjured up images of adventurers getting slowly worn down, epically struggling on as their equipment no longer gleamed shiny clean.  People assumed that crafting would add a big enough bonus to 'require' all fighters to take it, but again we didn't know this, the bonus may have been great enough that it was nice to have if you had crafting anyway but not big enough to warrant taking it over another skill, but I guess we'll never know now...

[Micamo]

we won't know until we see the game but for all we knew the penalty would not have warranted immediate evac from dungeon, just a sign that your character was getting tired so to speak, and only when penalties from other sources that added altogether would you consider time to leave), to me it conjured up images of adventurers getting slowly worn down, epically struggling on as their equipment no longer gleamed shiny clean.

I have a bit of a problem with this. Having my items break and my stats take a hit doesn't make me feel worn down and desperate, it's just the DM telling me "You are very tired right now."

[FlintlockJazz]

 

we won't know until we see the game but for all we knew the penalty would not have warranted immediate evac from dungeon, just a sign that your character was getting tired so to speak, and only when penalties from other sources that added altogether would you consider time to leave), to me it conjured up images of adventurers getting slowly worn down, epically struggling on as their equipment no longer gleamed shiny clean.

I have a bit of a problem with this. Having my items break and my stats take a hit doesn't make me feel worn down and desperate, it's just the DM telling me "You are very tired right now."

 

Again, they never said that the items broke, on the contrary they said that they became damaged, that was all.  As for railroading as mentioned in your link, it's no more railroading than your DM saying "You feel dead," when your hit points run out.

[TrashMan]

 

That just proves you are either exceptionally close-minded or exceptionally prejudiced.

Nothing more.

 

You dont KNOW. You THINK you know. And that very mentality only digs you deeper.

Meaning, you have created your own prison.

"You must try everything" is a flawed philosophy. I would not try drugs because i know they will screw me. Or go to ghetto to know that being robbed and beaten is actually makes me feel bad. So yes, I think that I know. My experience is based on interaction with various durability systems in various games. SO rather than go full Dragon Age 2 and trying things a lot of people hate, Obsidian decided to stick with traditional Infinity approach.

 

 

I never said "you must try everything"

See how you are jumping to conclusions and pre-judging?

 

Ya know, there is a difference between something being proven objectively bad, and something being a subjective, psyhological issue. I told you before - you forged your own cage, and only you can break it. But you have to want to do it. And you don't.

 

[Cultist]

[Bitula]

Voted the second option. Because constraining durability to weapons, chest armour and shields is too simplistic and unrealistic. I would have liked to extend it to much more equipment and items so it would be some significant part of P.E. world. However if it is too much effort, probably better to drop it and concentrate on other features.

[Funke]

The general idea that damaged weapons are less accurate, damaged armor slows you down etc (Update #58) are good. on/off rule for this is however not natural to my opinion. I.e. loss of accuracy/speed as a function of durability is more realistic, thereby people who have the energy to sharpen their sword after every strike get some bonus from it. But the function should not be linear, maybe logistic or similar. Then, for example item with 70% durability still has e.g. 95% effectiveness. So you don't have to maintain your equipment all the time. 

 

And I would like the chance that your sword really breaks. Not sure what types of material you have, but e.g. glass sword or wooden bow could totally shatter, but iron sword could just break/bend and then you could collect the scrap metal and forge a new one with some more resources. And when some items break, e.g. flail, there could be a chance that you hurt yourself when it breaks.  

 

Some high quality or magical items could of course be indestructible, otherwise people will lose too much hair.

 

Repairing yourself or in the shop is good, of course you will have to find the balance between cost of shop-repair and time to use for self-repair.

[jethro]

All the talk got me thinking what weapon degradation system I would like. So ...

 

I would have liked a system where durability randomly goes down and there is *no* way at all to repair it. Making weapons and armour essentially long lasting consumables. Why?

 

1) It would lead to more weapons get used. Instead of finding a good weapon and doing 1/3 of the adventure with it, selling all the other equally good weapons, you would actually use 2 or 3 of them, adapting to their strenghts and weaknesses. Game Designers could place more loot stuff into the world because more of it would be used.

 

2) Excellent money sink

 

3) No management hussle (like repairing whenever in town) except that you might like to always have a spare with you.

 

4) Different strategies possible: Either always use the best weapon and look for replacements or use weaker weapon on weaker enemies and prolong like of best weapon

 

5) You could add an effect that when a weapon breaks it often does additional damage due to the splinters hitting the defender. This would diminish the danger to lose a fight just because of a breaking weapon and also create the possibility of an interesting tactic: Collect nearly broken weapons to use them in a difficult fight. 

 

Disadvantages:

1) Players with unhealthy weapon fixations ;-) won't like it

2) May lead to frustration with players who just can't see their best weapon slowly moving to obsolence. Won't be popular with players who don't like degradation at all. Probably would have to be turned off for easy or even normal play so that the game retains mass appeal.

[Lephys]

*Ponders*... I think "money sink" should always be a secondary objective of any mechanic. Just for what that's worth.

 

And three things:

 

1) Durability shouldn't ALWAYS decrease sheerly with weapon/armor use. I think it would tie into the weapons-vs-armor-types system very well. Use your sword against some plate armor... degrade your sword blade. Use a maul against plate armor... probably doesn't degrade your maul. And vice versa. If an enemy with a rapier is attacking your plate-wearing Fighter, then there's almost no way his armor's going to degrade. This actually gives you tactical means of affecting item degradation.

 

2) There needs to be some actual positive incentive range for durability. Maybe everything above 85% actually provides new bonuses/effects (like bleed damage/chance, cripple/impale chance, etc.)? Maybe weapons you buy in shops start at varying durabilities? But, when the best-case scenario for item repair is "you go to spend money to stop your stuff from sucking," there's not a whole lot the mechanic is providing to the player. Even with HP, having it be high means you can take a greater hit without dying. But there's no significant durability damage variance, so you don't even have that with durability. Add to that the fact that HP doesn't always cost money to regain. Just for comparison.

 

3) Unless you're just constantly thwacking rock walls with your blades, and diving upon jagged boulders in your plate armor (see point # 1), durability should take a while to significantly degrade. Complete item breakage, if it is included, should be QUITE rare. In fact, instead of any kind of effect simply having a chance to break an item, I'd rather see a very tiny chance for something to deal 10-times normal durability damage (like a durability critical hit). Kind of like what they did with missing. There's still a dynamic as to how well you can hit in combat now, but there's much more nuance. You're rarely going to have a 30% chance to completely miss someone, or score a critical hit. Same idea with durability, only, the numbers would be even MORE different, because the expected, abstracted frequency of you just getting your armor torn in half or your sword blade cracked in two is even lesser than the frequency with which you expect to land a critical or suffer a miss in combat.

 

And, because it was mentioned some, I got to thinking that it might be interesting for magical items to have some sort of durability. I don't think permanent, passive enchantments should lose anything (unless maybe the item breaks, but that's more because you can't wear the armor/wield the weapon anymore, feasibly, and not because the enchantment just somehow doesn't work anymore). Honestly, I think it'd be AWESOME if your sword blade snapped in half, and you could still fight with the half-a-foot jagged nub of a blade to much less effect (almost like fighting with a broken liquor bottle in a bar brawl or something, heh), and STILL have that nub deal +5 fire damage, but without your swords initial 5-10 damage or whatever (maybe it's 1-2 now?).

 

But, ACTIVE magical items (wands, staves, things with charges, or with toggleable magic effects, etc.) could suffer their own form of durability. It would be more temporary, time-sensitive durability, though. Sort of... magic focus/channeling fatigue, if you will. That staff casts Chain Lightning? Great! Maybe the first cast fires 30-damage lightning, and jumps to 6 targets. If you cast again right after that, maybe it only fires 27-damage lightning that jumps to 5 targets. And so on. However, if you wait 20 seconds (arbitrary example duration), THEN cast again, it's able to produce maximum-efficiency Chain Lightning again at 30 damage and 6 jumps. It kinda works the same way as some like... I dunno, invisibility ring. Maybe it only makes you invisible for 3 minutes, then it deactivates and goes onto a cooldown. Well, with Chain lightning, it's kind of like you're activating an effect, then immediately deactivating it.

[Hassat Hunter]

*Ponders*... I think "money sink" should always be a secondary objective of any mechanic. Just for what that's worth.

Money sink shouldn't even be secondary either in SINGLEPLAYER Roleplaying games.

 

The good developer-question would be "Well, what can we offer the player for it's money?" and then work from there to offer the player good incentives to spend it's money on those various things.

A very bad developer-question would be "Well, people got money. How do we MAKE them spend it?" (notice the complete different feel of the question). And then you get to 'goldsinks'. Which aren't made to be good incentives for player spendings.

 

It's a just a small difference in how to develop your economy in the game, but the result does influence the player alot. A game which is designed to give the player ample *choices* to spend their money on stuff would be a lot more fun to play than a game where the player is *FORCED* to spend their cash on various sinks.

 

I most certainly hope the OE-team is of the 'good kind' where they actually think well on economy and various ways to spend cash in meaningful and interesting ways that they don't have to resort to the goldsink just cause goldsink. I got worried here for a moment, but Sawyer already resolved that for me. So, currently, I have no reason to assume (yet anyway) to assume they try to make the economy the bad way (with forcing expenses on you rather than incentitives on what you can spend your cash on).

[Tagaziel]

You are my hero.

[Lephys]

Money sink shouldn't even be secondary either in SINGLEPLAYER Roleplaying games.

I actually agree with pretty much everything you said here (shortened your quote for brevity). I think what I meant by "money sink" wasn't very clear, and I really shouldn't have even used that term. I was thinking more of a very simplified definition of "something that money can be spent on." Like... the stronghold, for example. It's optional, but it was sort of being referred to as a money sink. Something that, if you so choose, is going to actually give you a use for your money, and, therefore, against the total potential income you can get throughout the game, give your money some actual strategic value.

 

In other words, I agree with the general idea that you kind of have to balance, to some degree, the income potential in a game with ways to actually use that money. If you always get 7,000,000 gold throughout the game, and there's only ever 500,000 in costs, total, throughout the game, then you've got a problem.

 

But, yeah, you really could just go the other way around: when you've got something that costs money, then balance the income potential so it's sufficient. It does get a bit tricky, though, when you've got a bunch of optional things. Because, you want a Mithril Longsword to be rare/costly, for example, but you also want there to be enough money in the game to be able to cover all the stuff you can do with a stronghold (which is probably WAY more costly than a single weapon). Well, if it's easy to get the money for the stronghold, but you don't do the stronghold, then now you've devalued the Mithril Longsword, because of the ease/potential of income.

 

So, yeah, I don't think anything should just be designed to force you to "sink" money for no other reason than to balance the "economy." But, if you zoom out and just look at the entire game, the game actually requires you to spend some amount of money to get through it. There's not a certain specific set of options you have to pick, but there is a minimum amount of expenditure involved across a range of options. So, in thinking of the things you have to spend some amount of money on, and the optional things you don't have to, but lose something for spending them on, I understand the label of something as a sort of monetary counter-weight. I think maybe "sink" is misleading, like I said, but it's kinda tricky to pinpoint this idea. At least for my feeble brain.

 

So, if something actually serves a purpose other than money balancing, then I don't really mind if it ALSO serves the purpose of money balancing. That's what I'm saying, I suppose. Once it's a secondary objective, that means another objective was already met, so that "money sink" is never going to be pointless.

[LordCrash]

They should avert "the money problem" in the first place by adjusting basic design. There should be only very limited options to get into possession of higher amount of money if at all. There simply shouldn't be an option to buy epic weapons and stuff at traders and if so only for a horrendous price you won't likely be able to pay for a single element. Spending money you get from corpses and looting on things like arrows and stuff, magical supplies and alchemistic supplies is ok.

 

But there is simply no need to give the player more money than just a few bucks to get that basic, daily life stuff. There is no need to put money in every crate and chest (it's poisoning immersion after all) or giving the player high amounts of money for quest rewards.

 

Give the players "intelligence" options to get epic stuff and upgrade the stronghold and things like that. Make them part of exploration, characters and quests. Make them connected to the world and the story and not to the need or luxury of spending insane amounts of money. That's just flawed design in the first place.

[Gnostic]

It is very simple, will it add to the fun factor in the game? If not the developers efforts are best diverted elsewhere.

 

For example a talking cursed sword that can eat / destoy some other items to gain some of their attribute literally and figuratively a double edge sword. Maybe some morning the PC will wake up and find some of his items is missing with the "acursed" sword whistling in the background, then some NPC accuse another NPC thief for theft with the cursed sword acting innocently.

 

If it is just a money sink, don't bother. What? Want to make crafting a viable skill? There are so many option like crafting can make the most badass item, or crafted items is better then the usual vendor items, or some attribute is rare enough that you can only consistently get it through crafting. For example to introduce vamparic life / mana sucking abilities in an item rare enough for the store items. You get a level 5 item in store with vamparic ability, then when you are level 9 you cannot find other vamparic items and other level 9 items are superior in stats that your vamparic level 5 items get outdated the only way to get a comparable level 9 items with vamparic is with crafting.......

Or something like attack speed, attack range, spell power.........

[Tauron]

I think some form of durability should be implemented. It would be cool if it would be shown as visible feature. Maybe gritter, dirtier look on gear.

 

If you have been questing through mountains and forrests it shows. But it doesnt have to be shown like on player except like dirt or something like that. Having it in dialogue as well. Depending on your gear you might be excluded from certain places.

 

Also I like idea that you have to take care of your stuff, becouse I feel it makes sense. I am not sure how or how much it needs to be portrayed tho. It doesnt have to be shown in % ...but depends your characters skill and some "common sense" int and wisdom i guess. Evryone can see whn iron is rusty or like worn out somewhat, few can determine how much it being 'worn out' affects it overall use.

[Kinowek]

I voted no, because I do not feel durability mechanics add anything to the game but annoyance.  I'm a little shocked the poll is even as close as it is, surely fans of past IE games would have no tolerance whatsoever for their Crom Faeyrs breaking on some gnoll's skull?

 

It isn't challenging, it isn't fun to repair your weapons/armor every X fights. It's a chore.

 

As others have said, single player games do not need gold sinks. This isn't an MMO, and theoretically we will be spending money on the Stronghold anyway?

 

If for some weird reason they actually include Durability in the final release, I will be using one of the many mods to remove durability as soon as they are available(hopefully).

 

Conversely, if somebody actually wants Durability, I am sure there will be mods for it very soon after release as well, so DO NOT WASTE TIME WORKING ON DURABILITY, Obsidian.

 

If you feel crafting isn't strong enough, improve crafting/make more recipes/more options. Do not add a game wide penalty to give crafters something to do. That cure is worse than the disease.