First of all I would like to thank staff and especially nezmar for the great game; it is well organized not to flashy and quite simple.

Now for my feedback on the new repair code. In my opinion I think it would be bad for the game. My reasons are as followed.

1. It takes over 100 kills to get something to load sometimes. Why bother even loading if along the way you are going to lose items and have to reload those and probably lose more doing that.

2. Warriors are at a disadvantage they do most of the tanking and will lose the most gear doing so. I have already heard one warrior say I will not tank unless someone pays me big.

3. Mages and clerics are now at a big advantage they need no warrior to tank they just use zombies and charmies.

4. This will hinders groups since the tank of the group will probably not want to tank for risk of losing gear.

5. This will cause more hoarding since people will know that an item might not last long and will want back ups.

Thanks for reading and keep up the good work!


Nusa

As much as I don't want to say it, I agree. Perhaps increasing load rate slightly and load capacity, it would even out the situation. It would give people incentive to go out and kill things. Another idea is perhaps you don't take permanent damage to an item if you get it repaired at the blacksmith. Lower the price it takes to repair some of the higher level things, because 20000 coins is quite pricey for an item that is rather hard to load.

I for one have to agree this new code will have a big negative impact on the game.
As far as i can tell it would cause more of the hording of items and after all were having an item wipe so we get rid of that very problem introducing this type of code will only make that problem come back in full force. And and stated above would cause serious issues with loading gear. Hell im a cleric and started a mage and i for one appreciate it when i have a tank to help load gear but if they get damaged equipment and it goes beyond repair who's going to help load gear now...... well i think its a bad idea and thats my 2 cents but again my cents don't add up all the time so just thought you'd like to know my opinion on the matter


On another note Ive noticed people saying things about finding ore before a repair can be made what about magic mending I already noticed this beyond repair on a misty cloud of magic i haven't noticed on anything else currently. And isnt that why we pay such a dear price to get items repaired at blacksmiths cause they have the required materials on hand. For those fix it them self kinda folk yes finding ore each time or some sort of material would seam appropriate but would need to be a common item and load alot or have a shop set up for just selling materials. would work to.

I am still leaning towards what the ? in my head on this new code it dont seam like a logical fix at all but would love to hear staffs side of it. I do believe you will see less people inclined to want to participate in playing when it takes so much time to get the items and would take so little time to lose em.....It would make me want to play less if i had to worry about my gear constantly instead of worring about trying to have a good time playing dl as i always have.

Thank you Nusa for the information on the new unfixeable code or whatever it’s called. I didn’t see a post about it on ideas or anything so I’ll assume this has been behind the scenes and recently implemented. I’d like to hear from staff their thoughts on why this would be a good code for items. I understand it’ll give more people chances to load it if and when it scraps, but who is to say that the person who loads it will never use it?

Nusa has a centaur breastplate he’s passing around for everyone to look at and notice this new code. Sucks for him because
he had to trade some pretty nice items to get a hold of this. I know because he traded me for it. So now he’s wearing a servants smock, which is also damaged, but he doesn’t dare fix it because we don’t know if it has the fix until unfixeable code on it.
I’ve got a wrist chain, that gets hit all the time because it’s armor rating is low and now I can fix it so no big deal. Good stats for a cleric like me, but does that mean I’m out of luck in about 10 more hits/fixes?

I’d like to know more about this code, what it does, staff reasoning. I makes sense that you can’t just keep fixing and fixing and fixing an item unless you add something to it. Like more adamantium. Maybe it’s time to think about adding ore into DL. Lots of other games have it. To repair something, you have to have that ore in your inventory along with holding a hammer and having an anvil nearby. Hrm, then you’ve got more problems with weight and ore. If the ore is made too heavy, no one will carry it around except for those who have portable holes. Time to make a shop where we can purchase ore, thread, etc from, oh, I’m smart… It’ll put more money into the game too.

There’s my solution. If you’re going to do the unrepairable timer to items, make it that once it hits that unrepairable mark, you have to fix it with some ore. This would put it back to however many times you can hammer out dents, or sew it until it hits that mark again.
I agree with loads rates, up the load rates and lower the prices in the blacksmith.

I would agree that without some form of middle-ground (such as requiring the player to find ore each time on a repair, as gydin suggested), this would only encourage players to participate less in the game.

Currently there a number of very useful items that are both difficult to come by and low on durability. If it takes a month of casual effort to acquire such an item and it gets damaged very frequently (i.e. in nearly every battle with any NPC over a certain level), this piece of equipment will be destroyed maybe only a few days of wearing it.

Does it sound reasonable to make something extremely difficult to obtain yet set to only survive a handful of tough encounters? This does not describe every item of course, but there are many that fit this situation. Even with increased load rate, it would only mean further repetitive and grinding game time. I recognize the need to circulate items, but this does not seem to be a balanced solution.

I know World of Warcraft uses a system where particular items cannot be transfered to other players. Maybe a system that puts the owner with only the choice to tithe the item instead of passing it on or selling it would give players more control over when their hard earned items must return to the system.

Actually, I -agree- with the code. I'm not sure of the mechanics of how it works (I haven't looked at the code recently) but I've written something like this before.

**THIS MAY NOT BE HOW IT WORKS, SO DO NOT ASSUME THIS IS HOW IT WORKS**

The way it worked when I wrote the code was that each time you repair something, there's a chance that you will screw something up. This chance is rolled with a combination of luck, dexterity, intelligence and your proficiency with the repair skill (and if the item is metallic, then the associated metallurgy skill.) There were semi-random messages that would display if you screwed something up. For example:

As you strike a steel breastplate, the metal fractures from stress.
(this could be from a bad luck roll)
You hit a steel breastplate a lot harder than you should, damaging the metal.
(bad skill roll - perhaps combination of armory and metallurgy)
You fracture a pair of glasses as you attempt to melt the glass into place.
(bad luck and dexterity rolls... maybe bad skill roll)

There was about a 10% chance that the calculation code would even run, and THEN at least one of the rolls had to fail, so there was about a 5% chance the item would actually be damaged.

My reasoning for developing that code (THAT IS NOT IN THE GAME) comes from my real world experience in metalworking. You can heat, bend and form a sheet of metal, but the more you heat and mold it, the weaker it gets. Take a steel car fender for example (back when car bodies were actually made of metal...) If someone hits your car and dents the fender pretty bad, you generally have two options: 1) Repair the damage, or 2) Replace the fender. If you repair the fender, that normally involves heating and hammering the metal enough to the point where it's smooth again. Each time you bend metal, it causes stress that can lead to a fracture. If you don't understand or don't believe me, do an experiment: Take a thin piece of metal, for example a radio antenna. Bend it at some point (it doesn't matter where.) Now bend it upright to how it was. Repeat this a few times and watch the metal fracture from stress. Whether it's a dinky little radio antenna or a thick breastplate, it's all made of metal. It's all subject to the same physics, but the thickness, grade and type of metal is mostly what determines its strength and durability.

If there was the skill "Oxy-Acetylene Torch Cutting", I'd probably be at "Well Skilled". Given that I don't have full mastery, I'm still subject to screwing up. If I take that torch and try to burn through, say, a 3" round steel pipe, and slip up, I'll damage the pipe. Maybe I missed my mark somewhere and cut at a weird angle instead of straight through. If there was the skill "Stick Welding", I'd also be at "Well Skilled". If I don't run a bead as well as I should, the weld would be really crappy and my work would probably break during use.

You get the point.

I endorse the idea of the new repair code, but since I don't know the current implementation, I can't be for or against it.

The item lifespan code limits the number of times an item can be fixed/repaired. When it is exceeded, you simply can't repair the item in question (there is a message indicating that it can't be repaired and if you can see the item's condition, you can also see if an item is at the end of its lifespan) . It can be changed on a per item basis so if something is out of balance we can adjust it. Keep in mind, this was applied to over 5,000 unique (existing) items in the game. There are bound to be some things out of balance, if so it needs adjustment. Please mail me about individual cases.

Unless everything is out of whack (it is difficult to judge the true impact of these changes without having players observe them) and the entire system needs adjustment... anyone think it is that bad? Is the problem most items or just some?

The system has quite a bit of flexibility in it, I think we probably just need to find the right adjustment points. I chose this over the system Vulsin proposed above (which is also a good solution) because I felt players would have a less negative reaction to it. (The theory being that they'd rather see that an item is about to expire rather than having it just scrap on them when they pay to fix it.)

Best regards,

--Nezmar

It can be hard to see which items get hit alot. for me i have 6 items that get hit on a daily basis 2 of those items are beyond repair. And the others are not to far behind it. I also would like too add another negative side. When you reach a certain level it's hard to get experince unless you kill big mobs. and big mobs equal crushed eq.

I know there is some adjustment to be made but to be completely honest i think this new code is a bad idea.

I'm sorry to bash the new code but in my mind there is too many negativies out weighting the positives.

Nusa

I didn't want to post right away because I wanted to let the idea of the new code sink in a little and absorb what other people said about it before I jumped to a conclusion. After giving it a think - through I stand kind of in the middle with the new code... I definitely don't think it should stay as is, it really needs some tweaking as it creates an imbalance in the game at the moment. I play a variety of classes and as a player I think I understand balance fairly well, my cleric and mage are completely unaffected with this new code what so ever. My fighter class, the cavalier not so lucky.

At first I thought it was being a little embelished that people wouldn't want to tank for fear of putting their equipment beyond repair, it's really not, people want to fight big monsters less. I feel it now too, I don't want to tank big monsters for people that I would have in a heartbeat before this new code was implemented. New players won't be affected in the slightest by this code, but long standing players won't want to fight challenging monsters at high levels anymore with this new code leaving them with nothing to do. Do we really as a player base want to leave our long standing players with nothing to do? I don't see how this new code helps or benefits the game, I do see how it adds an element of realism as Vulsin commented but as far as I'm concerned this is a fantasy role playing game, does realism really have to be that important?

Well after my rant, i suppose it's kind of clear i'm leaning towards not in favour of the new code, but with upgrades I do think I would accept it, the iron ore suggestions I thought were great, the only other thing I can think of is a time limit on the beyond repair status of an item or perhaps a master blacksmith being able to remove the beyond repair status on an item for a fee. Maybe if the beyond repair status on an item lasted a few days or a week at the most and then went away? I think that could work. As far as the code goes now, it makes people want to fight less, and keep their valuable items locked away from being scrapped instead of used as they should be. Playing with fun items and killing big monsters is really what draws me to this game

Arioka

First, I'd like to say I don't consider your's or Nusa's posts to be rants. They are fairly well thought out critical posts. (I do wish they could have been more constructive.) At this point, what I'm most interested in is what would make the system better. The changes in the system were primarily added to help cycle equipment in the game (and we'd actually hoped to de-value equipment some, that is to say, make it easier to get, it sounds like people are saying we've actually managed to do the exact opposite of that) as well as add a touch of realism. So part of the idea is just that we know the game revolves around equipment too much (and admittedly it doesn't seem to be helping this issue, yet, see below).

I understand the system needs further adjustment, we'll do it. Now. Help me figure out what that adjustment is... I'm not ready to give up on the new code completely yet.

What if we made the lifespan (length of "fixability") based upon actual time instead of damage? (That might also discourage hoarding of items.) It would likely remain variable like it is now, but perhaps lifespan should be limited to a number of game months (or something) versus number of times it gets smashed? So essentially once an item had been in existence for x months, it would become unfixable. That would also affect everyone equally. I'm likely that idea more and more...

Any other thoughts on this? Thanks for all the participation.

Best regards,

--Nezmar

Well I was going to wait awhile longer to post a reply to to Nezmars and the rest of the post's after mine...However some disturbing conversations have been brewing about that concerns me a great deal. I am here allot i admit probably to much for my own good but i hear things going around that others are not going to post about this cause there just going to leave if dl continues to become like every other mudd out there. (Do understand please that these are not my words.) These conversations i have over heard are coming from some of our committed player base, as well as our new player base. And there not just stemming from this new code either its coming from all of it from the new code just implemented to the item wipe.

I love this game the way it is, hence the four plus years ive dedicated to it and i welcome change if it is beneficial. Hence i voted in favor of the item wipe. I however and a good fraction of your player base do not agree with the new code and do not wish for the change. However having said that i will repeat something i have stated in a previous reply on another topic. And that is, it is Nezmars game and if he wants to change something it is up to him to do so with or with out players permission. Even at the cost to his current player base im sure Distant lands continue to attract more and more different players.

Just a quick comment on the whole items with time limits on them. I really have to say i tried a mudd that had time limits on items and people were constantly losing backpacks and other things like that then would go to the equivalent of the fountain and drop all there stuff and quit game just like that. I personally think gear is fine the way it is it is something else that needs tweaked not sure what that would be but i can say its not gear. In my personal opinion. Maybe load rates or item rarity... is it that big of a deal if pc's have an item someone else does? maybe make the mobs as done in the past bigger with the better items on them...Im not sure i just know that allot of people are saying there going to leave this game. Another hit to player base could make it from 5-10 players on to 0-5. I dont want this to happen.

Currently I have no solution to how to tweak this code to balance the game back out except remove it entirely. I really don't want to lose players here at dl as im sure neither does anyone else. Hate me all you want for these comments but I just wanted to let staff know what the word on the streets of turien is......

Here is a thought instead of killing items why couldnt we implement a code that would limit the number of a each item to each player. So attach houses to players consignment included and items to players. so say every player on your account can not have more than 2 of any item in the game sept food. This would put a dead stop to any hording and would still allow for game play to continue on its normal coarse with out killing items with a unrepairable code. I would think you would have less a negative reaction from players and items would then be able to be circulated more evenly per rarity and load rate. Just a thought.

sincerely,
Clea

Ok i do agree that the way the new code is at the moment it will not be of any help. As Nezmar said all he needs is suggesstions and it is not set in stone so im not moaning here what so ever.

In my opinion this gear thing is to stop hoardeing eq but at the moment i do not see hordeing as a problem the players that play now share and give gear to people that need it. As some have said making equipment beyond repair will just stop people from giving away spare eq. Also a time limit on eq could be even worse it is really like a eq purge every 3 months so you work hard for 3 months lose all your eq and someone that logs on once every month loads it with little work so here is a suggestion. As clea said maybe a limit on the number of a certain item you can have. And maybe as the player base grows just increase item limits and then gear will not be a problem. Maybe even staff could look at people that just log on once a month and if you do not log on lets say for at least 2 hours a month you get a warning and if this continues your char could lose there gear. this may not be a good suggestion but could solve the inactive hoarding.

Thanks
Qutin.

I'm not to sure i agree with this part there are some people who have to go no purge for various lengths of times sometimes a year or more. And it is not there fault life happens. And if the code for limiting items per charictor is implemented there wouldn't be a need to purge people equipment that are inactive. Just my thoughts on that one part of your post is all.

sincerely,
Clea

Thanks for all the input, in the end, I think we will be keeping the new system but effectively disabling part of it for a period of time. I've decided to go ahead and essentially reset all the items in the world to an "unlimited" lifespan (essentially creating the same status we had before the change) until we are able to create some mechanisms for "resetting" the lifespan of an item (such as with additional material for the item and/or use of skills).

We will retain (and may utilize) the ability change specific items to have a limited lifespan.

People repeatedly bring up item rarity as a way to help fix this issue and we actually did have (significant) changes in item rarity (for most items) at the same time this change was put in, just that nobody has likely had the opportunity to notice yet.

Best regards to all,

--Nezmar

P.S. The change described in this post has already been made in the live game.

Oh, just wanted to add a few more comments regarding the new code.

I really REALLY love the new voted command It's such a perk and an easy way to remind people to vote and when they can vote. Can't believe we've gone without for such a long time. One of the best new commands I've seen in a long time.

Also thought the toss and flip command is GREAT! Rolling dice, flipping coins, such an easy command to implement and such a fun one to play with. Easy to make decisions, who tanks, who does what, who attacks first, who leads the group, lol. Really like the new ideas pouring in and hope they keep on coming.

Also thought I'd put in another word on the one on one arena showdowns! I posted about it a long while back and I know you had a lot of code set aside for it with terrains and things, just wondering if it's remotely close to being finished? I still think it would totally add a new element to the game... I would challenge Eracules over and over again until he got sick of killing me, lol.

That brings me to another thing, I was wondering if it would be difficult to possibly add PC's to a player's kills list? I just really really think it would be fun having players on a kills list after whipping them in an arena or something like that. You can tell I'm a fan of competition and player vs player atmosphere I just think it would be a fun friendly way to add more to the game.

Lastly, level progression I think is something I was hoping could be addressed in the game... I spent a little while browsing over the "avatars" on the hall of fame... my god there's so few left but there are so many on the hall of fame. There's such a large number of avatars that have purged, permied, left, and ya I mean that's happen but there's nobody taking their places which is really starting to make the game difficult. New players are definitely needed and I'm glad the websites are drawing in more and more people but I think it might be time to add a new way of title levels to the game perhaps? The staff side may not quite agree on this but I would still like to throw my ideas out here because I do know you guys read and listen as shown by Nezmar with this thread

What I propose is perhaps an automated quest system. More or less the same as a task, but add more elements to it and require a minimum of 5 quest ready players grouped before the task can be started. Also perhaps another restriction could be one character cannot embark on a quest level task more than once every two real time months. Gathering 5 quest ready players is difficult in itself plus with the two month limitation I think it would remain sufficiently difficult and not easily attained title avatar levels. Clearly it's not easy to gain title avatar levels and while this idea might make it a little quicker, i think it would relieve a burden on staff members pressured to take on quests and still stay difficult to progress but not impossible.

Well I know this would be a lot of code to implement, and it's easy to offer ideas rather than code it but I'm hoping this will catch some interest. Please let me know how you feel about these ideas, constructive criticism, easy pitfalls, adding a little more to, anything goes Love to hear what the rest of the player/staff base thinks.

Alysandir