expiring weapons

[Nut]

Hi to all,

when playing I normally use flagstone pride and seldom change weapons.
I tried other things, but I have 2 favourite combinations of weapon/armour/rings/... and seldom think about it any more.
Why should I change? Flagstone Pride is a really good weapon, and I earned it costly.

But - what if it could get damaged?
This would be totally different. If using items have a certain chance to get them bad, or even break them totally - oh dear!

Bad weapons would give less attack points, broken weapons couldn't be used at all.
This would be nearer to reality and certainly I would think more often about which equipment to use.

So I came to think about a wear down mechanism for weapons.
The chance for this could be really small. Just the possibility of loosing such a worthy item would make me think twice if it is really necessary for simple fights.
Worn down items may be repaired again for gold, e.g. swords in a smithy. But broken items would be lost totally.

And maybe other things too? The rings for example could loose their power slowly when worn. Why not even the RolS? (Hard, I know )

Programming this might not be that difficult, if you can't sell broken things, and worn down items can just be sold at low price, so that re-bying it again has a repair service included...
So only the items in active inventory need to have a status value. Just important to distinguish several equal items.

It is not thought to end, but what do you think of this?

[Tomcat]

Diablo series had a weapon wear down feature, but you can pay an armorer to repair them periodically. If we have old weapons that can't be repaired, we would need a lot more powerful weapons!

[Voom]

I don't know, it is a realistic idea. However, I have always been annoyed with repairing equipment in any game. Honestly, it does not add to the fun for me. Instead of taking away from equipment, we should do more to give to them. Maybe there should two types of equipment: amateur and standard. Amateur equipment is transitional and standard equipment is upgradeable.

To be honest, I don't think any of this is the intent of Oskar. I think all it has to be is an adventure with a well coordinated and balanced equipment and weapon system and combat. Nothing fancy.

[Tomcat]

Agreed on this being an unnecessarily complicating idea

[Nut]

I have always been annoyed with repairing equipment in any game.

Oh yes, there could be many annoying routine work, (like having to eat as well). And I am glad that such things are minimized in AT.

So this wear down mechanism should be very rare chance indeed. (Maybe even legendary )
Just the - however small - possibility that it might break, let me hold my favourate weapons more in honour and be proud of it.
Rather irrational, yes. It is more a psychologic effect without really extra routine work for the players.

unnecessarily complicating

Do you think, wear down is too complicate? Would a mere break chance be better? (legendary seldom, of course...)

[Voom]

Could you describe the psychological effect

[Nedeh]

Well,integrity status,
Since the game isn't finished there might be materials to of course fix it,
With a skill of course.
Ah, that reminds me of NEO scavangrt

[Nut]

I remember reading an article about probability, where people should decide between a small but 100% loss and a much higher loss with <1% probability. And most people take the sure loss.
But if both decisions are with risk (I don't remember the values, maybe 95% small loss or 1% high loss), many more people take the second choice.

Unfortunately I don't remember the source. The best link I find is
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory (Example)

It is not totally the case here with damaged weapons, but I read of it: people tends to overweigh small risks. So a however small risk to loose my beloved weapon makes me think twice when to use it.

[Voom]

That's an interesting effect. If this is the case, how would it get implemented? I like the idea where you can use materials to fix equipment. Have a local blacksmith.

[Nut]

how to implement? Maybe something like this:

- after attacking do this for every worn item with attack attribute (weapons, rings, shoes, ...):
if random value < x % then item wears down.

- the same with defensive items on defending

- x% could be fix, or better be a special new attribute for each item, but with a standard value e.g. 0.1% if not set explicitely.
Thus some items may never break, others may break after first use.

- to implement wear down you first have to define the effect:
1. just bring a message and take item from inventory. This is easiest, but I wouln't like it.

2. switch item to a corresponding item, like "balanced steel sword" to "broken balanced steel sword". Here the attack bonus would be 0, price is reduced. Game logic wouldn't be further affected.

3. Implement an extra attribute wear down state.
This could be a % value, so that items might slowly get worse.
But this means that this attribute is not only for the item, but the instance itself. you can not just put a damaged weapon to inventory and mix it with other weapons.
This would be the most programming work of the three. But gives most possibilities like implementing repairing service. (what is already disliked)