Item decay for returning players

Kedlin

I’ll start by saying this. I like the idea of decay, it’s necessary to drive a player market for weapons and armour and affects other parts of the economy in game. I get why we have it and I get why we need it. 
That said, I stopped playing Starmourn some time in January, I’m now feeling the pull to return and logged into my B.E.A.S.T to find I had around 7k marks, no clothing, no armour and some heavily beat up weapons. I know this isn’t world shattering, but it’s an added stress for someone who just wants to get back into the game. After dropping my 7k on three pieces of armour about 20 levels too low and heading out into a zone 10 levels too low and subsequently dying just to find myself in debt to HETE when I could be tracking down some cool roleplay or flying my ship has put me in a mood. Anyways, i digress. What I wanted to suggest was maybe a grace period on Armour decay for inactive players, IIRC Midkemia Online had something similar, whereby if a character didn’t log in for 2 real life weeks, decay would stop at that point and resume on return. This would be fantastic. Another suggestion could be that decaying stops maybe 7 real life days before destruction, giving a returning player one weeks grace to kit up, so to speak. 
Thanks for your time,
Kedlin

Cubey

Armor in npc shops is overpriced. There's also little difference between protection values armor offers until level 70+ so feel free to buy cheap crap from basic newbie stores at Omni just to have something to wear. It honestly doesn't make a difference (unlike weapons which should always be as close to your level as possible) - you died not because your armor was crap but because beast pve rotation changed a lot and you probably used an old one that's not effective anymore.

Ask players around to get info for the new rotation. Celestine and Song are reasonably up to date with it.

Kedlin

Backhand and Wristblade with routed to small. I probably do need to relearn most of everything though.

Nykara

Backhand boosts minigun now; tear boosts wristblade


That being said, strong opinions to come...

Kedlin

I think even with all that said and done, a little grace on decay wouldn’t be a bad thing imho.

Kirin

Possibly stop decay of items if person doesn’t log in for more than 2 weeks. Of course seconds abuse becomes a thing 

Kedlin

Kirin said:

Possibly stop decay of items if person doesn’t log in for more than 2 weeks. Of course seconds abuse becomes a thing 

It shouldn’t affect seconds as it would only apply to equipped items and those are genelocked.

Matlkael

That brings up another good idea! If the decay is stopped for players who don't log in for 2 weeks (or some other threshold), have the non-decay effect only apply to genelocked items. This is so that there aren't players who suddenly pop up carrying loads of good gear that they can then sell off.

Nykara

Even then I don't think that is healthy for the game. The need to cycle equipment is very serious and real, and any ability to prevent decay is not good. That being said, a simple command to spawn some low-range equipment for your class/level that can't be sold for very much, in order to be able to bash up some good equipment, would be awesome for various reasons. Only usable once every 90(ish?) days, etc etc, could be great for returning players. 

Kirin

Nykara said:

Even then I don't think that is healthy for the game. The need to cycle equipment is very serious and real, and any ability to prevent decay is not good. That being said, a simple command to spawn some low-range equipment for your class/level that can't be sold for very much, in order to be able to bash up some good equipment, would be awesome for various reasons. Only usable once every 90(ish?) days, etc etc, could be great for returning players. 

Issue with spawning new stuff is that things like mods equipped would be lost. 

Nykara

Kirin said:

Nykara said:

Even then I don't think that is healthy for the game. The need to cycle equipment is very serious and real, and any ability to prevent decay is not good. That being said, a simple command to spawn some low-range equipment for your class/level that can't be sold for very much, in order to be able to bash up some good equipment, would be awesome for various reasons. Only usable once every 90(ish?) days, etc etc, could be great for returning players. 

Issue with spawning new stuff is that things like mods equipped would be lost. 

Yeah, exactly. 
That's the point.

Pink_Candyfloss

The whole point around this idea is you aren't penalized for spending time away from the game. It is already rough getting back into the swing of things after all the sweeping changes that happen in the game.

If all your equipped gear stopped decaying after 14 days of inactivity, this would allow you to come back fully equipped and continue where you left off. I fail to see how this can be abused because the gear is bound to the character wearing it and decay will start again as soon as you log in. It doesn't affect the economy in any way because that player has been completely out of the equation during their time away, they haven't been generating marks, haven't been using or generating supplies.

Cubey

I don't think spawning low level equipment would solve this problem. Armor doesn't matter a lot - the difference between low level and no armor is about 7-10% depending on your weight class, which is also fittingly enough the difference between level 1 and 70 armor. This is a disadvantageous difference but not one that is so big that it breaks the game for you. You can farm some cash or armor drops even when not wearing any, it will be a little slower than usual (more breaks for healing) but relatively painless.

On the other hand, weapon power matters *a lot*. In my experience damage is proportional to weapon power so if you're high level, a low level weapon won't cut it. The time to kill is simply too slow and it's likely you won't be able to outdamage level appropriate mobs either. If you want some numbers, level 1 weapons have around 4k power while endgame ones are over 9000.

BEASTs and Furies can get around this because they have attacks that are dependant only on level and not gear. These attacks are inferior to normal mobbing rotations but still better than nothing, and better than trying to hunt with an underlevelled weapon too. Perhaps the solution here is to introduce similar basic, non-gear dependant attacks for other classes?

Also, in general I have an impression that unlike other IRE games, where you have a piece of gear crafted and then it serves you forever, being repaired in the meantime as necessary, in Starmourn all gear is meant to be transient. You use a weapon or piece of armor and then replace it. Even if you are at the level cap, gear will still decay and there is no way to repair it - and that's how things are supposed to be. Losing your equipment is an inevitability, and it's part of the game design.

But on the other hand, gear doesn't decay when it's in player shops so it wouldn't hurt if it doesn't decay when in equipment of inactive player characters, either.

Nykara

I feel like I wasn't exactly clear here: I don't mean spawning low-level armor/weapons, I mean spawning low-end equipment and weapons AT your level. So like 14.5% across the board for light armor, 9000 power weapon (at level 75) for example. 

Otherwise I actually agree with you @Cubey, sort of. I feel like inactive player equipment not decaying means that people who aren't actively playing can pop in once in a while with a super set of gear and do some wild shit, then bounce again. It removes the transience, it breaks the flow entirely. I say this as someone who left for a while and came back and lost some really good equipment just after popping back around, too: yeah, it was annoying, but also it's the way the game is designed. We're not supposed to have our Good Shit forever, we're supposed to work for it.