Tie in repairs of items to crafting skills

[Brian9824]

So I was thinking that ever since A17 when we lost the penalty for repairing items it doesn't feel the same. As soon as you get a purple item your basically set forevor with that item and don't really need any more of it ever again.

 

So what if that wasn't the case?

 

So my idea was this. Items have 6 tiers. If you can craft up to tier 4 of an item and you try to repair a Tier 5 or 6 item then it has a chance to drop a rank (or for its stat's to be lowered upon repair)

 

This could be adjusted or tweaked. Since we can only craft up to tier 5 perhaps it would only occur if your 2 tiers below? Or perhaps the penalty would be less?

 

I'm envisioning something like having a purple hunting rifle with 100 damage and upon repair the damage drops a few points permanently as its been repaired but not as good as it originally was. The bigger the difference in crafting skill compared to the item the bigger the descrease could be. This could effect more then an items damage.

 

The benefits are as follows

 

1. Creates an economy for duplicate purple items

2. Creates value in the crafter repairing items

3. Encourages you to actually develop crafting skills vs just going to trader and buying 1 of each weapon/tool and never needing another ever again.

 

Since the tools will degrade over time without the proper skill to maintan them you get a large benefit in buying one, but overtime the more you use it the more it will become damaged and your repairs just won't ever get it back to how it was originally

 

TLDR version - repairing an item above your ability to create has a chance to negatively impact the item in some way. Either via lowering its stats or tier.

[unlike them]

I better like MM's idea of adding random stats to crafted items. This way we can hope we craft a better item than we had looted, and if we failed, well, scrap it for parts and try again. And we still need to loot for parts, we cannot just make steel and craft best tools/weapons. And yes, if implemented we need to be able to craft pink tier stuff.

[Brian9824]

I better like MM's idea of adding random stats to crafted items. This way we can hope we craft a better item than we had looted, and if we failed, well, scrap it for parts and try again. And we still need to loot for parts, we cannot just make steel and craft best tools/weapons. And yes, if implemented we need to be able to craft pink tier stuff.

 

It's better but it still results in the point when you basically have the best your ever gonna get, its never gonna go down, and it makes all future items of that type worthless as your never gonna need anymore.

[unlike them]

No, you can always find/craft an item with better stats

[Brian9824]

No, you can always find/craft an item with better stats

 

Once you find that item with good stats your done. You'll never find one better because your at the maximum or close enough for it to not matter for all intents and purposes.

 

Like I was playing yesterday got quality 6 steel chest armor and a quality 6 AK.

 

Basically no chest armor or AK or really any weapon I find from now on will have any use to me as I basically have the bst i'm ever going to get. I'm level 12 on day 4. So it kinda kills the excitement.

 

Now if i knew that using those items without the skill to maintain them would slowly weaken them over time as they took damage that would add a lot of excitement.

 

Do I save them for horde night? Do I aggressively use them to go find more gear? I mean right now its just slap a repair kit and they are good as new. No risk, no loss, boring.

[SrslyGTFO]

I like the idea of field repairs vs workbench repairs along with degraded quality with repairs. I also think there should be a bigger gap of damage/performance between quality tiers. No Tier 1 should outdo a Tier 3, let alone Tier 6. Tier 1 and 2 should overlap, Tier 2 and 3 should overlap, etc., with crafted items allowing random stats too. If we want to waste tons of mats getting that sweet stat roll, why not? It's a perfect material sink.

 

 

I would love to see a penalty for allowing an item become "broken", as well as performing a field repair. Workbench repairs on an unbroken item would restore almost full health. Broken items would lose max durability by a larger amount. Performing a field repair on a unbroken item should lose a smaller amount of durability and take a short while. A field repair of a broken item should most the most durability and take the longest. If item durability drops below the minimum of a tier, have the quality drop to the next tier. This would give items a definite shelf life. A tier 1 item should eventually no longer be repaired. To counter this, I would allow the same number of mod slots on any tier, which also alleviates issues of dropping tiers with mods installed. I wouldn't even mind if the number of mod slots was random, as long as it was decoupled from tier levels. Let the tier dictate the "min-max" range of random stat quality and the durability only.

 

 

Example Damage/Tier: Min-Mid-Max

1: 10-12-14

2: 12-14-16

3: 14-16-18

4: 16-18-20

5: 18-20-22

6: 20-22-24

 

 

RNG should favor the Min to Mid range stats, with Max being rare.

 

 

No tool or weapon should last forever. Keep us looting/crafting for better gear, even once we find/craft the best gear.

[Brian9824]

No tool or weapon should last forever. Keep us looting/crafting for better gear, even once we find/craft the best gear.

 

Yep, thats exactly my thought

[meganoth]

I agree. I don't think degradation should decrease the quality level hte steps are too big and random degradation is not a "good" randomness, it is frustrating. But we have random stats that span a wide range anyway, a lvl6 weapon can be worse than a lvl4. So just decrease damage with every repair and you have small enough steps but ultimately a weapon sink

 

Tying the degradation to your own weapon skill is also an excellent idea since it further rewards you for speccing into your weapon. That early T6 find of a weapon might make you a lucky man for the moment but not for the rest of the game.

 

The only (possible) drawback is that there are weapons with very low damage that practically define the minimum degradation unless the damage value is stored internally as a floating point number (which should not be a problem, but you never know).

 

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MMs idea of random crafting stats isn't that bad, but sensible people would look at their chances and drop crafting very early in the game because their chance to craft a better weapon is so low that getting the money and buying a T6 in the store is by far the better option

[Brian9824]

I agree. I don't think degradation should decrease the quality level hte steps are too big and random degradation is not a "good" randomness, it is frustrating. But we have random stats that span a wide range anyway, a lvl6 weapon can be worse than a lvl4. So just decrease damage with every repair and you have small enough steps but ultimately a weapon sink

 

Tying the degradation to your own weapon skill is also an excellent idea since it further rewards you for speccing into your weapon. That early T6 find of a weapon might make you a lucky man for the moment but not for the rest of the game.

 

The only (possible) drawback is that there are weapons with very low damage that practically define the minimum degradation unless the damage value is stored internally as a floating point number (which should not be a problem, but you never know).

 

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MMs idea of random crafting stats isn't that bad, but sensible people would look at their chances and drop crafting very early in the game because their chance to craft a better weapon is so low that getting the money and buying a T6 in the store is by far the better option

 

Yeah but what i'm forseeing might be more then damage. A percent based decrease to 1 or multiple stats of a weapon. So it might make reloading take longer, let the gun hold 1 less bullet, etc.

 

The more of a gap between your skill and the weapon the faster it will degrade upon repair. So that purple weapon you found early will quickly get worse and worse as its repaired. Once you raise your skill in those types of weapons the degradation drops to far less upon repair.

 

Perhaps in the future with NPC's there would even be options to pay a NPC to repair your weapon/tools for you.

[Kattla]

It's better but it still results in the point when you basically have the best your ever gonna get, its never gonna go down, and it makes all future items of that type worthless as your never gonna need anymore.

 

No, tested by loading a couple grade 6 hunting rifles. Ranged damage had variations between 95 and 97. Not a lot of variation, but it's there. So we are not guaranteed the best item even if the quality level/grade is the same.

[Brian9824]

No, tested by loading a couple grade 6 hunting rifles. Ranged damage had variations between 95 and 97. Not a lot of variation, but it's there. So we are not guaranteed the best item even if the quality level/grade is the same.

 

Until you find that 97 rifle, then you do have the best damage.

[Kattla]

Until you find that 97 rifle, then you do have the best damage.

 

That we do not know, unless we check the xml file. Perhaps it would be possible to find a 99, or 100.

[Dragonsblade71uk]

I just had a similar thought, but more too do with durability and repairing.

So the idea, is that as the durability goes down, then there is an increasing chance for the item to break. This would then require items to repair fully (Maybe ,more repair kits, or forged iron etc...), or maybe even craft a whole new item.

so the range could be like 1-5% for durability starting at 50% down to 0%. A 1% chance per 10% lost. Maybe this could also be tied to crafting level, and would reduce the chance by 1% per level.

The other thought, is that under a certain Durability it would require more repair kits, or that there is a chance to fail the repair. Something like they have with the lockpicking.

[Jihh]

I don't like degrading items due to one single reason: When I'm finally able to twoshot stone with my pickaxe, I don't want to go back to threeshot it and thus taking 50% longer for mining, just because my pickaxe overshot the treshhold by one point. For me it would ruin my fun quite a bit.

[Dimpy]

From a game design perspective basing repair skill on the weapon specialization makes a lot of sense. Makes specialization less about which weapon type does the most damage and more about what weapon type can you use the most reliably.

 

Since we can only craft up to tier 5 perhaps it would only occur if your 2 tiers below?

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This.

 

 

I say handle the degradation deterministically. No random degradation; either you have the skill to repair it without damage or you don't. If a repair will cause degradation, tell the player ahead of time exactly how the stats will change.

[Brian9824]

From a game design perspective basing repair skill on the weapon specialization makes a lOr perhaps the penalty would be less?ot of sense. Makes specialization less about which weapon type does the most damage and more about what weapon type can you use the most reliably.

 

 

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This.

 

 

I say handle the degradation deterministically. No random degradation; either you have the skill to repair it without damage or you don't. If a repair will cause degradation, tell the player ahead of time exactly how the stats will change.

 

Honestly personally I want some form of always degradation, but I also know that's not the norm and I like a harder experience. So i think simply linking it to the crafting is a good compromise

[Dimpy]

Honestly personally I want some form of always degradation, but I also know that's not the norm and I like a harder experience. So i think simply linking it to the crafting is a good compromise

 

Yeah, I liked that when it was a thing too, but that was because it worked in conjunction with other things that don't exist anymore. It used to be that low durability would decrease tool effectiveness, so repairs would still always have a positve net effect on stats even if the quality went down. It's also just less intuitive to have granular degradation now that the quality levels aren't granular.

[stample]

I like the idea of field repairs vs workbench repairs. But don't affect damage or stats, just durability. And make it pretty significant, because of how high the durability goes on many items now.

 

If you want to field repair your rifle in the middle of horde night, make it take 20% CURRENT max durability (ignoring Structural Brace or other things that may affect). If durability was 500, make it 400. If its 400, go to 320, etc. It'll eventually need repairs often enough that it'll need replaced, unless you're diligent about using workbenches.

 

There are many frustrating things in this game. But none beat doing 249 dmg / swing to stone blocks. Don't degrade damage!

[Brian9824]

Hopefully with the change in that we can no longer craft purple items anymore something like this gets addressed. Otherwise there is no point in investing in most of the crafting skills.

[Dimpy]

Hopefully with the change in that we can no longer craft purple items anymore something like this gets addressed. Otherwise there is no point in investing in most of the crafting skills.

 

The impression I got from the dev diary is they aren't even supposed to be "crafting skills". It's intended to be a tool proficiency, with the item crafting as a contingency for being screwed by RNG.