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BDCKoolaid

Are damage and decay strong enough to sustain a healthy economy?

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Just thought I'd pick the forum brains a little bit and see what everyone thought about damage from use and general decay of items in game. I apologize if this has been gone over a thousand times, but I don't think I've seen anyone discuss how damage/decay can play a role in this.

 

So to set the stage:

 

An abandoned boat, depending on quality, can lay and rot for a year or more before it's finally removed from the game.

Obviously, this is a problem for the health of the economy because, as any shipbuilder can tell you, once a player buys a ship, with reasonable care of it, they will never need another one for the remainder of their time in wurm. As this plays out over the long term, shipbuilders produce more boats than new players buy and we end up with an excess of boats at a much higher average quality at that. This excess of supply and lack of demand drives the prices down to a level that hurts existing shipbuilders and discourages new shipbuilders from entering the market.

 

This same vicious cycle occurs with several different markets in wurm. Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Animal Husbandry, Farming, and the list goes on.

 

Now, the punchline:

 

The simplest solution I can come up with for this problem that doesn't require a huge overhaul of existing meta and game mechanics is to heavily increase the strength and speed of decay of items as well as damage done to items through use. Not going to give an opinion on how on deed and off deed should play into that.

 

So, examples:

Let a boat that's been abandoned off deed completely decay in somewhere between 1 week and 3 months depending on quality.

I think abandoned buildings/off deed buildings could be a range of 2 weeks to 6 months depending on quality.

I think weapons are in a fine state as far as damage from fighting. Same with shields

I feel like tool damage rates need to be increased as well, but I'm not sure if a 2x damage rate may even be too extreme.

I also feel like the decay of enchants on tools and weapons is in a good place right now. I'm not interested in ruining good weapons and tools attributes, just wearing down their quality/moving them closer to poofing more quickly. The idea being to make keeping things from disappearing to require more active effort and by extension, allowing items that no longer have someone actively caring for them to disappear much more quickly than they do now.

 

Without getting too lost in the weeds, I think that increased damage and decay could help move items out of the game at a faster rate that could keep up slightly better with the rate at which they enter the game, allowing for a more active and healthy economy.

 

RMT has been a great start in my opinion to recovering the Wurm economy and I think such a change may be a great 2nd step in that direction.

 

So please, blast away with the praise and criticisms 😁😁

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This could give the economy another push and I've been trying to think of negative effects this could have but I can't think of any.

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Define “abandoned boat.” Is my boat on other side of server off deed abandoned or only if I don’t log in?

 

Also are those abandoned boats really impacting the economy? I guess if a player returns after a break long enough without maintaining a deed, but that seems like a small amount. Maybe increase damage while sailing, to buff market on re-imping ships? And maybe add some sort of consumable, like you can push your boat harder, but it might need some sort of supplies to maintain (extra rigging or whatever).  

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3 minutes ago, LionIX said:

Define “abandoned boat.” Is my boat on other side of server off deed abandoned or only if I don’t log in?

 

Also are those abandoned boats really impacting the economy? I guess if a player returns after a break long enough without maintaining a deed, but that seems like a small amount. Maybe increase damage while sailing, to buff market on re-imping ships? And maybe add some sort of consumable, like you can push your boat harder, but it might need some sort of supplies to maintain (extra rigging or whatever).  

I like where you're going with increased damage on sailing.

I think you bring up a good point on what defines abandoned, and I think the main pro to having them decay is to get them out of the way for active players to enjoy wurm without it being cluttered by the debris of players who aren't even around anymore. As for the example of your boat on another server off deed, I think the effect to you, a still active player, would be that the boat decays a few points of damage between visits and you have to pay to reimp it or reimp it yourself. Either way is a win considering the goal of buffing decay for those types of things.

 

And I dislike the idea of adding some new thing to the game that doesn't currently exist, such as a consumable boating item. I think that runs the risk of getting away from the spirit of what wurm is as a game.

 

Awesome feedback though, tbh.

Edited by BDCKoolaid
Added in the part about your boat decaying still being relevant
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Fair enough, damage/improving is basically an analogue for generic consumption. 

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i like the idea on freedom, youre right the economy needs a boost. On chaos i disagree and it shouldnt be added there finding an 8 year old item is a treasure there. i cant count the unfinished pickaxe etc i can find. i lockpicked a JBERG boat that was 7 years old and i love the thing,.

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Just for the sake of the thread, this is a question and discussion, not a suggestion and discussion, right? Before this gets moved to suggestions and buried under requests for weird stuff

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2 minutes ago, Beastwolf said:

i lockpicked a JBERG boat that was 7 years old and i love the thing,.

 

I'm totally okay with having different rules for chaos, but the fact that that's even possible is the HEART of the problem with boats lol

 

Was it off deed the majority of that time? Is it really possible for a boat to last that long in the wild?

 

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i don't think increasing chores for the sake of the economy is a good idea, that's about all i can say on increasing damage taken.

 

decay is wonky when nobody is in local so thats probably why the chaos boats still exist

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8 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

i don't think increasing chores for the sake of the economy is a good idea, that's about all i can say on increasing damage taken.

 

simply that

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Ah?  But I'll chime in as a priest who CANNOT improve his items.

Where do I stand in this economy?  Surely I'd be disadvantaged heavily, unless cast decay drastically increased so I can offset the need to repair my tools more often?

 

I can see your logic: "less high level items in circulation, money moves as new items are purchased", however it's missing a crucial point in terms of priests.

 

Without hitting enchants, you're not going to do that; you'd have to actually properly balance priests for PvE, something still a long way off.

 

Your only options, as I see it, in that scenario would be to either damage items that are the product of extreme RNG persistence (a bad idea), make improving require magic (a bad idea), let priests improve (a bad idea), or add in a bunch of new content for priests that is linked to consumable items (a good idea, but extremely dev-time heavy).

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14 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

i don't think increasing chores for the sake of the economy is a good idea, that's about all i can say on increasing damage taken.

 

True, for some it's "increased chores", but for others it's "increased business" for sellers, which is what I'd hope to accomplish with the change.

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4 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

Ah?  But I'll chime in as a priest who CANNOT improve his items.

Where do I stand in this economy?  Surely I'd be disadvantaged heavily, unless cast decay drastically increased so I can offset the need to repair my tools more often?

 

You make an excellent point that I completely ignored coming from the perspective that priests are most often alts for a player with a crafter main. I won't even begin to try to think up a way to incorporate priests into this, but I agree that it's something that should be addressed.

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26 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

decay is wonky when nobody is in local so thats probably why the chaos boats still exist

still waiting on my med rug issue being fixed so I can continue my 100 grind :(

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I like giving boat economy a boost. They're fun to build, but aren't worth anything anymore.

 

So here's an idea, instead of the boats taking damage and dealing with decay, we go off of the mooring anchor and winds. If the winds are at gale force, let them move a boat a tiny bit every so often. If the boat is moored while a gale is happening then the moor takes an extra tick or 2 of dmg. Eventually the mooring anchors would break and the boat would be set free to move with strong winds. As more time passes these loose boats may even find their way to the server border at which time they cross to chaos.

 

Makes anchors more important, would add openings to the boat market, also adds some more immersion by seeing boats slowing moving across servers if abandoned, and it would give chaos players new toys to abuse.

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+1, ive been thinking about this since i remember.

wurm economy suffer from big amounts of items that are gonna be there forever

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28 minutes ago, Polojordan said:

I like giving boat economy a boost. They're fun to build, but aren't worth anything anymore.

 

So here's an idea, instead of the boats taking damage and dealing with decay, we go off of the mooring anchor and winds. If the winds are at gale force, let them move a boat a tiny bit every so often. If the boat is moored while a gale is happening then the moor takes an extra tick or 2 of dmg. Eventually the mooring anchors would break and the boat would be set free to move with strong winds. As more time passes these loose boats may even find their way to the server border at which time they cross to chaos.

 

Makes anchors more important, would add openings to the boat market, also adds some more immersion by seeing boats slowing moving across servers if abandoned, and it would give chaos players new toys to abuse.

+1

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While increasing damage on items would be a slight pain, I understand the idea behind it. 

One thought I just had is what if there was a secondary damage number on items that cannot be repaired that VERY slowly increases as standard damage is repaired on it? Say, .1 increase for every 10 damage repaired. As this number climbs, the item becomes harder to imp, or becomes less effective at its job? I mean, you can only fix something irl so many times until it's just better to replace it. This would eventually drive someone to replace their tools and items, but keeps the standard damage rate as it is now.

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14 minutes ago, Jore said:

While increasing damage on items would be a slight pain, I understand the idea behind it. 

One thought I just had is what if there was a secondary damage number on items that cannot be repaired that VERY slowly increases as standard damage is repaired on it? Say, .1 increase for every 10 damage repaired. As this number climbs, the item becomes harder to imp, or becomes less effective at its job? I mean, you can only fix something irl so many times until it's just better to replace it. This would eventually drive someone to replace their tools and items, but keeps the standard damage rate as it is now.

 

Sounds very based in reality and probably a good system, but I think it would A) Get away from the spirit of wurm and B. Be very development and workload intensive.

 

Probably not something we could reasonably ask or expect to be implemented.

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4 hours of chopping veggies = about 25 points of damage on my knife. Double the damage taken on tools/items and I'll be sitting at 50 points after 4 hours of use, depending on the tool's material. Can't you see an issue with this? People who spend countless hours imping would be out of tools in but a couple of sessions. I don't know about you but with the amount of grind we are forced to endure due to game design, this doesn't seem viable to me. I rather not spend 50% of my play time imping my own tools so I can do tasks to begin with.

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3 minutes ago, Angelklaine said:

4 hours of chopping veggies = about 25 points of damage on my knife. Double the damage taken on tools/items and I'll be sitting at 50 points after 4 hours of use, depending on the tool's material. Can't you see an issue with this? People who spend countless hours imping would be out of tools in but a couple of sessions. I don't know about you but with the amount of grind we are forced to endure due to game design, this doesn't seem viable to me. I rather not spend 50% of my play time imping my own tools so I can do tasks to begin with.

 

2 hours ago, BDCKoolaid said:

I feel like tool damage rates need to be increased as well, but I'm not sure if a 2x damage rate may even be too extreme.

 

our reading comprehension is almost as bad as our grasp of the law of supply and demand.

 

And after further thought, I think after 4 straight hours of chopping vegetables, you have amassed a metric ton of chopped veggie. Having 50 damage on a knife, which seems like a lower ql knife to me tbh, seems like a very balanced trade off for the sheer amount of chopped vegetables you produced.

Edited by BDCKoolaid
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Just now, BDCKoolaid said:

 

 

our reading comprehension is almost as bad as our grasp of the law of supply and demand.

Since it seems that the grasp of the concept escapes you, let me make it a bit more clear, and thus easier to understand. Sometimes I forget not everyone has the same critical thinking skills.

 

Increasing decay is one thing, but increasing damage is another. Damage is taken by action and its drastically different in relation to how its used. A hammer with no WoA has a longer imp time and thus takes less damage during the same period of time than a WoA 100 knife chopping veggies. It takes you 30 minutes or less for a troll to destroy a skiller shield (about 50ql?)  with current damage. Give or take. And lets not even talk about weapons and armor. After a day hunting I got several pieces of armor deep into the red, requiring me to constantly imp them to keep them in good shape.

 

I am against anybody touching the damage rates. It will throw tools and imping out of whack and will certainly piss a lot of people off when they find that they have to be tied to their forges just to keep their tools from crumbling to dust so you can make a couple more silver? Yeah no thanks. It is right just the way it is.

 

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Decay is another matter entirely. Somewhere around C-25 on Xanadu is a Mol Rehan wagon floating in the water. That wagon has been there since before I started playing the game back in 2016. That's 4+ years a wagon has been floating on the water without its owner ever reclaiming it. You can see the same with plenty of boats hidden away in mines on Chaos, and junk littered all around Freedom. 

 

The decay issue could be corrected by slightly increasing decay to off deed items. Once someone's deed drops, items should start to progressively recieve decay if left outside a building off deed. When these two conditions are true, increased decay should kick in that it gets exponentially worse each week the item is off deed (or some other arbitrary time amount) until the item is destroyed. This should of course apply at a lesser degree to vehicles (such as boats or carts). You can further reset the decay rate if the item is repaired. 

 

There is no reason why items off deed should be eternal. This would be a good way to reduce the amount of items that are just abandoned and a great reason for people to live on deed.

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Starts talking about weapon and armor damage rates when I say in the OP that I think those rates are just fine...

 

https://wompampsupport.azureedge.net/fetchimage?siteId=7575&v=2&jpgQuality=100&width=700&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F024%2F196%2Fsign.jpg

Edited by BDCKoolaid
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2 minutes ago, BDCKoolaid said:

Starts talking about weapon and armor damage rates when I say in the OP that I think those rates are just fine...

 

https://wompampsupport.azureedge.net/fetchimage?siteId=7575&v=2&jpgQuality=100&width=700&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F024%2F196%2Fsign.jpg

You're no the only one posting in the forum bud. Got any more smart### remarks? Very constructive for the thread.

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