Tailor Archive
Thread: Clothing decay
Seems to me the easiest form of decay should be the same as in life. Color fade. Put a time based delay on clothing, at certain intervals the item will fade more and more until it becomes a plain grey. I have no idea what should happen from there or should happen to clothes that already grey...Most players have shunned grey clothes so they'd probably seek a replacement
Trust me, I agree with you 100%. A lot of patches to into play for warriors and the support roles behind them (Notice most of the patch today was all Commandos, WS changes to support Commandos and, of course, CH's).
I have bugs with my image design abilities that I don't expect to see fixed anytime soon. Combat Medics STILL need THIRTEEN identical BECs for Ranged Stim E if I recall correctly. There are numerous issues with many of the non combat classes.
I nearly fell over dead when I saw a long list of Ranger changes today. I never thought I'd see that.
Basically if you're not shooting people or supporting the shooters, you're left out in the cold with regards to changes...At least that's how it seems to me.
Thea
Master Image Designer
At one point in Beta, I remember the devs were wanting to add "mini-games" to increase the fun factor. Repair and experimentation were, from what I understand, designed to be just that. And I used to get a little jolt each time I saw that "amazing success" message, even though it never affected my end product.What's left for fun now? Without some way to alter the "stats" of our clothes, the concept of one tailor's "quality" being higher than another is useless. We can change the item names to "brand" our clothes, but why even bother?
As for the decay-upon-incap idea, a couple others have mentioned that there are lots of players whonever venture to places where they would be incapped. Entertainers stick to cantinas, and many crafters (including myself) stick to cities or unofficial player towns. Since launch, I've been incapped less than a dozen times because I skirt aroundred mobson the rare occasions I'm out in the wild. Entertainers, in particular, are major clothing customers but if they never get incapped, our market with them will eventually tank because they'll still have the same fleshwrap they had three months ago. If I recall, in Beta people didn't so much have a problem with time-based decay as they had with the fact that the things continued to decay even when they weren't in game.
Holo...
I was in beta, I had no problem with items decaying. It's annoying to log in and find something gone but there is an easy fix to that...expecially for things like furnature...
Send out a Email (like we get when a factory finishes producing) that saysY item fell apart in X person's house. (X being the owner). That way the people know why their items disappeared. Maybe even have 2 messages. One when the item hits 10% that warns the person that Y item is looking abit old and needs to be replaced soon. Then later the message that the item fell apart. (Furnature is in use if it's in a house...therefore it's 'usage' decay).
Clothing should have usage decay, for when the person is wearing it. Yes it doesn't make sense that an item in your inventory will disappear when you don't use it.Clothingcould also include the two messages.
Ialso wish there was a filter/option for what mail we get or don't get. (I would love to not get the messagesall the time/when on vacation that aretelling me something sold, or something didn't sold, etc...)
Anneke Rose (Tailor of Naritus)
YukonSam wrote:We argued against time-based decay in Beta because it applied to EVERYTHING -- items in your pack, items in your bank, items in your house. It was a bad idea badly implemented.
I don't recall that anybody had an issue with USAGE-based decay, which is what we expected to be implemented for clothing. We had one stat that we could experiment on, durability. We had clothing repair tools. We were all geared up for a usage-decay system to be introduced. We didn't catch that it was obsolete (like, for instance, the whole factory system obviously is since the removal of the Industrialist).
So we get this crazy curve ball of everything going away, and maybe we'll get a decay system in the future -- but only for people who get incapped a lot. Hell, with bottom feeding as prevailant as it is, that doesn't even cover most fighters.
Thanks for standing up and addressing the mob, Holo, but I don't think anyone's putting down the torches and pitchforks just yet. The alternatives should have been ready to go before the 'obsolete' props that were giving us some hope were taken away.
I'll back you up with this. In beta we were against logging out for a 2 week vacation, coming back, and having everything gone from your character. We repeatedly stated that use based decay should be in.
Holocron wrote:
Raea wrote:Just because it hasn't worked since beta doesn't mean it should be removed rather than fixed!
You misunderstand me, I think... It's not that it doesn't work. It's that players hated it during beta. You'd log in and find that some of your inventory was just gone. You'd check your bank and find that some of that stuff was gone. You'd visit your house, and find that some of the furniture was gone... you get the idea. It was time-based decay.
It seems that you guys know that there needs to be some sort of decay, but you don't want to make people unhappy. I was not involved in the beta, but maybe things decayed a little too fast. I would personally hate it if my clothes, armor, weapons, furniture etc. decayed in a matter of days. It would really stink if when I was trying to craft something, my materials and components decayed faster than I could make them. I don't think that is what anyone is asking for, though. I think that something on the order of months is reasonable, even longer if the clothes are maintained well. Maybe cheap battle clothes shouldn't last so long since there would be a lot of wear and tear on them. Most people would fight in a combination of armor and basic artisan level clothes anyway. I don't think people would complain too much about having to replace a 150 credit shirt fairly often.
Anyway, the point is that I don't think people would hate time based decay so much if it was balanced properly.
"This is also why there is no UXP for clothing (UXP is currently granted only for items that decay, such as weapons and armor, or for consumables). "
Um we do get UXP for clothing, it's weapons that don't get UXP, armor I don't know. But before I hit master I constantly got little boosts of exp anywhere from 1 to 50at random intervals (like 2 to 10 minutes apart) while not doing any crafting or running my factory. I assumed this was UXP at work, or was it just the exp fairy helping me along?
"Our current thinking for clothing decay is the death idea I floated in a thread yesterday. Basically, all items in inventory or equipped (including clothing) would suffer some damage when you get incapped, unless they were insured."
Truthfully that won't help us much at all, the majority ofour customersare dancers and crafters, whorarely engage in combatand get the majority of their deaths from wanting a quick trip back to town. A great deal of clothing is also stored away in houses to swap around as people like, top all that off with clothing repair tools andwith the decay you suggest you'd rarely see any clothing actually be destroyed because ofdecay.
Perhaps instead of decaying we could get fading? IE. After wearing a piece of clothing fora week (played time) the color on it will start to fade from the original color? The clothing would still be wearable but it wouldn't look exactly as originally purchased, the customer could live with this or throw it away/sell it off and buy new. This I know would help considering the glut of black colored items out there...
Holocron wrote:
We don't have usage-based decay on many things because there's no real "usage" of them. We could theoretically implement something like a time-based decay only when being worn, or something, but that covers only clothing and leaves out all the other types of items that suffer from the same problem (furniture needs decay just as badly as clothes do, for example).
I agree that the death solution isn't a comprehensive one. We may end up having to do specific solutions for every item type in the end.
I think that hits it on the nail-head right there. There is no end-all, be-all solution for decay so each item type will have to decay by its own given set of rules. Clothing from wearing, weapons from using, armor from getting hit, etc.
Will be better to just start on that path then trying to find some genericsolution that really won't cut it.
Possible short-term measure:
Port the armorcrafting experimentation system over to clothing, kit and kaboodle. Give clothing very minor protective abilities (we don't want to replace armor, we just needa basis to work from). That gives us a foundation for SOME uxp and some turnover, along with a small incentive to experiment and use good materials.
This would serve as a stopgap until a more comprehensive system can be implemented... which, given current priorities, could take several months.
Holocron wrote:
Raea wrote:Just because it hasn't worked since beta doesn't mean it should be removed rather than fixed!
You misunderstand me, I think... It's not that it doesn't work. It's that players hated it during beta. You'd log in and find that some of your inventory was just gone. You'd check your bank and find that some of that stuff was gone. You'd visit your house, and find that some of the furniture was gone... you get the idea. It was time-based decay.We don't have usage-based decay on many things because there's no real "usage" of them. We could theoretically implement something like a time-based decay only when being worn, or something, but that covers only clothing and leaves out all the other types of items that suffer from the same problem (furniture needs decay just as badly as clothes do, for example).
I agree that the death solution isn't a comprehensive one. We may end up having to do specific solutions for every item type in the end.
There are several items that are "used" but never decay Holocron why is that?
Examples
Crafting Tools
Survey Tools
Crafting Stations
There are also a lot of items that have an effect on things that do not reflect those changes when examined. This hurts secondary markets and people trying to supply high end crafting components to other crafters. In particular this hurts novices who may be able to make certain novice level items for masters.
All of the electronics (control units, microsensor suites etc)
Cloth
The removal of all experimentation to clothing also has nerfed armorsmiths. Instead of being able to buy high end cloth from tailors now they can only get base level cloth. Of course it is not like they could ID the cloth anyway since it is just like electronics, no examinable value number.
So this one change
- Destroyed the morale of tailors who are praying for something to ensure long term health in their profession.
- Ruined one area of tailoring that could make some $$, supplying high end cloth to armorsmiths.
- noted the change in the patch notes using the worst possible wording further confusing and distressing players.
I have a question too, during beta did you have a number on the clothing that counted down or did it just poof? ie like a weapon could I id clothing and other items to see how much time I had left? Also is what people thought in beta relavant now? I mean we are in a much bigger game with a whole different economy going on and a lot better understanding I think why things should decay over time.
Also why do things have to poof? Simply make them unwearable and note the reason why. Then they can be repaired or replaced.
Could it be that the problem was not that people did not like decay, it is that your implementation of clothing decay sucked?
As someone already mentioned:
armor decay fuels the player economy because you either have to buy a kit to fix (which I hear doesn't work), or you have to buy new armor. Do players like it? Probably not, but the armorsmiths sure as fire do.
weapon decay fuels the player economy becaus you either have to buy a kit to fix or you have to buy a new weapon. Do players like it? Probably not, but the weaponsmiths sure as fire do.
clothing decay is non-existant. The irony is that I can build clothing repair kits? Why? I don't know...to waste resources I guess. Do players like it? Unknown..you say, "No" using whatever "unofficial" polling you performed as the answer. Do tailors like it?
Er..obviously no. Why should tailors be subject to different restrictions than armorsmiths and weaponsmiths? How do you geta gun out of the database? You either blow it up while trying to repair it, or it eventually destroys itself from usage. Same with armor. Clothing...uh..you get my point.
Usage decay...not time based decay...not death based decay....USAGE DECAY.