Repairing crafted items - Idea #838

SibattiSibatti Mamba dur NayaAmidst vibrant flora and trees
edited October 2017 in Idea Box
Last night I had a weird dream that we could do this in Aetolia, and I woke up realizing it wasn't in the game and desperately wanted it to be so.

EDIT: There is a relic already for this, but after doing a cursory search on Ads, Auction Wares, and all five city directories I was unable to locate a single piece. I like the idea of the repair kit but it's not currently at the level of availability I'd like (I could see myself going through 2-3 repair kits in a single month). If this were boosted, or available outside of a random chance whenever relics are in cycle, it would maybe help solve this problem.

I'd REALLY like it if tradeskill crafted items (not mercantile) could be repaired, and their durability extended. I totally get the reason why we don't have items with infinite durability - it's important for a server load standpoint as well as economical. If you only had to buy one pair of clothes the rest of your life, no one would ever make money as a Tailor.

But for some items, the durability length doesn't make as much sense. A well-made item in woodworking, in all reality, could last over a hundred years. Right now, my character has a house full of furniture that she has to completely replace every couple of in-game years - which means the craftsmanship on the item is on par or worse than cheap IKEA particleboard furniture. There are other examples, too: jewelry with sturdy and high quality metals, statues, etc.

What I'd like to propose is a repair system for tradeskill crafted materials - namely woodcrafting, tailoring, furniture, jewelcraft. I don't think it could be too terribly tedious to implement, but would provide leaps and bounds in terms of satisfaction and enjoyment. Right now, the only way to preserve items of sentimental value is to either pay 50cr (40cr for varnish) or stick them in a non-decaying container, neither of which are very sustainable long-term or to scale.

Having these items decay would be really sad - some of the "treasures" Sibatti keeps are from people who no longer play, for example. In addition, I'm really in love with the idea of having a house full of curios and antiques, items that have been around for decades or longer. It adds a ton of flavor and personality - let me be a crazy cat lady full of weird stuff in my house!

I could see this being accomplished in a few different ways:

Option 1: Give a Transcendent crafter of the skillset the ability to perform the verb REPAIR (or something similar, as I think that verb is already in use) on an item. This would use up 100% of the base crafting commodities of the item type and restore it to full durability.

This would provide some additional prestige to being a Transcendent crafter, as the current perks aren't super amazing and many people stop investing lessons at Expert (the level in which you can make your own designs). This additionally has the benefit of creating more interaction between players in an increasingly-isolated player experience - we look for handymen and repairmen in real life to help us out and there's a definite service provided there.

Since the base crafting commodities for all items are based off an original template, there's no finickiness around trying to account for a hundred different recipes used to craft an item. If I were going to repair an armchair, for example, any armchair will always be 7x wood and 2x cloth, the base crafting costs for the item.

Option 2: Make a "repair kit" item that can be created by a tradeskill user somewhere around Virtuoso or Mythical. This would allow a consumer to buy the repair kit and then use it themselves on the item using the above example. This option is less interaction, but more convenience for the consumer. The repair kits could even be broken down further into "jewelry repair kit," "furniture repair kit" etc. to account for the differences in the tradeskill's primary commodity.

Option 3: If neither of the above options are feasible, at least give us the option to extend the original item's durability by a factor of X when the item is originally crafted. It would simply use the number of commodities multiplied by X.


The idea here is not to disrupt economical factors too much - if I really like an item, I'd really like to keep it but still keep the gold flowing to crafters for the privilege of keeping an item around longer.

Please let me know your thoughts! If there's sufficient chatter around this idea, it's more likely to gain traction. Also, IDEASUPPORT 838 if you agree!
NolaZailaTekiasMykellah

Comments

  • RhyotRhyot Bloodloch
    The only issue I see is something you've already stated. It ruins any sort of affordability to have any sort of craft. Tailor, woodworking, jewelcrafting, etc. It all becomes so mundane that it becomes a non-issue.

    If anyone can go out and just buy a repair kit, or just buy the comms to repair it, or even extend times.... it ruins crafting as a whole. The idea behind crafting is that there are always new designs filtering out old designs and old designs going the way of archival because they weren't kept up. This also encourages player interaction because when your entire house's furniture goes poof, you now have to walk around and talk with people to refurnish it. Spending gold on their furniture instead of just keeping everything as is.

    While I love the idea (not for myself, I just think its a nifty idea)... if this were any other game, I'd promote it. But because it's Aetolia and the admins are wanting to increase player interactions, I don't feel this would help push that agenda to do so.


  • MykellahMykellah Enorian
    edited October 2017
    The common way to fix this is to have durability values, and make each repair reduce the maximum durability each time. It's a fairly simple system and it usually works, as long as the max durability doesn't end up so high that it may as well not be there or so low that there's no point in repairing it.

    W/r/t the interaction thing, I would just make repair require you to have the skill, or have someone present who possesses it. I probably wouldn't want to see repair kits, or if we did they would be significantly less of a repair quality than having someone with the skill use them.

    As regards house furniture, ehhh, Item Features exist, and I intend to abuse that to its fullest (pls no kill I @tiur )
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