Current thread: Mythic forums > General > grumbling hard
|
| Author | Message |
9/12/2012 9:54:00 AM | (8) water caster attacks the wrong target by mistake.
(8) water caster [acid squirt] hits kill party with bow for 2 damage.
(8) kill party with bow's cheap shoes has been destroyed.
(8) kill party with bow's twine bracelet has been destroyed.
(8) kill party with bow's kobold wizard's rat-gut bracelet has been destroyed.
(8) kill party with bow's wooden belt buckle has been destroyed.
(8) kill party with bow's cheap cotton gloves has been destroyed.
The creature i had targetted was not in any combat, and lost about 2/3rds the items the character had on them. It has seemed recently the game is bad to breaking items every other round. It is ok if the item breaking code doesnt work. Im sure alot of people will agree. |
Legion
9/12/2012 1:41:38 PM | Acid damage is the hardest on items. Please check the durability of the items that were destroyed. You will see that they all had durability of 1 (pretty sure at least). There is virtually no chance a durability=1 item will stand up to an acid attack.
To tell a related story, I was looking at market valuations of items compared to the formulaic "base value" of items. The base value VERY highly takes durability into account but it was clear that most players will not pay for higher durability.
Usuing a combination of market drop rates and purchasing rates I can assign every item a "desirability score" which helps me identify when things are priced poorly. For example, if something drops all the time yet still sells out even at high price multiples that is an indicator that the item is high sought after at that price and its base value might be too low. Or if it rarely is added to the market, yet there is a huge glut of them for sale even at cheap prices, then no one likes it at that price and the base value might be too high. Obviously there are item-specific reasons some things are more or less desirable, so I created this score to be able to look at hundreds or thousands of items at a time to try to spot meaningful trends. For example if I see that any item with "fire resistance" has a high desirability at its current price, regardless of the item type or other attributes, it is clear I undervalued "fire resistance" as a multiplier for base value and it needs to be increased.
Wow, this post is getting long :)
The point is, that desirability score is godo at spotting trends even if its not always great for spotting specific items inconsistencies. And one of the trends I have spotted is that durability is not valued by players nearly as highly as I thought it "should be" when setting base values.
For example, if you look at the "spear" vs. the "quality spear." They are identical in every way except the quality spear is 4x more durable. So if you carry 3 "quality spears" or 12 "spears" you should get the same number of attacks out of each one before they all break. Of course, when one breaks you lose turns re-equipping, and carrying 12 vs 3 is a lot of added encumberance, plus more items to break in area attacks, so obviously there is a huge advantage to a character having 3 quality ones vs 12 regular ones. So, I would expect the price for a quality spear to be a lot higher than just 4x the price.
The base value reflects this. 303 vs 45. So for 4x durability you pay 6.7x the price, which I thought was reasonable. The other relevant info is that a spears have a drop rate 50% higher than quality spears. So, if the base price was perfectly indicative of perceived customer value, there should be 50% more spears on the market. Checking the market I see that spears sell for 45 (base value) with 110+ available. Quality spears sell for 273 (10% discount) and even so 240+ are on the market. btw -- drops are related to the amount people spend too. Spears are cheaper, so more players are in that price range, and that is considered too. More expensive items like the quality spear drop a LOT less often than a regular spear even before the +50% weighting of the spear, so you would expect there would be FAR fewer of them. The point is, that even people who can afford quality spears are not buying them, they are buying regular spears instead even though they break 4x as often. This is reflected in the desirability score. A spear has a resonable score of 52 while a quality spear is very low at 22. Same comparison can be made with the "heavy spear" vs "quality heavy spear". Desirability is 89 for the heavy spear (really high! everyone loves these) and 31 for the quality version.
You can even look at the "light spear" vs "short spear" for another good illustration. They are almost the same item. The short spear is 33% more durable, and the light spear is 33% faster. I know people value speed and not durability, but look at the prices. For two items that are more or less the same the light spear goes for 29 coins while its more durable cousin the short spear cost only 16! Desirability scores are light spear: 47, short spear: 24.
Anyway, the reason I even started in on this is to say that obviously people don't think durability is as important as I expected them to. Thats fine, I can adjust prices if I feel like it to place a higher cost premium on other attributes (like speed) and less on durability to get items priced more how the player community values them. That was the whole point of creating that score. It was just a nice coincidence that you posted this the next day, since it is a perfect illustration of how people don't always appreciate that durability plays a major role in how long your items will last. I know that in this case those were likely all looted items not purchased ones. I do the same thing, my level 1 characters (even level 2 often) are head-to-toe equipped with low durability loot items. Its the only way to go, since who has money to spend on gear at that level? But the item-breaking-code is working correctly. Those are junk items which are meant to break basically every time they are hit, particularly by acid or other elemental effects. Carry backup weapons and when you start buying things at higher levels, pay attention to durability if you don't like them breaking a lot.
footnote: I think a lot of the reasons that higher level players are happy buying cheap breakable stuff instead of expensive durable stuff is that with crafting magic, the cheaper stuff is pretty easy to repair. This makes a lot of sense, and is further evidence that I probably need to place less of a base value premium on durability and more on other attributes instead. |
9/12/2012 10:27:29 PM | I think people buy the cheaper stuff since it seems things break alot no matter the durability, and its easier and cheaper to buy 2 or more cheap items, instead of the one high priced unit and have it break :) |
10/3/2012 5:57:41 PM | (5) fighter 0 attacks the wrong target by mistake.
(5) fighter 0 [55% d12 : crystal two handed club] pounds fighter 7's neck for 10 damage.
(5) fighter 7's canvas collar has been destroyed.
Sheesh. love when you lose items on a party memeber inflicted wound. |