improve early-end game

[xzo]

im whining other are whinning we all whine

you speak about decaying like a remedium (which is not) but you fail at basic stuff like trade:
existing tools are being replaced all the time. breaking tools will be only taking it tool on those who are at bottom, because they're getting older versions from trade, as it is now, good tools cricle from top trade to villages to hermits to trash. You propose a lot more trash or scam trades with end durability tools. not to say high burn for pickaxes if that happens.

durability should be well displayed on barter stands
players should have choice to buy or not to buy, but first of all should be provided with a way of having items to pay with

[Granger]

im whining other are whinning we all whine

you speak about decaying like a remedium (which is not) but you fail at basic stuff like trade:
existing tools are being replaced all the time. breaking tools will be only taking it tool on those who are at bottom, because they're getting older versions from trade, as it is now, good tools cricle from top trade to villages to hermits to trash. You propose a lot more trash or scam trades with end durability tools. not to say high burn for pickaxes if that happens.

durability should be well displayed on barter stands
players should have choice to buy or not to buy, but first of all should be provided with a way of having items to pay with

No one spoke of durability. It could as work through via reducing the quality with use, which would have the upside that obsolete (as in 'no longer good enough') tools could get traded down to less developed characters - which, at first glance, looks like a better mechanic than what you two have in mind with durabiliy. Armors, which currently is obsoleted via durability, could also get a repair option the trades quality for health (quality) to align them with what would be needed for currently eternal tools in case characters get limited in reachable numbers.

[WESKERBOY]

Decaying stuff can make a diference, mean as an hermit I fought witt the problem of starting to produce a lot, what can I do? Sell but high q stuff is better than mine so what can I do? Made mulch etc... my point is if a metal axe need to be repaired once In a while even my low Q metal can be sold, or bone or cloth, even against industrial producers that Will make sense to me, or even I should keep more stuff to maintain what I already achieved is a little solutions, Also the cap stuff is a thing in lots of mmos bug I Like improving endlesly is the base of HnH, a mechanic should be implemented to make things more far on combat but not on q items

[MooCow]

early - rework foraged items quality hard caps

A better solution to this would be completely removing quality from most local resources, like gold, they are always awesome

late game - here my idea would be to add wear on everything, tools, cloths, backpacks, capes, everything, wtf is that I can fight bear who will get my leather shoos ripped apart but wont destroy bunny slippers, come on. just add it. same on weapons, some of those items should be fixable, some not, to maintain flow of "need" you have to create "waste"

Most items effectively decay because of infinite growth. This form of decay is actually really nice because it happens naturally at whatever pace you play at. Perhaps a better resource sink would be higher Q tools require more resources.
Q 10 axe -> 1 stone
Q 100 axe -> 10 stones

High quality guiding already sink a LOT of resources

Infinite growth is bad

You always bring up a lot of good points regarding the evils of uncapped stats, but i don't think that these problems are unfixable. The current player base REALLY likes seeing 'dem big numbers, and i don't think it is inherently wrong to try and satisfy them.
With the excetion of UC, MC, and MR, the ever growing numbers adds tangibility to peoples efforts in a non-toxic arms race.

Diminishing returns are the way to go, if it would scale way differently above 500 stats then don't need catch up mechanics because it's not high

I agree.