Quality decay - slow down quality grind

[ErdTod]

Hello!
I was lurking through "World reset requests" topic, and saw the post that said:

There's nothing exciting about upgrading your axe to q50 or finding q40 forageables when you can get q200 stuff for two q10 iron bars.

(For full quote see the topic)

I agree with that, and would like to propose a partial solution: quality decay mechanic.
- Every time a tool/weapon is used - it chips off small portion of it's quality, or has a chance to do so.
- Every time a station is used - same, it either very slowly drains the quality of the station linearly, or has a chance to tic a quality decrease.
That would reduce the ability to sell used tools, ultimately slowing down global quality progression, as well as give additional sink to high quality materials, and overall making hq stuff maintenance a bigger pain in the ass, as we all love punishing mechanics - this is what this game is about in the first place.

- The longer a tree/a station/a crop is left unattended - the faster it loses quality. This way abandoned bases late world wouldn't be a "skip" of content for a newer player, who'll still need to grow his own trees rather than just getting q500 spruce from nearest ruins.
- The longer an item exists in a container/inventory - the faster its quality loss. Imagine rusting, spoiling, rot etc. - but we're talking quite slow, though speed may vary from item to item (i.e. food spoils much faster than a tool, some items might not spoil at all)

This is a way to introduce a reason to still do one of the key things to do in this game - quality grind - if you join late world. Also could be an additional mechanic for credos - i.e. decrease the chance for quality decrease of professional tools. An active claim may slow down quality decay, while absence of such would mean rather quick decay.

[Fostik]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc

Any kind of tool/weapon wear is the most undesired thing by players ever proposed in game

See nothing wrong in joining late worlds, this is online game and community achievements and inventions are shared and available for newbies. Regarding ability to buy 200+ stone axe - it was a good mechanic driven by metal spiralling (which is no more exist) that allowed developing players to catch up with top players, and have an in game economy built on valued resource everyone needs.

This is a way to introduce a reason to still do one of the key things to do in this game - quality grind - if you join late world. Also could be an additional mechanic for credos - i.e. decrease the chance for quality decrease of professional tools. An active claim may slow down quality decay, while absence of such would mean rather quick decay.

And it's not, putting an extremely large efforts in something would not pay off (metal critting, searching for crazy big qualities etc)

[ErdTod]

What do you think about offclaim quality decay, i.e. for trees?

[sMartins]

I proposed the same time ago ... yeah nobody agree with tools wear and quality decay, Jorb too.

I can partially understand that, punishing players for playing is not typical a wise choice .... tho, other than what you mentioned, it would also improve trading a lot ... and that was what I was more interested into.
An high demand of weapons and tools and so on in the market.

[VDZ]

This is a way to introduce a reason to still do one of the key things to do in this game - quality grind - if you join late world.

See nothing wrong in joining late worlds, this is online game and community achievements and inventions are shared and available for newbies. Regarding ability to buy 200+ stone axe - it was a good mechanic driven by metal spiralling (which is no more exist) that allowed developing players to catch up with top players, and have an in game economy built on valued resource everyone needs.

The impact is far greater than just no longer be able to upgrade your tool qualities. For example:

• Why would you forage at all if for any forageable you could find, a better equivalent is readily available at a market or abandoned base?
• Why would you mine at all if metals of every type, and of qualities you can't hope to reach, are readily available at markets?
• Why would you hunt at all if the gear you could make with the hides and the food you can make with the meat pale in comparison to what is already readily available?

And so on, and so forth. Many activities are rendered futile by advanced world progression, and the only things giving real value anymore are a) Acquiring whatever is in demand to sell it on markets, and b) Exploring to find abandoned settlements to scavenge stuff from (may also end up worthless if markets are good enough).

I agree with that, and would like to propose a partial solution: quality decay mechanic.
- Every time a tool/weapon is used - it chips off small portion of it's quality, or has a chance to do so.
- Every time a station is used - same, it either very slowly drains the quality of the station linearly, or has a chance to tic a quality decrease.
That would reduce the ability to sell used tools, ultimately slowing down global quality progression, as well as give additional sink to high quality materials, and overall making hq stuff maintenance a bigger pain in the ass, as we all love punishing mechanics - this is what this game is about in the first place.

This will not accomplish anything (aside from I guess slowing the grind, but definitely not preventing it) as long as tools and workstations of a certain quality can be used to create tools and workstations of a higher quality. To make this any effective, you would have to nerf quality increase to the point that trying to upgrade tool quality feels useless in the first place, in which case you'd be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

- The longer a tree/a station/a crop is left unattended - the faster it loses quality. This way abandoned bases late world wouldn't be a "skip" of content for a newer player, who'll still need to grow his own trees rather than just getting q500 spruce from nearest ruins.
- The longer an item exists in a container/inventory - the faster its quality loss. Imagine rusting, spoiling, rot etc. - but we're talking quite slow, though speed may vary from item to item (i.e. food spoils much faster than a tool, some items might not spoil at all)

This would have to somehow be restricted to only players who have quit, or it would be an extremely frustrating mechanic, possibly vile too in making players feel forced to craft that one item today (even though they already wanted to quit playing for the day an hour ago) to avoid their tool and crafting station decaying to the point they no longer get their desired quality.

Any kind of tool/weapon wear is the most undesired thing by players ever proposed in game

While the immediate impact (gear being damaged) is immediately obvious and almost universally hated, the long-term impact (creating demand for items by removing existing ones from the economy) can be very beneficial, sometimes to the point of being essential. This is why games keep implementing it despite it being an unpopular mechanic. However, it only works decently because the quality of items is hardcapped in most games: while it sucks to lose your Madeuporium Sword of Superlative Bombasticness, you can just get a new MSoSB from the (probably centralized and easily accessible) market and it will be identical to the one you lost. Once you start losing items that cannot be trivially replaced it starts feeling really bad. Even when relatively speaking it's pretty easy to get a new one people will still hate it - Breath of the Wild had weapons lying around everywhere, but because you couldn't consistently get a weapon of the exact same quality to replace it, weapon durability is generally the most disliked element of the game. I imagine it would be significantly more hated in Haven.

[strpk0]

people who care about quality aren't suddenly going to buy your sprucecap garbage, they're just gonna have to spend more time on pointless busywork
the game doesn't need more idealistic changes that just end up implementing dumb tedium, infact it needs less, much less of it

years later this is still a terrible idea
thanks for coming to my ted talk

[DDDsDD999]

Late-joiners catching up by scavenging or trading seems like a non-issue, and any change to address it will make the game worse overall.

This idea specifically just adds wear which sounds terrible. Late-joiners would still obtain high q stuff, but they have to micromanage their good and bad gear, while also being more dependent on traders, which just sounds tedious and unfun.

If the quality decay was only for items off-claim I wouldn't really mind. But if I left something in a container briefly and it took a quality decay tick I'd want to kms.

[MadNomad]

there shouldn't be any quality decay because it would be pointless to do anything in the game

not even in abandoned bases because it would make them useless and there wouldn't be any point in looking for anything in them, which is another thing that would be taken away from the game

there is no need to ruin the game by making it pointless, it would be a great shame to ruin a game that they spent years of developing on

[wonder-ass]

what u want is a stat cap not some shitty decay that'll only inconvenience the active player base.

[sMartins]

What about keeping the quality but giving tools, stations and so on some status?
I explain myself with an example:

- Axe quality 100
- perfect status green, works as Always
- Intermediate status Yellow, the Blade Is loosing Is Edge, quality of the products Will be 75% of 100
- dammaged status Red, Dull Blade, 50% of 100 (btw random numbers)

- you Need to sharpen the Blade to come back to normal 100% (stats does count of course)

This would achieve that once you get your hands on a super good quality item you won't be done Forever, but you Need some good blacksmith to sharpen It again, or buy a new One. And if you haven't crafted It yourself you won't be so good to restore It at its max quality gain. Or buy a new One.