Should all items decay?

[burgingham]

in before avu

[sabinati]

maybe more metal items would take care of that? large chests, for example, take a fair amount of metal to build and also need nuggets for repair.

more metal armor, i.e. leg, feet, hands, and perhaps something like a larger boat that requires metal, or additional structures/buildable tools that require metal, or i don't know, maybe horse armor (lol).

again, i'm not 100% sure we even need more resource sinks at the moment, surely there will always be new players? i think your "lifetime use of metal bars" per player is a little low anyway.

[Avu]

I suggested long ago training dummies made out of metal (and any other crap you think there isn't enough used) that would basically give lp but would get destroyed on use.

Also fuck decay decay sucks. If you want to sell decay to me gimme something in return.

[loftar]

I think the game should have some sort of (rather slow) decay mechanism on ALL items, something akin to the degradation of Symbel items.
I'll not present any hard suggestions for actual mechanics here, but IMO both a (slow) quality decay based on time as well as a per-use decay would be fine (for items that have a well defined concept of "use", like straw hats).

While I do agree that there should be more general item decay (linen clothes are a prime example), I think the main problem with leather is not the lack of sinks, but the general lack of leather stuff, quite simply. There's almost nothing meaningful that can be done with it. Apart from a more expanded leather industry as such, leather should probably be introduced a quite a number of crafting recipes and blueprints here and there.

If you want to sell decay to me gimme something in return.

To be fair, you do get more content in return to compensate for the decay. If food decays, for instance, a lot more things could be introduced to modify it, such as pickling, drying and smoking, or special containers to make them decay at various speeds, or special foods that are really good but decay within minutes, &c. The same thing can be said about most decaying things. It has the potential to make the game more varied and introduce more trade-off choices.

In my mind, there are two kinds of decay in Haven -- one kind that is simply supposed to keep the map clean from people who've stopped playing, which is the purpose of the generic map decay; and one that is supposed to make the game more challenging, which would be the purpose of decaying food, clothes and other such things. The problem with the first kind is that it occurs even while players are active. That is not a huge problem, since it adds some generic resource sinks that are at least kind of convincing, and it ensures that settlement sizes scale properly with the number of players involved in them; but there is certainly a problem of balancing it so that the decay isn't horrible, while it, on the other hand, doesn't keep unused things around for longer than they should be. The main problem with the second kind is that it may, indeed, just become a form of tedium if not done properly. I think that can be avoided by careful design, though.

[Blxz]

Really not impressed with the 'cleaning' decay at all. Its so frustrating to sign in and see more wall is falling down and needs repair. Especially when it involves a considerable trek to find clay for bricks or wood for palisade repairs.

I do like the much improved instant repair system but if you want to reduce tedium but still keep decay for map cleaning why not just reduce the resource usage down to 1 item of whatever to repair it? The area will still decay within the same timeframe but only a handful of materials need to be left behind for repairs to convince the game I am still playing. Its so disheartening to have to spend the majority of my currently small amount of time treking out to my long distant clay spot. I'd much prefer to be baking/farming/hunting/tanning/feasting/sacrifcing/chatting/killing/building/exploring/foraging/mining/decorating and whatever other fun stuff you have programmed into the game. Fun stuff is fun, deliberate time wasters....less so.

Having said that, what you said about food has me interested. Most of the other stuff I am more likely to agree with Sabinati in that tools (anything in fact) rarely need repairs, especially not in the timescale that this game exists in. (days and months)

[Granger]

In case everything should get decay: Items in inventory should degrade quality by use then, no repair.

This would lead to hq-stuff being handed down to lower level users after a while (eg. when it arrives at medium quality), while ending up at the end in the hands of newbies.