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Dealer repair skill - balanceable or not?


LoreChief

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Of all the utilities an Artisan can't provide, I'm legitimately surprised they aren't able to repair equipment.

1. We are already the 'crafting' class, we even perform Alchemy
2. It would increase our utility in parties.  A lot of people do not take Artisans into their parties for our perceived lack of utility ("Why not bring a Borg?"

Perhaps make it cost a fraction of the zulie you would pay an NPC for.  Allow us to repair allies stuff after they are prompted with a "Confirm repairs for ____ bill?" prompt or something similar.  So you spend your own zulie to repair your own stuff, and allies can volunteer their money for accepting repairs from you.

Thanks!

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  • 1 month later...

I've heard many people say that dealers should be able to repair equipment, especially items they can already craft. But crafting doesn't take place at lower levels, mainly due to the current quest meta and also due to the difficulty in crafting items less than 30 levels below you/at your own level. Basically, there are barriers. So, given that crafting doesn't take place at lower levels, can we justify repairs? Or are we going to pretend that this is totally different? Also, how would this affect the market, given that zulie that'd normally disappear into the hands of the NPCs (with zero effect otherwise except as moneysink) would now end up in the purses of dealers?

 

Any other issues with such a skill?

Edited by Bobbity
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Hmm, how about if the dealer skill would reduce the durability by a certain %? This would make it so people who are desperate not to go back to town they can get it done, but will have to eventually use Saki (further zulie sink) to once again increase the durability. 

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1 hour ago, Bobbity said:

Sounds alright. Would the cost of repairs be based on NPC material costs? If so, should Discount skills apply?

Oh, a fee should definitely be involved. But instead of zulie, it could be either metal that’s already in game, the higher the item level, the more quality of metal you’d need… or a special metal based on item grades or something. 

This would negate the discount skill and the zulie fee. If any zulie fee applies, it’s because the person doing the repairing is asking for it. 

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14 hours ago, Avatar said:

Hmm, how about if the dealer skill would reduce the durability by a certain %? This would make it so people who are desperate not to go back to town they can get it done, but will have to eventually use Saki (further zulie sink) to once again increase the durability. 

hammers used to do this way back pre evo (1 planet max lvl 70 i think), watch your items degrade till 1/1 and is permanent. 

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What if it was a function like a trade or something. Where you can do it with dealers: where a window pops up like an equipment inventory/trade of what the other person or yourself (maybe) has equipped + maybe 0<5 slots for other random equipment you might want repaired and you as the dealer can repair whatever you agreed on with the other person at the cost of zulie and or materials. People seemed to like services like that back in the days with buffers, it might be something people want to see more of?

  • You can do this anywhere anytime between 2 people
  • You can use this outside the city like hammers but more player driven
  • This might be something that could increase player needs for artisans in parties
  • Zulie sink and material sink
  • I would remove repair hammers I think if this existed.
  • more player interactions!
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2 hours ago, Bobbity said:

I remember that. I don't mind using that mechanic as-is, but we could modify it a bit.

 

@Maddox What's wrong? 

If you’re referring to their confused reaction, don’t worry about it. They seem to have an issue with me and they’ve been doing it to every single one of my posts. I think they believe it bothers me lol. 

But yeah, I’m in agreement. I wouldn’t want to remove hammers, either. 

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Like I said, people have been talking about this for years. This thread is the balance discussion about the prospective Repair skill.

 

EDIT: I just realized that at this point the difference between the suggestion post and a balance post about a suggestion is negligible at best.

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Nothing wrong with multiple people talking about it.

I think having repair work similarly to the NPC version economically would make sense.  How about this for example;

 

Situation 1:  You repair at the NPC.  It costs 100k to repair at an NPC.  It is not reducible in any way.  The 100k goes to the NPC, where it effectively returns to nothingness.

Situation 2:  You repair at a Dealer.  It costs 90k to repair at an NPC.  There is now a value gain by going to players for repairs instead of the NPC.  In addition, 1% of the money you 'paid' goes to the dealer, the other 99% goes into the ether as it would at an NPC.  There is now also incentive for the Dealer to have the repair skill and offer it to others because they get a small kickback for doing it.  The dealer can of course repair their own equipment with the same results in order to prevent an exploit.

 

In this manner...

  1. It makes players repairing a better method than going to an NPC.
  2. It does not make it *so much better* that players will feel screwed by having to go to the NPC.
  3. It incentivizes interactions between players
  4. It does not require carrying around extra materials for repair as Avatar mentioned above.  Our inventory space is already limited, nobody wants to carry around even more things they may not even use.
  5. As stated in my original suggestion post, this is a value add for party utility.

 

I will admit there are some things I'm not taking into account.  Specifically the prohibitive cost of repairing at high levels, the point where people switch from repairing via NPC to repairing by spamming hammers (this is bad implementation in my opinion, but thats a different topic entirely).

I also envision leveling a repair skill to do things like...

  1. Level 1:  Basic repair functionality, 100% full cost, no kickback to dealer.
  2. Level 2:  Basic repair functionality, 95% cost, no kickback to dealer.
  3. Level 3:  Basic repair functionality, 90% cost, no kickback to the dealer.
  4. Level 4:  Basic repair functionality, 90% cost, kickback to the dealer.
  5. Level 5:  Enhanced repair functionality (over-repairs by 5 durability points), 90% cost, kickback to the dealer. 

    Over-repair incurs the same cost-per-point as standard repairs in order to prevent exploit.  This is mostly just a kicker service to prolong time-to-repair because why not, with almost no strategic gain since people don't normally grind til their stuff is fully broken in the first place.
Edited by LoreChief
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