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#593861 20/10/16 08:27 AM
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So - we keep on having discussions about durability and figured we'd throw it in the group and see what comes up.

We're open to try to remove it (and thus also the entire repairing mechanic) to see what it gives but before we do that we want to find something different that makes bashing open wooden doors & chests with weapons not the default option. The design is such that any way of opening a locked door or chest that doesn't involve the key has some type of cost.

If you bash open a wooden chest, you know you'll pay with durability. The cost here is that eventually that'll cause you to have to consume a repair hammer which has a gold value.

Obviously, you can choose to burn a chest (wooden objects have high resistances against other types of elemental damage), but then you have the risk that's what is inside will start burning. And if you burn a door, that takes time. Which, with the new reactivity mechanics, increases the risk that your crime will be discovered. Here the risk of discovery or loss is the cost.

And then there is lock picking. There the cost is that of the lock pick and the need to invest points in thievery.

We've got a couple of ideas but we'd be curious to hear what you guys think.


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The risk of bashing should be the same discovery/loss that comes with burning. Honestly, I didn't realise that wasn't the case.

Durability/Repairing is a terrible mechanic that always makes me super sad in games.

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Make items unrepairable (but material salvageable).

light door vs cheap sword: 50% door breaks or 50 %sword breaks
light door vs expensive sword: 90% door breaks 10% sword breaks (everything salvageable)
strong door vs cheap sword: 10% door breaks 90% sword breaks (destroying some sword materials/ gems)
strong door vs expensive sword: 50% door breaks or 50%sword breaks (loose one gem)

-> having the chance that you have to rebuild your sword when attempting to break a door (and loosing a gem)-> gold or good crafting


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Originally Posted by Morbo
Make items unrepairable (but material salvageable).

light door vs cheap sword: 50% door breaks or 50 %sword breaks
light door vs expensive sword: 90% door breaks 10% sword breaks (everything salvageable)
strong door vs cheap sword: 10% door breaks 90% sword breaks (destroying some sword materials/ gems)
strong door vs expensive sword: 50% door breaks or 50%sword breaks (loose one gem)

-> having the chance that you have to rebuild your sword when attempting to break a door (and loosing a gem)-> gold or good crafting

I think that works for me. No item degradation when it's being used for its intended purpose, but if you're using a sword as a woodcutting axe then it kinda serves you right if it gets broken!


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I honestly thought that breaking some of the items was already a thing for bashing chests. How about a compromise? Durability remains but only on weapons, and weapons take damage only when used to break things open. The cost of bashing open chests is still held strong without the tedium of repairs for those who have a thief or use other means to get around locks.

Alternatively, just make it so bashing destroys some of the contents. XD


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Weapons in combat would just get "dull" en need to be sharpend?

(not sure how a battle hammer could get dull)


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Originally Posted by Lar
We've got a couple of ideas but we'd be curious to hear what you guys think.


Remove the durability entirely, and replace hammers with crowbars.

Originally Posted by Naqel
Instead of durability and repair hammers, we should have a Disarm and Disrobe status/effects that allow an enemy to strip your gear(forcing AP use to re-equip), and Crowbars that act like super-lockpicks(rare, but require no skill to use).

With Crowbars in game, no door should be breakable through damage.


It achieves the same thing durability does: you can break things(gold cost) instead of opening them(skill investment), but it does so without the middleman of gear breaking and requiring repair.

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How to make durability interesting?
======================

-Perhaps weapons should gain in 'status' the more notable creatures are killed with the weapon.

-This 'status' adds bonuses such as intimidation in conversations. In battle the weapon gains an ability to hit the creatures it is renowned against more often. After a while you can name your legendary weapon.

-However if you use that weapon to bash a chest or door the weapon loses its 'status' bonuses because it is being treated as a simple tool and not as a treasured or mighty weapon.

- Using a weapon to bash a chest/door is also noisy and is more likely to draw guards/monsters to your location. After all, its not a subtle approach


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Keep the durability, but only for 'breaking' not for 'fighting' but remove option to repair, so if you want to break something, you have to be ready to sacrifice a weapon.

Or keep durability only for weapons. The most annoying thing is, that there is so much equipment to repair, even though most equipment gets replaced, before you need to repair it.

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Lockpicking is not a good reason to keep it - there are still lots of ways to go past the limitations. Sure, chests are resistant to elemental damage, but there are spells which do physical damage. You can just teleport that chest back and forth. If that's slow - well, just burn it until it has low hp, then teleport it so there's no fire when it finally breaks. And even if weapons get dull - you're literally drowning in non-enchanted weapons that cost almost nothing when sold. You just use those as improvised "lockpicks".

Durability just adds nothing but chore to the game. Especially now that the hammers are finite.

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Originally Posted by Naqel

Remove the durability entirely, and replace hammers with crowbars.

Originally Posted by Naqel
Instead of durability and repair hammers, we should have a Disarm and Disrobe status/effects that allow an enemy to strip your gear(forcing AP use to re-equip), and Crowbars that act like super-lockpicks(rare, but require no skill to use).

With Crowbars in game, no door should be breakable through damage.


It achieves the same thing durability does: you can break things(gold cost) instead of opening them(skill investment), but it does so without the middleman of gear breaking and requiring repair.


That's simple and easy to understand, and it probably allows for better management of doors which you don't want players to bash down too easily.

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At first I thought to remove durability completely.

After reading this I think it makes sense if a weapon is not damaged by normal combat, but it gets damaged when used to bash objects or attacking enemies like a stone golem. (I think Arcanum did it like this)

Armor does not get damaged from normal combat but it can be damaged by some special attacks. Rings and amulets cannot be damaged.

Maybe there are skills that attack equipment.
For example: Rusty rain: does high damage to the physical armor of anybody within the AOE and damages weapon and armor for everybody in the AOE. Does not do any damage to vitality or magical armor.

PS: I never bashed anything in the game to avoid repair. I always used skills to destroy objects.

PPS: I liked that in NWN2 you found "destroyed items" (correct name forgotten) among the loot when you bashed a container. It reminded you that bashing might not be the best way to open things.

PPPS: I never repaired anything in arcanum where they used this system.

PPPPS: I ran out of "P"s grin


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I really like many of the ideas here, and am extremely pleased that Larian is looking to fix what was IMO an incredibly tedious, frustrating, and pointless mechanic from D:OS 1. Although it doesn't directly address the side issue in this topic of how to apply durability to lockpicking mechanics, I'd like to again repost below my suggestions to improve both repairing (in case Larian insists on keeping it in for weapons and armor used in combat) and identification (which is equally tedious as currently implemented); I first posted the below suggestions among others in 2014 during the D:OS 1 alpha, then again during the D:OS 1 beta (http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=485218#Post485218), but here they are:

1) Loremaster/Identify overhaul
The current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge. If a player has an identifying glass and sufficient Loremaster ability, all items that are picked up should be identified automatically (except those beyond the player's ability).
2) Blacksmithing/Repair overhaul
The current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge. If a player has a repair hammer and sufficient Blacksmithing ability, a new "Repair All" icon/button usable only outside combat should repair all items equipped by the party with one click (except those too damaged for the player's ability).

Regardless, as long as the pointless repetitive clicking for item repair and identification is somehow fixed, I'll be able to play D:OS 2 without wanting to cry. wink Cheers!

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I agree with those that say the cost of bashing open a chest outta be a potential for broken items. Also the "broken items" should be shown to indicate that you are missing out by bashing down chests.

The cost bashing in a door needs to be handled exclusively, with reactivity mechanics. Bashing/burning down a door is louder and takes more time than a lock pick, there should be a significantly greater chance of being caught while doing so.
I think in the ideal case, every time a door is hit there is a chance that near by NPCs will notice. If they are on the same side of the door as you and they notice, they would recognize what you are trying and sound the alarm etc. If they are on the other side of the door, it is a bit more tricky but I think at the very least if you bash the door all the way down, and during that period somebody noticed you bashing/burning, the alarm would sound.
The chance of being noticed could be based on distance from the bashing, and Wits of the characters.
There would have to be very clear feedback about when you are "noticed"

As a note, I also like the idea of weapons only being damaged for the duration of combat, so that there is an opportunity for gear destructive skills, weapons, strategies. For example an enemy could have some powerful sword, I have high Loremaster/Wits so I'd know what the effect the sword is having on his overall abilities so I target the sword directly. The biggest challenge with this addition in my view would be the UI complexity for handling all the different gear durabilities.

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One possible thought (as other have mentioned): Remove the entire mechanic, and replace with another penalty for destorying the chest, e.g. a chance of destroying the highest valued items inside the chest. If you want to go even further, you could implement a rule that any magic item rolled for the chest is always destroyed if the chest was forced open through weapons or magic. This gives incentive to find a key or pick the lock.

Last edited by Gnoster; 20/10/16 05:27 PM.
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That wouldn't address the main concern of breaking doors for free. If you destroy a chest you can't use lucky charm anyway so it is less likely to destroy chests anyhow.

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I see a lot of people calling for improvements to the durability system. Keep in mind that everything they rework takes away time they could be putting towards something else, it's not a huge dev team after all.

Repair systems are inherently boring. In fact, I've never played or even seen a game that made repairs actually engaging. With that in mind, I would much rather see them band-aid this and move on rather than spend a bunch of time here trying to make an inherently tedious task less tedious. The two low hanging fruit that would be quick to implement and solve the issues stated by the devs, that I have come up with anyways, are as follows:

1) Make it so weapons only take damage from bashing locks.
or
2) Remove durability altogether and make it so bashing chests destroys loot.

Anything more complicated than that is a waste of resources IMO, but I'm open to similarly simple solutions.


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I hate that repair hammers/identifying glasses are consumed when you repair/identify. While I would not be sad to see durability dropped completely, if it needs to be kept, why not make repairs have a small gold cost instead of consuming an item? It kills immersion to carry 300 repair hammers at all times.

I don't mind the idea of repair/identifying in general, as long as it isn't completely tedious. I like making sure I am "geared up" for adventuring by making sure I carry some sundry items that will aid in my journey, and its fun to get a mysterious purple item and then excitedly identify it (especially in DOS2 because my wife's character has lucky charm and I have loremaster, so she always opens all containers and the only excitement I feel about looting is when she sends me the items to identify). Consuming my gear, however, upon its use just makes for a tedious run back to a central hub in order to buy more items. If I am careful in my battles I can conserve potions and keep from having to bounce back and forth between resource management and adventuring, and I feel rewarded when I am tactical enough in my approach to not use potions. There is no way that I can obviate item deterioration, though. Ultimately, item deterioration to me seems like a game momentum problem, so I hope that any solution Larian implements keeps game momentum in the forefront of its concerns.

Being able to repair items with like items would work well, too, since you naturally get them when looting. After a battle I stop and examine what has dropped anyway, so taking the extra step to decide what to scrap for repair parts or what to keep to sell wouldn't cause a lurch in momentum and would solve the problem of making tactical decisions about how you use your resources. Likewise, as long as repair materials were easily obtainable from looting (if you don't want to make armor and weapons able to be broken down for parts) I would be ok with repairing.

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Lots of people have been asking for either its entire removal or some changes in how it works. People also seem to dislike the idea that upkeep would ever be forced onto them and that using an infinitely usable repair item to repair items is simple tedious and "un-fun."

In the vain of solving this, while keeping the system, I offer a few changes:

> Add a repair all button that uses up repair items in inventory
> Make hammers and tongs consumables
> Make repairing require some points in blacksmithing/crafting and the amount of durability returned per consumable dependent on ability level(s)
> Add in skills/actions that target item durability (ie Sunder from D&D)
> Allow players to deconstruct/recycle components from items for crafting/blacksmithing using repair items. The value of the items obtained dependent on crafting/blacksmithing levels
> An item reaching zero durability is only unusable for a couple turns in combat before regenerating small amount
> A "break" action to tell PCs to auto target a door, chest, etc... till the item is broken without forcing players to repeatedly click
> Reward players for gear upkeep**

**Expanding on The Reward System:

- Example 1: A well maintained sword gains a status effect like 'keen edge' which adds +2 to hit. Items with a keen edge can be poisoned and have other effects added to them. In contrast a poorly maintained sword can't have effects added but hits as per normal.

- Example 2: An armour set kept in top condition adds +10 to armour rating and +1 to intimidation rating in conversations.

- The benefits would vary by weapon or armour type and would go away once durability fell below a percentage (ie 75%).

The above reward and recycle/deconstruction systems are courtesy of BlueGuy and the rest is an amalgamation from a number of users on the forums. Smokey, in particular, offered the suggested durability combat system ideas.

Thoughts and suggestions on this?
Should items still be breakable in traditional sense?
Would durability skills be too much?
Would you prefer if the reward system was the only thing in place if durability was still left in at all?

**I think the durability combat mechanics would also add more flavor to physical melee classes in the shape of soft CC.

Last edited by aj0413; 20/10/16 07:11 PM.
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Originally Posted by aj0413

> Add a repair all button that uses up repair items in inventory
> Make hammers and tongs consumables
> Make repairing require some points in blacksmithing/crafting and the amount of durability returned per consumable dependent on ability level(s)
> Add in skills/actions that target item durability (ie Sunder from D&D)
> Allow players to deconstruct/recycle components from items for crafting/blacksmithing using repair items. The value of the items obtained dependent on crafting/blacksmithing levels
> An item reaching zero durability is only unusable for a couple turns in combat before regenerating small amount
> A "break" action to tell PCs to auto target a door, chest, etc... till the item is broken without forcing players to repeatedly click
> Reward players for gear upkeep**


That is a LOT of work to make durability into literally anything meaningful. It requires at least two systems to be added (skills that interact with durability and rewards for upkeep) and essentially just turns it into an arbitrary extra health bar that you can't see without digging through your inventory.


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