Best features of past games

[Dustie]

I agree that the economy needs this. I want to avoid one thing though. I never want to be required to do the same repetitive task over and over throughout the game. I don't ever want to plink on my armor plate once every other night from now until I quite the game. When we come across situations where repetition is necessary, we need to make it fast and easy.

Semantics again but some repetition is necessary on a rote level. The nuance is repetition you are aware of and repetition you aren't. You can do a dragon uppercut a thousand times with Ryu and it never gets boring. Pick a thousand light saber crystals off the ground and you're ready to punch your monitor.

I'm a little concerned about the psychology behind your reasoning though. It sounds to me like you are saying, "Yes give me something that's important to my character's success but don't make me exert energy in obtaining it." Or minimally, "Give me something important to my character that through routine use begins to decay but don't make me do something routine to re-obtain it." Is that even possible? Or more importantly, why have it decay at all if you don't have to do anything exerting to get it back? If something is going to decay through the its routine use how would you recommend you reobtain that item through perpetual unique experiences? You're going to encounter repetition and very quickly unless someone knows how to program infinite variation into a video game. The question is can you make the repetition necessary but perhaps fun?

This is an important aspect to the gamer's mentality. I've held on to items well passed the point where they were useful to my character simply because of the items rarity or the difficulty of obtaining it. The only thing that ever made me delete these items is a lack of bank space or I would have held on to them indefinitely for nostalgic reasons. This behavior actually permeates Real Life as well.

I understand what you're trying to protect. You're trying to protect the idea that the value behind something comes from the effort it takes to get it. I understand and agree with that principal. My idea is not incompatible with that, think of epic quests to get some ability or item. While I don't need those, I think there's room for that type of thing in any game. But now think of potions in WoW. If I need to kill things in Un'Goro crater over and over again to keep up my potion count just to be competitive, then I call that mindless repetition with no purpose. Everyone has to do it to be competitive. We're essentially paying Blizzard to grind potions for 30 minutes, and then play for 30 minutes.

Getting back to armor decay. I don't have the solution yet, but I do know that I don't want to go back to the black smith each day, sit down, hit 'g' 50 times, wait 20 minutes, and get a new breastplate. I don't mind at all, having a guild black smith who re-supplies us and we simply need to swing by the black smith and pick up our order.

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