Equipment

[HR-Trevor]

Because equipment in Live will generally be player-made in Live rather than found in treasure or store bought, there are some goals I thought I'd mention about this:

• Items will need repair from time to time.
  
• Items will wear down to the point that they can't be repaired and must be replaced.
  
• Items that required a lot of investment to create such as very magical items or tech that requires a lot of expensive parts will have a longer life, but will eventually need replacement.
  
• Items that never need repair and never become destroyed are likely to exist, but they will be rare and not as effective as the other options available. There may be a nice magic sword that's indestructable, but you should assume it will be very scarce and will have less magical properties than the other scarce but destroyable items.
  
• Items will have minimum requirements in level, skills ranks, etc. This means you will probably outgrow certain equipment over time because better options will become available. You might have to shelve a nice item for a bit until you can use it, and sell/toss out/whatever the old item since it'll be obsolete. Or keep it as backup.
  
• You'll have the option to "bind" many items to you. This is common in many RPG's lately, so many of you have probably seen this in action. In HR it won't be required, but doing so will make the item stronger. Binding an item to you means that no one else can ever use that item, however.
  
• Even some non-magical items will have minimum use requirements.
  
• We'll try to keep the item restrictions mentioned in-character as much as possible. We do realize this clashes a bit with realism in some cases, but it makes a whole lot of sense for gameplay and game balance.

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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

-- Trevor Rage / Rich Mondy

[Seth Ventril]

[soundless]

[Seth Ventril]

You mean to honestly tell me if you absolutely had to use a gun, and had one, you'd be more likely to throw it because the inner workings of such advanced technology baffles you?
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Victim: Well, what is the creed?
Assassin: It's very secret, passed down for hundreds of generations. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.
Victim: Aren't you already killing me anyway?
Assassin: That's a good point...The creed is..."Stick them with the pointy end." - Ctrl+Alt+Del parody of Assassin's Creed.
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TELEPATHY [close]:  Yaru Dex - "Great now you made Mickey cry. Thanks a lot, Seth."
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Korell Ventril exclaims, "Choo ain no guard! Choo a crackhead!"

[HR-Trevor]

This is a pretty difficult debate you two are suddenly in, and probably not a useful one. But there's many angles to consider. It's easy to point and pull a trigger, and I think it's safe to say that almost anyone on our own planet knows that's what you do with a gun. I think you can say that almost anyone on Haelrahv that falls under the list of playable races probably knows that much, too.

However, that doesn't mean you'll hit, handle the kickback (if any) effectively, know how to reload, know how effective your shot was if it did land, know what to do if the gun jams, know how many shots it has in it (without firing them all), know the effective range of the gun, and so on.

So there is no black and white "I know it or I don't." It comes in shades, and while it's pretty safe to say your chance of using a gun to land a shot on someone or something at close range is high, there's more to the picture than that.

I think you've both made points I'd agree with. Yaru's right - a lot of common tasks really aren't things "anyone would know", and Seth's right, it's easy to explain inability to use certain pieces of equipment in an IC manner. Although it does get more difficult if you're trying to explain why a Darju Merc with masterful sniping ability can't use a non-magical gun because it's flagged as Jaddan-only or Trooper-only.
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

-- Trevor Rage / Rich Mondy

[Denavae]

You say that things will need to be replaced after awhile. How long? I mean ... I could see a mediocre dagger shattering or something in combat .... but what about guns? They don't go through a huge amount of stress that bashing a sword against an armored opponent would go through. The only way I could see having to replace a gun would be from throwing it in the sand at the beach every day before hunting without ever cleaning it and taking care of it. Same with a sword, really. After every battle men would take meticulous care of their weapons.

So, instead, give us the option (if you haven't already done so for live) to clean and do general upkeep on our stuff based on skill to stave off things like catastrophic failure (for guns) or just plain breakage (for archaic weapons). I personally would like to see this general upkeep based off the weapon skill .... If you have hundreds of skill points invested into the marksmanship skill, it stands to reason you'd be able to perform basic upkeep to keep that weapon running smoothly.

However, in the event that wear and breakage does occur, will it be in stages? Say, a pistol jams while in combat. You clear the jam and continue hunting, and everything is fine. You finish your hunt, sit someplace quiet to do your general upkeep (cleaning, oiling, etc) and you notice that the reciever for the ammo has been damaged from the jam. If it was a minor defect, you could probably fix it yourself. But if it was too messed up, you'd have to take it to a gunsmith to have it worked on. Same with a sword. You hunt for a couple hours, go in, sell your goods and sit down to do maintence on your weapon. So you pull out the whet stone, polishing rag and oils and begin examining the sword. During this process you notice a slight bend in the blade. All right, easy fix. However, upon a closer examination you notice a crack in the hilt or pommel that makes the blade loose in its setting. Well, unless you're a forge master and can forge yourself a new hilt to set the blade, you'd have to take it to someone to reset.

Honestly, it's this type of realism that gets me ecstatic. I would love being able to sit down on the floor in Dixie's house, spread out a towel and being cleaning my handguns. Hell, I do that in RL (except in my own house and not Dixie's ) Especially if this type of upkeep would keep me from having to ultimately replace a gun (or sword, or knife) I've grown fond of using. It would also be neat to, on the case that a weapon did fail, to have to take it to a mage to get the bonuses reworked if it was a magical weapon.

[soundless]

[Denavae]

Having a gun burst into flames is considered catastrophic failure. It most often happens due to something jamming the barrel of the weapon. It could be anything from sand to dirt to the gunpowder residue from firing repeatedly.

It could also have happened because the upkeep on said weapon was poor at best.

I know what happens when a gun explodes or catastrophically fails. I know it intimately. I still have the scar from it across my collar. It happens about once in several million with a properly cleaned and upkept weapon.

[HR-Trevor]

The general plan is as follows:

• Guns break, too. Sorry, equipment is equipment.
  
• Your items have a general level of upkeep and repair (call it integrity). When you repair an item's integrity to full strength, it loses some amount of its lifetime durability. The worse off it was before you repaired the more effect on lifetime durability.
  
• No huge sudden drops in integrity or durability. A pretty even-keeled approach to decreasing each.
  
• Some items would reasonably have the option of extra maintenance like cleaning and such, i.e. preventative maintenance.
  
• Eventually it'll be so busted up (integrity) you HAVE to repair it to use it, if you don't repair often.
  
• Eventually it'll be so worn down (lifetime durability) that you can't repair it any more. You still have the item, but it's essentially worthless other than RP or cosmetic purpose.

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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

-- Trevor Rage / Rich Mondy

[soundless]

on one hand, i love the idea of all items having a shelf-life. this encourages people to visit yaru, buy his stuff, and make yaru MILLIONS (!!!!11!11!1).

on the other hand, while i'm looking forward to the amount of detail we'll be able to craft things, i'm also hating the idea everything having a shelf life because i like my altered things lasting forever.
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A bright-eyed Thekko Ku Kalla dressed in a dapper sailor suit takes to flight and careers through the air toward the Modan Kucho and slams into him!
With a high-pitched cry, The Modan Kucho collapses in death.

[Brokyn]

Will binding increase integrity and lifetime durability?

Also, this isn't going to affect clothing and containers is it?

--William

ps:

[Denavae]

I'm gonna reserve judgement on this system until Live comes out and we actually get to fool around with it ... but I'm pretty skeptical on it already. Yes, guns are equipment. Swords are equipment. But there are steps to take that will drastically reduce their chance of damage and breakage. Constant cleaning and upkeep is one of those ways. Not to mention there are various parts that could break and be repaired instead of the whole weapon being so unusable its best to just trash it.

I mean, in real life, I've got a gun that's about a hundred years old that I can take out, load up and shoot right this instant. I've got my grandfathers pistol from WW2 that works just as well as the day it was manufactured. I've got dozens of antique blades that are so sharp they can still cut through rattan rolls with ease.

Breakage is realistic only if you don't perform general upkeep every time you use it.

But, this is just my opinion. I'll wait to see how it looks in Live to actually critize or compliment it.

[soundless]

i don't think breakage in HR is going to be for the sake of realism, but for the sake of making it so someone doesn't buy something once and never have to think about buying it ever again. this way, money doesn't just start massing up like it does in this instance because there's just nothing left to buy.

take my case. i bought my two handguns a year+ ago. i never really have to buy another pair of guns again, except for the sake of just buying more stuff. this means that i just horde my cash til forever.

same with backpacks. i got my max sized backpack. do i ever need to make/buy/get another? nope.

same for armor.

same for everything.

making it so we need to keep obtaining stuff means that the economy won't have a situation where money just sits there and more money gets piled on. in the long run this will be, in my mind, beneficial, because then if a GM wants to make uber-cool item, it can be done at a reasonable price for two reasons:

1) no need for a moneysink
2) it won't last forever, thus no super long term issues with creating it with a price tag of under 1mil

beyond that, it'll also lower the money gap between veterans and newbies in HR. new people have low cash because they have to keep purchasing stuff. me? i'm sitting on 9mil right now. that will only go higher until i decide to buy something on a whim. in the long run me having all that cash is bad because GMs have to scale prices to take it into consideration.
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A bright-eyed Thekko Ku Kalla dressed in a dapper sailor suit takes to flight and careers through the air toward the Modan Kucho and slams into him!
With a high-pitched cry, The Modan Kucho collapses in death.

[Xavain]

[soundless]

since lots more gear will have skill requirements (like some weapons do now), i don't think anyone is going to be unable to buy things at-level.

i don't know if you played FFXII or not, but as you gained levels you unlocked more and more weapons you could use. the low level weapons were cheap and the high level ones were more expensive.

i'm sure the treasure tiers are going to work so no one will be poor at level, but also no one will ever (in theory) reach a point (see: a lot of the 100+ crowd and/or people who have been here since forever) where there's no reason to spend money ever again because they have everything they want and thus the money grows and grows and thus the game has to shift to accommodate that, even at the expense of the little guy.
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A bright-eyed Thekko Ku Kalla dressed in a dapper sailor suit takes to flight and careers through the air toward the Modan Kucho and slams into him!
With a high-pitched cry, The Modan Kucho collapses in death.