This whole thing came up from another thread (http://mud.arctic.org/node/1747) and I brought up an idea I had about 18 months ago. Read that thread (I guess my posts are the only required reading, but the whole thing can be useful) and think about how a change like this would adjust your game play and respond.

Keep in mind the exact length of the timer is up for debate, so dont think the 2 week thing is set in stone. Also, whether this applies to all items, just limited items, or just items we deem need it can also be discussed.

Personally, I find this as a quite good idea. The only issues I can see arising is the timers on the high end items . . .

For those of us who play once every couple days but are maintaining a set with lots of high end items . . . This could really hurt . . .

Now, if there was some way to regenerate the decay timers (say for every hour of online time it puts back a couple of hours for offline time) that way the people who only get to play 5-6 hours/week can still maintain a nice set (as long as they keep enough cash) . . .

Otherwise, I think this would be an interesting system to try.

Yeah I feel the same way as Rorc. Would be nice to see deeprenting destroyed forever along with people who have 4 very nicely equipped chars. The major issue is harming people who can't afford to play 2 hrs per day. I think the idea Rorc suggested about increasing your decay timers for certain amount of time played in game is worth discussing, but I'm not sure how I feel about it quite yet. Abuse is always an issue. Also we should keep in mind that a lot of the problems that lead to this discussion in the first place are that zones aren't loading gear anymore. Will this change help this at all? Or will the clan who can zone 8 hrs a day dominate the game by keeping all eq from decaying?

I voted 'other', meaning that timers should work when in peace too. If this is included in the 'rent' thing, count it as a yes

What if items decayed for any tick not spent fighting? same idea as peacerooms (anti-bot), but a little more extreme. it might need a new pc variable, as it wouldn't be fair (esp. to casters) to only check for fighting on the tick itself. Maybe.. if you haven't done any fighting in 5 ticks or so, or are rented, or are in a peace room, decay happens.

My vote: anything to avoid deeprent. I wouldn't even mind losing all of the unlimited items if deeprent stopped :)

Excellent idea.
It provides simple solution for a lot of the critical problems of the game.

A few slight modification that would be helpful:

- items should decay in peacerooms as well as 1-man-rooms with the same rate as in rent
- unlimited items shouldnt be affected by this rule, so zones would still load some gear
- the items would actually decay, but in a very long time, like a super extended decay timer, something like 20x as of now... is this too stupid?
- some ppl said that there would be a trend that clannies would always transfer the gear to ppl who is about to log on to zone, but I dont think thats a bad thing. I know that I wouldnt give away a single piece of gear to anyone :)
- I don't see a problem with the missing items in high level zones, because items will eventually decay while the character is in rent or get fragged and destroyed. Actually, even better, because when the item is decayed in rent, the clan won't run to repop it immediately, so neutrals have greater chance than ever to pop good gear from zones.
- Neutrals and smaller groups would actually fight for gear! And you would always know the every enemy is using his best possible set, so everyone will have a lot to gain from every fights. Forcing enemy clans to rent now costs their items and decays! Interesting and great challenge! Every minute you are forced to sit in rent now costs you your items. What is better than this? :)

k well i can only play for like 2 days every 2 weeks for the next 3 months... that means im renting for 12 days and playing 2 personally i dont wanna waste time re-equiping every time...

-hinata~

leaves 16 hours for decay.

8 hours a day, with two equipped chars...
24 hours of decay on one, 16 on the other, or somewhere in between...

even if clans zone 8 hours a day, each member will only be able to average one character a day to save from decay. Sounds good to me :)

Something should be set up to make a vacation mode for "real" 1-2 week vacations that you could still have your gear. Not sure how difficult that is to do by email vs character, but it would suck to take 1-2 weeks off and basically just lose everything.

Current vacation mode is really, "I quit the game for at least 3 months and I dont want my character to be deleted".

I like the ideas of this system only applying to the best equipment, and also giving some bonus timer for something (maybe when you rank, your gear timers could be reset?). I don't like timer extension purely based on playtime, since it'd be easy enough to run around the world doing nothing and still be able to extend your timer. 10 man from clan A could be hunting 10 man from clan B and never get to them with a druid or 2 running them everywhere and they would still get the "bonus" of being online. (Have to imagine the abuse possibilities).

It just means you can't have the best gear. Obviously you can see that you shouldn't expect to keep the best gear only playing 2 days out every 2 weeks? That's hardly even playing.

As long as the system is set up not to include all gear I think its fine.

Ultimately, I don't mind if this change happens. It seems like a strong encourager of a variety of things that would be positive. I will try to explore areas we may want to touch on.

My primary concern is the concern of vacation. I really hate the idea that if I've invested a lot of time and energy into this game for the last 3 months, but I need to go on a business trip, family trip, intense final exam study period, or there is any other sort of emergency, I will come back to this game starting effectively from the beginning.

The proposed solution would be to offer a vacation offer, where you wouldn't be allowed to play any chars during your "vacation" but you could get a degree of leniency on your rent decay. Maybe this sort of "vacation" could be limited to a two week period. Since vacation would be set by immortals, 33+, it would be at their discretion whether or not you received it. If you ask for vacation 4 times in 3 months, you will probably start getting screwed.

Also, we need to come up with a fairly strict rubric as to what items will be effected by this rent_decay.

To me the ideal scenario is to only have the rent_decay in effect if the max, in terms of limit, has been reached on an item. So for items that aren't maxed, you wouldn't rent_decay them. Obviously, all limit 1 items would always have a rent_decay turned on.

The reason for this is that it can take a painful amount of prep and effort to be able to load certain individually attainable objects of power that may not be maxed but are very good. It would be pretty lame to have to repop this stuff regularly, if nobody else was using it anyway.

Finally, I'm concerned with gear redistribution once it has decayed in rent. Well the gear immediately return to circulation after it has foomed? The ideal should be that there is a randomized amount of time once an object has foomed for it to start loading again. I'm sure this is probably a coding nightmare--but this would be the best method to guarantee that people don't simply calculate how long they rent so that they can immediately repop their gear after renting for 332 hours real time.

This profoundly stupid idea fits really well into the "rich getting richer" concept. I can't believe someone has such surpassing ignorance to actually think that this will make someone... anyone? to play more. On the contrary, some casual players will quit.

Going to replies to Terk's post not because I am ignoring other people's, but because his brings up the most unique points and touches on most of the issues brought up:

I think you state the problem and part of the solution quite nicely. Limiting the vacations to X days (14 sounds fine) and keeping track of what char has been on vacation when will alleviate a lot of the problems. We could just say no-decay while on vacation, but you also can't log on the character. We might want to think of some 'cost' to put on vacation, so it isn't exactly a nobrainer and people don't use it to keep certain items out of game for 2 weeks.

I see your point, I would rather go with a slightly more complex solution. The item would decay in rent at a slower rate when the item is not maxxed. So lets give it a base of a 1 to 1 decay, Items decay 1 tick for every tick in rent. If the item is maxxed, that 1:1 is used. If the item is not maxed the ratio goes up based on how close to maxxed it is, so if 1 out of 10 is in rent, you will decay 1 tick for every 10 in rent, 1:10. If 9 out of 10 are in rent it is 9:10. I think making it not decay when un-maxxed could cause issues in a few different directions, this kind of negates those problems and makes rarer high-max gear even better. That make sense?

And because the players are peering in on this discussion I will add, the system I propose makes it harder for the players to determine an actual decay time to the minute, because they can only guess at the max on an item and how many are held. The less likely we make the actual decay moment pin-point-able by a player, the better off everyone is I believe. Hell, even I would have a hard time determining a decay moment for any piece of gear in this system, because the variables change so often.

Its not really a coding nightmare, I can just set a %chance for the item to go foom when the timer hits 0. If the chance decides it shouldn't decay, next pass through the gear it will try again. The idea being I would write a sweeper to go through gear on some schedule (hourly, every 15 minutes, whatever) to look for things that should decay, decay them and put them back in circulation. Point being, it wouldn't rely on the character logging in, so they couldn't predict the load.

Whether or not that gear starts loading immediately has to be decided on the creation side (zone reset times, mob reloads, death loads, % chance to load, etc). You get my point.

Another thought I had was a randomness factor to timers. Set a base timer on an item and when the item is loaded, the game will randomly add or subtract X% to that base. So if the timer is 1000 and X is 10, it would be a range of 900 to 1100 timer, and that timer would generally be different for each load. Just another attack on the same point.

(FYI: this is kind of what our immortal discussions look like, although I dumbed this one down a bit)

I see your point, and it is kind of why I brought it up for discussion. Casual players were one of the big reasons I ditched the idea 18 months ago. But I think that problem is addressable within this system with a little more thought.

Frankly if you are a casual player (depends on how you define casual), should you really be able to hold onto the upper tier of gear?

This change would come with a reworking of what is limited, what is unlimited, what those limits are and load %'s on everything, which we are already planning.

Also, I present this as an all-or-nothing solution because I want to get discussion started. Reality is, this will probably only apply to limited gear in some middle ground solution. The basics for all this is already coded in, I wrote it when I thought of it, but it just hasn't been applied to any items yet and don't foresee it being on everything in the game, ever.

First off I want to address the idea of this hurting people who only log now and then and those who can't play a lot.

I don't believe people who can only play a few hours a week should be taken into account when it comes to high end gear. I don't want to punish them, but the fact is that many people play atleast 4 hours a day and they deserve to have a crack at the gear that would normally be in rent all the time. If you can't play a lot then you should stick to unlimited gear.

Now about the topic itself...

I think that all unlimited eq should have the exact same decay timer (for rent) that it has now. My reasoning is that it's unlimited... so its not like there's any real harm to letting people (such as those who only play a few hours a week) be able to hold onto such gear for a long time in rent. But ALL limited eq (even if it's not loaded in a high end zone) should be moved over to the proposed idea.

My thinking is that if you want to use lim eq then you should be using it a lot so that it has a chance to be circulated by pk (and trade), and because such eq should simply be used a lot.

One last idea..

Maybe all unlimited eq should have it's decay timer totally removed. I don't really see the point in having such eq decay anymore since it's not limited and it's decaying only annoys people who have to reload it (and probably clear a zone they are damn sick of by now). This way those people who hardly play can load a set of unlimited eq that pefectly fits their char, and they won't ever have to worry about reloading it because it decayed. This would help them since they won't ever have to spend any of their limited playing time reloading decays (atleast their decays) and they can focus on just having fun.

PS. The vacation idea is good as well. Just make sure all of the known multies for that person are locked for however long they are going to be away.Should also probably put a lock on their IP to prevent them from easily (easy as in not being force to use a prox and such) sneaking back on the mud while their other chars sit in rent.

I like the idea of the storage situation being policed by itself, but I think the original idea will considerably hurt the casual player in the long run.

For this I propose, in a nutshell, the idea that all gear decays at the same rate whether in rent or in play. From this, timers can be adjusted up accordingly.

An example:

Lets say the average player plays 4 hours a day. Multiplying the current timers by 6, it would effectively decay at the same speed as it does during the current system. This multipler can of course be adjusted down if we want gear to recycle back into the game faster if that is the goal. For 'epic' items, the timer increase should be obviously smaller, say only 4x. (These numbers are only given as an example)

This would solve the problem of deeprenting, as the gear is constantly decaying, while not changing much for the 'average' player. I like the idea of randomization of timers, and I think something along these lines would still bring a positive change to the game.

I will say that I also like Brafu's idea to remove the timer completely on a fair amount of unlimited gear. This can be countered by making the gear considerably less durable. You won't have to worry about it decaying while you're rented, but through usage it will be quickly fragged/require constant upkeep. So, for the person who only plays once or twice a week, they will always have something for them when they log.

I didn't even know there were people who played once every two weeks. I don't understand the purpose of playing that little, but I suppose to each their own.

I personally just don't see any downside to the proposed change, I'm sure it will effect everyone differently, but personally I don't think it's fair because I can't get "that whip" or "that sword" because so and so only plays once every two weeks. At that rate he'll never decay the damn weapon, and god forbid if I decided I wanted it so bad I'd hunt him for it, I would only have a 2 hour window, every two weeks.

I suppose I wouldn't have to fear retribution that way, so long as said "once every 2 weeks" person isn't friend of someone in clan X.

Now that is not to say that everyone who takes a 2 week break, or even a 2 month break should lose all their gear, everyone is entitled to vacation. I know I lost 3 level 30s before ranks went in earlier this wipe, and I hated that, but to only play once every 2 weeks to be a regular playing schedule, and not due to some needed vacation just doesn't seem fair to those who do play regularly, who enjoy it, and put time forth trying to acquire things that just won't load because soandso doesn't play.

-Skyler

While I generally like the idea of storage policing itself, I have to say that the elite player who maybe can't play as much as he/she would like gets screwed here. Real life issues tend to get in the way and can affect your playtime unexpectedly and tend to be unavoidable. I mean, say your job sends you somewhere for two weeks and only gives you one day of notice? Or say you're simply going on vacation for two weeks? So when you come back you've got to repop all of your gear? That's not cool.
I think maybe Earli's idea has some merit. Although actually another option that i'd like to suggest is that maybe every time you log on for more than say, 1-2 hours (out of peace, although obviously not consecutively, which would get in the way of recalling and whatnot) the rent timer on your gear gets reset. Heck you could even do it where you'd have to log on for 8+ hours total in the span of a week to have it go into effect or something. I just think that if you do use your gear to actually play (and not just log on to check the board/who list/avoid rent decay timers) you should still be able to maintain whatever gear set you want without having to put in 4+ hours every single day.

If they went with that idea then what would be the point of even making the change in the first place? One reason for the change would be to stop deep renting and to promote the use of nice eq. Your idea would make it far to easy for someone to work around the system and still deep rent eq.

Now, I'm not saying some variant of your idea couldn't work.... but I still say if you can't play regularly then you don't deserve to have all that nice lim eq. Just load up on all of the nice unlimited eq and enjoy the game.

The question of gear storage and decay has always been a problem and it most likely will always be a challenge to the staff. The deal here is to try to eliminate storage, which is indeed a problem since the vast majority of the playerbase has found ways to hide their storage or make it difficult for the staff to track down.

So, what options are there? We have seen alot of ideas thrown out there, so I'll throw my idea into the hat. Its nasty and its complex and I'll feel sorry for the bastard who has to code it if for some reason people decide to go for it. So here we go.

Decay rates should not reward those who play heavily or punish those who play lightly, it should be fair to all types of players. It should help to eliminate storage, and help gear circulation to a certain (limited) degree.

Basing decay rates on time during which the item is on and/or during which the item is in rent won't work to this end. It needs to be a tiered system. Items should be like they are now in regards to limit, I think the current system is groovy.

How these items decay in play time should be on a set rate, all items decay at the same rate while being played. If you want an item to last longer, just code it with a longer timer, or vice versa.

How these items decay in rent should be a tiered system. The basic idea is that items that are rented for short periods of time...under 24 hours with a mimimum play time per login period (lets say one hour) have a rent decay value of 0.25 whereas playtime decay is 1.00. Now if that item is not played in a 24 hour period the decay kicks up a notch, to 0.35. The increase it incrementally for each 24 hour period to where after around a week you are going at 1.00, the same as play time. So after 2 weeks of an item being in rent, it decays at 2.0, after 3 weeks it decays at around 3.5 and the more it is rented the more punitive the rent decay value becomes.

This rewards those players who do play weekly and does not punish them. It bases their item decay values on the time they play those items and draws a line between casual play and storage.

Now for those players who do log on long hours. Elite gear that is hard to pop should have a long timer, by playing long hours you are using that item to accomplish a great deal, so when it decays, you know you got your use out of it...unless you LD way too much and then you don't deserve that elite item.

Just my two cents, I'm sure people will scream that this idea sucks, but overall its fair to every type of player.

Die in a fire,

Kael

I see lot of ppl mentoining the 2 weeks period, while Aristox clearly stated that his 2 weeks decay timer is just an EXAMPLE.

Vacation mode could be something like a possibility for when you roll a character, put it to a 6th option at character login screen. If someone selects this, he have to confirm, then enters vacation mode. Once it is used up, the vacation mode flag is removed from the character and the option disappears. One can get this flag once in every 6 months. Issue solved in a fair way, without human interference.

*** Press Enter:

0) Leave Arctic.
1) Enter the game.
2) Change your description.
3) Change your password.
4) Delete this character.
5) Vacation mode (14 days).

Make a choice:

Frankly, this idea has a lot of positive effects to the game.

It encourages:
- play in best gear
- have one character, maybe two equipped in great gear, but not more
- punishes deeprenters
- more pk if you want gear
- more pk forms more clans
- more clans encourages ppl not to quit but play, forming another massive base
- if an item decays in rent, big evil clan wont immediately run and repop it (because they have no idea it decayed)
- deeprenting pzappings were always huge unjustice, because it didnt happened equally for everyone... this solves that problem once and for all
- enemy clans would fight for playtime (and for whole clan's items!), so wimpy players can grow balls :)

I see one interesting thing though:

- clan warriors will zone with other clan multies gear in their inventory! :)

But this can be avoided, if the nodecay applies only to worn gear.
Or it will encourage more ppl to roll thieves and steal!
And if steal would give pk flag, then more battles will happen!
See, such a good idea that will make a lot of options. :)

the more i think about this idea, the more i like it. even without thinking about deep renting it will be nice because items will circulate. your hardbash will decay while you are renting and someone will pop it even before you know. stuff will actually be loading which is always fun.

whining about going on vacation and losing your stuff? who cares. if you leave the game for a month you should lose your stuff. items are meant to be in the game not rented in an inn. when you come back, load some new items or if your stuff is that special give it to someone else until you return.

this is an excellent idea. lets do it.

This is a great idea that evens out in the end. As a casual player (my rl time is valuable!), when I do zone I want stuff to load, EVEN IF I can't rent limited items that long. For experienced players, even if things decay in rent, they are compensated by other items loading that otherwise would be deeprented. For fighters, this encourages more items to be actually used/available for battles (in so many ways). For new players, they are rewarded for actually playing, and this tends to keep new players.

BLUF: Equipment is the economy of Arctic. The more EQ that circulates (vice deeprenting under someone's mattress), the more healthly the playing environment becomes for everyone. The question just remains as to the scope and degree of change, and perhaps a few minor rules to prevent abuse (financial laws, if you will). If you are living in a disillusioned, post-communist, pseudo-democratic society, understandably you may not immediately believe this but just ask me online and I'm willing to freely discuss/debate anything in good faith.

Arb

P.S. kudos to kmark for restarting this whole discussion!

[Below is a repost from the other thread titled "Great Idea, Q is scope and degree of change."]

I think this discussion is heading in the right direction to assist in good coding decision, so I'll not rehash what has already been mentioned. The true question Adam needs help on deals with the scope of change (categories) and to what the degree (balance).

That said, the best idea I heard was not having a decay timer for items in the game, and some sort of decay timer for items in storage. This will reward players for playing (imagine that), playing fewer but more developed characters, discourage too many sets of equipment (still can but will progressively harder with each additional set), and still actually do what decay was intended for: a hardcoded fixture that tends to circulate equipment among the playerbase over time. This system will still reward those who zone hard, plus with a chance to see equipment that would otherwise have been immediately reloaded upon decay (symptom aka "mine diamonds" syndrome).

Arb

A possession went missing while you were sleeping--Hey I paid good money for the inn but it's for the good of the game.

I was just looking through the gear I have, and comparing it with the difficulty to load . . . This system would probably have to have items that come from superhard fights (like cyan, suun, 5headed dragon, ochre, argentine, etc) have a much longer decay timer than some of the comparable items that load on easier fights like sleet, flurry, Soth . . . Just kind of a reward to completing the major fights and to take into account how often the harder fights can be done (due to prep requirements, group requirements, etc) . . .

Item decay should occur at 2:1 vs the current rate, or possibly even faster. The in game decay rate should be something along the lines of 1/4th the current rate to encourage those players to more actively do and explore more zones.

For coming up with a solution that not only solves several problems at once (deep renting, storage chars, not enough pk, not enough clan war, eq never ever loading no matter what zone(s) you do), but also makes everyone from neutrals to clannies happy.

Truthfully, I thought that clannies would hate this idea - it basically means they can decay an item in rent and not have a chance to force a repop, which they've been doing for years (and which I feel is the biggest problem with lack of eq circulating). But they've embraced it wholeheartedly, and I think a simple version of this plan should be put in for testing. If it's not working right, or someone is abusing something, then further tweaks can be made, but I think it's important to start out simple and not over-complicate matters from step 1.

As the crazy Hungarian said, this can lead to so many possible options and outcomes, some of which are influenced by staff changes, some by players, some by game mechanics... IMHO this is a fresh change to arctic that it sorely needed.

To the concerns of rare players getting punished... well, if you have a lot of elite gear, and don't play, then frankly you should be punished for renting that gear and not playing. If the changes were made so that unlimited gear is exempt (or a much slower decay), then the rare players have a good chance of coming back after a week-long break and still having a pretty large amount of decent eq (even if their 2 or 3 epic items decayed). Frankly, I doubt any rare players even have any nice gear that they popped just by playing a couple of hours a week, so I don't think the issue is as big as it's made out to be.

My last concern is for those people who are always pushing the boundaries of the rules. If you made a system like this, that worked every tick, then they would innsit for the majority of that tick, and only jump out of peace for the few seconds required to be considered 'playing'. I think the check should be made at random points throughout the tick, that are impossible to predict or counter.

Aristox, hopefully the huge amount of recent discussions between staff and players (and the almost entirely positive feedback to this idea) will help you to stay motivated and keep up the good work.

This would be a great addition, particularly focusing only on the top level limited gear. The addition of some complexity in the actual decay timer depending upon how close to the limit the item would be a great addition.

I think a lot of the arguments against this are possibly misunderstanding the type of equipment that would actually fall under this system, My understanding is that it would be limited to types of items such as the unique items that people who know always drool over. Your autoflies and basic primes and such wouldn't be covered by this.

If you are a casual player that somehow ends up with Huma's shield--enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Just because you play casually, doesn't mean to me that you deserve to keep your hands on it for 5 to 6 months. The more often the item decays, the more often SOMEBODY ELSE aside from the person who had it before has a chance to load and use the item.

I don't know if there is a technical reason for this, but why limit decay to only while items are offline? Set the timers to work on real time. It would eliminate a lot of possible gaming of the system to just let the decay timer work in real time--whether the item is online or offline let the timer continue to tick.

For this system to succeed it needs to remain very simple. Adding in all sorts of special occassions, adding extra timer to characters that log on every week and such, lends itself to possible abuse and basically kills what I think should be one of the primary motivations behind adopting this kind of system.

My vision of doing something like this would increase the level of large scale clan pk by giving clans concrete reasons to fight. If you know you and your clan have a chance to load a no_bash item every 2 weeks or so, but you have to fight off the opposing clan to be able to get your shot to it, an active clan leader will gather her clan and duke it out. Although there is a chance that with shorter decay timers some of the urgency of reloading the item will be lost.

The very best PK fights I got to see were all motivated behind repopping items like the onyx shield and the shadoworb.

"It's the economy, Stupid." (not calling anyone that, just spoofing an American political quote) Ultimately, it's all about healthy equipment circulation.

For re-emphasis: NOT having any decay timer for limited items in play is as important as having a decay timer for limited items in storage. These are the two complementary sides of the same coin. People keep overlooking this complementary aspect, or view this part as a separate factor.

1. First of all, the decay timer in storage discourages deep renting (good thing that enhances equipment circulation), but the decay timer in play (among several effects) allows folks to immediately repop decays, which I think contributes to the current state of rare loads in high zones (although no longer due to deep renting)

2. Second, a constant decay timer in its current form would cause a constant struggle to repop decays. To make this decay rate more reasonable, Adam would have to code in a much slower decay rate...thereby nullifying many of the benefits to equipment circulation from storage decay (just against deep renting).

3. Third, this aspect really enhances/rewards active game play (not just one aspect such as pk battles). Groups will still zone hard for items that went missing while rented and, in addition, on the chance that an item could be available. Groups will still be motivated to either zone or pk over items or potential items. Groups, after popping any decays (that someone else hasn't loaded) will then be free to play/zone/pk without worrying about decays.

In conclusion, it's critical that limited items in play be decay-free as much as limited items in rent can decay, if we really want to break free from this orbit of eq stagnation and generate the escape velocity necessary to achieve critical mass of healthly game play.

As for implementation, the primary variable comes down to this: determine the storage decay rate (+/- some random factor) for limited equipment so its not unreasonably too long or too short (balanced economic health) and some policing/provision against botting in peace room (anti-corruption law) which, even then, subjects a char to uncomfortable looks, cases, and locates (audit)...

Arb

I think it is important to include randomness (instead of a fixed time). The point is that items have to decay in rent unpredictably, otherwise, one could just calculate when it will happen (from game/rent time) and play just to pop. This is also why items must not decay during game time and hence, sitting in peacerooms should not activate the timer.

I voted 'other', but in principle you can count me a 'yes'. I just wanted to argue for an addition: Let the decay timer roll backwards while in game such that, i.e., with a game time of, say 12h/day and renting 12h/day, the item will never decay. It will reward gametime even more. The drawback I can see is botting, but that would be a problem for the original suggestion already.

Ah, and btw. by playing more than 12h/day, you shouldn't be able to increase the decay time beyond the maximum.

The current decay system causes a dysfunctional "wipe" cycle that generally follows the same pattern:

1. There is a mad rush during the first days of a new wipe. This is an exciting period, with people rolling and grouping like mad (clanned or not), and online numbers totalling 150+.

2. After about a week or so, some pk battles over zones take place, from which clans are identified, and this too is a fun time for those involved and the spectators, as sides are drawn and suspicions run rampant. However, the numbers online are already down, stagnation creeps sets in, and the online playerbase numbers dwindle from there. A few more fights happen over zones, until dominant play hours and equipment sets are basically locked in.

3. Before you know it, people are complaining that no one is fighting, things are not fair for X group or Y group is being punished, or Z group are having it too easy, and this is when the staff implement revamps or new zones/guilds, or run some fun quests and chaos days, but these bandaids fail to address the underlying game dynamics (or lack of).

4. At some point, calls for new Pwipe grow. Some rumors may run rampant as to when, causing some players take a break (no point in developing chars when pwipe is going to happen soon, right?) Plans are taking shape for next wipe among the staff and players, until finally, Pwipe happens. Two constant predictions can be sure: (1) the next wipe will follow the same pattern (2) with a somewhat dwindled playerbase.

A new, effective decay system should break this monopolistic cycle, making the first weeks just as fun, and providing an INITIAL advantage, but NOT PROLONGED advantage. Mid-wipe, in principle, both relative newcomers and re-equiping clans doing high zones should see loads pop (that currently do not) to reward active playing, and allow everyone to "get back in the game."

In conclusion, we have pwipes because the current system fails to address stagnation (yes, even coding changes). The ultimate litnus test of effectiveness would be a system that essentially precludes any need for a pwipe just to make things exciting again. Thus in principle, we could implement/test a new decay system right now without any pwipe--this is the true measure of success!

Arb
would like to see venerable chars again

P.S. Re: gnomeflinger. I disagree with anything hardcoded that potentially allows a limited item to NEVER reenter circulation. This is unhealthy for game play, completely unnecessary, will be abused, and the cure will probably be worse than the disease. As to why, read my previous post. Don't go down this path.

P.P.S. That said, I agree with your comments about having a randomness factor to the [storage] decay timer. While the original possessor has an advantage of knowing what decayed upon logging on, this system still allows limited items to circulate which is healthly for game play.

Agree 100%

Well not to make an open attack on this thread but I think this system is perfect for you "casual" RGB players. Everyone knows that this system would practically ravage RGB and Outlaw players that have allegedly "quit" or only play 1 day a week. What's so "casual" in that? As someone said earlier on this thread, if you play 2 days out of every 2 weeks, you really don't play and shouldn't keep high end gear as it is. I think this just pisses you off that you're going to start decaying all the eq you guys get from logging 2 people once ina month and strike some eq'd player and rent again.
(Not trying to flame, just a fact)

Why is this preferable to making all eq nolimit with some %load factor?

I guess I fail to understand why it makes more sense to do all this tinkering in the hope that it recirculates eq (setting aside for the moment that it won't change clans immediately hopping on their decay lists) than to just reward any group that can kill a particular mob with the chance of the load.

So by your theory of it being preferable to make all eq nolimit with some %load factor, it'd be better to have 72 dragon orbs in the game than the current 2? Better to have 30 15+ heal healers (because all the +heals are now nolimit) than the current 3-4? Better to have 20 900hps limit_damage barbs instead of the current 2? Better to have 40 bashers with the shield of huma instead of 1?

There's a reason limits were put into place on the high end of gear . . . Without limits, it'd be pointless to load anything but the very best of gear . . .

If the %load was just based on how often the zone was run and how many items you want then you could still control the number of that item in the game.

eg. item A loads in zone B. Zone B is run 1000 times per wipe. Say you want around 3 of item A in the game:
3/1000 chance to load would give (on average) only 3 items in the game per wipe.

Not too hard and everybody has a chance to load every peice of eq.

If thats the kinda game you want then why don't you go play something like WoW? Arctic is fun because of limited gear and pk. Remove the chance to getting something that maybe only ONE other person has and this game would lose most of its draw.

I play this game because not everyone can have a char stacked with uber gear, even if they put in 20 hours a day.

Rorc, I'm surprised you leave the analysis to just unanswered questions- I'm used to seeing much more lengthy and thought-out responses from you. But I'll bite: what exactly would be so much worse about having X more of Y? Maybe I missed all the wipes where we tried that and discovered the game was no fun anymore.

I'll assume it's basically a 'game balance' objection you're making, which may be ultimately valid, but to my mind, that speaks more to the location/difficulty of item loads than anything else.

Regardless, I think this all boils down to people's opinion of who deserves elite equipment, which isn't at all what anyone's discussing.

Yah, it mainly is a game balance objection I'm making. . .

+1 to all slots being readily available for every caster in the game. . .
+20hps aboutworn being readily available . . .

We'd end up with clerics, druids, and mages who have 600hps, 15 stuns/lightning storms/sunrays . . . and a ton of other spells . . .

Basically, the unlimiting of the high end gear would make the game boring . . . If anyone could be a 15 heal healer, there'd be a lot more people doing the very hardest of fights, resulting in more beefing of mobs, until noone can kill them . . .

The only comment I have for implementing a decay system like this, is to really spend a great deal of time deciding which pieces of gear you want in the game at all times.

This system will bridge all sides of the world, by making it a requirement that a clan play 24 hours a day (or as close to it as possible). So my opinion is that you should decide which gear needs to be in the game 24/7 and what does not.

Now i know there are some really badass pieces of gear out there, but I would really hesitate placing a short decay timer on 2 int/+7th, 3 wis, 2dam/2hr shit

My arguement is that while its cool to xfer the best pieces of gear, its really lame to xfer your entire set of gear everyday.

So I propose that this system be tried out on only the highest pieces of gear. Gear that will not be touched by anyone besides the current best clan in the game.

Examples include: dragon orbs, no bash(s), shield of huma, maybe even the dragonlance(for sentimental value only)

Basically items that seperate the best from the rest.

I'm not saying dont implement this to all gear, im saying keep the insanely short timers on the gear that is fought for, and not on the very useful, but not very critical pieces of gear.

Nantag,

That is precisely what I have been saying the whole time.

i feel like the best equipment in the game belongs in the game. if you are a player who doesnt play much, you dont deserve to have these strongest items. they should be in the game more than a couple of times a month.

a different way to make this happen could be to give these elite items ridiculous rent prices. if you have a lot of fun equipment, but each piece is 3k per day worn, it would make it difficult for these things to be deep-rented.

i think i still like the in rent decay idea better, but if the rent decay plan is making people too crazy this is another way to go.

If a change like this will make more high end equipment available in the game to a wider distribution of people, then I am for it.

It seems that what you are proposing will do this.

Theoretically, it should also provide a balance of power between fighting clans, because no single clan can truly hold all of the elite items. Even if they played in rotation 24/7, you still cant rent everything.

What I would like to know is, if the propsed changes don't deliver the expected results, can the change be easily rolled backwards without another pwipe? I would hate to be stuck with a changed system that people don't enjoy and isn't working as intended.

On a side note, why have only 85 people voted on such an important change? Click a button people and influence your own destiny.

Paul

Well for kmarks system, it would be nice. But there's a very simple exploit there.

rent;5 --> ... 2 weeks later
Welcome to the land of Krynn.
rem all;give all $storagechartwo
rent;5 --> ... repeat process indefinitly to avoid eq decay.

I believe Myte makes a strong point here, but the initial question still stands. Why do we think people deserve a grace period or vacation?

I believe we stumbled by assuming that this course would happen to all gear and that all gear would have a timer of two weeks or less. From posts below we find that simply to not be the case.

So in my opinion there should be no grace period. This is because this decay all your gear in 2 weeks idea will simply not happen. The only gear that will decay in a short period of time is actually "clan gear," which will not be owned by any one person, but instead by a collection of people. This new system will promote guardians rather than proprietors.

In closing:
Imagine no possesions.
I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

I think this is a great idea for many of the reasons already stated, mainly agreeing with kmark's ideas (increasing pk/availability of gear etc etc) and I like suf's idea of real time decay.

I also think vacation time is an excellent idea, backing up the idea of built in option to enter it rather than having to apply to immortals. Vacation option removes timer for up to 1 month or whatever length of time imms see as best, however as in life vacations cost money and the rent cost is quadrupled or something along those lines.

It was also mentioned earlier about the possibility of abuse due to character transfer but I suggest a simple two part solution. Firstly rent costs of all limited eq goes up so it is a real struggle to maintain an elite set without playing and the increased rate is a huge burden. Secondly all limit 1 items become flagged no_drop including on quit, so the only way to take them is from someones corpse, or they decay it. Again some people will say they will suicide to transfer etc but I see that as a fitting cost.

Expanding on this idea, I have in the back of my mind that these epic items are so powerful that any character picking them up is unable to release them due to the unnatural greed they enforce upon their bearer. Another way to go could be a quest giving a potion which removes the curse from that player and places the item in the room.

I also remember the battle banner of takhisis in sanction triple obliterating good aligns who tried to loot it and implementing this type of idea for epic items could be fun.

Well I've been putting in more online time on Arctic than sleep for at least the past 6 years, so this is actually going to lengthen my timers :)

I think it would be nice to try some ridiculous timers.

Imagine having a 1 day in rent timer on a dragon orb. The orb would eventually be used on some lowbie sometime just to keep it from being rented.

I feel extremes could be the key to an explosion of pk between the clans

For dragon orbs, at least, a sort of balance could be reinstated in relation to zone difficulty

Easiest – 1 day timer
Median – 3 day timer
Hardest – 1 week timer

Of course if I know anything about Arctic the revamped dragon orb will either be taken out of the game, or placed into a zone that can only be done by prepping for a week.

Basically the things has been said before by others.

basic idea is people that play alot should have the possibility to have and maintain high end items. If you don't play why should you rob others from the chance of having the items you have just because you might play 1 day a week.
I for one would be hit by this.
If you want more play more or have good friends(that is always the fast lane that one).

Decay timers for limited items should decay when in rent and with a factor that is noticable.
Remove decay timers for limited items, and decrease the durability this way people that do return from time to time to play will have the opertunity to have a fairly playable character upon returning, if you still have the cash.
That beeing said there is obviously different oppions about what a playable character is. Playable is with unlimited items, thats why they are unlimited, it's a starting point. Again if you don't play don't expect to be able to maintain your limited items.
Increasing item rent timers because you play defeats the purpose of the timer in the first place which is and should be solely based on how much the character is rented.

Item repairs could be factored in. Some items are norepair which in some ways make sense as they are unique and all though if you play alot and try to maintain that "super set" it's in many cases annoying not to able to repair that item. could introduce a reapir shop where you need specific material items to be able to repair you item. This material item could or perhaps even should be attainable only from the mobile / place it was loaded in the first place. So if you got a certain item from cyan and want to beat the timers by adding 1/10th, or whatever fits, of the rent timer back to it you would have to revisit cyan for the repair item.
Obvious abuse factors, clans hammering certain mobiles for repair materials to able to repair certain items.
Fix codewise only load the items that are actually brought to the fight in inventory or worn, that means they are able to indure damage during the fight and so on.
This scan could be made several times during the fight to insure that people don't run in during the fight with a dummy character where all the items are on. So any items introduced later than a certain fight round wouldn't get marked.

Anyways just my thoughts

Best regards
Christian

Items should decay in rent only but start loading only when you enter the game or game booted. So there will be ok chance to repop your decay. To the other side any deeprenter will lost his decay permanently on 1st boot

My vote was other, and this is what I was thnking:

All items have their times, and their condition. Right now you can repair the condition, but never the timer.

Just as there is a 'level' to repair item condition, the same could be true with the timer. Now to repair the timer would require alot of 'skill', and maybe even special smiths, not just the current well-known repair spot. The cost would be based on the item's power really, and epic items, and maybe the elites too, would be unfixable on the timer.

However the 'good' stuff, like your +stat, handworn +dam, and other common yet decent eq would be, and the price would be somewhat reasonable.

There would naturally be some items that wouldn't be worth fixing for the timer, just as some items arent worth the condition repair cost. However the ability to fix the 'timer' would be very useful for those who hate constantly having to repop the same common item over and over.

As a guideline, perhaps any maxable item would be no_time_fix, to prevent perm hoarding of those items.

This idea would mainly be for those people who have the coins to keep the item form ecaying/breaking, but perhaps lack the time to zone a few hours a day to keep repopping even their nolim eq.

The only downside would be some items might become too common, but constantly repopping people's (so so) decays sucks. :/

Disagree. This suggestion defeats the original purpose of limited items decaying only in rent (equipment circulation vs decay "recovery") by making it somewhat easier for deep-renters (log on only when decay-recovery group is ready for its monotonous duties). I could go on and on, but that's the essence. If I am missing an obvious point, please explain your thoughts in greater detail.

Arb

P.S. I'm deliberately ignoring the game rebooting comment--such "timing" creates a mirror microcosm of recent wipes: typically short yet mad rush subsequently followed by a prolonged yet dull lull until the next wipe. Like bad sex, it's just short-sighted.

With the proposed change what will be point of renting at all? Inns and rent always were one of Arctic specifics. Some safe haven. That would be very anxious to feel being in rent of just leaving the game for some time. Thats just wrong. Feels wrong. Sounds wrong.
;
As for your "if you dont play enought you dont deserve elite items" - arctic was always a game where your brains and skills meant more than time spent online, why change that? I dont like "you are idiot, because i sit more online" idea.
;
I also can easily foresee, some unknown character sitting in nopeace, but nomagic, noteleport and locked nopick room or area holding set of elite items.
;
As Kael mentioned, rent system needs to be dynamic. And, of course, items should decay online. Thats the purpose of decay system. If you want to encourage players to play more - decrease decay modifier with the amount of time being played. For example, every hour from 1.0 decay modifier with -0.1 step up to a minimum of, lets say, 0.3 As for rent, players need to take of its advantage. So, i propose to make first hour with the same decay modifier player had online when he rented. With slow decreasing -0.15 every next hour down to a minimum of 0.1 and then after some time (for example rents longer than 24 hours, increasing again up to 1.0 or more for bigger times). After player relogs he will start with having 1.0 decay modifier again. Relogging and immediately renting will actually lead to faster decay rates. As the same time it wont hurt casual players who play normal cycles (several hours playing, long time away), and will even encourage full time mavlads (24 hours online). It will hurt however players with many chars as they cant play all of them at the same time.
;
But anyway, better find a way to get rid of multies, whose amount already exceed even most brave approximations.

I like the ideas of this system only applying to the best equipment, and also giving some bonus timer for something (maybe when you rank, your gear timers could be reset?). I don't like timer extension purely based on playtime, since it'd be easy enough to run around the world doing nothing and still be able to extend your timer.

Regards
Tomash Sanderson

That is why to remove all peace rooms also. If someone wants to stay online and have their things never decay, they should be needing to protect it. Maybe 5 seconds of peace on log in like quake 3 or something. make sure people cant just attack people as they sign on. yes that is good.

all unlimited items should decay in rent. why does it matter if it is a nobash or a +wis ring? no one should just be able to own an item and get it back on every decay. i dont care if timers are long in rent. just if they decay unknown is best so it is possible to load items.

Semi-old topic but I'm bored as hell at work and the rest of you surely aren't posting enough spam.
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If equip is rented constantly it may as well not even exist. Having gear decay only in rent would be a very good change overall. Actually making people want to run zones with their elite-geared characters is a damn good thing. The amount of "no chance in hell I'm logging on to do that lame zone just to decay myself" whining would seriously be reduced.
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This system would reduce the effectiveness of guerilla pk tactics, which is what I think this game really needs. Fast log-in ambushes are lame as hell and only hugely discourage max group battles.
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That said, something also needs to be done to reduce the dominating power of the top clan in comparison to those who need or want to fight them. If players must be on the game to preserve their gear, they need some sort of protection from the bigger clan who has 2-3x more players and is on at all hours in force. Players will be more willing to compete against BSP (screw takling around it, we all know who you are) if they are still able to actually play the char(s) they want, when they want to play. Hiding in rent and on IRC or playing some lame spy/multi char you really don't want to play is not playing ArcticMUD.
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Defending playtime used to be the basis around success on here, but I know for a fact I simply don't have time for that bullshit anymore, and I bet a lot of other older players (and probably newer people who might come) don't either. If I feel like playing Arcitc and doing the zones my clan is capable of doing, I damn well better be "allowed to" otherwise I won't waste my time even trying to play this game anymore. And if there is no chance of keeping hold of the gear that happens to load for us, there is also no point in playing this game. If there was a reasonable expectation that any gear lost in a major pk fight would be recovered by subsequent pk encounters, it wouldn't be a big deal (as was the case in the past). But Arctic hasn't been like that in years. If you lose a stacked 10man in a pk fight against BSP now, you're done. You either quit (like Wild did) or wage lameass guerilla fights (like Outlaw/RGB does). Even if you manage to negotiate peace with them you'll be re-aggroed when you obtain any gear that might give you a chance of winning against them. How the game functions now simply does not work. If you feel that you disagree, you are free to discuss the issue with the playerbase numbers (before wipe announcement). They don't lie to anyone.
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Players must be allowed to play the game and hold onto the elite gear if they are able to earn it. These players must then be given a reason to *want* to engage in large-scale pk battles. There is simply no other way to revive this game in my mind. BSP is too large and too powerful to have the free reign they've had to continue into the future, other clans simply can't compete and no longer want to try. This recent Relentless clan I hear of was quite powerful and still refused to fight BSP, for example. If some clan was to form and smash BSP down, it would REQUIRE that all BSP players be hunted on sight and killed off the game entirely. No game can thrive like that. Forcing players to quit is exactly why the playerbase has attritioned to the poor level it is at now. The clan system is a good start, but firm coding based around that system itself to protect rising clans until they have a chance to win (at THEIR choosing, not BSP's) and then protect them again if they start a war too soon and get annihilated. Pk needs happen because it's fun, not because it's forced on you. If anyone quits because of it, it will be those people (probably BSPs) who can't even fathom losing a pk battle or understand the fact that they can be protected for a time until they can fight again and get their (and new) gear back.
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The in_rent_only decay system combined with clan system protections will help in the long run, even if the short-run whining of BSPs is at a maximum level. I'm not an "OmfgPermaHateBSPIlyaStyle" BSP-hater, I just know that this game sucks today largely because of how BSP acted in the past and still acts today (not killing Relentless was a good start, but too little too late I imagine). Their playstyle is what needs to be nerfed above all else. I can't say I'd have acted differently in their position, which is why the power needs to be taken out of their hands and given back to the immortals and the code.

Now granted, it's been quite a while since I've played this game seriously, but I don't know how you believe this. If you lose a stacked 10man in a pk fight and [b]quit[/b], then you're done. If you pick up the pieces the next day and climb your way back up you're fine. You can't win fights without fighting.

-suf

I believe it because I've been in that situation more than once. The only way to have a chance after losing is to get peace, which always results in at least half the clan quitting because bending over and taking it up the ass from the enemy is not worth the effort to keep fighting for most people. Especially if the fight was totally lopsided and there wasn't even a chance at winning, why waste the time spending another month regaining strength just to get smashed again? There are too many other ways to spend our time now than gear up, lose, gear up, lose etc.
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And from what I've seen from your own irc about current BSP leadership in pk situations, mavlad will not allow fighting if there is even a 0.01% chance of losing. I'd like to think this is because your main enemy now is RGB who are 100% borderline trash ambushers, but you guys have been that way for years. You don't want [semi] fair fights, you want to slaughter everyone with no risk. And given this new decay system without other caveats, you guys can stay on all the time and never lose your gear. How convenient for you.
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You guys have done an excellent job making Arctic your game by *never* quitting and maintaining a "flag-using" zerg force, so maybe you've earned the right to be the only ones playing it. I've seen a few of your leaders even talk about not returning at the wipe because the game is so boring now. I hope it's a good feeling knowing that you guys did it to yourselves. If any of you have read Test of the Twins, you'd see a pretty good example of what your playstyle has done to the game.

Heeh the fairweathermen like you are not quite in the position to talk about fighting.

Logging on for 10-20 minutes once a week to try and pick someone off just to be annoying isn't really playing the game. Keeping elite gear out of the hands of that type of "playing" is an excellent idea all around, even if it does give BSP more power. At least they would use the gear when playing with themselves instead of deep renting it into oblivion.

http://arctic.elay.org/index.php?option=viewlog&&logid=479

So you are saying we all should have quit after that log?

If you lose, you keep on fighting. If you stop fighting and stop playing then you quit. Losing the pk didn't make you unable to compete, not bothering to try made it so.

Matt does have a valid point. A smaller clan, like ours, having no spare resources, has to recover (being unable to fight with any visible chances to succeed) a few months after a big loss - that's how it went this wipe. And the change in topic wouldn't help us at all. But it's funny to hear complaints from Matt... it's him who quitted at the sign of troubles, not the whole Wild.

However the once existing balance of two powers was based mainly on timezone difference, not on the fighting spirit. Now when USA seem to have beaten Europe with zerg rush, our chances probably only lie in enlisting the help of Asia.

Hehe I quit Wild last wipe because BSP forced us to begin to start zoning at 11pm-2am my time. That doesn't work well with work, so I tossed off my gear instead of deeprenting the entire evil healing set because I was restricted to 0-1 hours of zoning at the most during the week, and half the clan didn't play much on weekends. The andrew dramafest didn't help my wanting to stay and tough it out either since he got me into the clan, but I knew he was acting like an idiot. Being caught in the middle sucks.
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I'm trying to say that if some protections existed so smaller clans like RGB and Myth (if they wanted some action) could both fight and zone with their main chars and not waste endless hours plotting futilely(sp) in IRC, a lot more people would probably not feel like playing was a waste of time. Especially if/when good gear starts to decay in rent only.

sitbdyvv