The "rent_decay" system is a direct method of keeping items of the highest caliber away from deep rent. The purpose of this is to ensure that items of the highest caliber stay circulating and continue to be played.

Items you describe, those not decaying in 2.5 months, are not considered of this caliber. Now, certainly many of these items are good and very good. This is an essential dynamic. We like giving casual players the opportunity to have characters that will allow them to participate in the vast majority of game content, even though they will not be playing every day. If you log 20 hours a month, which is by no means a lot, why should you spend all that time reequiping?

The non rent_decay limited items exist for this reason.

If you know you are going to take time away from the game, and would be happy losing your gear. It is your responsibility to help the mud by putting it back into circulation as you desire. Imms also will check what is considered storage.

It is a clear truth that high end gear is readily available throughout the game in many locations even to this day. I think players should be reasonable with the amount of gear they have simply for the purpose of hoarding, but the game does control the highest caliber items in an extremely effective manner.

Furthermore, the difference in power between limited, non rent_decay items and unlimited items is not particularly distinct. Learning where unlimited items load, though, is what will allow you to pop gear through out the wipe.

I understand your concern, but I don't think it is very justified.

I do really enjoy your idea of tripling rent prices. We already started to boost rent cost, to reduce the inflation that has occured on the game in the past few years. I will look into this.

Don't tell me how to do it; it sickens me.

Isn't that the whole point of unlimited gear? To give casuals items they can use and rent without taking it out of circulation?

I have to agree with the OP. If there are limited items that can be easily rented for 5 months at a time without them decaying in rent, something is seriously wrong.

1- the item should be unlimited
or
2- the item should decay if rented longer than say, 2 weeks

Seriously, if you log in less than once a week you aren't even a casual player, you are a NON-player.

I really don't see any problem here.

First of all, the items you described are of upper-medium tier, not super-elite.

Second, how much gear remains in storage is not an issue by itself. The issue is how much gear is left in the game. If your +2 stat or +dam item is not the only item of that kind (and especially if the other similar items could be found in zones of comparable difficulty), then you may rent it the entire wipe, who cares? Even if the loads in the zones you know are low, there are certainly other zones (and hidden caches everywhere) that still have hoards of elite gear waiting for a seeking adventurer.

Third, even if some kind of gear is maxxed, that is not necessarily bad. The situation still encourages exploring (you never know if all the +stat gear is actually maxxed, or if you're just looking in the wrong place, see the previous paragraph), it also encourages pkill and, most importantly, it encourages creativity. No more +dam around? Find +skill, +magic, decent charmies, whatever and learn to fight effectively in a new way!

Fourth, the current availability of the gear in general is nowhere near "scarce". Back in 1998-2000, one could easily TRADE a +1 stat item or a 3d4 weapon. These days, it is not uncommon to BUY a 3d6++ or a +2 stat, and the price is so low (often <5k coins) that zoning for coinage often becomes (for a neutral) a more effective way to equip their char.

Fifth, our playerbase isn't as big as it used to be. a NON-player or not, if a person created a char in arctic and got some gear for it and wants to rent it, why not let them possess their heart's desire for as long as they like unless that SERIOUSLY harms the balance?

On the other hand, the ideas about PARTICULAR items (e.g. make the dragon orb rent_decay, it is too powerful and unique to let it be stored in rent indefinitely) may certainly be of interest. Once again, the stats are not the only parameters of the item - the rent cost, the limit, the time and difficulty of getting the load and how many people know the load location, the availability of similar items etc., all that should be taken into account when making the decision.

Thats the kind of attitude that got arctic where it is.

Oh, a few people are quitting, but I don't see any problem here.

Oh, the prime time numbers are half what they were 3 years ago, but I don't see any problem here.

Oh, the old whiny members are quitting? Thats not a problem thats a good thing.

Then you wake up 3 months later and wonder why there are only 20 players online.

I completely disagree. If gear is meant to be stored, lets just give every character a bank like world of warcraft, is that what you want? Because when you can toss gear on an alt and rent it for as long as you want, it's basically just a bank.

The great thing about arctic is the risk of losing your gear. With the capability of storing just about anything on alt characters, except the most elite items, a lot of that risk is minimized.

An item being "elite" or not is totally relative. For more casual players, that +2 damage item is pretty damn elite.

Gear being maxed out, on it's own, isn't bad. However, gear being maxed out by players who don't even play the game *is* bad.

How the hell does this encourage pkill? Is there some secret where you can bribe the innkeeper to pkill rented characters? I didn't think so. All this encourages is more storage characters.

Yes but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The game is flooded with good gear more than it's ever been, I'll agree with that. The solution is to go and reduce the limits on items, not to encourage players to store more gear. Storing gear cuts down on the sting of death and makes gear less valuable because it's easier to replace.

Then just make the item unlimited. If you think it's too good of an item to be unlimited, then I think it's too good of an item to be rented for an unlimited time.

That's exactly my greatest concern about the game. However, not every idea, and not even every good idea is related to keeping the playerbase. The players quit even if Arctic becomes better and almost ANY change makes happy only SOME players and makes some others unhappy. There is no ideal solution, it's always the question of choosing lesser evil (even greater good is often not an option).

Once again, your ideas about balancing the gear aren't necessarily bad, they may possibly work slightly better or slightly worse than the current setup, but there is no major problem here. Other things have a much greater impact on the Arctic player numbers and the well-being of the game in general. Unfortunately, among the players of Arctic there is no common understanding of what hurts the game most (and even the imms have different opinions on the subject).

Rule: Solve the greatest problems first. Let the irrelevant things remain as they are. And most important, use good judgement to tell the former from the latter.

I didn't say gear MUST be stored. I said, most gear MAY be stored. See the difference.

For even more casual players, a +1 hitroll item is as much pretty damn elite. Do we have to make all the non-shop gear rent decay?

The same way as it does encourage exploring. If you can't get the gear from the zones you know, you get it elsewhere. Certainly, you can't do anything to a player that deep-rents your favourite item, but chances are, some of the on-line players have something equally shiny. The playerbase may shrink or grow, but the proportion (approx. 1% of all the created chars is on-line) remains the same for ages.

The solution is to address the balance in general and use all the tools for it - reduce the limits on one item, change the stats of the second, move the third to another load location, make the 4-th rent_decay...

There are quests that are so obscure that nobody can solve them (or perhaps something was damaged and the quest is no longer doable at all) - why do you talk only about deep-rented gear and not about the "deep-quested" one, isn't it the same issue? There are lots of things that affect the game balance, why are you so concerned with deep-renting? What makes it more important than lots of other issues?

Once again, if the limit of the item AND it's rent cost AND it's rent-decay flag AND many other things affect it's availability, why would we always use just one of these parameters, rather than benefit from all possible combinations? E.g., there may be 2 elite items with exactly the same stats, except that one of them is rent-decay and the other not - that simply makes them 2 DIFFERENT items, the second being noticeably more elite than the first, that's it.

Well, this thread was started about deep-renting gear, so I was staying on the topic. It doesn't mean there aren't other issues, but I wasn't going to bring them up here.

And why is it important to fix? Because it seems like a ridiculously easy fix. I don't see how rent decay can be anything more complicated than setting a flag on an item, it seems to be that an imm could go through 100 items in 5 minutes and fix them all really easily. Heck, you could probably write a script: if rentdecaytime > 15 & itemlimit != unlimited THAN set rentdecaytime=7

Would it be more beneficial to rework the entire system from the ground-up and fix every problem with the game? Sure, it probably would be, but it would take far more time and effort than anyone is willing to give.

To other players who read this forum:

All Drakantus' statements must be taken with a grain of salt. He knows nothing of game mechanics/systems and in general is much more interested in saying basically every change the staff has ever made is totally willy-nilly and ill-conceived. Essentially, the data he presents is entirely erroneous.

Here is the break down of my thought on the issue, since I take full responsiblity for the equipment system currently implemented in the game and was very involved in the history of what has led to the current system. (If you like it; the rest of the staff is also responsible, since I am not a unilateral sort of dictator (well, not on everything)).

This system of 3 principle types of gear was developed after both attempts to make good gear unlimited and good gear rent_decay failed miserably. The reasons for failure were different.

When almost all good gear was made unlimited, we assumed that the high availability of gear would make people much more willing to pk and explore new zones, since there was an even further increase in character strength. This turned out to be the exact opposite. People remained unwilling to pk, since you had the opportunity to lose extremely good gear to a bunch of people who did only easy zones which loaded nice stuff, and nobody explored new zones, content with the gear they could procure with their current state of knowledge.

When almost all good gear became rent_decay, the system failed for related, if somewhat opposite reasons. Gear being so dynamic (regularly disappearing on you) was not considered a plus. People spent literally their entire time doing the same zones just to repop gear. Also, because the gear was always repopping, there was no reason to pk.

The hybrid system between to two has resulted. In which there are about 1600 total rent_decay items, 3200 limited items, and obviously an unlimited amount of good unlimited items. The number of items still loading from each set of items is still extremely high. That said, of items in rent the ones that are most in rent are rent_decay by a landslide in percentage.

The criteria from which we determine what items belong in what grouping is based on so many parameters that inevitably it becomes a little subjective. A few example parameters are wear location, timer length, rent cost, durability, repairability, stats, load location difficulty, and item fame.

Obviously, our system is extremely dynamic and specific items may very well, as the first poster suggests, need some changes, but the data shows that in general things are working in this system.

Don't tell me how to do it; it sickens me.

You did it wrong. You made gear decay in rent AND while played, so gear just plain decayed too fast. Try setting it so if you rent for a week your gear is gone, but it never decays while online and the rent decay timers are reset every time you log into the game.

That is what I think of when I say rent decay, not the arctic system where items decay in rent but it doesn't reset by logging in and they continue to decay cumulatively each time you rent instead of it resetting.

If the gear only decayed in rent if a player was logged out for more than say 8 days, I don't see how any active player could possibly complain about re-popping gear to decays because his gear would never decay.

everything you wrote makes a lot of sense to me terk, and its obvious that more thought has gone into this system than i thought. the only problem i see with all your figuring is that you seem to be mainly looking at the biggest clans and strongest players to form your plans for how the game should work.

in the wipe with unlimited equipment you said not much more exploring was done, however my small group of friends didn't ever have very much of that elite limited gear then and we actually did explore and learn several zones that were new to us. i'm sure these are the same zones that the stronger players had been spamming all along, so it would be hard to notice, but we probably learned more that wipe than the 3 before it. it might seem like there arent any players left who aren't in one of the big clans, but i bet there are other groups of players out there just like me and my friends.

in this wipe, high end equipment might be readily available in many zones but those are likely zones that are too difficult for our weak powers. we see very few loads of any kind. sometimes we do get into stronger groups, but of course any good items that load are kept away from the fodder.

anyway, i am just hoping you keep the little guys in mind also when you make game changes. thanks for listening.

eh?

I understand where you are coming from Rob, but there are some small difficulties with your analysis.

The first point to make is that every time I do a zone which is within the range of the small group, it seems to me that something loads. No, the items are not super-elite, but those zones that easily doable with a small group shouldn't load elite items. We 2 manned all of Balcombe's recently (with 2 mages!) and a few ok items loaded.

However there is a point I would like to bring up. When you are an unexperienced player (and I am not assuming you are an unexperienced player) then you don't know where some of the semi-elite items that are soloable load. This is because every time you do the mob, nothing loads. I would like to point out that my mage's gear is almost entirely self-loaded solo (maybe 4-5 items of my current set of items I was given from group zoning) and although not much of it is what I would say is elite, I still manage to have nearly 400 hp and 28 int.

My suggestion is, if there is a specific item that you want to load, and you know where it loads, put that load location on your route and run it every time you log on. Eventually the item you want will load (because it may rent decay or frag or regular decay) and when it decays next time, you can go and get it.

One difficulty I do see is that the addition of clan stronghold smiths has greatly decreased the amount of ok gear that is sold to the shops. It used to be that you could just wait patiently by the shop for some 3d5 1/1 or 3d6 1/1 weapon to load because eventually some elite player would sell it to the shop for cash. Now that never happens anymore. It may be a good idea for next wipe to either restrict what gear can be sold to the stronghold smith, or remove that part of the smith entirely (since their ability to repair items is pretty decent).

Dave

Education replaces force with reason.

Kapis & Stronghold Smiths:

Yeah, this point has been considered. The plan is as follows, but may take awhile to implement:

We want to make it so clans can sell objects they pop to the general population through their shop. What would result is that, money spent at the forge would go at least partially into the clan vault, and the store would be open to everyone. We are debating whether or not clans should be able to set a price on an item, if the price would automatically be set to something like 5x item value, or a variety of other little things in the system.

This would be sold as a new asset: Clan Store, or something like that. This would be an easy way to sell gear of any tier--although doubtfully the most lucrative.

Don't tell me how to do it; it sickens me.

I think the idea of a clan store would be an amazing asset, especially if it would allow for others to purchase gear that would not normally be available to them. One suggestion however; allow them to sell spells as well, having the item shown as (spell book (force bolt) 15000, or prayerbook (strength of one) 9000.

Walking the Dark Path Alone

I think this is a bad idea. Part of the balance of clerics is that their spells load in random spots. None of their spells is in an amazingly difficult spot, so the trade off is that although the type of book might be fixed for a particular fight, the actual spell itself is random. This allows the imms to place spells like 'healing mist' and 'sunray' in locations that small clans have a chance of doing. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only place you could get sunray was Caiaphus?

Also this would encourage a glut of pk trash because it's much easier to pop a bunch of coins, level up a mage to 20-22 or so and buy all its spells and instantly (as far your opponents are concerned) have a trash mage.

Dave

Education replaces force with reason.

First of all, I don't see very many small clans running around with sunray or healing mist.

Second, if a clan wanted to put either of those two spells up for sale regardless of the amount if someone wants to buy it, they will. This is little different than their shouting it was for sale, save the item would be in a shopkeepers inventory.

Third, spells are for sale all the time and often for very reasonable amounts. The fact a spell might be available for a single purchase on a clan shopkeeper makes little difference in whether a trash character gets a spell or not. Chances are they have it anyway since most of the really notorious trash characters are alts of clanned characters already.

Walking the Dark Path Alone

Interesting ideas all around.

BlackMagus, I think spell selling is interesting, but as Kapis said, the potential for abuse to "see through" the random cleric loads would circumvent a system that, while frustrating to me personally, the imms deliberately kept in place. Also, most clans don't hesitate to sell spells over shout, and with bidding chances are you'll get a higher price. (Often, people who wouldn't pay X as a fixed price will pay even more if they start bidding lower, and the competitive juices start flowing.) Also, there are many reasons to sell gear at shop prices instead of over shout. People tend to load more gear than spells, so you'd be running more negotiations if you sold every decent piece of eq, and as another consequence, while everybody has some idea how rare and how good every spell is, there are more types of gear to keep track of, more gear using classes than spell studying classes to understand, so it's more likely that somebody will forget that, say, a 3d5 1/1 prime longblade is actually valuable to less experienced players than for them to think force bolt is junk.

Oh, and as an added bonus, here's something of marginal use: A certain magic shop buys mage books, if you're interested in making about 40 coins for the ones no player will buy.

Strange as it sounds, and despite Terk's sound thrashing, I think Drakantus' basic premise is sound: Having a substantial amount of gear that can be kept out of circulation for months at a time is, in itself, intrinsically bad. However, I agree that in practice, sometimes bad consequences and good ones are inextricably bundled. Storage is an unfortunately consequence of having gear that decays only in play, but it wasn't the reason--instead, the system is meant to let casual players stay playable even if they only play ten hours a week or so, and to let people have a playably equipped, but not elitely so, alt or two without having to double or triple their play time. A pure rent decay system (where gear doesn't decay at all in play) would kill traditional storage characters, but as I'll get into later has its own unintended consequences that would also take gear out of the game.

Nasredin also makes a good point--while Drakantus is right that abstractly, storage hurts the game, his implication that storage and lack of eq in play is the reason Arctic has lost players is unsupported by the facts. When Arctic was thriving, gear was even more scarce than it was today--I literally couldn't load a pair of blue gloves without the Wild or BSP who lost them offering me 3k for them about 2 minutes later. Like Drakantus, I'm not privy to how the actual limits have changed since then, but from the mortal side I definitely see more gear to go around. Yes, I'm more experienced and connected than I was then, so naturally I have more gear, but even within zones I could do back then (small solo quests and two-three man zones) I definitely feel like I get lucky a lot more often.

I remember talking with some imms during the great rent-decay experiment, and I know they considered a system Drakantus described--rent decay in rent, zero decay in play, rent decay timer resets when you play. It was agreed that such a system would be far too easily abused--just log your storage in as needed, idle for the minimum amount of time, and rent with your timers reset. Another factor to consider is that we want all gear to decay at some point--if gear only decays when people fail to "play the system" right (by resetting rent decay timers often enough, or whatever), then we're rewarding people for anal adherence to a routine, and not for actually playing (insert joke about the similarity of the two here).

I know a modified system was also proposed--rent decay counts down the timer, but being in play slowly builds it back up, but I don't remember how well it was recieved. Such an idea would prevent the easiest storage types--rent with bundle of money in the game decay only system, or log in minimally (possibly with scripts) often enough to reset the rent decay timer under the system Drakantus mentioned. However, it would also be even harder to balance, and might also fail to help the casual players (both the old system and Drakantus' proposal would let these guys hold on to a set of gear even if they only play 20 hours a month, but under this system you'd have to "regenerate" 36 rent decay hours per hour in play for the same player to break even). Still, since rob and Drakantus are both concerned with killing storage characters above all other priorities, this might be the system for them to trouble shoot and get behind. Obviously, I'd prefer any system that's self-regulating to one where Terk has to spend time on spring cleaning rather than creation, and as an added bonus we'd avoid the inevitable complaints of immortal cheating/bias in who got the zap.

Incidentally, I love the return of the quotes out of context--Nasredin says he didn't feel like the specific problems raised in this thread (the current mixed decay system) are as big as they're made out to be, and Drakantus quotes it out of context as "proof" Nasredin doesn't care about the dwindling player base. As Nasredin pointed out, running a good mud is like running a good government--if every decision were made with popularity as the top consideration, America would have no taxes, a huge military, unprecendented social spending, no living minorities, and very soon, a bankrupt government.
In general, the staff should listen to the will of the playerbase over what kind of mud this should be, but on the day to day stuff, they can't give us candy just because it would make us happy. I'd bet that if the staff offered to make every tattered prayerbook spell guild tommorrow, more people would vote for it than against it (basically, only clerics with the spell, and the handful of people who would give up a tangible chance to play with a new toy on principle would oppose). But ultimately, it would hurt the game even if it, temporarily, benefited most people. Ask anyone, and they'll say they loved it when there was no limit on wrist dams, and given the chance, I'd be spamming right along with them--but was it really good for the mud to have people queuing up waiting to spam four solo zones?

I think this thread has gone a lot out of point ;p
Nevertheless i will agree with the pointing out of limited elite/good items as some people refer to them.

As i have stated in another relative thread, i believe more items should be available in the game.
I am currently wielding a 2d9 ++ and i also have a 3d5 ++ on the same character (in my pack:),
yet i keep hearing that these items are nothing special (maybe they are considered good but not elite items)
How will i know though that there are even better weapons than them, if i cant get my hands on them???

I believe something must be done about it, or i 'll sent my goat herd to kill you...

What does it matter if I rule over the dead or the living?
The dead ask fewer questions...

Well, you hear about them from friends don't you? Therefore you already know they exist, unless you narrowly define "know" as "loaded it, lored it, and wearing it." I can understand your frustration (it's the same I have whenever I realize, many years later, that some elite item loads in some zone I lead, and spam endlessly, and never discovered due to item limits), but the reason these items are considered "good" and not "elite" is that a decent number of people can have them (and a second spare in their pack). If you're talking about something at the level of Arctic Night, then even in the most dominant clans only one person actually gets to wield it at a given time.

This sentiment may sound elitist, but Arctic is at its heart a competition for rare items. Yes, it's frustrating that you haven't been able to find any of the better weapons that 'everyone talks about,' but what do you suggest? If the imms make more weapons available, of superior quality, then these weapons become the new "good." Having a 4d5 ++ prime with specs is great fun, but I imagine for most the motivation isn't so much to have "a weapon that does X damage" so much as "a weapon nobody else has right now." And it's not like "good" items aren't useful. My DK prime isn't much better than yours (3d5 3/3), isn't exactly limit one, and with my current set consistently massacres/annihilates. It may or may not be enough to pull my own weight on something like Cyan or Dun Mir,

For me at least, the heart of Arctic was whispers and teasing snippets of info I stumbled upon, at first by loring expensive looking things I found in shops, then just by getting to know more experienced players and joining large groups, and loring random gear found on chaos days. You have to pay attention to these things, because by the time you've got an item in your inventory to lore and you can say, "Oh wow, 3 dam items exist!" you've pretty much already checked off that goal. The teaser is the soft information, the group leader saying "oh, this zone loads some elite druid robe," or a random groupmate telling you "together my gear is +8 dam" that drives you to want to see what all the fuss about.

I agree with your main point about having more items available--I think that every player with moderate experience should be able to load himself a useful set of equipment, no matter how many people are playing or storing limited items. That means better gear than armor/apply for secondary tanks, and int/wis and other caster relevant gear for casters. However, for there to be real competition, and a real drive for people to accomplish more, at some point there needs to be a difference in quality between more common, good, equipment, and highly limited, elite equipment.

Ok sure i'll accept that i should be reciting lores on any item that falls in my lap,
but then i spend my entire time (and it is not a lot) raising the money to lore equipment and afford storing them.
I rolled a priest the other day and found two neck wears (both giving a +1 1st level spell slot) i know i SHOULD be loring them, but i did not because: first finding out about the +slot was pretty easy, second it IS useful to me (shrug if there are negative consequences) and lastly the fact that i only have a total of 2k coins, given that i already pay 400coins rent per day.

Could it be that SOME items (not all) give you an idea of what they do and then if you have the moneyz you can lore them?
For example an item that gives you a +1 strength and -1 int, when you wear it could give you the message:
Duh, touch my bicep (ok just joking here cause i clearly have no idea, but you get my point)
Or an item that affects skills could give you a message while using it (the skill and the item at the same time)
For example a cloak giving you +2 in the skill hide could give you a message when you hide succesfully for the first time wearing this item like: You use the cloak to pretend a shadow on a wall.

I am sorry for this irrelevance with the subject of the thread but i am giving some points that i notice as i play.

What does it matter if I rule over the dead or the living?
The dead ask fewer questions...

Some items (especially the no-id ones) actually do that. However, creation is a lengthy (and sometimes boring) process as it is, and making fine adjustments (such as intelligent custom wear item messages) makes it even longer.

I think that once you have been playing a bit longer and learn how to solo some mobs that give you more coins, 250 coins for a lore won't feel like such a burden.

Interestingly enough, soloing reasonably tough mobs with a cleric is certainly possible, but you might find it easier to solo with a thief. The only skills you really need to work on to solo with it are backstab and sneak (other skills are certainly very useful, but not critical).

Dave

Education replaces force with reason.

Well, one thing I did as a newbie, trying to figure out more stats, was to burn a cheaper identify scroll on the item first--it doesn't tell you as much as a lore, but, without giving away any specific info, it'll often tell you when an item should be further examined by loring (not always though). I also screened out some items by pricing--if it was over a certain shop value (tested by valuing it at a shop, and having some idea how much that shop pays in terms of item value), or if it was above a certain rent value unworn, I'd lore it. Obviously, it's a bit of a vicious circle, since to get a good idea of what rent/price usually indicates a decent item, you need to lore to compare stats to these values too, but if you can save up some coins for that, the knowledge pays dividends in the future.

Another thing, which is also a bit harder for casual players, is to pay attention to what loads and how often. If its a solo zone, pick up everything that loads, run it again--anything that doesn't load twice might be worth checking out. In bigger zones, even the big mobs might have some junk eq to give the zone more flavor, but in general, gear that loads on mobs with a name, or mobs that are unique in any given instance of that zone, is often worth checking. Also, get a sense of "uncommon items." Junk or zone flavor eq tends to be of the standard weapons/armor variety. In lowbie and solo zones, you might find some very mediocre rings, for example, but in higher zones, it's rare for a creator to put in a junk ring just because they think a mob would look good in it--you're far more likely to see them offhanding a junk long sword, or wearing a set of stylish junk armor.

> but in higher zones, it's rare for a creator to put in a junk ring

Note to self:
Lord Soth, the Punk of the Black Rose, definitely needs a junk stylish spiked nosering (often worn on the finger of whatever hand he uses to pick his bony nose).