137659-maybe-it-is-time-to-do-away-with-repair-costs

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So, the posts that I have been seeing regarding how "difficult" the game is have mostly been the spark for this thread.  I honestly don't think the game's "difficulty" is actually the problem anymore, I think instead the problem, the actual cause of the issue, is the hassle of recuperating the costs of less-than-perfect performance on the part of players in the group content.  It really seems to me that the costs associated with PuG-ing through multiple wipes and simply learning the mechanics of the group content really seem to outweigh the benefit/enjoyment of getting together with people to overcome the challenges that the game presents.
 
Wildstar has admittedly gotten much better about how it deals with less-than-ideal performance with the change to the Medal System, but I am still seeing people express concerns about the difficulty and in some cases outright stating that the Repair Costs are "too much".  From what I understand, this was a topic of discussion about a year ago as well.  I would greatly prefer not to see Wildstar suffer the same unspoken domino effect that it had before the f2p transition:
 
Players wipe repeatedly in the dungeon -> Pay massive repair bills after group disbands several hours later -> Refuse to PuG anymore because it's "not worth it" -> Players have trouble finding other players to run content with -> Players conclude that people "aren't playing Wildstar anymore" -> Players stop playing Wildstar to go "where the players are".
 
Now, I'm an older gamer who's been playing RPGs since roughly the days of the original 8-bit Nintendo and Repair Costs are just something that I have come to expect from RPGs in general, but the posts that I have also seen have made me start actually thinking about it more than usual.  I have been thinking about especially in regards to how Repair Costs actually fit into the MMO genre.  While I more often than not simply go through the motions of repairing my gear every time I stop by a vendor without ever really looking at the cost, I also can't think of a good reason for why they exist in MMOs.
 
I can see the value of including them in a single-player game or a game that falls squarely within the Survival Horror genre ("Should I fight this thing or run like hell, how's my gear?").  I can't articulate what the added value of having a Durability system for gear is in an MMORPG, though. 
 
Some people claim that it is a "teaching tool", and if people are not punished for failure then "they will never be incentivized to get better".  I wholeheartedly disagree, people get better at something by choosing to engage in that activity until they know it like the back of their hand.  Continued participation is the key.  People in general are also driven by a desire to get better by overcoming challenges, not by being beaten until morale improves, so to speak.  The time associated with having to try again at any given task is generally construed as "punishing" enough, because time is usually pretty important to people who only have so much of it to dedicate to their favorite hobby (like playing Wildstar!).
 
I also don't see how Repair Costs are particularly useful as a "gold sink" mechanic, either.  Wildstar has so, so, so many collectibles (mounts, pets, décor, dyes, toys, etc.) for people to spend their in-game money on.  Most importantly, these collectibles feel like a much more equitable transaction for the player, as opposed to the "hassle of recuperating costs from a bad dungeon run".  Even if the Repair Costs are pretty negligible, they still take money away from the player that would like to buy that Mini-Maw, and are thus perceived negatively.
 
All in all, I think we have reached a point where we can keep the group content difficulty as is, but simply remove one mechanic that in the long run behaves as a conscious or subconscious deterrent to continued participation and "taking that chance" of grouping up with people you have never played with before.  This is an MMO and people taking the chance to group with people they have never met before is something that will only benefit the overall health of the game in the long run (regardless of whether they become BFFs or never utter a word to one another).
 
Just my 2 hundred and 2 cents...
			
				
	Edited October 6, 2015 by Srfrogg23	
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Personally i don't pug because some people tend to have a learning cap, was in a vet dungeon, and no matter how many times we told this one dude that he first thing the boss does is cleave, what did he do...nine.....times.............
 
He ran straight through the boss got turned to jiblets and needless to say we cant do shit without the healer.
 
Repair costs are still an issue but they are not the only thing stopping people from pugging.	
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			I was wondering if the'd made the content easier since F2P inevitably means lower quality players and much lower quality grouping.  Guess not.  Which is good, but it just means it'll be even harder to do any serious content or any decent grouping.	
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			I agree. GW2 did away with repair costs and I don't think that the game is worse off. Quite in reverse. It encourages people to try hard content.	
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			If you're going to remove that gold sink, you're going to have to introduce (or adjust) another.
			
				
	Edited October 6, 2015 by Shootsfoot	
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I agree. GW2 did away with repair costs and I don't think that the game is worse off. Quite in reverse. It encourages people to try hard content.
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Last time I checked, I still had to repair my armor in GW2. o.o  You only have to do it when you die, tho.
 
As for WS, I'm pretty fine with the idea of repairs, but the price could always use some tuning.
Maybe a discount if you're repairing mid-dungeon or something.
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			I'm not sure it's a good idea to just start knocking down all inconveniences. Why would someone repair your gear for free? Also, gear repairs don't cost THAT much. 	
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I'm not sure it's a good idea to just start knocking down all inconveniences. Why would someone repair your gear for free? Also, gear repairs don't cost THAT much. 
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Could just slash the repair costs in 1/2.
Tho usually when players feel that a few wipes will cost them an arm and a leg they start to get really angry at other players who cause the wipe or make mistakes and then RAGE can really set in because people feel their time has been wasted.
I personally don't mind repair costs i've had to deal with them in mmo's for the last 10 years.	
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Well when you die you 'magically' come back to life. So why can't your gear be 'magically' repaired too? Gear repairs are just a legacy from old pen and paper RPGs anyway really.
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Why not just get rid of all in-game currency and just give players everything? Would save a whole lot of time and hassle. 
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Go on say it, say the word "entitlement". You know you want to ;)
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It's more realistic and, imo, more enjoyable to feel like you're part of a living world. Taking it away not only takes away a tool the devs use for balancing the economy, but also strips some of the life out of NPC merchants, effectively making them repairbots with that much less of a hint of character or place in the world. 
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Of course I don't. My intention isn't to insult anyone, but I do feel like there is a general movement to try and make the game "better" by just stripping out parts of the game and I don't think it's a good direction
 
Also, about your holdover from pen and paper comment, repair costs serve a function of a money sink. It's purpose is to have something players spend money on so they aren't just hoarding cash from level one. It's more realistic and, imo, more enjoyable to feel like you're part of a living world. Taking it away not only takes away a tool the devs use for balancing the economy, but also strips some of the life out of NPC merchants, effectively making them repairbots with that much less of a hint of character or place in the world. 
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			this game has more gold sinks than most. And everything is so expensive that before doing ANYTHING that day, you have to grind for several hours. The difficulty is also ramped up high, meaning that when you're a new 50, with 2 plat in your pocket, paying 30-40G for repairs, for just trying the content is likely to really send you away.	
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			I think repair costs have actually gone up, and it starts sooner.Before FTP new toons didn't really have repair costs unless they died, now all they have to do is bump off a few mobs and they incur repairs on almost all gear pieces and the costs go up exponentially as you level.	
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it didnt feel much worse than before. im fully ds geared and a full repair cost slightly > 1p, before it was 60g. 65g.
now a 40g increase is not much for a ds raider.... but it might be quiet alot for a new player who has to spend more gold for other stuff.
Im just saying... the 40g more you need to repair your gear is not really something that will prevent raiders from raiding. so once you are geared and progress in GA/DS this should not stop you.	
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			It's called a death penalty. You aren't supposed to "learn content" by zerging it over and over until something works. In MMORPGs you used to drop all your stuff or lose levels every time you died, this has been trivialized into a small gold cost recently, and now people are complaining even that is too much? Stop dying. It's not a free teleport to a respawn point, it's not a mechanic for probing an encounter's strength or abilities, dying is bad, it's to be avoided at all cost, the penalty should be much harsher IMO.	
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You aren't supposed to "learn content" by zerging it over and over until something works. 
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It's called a death penalty. You aren't supposed to "learn content" by zerging it over and over until something works. In MMORPGs you used to drop all your stuff or lose levels every time you died, this has been trivialized into a small gold cost recently, and now people are complaining even that is too much? Stop dying. It's not a free teleport to a respawn point, it's not a mechanic for probing an encounter's strength or abilities, dying is bad, it's to be avoided at all cost, the penalty should be much harsher IMO.
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Of course, if the super-hardcore MMO market was even 10% as popular as some of the posts in this thread make out there would be no financial need for W* to have gone F2P.
 
Something to think about perhaps, at least for those capable of critical thinking.
 
All The Best
			
				
	Edited October 6, 2015 by RedneckRPGer	
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I have two things about repair costs that bother me:
 
First, I don't like it when swapping to new gear is cheaper than simply repairing the stuff I'm wearing. It feels really wrong when I'm not even top level and I catch myself considering equipping that garbage green drop in my bag rather than bothering to fix my quest reward blues.
 
Second, crafters can make their own gear, but once it's complete apparently they forget how they did it and need to buy band-aids made from solid gold just like everyone else. I think it would be a huge relief if armor crafters could repair their own stuff at crafting tables, and the cost would be in the same raw materials that they made it out of rather than cash. I'd be so happy to just pour my extra metals into gear maintenance every so often, rather than being at the mercy of my wallet. 
 
I suppose I;m saying in my preferred solution, there'd just be more options.
			
				
	Edited October 6, 2015 by Aldones	
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dying is bad in this super hardcore MMO and requires you to grind money to even attempt to learn the mechanics first hand, or you can go to GW2 which is F2P MMO as well right now and try your hand at fractals with the safety net of your repairs will cost you nothing!
Which game do you think players will choose?
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I thought of one other thing I'd alter after reconsidering this:
 
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 Why would someone repair your gear for free?
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Paying for repairs is the only substantial gold sink through levelling, It is also the only substantial penalty for death in the game. The cost fairly scales with your gear quality.
 
I'm not at all suggesting anyone is "entitled" but you NEED both some penalty for death, AND gold sinks to avert inflation. Repairs are a great way to do this. Plenty of games reward death with experience loss and deleveling as well as monetary loss... I don't really see how only having to pay to repair your gear is such a bad deal for us (added benefit of keeping inflation low)
 
 As for dying while "learning content", yea it happens, eat the costs or prepare before hand. I can't remember how many times I got cocky and decided I didn't need to PRE-pare for soloing / fights with my RDM only do die and see my poor Taru go from level 75-74, and then having to grind 10 hours to get just my level back let alone anything else done.
 
A lot of players don't realize how much is actually available to them to use in preparation of fights  soloing / stuff. For example there's a potion that grants short term stealth to any player. There are also a huge variety of absorbs, health items, and other really quirky and useful items for soloing / getting out of sticky situations that most players don't know about.. why? Because the penalty for death is insubstantial and no one would rather put in the slight effort to avoid it rather than just Leeroy Jenkins on into it.	
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But the game is incredibly unrealistic to begin with. My immersion is already ruined based on many things. The fact that the Holocrypt revives me is immersion breaking. I can be in my underwear in space, but as long as I have a space helmet I'm fine. My Warpig mount also doesn't need a space helmet. I can sprint indefinitely without getting tired. There are definitely more examples in the game, but these are the ones that came to mind.
 
I don't mind repair costs but they don't make me feel immersed in the world when there are a bunch of things that already break it in-game. Also, pretty much all the merchants feel like repairbots to me now. Most of the vendor NPCs don't have much personality. They say a few race specific lines when you interact with them, but that's about it. You hear all of them very quickly. Anyway, I don't think we should get rid of them entirely but maybe the cost should be reduced.
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Still leveling but the repair costs do seem higher than in most games. Even though gold sinks are important you don't want to inconvenience casual play too much with repair costs. It only leads to frustration and not wanting to participate at all. The cost should be such that you don't really have to worry about it outside of spending a whole evening dying in raids. That way it still taxes the economy but doesn't feel bad to players.
 
Spread out the gold sinks so we don't notice we are being milked.
			
				
	Edited October 6, 2015 by traja	
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 but also strips some of the life out of NPC merchants, effectively making them repairbots with that much less of a hint of character or place in the world. 
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That's all they are.
 
NPC vendors are there to take my trash too and repair my gear. I can't name any of them and i've been around since day one.
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I guess, if it an immersion thing, it should go all the way.  No more click to instantly repair then you're on your merry way.  It would be kind of like taking your car to a mechanic, you just have to wait until they're done or find another ride.  No more of this half-assed immersion :)
 
Let's face facts, repairing futuristic armor would take a significant amount of time and could realistically only be done by skilled professionals.  I propose that Carbine makes it so that if you want your geared repaired you should have to strip off every piece of equipment that needs to be repaired and then give it to the one NPC in the zone or world capable of repairing for several hours to several days.  They should also work for an hourly rate that is equivalent to their knowledge and skill level, so it should be much more expensive.
 
If you can't run dungeons or play the game for several hours or a day because you don't have alternate gear, then that was your fault for not preparing, this is immersion.  Oh, and you don't resurrect in real life, you shouldn't be able to do it in the game either, now that would be really immersive.  Death should be permanent, that way no one will want to do anything because dying will actually mean something, and no one wants to die.
 
Meh, that doesn't sound like fun at all actually...  This really isn't about immersion is it? 
 
Listen, if there is an archaic game mechanic in place of dubious value that is hindering player participation in a core mechanic that is directly related to why a person would even want to play the game, then I think it's safe to say that the less valuable mechanic can be let go.
 
I also think it would really cut down on the complaints about the "difficulty" if people always left the content in a better position than they were in when they first walked into it assuming they were willing to put forth the time to overcome the challenges.  I like the challenging content and I would like for people to join me, so I'm willing to make a concession when it comes to things that don't seem to directly contribute to the enjoyment of the game by others.	
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this game has more gold sinks than most. And everything is so expensive that before doing ANYTHING that day, you have to grind for several hours. The difficulty is also ramped up high, meaning that when you're a new 50, with 2 plat in your pocket, paying 30-40G for repairs, for just trying the content is likely to really send you away.
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Of course I don't. My intention isn't to insult anyone, but I do feel like there is a general movement to try and make the game "better" by just stripping out parts of the game and I don't think it's a good direction
 
Also, about your holdover from pen and paper comment, repair costs serve a function of a money sink. It's purpose is to have something players spend money on so they aren't just hoarding cash from level one. It's more realistic and, imo, more enjoyable to feel like you're part of a living world. Taking it away not only takes away a tool the devs use for balancing the economy, but also strips some of the life out of NPC merchants, effectively making them repairbots with that much less of a hint of character or place in the world. 
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In my opinion, the gear repairs since Drop 6 have been bumped way too high now....on a GA run you could easy be looking at a couple of plat (depending on how it goes).....
Over the last few weeks I have seen a definate decline in my own personal wealth - the amount you make per dungeon/raid doesn't offset repair costs.
 
I would, however, like to see Armourers have the ability to fix their own armour, tailors theirs, weaponsmiths to repair weapons etc......(at a massively decreased cost I must add).
 
Repair bills are too high! \o/
 
 
P.S. For those that want to tell me to "die less", just post it up in /dev/null and I'll read it later - kkthxla~
 
:P	
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this game has more gold sinks than most. And everything is so expensive that before doing ANYTHING that day, you have to grind for several hours. The difficulty is also ramped up high, meaning that when you're a new 50, with 2 plat in your pocket, paying 30-40G for repairs, for just trying the content is likely to really send you away.
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dying is bad in this super hardcore MMO and requires you to grind money to even attempt to learn the mechanics first hand, or you can go to GW2 which is F2P MMO as well right now and try your hand at fractals with the safety net of your repairs will cost you nothing!
Which game do you think players will choose?
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