Brian.6973

@kharmin.7683 I will settle with it being called subjective vs. the definition of grind.

Ok, understood.

@Randulf.7614 yeah think I understood this earlier on in the comments. I would not go so far as to say this mechanic is outdated, but it's just not preferred here. Survival game has gone one way RPG another, and not much of a middle in newer games.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 Just in case you don't know, you can still repair it and no durability is lost, don't trash it.

@Astralporing.1957 "I am sorry to tell you that, but UO could easily be used as a textbook example of grind."In my 20 years+ experience in UO, I never had this feeling or my guild-mates. Maybe right at the beginning when player housing was in short supply.The game is still in the top 100 and has an engine from the early 90s, definitely not the great graphics or new content keeping them alive. As mentioned it seems generally people prefer immortal items in GW2, if that is the general consensus I am happy with that.

I suppose I should have given a more broad definition of decay, think I did mention durability loss. Perhaps I should have said incremental destruction / damage. In this context though I think most understood stuff which breaks over time. If I reworded it, think I would have gotten an equal negative response. The first online MMORPG which is still around despite no graphic upgrade was UO. The armour / weapons broke if not repaired and would lose durability after repair. In fact worse than that your stuff stayed on your corpse and the monsters could loot you. In pvp zones your stuff was up for grabs. It wasn't a big deal since stuff was easy to make, so crafting was a core mechanic and was not considered a grind. If you did not go back to get your gear within 20 mins, then it would be gone lol. Sometimes you would ask your guild come help with corpse. Some stuff had acid on them, eat your weapons fast. Players were typically not as squishy, but if you were going to a high risk area you would not be carrying too much resources in your bag. So hope you can at least understand it was not really grind, but I can understand how it could be seen as annoying.

As mentioned above, don't think I am going to win this discussion, but UO had practically no grind but weapons had durability. You would just go mine the ore, smelt and build in 15 min, not a grind at all was fun. Later on they added imbuing materials so you could add custom stats, but it never felt like a grind since very little time was spent gathering. Sorry but still have not seen a new mmo top that, but maybe I am just too old school now lol. In general this seems like more of a preference, and vet players who already have stuff will likely want to keep things the same. Hunting / gathering / crafting seems to be seen as not fun but annoying, so it's more a 'get it over with' thing. Above someone wrote off decay as as a completely outdated mechanic, but without having things that break I don't think RPGs could exist. The HP / MP reduces, the wvw walls and siege weapons break at least.

@Obtena.7952 in general I don't think decay was a consideration at the time, and it is hard to change after the fact. I do not think they want any grind, and have done a better job than most. @Taygus.4571 someone argued above about grinding for max not being worth it with decay, exotic is not the endgame standard. @GummyBearSummoner.7941 as I am a casual player I also don't like grind, and I don't understand the maths with respect to this being more grind. If you spend 1/10 the time getting a weapon which needs re-crafting every couple months of heavy game play, then that should reduce grind. If you are a casual player it would last even longer. I think the issue is most are vets and already have this stuff, so then it does not make sense.

"developers to tell them what to do in game"You can only do what any game is coded to do, which is defined by the devs, interesting to bring up the free will argument. Technically as mentioned decay introduces more freedom since you can either do everything at once or do a bit and come back later for recraft. If you don't want to go back, then spend as much time as you would have to craft the immortal version, and that would be enough to last a lifetime.

"suddenly forcing it into the game would be bad."Yeah I have to agree with this, I really don't see such a shift. The vet players would not be happy if stuff started to decay and was easier to obtain.Every couple months; hours would be a bit harsh for an mmo lol.

"adding new tiers of equipment"This is actually more necessary when decay isn't introduced; endgamers have all the top items now and they will last forever so lets introduce a new tier with more rarity. If items are mortal, then new tiers aren't really necessary. "I'll never max it out and don't make any effort to do so" "locked out of the areas of the game they enjoy"This is more about calibration of rarity and decay, and has little to do with the mechanic itself. If things break too quick or materials are too rare then yeah that would make sense. I stopped playing for some time after looking at what was needed to get into fractals / raids, so think this can happen anyway. There is also no reason why you could not have both; a glass version for us causal players and an unbreakable version that the elite people can have. Maybe the glass version could not be account-bound to give crafters a market. Seems like there's a consensus on no decay, so won't spend more time on this point. Thanks

"Grinding for 30 days to pick up 100 years worth of repair items is a massive grindy no for me"My point was you could spend as many hours as now to have essentially immortal items which is by definition a grind, or you could spend the same time very infrequently which is not a grind. Grind is when you spend countless hours gathering all at once, not spending short amounts of time infrequently. Could you point me to this game where you only spend a couple hours gathering / crafting the best weapons every couple months of hard gameplay? Would quite like to try that out.

The idea that decay requires more grind due to re-grind doesn't make sense.Having items that are immortal means massive upfront grind since there is no replay. If you want immortal then decay gives that choice; you can either spend 30 days to gather 100 years worth of recrafts, or you can spend a few hours on occasion. Going back to a place to pickup resources occasionally can't be defined as grind, and if it is that means the decay rate is set too high.

I am not sure grind is something that draws a lot of people in, it is more likely other aspects of the game.Infusion collection has a diminishing return, and to combat this rarity is increased which can cause grind.If infusions were semi-rare but were bound to weapons that lost durability, you would need to replace them on occasion, which allows for replay and less grindy feel.

I have been playing MMORPGS for a very long time, and there is something about endgame that I don’t get with the newer games. MMOs are 99% endgame, and that endgame should feel rewarding not grindy. MMOs strive not to create dead-zones where players don't have any particular interest in going back. There is a simple mechanic that can fix this, which is decay. Decay introduces replayability and reduces grind. For example take magic find; currently you can grid it to max once and then it's done. If decay was introduced you could max it in a couple hours and it would decay over a couple weeks. Suddenly you have endgamers boosting their magic find before going to raid. The weapon and armour system again doesn’t decay, so there is one long grind to get the best weapons / armour, and then it is done. If weapons lost durability with use then every so often players would go on material hunts to recraft. This means less grind and less dead zones in the future. If there is too much decay there is grind due to too much replay, but no decay means zero replay and forces max upfront grind for endgame items.You can reduce the repetitiveness a bit with replay by having multiple zones to farm the same crafting items.