Original Post — Direct link
I had a post in the Enchanting thread that I'd like to get more reactions/critique to. This suggestion would have the scaling upkeep, would have a good gold sink, mats sink and a potential gear think in it w/o rng in the OE (overenchanting). Hear me out.

Let's say that each piece of gear consists of 4 part during a craft. Those parts have their own multiple parts too, but when you're about to press the button to "craft the Sword of Awesome" you need to have 4 particular items in your inventory that represent 4 parts of said gear.

Those parts would be linked to the crafting dials and would represent some stats of the full gear, which the dials would then control. Horizontal enchantment would add more effects on these parts. So let's assume we'll be able to horizontally enchant each piece of gear 4 times (once for each part).

Now let's assume that gear decay is not dmg-based, but instead time-based. The decay timer would tick only when you're wearing the gear. Intrepid would decide how long that timer is based on their own calculations of potential time-to-farm-for-repairs. And we could even prolong that timer by using high quality mats and services of a top tier crafter, so each part of the piece of gear could add some amount of time to the decay timer.

Let's say we only need mats for repairs when the timer runs out. But if you have just the base version of said gear, at the end of the timer only one part of that piece will break (at random). So to bring back the timer to full you'd just need to use the material that is used to craft that part of the gear. This would be our main mats sink.

Horizontal enchantment would remove some amount of that timer (the amount would probably depend on the power of the enchantment), because it's putting some burden on said part.

To represent ware and dmg to the gear we'd have some decrease in its power at certain intervals of the timer. And to bring the power back we'd buy "honing stones" (or whatever alternative for different pieces of gear) at the node stores (with tiers of those nodes relating to the lvl of the node). This would be our gold sink.

Now we come to vertical enchantment. I suggest having +8 as the max vertical enchant level. Here's why. When you vertically enchant a piece of gear for "+1", you pick a part of said piece and increase the stats that this part provides (enchantment included). By doing so you double the amount that horizontal enchantment removed from the timer (or if there was no HE, you just remove some fairly big amount). And on top of that you make this part always break at the end of the decay timer. So now you'll have 2 parts break and will have to use more mats to repair the gear.

Once you repeat this +1 on all parts, you'll have a way shorter decay timer and you'll have to pretty much recraft the whole piece of gear once it decays fully (but all your enchantments and power remains). This will be our main gear sink.

And after that step you can now OE that piece. OE is just a repeat of the first round of vertical enchantment and it puts "strain" on your gear parts so you now have to use double the mats to repair any +2 part. And this way at +8 you'll have to double the crafting mats to repair your gear. And if you're going for this kind of OE, you'll just HAVE TO use the best mats and craft at the best crafter, just to balance out the decrease of the decay counter. This would be our great gear sink, meant only for those at the very top of the game.

I think this kind of system would keep the RPGness of the game (because to keep the timer from ticking, you'd be switching to other sets of gear). This system would provide several resource sinks that, in theory, should keep the power creep from growing too much. The vertical enchantment resources should be even rarer in this system (because of the 100% success), so the power growth of the whole server would be fairly slow. There'd be no RNG involved, but OE would still be a huge hit to anyone who tries to play with it. Also, this kind of vertical enchantment would empower the horizontal one, so in a way it'd be DIAGONAL! And ain't that just super cool B)
almost 2 years ago - Vaknar - Direct link
Certainly a comprehensive and interesting design! I'm glad to see other folks in here adding their thoughts and feedback to your ideas! Great conversation, everyone!