Personally..

[KoKane]

I dont think anything should be repairable.

Referring to the original L25.. The tools to make the good stuff became abundant, they always will. If you couldnt repair your stuff... yes it would suck to see it break finally, but its the type of thing players have to overcome, like having no insurance for items.
Even on artifacts.. Nothing should be repairable. I know it sounds DOUBLE SHIT for crafters but its for the greater good imo. It keeps the actual crafting in more demand.

I would say a global nerf on total Durability and slight increase to degredation topped off with no ability to repair whatsoever or at least a super rare, and thus super desirable, way of doing it.
Hours obtained logged in build up towards a Repair Point? If a crafter is logged in and active so many hours, he earns repair points allowing him to repair. Obviously the harder that is the better the economy will be (queue afk'rs)


Anyway, one idea I had donkeys years ago was a working Artifact Rarity system. I cant remember fully now what I was thinking of but I know it was making full use of the whole Artifact Rarity system, which at the time was a mere number attached to an item and meant shit really.
I told some Dev about it and he thought it was great.. but he said "write me the algorithm for it and I'll make it"
I was too embarassed to ask what an Algorithm meant or even had the cop on to google it... Thats how long ago it was ROFL

[KoKane]

Ok I've done some more reading here of your walls of text Calix and you've already said most of this stuff. Great

[Fatalist]

I do think repairs are fine - and a big part of the 'smiths @ brit smithy' community aspect. Could increase the max durability reduction perhaps? Have to remember that we're not just talking about sexy weapons, but individual armor peices that can be impossible to replace and require a whole suit re-work. Whilst I like the idea of continued endgame requirements, losing your lrc/lmc tunic with just the right blend of resists would be fucking bent. Also the inevitable wave of supermacers would destroy whole suits in a month flat.

Items encourage creativity in templates. They make seemingly impossible templates viable (and some are gimped yes, but all part of the fun when you get people trying to copy it), and it's that variety that made AoS pvp fun, because it was probably the time when the highest number of different templates were on the field. I want to be careful how we would go about addressing this, otherwise we might end up with a load vanilla templates that are easy to item up, ie scribe mages.

Just want to make sure we're not making it too difficult for people to enjoy the end game.

Despite my rant which suggest the opposite, I am actually against everlasting items. All wearables except jewels will break eventually because of the wonderful removal of powder of fort. That's not to say we can't make smithy/tailoring rewards that add +5/+10 max durability, but this if even ever considered would need to be like a top tier item. Perhaps on the side we could look at things like certain item classes (weapons more so than armor, or maybe artifacts/minor artis) being the first ones to die. Again obviously don't want to fuck over any specific classes/templates or options, ie. dexers I guess.

[KoKane]

I do think repairs are fine - and a big part of the 'smiths @ brit smithy' community aspect. Could increase the max durability reduction perhaps? Have to remember that we're not just talking about sexy weapons, but individual armor peices that can be impossible to replace and require a whole suit re-work. Whilst I like the idea of continued endgame requirements, losing your lrc/lmc tunic with just the right blend of resists would be fucking bent. Also the inevitable wave of supermacers would destroy whole suits in a month flat.

Hmm but wouldnt that be more of a good thing than a bad thing?

Because, if we get that sweet tunic we've been farming runics for (And remember L25 and runics and droprates etc) we then get our suit done and then what? We stop farming runics? Eventually.
Eventually you are living on stock. You trade initially to make money or get some better items and fine tune a suit... but still, eventually again... thats run its course. Eventually you dont know what armour you've got and you dont care. You are 'free' to go pvp but then thats all there is left..
I think if people were constantly working on their suits they would be constantly seeking runics and trading/farming.
If also there was 1 char on each account, you will probably end up with a bigger demand on crafters.


(Just had an idea for repairing - what if was somewhat costly? Some item needed to be consumed during repair and NOT a full repair.. just for a couple of dura, so you get people hammering away on 1 helm to repair it, consuming materials - thats always good, surely. UO economys are destined to be shit from day 1, its just how it is. This might help?)


Also I didnt think about macers being more griefy than ever.

How about this - Macers can smash MAX durability but never the min (number on the left wasnt it? 144/255) so that an item could be brought down to 1/1 but never destroyed.

That coupled with a consume to repair system might balance out? Still quite griefy though. Never below 10/10? meh