This is what I am trying to point out, there is a marked difference between, I don't like it or I would prefer to see x and saying, the system is broken.
There is also another possibility as well: That the system is not achieving what it was intended to be its true potential. Yes, they do get cycled in and out, advys find them and give/sell them to nobles, etc. But the idea was to create some kind of legacy, a storied history. When you find an item, you're supposed to be able to go look on the wiki and see it's history, who owned, when it was first found, etc. But the transitory nature of items means that this simply does not happen. You're almost guaranteed that the item you have found/bought is a brand new item with nothing more than an enigmatic, and possibly silly, name. I don't think they've achieved the level of RP meaning they
could potentially have with just some simple changes.
What I would prefer to see is a system where the recycling of items is greatly increased. Names should be reused more frequently, allowing the items to amass greater history. Without that history, people just can't get a connection to their transitory items. If they wee allowed to develop that history then you'd get player attachment, and items that actually have meaning and permanence. Maybe when an item hits 0%, there should be a chance that instead of simply being deleted, it gets transported to a random region to be refound, or put in a holding pool to be handed out by the next undead champion that gets killed. The better the item, the greater chance it has of being recycled. So the piddly little +1 Oil of Ygg d'Razzhul will probably be deleted, but the +14 Daemon Bone Broadsword of Cruel Suffering (+20% swordfighting) will be a near-permanent fixture of the island.
We don't
need every item to last forever. We don't even need every item to be able to be held for 2 years straight without needing repairs. 4-6 months is a good figure for an average item, I think. Some longer, some shorter. And I think that with the current system we have that. But the permanence of decay is a major downer for quite a few people.
Actually it is simple. Ask yourself this, are nobles still buying items? Do you still see items coming up in battles? If the answer is yes, then at least SOME subset of the player base is sticking with them.
Simply saying "Look at all the items in huge battle reports" doesn't really tell us anything other than that there is a small percentage of nobles that own items. What we don't know is:
- How good the item is.
- How long they have had the item.
- How many times it has been repaired.
- Is there any particular history involved with this item?
- How many other people have owned it?
- Do they care about the item as anything more than a small prestige boost?
- Did they buy it because they wanted a unique item, or did they buy it because buying it helps out another player and they wanted to be nice?
- If they lost it during a battle, would they put any serious effort into getting it back?
We can't really tell how invested people are to their items. For all you know, each and every item you see in a battle report could be a disposable item the noble only recently got from an advy. But we can't know either way, because that kind of data is not tracked at all. A huge battle report about a battle my Dwilight character is in will show that he has an item. But I don't really care about it, only having bought it because some random advy offered it to me, cheap. Using my character as an example of how the unique item system is active and thriving would be a serious misrepresentation. It means nothing more than that the mechanics still function.
A few simple changes in how unique items work could change the system from "Well, the mechanics obviously still work" to "Hey, this is an awesome feature, and has a huge amount of potential for story and conflict." Right now, we have the former. I'd really like the latter.
