first of all as i am only about 2 1/2 weeks playing both warband/crpg, great mod, your work is really appreciated, that of all devs.
I play round the clock on EU and NA Servers, and i just loved it that there weren't so much tincans anymore. It looked more like a real historic battle.
20% upkeep was too high 5% could be too low, as you said time will tell.
I liked the idea earlier on if you did some killing the ratio of breaking items/repair decreases. So all are starting with a high ratio which decreases with every kill you do.
As a peasent it wouldn't be a problem because of low level gear, but if you suck as tincan it hurts.
If you just punish the whole team it demotivates players.
Also such a beginning ratio must somewhat depend on the amount of players you are up against, so we can still play with fewer players on small servers aswell on big once
A humble suggestion for a future patch if i may
If possible can you make the characters resetable on the homepage, without loosing the lvl/exp/gold/items, so we
- can play different builds (perhaps even save/load them)
- have more time in general
- can quickly create a build for a strategus battle
To do so it would perhaps needed for some players to retire their other toons to one single characeter.
i am looking forward to a long time with crpg
Edit: longterm motivation was mentioned, i go with the heirloomed items alone, gold/xp is just another way to change your playing style. As different weapons/armor and stats allow you to change it.