[Feedback Request] Current Armor & Weapons

[AdamBlue]

Also, make 'feint' have a better use. I believe it sacrifices the first hit in two to make the second hit stronger/a crit?

Bash is -very- good

Feint, actually, gives your first attack a -1, and your second a +1, just to hit, if I remember the code correctly.

And bash, while good, is also incredibly dangerous to use, even at high levels. If you botch your roll and fall over, that's all she wrote. Especially if you're a tank.

Overall, I'd say that the feint skill is better. You can't fail it, you can't fall over, and you'll be rocking out damage regardless.

Suppose Feint isn't all too bad, then.
Bash is a gamble. If you succeed, the odds are huge. It's an instant headblow, which can also be a concussion, and it can also knock the enemy down. But on the other spectrum, the odds are that you could fall over yourself.
It's a gamble, alright, but if you hit the jackpot, that's all she wrote for the other nerd.

[krelm]

You actually can't cause concussions until your skill gets pretty up there-- adroit, I believe, is the skill level. And knocking other opponents down is all but impossible (though it does happen) until you hit master.

Also, I'll freely admit this, with wielding two weapons and bashing being tied to the same skill, I used to have a macro for bash:

sheath
rem shield
bash
wear shield
draw

If you're not tanking, and not planning on doing anything that requires balance, you just get an extra hit on whatever you're fighting, with no penalties. It's pretty cheaty.

[tehkory]

While part of me was hesitant about doing this, what with you all riled up and such, but I need the feedback. I'm about to embark on an audit, and knowing that players who utilize this gear every day often figure out funky things about it, I'd like your feedback.

Please let me know what your experience has been with crafting and utilizing the current spread of equipment IG. Does anything seem particularly useless? Is anything particularly essential? Do you have your sekret twink formula of gear? Differences between Orc and Human loadouts?

WHAT THIS THREAD IS NOT:
- A place to vent about all the ills in the world
- A discussion board for non-craftable gear
- A place to put your wishlist



Things Icarus Learned:

Variables in armor and weapons have no explanation
Check armor craft timers, see if balanced
See why people can wield two "medium" weapons. Needs fix to prevent.

Bows are super ridiculous currently, but I'm not going to rant about them for an extended post unless they actually fall under the purview of the changes you're currently working on.

[Icarus]

Please do.

[tehkory]

Please do.

Well, when the game started, bows were a straight port of single-shot guns, except that they unloaded when dropped. This included that they gave warnings of gunfire when shot. They're not changed at all, except for no longer sounding like gunfire, AFAIK, which means that these arrows are essentially guns, and we have no kevlar(unless leather falls under that, and given this:

Code: Select all

Compared to a colored gambeson of oiled leather, an irontype spangenhelm:
   + weighs less
   + provides less overall protection
   + protects more against piercing
   + protects less against crushing
   + protects more against slashing
   + protects more against gunshots

I don't think that's the case).


Now, there's no reason/way to 'add' a 'kevlar'/anti-bow armor type into the game, and I don't think anybody's going to suggest that, and if they did I'll call them silly. But the fact remains that people are running around with singleshot guns that don't need unloading to fire again, which makes them even more powerful than the singleshot guns were in Parallel, and those were only of debatable weakness compared to semi-autos, given their ease-of-fire/aim and the quick unload/reload speed. That's a problem, or at least I'd say it's one.

This is ontop of the fact that archery works like a gun. They really should deal more upfront damage(and less DoT). There's a solid chunk of wood shoved into you, conveniently reducing the bleeding but taking up waaaay more mass than a bullet.

What needs balanced after they start mimicking what arrows actually ought to do damage like, heck if I know. That's a hurdle to cross when we get there, but...overall they're overpowered as-is, and probably one of the major causes of concern to the game's community/PvP/etc. Go look at any PVP thread, and they are brought up as what gets you marked as a straight-PKer worth absolutely zero mercy, according to multiple people.

[krelm]

Seconded what Kory said. The current bow/arrow set up really provides nothing to the game but letting people merk other dudes easily. If you get an arrow to the face outside your options are 1: die, or 2: spam back to your base and IM all your friends to get on and help you bind that bleeder so you don't die.

[Matt]

I'd like to see arrows do about 90% less bleed damage. I'd also like metal armor to defend fairly well against receiving HP damage as well. But at the same time there needs to be some kind of stealth nerfs for people in metal armor. Maybe no sneaking? No swimming? Would be an interesting addition to make it so there's no retreating via river if you're in metal armor. Also would make ambushing only.

I think if we did that it'd make scouts/archers dangerous to each other or lone targets they may encounter. But if they tried to tangle with a half dozen dudes in metal armor they'd get wrecked. This is realistic.

[Brian]

This is realistic.

*que debate of realism vs, playability and playability vs. lore*

[Matt]

OK. This is balanced. And realistic.

[Matt]

Also. Maybe make removing the arrow do all that bleeding? And make it so medicine greatly speeds up binding that bleeding?

[WorkerDrone]

A lot of code seems to be funneled into the after effects of being shot with an arrow in these requests, it seems, but for good reason. Getting shot with an arrow should generally just SUCK ASS. But at the same time, shields should definitely block arrows. That was a component in the old engine, not the engine that came of the likes of Atonement that we're currently using today. So I'm not sure how exactly feasible that is, but it's probably semi-feasible.

And in addition to that, perhaps the amount of sheer "oh gawd arrows" doesn't need to be toned down that much. Perhaps a nerf here, a nerf there, but overall what we need when dealing with arrows are deterrents. Sure, yeah, the ability to continue roleplaying despite coming under arrow fire would be swanky, but then thinking about it, you have absurd situations where you and possibly a group of people are standing around while arrows are whizzing by, possibly having a casual conversation about something unrelated, because the level of danger has lessened enough for players to break immersion.

Because yes, when players can do something that in reality would probably be unwise but ingame can be easily gotten away with, they will typically do it without thinking. I wouldn't even necessarily blame the player, at times you need code to necessitate action in such a way that people remain motivated to both do the IC thing, and the immersing thing.

So how do you get people to still freak out about arrows, but only freak out to an EXACTING degree, a CAREFULLY calculated amount of freak out that allows them to continue roleplaying without stoppage for coded command spamming out of reflex?

The only thing I can think of is coded "breaks" or "gaps" where the code announces to everyone involved that "a something something person here is about to be shot with an arrow through the shin!" The damage doesn't happen right away, but the rolls have been done, and the arrow is in the air, and there's nothing anyone can really do to stop it from what it's going to do. When that character would be moved out of the room, bam, the damage goes through.

Any directionals, essentially, and maybe other non-emote-related commands, allowing them, and basically everyone else involved, to roleplay the situation out without thinking they have to act IMMEDIATELY or ELSE ALL IS LOST. Which is admittedly, again, a knee-jerk reaction to being shot with arrows.

Something something. I dunno. This is pointless rambling. I hate pointless rambling. Whenever Rivean did it I felt like picking on him just because. It all sounds difficult to code in, and totally not within the time-resources of the staff to implement, but it's pretty damn clear the RPI engine is not only a shit-pile, but it's a shit-pile outside the wants and even the basic demands that the community needs of it.

[radioactivejesus]

[quote="WorkerDrone"][/quote]
I'm going to pick on you because that sounds difficult to code in. All we need to do is make it so that arrows have the same damage and bleeder levels as your typical iron heavy spear. I've definitely never seen anyone just laugh it off when a skilled opponent is stabbing at them with one of those things.
(and also shields must be able block arrows. This is extremely important.)

[Songweaver]

Sidenote for any who are less familiar with the Atonement Engine and ranged combat: the cover command is very useful.

[Icarus]

(As a note, going to review more of these today, but we are going to be implementing modifications to crafted quality so it's not JUST shoddy or exceptional, but some decent spreads.)

[radioactivejesus]

(As a note, going to review more of these today, but we are going to be implementing modifications to crafted quality so it's not JUST shoddy or exceptional, but some decent spreads.)

this is welcome news. It's been kind of jarring to see my familiar-talented level crafters churn out either shoddy garbage, or exceptional level masterpieces all the time, rather than cranking out solid quality

[Matt]

I'd really like to see material quality to come into account some more as well. As is for 4x the metal you only get a little lighter armor and some more durability.

[radioactivejesus]

I'd really like to see material quality to come into account some more as well. As is for 4x the metal you only get a little lighter armor and some more durability.

+1 to this. Just need to make it so that the deflect mods from armour actually get factored into your pc's skill level. Pitted gear will generally lower deflect unless it's mastercraft, and refined iron will generally raise deflect unless it's shoddy.

[Icarus]

I'll be honest, that frankly the focus on deflect mods probably isnt the best way to go about things due to the way math works in the rpi backend. Small boosts in points become exponentially better the higher a character's skill is. A 2 point boost in deflect from 20 --> 22 is a much lesser effect than the boost a character might get at the 50 --> 52 range. Like, orders of magnitude. So truth be told we are going to very likely remove all such boosts.

Now, that being said we can make the wqual and aqual variables have a much greater effect on weight and durability. I'm thinking something on the order of a hefty magnification of the current ratings. I'll be looking into a few other things we might be able to do as well.

[darksage]

There's not enough incentive to use chainmail. It has low durability and will get to worn quickly even with a couple of minors to it. Iron isn't much better for durability. It seems like the only difference between pitted iron chainmail to iron chainmail is deflect bonuses and penalties, durability and weight.

Chainmail takes too much metal to make. A full suit of iron chainmail takes 216 chunks of ore to make. A full suit of bog iron chainmail takes 54 chunks of ore to make. Both of them take too much metal I think. Having iron chainmail is an unnecessary luxury compared to bog iron chainmail. There is a much greater difference between bog iron weapons and iron weapons in effectiveness.

A simple solution to make chainmail cost effective is to cut the number of lengths of mail needed to craft each piece by half. Even that is not enough incentive for people to use it over oiled leather armor. There would have to be a lot changed for people to prefer chainmail over oiled leather.

Oiled leather armor doesn't make much sense as it is. Its short and long description doesn't reflect that there's a whole ingot of metal in the gambeson for example. For how effective the armor is its description just seems so unremarkable and like it's just a piece of leather that's been treated by oil so that it's softer. From appearances alone it's easy to assume that segmented leather armor is more effective than oiled leather armor. But that's obviously not the case. I think its short and long description should involve metal plates of some sort or something along those lines so that someone can just look at it and know it's effective.

Oiled leather very, very good armor so someone new should be able to see it and know that its good without finding out by comparing it to other armor. I think oiled leathers are too good but it's too late to nerf them because of the sheer number of them floating around in game. The craft should be changed with a more accurate desciption of its effectiveness and maybe the crafting components changed too.

Craftable shields aren't effective. They don't block arrows and they give less of a deflect bonus than weapons. There's no incentive to craft shields either because the newbie shields are just as effective as the craftable ones.

Weapons seem fine as they are.

[Brian]

The intention here has always been to keep iron armor to minimum and I don't think that's changed,nor do I believe that it should. Leather armor is supposed to be the standard and I think that it should be. Iron mail is what you put on when you know you're going to battle, not to slog around in a wet, humid bog or a forest so dense you can barely push your way through.

That said, if iron armor isn't a good bit better than oiled leather, or it is only slightly better, it should be. When it comes to stopping a blade, spear, arrow, really everything besides blunt weapons potentially, metal armor should clearly be the best choice. If that isn't reflected it's probably one of the things that should be covered in the audit.

However, I really like the rarity of the armor IG, and the only way to make that happen is to make it time consuming and material expensive to create. If it's easy to make, and clearly better stat wise, everyone will be wearing it in no time.

[Songweaver]

As Icarus noted elsewhere, current metal armor is trash (entry-level) quality, whereas leather armor has released oquality (tier three) armor. That's why it's better in many instances. With future patches, metal armor will become more protective, and ever moreso. But the game's not there yet, because releasing that more protective armor will demand releasing better weapons, the next tier of hardened leather armor, and more dangerous mobs.

[Icarus]

Or we could just release the dire bears of Ithilien on y'all and bump the metal up slightly and cackle with glee.

[Brian]

Or we could just release the dire bears of Ithilien on y'all and bump the metal up slightly and cackle with glee.

Stick to the plan!

We players need to remember as well that things aren't fully rolled out yet. I don't know the particulars but I'd rather have a fully balanced and prepped partial release than make minor adjustments to address specific momentary concerns. It's all part of the beta balancing act that sometimes things won't feel right or balanced, which is good cause then we can make the suggestions and changes that are now happening.

[radioactivejesus]

If it's easy to make, and clearly better stat wise, everyone will be wearing it in no time.

hence why basically everyone wears oiled leather, unless they just want to look cool, or don't have a fisher in the sphere to bring them oil.
These are the current AC levels of each piece of armour. Keep in mind that oiled leather also gives you a -bonus- to stealth, rather than severely hindering it. Oiled leather is 3 times as quick to make, and is also far lighter. It's not balanced at all

oiled leather
stab 5
pierce 5
chop 5
mace 4
slash 4
chainmail
stab 5
pierce 5
chop 5
mace 2
slash 5

[Matt]

I understand the 'we don't want unbalanced super metal armor in game' argument. But at the same time the best type of armor possible IG shouldn't be a set of scout leathers.