quote: Original post by Run_The_Shadows
There is an article floating around out there about taking magic systems, especially enchantments, realistically.
Assume and imagine for a moment that you are this Farmer Milosevic, out to slay goblins. You begin your adventure with a rusty old blade(numerically, this might be represented to being with as -1, but you DO NOT give this to the player). At some point, after killing the goblin chief Schlep, you discover a shiny blade locked away. It feels extraordinarily light(+1 Strength), and you find it seems to slice through the meat of the wild forest creatures especially well(+1 vs Natural Beasts). You don''t immediately take out your farmer''s notebook and say "I think this is a Mithril Sword of Animal Slaying!". You simply understand what it does best by usage.

Hide the statistics from players and let them explore for themselves. If they see a shiny fancy helmet in a shop that costs a lot, let them assume that it has wonderful effects(that the shopkeeper may or may not ''elaborate'' on).

You want a realistic take on enchantments? Somehow I don''t think it makes sense, if you want realism I don''t see why you would want enchantments at all, since they aren''t very realistic.

Realism has basically no value to me, even though internal consistency and "making sense" might have. All you accomplish by hiding information is making the choices less relevant, and to me making choices is one of the central parts of gameplay. Without choice it is not a game, it is some kind of movie.

If the choice is between a "good helmet" and another "good helmet" it becomes pointless. If it is between a "light blade" and a "strong blade" then it''s just another way of representing numerical information, it''s just less informative.

In real life I probably wouldn''t look on a blade and see that it is "+1", but I would probably not go hunting for demons either. Still, if people can''t stand looking at the numbers I don''t think it would be a lot of trouble to give the player an option to hide it. That way everyone would be happy.

quote: Original post by Run_The_Shadows ...Would you use a .50 to hunt gophers?...

Damn right I would! See the little things fly like that!

Sometimes I'll pick a helmet/aegis/sword/whatever that isn't the strongest that I *could* have, just because I like the name or look of it. I always do things *differently* than other people in games (just because) even if it makes it harder for me (in Americas Army, I change the HUD color to bright orange and set the alpha to about 10 - hard to see, but looks cool).

I like VertexNormals ideas. Some games do a good job with items that work against only some of the enemies well, but not so much others.

And I hate when every little frickin creature has it's own personalized magically enchanted uber-mace. A real army would have a standard (even police guns don't differ that much). M16s are the norm, with a few SAWs and M80s scattered around. The Special Forces get to customize their M4s with different scopes, flare/grenade launcers, bipods, heatshields, etc. You'll occasionally find a SPR (modded M16 for sniping) on someone. I would follow this - real life works great for me in games. (Of course, the M80 sniper rifle would be your enchanted uber-crossbow)...

ANyways...

_GEo.

[edited by - Avatar God on December 29, 2003 4:35:04 PM]

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
So what''s a good system?

I think an interesting system would cause you to take into consideration the speed and length of weapons versus certain foes.
For instance, many foes can be cut in half by a battle axe, but others are so quick that you can''t hit them, so you need a faster weapon that can react mid-swing.

Also, some weapons are not as effective indoors. Often you don''t have enough room to effectively swing something in a hallway or storage room. So take that into consideration.

Basically, give the player more reasons to switch weapons and not just hold their 1 kill-o-zap sword.

Other points that would make it more interesting:

- Using a silent weapon to take out a scout without alerting his buddies.
- Using a cheap weapon to engage low level foes because they just run away when they see the flaming humming sparking d3thblade.

As for armor, it would be interesting if wearing certain helmets reduced your line-of-sight to a smaller angle.

With regard to the wide array of guns available in the local Gun Shop, I''d argue that a wide array is fine, but a huge difference is not. Sure, .22LR is no match for .50AE, but at least a few dozen of those guns are going to be between .38 Special and .45 ACP. I''ve heard all the stopping-power arguments and myths, but I carry a 9mm H&K with Speer Gold Dot Hollow Points, and my experiences and tests make me confident that two center-of-mass hits with that will end any fight, and one will probably do the job. With a .45 or more, there might be more energy transferred or something, but at the end of the day, shot placement rules the stopping power equation.

So when you get your .40 S&W Berretta, and I get my .357 Magnum Ruger, it''s not a question of five shots from mine or five and a half shots from yours, it''s a question of who hits who, and how fast. A .22 in the ten-ring will be far more devastating than a .50 in the toe.

As to armor, the formula is complex, but if you ignore magical effects, getting whacked in the wooden shield with an axe or getting whacked in the iron shield with an axe will not be so cosmically different as most games make it seem. I''d argue that most non-magical armor should have fairly similar stats for attacks that they stop. The wear & tear issue is valid, of course, and a steel-headed arrow will go through a wooden breastplate more readily than through a steel one, but that''s almost anecdotal. I think armor should either stop an attack, rendering it largely ineffective, or fail to, diminishing its effect only slightly.

Any kind of super-toughness that lets a man take a bullet in the forehead and come out swinging should be attributed to properly supernatural forces.

Really, the current system would be totally salvaged if some metaphysical system was defined that empowered these various things to reduce damage or inflict harm as they do. What is needed is a way to magically augment your gear rather than replacing it. Instead of dishing out 10,000 GP for a Fireproof Steel Kite Shield of Light, just get a 5,000 GP Steel Kite Shield and take it to the local techno-wizard, who, for 2,500 GP a spell, will give your shield an elemental affinity and resistance, and even boost its defense against penetration or corrosion. Get your sword ever-sharp and give it the power to cut through certain types of stuff, and you''re on your way.

So if you get a steel short sword, a steel falchion, a steel scimitar, or a steel sabre, your weapon will be as effective as you are at weilding it. You get it pimped out, and it''ll be better. This doesn''t preclude finding a sword in the woods with 50,000 GP worth of level 8 enchantments on it, it just makes that a measurably bitchin'' piece of gear. And it allows you to find it, see that''s it''s really shiny (I think that it should feature crazily detailed images/examinable models, so the player could look at it up-close and see what he''s got), and use it until you get to a town and can pay 1,000 GP to have it properly checked out.

Curses could also be used, and then you''d have to disenchant them before they''d be safe to use. You could even bind a weapon or armor to a race, player or character, so it would only give that +5 against fire to your guy, or someone with your alignment, and would have a nasty surprise for unauthorized users.

Anybody ever play DARK CLOUD for the PS2? Theres an interesting weapons enhancing system going on there. Just to make a quick description:

Each weapon has several stats, ATTACK, ENDURANCE, SPEED, MAGIC and then two meters, WHP and ABSORB. Attacking different enemies reduces the weapon''s WHP according to the enemy''s own defense and the weapon''s endurance. When the WHP hits zero, the weapon breaks and is removed from the inventory. As for the ABSORB, thats the game''s EXP. When the absorb fills up, you have to explicitly choose to upgrade the weapon''s level, and in some cases upgrading to what type of weapon. The customization involved equiping items found in the dungeons that enhance stats (the weapons are further categorized a bit like Vagrant Story with affinities and effectivenesses against enemies). If you upgrade a weapon with these items still equipped, they become permanently part of the weapon. Finally, you can delibrately break a weapon and use it as an item to enhance another weapon.

The system is touch and go, broken weapons are a tad odd, but it might be worth while to consider that instead of a list of a hundred weapon classes, you could just have several basic types and let the players customize the weapons and even name them themselves (Vagrant Story did this as well).

um, what''s your complaint again? i can''t tell, because you seem to be lamenting both the "enormous array" of equipment, and it''s relative homogeny. a selection of similar equipment, even a large selection, cannot accurately be described as an enormous array.

I gather he''s talking mainly about the unrealistic progressions of unrealistic items that occur in games. You start the game with a dagger, kill a few slimes, go to the store and buy a long knife which has better attack and does more damage. You go through the Cave of Doom to the next town along the quest, and now you can buy a poignard, the poignard doing even more damage and having even better attack.

Moving along, killing guys, you hit the next town, which conveniently has the short sword, for even more attack power and damaging goodness.

Then comes the bronze sword, then the steel sword, etc... all in a nice linear progression, neatly coinciding with the story. And all advancing along a completely unrealistic scale of damage/attack increases, which their real-life counterparts obviously do not follow.

There really isn''t all that much difference between a long knife and a short sword, but some games would have you believe otherwise, allowing you to do the neat and tidy range of 1d4 damage for the long knife, but 1d8 damage for the short sword, or some-such. And never mind the Titanium Sword you find later on, that does 43d2000 damage. What Iron Chef Carnage is suggesting, and which I pretty much totally agree with, is that across the entire spectrum of bladed weapons (knives, short swords, broad swords, whatever) or any other class of item, there shouldn''t be such a wildly varying spread of damage capabilites etc.

The short sword should not necessarily confer superior abilities compared to the long knife, while the silver sword (not even minding the fact that silver is a bad metal to use for a sword) should not confer greater damage than the plain broadsword. The basic weapon types themselves should be varied enough to be interesting, have their strengths and weaknesses, but not be arranged in some sort of pissing-contest hierarchy where one is obviously better than another.

Classic or older RPGs (Dragon Warrior for the NES for some reason springs immediately to mind) were worse for this sort of wierdness than most modern RPGs, but you still see it cropping up For instance, see Diablo 2:

Great Sword(non-magical)-- 25-42 damage
Colossus Blade(non-magical, seemingly identical to Great Sword in size and appearance)-- 52-115 damage.

What is there about the basic CB that could possibly explain such a large difference? It''s non-magical, so you can''t pin it on magic. They are both sharp pieces of steel. I don''t care how much care or craft you put into the making of a sharp piece of steel; two equal-sized sharp pieces of steel will do approximately the same amount of damage to a soft human body. That seems to be the main complaint here.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem: Lands of Shadow, an isometrically rendered hack-and-slash inspired equally by Nethack and Diablo.

Concisely put.

I think a system with myriad items that have similar combat statistics would be ideal, because you''d get rid of the clear-cut "progess" from item to item. I can buy a .22LR S&W Model 40 (I think it''s 40) for a higher price than a Mossberg 590 12-gauge. Cost is no indicator of combat capabilities. Sure, that Model 40 is a dream to shoot, dead-on accurate, and 99.9999% reliable, but it''s not something I''d bring to a fight.

On the other hand, I went to the gunshop to buy a double action 9mm for the Police Academy, and for $500 on the "used" rack, I had a choice of the following: Glock 17, Sig Sauer P229, H&K USP, Ruger P95, Ruger P89, Beretta 92F and S&W 5906. The Glock is technically a "safe-action", but the academy allowed those. Every gun there was in the same price range, in perfectly functional condition, and comparably reliable, accurate, etc. The fact that they are all 9mm made power a moot point.

So, which do I choose? Glock is ugly, and I don''t like the abscence of an external safety. Rugers were a little cheaper, but the smooth grip of the P95 ad the long barrel of the P89 turned me off. The Beretta, likewise, was a little long for my taste, carry-wise. The S&W has a magazine safety, which for training purposes I opted against (some drills require dry-firing without a magazine in, which is impossible with that model). It came down to the H&K and the Sig. I chose the H&K because in my hand it had a more natural "point", i.e. the sights fell onto target more readily before I looked over them, making for faster target acquisition.

In an RPG, these seven pistols would be indistinguishable. I like that idea. I''d like to see a RPG world in which equipment could be chosen for aesthetic reasons, or because it reflects something about the character. A royal guard would not be inclined to take off his uniform and put on a burlap shirt to get that +1 defense bonus, and you could identify a body as a member of the Westmarch Riders by his standard-issue gear, which is functionally equivalent to everyone else''s.

In a real life gun fight who ever hits the other first wins. In an RPG world where you gain more hit points ever level, who ever can deal most damage fastest wins.

If you get rid of the ridiculous hit point increases ever level you don''t need the ridiculous equipment system.

The problem with eliminating the progressive nature of RPGs is that we all know where Sauron lives, and given that at level 1 I''m just as strong as I''ll be at level 99, why hang out here in this crappy shire when I can get the secret ending for beating the game in 7 minutes?

Maybe we need to rethink the basic structure of the game before we eliminate the mechanics for it.