Seriously, how hard would it be to just have shops in game where you can go in and re-customize your gear with some currency? Like maybe change its color? Add some embroidering pattern that you picked up somewhere. Take that gem you found in some old treasure chest and afix it on your sword, etc. Wouldn't that just simply solve everyone's problem?

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Taking away the phat lewt would deprive players of one of the "scorecards" they use to compare their characters, and eliminate a form of currency. Would it be possible to replace that function of inventory items? Could you trade skills by "sparring" with other players, or offer "lessons" to newbies in exchange for gold or other desirables?

Hmm... it seems that you'd need to be a bit cerebral to really appreciate "techniques" over material goods. A technique is somewhat abstract, hard to quantify in value. To a newbie, which might sound better, a mithral blade or "iron hand technique?"

And how do you manage these techniques and skills? You equip armor and weapons, do you then also equip techniques and skills (as if they were computer programs)?

You might need to cheat and restrict players to fixed prices for training, as well. Otherwise, how does a newbie really gauge the value of "iron hand technique?"

It seems to me that you'd face the same problems as the "knowledge economy" of the internet: Mainly, how do you create scarcity when the object of value is continuously cloned. Replication should drive down its value over time. What might be a really neat antidote to this is a kind of continuously leveling tech tree of techniques that naturally obsoletes older techniques. That way, new techniques can be recycled from old and will continuously have value (if you were thinking MMO, which is par for the course these days).

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I also like the idea of legendary gear being present in the game, but when 5,000 different players can all be outfitted with a full set of the Glowing Armor of the Seraphim, it's less awesome.

What if clothing affected combat, in conjunction with techniques? There could be the easy to understand physical limitations (no backflips in platemail). There could also be the environmental ramifications (platemail kills in the desert, bad in the mountains during lightning storms, really sucks for stealth, etc.)

To make clothing even more important, what if shape, symbol, constituents and color affected combat with monsters in a sort of adaptive way? For less intelligent threats, it could be from properties like what the gear is made of ("Moon Trolls smell leather from a mile away") to its color ("Minotaur's HATE the color red, and will go bezerk if they see it.")

If you did this, to make things really interesting I'd lock players into evolving equipment paths, using some story-scheme involving "intelligent magic gear" that moulds to the user. The player would be able to sculpt this gear (like bioarmor in Gyver, but much more pretty [rolleyes]), evolving spikes and extensions and attachments which would make them entirely distinctive.

If gear couldn't be easily swapped and was a part of your body, you'd then have players with specific weaknesses and strengths being sought by other players around the game world, should monsters react to armor/gear strengths/vulnerabilities. This would drastically extend the vitality of the knowledge economy because people would become specialists paid for specific missions.

You'd probably need a very capable procedural animation/texturing system with in-game modelling capabilities (like Spore), but if that's the core of your concept, it would be worth it.

I don't really like the "equipment familiarity" solution. It's not as realistic as people make it out to be. If you're used to driving around town in your Kia Rio, I find it hard to believe you'd be a significantly worse driver if you were put behind the wheel of a Jaguar. I play a MIM Tele through a Frontman 15G, do you think I'd be worse off with a MIA Tele through a Twin? Maybe, for a few minutes, but familiarity comes quickly. Sure, it might work as a balancing mechanism, but it's no more realistic and, in my opinion, more annoying. Your mileage may vary.

Of course, we all get an old favorite (BB King and Lucille?). I think the big difference between real life and games is that there isn't that much difference in real life. Also, what difference does exist in real life usually comes down to personal preference.

My ideal would be to make different equipment combinations lend itself to different playing styles and even have equipment with no difference other than aesthetics. One of my favoirate games, Infantry, allowed you to buy various equipment. After a while, you had so much money cost wasn't an issue. However, there was no perfect set up. What you bought was determined by playing style and what role you wanted to fill. There were even two items that were purely for show (The $$ sniper rifle which mocked your victim with a $$ symbol but made the shot a little easier to dodge, and LOL grenades which displayed some LOLs and giggled at you but did nothing else). (Game's still going, I'm just too cheap to pay)

Basically, the solution is to make the latest not necessarily the greatest. Let the player wander around with their dragon-infested katana, hakama, and kimono. Maybe they get an agility bonus that offsets (but requires a different play style) the lack of defense from armor. It's not necessarily realistic (armor was found to be more useful), but it'll make for a more interesting and more diverse landscape, and endless discussions about techniques and preferences. And maybe there's no gameplay difference between a kite shaped or round shield, but that just means each player is free to choose one appearance.

Also, I don't think you'll lose much in the way of motivation. People who aren't interested in getting the essentially useless platinum-uber-sword-of-doom won't be interested in getting the platinum-sword-that's-just-a-shiny-iron-sword, because they don't care about the extras. People interested in the PUSD will probably also want the PSTJSI, simply because they gotta-catch-'em-all.

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Original post by Way Walker I don't really like the "equipment familiarity" solution. It's not as realistic as people make it out to be. If you're used to driving around town in your Kia Rio, I find it hard to believe you'd be a significantly worse driver if you were put behind the wheel of a Jaguar.

I think you're underestimating the skill required to wield a medieval blade at large psychotic monsters. Switching gears and pressing a pedal hardly seems comparable.

Imagine something incredibly simple like your keyboard and mouse. What if you started using a mouse with a large gadget hanging off the side, and your keyboard's numbers were moved to another location? If you're extremely adapted to switching devices, you might be fine. But it would take me weeks to adjust to such things. My mouse would be squirming all over the screen, and I'd always be pressing the wrong buttons. Still not very comparable to herioc combat situations. If you've yanked your sword out of a rib cage a thousand times, you know every nitch and wobble it makes as you do so. Now you're using something with a 1 inch wider blade that weighs 3 pounds lighter. The handle is shaped differently, and it doesn't slide on your hand like the old one. Just as a guess, I don't think it would be that easy to adjust. Every motion would change. The force needed to thrust the weapon would change. Your handling of the weapon to perform the same feats would change.

I guess the realism isn't that important. It's more about the quality it adds to gameplay. But you didn't mention why you dislike it.

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Original post by Wavinator Hmm... it seems that you'd need to be a bit cerebral to really appreciate "techniques" over material goods. A technique is somewhat abstract, hard to quantify in value. To a newbie, which might sound better, a mithral blade or "iron hand technique?"

Exposition works wonders, especially if there's some approximation of a simple effect/impact scale. Switching genres completely, TopSpin for Xbox (lovely tennis game; if you haven't played it, play it, especially on Live) has you spend some of your earnings and endorsements in Career Mode on trainers, with each successful training session boosting either your Forehand, Backhand, Serve or Volley skill. You can have up to 4 stars/points in each skill, but your character maxes out at a total of 14, meaning you have to choose how to allocate your pursuit of skill points.

Since we're talking about RPGs, the system doesn't have to be quite so simple, and you can leave some measure of ambiguity from the player perspective if you wish, but making it clear that learning to dual-wield weapons boosts your Lethality and learning to dual-wield bladed weapons lowers the cost of increasing your Defense (meaning that an investment in dual wielding for a swordsman yields dividends in making learning circle defense cheaper in addition to making you more proficient at attack) seems relatively straightforward.

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And how do you manage these techniques and skills? You equip armor and weapons, do you then also equip techniques and skills (as if they were computer programs)?

Pretty much, yes. In Jade Empire, you can fight with a variety of weapons as well as with your fists and feet. You can acquire multiple weapon styles, magic styles and combat styles and then map the four best-suited to the situation to your D-pad (press a direction to switch mid-combat, hold any direction to re-map styles). It's like switching stances, and some skills will automatically be activated or given primacy by switching to a certain weapon (dual-wielding doesn't make sense with a bo staff).

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You might need to cheat and restrict players to fixed prices for training, as well. Otherwise, how does a newbie really gauge the value of "iron hand technique?"

Actually, I'd go the other way and have there be a thriving economy in instruction - including fraudulent entities. Discovering that he was overcharged for training, a player could return to the instructor and seek redress - possibly by beating the snot out of the crooked sensei. It would quickly become a strategy to compare prices (and it would make sense to enable players find prices out without necessarily having to locate the instructor; in certain localities there would be a notice board-like information exchange) and do negotiate bargain prices for skills that appear to be widely taught.

One idea I had a while ago was that of Respect or style. The idea being that the character's clothing/gear affected how NPC treated them. If your dressed like a bum no ones going to belive your capable of defeating the deadly dragon of death and as such no one will give you that quest. Each piece of gear could have a set of style stats and different NPC would react diffrently to different combinations. This idea would require a game that had more character interaction then is typical in RPGs but it could be good none the less.

I've also always liked the idea of equipment evolving and adapting the longer its used. Maybe the variations between different pieces of equipment isn't that large enough to give the user an advantage in the right situation and with the right techniques but ultimatly it depends on the users play style which piece of gear to use.

for instance if there where these 3 pistols which one would you choose?

1) 10 accuracy, 6 damage, 6 shots per clip
2) 6 accuracy, 10 damage, 6 shots per clip
3) 6 accuracy, 6 damage, 10 shots per clip

When RPGs first started, yes, it was hardware limitations that pushed the development of these systems. But, also, the scale of the systems were also limited. Across a NES or early PC rpg, you maybe got a total of 8 weapons, which is why the hierarchies made sense. The problem that modern RPGs has is that they didn't scale. Hierarchy doesn't make sense when theres literally hundreds of weapons to choose from.

Now, my personal opinion, weapon customization is the way to go. Not strictly in the sense that you get your one sword, and have to make due with it. If you've played Phantom Brave, you'll know how great it is customizing your own weapons can be. I had a simple knife, one of the first I picked up, as my strongest weapon. Any sentimental attachment to it was purely my own. Plus there was the catch and carry benefit, when Ash couldn't get to a fight in time, it was just as effective tossing the weapon to whoever was close enough and having them dispatch the enemies.

I like both weapon customization AND weapon skills.

FF7's materia system had an interesting weapon/armor customization system. It's a bit of a non-sequitor in their implementation though.

Sacred had a system of weapon customization that I liked. Well-made (higher level) weapons and armor have up to four slots. Unlike the materia slots of FF7, you had to go to a smith to have them embed your magical amulets or rings. You can have a smith extract the amulet/rings, but you can only salvage one of them.

Many games, including NetHack and other Rogue-like games, have skill levels on weapon class. Your skill with a weapon or spell increases as you use it. You might be skilled with crossbows but a complete novice at knives. Or you might be skilled at regeneration magic but unskilled at fire magic. The net result is that you can more easily learn regeneration spells, can cast them quicker, and get more benefit from them; and would also have difficulty learning new fire spells, they would be less likely to be cast successfully, and they do less damage.


As people have made comparison to LOTR and the weapons there -- Legolas is skilled with all bows, but he gets a very nice bow from Galadriel. Strider is comfortable with blades, but there are legendary named swords. Many old and rare items had been carefully crafted with special abilities.

Well, those are some thoughts.

frob.

Perhaps an interesting idea would be to have two types of gear, normal and unique.

Normal gear would be just that, normal. A steel axe would be just a steel axe, it may be in different states of repair and usefullness (can get it fixed and sharpened) but it's still the same as another steel axe. These weapons are available in quantity, and the range of weapons would be small. Perhaps 15 weapons total.

Unique equipment is very rare. So rare that their actual worth is priceless. Each piece of unique equipment is really unique, there is only one of that item in the entire game, and it may not be found. The aim of the unique equipment is that they are too rare to look for (but still provide motivation), but exciting to discover and famous to have. These unique items are only found in appropriate places, in the secret chamber behind the goblin kings treasure chambers, prised from the dead hand of apollyon himself, cut from the finger of Sauron...

The real difference two warriors wielding the same weapon would be their experience and techniquies with it. This isn't always weapon specific, but it tends to be. Using and learning about a weapon type will increase your character's ability in it. It won't make it sharper, but you will do more damage because you know where to aim the sword, and can feint and parry better for example.

Techniques can be learned from battling with various enemies. Slashing your way through hundreds of goblins won't give you any more insight and understanding than your first encounters. Fighting an airbourne creature should educate you in aerial attacks. These techniques could be 'dropped' as items to replace the weapons and armour that would be dropped in it's place. They would then be the reason to search out and kill monsters. The dropping may make the game too arcade, so it's a design choice.

Another thing that this would cover which is a pet peeve for me in RPG's is what monsters drop. That flying dragon with claws just dropped a spear, or that clothed man dropped nothing but an amulet. If the basic equipment is vey common and can only be traded for minimal value enemies can drop what they actually have, their basic weapon and clothes. There is no reason to pick it up because it would take up too much room in your pack, and is essentially worthless. There needs to be some way in the game to stop this being unwieldy, sifting through many items looking for the interesting ones would get boring and annoying.

If the setting permits, this could also work with the ability to upgrade gear. In my opintion swords bows can't be upgraded as such, but they may be imbued with magical powers instead. Perhaps winning a large battle will cause your weapon that carried you through some special ability or upgrade. Or maybe it's only then that you can personalise it.


Summary:
A small (if any) 'value' heirarchy of equpiment types
Abundance of basic equipment
Each monster or NPC dies with all the equipment they have
Very rare unique weapons
Techniques learned from encounters with monsters

Man, there's just no easy way around this. It's such a firm convention in game design.

I liked the suggestions about making the gear more of a tradeoff, and less of a linear progression. Big penalties to agility or dexterity, combined with environmental factors like thermal insulation and electrical conductivity, could serve to make armor more than just a numerical modifier for your defense stat, which would make it easier to introduce a diverse array of gear.

How do you think players would respond to a game in which they had to leave their steel plate at home because it's too hot to wear, or buy a fur hat to wear instead of their mail coif, because Winter's coming?