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Original post by FadedPhoenix A possible way to get the best of both words if you were dealing with a MMO setting could be a "profecancy" per say. Meaning, lets say there are types of swords. Ex: Long sword, short sword, and my personal favorate a Duchang((duel ended sword)). Now When you use a type of weapon you start at a 50% profecancy of that type. So you do not use the weapon at its full potential. By staying with this "type" of weapon over time, your profecancy will increase eventully to 100%. Which would mean you are using this type of weapon for its full value.

Several games implement weapon and skill proficiencies, most notably the excellent Discworld MUD. Commercial MMOs are literally about 10 years behind some of the forerunning MUDs.

Well I am not stating that its a my own new revolution of character development. Ive not played MUDs in forever so I have never seen a system like what I described. But it does not surprise me that someone has thought of something similar to it.

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Original post by FadedPhoenix Is this a MMO game or a single player game?

It could work in either setting depending on how you worked it all out. Though I think single player would be the easiest to implement.

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Original post by FadedPhoenix How does this effect the world and what validates its exsistance?

This will give the player something else exciting to focus on, another aspect of gameplay. It effects the world with some custom gear, balance the system and it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The fact that it's a game, and a fictional world lets you validate its exsistance with whatever reason you so choose.

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Original post by FadedPhoenix To have a single weapon that increases as you use it over time is a great idea in theory. But in a MMO type setting economy is a big issues. If a player feels promoted not to change weapons or has no need to buy things ((acceptable money sinks)) than this is goin to hurt the game more than anything.

A few of us have suggested that items can only grow to certain limits before the player feels the need to find the next best item up that would allow for even more growth. More growth equals more power potential. This would give people an excuse to find better items to work on and enhance those as well. Not saying this doesn't need some work for balance on how often a player needs to upgrade, but it is a solution to limit how much an item can grow.

People would also be inclined to sell their weapons, and a lower level would be tempted to blow some cash on a weapon they don't have to level up every now and then. You could always do the ugly WoW way and make it so that a player has to spend lots of gold or have a high faction with someone before they can get to the 'better' enhancements. Again not saying it doesn't need balance work, but it can be balanced...

Some things that came to mind when reading all this (nice ideas btw):

Gorasul - iirc Gorasul had a talking, intelligent, growing weapon that had an experience counter and abilities (str, dex, int). At the beginning you picked a weapon name and type (longsword, dagger, axe, etc). Each had different abilities and iirc some extra gameplay effects. It was all very tightly integrated into the campaign (in the beginning your weapon was the tutorial voice, I think) and worked nicely imho. A talking weapon may not be much of an option for multiplayer though, beyound the "tutorial" function maybe.

NWN - HotU - Enserric had some options that could be unlocked through dialogue, iirc. Not much there but the additional functionality offered to scripters, coupled with the dynamic item properties, meant that an evolving weapon of the variety discussed in the beginning here would be trivial to implement in NWN. Incidentally, there was also a magic forge that could upgrade your weapons and armor, and similar functionality did later surface in some community modules.

Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper - each character has a weapon assigned to them that gains experience and levels up (and consequently upgrades to a better weapon every bunch of levels). I think it suited the gameplay nicely - apart from the "see all endings" and "unlock all levels" and "collect all items" there's also the "upgrade all weapons" aspect. It may seem trivial but it greatly adds to replay value. Incidentally I think similar strategies are often employed on console games, but I wouldn't know as I don't own any console - is this the case?

KOTOR/KOTOR2 - constructing your lightsaber. I always wanted this, and they actually made it possible [grin]. The player crystal in KOTOR2 gained powers, and there were some high-level crystals in KOTOR. Though I guess this is similar to the orb idea, upgrading the weapon components instead of the weapon itself.

then there is the Ratchet & Clank series. Your weapons upgrade with the number of enemies you defeat.

A few people explained in depth what I thought of when I read the OP. So hopefully I don't repeat something because I missed a post.

I don't think the trade old sword for new sword tradition should be casted away. But what if your use of sword allowed you to learn new techniques. Basically you grow with the sword. More you use the sword you gain accuracy, speed, strength as well. Also the sword can gain "respect". For instance, when King Arthur whipped out his sword everyone knew it was Excalibur. And they were scared. The sword itself does gain any new powers or becomes more powerful but it gains a sort of legend behind. So if you killed a thousand ogres with the sword and your sword is one of a kind, people are gonna know the sword. They may not know you but they'll know the ruby tipped sword with the dragon skin scabbard.

Also what about getting swords that match your abilities. For instance you have a regular sword but your notable abilities are one-hit kills and quick draws*. So obviously you go to a blacksmith who alters the sword to suit or enhance your current abilities as opposed to giving you new ones.

*too much Rurouni Kenshin

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I don't think the trade old sword for new sword tradition should be casted away.

Actually, code wise, upgrading a sword or buying a new one is not very different. Even when upgrading a weapon, you are just replacing the curent record of the weapon with the new one.

True but in essence the player doesn't know that.