Hello guys, let's assume we have a game like a WoW, with tons of weapons and other items. It's all good until you have to give different purpose to different items and stats.

For exampe:

1. We have a dagger (2 attacks per second with 10 damage), and we have an axe (1 attack per second with 20 damage)? What is the point? When dagger will be better than axe and when axe will be better than dagger? My thoughts - dagger will be better when we have special effects on every attack not depending on damage. Axe will be better when you have to oneshot someone who heal himself. What is your thougts?
2. We have a guy with 100 hp and 10 armor and we have a guy with 200 hp and 5 armor (assuming that armor works that way so all guys will be killed same time with same dps on them). Okay, here first guy will be better when he is healing with potions : ) what about second guy?
3. Evasion and Blocks? That is beyond me, why do we need those if we have armor? Because if we have random blocks or evasions why it is better than to have more armor or hp?

1. I agree. Depending on the game, having different attack speed may not have any mechanical difference, but it may have a difference in feeling and style. Rembember to show dps to the player (in info screens etc) not only damage and attack speed. If dps is the only thing that matters, you should omit desplaying the other data.
2. the second guy is stronger against attacks that disregard armour, since he has more hp. For example some magic attacks disregard armour, or piercing attacks such as heavy crossbows. Or maces! The first guy is cheaper to keep healed up.
3. Yes in some games its just obscurs the mechanics and has no practical difference. But lorewise it makes sense: heavy knight → survivability is armour, rogue → survivability is evasion.
   You can add skills that increase one of them, like getting “shield master” increases block chance.
   You can have attacks/events that affect only one of them like armour helps one of them but evasion only helps if the player can see the thing (e.g. a trap).
   But yes: do not add armour, evasion and blocks unless you plan to make them mechanically different in some way.

I feel like there are probably three independent ways to differentiate items

1. Effective throughput. An item could be just flat out better than another item, all things considered.
2. Situational effectiveness. An item could be better than another item in one situation, but worse in another. What kind of situations these are will depend entirely on your game and its mechanics. For example in a race between your dagger and your axe against mobs of 10 hp, the dagger will kill twice as fast, because the axe will over-damage.
3. Aesthetics. An item could be functionally identical, but have a different design or animation or whatever.

If you're trying to design items which are stylistically different but equivalent in power (i.e. different types of DPS classes), the differences will become a mixture of situational and aesthetic.

The difference between armour/evasion/block might just be aesthetic, i.e. functionally identical, or it might be situational, e.g. block could be a % chance to ignore a hit, whereas armour is a % reduction of damage.

Situational differences require balancing. Aesthetic differences do not.

There are A LOT of examples of this kind of theorycrafting combat mechanics stuff. My advice is look at lots of different games and see how they do it.

I think what @suliman said is true. It has to make sense mechanically, otherwise there is no point in having different weapons or armor (especially when they are perfectly balanced in DPS like your example).

Think about this examples:

• A large amount of damage hit may stagger or knockdown your enemy (makes high damage weapons more interesting).
• You have to overcome high armor (high damage is better)
• Your enemies are much weaker than you (fast damage is better)
• Carrying heavy thing makes you slower (lighter weapon is better)
• Dodging let's you evade 100% of damage, armor only a portion of it (like Dark Souls). Dodging is risky and demands skill, while armor is safer but less efficient.

Also consider if it's actually going more for the Role Playing part, that just having the thematic choices can be worthwhile, even if mechanical stats for some similar things (e.g. bow vs crossbow, sword vs axe, evasion vs plate armour) like effective HP and DPS end up fairly near each. For example if a long bow and a crossbow are almost the same, that can be fine and I'll choose one for preference reasons.

Raali said:
My thoughts - dagger will be better when we have special effects on every attack not depending on damage.

Also consider the different ways protection (including armour) might be implemented.

Does it reduce all damage by X %? Or maybe it reduces damage by a flat amount making weak attacks do no damage, while strong attacks still do most of the damage? Or maybe a mix of the two or some other system.

If you have weapons miss entirely (e.g. due to evasion/blocking), then faster attacks will be more consistent. If you have a very heavy weapon that attacks only every couple of seconds (or even slower, e.g. crossbows and the like), then you get multiple unlucky “miss rolls” then you did no damage, and sometimes that might be critical. A much faster weapon that made dozens of attacks in that time is unlikely to have failed all of them.

If you have defensiveness effects that can block a single attack with a cooldown, rapid attacks also mitigate those, while they might block every single powerful attack.

Raali said:
Okay, here first guy will be better when he is healing with potions : )

Yes, this is a fairly common positive effect of having armour as you increase the “effective hitpoints”. But if you for example have a different armour/"protection" rating for each damage type, it's unlikely they can get high protection against everything, so if they max armour it could leave them highly vulnerable to certain other attacks, maybe even to being instantly killed if base HP was almost completely neglected.

Raali said:
Evasion and Blocks? That is beyond me, why do we need those if we have armor? Because if we have random blocks or evasions why it is better than to have more armor or hp?

In video games at the very least it provides for the option for some nice visuals.

Some games might have evasion/block be a player action that requires proper timing, or sometimes the hit/miss mechanics might treat evasion mechanically separate from armour (e.g. can't evade/block an “unseen” attack, can't evade/block AOE attacks, evading a war hammer is easier than a short ranged arrow, but the war hammer might crush plate armour while an arrow bounces off, etc.).

Sometimes it's just the “protection” being obtained in different ways, and then the numbers are literally combined together. And if you view this from a larger stat system where “maximise evasion” and “maximise armour" are not two independent things to just spend XP on, then the combinations can each have their own niche even if it is just a flat “armour class” mechanic.

I can't think of a popular video game example off hand, but Dungeons and Dragons 5E is like this. Attacks just use the “armour class”, which is a combination of things. Which a player will try and go for (or just lots of HP tanking) ties into the class choices and other stats/skills. For example getting the maximum +5 Dexterity modifier bonus ("evasion") means for just a 45 gold light armour, you get very close to the 1,500 gold heavy plate armour (12+5 vs 18) as heavy armour can't get any dex bonus, plus heavy armour means disadvantage at stealth and requires a strength stat of 15. But, for many builds Dexterity is not the most important ability (of 6), it might not even be 2nd or 3rd. So getting that +5 modifier (20 ability score) for many builds is unlikely in most campaigns. And likewise getting heavy armour proficiency and at least 15 strength is not a priority for many others.

There is a lot of game mechanics features available in tabletop RPG systems. Most of computer games are using simplest solutions. Dungeons and Dragons 5E is one of the simplest ones and SyncViews described its basics.

Lets look at the topic of 2 daggers versus 1 axe with same total DPS at different system - GURPS

1. First you need to hit the target - you need random number in range 3-18. Compare results with fighting skill (eg. 12). If random number is lower or equal to your skill you hit the target
2. Active defense - opponent can dodge attack. When he has no armor , he has dodge on 6. When he wear armor he is encumbranced so it drops to 4 but the armor gives him +3 passive defense . In total he get 7. Compare with new generated random number as above
3. If he did not dodged attack, he will get damage. Dagger do 2-7 damage, axe do 5-10 damage. If he has no armor he get full damage. When he has armor he has damage reduction of 6 , it means from every hit damage he subtracts 6.

So at hit with maximum damage on unarmored target with 2 daggers get 2*7=14, with axe gets 10

On armored target with maximum damage, with 2 daggers he get 2*(7-6) = 2, with axe gets 10-6 = 4

There are of course many other systems which will differentiate it much more.

Raali said:
We have a dagger (2 attacks per second with 10 damage), and we have an axe (1 attack per second with 20 damage)?

These weapons have distinct characteristics in the presence of damage mitigation: attacking a target with 5 armour, the dagger does (10 - 5 + 10 - 5) = 10 effective DPS, while the axe does (20 - 5) = 15 DPS.

Raali said:
Okay, here first guy will be better when he is healing with potions : ) what about second guy?

The second guy is better with healing abilities that restore a percentage of max health (and similarly, is more vulnerable to percentage-based damage).

Raali said:
Evasion and Blocks? That is beyond me, why do we need those if we have armor?

Evasions/blocks are useful if the attacker can impart status effects. Armour can mitigate the damage of an initial attack, but if that attack landing is going to impart a 5 second damage-over-time “bleed” effect, then you'd much rather evade it entirely and not take the status effect.

All of these mechanics are designed to expand the range of useful/interesting builds available to the players.

If the only factors were how much DPS a character could inflict, vs the size of their health pool, then there's going to be at most two optimal builds that optimises those things. If instead you have to consider direct vs percentage based damage/healing, evading damage-over-time effects vs absorbing physical damage, attack speed proc'ing status effects more often vs high damage attacks getting past armour… it opens up a lot more viable builds.