Knight Weaponry choices, for consideration from the Arena thread

Iocun

Sasiya said:

Knights being able to use longswords, broadswords, or scimitars and be as competitive as with rapiers is not inherently a bad thing.

Well, yes, this is pretty much the basis of this entire debate...

Cardan

We haven't made any definite plans on how we're going to tackle this issue as of yet, but I believe we are keen to avoid a situation where the only difference a players sees/feels in using different weapons, is that the messages are different. As a side benefit, it would be good to remove/lessen the need that some players have that they need to forge 15,000 rapiers just to get that extra single point of speed. Players should be here to play a game and enjoy themselves, not spend all day hitting their forge alias over and over (because no one auto-forges anymore, right?) to get the 'perfect' weapon.

It is my personal belief (i.e. not necessarily shared by Tecton) that if you, as a combatant, want to use multiple types of weapons, then you should expect that you may very well need to use completely different fighting styles and tactics. A knight wielding two rapiers would theoretically be more about the speed and delivery of venoms to disable the opponent whereas a knight wielding a two-handed sword would presumably be focused more on damage and limb breaks. Whether this means we need to create different new abilities that are dependent on the weapon style you've chosen, I couldn't speculate.

I would presume that the direction we end up taking will encompass some significant changes which of course will require a lot of balancing work.

Once we have a clearer picture of where we want to head, I'm sure we'll start releasing some more teasers and tidbits.

Jules

Sasiya said:

@Nizaris said:
Sasiya: To the bolded: this would remove all incentive for forging. Forgers need to be able to create weapons of variable quality; this is what makes the skill potentially worth it.

I agree that putting a flat balance recovery for the skill is a terrible idea. I think it is an equally terrible idea to argue that rapiers should always be the fastest weapon in the game, because then there is no incentive to use another weapon type in today's Achaea combat. Ideally, all the Knight classes would be revamped, but this is a huge project compared to simply allowing each weapon type to be competitive by mirroring stats. There is nothing awful or bad or terrible in this. In fact, the current variations in stat distribution could easily be kept by using different weapon templates.

Also, I am not convinced that forgers -need- the current incarnation of the skillset to make the skill potentially worth it. I am going to point at Aetolia's forging as an alternate and very viable example, even though it has its own issues. The fact that they got rid of to-hit and added armour penetration as a stat instead was just icing on the cake (even though the numbers were horribly skewed in favour of damage anyway).

Knights being able to use longswords, broadswords, or scimitars and be as competitive as with rapiers is not inherently a bad thing.

In fact, it makes less sense to me that a Knight would go into battle with a rapier than with any of the other swords.

I hope they do fundamentally change how forging works by removing probability, or at least significantly narrowing the upper and lower range of possible results, so that the weapons produced are more consistent in stats.  Right now, those with the time and the obsession strive endlessly to beat the odds of forging - and through sheer persistence (countless hours of tink tinking), they are successful, probably more successful than was originally intended, since there seem to be enough "247 rapiers" to matter.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear some people addressing the idea of set stats (and even possibly allowing a small degree of stat customisation) in the other thread. 

It seems like it would be harder to "balance weapons" (using stats) when a small, but significant minority is carrying weapons that are on the very narrow end of a curve.  Does every point in the speed stat count equally or are there diminishing returns above a certain number?

I would love to see set "tiers" of forged weapons, something like artefact tiers, and I'd love it even more if I could move a few points around (for both artefacts and forged).  It's so interesting to me that they just got rid of to-hit in Aetolia.  I wonder if part of to-hit's purpose is to help prevent forging from producing uber weapons.  I'd guess that that might be part of its purpose, so it just wouldn't be needed if forging worked differently.  I do think that forging could still be an economically viable skill for the forger - and maybe even more so.  There's also the gold sink and possibly city comms shops to think of.  In short - maybe make people use a lot of comms for each forged weapon, and restock comms shops much faster.  It would definitely impact a certain kind of forger/market negatively - the guy who takes huge orders in the hopes of producing an uber weapon/armour for someone.  That market would go away.  It would also mean higher quality weapons and armours for all non-knights (and newbies of all kinds, too) since forging rapiers wouldn't be so all-consuming.  And then there's Iocun's idea from the other thread too, forging cosmetic items.  Even if it didn't do anything, I bet there's plenty of items people would go nuts for.  Horse armour, for starters.  I'd buy the heck out of that for my text ponies (well, in my case I'd make it, but most would be buying), and it's no secret that people go absolutely nuts for anything pet/steed related - pretty sure that's the reason creature customisation is the only artefact price that actually went up in recent years.       

EDIT:  wow, thanks Cardan, that gives me hope that I might see some of what I'm hoping for (the bit about the 15,000 rapiers).

Sena

Jules said:

Does every point in the speed stat count equally or are there diminishing returns above a certain number?

There are no diminishing returns, but it's also not entirely accurate to say that every point of speed gives equal benefit. Every 5 points in speed reduces the balance time by 0.1 seconds (before nimble or other balance modifiers), and balance is always in increments of 0.1 seconds. So 240 and 244 speed might be identical (depending on how it's rounded). But +5 speed will always reduce balance by a tenth of a second no matter how high or low the speed already is.

Also, while it's only somewhat relevant, I've always thought it was somewhat strange that no matter how good you are at forging, the majority of the weapons you forge will be crappy/useless.

Iocun

They're only crappy/useless in the eye of the players though. If pretty much every blacksmith who puts weapons on the market is transcendent in forging, often also has a hammer, and if there are enough people willing to pay high prices for exceptionally good weapons leading to massive amounts of weapons being forged and only the best few kept, our expectation of what constitutes a "good weapon" will naturally shoot up.

Aerek

I didn't post this because it was already in the knight thread in the Matsuhama Arena, but then I realized a large portion of the forums probably doesn't spend a lot of time there.

Personally, I'm not a fan of pure flavor changes like Trey's, but I do want other weapons to become effective. I agree with everyone who recognizes that a pretty substantial overhaul would be needed if any other weapons are going to be competitive.

Aerek said:

The issue, like Mizik pointed out with his first post, is that knight classes are tied to so many fundamental game mechanics (The everyone-can-use-it Weaponry skill, salve balances, herb balances, writhing off blades) that are not knight-specific, to make any kind of meaningful change to the class or its tactics means a complete re-design of knights and how they work, or a complete overhaul of the game and how it works. You can't just take rapier speed away from them, or our ability to land disembowels and vivisects becomes nil, and just raising other weapons up to rapier status wouldn't change anything except the text that scrolls by.

The best idea I can come up with is take the Blademaster approach and remove DSL's damage, speed, and accuracy dependencies on weapon stats and give it its own inherent values that are able to be balanced freely of Weaponry mechanics. (Weaponry damage could still be used to determine limb damage, so limb counting doesn't become universal and easily anticipated!) Next, give each weapon bonuses and penalties that modify DSL's base speed and damage, (Giving any weapon less accuracy than another would just mark it for disregard by the players) and give each a "perk" that would make weapon choice more than flavor and add a level of tactical variety, but that wouldn't put one weapon clearly above the others:

Battleaxes: extra damage, slower speed, could ignore some damage reduction (stacking with Mastery) to help "damage knights."
Broadswords: no bonuses, no penalties, could break limbs faster than other bladed weapons on account of their weight.
Longswords: no bonues, no penalties, could...Lunge/Arc/Raze faster. (I can't think of a good one)
Scimitars: no bonuses, no penalties, could deal extra disembowel damage because of their curve. (Could become Paladin's starting proficiency, given its origins)
Rapiers: less damage, faster speed, could have a chance to bypass parry (a la Airfist/Vinewreath), but deal less disembowel damage to account for that easy setup.

Lastly, make knights SPECIALISE IN a weapon like Bards have to do for instruments in order to get that weapon perk. They can learn all the proficiencies and use all the weapons they want, but only get the perk from their specialization, so you can't use broadswords to prep the first limbs faster, switch to rapiers to bypass parry on the last limb, and then switch to scimitars to guarantee your disembowel kill, etc.

I'm not good enough with numbers to offer how STR health-scaling should factor in, but it feels like if battleaxes were on one end of the spectrum with an average 1400 damage on a 2.5 second balance, rapiers on the other with an average 700 damage at a 1.8 second balance, and longswords/broadswords/scimitars somewhere in the middle at 1000 every 2.2, we'd be pretty close. Battleaxes would become the king of damage (500 damage/sec) plus their damage reduction bypass, and could now actually use venoms, but they can't disembowel, so they'd become very momentum based. Rapier damage (370 damage/sec) would get dropped to about about 80% of what it is, now, but they can make up for that with prefarar stacks and other venom use, as well as the ease of limb-setups for burst damage. Longswords, broadswords, scimitars would live in the middle, (450 damage/sec) without the damage reduction bypass of axes or the speed of rapiers, but would still have their own unique advantages and could still be fast enough to stack venoms and disembowel/vivisect.

That's the best I have.

Let me stress than I'm not a numbers guy, so the whole last paragraph is purely my half-educated estimations at balance, and the ideas for weapon perks were just off the top of my head, so don't take either for canon. I came up with all the details just to present the idea fairly, but all the details are subject to balance and brainstorming.

The idea, once those details are sorted, should preserve characteristics of the weapons, themselves, while still making them competitively useful. The perk is there to give an actual reason to choose each weapon, (rather than just "do I want damage or speed?") they would just need to be brainstormed until they were comparable, and the SPECIALISE bit makes sure you can't switch weapons and abuses all the perks, which is where this type of idea has fallen down in the past. This would keep Knights able to switch between weapons for different tactics, which is a big part of the class, in my opinion. Anyone could still use axes for damage or rapiers for the speed, and for the first time, both would be valid options. And, depending on what weapon the knight has specialized in, you might have to be careful/watch out for different things, which is what I really miss about the "damage knight/speed knight" days.

Jules

Iocun said:

They're only crappy/useless in the eye of the players though. If pretty much every blacksmith who puts weapons on the market is transcendent in forging, often also has a hammer, and if there are enough people willing to pay high prices for exceptionally good weapons leading to massive amounts of weapons being forged and only the best few kept, our expectation of what constitutes a "good weapon" will naturally shoot up.

I definitely think that expectations have steadily risen, thanks to forgers (and said so in the other thread), but is part of this also just because the system has a very low end (probably with the intent of keeping forging "in line")?  This is sort of what I was getting at above when I said "at least significantly narrowing the upper and lower range of possible results, so that the weapons produced are more consistent in stats" (if they don't just remove probability altogether, which I would absolutely love).  

Kakotas

Personal thought would be there should be certain weapons that deal more damage to limbs (hefting a good set of battleaxes or broadswords should deal slightly more damage to limbs and more heavy damage/bleeding (having a chunk of your flesh ripped or impaled by smashed armor is a pretty nasty thing)). And then the rapiers aught to be purely speed for stacking venoms. So it would look like this for speed Rapiers->Knives->Scimitars->shortswords->Longswords->Axes->Broadswords->Hammers and like wise in reverse would be high damage to low damage and high probability of breaks to low probability of breaks. Additionally I would love to see a system where there was a bit more flexibility in play style for Knights with Shields. Perhaps even a new class based around a generic swordsman or even a hoplite.* But regardless I think there needs to be a good way of allowing some customization here. I learned scimitars not because I'm particularly fond of them (I would as a dwarf much rather be wielding battleaxes but battleaxes aren't effective enough to even warrant learning with the scale of players health now consistently on dragon level versus what was considered 'normal' in the old days). But that is your choice these days.




*Side notes
It would be cool if these were somewhat factional as well. Not sure and it is a tangent but here would be my concepts on such.

Hoplite
-Depending on number would have access to formations (similar to stances but requires a certain number of Hoplites), reduces damage/increases attack values
-Uses lances/spears and single swords (shortsword, longsword, broadsword) (so class comes with 2 proficiencies, lance/spear, shortsword/longsword).
-Class ent-Owl (basically allows falcon view of target but probably on a timer as in it reports to them) the idea is that this class are masters of strategy.
-would not have access to bows
-Could enact a form of harms with random ticks

Soldier/Infantryman
-Shield bash
-Standard weapons (Hammers, broadswords)
-Version of deliverance but for x seconds is immune to damage but then takes it all at once.
-would have access to bows but would only have access to longbows

Tanaar

Delete weapons. Real classes don't use them.

Nellaundra

I'd be happy using BBT in fullplate.

Kresslack

I think being able to have a practical use for two handed melee weapons would be great. DSL's with a two handed weapon would require a slightly higher cost in Endurance, and the action itself could be a two swing motion so as to still allow the application of two venoms, one coating on each edge maybe? That, or substitute the second venom application for a boost in damage dealt.

Iocun

Nellaundra said:

I'd be happy using BBT in fullplate.

Nah, one gets way too sweaty when doing tekura in fullplate. It's not comfortable at all.

Trey

I'm resurrecting this dead thread because I am an Infernal and by extension a filthy Necromancer, in the hopes that @Cardan may have some additional insight or teasers to offer. Given how long ships took doubtful, but I thought it was worth a shot!