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Equipment not limited to classes, but will it be viable? I hope so (more player choice/customization
Stiler
Member Posts: 599
in the latest FP it says,
"While CU does have a strong class system, we will not impose strict limitations on armor, weapons, etc. based on classes but there will be trade-offs that the player will have to consider for wearing and using certain items/materials."
In many mmo's I have hated being stuck as that generic "mage in cloth" or "warrior in full plate," while DAOC was not as limited as many mmo's with the options you had, it sitll had a few limitations.
I am wondering, will it actually be viable to use certain weapons/armour? Will we be able to play a mage who uses a Sword/Armour and not obe "nerfing" ourselves by doing so?
As the statement says, there will be trade offs, but I hope those "Trade" offs go both ways and it means either way is viable, and it's not "Well you CAN ewar plate armour as a mage, and use a sword, but you'll SUCK" so no one does...
I've always wanted to play a good mage/warrior hybrid, focusing more on dps , and not your usual "paladin" style warrior with heals/buffs, but more a Arcane Warrior style (if anyone played dragon age: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Arcane_Warrior ) or a SwordMage (Dungeons and Dragons http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Swordmage )..
Hopefull this will open up the classes to have more variety within them and allow many different "choices" on what weapons/armour you use and how it affects that class.
Comments
There's got to have some downsides as to equip yourself with items that can really affect your abilities.
with the usual mage with plate armor would suck that is present in most of rpgs, not having that would be very OPed. That is why its always been usually like that.
But i think that what we will see in CU will be a bit more open as to what you can or cannot wear, with some obvious downsides that will be thoroughly thought about, and probably adjusted in Beta if needs be.
an exemple of this could be that casting with a full plate of armour could either reduce the damage inflicted, or take more time to cast, or more chances of a fizzle, or a mix of those.
Bowbow (kob hunter) Infecto (kob cave shammy) and Thurka (troll warrior) on Merlin/Midgard DAoC
Thurka on WAR
I imagine that the trade-offs will discourage a caster from walking around in platemail. Your casting speed, dodge chance would probably go down wearing heavier armors. I imagine your choice in armor could effect your stats as well. Wearing heavier armors would probably help your strength from having wearing that heavy crap, and maybe stamina/constitution for taking more hits. While someone wearing light armors would be quicker for having to rely more on reflexes for defense rather then just trying to laugh off damage, and would be less restrictive for casting movements.
I imagine options for piecemail might be interesting as well. Heavy arms and legs, but perhaps light breastplate might make more of a mixed result. Who knows.
If that is the case, then there really wouldn't be a choice would there? It'd just be the illusion of choice.
"Oh, you CAN wear that armour, but you'll do terrible" That's not really a viable choice, and thus the entire concept of "open" armour/weapons for classes is null and void.
There needs to be advantages/disadvantages, with each choice being viable in some way, if it's not viable then there's no real choice.
Why not have skills that unlock based on how you play?
If you wear armour/use a sword as a mage, you gain skill in using magic with armour/melee weapons, which in turn enhance that playstyle.
Rather then simply being a "mage" that wears armour, the same as a range-mage, you gain abilities/skills which are built around the way you play. Having new abilities that focus on the choices you make. Since you are a magic class, your strength has an influence on your magic in a way that benefits that play style, rather then makes it nonviable.
Whereas a mage who wears "ight" armour and uses a staff or other more range type of mage style, their style is built upon range and dodging attacks/keeping ia distance. However the style of someone who uses plate/a sword, their magic is adapted so that it supports that play style and instead of long range nukers and things, they get skills/abilities that instead are geared toward melee fighting and such things.
Having these kinds of branching skills can allow for more variety in classes and how people play, rather then restricting claasses to more default paths.
I think it would be easy to give each mage a base ability, for my example I'll go with Lifetap, now depending on what weopons you decide to wear could open up new options. For example lets say you equip a Scythe, well you still get your lifetap as your base magic spell but now you have a whole host of melee abilities to go along with the Scythe turning you into a Valewalker. or lets say you pick up a staff, now you can summon plants and you are an animist. Well rather than a staff lets say you pick up a want, now you are a Sorcerer, or maybe instead of a wand you pick up a spell book, well now you would be a cabalist. Of course to fully unlock the abilities you'd have to level up, and you'd only be able to use those particular abilities if the correct weopon was equipped, so a valewalker wouldn't be able to cast shrooms or bolt range mez players.
Also if you tied certian abilities to weopons/armor players could create their own hybrids, for example using my above example if a healer equipped a spell book, maybe they'd be able to summon a pet making them a druid or that same healer equips a staff allowing them to summon healing type stationary pets (similar to War's engineer beer keg).
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
Interesting news.
games that usually do this usually have few parent classes to choose from to begin with, which makes it easier to balance.
(Melee fighter class, Mage caster class, ranged hunter class, stealth rogue class, healer class)
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
the effect of wearing plate armor for a caster type class could be made increasing by the amount of pieces he's wearing too. i.e. only wearing leggings could induce a 10 % penalty to his casting abilities. each additionnal piece you are wearing would hinder you more. so you decide to have a bit more protection, without giving too much penalities too.
On a side note, you can always think of the other way around to see if any ideas regarding that matter is good.
What would you do for a full melee class that decides to only wear cloth armor ?
Bowbow (kob hunter) Infecto (kob cave shammy) and Thurka (troll warrior) on Merlin/Midgard DAoC
Thurka on WAR
Leather armour can give you bonuses to your dodge chance among other things. It can be made to be more useful for "range" mages/casters over plate, which is more useful for melee mages who will take hits.
Rather then making on e"better" or "worse" make each have their own viable reasons to be used, which in turn you let the player themselves decide which type of mage they'd like to play, rather then having one be "the best" and he other "worse."
To me, this is a no-brainer. Make it all based off strength. Your equipped items have a specific weight or "encumbrance" associated with them, relative to your Strength. As your encumberance level increases, you lose casting speed, attack speed, foot speed, dodge chance, etc. Heavier armor and weapons are just that, heavier or entail more encumberance.
Heck, DAoC had this mechanic built in to it, already. Just refine it. By the way, I loved it when someone would get Str debuffed in combat and they'd become immediately encumbered... hilarious. I didn't like when they changed it.
Casters will have inheirantly lower Strength in trade for higher Intelligence. I assume this will be accomplished by a range of mechanisms.
Emeryc Eightdrakes - Ranger of DragonMyst Keep - Percival
RED IS DEAD!
Pretty much what you said. You could simplify it further and have strength and constitution affect stamina. Higher armor would increase the amount if stamina spells used, assuming spells drew from a universal stamina pool rather than an arbitrarily seperate mana pool.
This would actually solve a lot of balance problems inherent in allowing a wide range of freedoms in character development.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
The thing is, you guys are listing disadvantages to using it, vs any advantages at all.
If a mage can wear plate armour, he needs reasons also to wear it. If there's nothing but penalities for doing so, vs wearing cloth or something, then there's no real reason TO wear it in the first place.
A mage wearing plate armour could naturally gain inate melee/magic damage based on his melee attacks and abilities/spells that focus on that play style. His melee-focused spells aren't open to being "innterrupted" like the other mage counterparts, as they are quick and based more on melee attacks/combat His melee defense could be based more on magic (IE a shield imbued in his armour) which sets him apart from a general warrior/tank. However the drawback is that he suffers from range-casting, so his spells/magic is geared toward a melee focus. He loses his long-range nuke type of spells in order to gain his melee /plate armour focus.
Whereas a mage wearing cloth gains more affinity toward range-based casting, and while his melee defenses/attacks wouldn't be as good as the plate armour wearing mage who uses a sword , he will have longer range spells and things that are suited to that style. The drawback is his vunerability to melee (if they close the distance) and interruptions.
Mark also mentioned somewhere about how a caster wearing plate and casting a lightning spell would not be good for the caster but that it would be possible.
IMO there has to be some sort of trade off because if not everyone would were plate armor.
There would have to be tradeoffs if you are given free range of what to equip. And I support that. If a mage chose to run around in full plate, he SHOULD lose some offensive capacity. Why? Well he is gaining a lot of defensive capacity for one thing, and I'd imagine it would be difficult to be dexterous wearing all that armor. He would also have to devote a lot of time staying in shape to even wear that armor, and wouldn't have as much energy to devote to the arcane arts.
From a pure gameplay perspective, not to have disadvantages for wearing specific types of armor would remove any illusion of choice as well. Everyone would just equip heavy armor if it acted the same as cloth, but with more protection. Its only when tradeoffs are introduced that we are free to debate the merits of each and the specific instances they are better in, and then actually have choice.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Wearing a plate armor would directly give an advantage, otherwise why would a caster want to wear one in the first place ? To avoid damage there's your reason.
Bowbow (kob hunter) Infecto (kob cave shammy) and Thurka (troll warrior) on Merlin/Midgard DAoC
Thurka on WAR
Yes it needs to have both advantages and disadvantages, but imo depending on both the armour you wear and weapon, there needs to be more to it then "More defense, less offense," especially when it comes to weapons.
Wearing plate, using a melee weapon, should "change" how you play a mage, not simply "take off offense, throw on defense" A mage wearing plate armour, using a sword instead of a staff or something, should not "play" the same as the mage wearing cloth armour with a staff who's throwing around fireballs and range based spells.
If using plate armour and a sword, and all the mage spells/abilities are still focused on "range combat" then there is ZERO point to anyone using plate/melee weapons, as the entire concept of the class is range based, so the "illusion" of having a choice is broken if that is the case.
If you made each "choice" viable, each with advantages to it and disadvantages, where the choice you make wasn't simply "worse offense/better defense" but instead it was more "different" and viable, 'd be a much better system , it needs to have drawbacks, but also needs to open other "doors" so to speak on how you play that class.
Dragon Age did this fairly decently imo with their "Arcane Warrior," here's a breakdown of the abilities that allowed them to be melee focused/wear armour
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Arcane_Warrior
"Combat Magic: While this mode is active, the arcane warrior channels magic inward, trading increased fatigue for an attack bonus and the ability to use Spellpower to determine combat damage. Aura of Might and Fade Shroud improve the effects. Additionally, regardless of whether the mode is active, an arcane warrior who has learned this spell may use the magic attribute to satisfy the strength requirement to equip higher-level weapons or armor.
Aura of Might: The arcane warrior's prowess with Combat Magic grows, granting additional bonuses to attack, defense, and damage while in that mode.
Shimmering Shield: The arcane warrior is surrounded by a shimmering shield of energy that blocks most damage and grants large bonuses to armor and all resistances. When active, however, the Shimmering Shield consumes mana rapidly.
Fade Shroud: The arcane warrior now only partly exists in the physical realm while Combat Magic is active. Spanning the gap between the real world and the Fade grants a bonus to mana regeneration and a chance to avoid attacks."