Armour durability encourages cheese

[jordancoles]

I am not a fan of how armor currently works in this game.

In a face-to-face combat scenario your armor will always take durability damage, making each combat interaction a trade. You exchange armour durability for a dead animal. In the early stages of the game, this is fine. Leather armor breaks quickly and that's to be expected really. The problem comes in when you start making things like mammoth guards, ctcs, steel pants, etc. As time goes on, the animal body becomes less valuable and the armour becomes harder to make.

I don't want to scuff up my mammoth guard killing badgers, even though I am fully able to face-tank them at this point. This armour durability trade-off creates a situation where even if you *can* face tank an animal, it is always better to cheese it from a distance to save yourself some durability. I think that this is a problem that has entrenched cheese mechanics as being the norm (aside from the fact that re-agroing animals is a requirement to actually kill them at all). The cheese is not something you grow out of as your character progresses. It is not a matter of cheesing the early game until you can do things normally, you just cheese everything forever and reserve the armour damage for PVP encounters only.

*Everything below is just a suggested alternative but please don't focus on on this bit too much. I am open to other solutions if you don't like this one proposition*

In the past, armour would deflect damage from animals once you passed a certain AC threshold. This is how animals with armour currently work. I much preferred that system because it at least gave you a reason to actually engage with the combat system rather than spamming full circle and quick barrage from a distance.

A colour/opening threshold could allow animals to begin hitting you with armour penetration to avoid situations where you could just stand and tank without defending at all, but it would remove the durability loss from small, everyday encounters like badgers/boars/bats etc unless you were to really tab out in combat

[Duane]

I cringe every time I see a green 1 - 5 above my head. Managed to scrape a higher quality, mostly broken bronze platebody out of some flotsam a while ago and it's lasted me quite a long time, but it really sucks to see that I have ~100 armor and still get my face torn open, and armor damaged ~15 points by badgers that I can already kill in a few hits.

Idk, this kind of feeds into how animal fleeing right now is trash. Facetanking has too many negatives for cheesing to not be what people do by default, speaking as someone who had to learn the combat system the hard way.

[Massa]

I usually agree with colesy but I can't really see how this is an issue at all. It just never has been.

Armor breaks, wears down, gets broken, loses health, it's kind of hard to break genuine garbage before you can replace it with more garbage. I think it's totally fine. Maybe a mending mechanic would add to the game, but I can't imagine going through mammies at some kind of absurd rate fighting trash, even up to bears.

[azrid]

The trick is to not use your best armor when you go hunting.
You don't risk your best shit when you go into the wilderness in runescape either.

[jordancoles]

I usually agree with colesy but I can't really see how this is an issue at all. It just never has been.

Armor breaks, wears down, gets broken, loses health, it's kind of hard to break genuine garbage before you can replace it with more garbage. I think it's totally fine. Maybe a mending mechanic would add to the game, but I can't imagine going through mammies at some kind of absurd rate fighting trash, even up to bears.

I wouldn't say that the issue is that you're going through gear at an insane rate right now, my point is more so that because armor durability is always lost in face-to-face encounters big or small, it is always better to cheese an animal rather than to fight it normally. This solidifies the cheese across all levels of gameplay. Cheese mechanics aren't just being abused by noobs who can't fight things head-on yet, they are abused by everyone because it is simply the correct way to hunt at this point.

The solution I offered in the OP doesn't have to be the only one. I'm open to hearing other ideas.

A way to repair/reinforce gear could be what is needed to get people fighting animals legitimately even with cheese mechanics available

[jordancoles]

The trick is to not use your best armor when you go hunting.
You don't risk your best shit when you go into the wilderness in runescape either.

Wearing junk armour everywhere and carrying your ctc/mammoth guard around doesn't seem like a great alternative

[Kaios]

The trick is to not use your best armor when you go hunting.
You don't risk your best shit when you go into the wilderness in runescape either.

So you’re suggesting I wear something shitty that will get me wounded or my hhp cleaved through by a player? There is no ideal alternative which I think is the point that Jordan is making. I feel exactly the same, many players would rather continue to cheese hunt than allow their best armour to get fucked up in a minor encounter. That shit needs to be in tip-top shape if you intend not to immediately die should you run in to an aggressive player.

[Duane]

So what's the best suggested alternative?

Gear repair? Fix animal fleeing so that it's not cancer?

I'd honestly prefer gear repair. Why DO we need to constantly re-craft things? Is it really so outlandish to allow for six bronze bars to repair a bronze platebody to go from broken to full durability, rather than just crafting a new one? Where's the fire?

Main argument being that armor normally doesn't have gilding slots, so it's not like people are making a bunch of them to reroll like they are for clothing.

[jock]

[quote="Duane"]So what's the best suggested alternative?

Gear repair? Fix animal fleeing so that it's not cancer?

I'd honestly prefer gear repair. Why DO we need to constantly re-craft things? Is it really so outlandish to allow for six bronze bars to repair a bronze platebody to go from broken to full durability, rather than just crafting a new one? Where's the fire?

Main argument being that armor normally doesn't have gilding slots, so it's not like people are making a bunch of them to reroll like they are for clothing.[/quote

Hearth Magic Repair.

[Zentetsuken]

hot take: triquality was actually an interesting way manage armour stats and give a choice between incentivizing wear/deflection/absorption/agi penalty

I bet some sort of similar situation could be implemented with gilds on armour, where you ultimately can choose between upgrading certain aspects of armour at the cost of potentially downgrading others.