New Weapons and Armor

[Griegor]

I think the game needs new weapons and armor. Right now the current options are so limited that everyone nearly wears the same thing. So I'd suggest a new line of weapons and armor.


Boiled Leather Armor
Created by boiling minimum Q20 leather at a clay or metal Cauldron. Give it a different color such as a dark brown to differentiate it from the regular leather and give it slightly higher protection.

Bronze Viking Armor
Since this game is supposed to model northern europe. There was I think different models of Full bronze armor created by the various barbarian tribes during the time of the Romans. I think perhaps a different style or two of Bronze Chainmail, platemail, or scale would be nice. Maybe only marginal differences in protection but different styles for people to wear so everyone doesn't look the same.

Platemail
The same goes for platemail. It'd like to see different styles of Platemail with marginal differences in protection. Some different styles of helmets and what not. Maybe scalemail, chain/platemail combo, banded armor which is basically a leather chestpiece with steel plates sewn or bolted in to it.

Shields
OMG Shields. Need I say more? Tower Shield, Heater Shield, Round Shield, Square Shield, Kite Shield. So many different styles to choose from and none are in the game.

Bows- Ranger bow or regular bow? Can we get the composite bow? Crossbow maybe?

Weapons- Maces, Polearms, new swords, Axes, Warhammers? Bronze and Iron tipped spears?
The damage values could vary but you could also program in special attributes. Perhaps spears could have a push back distance on hit? Maybe maces have a chance based on skill level to knock somone silly and raise their attack cooldown back up by a second? Stuff like that.


I know this idea is being presented quite as expect but I am leaving it deliberately vague because only Jorb and Loftar know the capability of the Java client so I don't know just what they can program into it.

[Grog]

+1

at least give us another shield

[Potjeh]

Yeah, more armour and shields would be sweet, but we'd still have the problem of everyone just going for the stuff with highest damage reduction. But I think we could do something similar to what you're suggesting with arms to make the choice a bit less obvious. That is, make people in heavier armour slower. Not necessarily slower movement speed, though slight change in speed wouldn't be so bad, but slower combat speed (ie armour increases cooldown of all wearer's moves). Shields could similarly trade speed for protection, ranging from buckler that uses 3/4 melee skill but doesn't reduce the speed to tower shield that uses 1 3/4 of melee skill but doubles cooldown (numbers for illustration only). Maybe have shield quality slightly lessen the cooldown penalty, because I think it's kinda silly how shield quality is completely irrelevant.

As for arms, I'm definitely behind the debuffs idea. Generally, plain arms like swords should do the most damage, but not give any debuffs. More exotic arms should trade damage for these special effects, and some may even be so specialized that they're only useful if you're in a team (ie you use your billhook to pull a horseman off his horse, so your swordsman friend can fight him on even terms).

Another approach could be to define different damage types and give different armours different resistances to these damage types. Say, we have slashing, piercing and crushing damage, and armours can be vulnerable (damage reduction effectively halved), normal (full damage reduction) or resistant (damage reduction increased 50%) to these damage types.

On the other hand, this rock-paper-scissors thing may not be that appropriate to an MMORPG since there's little you can do if you find yourself fighting someone resistant to your weapon. Perhaps it'd be better to just give some weapons armour piercing damage (a la unarmed) at the cost of raw damage.

[DatOneGuy]

+1 to Potjeh's variation.

Unless you give people a reason to vary, they will not. If there is a perceived best with no opposition it will always be what people aim for, always.

Simply having those three types of damage can go a long way if you would need different items to block them (as well as different skill values?), I think having it reliant mostly in skill values would be best.
The problem is figuring out how they should work, a rock paper scissors style Pierce>Crush>Slash>Pierce barely works. Having like 6 Skill Values (Attack and Defend for each) would also suck. :/

(The reason I bring that up is because having it be something you can simply change weapons to would be a real big issue IMO, you could just change weapons and it would be turn into: Weapon Swapping: The Game)

Something you have to actually work for to use would be better, such that someone who spent his time in just "Slash" would have much more than someone who split Slash/Pierce.