Melee weapon degradation, melee adjustments

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Nice to meet you all! I’ve been playing cataclysm since Whales was still working on it, and I felt as though my prayers were answered when I found DDA. Anyways! I feel as though there is something that I sorely need to suggest.

It’s come to my attention that firearm malfunction/maintenance is going to be a thing in the game soon, if github was any indication. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and will make guns even more interesting to use in-game. However, I’ve come to realize that melee has no such degradation mechanics from what I can tell. If you find a nice machete or something, it’ll never break unless you drop it in acid, or something silly like that.

I propose that melee weapons should have a chance to degrade based on the weapon in question, player’s strength, weapon/melee skill, the material of the weapon, and the damage resistance/material of the enemy.
OR
That they should have a chance to just subtract from a hidden life stat.

Either way, this could tie into it degrading just like armor does, and you could repair it in a similar way to armor (have material and tools), need to craft a new one entirely, or perhaps swap out parts (like fallout 3). I also think that lower-health weapons should do less damage.

I think this would contribute to the gameplay and fun factor because it would keep the player from feeling safe and secure with a single powerful melee weapon, and instead need to plan to either repair it or find backup weapons. Thus, you could even find value in spicing your play up so often, crafting some of those fiendish makeshift weapons when another one wears out with an actual gameplay justification behind it!

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Also, this is a longshot and I understand some of you probably won’t agree with me, but I think that being able to swing endlessly at enemies without needing to rest for a time is a bit silly.
I propose that your arms should be able to get tired, and you’ll attack with reduced effectiveness until you gain distance and gather yourself, or pull out a gun (making guns a good compliment to melee as well). Perhaps stronger and more skilled players would feel the effects of this less so.

I think this would contribute to gameplay by changing the flow of battle and making it more strategic and tense, especially for low-levelled players.

2

@ 2nd part of post
Someone made a “strain” thread recently.
And it had a lot of details and discussion.
I know cause it was too long to read.

And yeah I like both melee weapon durability and stamina resource ideas.

Time for tactics.

3

I personally like the first option, feels a lot more like a proper system, albeit a harder one to implement.

4

For the melee degradation stuff I believe Rivet is planning at possibly looking at some of that stuff once the feature freeze and .A release is over.

Also yeah, some sort of stamina system is definitely planned and is just waiting for a dev to give it some TLC time.

5

Yeah, I like the concept of /get yer trusted nail bat/ whamwhackhit /loud noise of bat cracked in half / “Wait! Oh shi~”

Jokes aside - item “health” stat would be nice (especially when hidden or explained like “your sword has no visible flaws / there are deep scratch on side of your bat/ etc.” This would bring the need of backhand (I hope I used the right word ) ) weapons such as khife in boot and so on. Or make some “I gonna slash whole town of Z-s with my zweihander” situations some more challenging.

Of course such system should be accompanied by repair ability to mend weapons that are not completely broken.