Doesn’t anything that is used regularly in danger of being worn and/or broken? A reliably build gun can still be damaged from neglect and misuse? A properly built baseball bat gets dented a little with every hit. I know my ax is on it’s last leg if I don’t put in a new wedge and screws.
I’m hoping I’m not misunderstanding. I know a quality weapon is better then a makeshift one, but I don’t think that’s what you meant altogether.
No what I ment is that thats the response from some of the devs that I have heard before on this topic.
Well most rpg games have durability for all weapons, and I think that works well/makes sense, especially in a survival rouge-like. However, I can see that things which are properly made (with a high skill/proper tools) could become unbreakable to bypass having to remake all the level one survival stuff.
That would only serve to make early game harder. Late game would be unaffected.
Well ‘late game’ in an infinitely long game is pretty difficult to affect, and there is always going to be a point of becoming nigh-invincible unless you put caps on things. My thought is that if things break/deteriorate, it’ll stop you just being able to use the same stuff forever which will force you into more dangerous situations to recover items. Furthermore, the main reason you become invincible is due to your stuff (like an awesome gun) which, if it deteriorated, would stop you being able to rely on it forever.
I don’t think it’s because of high end-game equipment, really. You could give an early-game character the exact same equipment that a late-game character has, and I doubt it’d make much difference. The way I see it, an early game character is forced to make crappy equipment and take chances because he needs to build a base somewhere, and because he doesn’t have the skills to make anything better. If a late game character loses his awesome weapon he can shrug and hole up indefinitely until he makes a better one, but the early-game character doesn’t have that luxury. The only way to balance it would be to have late-game equipment deteriorate faster than early-game equipment, and that’s pretty hard to justify in terms of realism.
Plus, I generally go pure archer, particularly since ammo is easily replenishable, and the strongest bow is made of a few bones and sticks and strings. The raw material isn’t hard to get, it’s getting the archery skill required to craft it.
Equipment failure isn’t a bad idea.
It added a huge amount of atmosphere to the STALKER games (yes I’m comparing Cataclysm to that…).
Some notes on why I think it’s good:
[ul][li]Makeshift weapons really should break easily. They’re easy to make, and would encourage skill training so you can make better ones.[/li]
[li]Acid rain can damage weapons and this is irreversible because there’s no way to repair them. If we add durability, it would also mean adding a repair option[/li]
[li]Carring a handgun would make sense now because you could switch to it if your primary failed… rather than simply being something to use if you run out of ammo.[/li]
[li]It adds tension if your weapon breaks and you are mid-fight. It would check characters that rely on one-shots to survive, meaning bulky characters become more valuable[/li]
[li]It encourages exploration for materials that can help repair your weapon.[/li]
[li]It encourages the player to try out other weapons, and allows a new method to balance weapons through durability (very powerful weapons being fragile, and some weapons are already described for their reliability).[/li]
[li]Really, when I find a combat knife, that is going to be my melee weapon for life. It shouldn’t be like that, my clothes can tear, why doesn’t my weapon. Albeit a combat knife is going to have extreme durability, but at some point it WILL become blunt, and using a sharpening stone will be necessary. Even then, a knife will dent or shear when used the way we’re using it over time. If we try to smash metal objects with it, we should be damaging the knife. Blunt objects would take less damage from smashing[/li][/ul]
I’m not sold on late-game being impossible to make more challenging.
Not really- now, I’m playing devil’s advocate, but bleeding-edge isn’t as reliable as more basic stuff. That fusion plasma rifle is gonna wear out faster than yer ak47.
@Freezer
Oh god no, I stopped playing stalker when I found out there was no way to keep this snazzy unique AR from being gone after a little use. Fuck that, might as well not pick it up- old equipment would last longer.
I agree with your points.
Reiterating: a critical failure temporarily breaking a weapon would have an effect on end-game characters.
However, the ability to repair them would be absolutely necessary. I don’t want to have to re-make my katana every week. Sharpening? Sure. If I somehow get it broken (one in a million)? Yeah, a reforging is called for.
But if the PC worked hard for it, don’t outright destroy their efforts.
This would need work to balance- we risk implementing an annoyance, not an interesting feature.
A few important things:
We are planning on reworking the skill rust system to something that is useable, at which point it will become the default.
The current balance “cap” for skills is set for 10. That will be our effective cap once skill rust is working properly, and will be the point where things are balanced as a “max”.
We do have plans to eventually add weapon breakage/repair into the game, however this will be realistic weapon breakage/repair, not gamey “use this 25 times and then it breaks” stuff.
Sharpening would be like reinforcing, it improves the quality.
Your gun would be “maintained”, improving quality (a way to train firearms without actually firing a gun).
All objects already have a material type. Which means repairing them is simply a matter of adding the weapon category to the repair list. This can be done by changing literally one line of code
I don’t think deteriorating weapons is the solution to late-game invisibility, there is always a new weapon to find/make around the corner.
The real culprit is the skills themselves. I think adding an option to cap skills is the perfect choice to make everyone happy.
As I mentioned once skill rust is working correctly there will be a soft “cap” implemented by it that should limit your character to around level 10 in any given skill. As for more options, right now our goal with the options menu is to only add new options if we are fully dedicated to supporting them for as long as we can see going forwards. This means that for things that we have plans to rewrite in such a way that an option would be no longer needed (such as the skill system) we will not be adding new options.
[quote=“VampyreLord, post:1, topic:3921”]So I’ve read several people posting about how much powerful their character got that they don’t need any reasonable weapon or protection to defeat enemies, even if they are multiple Jabberwocks, one will still be able to beat it to death with a string. Now, I’ve never reached this state, but I’m guessing it is related to the skills of melee, unarmed, and dodge to become “Unstoppable god”, which you can go out naked and unarmed and still defeat horrendous amount of enemies without getting a scratch whilst dodging blows like an agent of the Matrix. This is beyond silly and game-breaking. I think overtime it will devalue the game and make progressing boring. Because at the end, it’s a survival game, if you become a “God” you will sh*t at that concept.
What I suggest is capping the skills responsible and ultimately gaining balance. Because balance in an RPG game = playability and re-playability.
For example you can raise your Melee skill to 100 or more but its effectiveness is capped at 50 or something. So you are still very powerful with melee weapons but still not “God of melee”, or simply untouchable with a very high Dodge skill.[/quote]
Well instead of that, why not just make more end-game dungeons and stuff that are a bigger threat? IE: Remote military installations, and huge lumbering beasts out in the woods. Once your Super Zed Killer Extraordinaire, you would probably go looking for bigger and badder things to fight, instead of “smash zombie skull” again for the umpteenth time.
[quote=“Turtlicious, post:33, topic:3921”][quote=“VampyreLord, post:1, topic:3921”]So I’ve read several people posting about how much powerful their character got that they don’t need any reasonable weapon or protection to defeat enemies, even if they are multiple Jabberwocks, one will still be able to beat it to death with a string. Now, I’ve never reached this state, but I’m guessing it is related to the skills of melee, unarmed, and dodge to become “Unstoppable god”, which you can go out naked and unarmed and still defeat horrendous amount of enemies without getting a scratch whilst dodging blows like an agent of the Matrix. This is beyond silly and game-breaking. I think overtime it will devalue the game and make progressing boring. Because at the end, it’s a survival game, if you become a “God” you will sh*t at that concept.
What I suggest is capping the skills responsible and ultimately gaining balance. Because balance in an RPG game = playability and re-playability.
For example you can raise your Melee skill to 100 or more but its effectiveness is capped at 50 or something. So you are still very powerful with melee weapons but still not “God of melee”, or simply untouchable with a very high Dodge skill.[/quote]
Well instead of that, why not just make more end-game dungeons and stuff that are a bigger threat? IE: Remote military installations, and huge lumbering beasts out in the woods. Once your Super Zed Killer Extraordinaire, you would probably go looking for bigger and badder things to fight, instead of “smash zombie skull” again for the umpteenth time.[/quote]
When we get multi-tile-monsters, you can bet we’ll have zombie giants.
More dungeons with enhanced difficulty is definitely a good way to increase the difficulty for higher geared characters. I would take it a step further and decrease some of the usefulness of gear you can get from cities as a whole, and make these dungeons spawn more useful items in addition to the special loot items. I’d introduce more areas that can spawn artifacts, and work on increasing the usefulness of artifacts in general too, so that I don’t spend an hour exploring a lab to find a -4 strength vest with shitty armor that irradiates me.
Time based difficulty gating, such as the introduction of harder monsters over time, evolution of existing monsters, and a general attraction of monsters to your location over time are good ideas too, but that introduces issues merging the new monsters with the old monsters seamlessly.
I think the items decaying and breaking over time is more of a hassle than a difficulty gating mechanic.
Although I like (who doesn’t) the ‘add more stuff’ option, I don’t think it always works well in terms of balance, as you start getting the ‘popcorn’ effect that you do in DCSS, where some stuff just becomes way too easy and an annoyance.
I completely agree that item durability should non-gamey and not annoying in it’s frequency. It’d mainly affect things like makeshift weapons and guns, combined with a more gradual scaling between makeshift and good.
To give an example, I found a good handgun (can’t remember which one) and a lot of ammo, along with loads of mods and had a machete as a backup weapon. As I knew none of these would ever fail or require repair, the only things I carried around with me was loads of food and drink and a few first aids. I could one shot all zombs other than soldiers and it became way too easy. If I knew that my gun wouldn’t last forever (unless it was carefully maintained, with finite resources like gun oil) I’d have had to do a bit more planning rather than just rambo-ing through everything.
[quote=“Binky, post:36, topic:3921”]I completely agree that item durability should non-gamey and not annoying in it’s frequency. It’d mainly affect things like makeshift weapons and guns, combined with a more gradual scaling between makeshift and good.
To give an example, I found a good handgun (can’t remember which one) and a lot of ammo, along with loads of mods and had a machete as a backup weapon. As I knew none of these would ever fail or require repair, the only things I carried around with me was loads of food and drink and a few first aids. I could one shot all zombs other than soldiers and it became way too easy. If I knew that my gun wouldn’t last forever (unless it was carefully maintained, with finite resources like gun oil) I’d have had to do a bit more planning rather than just rambo-ing through everything.[/quote]
I’ve been working on a build that has weapon repair and durability.
Like you say, makeshift weapons and weapons made of fragile materials will be damaged more frequently. Guns used to bash objects or attack enemies can be damaged too, but the damage chance will be significantly lower.
I’ve made it less game-y in that it’s not a “Use X times and it gets damage”. Rather it’s a chance based on your weapon’s properties (weight, size, bash/cut power, material, type) and the properties of whatever you’re attacking (furniture weight, monster bash/cut resistance).
As for guns, they will never be damaged when you fire them (it’s not realistic for them to do so). I intend to add weapon jamming and maintenance in the future, as well as the ability for makeshift firearms to fail. Hence the only way to damage your gun is to use it to hit enemies, with double the chance if you don’t have a bayonet (in the future we’ll damage the bayonet instead).
It could do with some testing: https://github.com/freezerbunny/Freezerbunny-Modified-DDA
It’s already built, just load and run away.
Great work!! I had a lot of fun with it and it definitely needs to get pulled!
A few things first though:
Great work!! I had a lot of fun with it and it definitely needs to get pulled!
A few things first though:
I really hope it doesn’t get pulled. Weapon-breakage = D: . The RNG has a functionally-unlimited supply of hostiles and loves to keep throwing them at the player. We’ve all sorts of horror stories about bears appearing in the shelter. Some players rather like the ability to feel like they’re accomplishing more than running away from every hostile.
To my knowledge, weapon durability follows the same durability as gear damage, so about four stages. Not sure whether frozenbunny pulled the repair code over too.
Repairing something to “it works again” is generally an acceptable standard if supplies, skill, or time are limited. Not sure why that’s being discouraged.
Great work!! I had a lot of fun with it and it definitely needs to get pulled!
A few things first though:
Thanks a lot!
Ranged weapons will be dealt with when melee/smashing is fully sorted out. There are no plans to damage firearms when they are fired (realistically a gun isn’t going to get mangled and stop shooting unless it is horrifically maintained). As for makeshift weapons like the two-by-sword, it should be like that. It’s a wooden sword, it should be nothing in comparison to a machete (which will almost never be damaged when attacking mobs).
Item strength will be explicitly added soon. Right now it’s a model based off of material, weight, and bashing/cutting ability.
The damage model will be changed later (it follows the same system as gear).
As your skills increase, you will be less likely to damage objects too. So if you had 5 melee skill you’d be very much less likely to damage things (and proper weapons should almost never be damaged through proper use).
Down the line I will add sharpening of cutting weapons, reinforcing of bashing ones, etc.
Reinforced/sharpened would of course wear off much quicker and will absorb any damage the object would’ve taken. That will be where the real maintenance takes place (does the player want to bother sharpening their machete?).
[quote=“KA101, post:39, topic:3921”]I really hope it doesn’t get pulled. Weapon-breakage = D: . The RNG has a functionally-unlimited supply of hostiles and loves to keep throwing them at the player. We’ve all sorts of horror stories about bears appearing in the shelter. Some players rather like the ability to feel like they’re accomplishing more than running away from every hostile.
To my knowledge, weapon durability follows the same durability as gear damage, so about four stages. Not sure whether frozenbunny pulled the repair code over too.
Repairing something to “it works again” is generally an acceptable standard if supplies, skill, or time are limited. Not sure why that’s being discouraged.[/quote]
No one is discouraging repairs. The modified build I’ve released lets you repair any item in the game using the standard clothing materials.