Suggestions Regarding Armor, Weapons, Stats, Leveling, Upgrades, and Combat

[irish_vampyre]

So first, the combat system kind of sucks. In terms of numbers it's overly complicated and it's gumming up the works. Essentially combat is too easy or too hard with very little middle ground and the combat seems designed for 1-vs-1 combat even against the AI, however it ends up, most of the time Player-vs-(1-10). It's not very fun.

The first point of contention is the leveling. It seems that there are random level caps for the main character and tribesmen. Make it 1-100 and call it a day. No one, wild, tamed, or main, will have any differences and that will make effort the biggest level playing field available, especially once we address...

Stats: they add a little to the game but ultimately, unless you get into the settings and change it all they have very little effect on your character until you throw a mountain of stats on them. The stat gain in the basic gameplay is essentially 1 naturally endowed point (seemingly through RNG) and 1 distributed point. This is, from the beginning, a flawed system. Give us a certain number of points and explain exactly what they do in a clearly listed format. Instead of 2 points and only 1 that is a choice where to put it, instead give us 1 point for levels 1-10, 2 points for levels 11-20, 3 for 31-40, etc... The stats also need to be more simplified. There 0.5% gain here, and 5 of this there. Stop. Just add a simple, hard number to the affected stats. EG: When you add a point to strength, instead of adding 0.5% damage to the hammer, just add a plain 1 point of damage to melee damage. This gives you a base damage, weapon damage, and modification adjustment (food, buffs, mods, etc...). I highly recommend 1-10 to add 1 point, 11-20 2, etc... just like the stat point gain. So the more you add to a certain attribute the stronger you get with commitment. I also recommend sticking to:

Strength: Melee Damage and carryweight
Physique: Health and Regeneration
Endurance: Stamina and stamina consumption
Agility: Stealth (and assassination bonuses) and Status Effect Damage
Perception: Ranged Damage and Output Increases

You can tie natural resistances (to special statuses like bleed, poison, radiation, confusion, and whatever else) and Physical Damage Type (Type in future: Blunt, Slashing, and Piercing) resistances to them as well but I would leave that to the masks and armors.

The third point is armor. Stop tying up HP gains to armor, it's a bad system. Instead focus on TYPE resistances, status resistances, and general damage reduction. I also recommend that general movement speed be reduced by heavier armor types. Typically there are 3 types of armor, Light, Medium, and Heavy, for good reason. Light armor shouldn't reduce speed at all but offer less protection, Medium a middle ground for both, and heavy for high defense but slowest speed.

Light Armor: 100% speed but approximately 60% of the material's maximum armor values for TYPE, Status, and reduction.

Medium Armor: 85% speed and 80% of the material's protection.

Heavy Armor 70% speed and 100% of the material's protection.

For example:
If I wear Heavy Linen Armor, I get a 40% reduction to Blunt damage, a 20% reduction to Slashing, and 0% resistance to piercing after the damage is calculated for the attack. Let's say I get hit with a hammer (B), a great sword (S), a spear (P), and all do 100 points of damage, while wearing the armor above the hammer would actually be at 60 points, the great sword 80, and the spear at the full 100. Then calculate the damage reduction, this is the defense's purpose, the armor has a defense rating of 20, so it takes off (since linen is weak, early game armor) 1 point of damage per 2 defense, removing 10 points of damage in the reduction phase. Now those weapons above are doing: 50 for the hammer, 70 for the sword, and 90 for the spear.

Armors, I feel, also need 3 pieces when put together and need to be editable, essentially. Maybe early armors do not get all 3, until you get the armor crafting bench. The armor itself is the mesh or plating and has a set of stats for:
Defense ::: TYPE Resistances ::: Special Status Resistances ::: Movement Speed ::: Swimming Speed ::: Climbing Speed ::: Sneaking Sound Modifiers ::: Sneaking Concealment Modifiers ::: Heat Resistance ::: Cold Resistance

The second part of an armor should be added at an armor crafting station and that is the lining. These would basically be an extension of mods, removing the basic idea of mods from the game and redistributing them to this, lining, and decorations. The lining would basically just allow the use of 1 mod type, and the decorations the second. This way we can adjust for extra defense, status resistances, TYPE resistances, hot and cold resistances, etc... The lining would be material you can craft and the decorations be gems enhanced with crystal infusion on a part for the mysterious stone table. The decorations would essentially be tech that syncs with the masks and as such might provide those basic enhancements but also have mods that upgrade mask features. Distance of life scanning. shape of life scanning, upgrades to the deep scanning feature, enhanced night vision, better sunlight diffusion to increase solar recharging, reducing costs for things like the mimicry, making sunstones go farther during a recharge, etc... You get the point.

Weapons also need slots for decorations. Say up to 3 per weapon, with the quality dictating the number of slots. White = 0; green and blue = 1; purple and gold = 2; red = 3. They would mostly adjust the damage the weapons do but also reduce stamina costs, swing speed, parry window, adding a little bit of TYPE and/or status damage (imagine adding a sheath of mist to a blade to add sonic damage or a light red glow to show fire damage. They could also come with stamina regen buffs, resistances to certain damage and status types while blocking, etc... There's no limit to imagination.

Then we come to the part of my post where I discuss upgrades.
The first and biggest thing is we need more weapons. I compiled a list of ideas.

Currently we have ::: Claws (should be P, currently B); Hammers (B); Spears (P); Swords (S); Dual Swords (S); Great Swords (S+B); Throwing Axes (S); Throwing Knives (S); Throwing Stones (B); Javelins (P); Bows(P); and Great Bows (P+B).

I think we need to add ::: Daggers (P); Double Daggers (P); Dusters/Gloves (B - for basic punching); Needles (S+ - for status application, would require venoms and powders, etc... for status ammo think of 13th Warrior, the mother in the cave towards the end); Clubs/Maces (B); Axe (S); Whip (B+S); Bola (B+binding status); Macana (B/S : kind of an axe or mace with a short leash instead of a shaft, popular in Incan and Mayan history); Sling (B); At-Ladle (P); Blowgun (S+ - With status type needles for ammo)

Then we get to material types for weapons and armor. We have, for armors, Linen, Leather, Bronze, Iron, Steel, and enhanced and then we have for weapons and tools, Wood, stone, bronze, iron, steel, and enhanced. I propose we add things like Jade, obsidian, copper/tin (equal tier just a lower level metal use) and then Spirit stone, Soul ems, and Living Metal (three different types in the high end tech level: Imagine instead of pulling a spear from your back, summon nanites to for a spear the way the masks move around also displaying that the tech works within the nature found rather than being hardcore circuitry)

The mask's red crystals are kind of terrible and just need a major re-work. How are we not able to add the red cores to craft upgrade types and essentially fuse the with decorations? Major failing.


The point of note is the combat. The dedicated zones causing instant enemy retreat, the near insta-healing when they do retreat to a zone which is so frustrating that I nearly gave up on the game in my first few days, respawning enemies while you are in a large POI zone like a barracks or dungeon (I know this has been addressed but it's been so poorly addressed I'd probably erase it from the histories because the only thing it indicates is incompetence), the MASSIVE parry windows both for the AI and for the player(s), the way the AI gets to assassinate just for being behind a player but the players only when sneak works (sneaking, which needs a MAJOR rework so we can actually use it)... We need to be allowed to assassinate if we're behind a stunned target, if we attack sneaking targets, if we get the sneak off, etc...

Another thing I want, badly, are contests. If me and an AI or other player attack at the same time there should be a small chance to get into a contest where you get a few i-frames and a button mash-off to see who gets the damage to the opponent and a push back. The executions need a few sides to them with different animations. And the fighting in general needs to allow for friendly fire for the AI ant the AI needs to be more intelligent about it, especially the archers and whatnot who just sit back and shoot through their friends to whittle me down. It's really a bad combat system when it comes to that. I should be in a crowd of 4 people attacking me in melee and 6 people shooting bows at me and I am the ONLY ONE taking damage while the AI exploits the no-friendly fire aspect.


These are my thoughts on the combat and armaments systems. The whole game needs a lot of love but combat is essentially the core of the system of gameplay and we need some love.