Do SPEARS not DESERVE to be in Games?

[HEROLEAS]

I have played many games and as far as i have experienced it....well,its painfully clear that spears which have great historical records for being staple of many global ancient armies have been unable to make their way or atleast not given enough attention in souls games and many other games like elder scrolls being excluded from being used in the game altogether except for the reikling spears which are morelike spear arrows. i totally understand how hard it is to bring out the truest potential of melee and ranged weapons in games where you have to program and design each thing from movesets to designs but Are the game developers just giving excuse for a low budget or are they afraid of giving it a shot and failing since many players have an IN-BUILT mindset to playing assassin or archer cause if you call only weilding a sword being a warrior class then they think of players as fools as a warrior is meant to be weapon from mind soul and body and and wield any weapon.

Long thing short are Spears so under-powered that it can't be put into games since it may be hard for players to use its fullest potential cause seikiro shows how well muscle memory works with a sword in hand. why hate spears give us some spears to play around with.

what do you guys think?

[peppermint hollows]

Spears do exist in the older Elder Scrolls games. Play Morrowind, it has spears, and they're actually pretty good in that game as well.

To answer your question, I think it has less to do with being underpowered or overpowered or balance or anything like that, and more to do with culture. Swords are just way more romanticised and seen as cooler, the same reason you always see samurai depicted in games wielding katanas. Even though in real life, the katana was generally more of a badge of office than a weapon used commonly on the battlefield.

And to make another comparison, it's similar to how the depiction of cowboys in media and the reality of what cowboys actually were in the real world are two very different things.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by peppermint hollows:

To answer your question, I think it has less to do with being underpowered or overpowered or balance or anything like that, and more to do with culture. Swords are just way more romanticised and seen as cooler, the same reason you always see samurai depicted in games wielding katanas. Even though in real life, the katana was generally more of a badge of office than a weapon used commonly on the battlefield.

To add on that, spears were for the most part a peasant weapon. Something for the regular infantry.

[Garou]

I remember spears being quite common in PS1 era rpg games. They were also powerful and looked good. Now spears are mostly found in online survival pvp games and maybe MMOs.
I believe there are viable spears in Nioh series, Surge and some Dark Souls games, when it comes to soulslikes.

[Utiviroo]

There are spears, pole arms, halberds and stuff of that nature to be found in that Ubisoft franchise, Assassin's Creed. Not in every edition but some, as the player using said weapons.

Anyhow large staff fighting is very effective at crowd control in the right hands, so it probably is the main reason they don't like distracting from the trope of swords, it probably has much more to do with the roots of fantasy novels than anything else.

It is more heroic/improbable that one lone defender fended off a group of attackers with just a sword. That dominant sword arm is gonna get tired fast.

With a spear, its way more effective as you pick apart opponents before they get into your personal space and give you a bad ending, at which point you switch to a medium/short blade anyway for speed/efficiency, as grappling is pretty much the end game you want to avoid if its many on one.

It is never about the monk that laid down the law, its always about the knight who charged in with great justice. Not the lance/jousting pretentiousness either.

Mostly its probably to do with hit boxes if you are talking about MP games. Spears will seem like having a pistol in a sword fight, its hard to counter attack without opening yourself up, which with a good spear user = impaled. If the sword user closes the gap, the spear user is toast, usually, so maybe its kind of boring?

Its a bit like a sniper vs pistol debate. Both can be effective in their range role, but its a swine to have the wrong tool for the job, if you find yourself in reversed roles.

Sword is kind of a catch all, enough range that its a little defensive, but not so much range that its borderline useless at close quarters, which is usually what two hander swords suffer from as well.

[Original Cast Recording]

I don't think they are actually all that rare, if you include staves, halberds, pole-arms in general. Fighting games, RPGs, Musou action, etc., all feature spears and such.

More rare is a game that lets you throw and retrieve spears. That's more of an ancient world thing. Many games are more or less themed around medieval-era stuff. Weapons like a medieval pike (or those extra-long halberds) were actually not meant for 1v1 combat, rather for use in formations against cavalry or conscripts.

[Hammer Of Evil]

probably not many developers know what spear looks like.

[LeviathanWon]

Yeah I have had a few idea's that punish game play in some designs for not holding formation, but they wouldn't pan out cause it restricts other kinds of players to move freely and play the way they want too.

Have make a spear or blockade formation in game with multi-player online rewarding... introduce breaking line rewards and so on so on. This from a third or first person view I am speaking about.... not from a top down strategy type game.

[Original Cast Recording]

Originally posted by NoMoreUnderscores():

That's more of an ancient world thing.

Looks like Conan Exiles has a bunch of spears and stuff.

[DOOMGIRL69]

i recently downloaded a mod for skyrim that adds them but i think i am missing an animation or something cause my character just swings it like a hammer lol instead of thrusting or poking with it

[Hammer Of Evil]

Originally posted by NoMoreUnderscores():

Originally posted by NoMoreUnderscores():

That's more of an ancient world thing.

Looks like Conan Exiles has a bunch of spears and stuff.

it does but, the issue is you can do some really good parry / swinging slashes with a spear, most devs just make the gameplay 'pokepokepoke'.

conan is a nice exception, spear is really hard to avoid there.

[WarHeRo]

simple, spears r over powered. any kind of sword wouldnt even be able to reach them in 1v1. even with shield u wouldnt have a better chance.

[Original Cast Recording]

Originally posted by WarHeRo:

simple, spears r over powered. any kind of sword wouldnt even be able to reach them in 1v1. even with shield u wouldnt have a better chance.

Not if the swordsman has real armor. Only a direct stab would have a decent chance of penetrating. Spear misses once, then he's scrambling to regain his footing while the swordsman closes the gap. A person strong enough to fight in armor could even grab or redirect the spear with his off-hand.

Okay, but what if the spear guy is like Wuxia-level? Okay, what if they both are?

Like people have said, to actually program every conceivable move-set would be borderline impossible.

[Ulfrinn]

Yeah, I never really understood most game's complete aversion to spears and polearms which were far more common than anything else.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Diablo 2

[Talby]

I feel the need to reinstall Far Cry Primal again...