good thing about graal weapons now:
range of weapon speeds
range of attack styles (sword vs nag spin etc)
range of damage types (fire, electric, phys)
range of hit areas (squares around player that are hit during an attack)
range of weights
range of damage values
range of event weapons bonus stats
the down side:
A few types are basically better than the rest and dominate kingdoms, the 'magic combos' are:
swords: diamond blade or df, inferno etc
hammers: event weapons, enough said
nags: spin attack is nice
daggers: fast, can hit monsters on player
missile: composite or ebony has best stats, others are a waste
(I may be forgetting something, not sure)
Anyway, if you look at history, a lot of weapons were rendered out of date fairly fast, ie, there are lots of weapons thoughout history, but they were dropped in favor of better ones.
All the same though, a large variety of weapons survived in every age due to distinct advantages in battle.
The short sword allowed the heavily shielded legions of the roman empire to pinch the revolting celts who were led by Bodecia, (forget correct spelling, the 'red bellied queen they called her I think) when they were cornered in a tight geographical area.
In that case, the large two handed swords were not effective in close quarters and the celts were massacred.
That is not something that can be exactly modeled in a computer game like graal I think, but there are reasons why certain weapons had effective 'niches' for use.
I do think, if the 'shield item' was replaced with 'secondary item' it would be good, then you could use a lantern in one hand, and a sword in the other, or a shield, or a parry dagger, or a two handed sword.
The point about the short sword is, maybe if more time was taken to find out
why certain weapons survived in history, amongst seemingly stronger ones, they could be modeled better.
For instance, maybe if during an attack, the damage of a weapon may be reduced if a lot of the hit squares pass the 'on wall test'
Thus, close quarter fighting would give an advantage to those weapons what are more select in their attack.
The key factor to new weapons is: why are they different?
and in modeling how they are different....what balances this out as an effective weapon?
otherwise, more weapons are just pretty graphics, used by new players who don't know any better.
If more weapon factors are added, I think interesting ones would be:
weapon motion:
swinging a weapon, by pressing 'S' more times over time, ie, at least once a second, keeps it up at speed.
heavy weapons like axes and heavy swords would only do the most damage at a mantained swing, smaller weapons top out at less damage, but do full damage without getting up to speed.
physical attack types:
pierce, slash, bludgeon - good against different armors and monster types.
Defensive use: allow some weapons to be used with perry, ie, with a sword, S+back arrow could parry instead of jump attack, momentarily improving ac.
two handed weapons: two handed axes and swords, *drools*
two weapons, one in each hand: parry daggers or other secondary weapons, maybe a special skill would be good for this to work, like melee or missile weapons are now, two weapon skills and two handed weapon skills.
terrain weapons: make a cutless better when player is over the sea, ie, it is a pirate's sword after all.
elven bows could work better in forests, maybe have higher chance of not being blocked by NPC trees, or get +s when on forest map.
close quarter weapons: dmg is lessened if a blow falls on both an enemy and on wall squares/or blocking NPCs.
novel weapons:
add Jousting and war Lances
(and make horses harmable when a rider is on it, and only invulnerable when player is off the horse! - off topic rant)
[/huge wishlist]
09-22-2003, 12:46 AM
it will be cool
Linear Mode
