Shattered Kingdoms

Actually, that'd be wrong. I know this, because I pushed for a great deal of time to get some changes done to axes. It wasn't the greatest change in the world, but they did become a lot more useable than they were.

I don't particularly like the weapon system, and think in retrospect it was one of the downfalls of SK. However, as much as I don't like some of the current staff one of the few things you can't blame them for is a lack of changes to weapon balance.

I can blame them for the weapon subtypes they add to the game, though - which have been khopesh, battlespear, khopesh, khopesh, khopesh, battlespear, kama, and ahlspiess. Great building.

Brilliant

Last I checked there were still only about 6 ahlspiess and only two tanso or better.

I think kamas are lame, because they are basically the exact same thing as a sickle in practice, and would be served just fine by the sickle sub-type.

As far as battle-spears go, there are only 6 spear subtypes. One is utter garbage, two are alright but have no reach, out of the reach subtypes one already caught the nerf bat, one barely exists in the game, and one is overpopulated as can be, which is kind of my point. The game worked a lot better when a spear was a spear was a spear, just different damage types/damage amounts. I could make a concession by allowing a few spears to be flagged non-reach, just like a few axes to be flagged reach. Other than the addition of a reach mace/axe I don't see much value in the entire weapon system, and sure as hell none realized.

I decided when I rolled a merc I wasn't going to spec in battlespear/khopesh even though they were without doubt the best specs to go for 95% of the time, I was able to find another decent spec, and then just shot in the dark on the second one to lean on the first.

So yeah, basically it comes down to logic. There is no reason someone would make a legendary short sword ICly or OOCly because short swords are completely inferior weapons in every way, shape, and form.

There is a store that sells cold-iron ahlspiess, and there are adamantite ahlspiess' in the game as well. Not to mention the fact that plenty of people pk with tanso steel weapons, because using tanso barely affects your pk and are far easier to enchant.



I agree - using the dice system that immortals can set for individual weapons is clearly a better solution than our current subtype system, but I highly doubt Dulrik would erase his subtype work in this fashion. I am still trying to come up with a solution, honestly, that would require very little work on Dulrik's part - but it's hard to find one because of how crappy the system is today.

AGREED.

I'm not sure why the system was changed. When it first came out I was under the impression it was there to "equalize" the different weapon types by making them each have relatively unique attributes, leading to more tactical thinking, as opposed to simply going "X weapon is better than Y weapon" and you hit 4x a round with all of them and etc.

It looked good on paper but it hasn't worked well in practice. First of all, many old weapons which were of "unique" make (and thus meant to be powerful) were turned into garbage, because their subtype is garbage. Second of all is that the subtypes aren't that balanced by their unique attributes... there are a handful which blatantly have the best attributes. Third is the gamewide proliferation of said "elite" subtypes.

What happens? Instead of there being a number of different weapon types which all compare at the top tier and thus get hoarded, we have a number of different weapon subtypes which all essentially "compare at the top tier" for subtypes and all get hoarded. And so instead of all the experienced people running around with adamantite/mithril weapons with crazy names, they just run around with tanso versions of the best-rated subtypes.


I believe someone suggested once that you maintain the subtypes, but create some kind of craftsmanship bonus or something. So that something called, for example, "The Longsword of Many Fates" or "Mortenha's Bane" or "The Punisher" or whatever isn't a total friggin' joke just because its subtype is bad. With a good enough craftsmanship bonus it can still be a viable weapon. What we'd be looking at is a sort of merger between the two systems that creates some variation and flexibility. Craftsmanship bonuses can be specific to uniques/rares, or maybe even areas (making an elven longsword slightly different than a Taslamaran one, for instance). They can be slight or huge depending on the weapon, and they can affect either damage, to-hit, or even speed.

Now, the above suggestion would probably be a balancing nightmare, but the individual weapon-specific nature of the modifications would mean that nothing could really be abused on the large scale, at least.

Enishi wins.

I just really think like The Super Sword of Doom and Destruction!!!!!!! which is an adamantite longsword, should be better than "a steel khopesh", sadly, even if the merc with the longsword was in full adamantite and the merc with the khopesh was naked, the khopesh would probably still win. Because khopesh is just 100x better, and materials really don't break very much.

Part of the reason I was so loudly protesting the change Dulrik made to allow tanso, steel, and cold iron to be resistant to breaking when he introduced cold iron to the game.

Enishi loses because simply making unique weapons better still doesn't fix any problem, in fact it makes it worse.

Unique weapons would still be made in the good to great subtypes, except they'd be even better than the normal version making an even larger chasm between good subtypes and bad subtypes.

The subtype system has failed horribly because it placed what used to be balanced by the entire staff and to a point the players, into the hands of one person who can only do so much in a given day and is quite understandably more interested in new features/fixing bugs than crunching numbers for game balance.

Also, I don't have any problem with tanso and up being resistant to breaking, I'd much rather have better material types have some other bonus other than instantly breaking tanso steel into pieces.

Dulrik really needs to read this page of the thread its full of win.