Shattered Kingdoms

So as it stands, weapons are pretty much weapons. A stone sword will do just as much damage as an adamantite sword, only the adamantite one will be pretty much indestructable. So with the same notion in mind, a normal cold iron longsword would be just as strong as Excalibur (assuming excalibur was a longsword) in SK should it exist.

Now is it just me or is it strange that, other than scripts, named weapons are fairly useless? I mean if you have something named, I dunno, 'The Scythe of Storms and Sorrows" just for example, then shouldn't it, being all magicly created and stuff, outperform a normal scythe? It's like the longsword / Excalibur deal.

Getting to the point, I'm not sure how it works, but I think that "named" weapons should be a little exempt from the Subtype system. Take the Scythe of Storms and Sorrows mentioned above. Instead of making it flagged as a scythe, how about instead flagging it as an exotic? Yes, it could still be described as a scythe and such, but with it flagged as exotic, it's stats could be more easily tweaked. Or am I way off on that and exotics too have set stats?

The thing is, when you have a weapon named "The Purifier" or "The Axe of Conquest" or "Death's Scythe," you don't expect these weapons to be matched by a simple iron or tanso steel weapon. They're magical. They're meant to be these highly valued weapons that are simply better. At least they are in my mind.

Not only that, with SO many subtypes of weapons, there are only a handful of usable ones and it seems to favor speedy, accurate weapons for the most part. Simply because even though they don't dish out damage, the parry bonus because of the high accuracy is simply nuts when in mood defensive. Not just that, six smaller hits is far better than two or three slower, more powerful hits because it's not as devastating when they're dodged. Just look at all the people that roam around with epees and such.

How many people do you see using Naginatas or halberds or scythes? Those weapons are all but nonexistent in any real PK matches anymore unless it's someone testing a merc spec. And then you have weapons like Staves and Ajatangs and bo staves. Subtypes that are absolutely useless. They suck SO bad that the only reason you'd pick them up is simply for a concept. They're in no way viable whatsoever. This needs to be changed in my opinion.

One thing is that the subtypes should be thought out better. Different weapons should have bonuses to things. Like staves get bonuses to parry or so.Or you could make it so that the weapons themselves get bonuses against people using other weapons. Like, a naginata vs a sword, the naginata has an advantage because of it's range. Now I know it also matters with skill of the wielders but, I think it'd make things a bit more innovative instead of seeing all the melee running around with the same epee, no-dachi and such.

I'm just sort of throwing ideas out there, but I think that melee should have a diverse choice of weaponry and also some of the neat items out there should see a bit more use. Clearly just tweaking the stats will never find a balance as there will always be weapons that are simply superior. What do you guys think? Post some ideas and such.

Unfortunetly anything that takes any amount of coding won't be happening anytime soon. There are some huge bugs i.e. Sleep and Persuade that haven't been addressed yet. So I doubt there will be anything else done at anytime in the near future.

But I do miss the head chopper, mottled pike, heavy horse lance, and the d0rf axe being heinously strong.

Glad to know someone else isn't happy with the way weapons went in this game. I know the subtype system pissed the hell out of me watching the majority of weapons become all but useless, and as Kin said the magical named Weapons being on par with a crappy material weapon of the same subtype or just plain garbage in melee.

How I miss the old school Heavy Horse Lance, one shot charges for the win!

Yeah, I know that code changes won't happen anytime soon, but still the only way to improve the game is to address the issues that are present. I feel that a complete overhaul of the Subtype system, or even a minor change would be more beneficial to the mud than new classes. The weapons aren't just for mercs, but for all classes capable of using them. As it stands, every class BUT a merc is pretty much locked into preset weapons.

SCouts ; bow or battle-spear (I think?)
Mercs: Mostly no-dachis, etc.
Swashies: No-dachis, epees etc.
Barbs : bandalores etc

There's not really any uniqueness to the characters other than appearance, race and backstory because they all use the same weapons and such. I can understand rogues and scouts being locked into certain weapons cause their skillsets are designed around them. But barbs and mercs should by no means be using the same weapons over and over and over again.

I just feel that if we DO want important issues changed, then we need to at least keep them updated on which ones we want changed the most, and I feel this is one of the most important changes that should happen next.

By the way, what's the persuade bug exactly? I've never noticed anything on my bard when using it.

You cannot persuade anyone to do anything except emotes or socials. Because of the your master has to order you to do that.

Personally, I care less about named weapons being "special" and more about the fact the subtypes aren't really balanced, as far as I can tell. There's really no reason that every character should be aiming for X weapon type(like khopeshes a few years ago. Or maybe still now?), because it's better than Y. If the weapon types were balanced, I think we'd be seeing quite a few different builds for each class, rather than, the Khopesh/kama or Khopesh/Epee that I remember seeing all the time.

The only way that you're going to find "balanced" weapons is by getting rid of the sub-class sytem all together and setting all stats at X on all weapons and the reducing the amount available of certain weapons. That would also mean that builders also need to be more responsible in some ways about what they're putting in to the game.

That's not how you balance out the weapons at all, sir. What you need to do is...

Okay, let's say each stat of a weapon goes between one and five. One being the weakest, five being the strongest. Set each stat at three and adjust from there. For example, a longsword would be, pretty much, threes across the board. Decent attack power, speed and accuracy. A claymore, however, would have, say, a 4 in attack power, a 2 in speed, and a 3 in accuracy. It's highly simplified but it's possible to do the sub-class system AND balance the weapons.

The system as it stands is just too complicated. The speed stat is a perfect example of that. Instead of the twenty-something ranks we have right now, we only need three: 2 attacks, 3 attacks, and 4 attacks per round. Let specialize, berserk/fury, and haste each add one attack. That's essentially the way the system works as-is, only with a lot more fluff and irrelevant material. From there you can just use Felgus's system. Let's say you have ten points to distribute (out of five for accuracy/strength and out of three for speed). Give reach weapons two or three less points, and you're set. If you want to make each point of speed count as two, that's also good. Make sure that there's a significant difference between each rank; a weapon with five points of accuracy should land at least a little noticeably more than one with four.

Likewise, there are too many subtypes. Seriously, what's the difference between a rapier and an epee? Yes, I know what the actual physical difference is--a rapier has an edge while an epee doesn't--but for our purposes they're the same sword. Gladius, shortsword, wakizashi, and machete are the same deal. Longsword, broadsword, bastard sword, katana, khopesh, cutlass, scimitar, and falchion are a step heavier, while greatsword, claymore, flamberge, no-dachi, and landsknecht are the biggest and heaviest swords. Just put in three categories for each weapon and stick every weapon in a category. You might get a couple of nerds arguing about how awesome katanas are, but the system as a whole will be much simpler (and a good deal easier to balance). Technically you might be removing options, but in practice you'll be making more weapons reasonably competitive, and so you'll actually end up seeing greater diversity.

Next, take reach away from all weapons except polearms and--this is important--give polearm to more classes. No, that puny gnome priest cannot fight in the front row unless he's decked out with a good set of stat mods which will require precise game knowledge to plan and acquire. That's all very nice when everyone knows their own stats and knows where to find mods, but a new player should be able to level a priest and figure it out himself without having to get OOC hookups. I don't think offensive caster classes like sorcerer, warlock, and necromancer need reach, nor do rogues. Pretty much everyone else does, although it's not like a swashbuckler is going to be very effective with a halberd or something.

Finally, and this is much less important than anything else, certain materials can and probably should have different properties. Even if a wooden sword can manage not to break in battle, a steel sword is going to be much sharper and hurt a lot more. That is really not important though. Seriously, I don't care whether Excalibur hurts more than your mass-produced swords as long as a 3000-year-old khopesh doesn't hurt any more than a state-of-the-art longsword.

'K I done now.

Agreed with pretty much everything, but I'm going to disagree here, slightly. I think we should keep the different weapon types, but alter them in a way. For example, like you said, an epee has no edge, but a rapier does. So why not make them identical, stat-wise, and alter them based on the type of damage they do? For example, an epee would deal piercing damage, while a rapier dealt slashing. I'm pretty sure we already have the damage differences coded in the game.

Edit: Though, if we were going to simplify the weapon types, I would be happy with a system like they had in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song. Gladius, Cutlass, etc. would be "short swords," while claymores, flamberges, etc. would be "two-handed swords," and scimitars, falchions, etc. would fall under the "scimitar" category.