Toril 2.0: Weapon Enchantments

Botef
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Postby Botef » Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:16 pm

Its not that I don't like carrying a lot of different tools around, because I do! But with 40 enchantments, and assuming each will have its merits, I can see this getting a bit out of hand. Especially with all the different weapon types, etc. It opens up a lot of room for unique configurations no doubt, I just hope we don't see a 'need' develop to carry around a whole armory of weapons.
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Ragorn
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Postby Ragorn » Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:29 pm

The funny part is, when Sojourn 3 was in testing and we saw the slew of new weapon procs, we were excited about the prospect of the golf bag. Prior to that, you had your primary weapon and secondary weapon, and maybe one or two switches (gleaming falchion for better +hit or something). The idea of carrying multiple proc weapons around to produce different effects was very exciting :)

It's kind of odd to see people refer to the "warrior golf bag" in the context of a complaint about proc weapons.
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Postby ssar » Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:30 am

I have always liked my warriors' "golf bags" of weapons.

It's such a core part of the enjoyment of the hack'n'slash/melee aspect of such games/MUDs.

These days of course my primary toy pretty much delegates all others to cobweb attraction much of the time.. but that's ok :)
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Postby Taka » Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:04 pm

Shevarash wrote:They are also intended not just for the highest levelers but for players of all levels.

This is great! In scardale there are the have and the have not. In an hour some can go through 10 levels while other may barely make one. Ensuring that some of the fun stuff (like weapon enchantment) is available to all can help with newbie retention.

Shevarash wrote:The enchantments themselves are broken out into tiers of relative power, and while you aren't likely to find a Vampiric enchantment at level 15, you could very possibly come into a Flaming enchantment to put on your weapon. That weapon could thne be brought all the way to level 50, adding additional enchantments as you go, and eventually renaming it to suit you.

This is part of my concern. The already overpowered will be more overpowered while the one that are having the harder time will be left behind. One of the problem I see with the way equipment are balanced (and that's not specific to weapon enchantment, this can already be seen today) is that the power increase is logarithmic in the wrong way.

A good system would make it such that the difference between the best item for equipment slot X is just barely better then the second best. On the other hand going from newbie item to mid level item would give a huge boost.

What I see today (and scardale did help reduce this slightly, but mid level hasn't realy changed): at low and mid level, finding better items mostly mean tiny incremental changes (+1-3ac or +1hit or +5hp,...). The first zone item a person will get will likely provide +5ac and +1+1 and +20hp (even if it is a soso zone item). This is then multiplied by the number of item slots (what is it? 12? 15?) and the difference between the one with the best items and one slightly worst is about 1.5 to 3 times the stats.

By comparaison, blizzard's games (which I am sure you are aware are doing well in terms of newbie retention) do the opposit and provide less return on investment has you get closer to having maxed item/skill.

What I suspect will happen with enchantment the way they are planed is:
- People who already have blind weapon and super powerful damage weapon will also have vamp touch and other crazy enchantment
- People who use crappy weapon today will continue to do so tomorrow

What I would prefer would be for people of lower level to have access to all/most of those enchantments but maybe limit the number they can add to a single weapon but has they get higher level they can have multiple on a single weapon. (I am not saying this is the only way to balance thing, but that's certainly better in terms of giving the new guy a chance).

Shevarash wrote:As for how casters are being adjusted to still be relevant, well...check out the announcement threads about wizards. And can you say "hundreds of new spells and effects?"


I have checked that thread... not enough info for me to know for sure, but let me give you a few examples of why i think this may not be as good as say vamp weapon for rogue/war:
- Shaman has hex, stone, heal, ray... that's a lot of powerful spells... yet because those are all on the same circle, I never use ray, and it took a while before I started using hex. When doing pirate ship exp (that's back a couple years ago at least) I could not be both the healer and stoner, I could be one or the other.
- Shaman/Cleric have blind... they could try casting those, but it is sooo much more efficient to let rogue/warrior do the blind... they work as fast (if not faster), don't need mem time, dont need cast time, ...
- Tank + hitter can do exp non-stop. That cannot be done for mage (except your overpowered by tia items lower level ones). Vamp and more dam weapon means tank/hitter combo just got boosted.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is great to have the possibility of enchanting stuff, I am just worried it will help the overpowered people more then the ones that need the boost.
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Postby Cirath » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:02 pm

You know, considering the number of times the concern of people taking already extremely powerful existing weapons and customizing them out the wazoo, I get the feeling that this quote is getting overlooked:

Shevarash wrote:Of course, every weapon can only take so much enchanting. Each weapon has a maximum number of enchantment points that can be spent on it, and each enchantment type is worth a number of points depending on its power.


So it seems to me that this system would be most effective when using non-magical or lightly enchanted weapons as a foundation for your project.

On a slightly different note:

Taka wrote:I have checked that thread... not enough info for me to know for sure, but let me give you a few examples of why i think this may not be as good as say vamp weapon for rogue/war:


There are already a handful of weapons that can heal the wielder far more effectively than a vampiric weapon (assuming that the enchantment doesn't differ much from the tabletop version). The holy and unholy avengers come to mind off the top of my head, both of which can restore large portions of the wielder's hitpoints many times over the course of a fight. Meanwhile, though I obviously can't say this will be true for the Toril 2.0 version, the tabletop versions of most any average weapon that siphons hitpoints rarely provides more than 6 or so points of healing for the weilder (which is a drop in the bucket once you are past the early levels in most cases). I would suggest waiting to see just how impressive the enchantment is, and how easy it is to get, before getting too worried about it.
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Postby Yasden » Sun Apr 22, 2007 12:55 am

If you want to take an example of a real vamp weapon, use Avernus. Holy/unholy both only do baby heals on random, unholy does fheal amount if you land the killing blow.

Avernus' random vamp proc stacks like the oldskool vit, and the wielder can end up with 3000+ hit points VERY quickly (albeit lose them quickly too). Just thought I'd throw that out there for an example based on my experience.
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Postby Lilira » Sat Apr 28, 2007 11:32 am

Also, its been said several times.. spells are being redone! Bet anything some are going to be swapped around in circle slots too. Take nothing we currently have for granted on anything really since everything from the basic engine up is being redone.

Oh and Avernus doesn't do much for you til you're higher level/skill or something. Totally looking forward to the elimination of skill grinding which is why my rogue is sitting at 42nd getting fat and old and my pally is basically doing the same.
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