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PS#4617 - More detailled information about equipment
Opened by bonifarz (bonifarz) - Saturday, 24 July 2010, 09:37 UTC-4:00
Last edited by Lanarel (Lanarel) - Monday, 02 August 2010, 11:03 UTC-4:00
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DetailsIt would be desirable for players to obtain all or more of the technically relevant information about weapons, armor and other items that can be equipped. For now, stats for weight, size and quality are displayed in the details window of all items. Weapons only have additional information on attack delay, damage type and damage base value. Armors and shields do not show any clues about their individual properties. Therefore, the diversity and balancing of available equipment appears somehow dull and imbalanced, although it is well possible that many other combat variables are affected by equipment: Attack range, block value, counterblock value, attack value, quality of hit and - of course - effects from item enchantments (loot affixes) that do not directly alter stats or skills. Some of this information may be displayed as additional base values in the details window of an item, although it would make sense to access such knowledge with a spell such as dweomer detection or analyze. Also, the impact of an items quality or affixes on its base values could be displayed in brackets. For now, there is no such information for crafted weapons, and no base value for enchanted items. Related tasks: |
If so, it would be nice not to show numbers (why not show the whole complicated formula? :) ) but some sort of qualification such as 'fast piercing weapon with low blocking capability' or 'heavy shield, good for blocking all slash and pierce weapons).
Assigning to stelanso just to give opinion (unassign afterwards). I think this would be nice, but a major effort (in engine, settings and rules).
I would like to note that sometimes it is nice to provide descriptions that are understandable ICly, but when it comes to make decisions in character development and for buying equipment as a player, you would like to have some quantitative information on the very basic impacts of your choices. For instance, we do have nice key words for the quality of crafted items and the appearance of observed characters, but as a player, you are much more interested in the underlying numbers. And without those numbers, the keywords alone are simply not accurate enough. (Example: You judge that XYZ is about as strong as you - two seconds later - You have been killed by XYZ.)
Conclusion: I still request more information in terms of item stats rather than tables of keywords. More informative texts in the item description would be a great addition, though.
Precise numbers and formulas to tell you what exactly things do, are not what the team has in mind I think (and agree). THat does not mean the more qualitative assessments should not be more accurate though. The 'is as strong as you' is a really complicated one that involves many things, such as which weapon you and your opponent are actually using. As such, it is a bad example. If you qualify a single thing though, it would work. FOr example, one weapon is clearly faster than another, or does more piercing damage. A single qualification 'this weapon will make you stronger than everyone in all situations' will not work of course.
I don't asks for detailed formulas - actually I thought you were making a joke about that.
The point is that if you provide numerical values for players to compare delays, damage factors and qualities (which is, apart from the price, rather abstract anyways), why would you not want to include similar values for range and defense? Describing such properties with words based on rounded values is complicated and counterintuitive, imho. The example I had in mind are quality prefixes (inferior to finest) and the physcial or mental appearance classifications ("as intelligent as a stone" etc). I know that the evaluation of relative strength is a different problem, but I thought that was a funny side note.
for defense - agreed, however it's already fixed on trunk
for range: you may not want to include that as it may be skill dependent
anyway, we're working on many of those.
I'm personally working on a rework of the whole combat+magic system which may or may not get through - who knows (if you want to help, poke me on irc, jabber, etc.), however it'll probably take a rather long time.
for dweomer detection/nature intuition: those are still in the planning phase atm and there are many things to be considered