Craftable Heavy Armor and Cons to MA/HA

[Eatuck]

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to write down some ideas talked about at the developer meeting today (mine, guild mates, and players) to add negatives/cons to Heavy Armor. Hopefully it will stimulate more ideas so that it may be possible to allow HA to be crafted in the future. From what I understand from the dev meeting, the reason heavy armor is currently not craftable is because it is too powerful. It would make max characters running around unstoppable. I will list the ideas for cons below to keep this from happening. I believe all of them need to be imposed on MA and HA for balance purposes.

1. Magic Debuff: Reduction of effectiveness. 75% HA (Heavy Armor), 50% MA (Medium Armor), 0% LA (Light Armor).
This would make it so magic users would be encouraged to use LA (since magic is already way too powerful). Since magic requires concentration, it makes sense that MA and HA would distract them because of the weight and it might absorb some of the magic. The magic debuff would also encourage more group battles because you would need a mage to heal, buff and cast offensive magic in the back while having a HA/MA user go toe to toe with the beast. In addition, LA users, and partially MA users need to have more damage done to them by beasts since it doesn't provide as much protection.

2. Stamina Drain: MA and HA should have greater stamina drain. Maybe 2 times for MA and 3-4 times for HA.
This would make it so potions and spells for recovering stamina would be more important as well as balancing HA and MA.

3. Keep Agility Penalty: As said, no description.

4. Switching Armor Ban: A ban to switching armor in combat. This would discourage players from switching armor quickly to heal with spells. Or make it so for a time period the person switching armor will be defenseless.

[Eatuck]

I was talking with a guild mate and he thought of another skill to add to this. The magic debuff should also include the ranged skill as well. So you could call it a armor debuff so it doesn't single out magic. Ranged should be affected by armor as well. The same as magic or tweaked a little bit for balance. Heavier armor would reduce the range and effectiveness of bows since it would be harder to aim and fire with heavier armor. It should encourage LA to be used. The reason is magic and bows are good offensive weapons but should be not as effective up close. 

[sgtkwol]

Support, in one manner or another. As there is no reason to use light or medium armor, once you progress far enough to use heavy. I like anything that will destabilize the "I'm a tank, fighter, and healer all in one" that we currently have.

[Eonwind]

The inherent problem keeping us from letting HA be craftable should be gone since the deference factors were fixed some month ago. There's also is post with nice ideas regarding Plate Armor crafting http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=40953.0. The problem is of course we lacks the manpower to create the necessary data, but we gladly welcome any help.
About giving specific limitation for wearing HA armors I think it makes sense.

[Bonifarzia]

Aha, so after yesterday's meet the devs, this topic comes up again. Here are some more useful links:
an old GSoC project that was not merged:
http://194.116.72.94/pswiki/index.php?title=Combat_enhancements
This topic illustrates earlier problems with subtractive armor rules:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=37912
Yet another discussion about armor and magic:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=40553
another topic about armor classes
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=41144
Same on flyspray:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=4335
Fixed problem with high q armor, difficulty with subtractive armor rule:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=5713
Stacking of affixes: Rare stuff is hard to balance
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=5927
Same for stacking of buffs: No use with poor armor, godlike with super-rare sets:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=5923

The implications are not quite clear, because combat rules are mostly unknown, but a key issue is that we run easily into situations where either most attacks are one-hit-kills or fail to inflict any damage.

[Eatuck]

Unfortunately, since I don't know coding, 3d modeling or art, the best way I can help is by bringing up issues and giving thought out solutions to them. Hopefully there will be enough volunteers in the future to add this feature. Thank you.

[Eonwind]

Unfortunately, since I don't know coding, 3d modeling or art, the best way I can help is by bringing up issues and giving thought out solutions to them. Hopefully there will be enough volunteers in the future to add this feature. Thank you.

@Eatuck: no coding is required to implement any crafting the engine has already everything we need at the moment. Only thing need is preparing the data to upload in the database (which is a lot of work of course). At the end of this page there is an example form we use to prepare such data: http://planeshift.top-ix.it/pswiki/index.php?title=Crafting.
Also everyone interested in contributing can join the IRC channel #planeshift-prospects.

[Eatuck]

Thank you Eonwind for the information. What I was saying in my last post was that I am contributing the best way I can at this point in time. It wasn't directed at crafting HA only. I figure it is better to give ideas for improvement than complaining about what doesn't work. That being said, I looked at the spreadsheet and it is interesting. I definitely understand that improvements require a lot of time and effort. Everyone involved with the game is doing a great job.

[novacadian]

As there is no reason to use light or medium armor, once you progress far enough to use heavy.

My character had to get a tailored made 300q leather set crafted to wear while she was suffering from a burn wound which was chaffing her with medium and heavy armours. So for rp caused reasons that could make a difference in mechanic combat my character usually wears a mix of all three types to progress in tandem.

- Nova