My weapon does nothing!

[Blackstream]

In Baldur's gate especially, the vast majority of 'Your weapon is useless' incidents were solved by having a better magical weapon. And by that I mean upgrading your +2 to a +3 or whatever. There were a few exceptions (golems mainly), but even those were generally fixed with magic (melf's meteors killed just about everything as I recall, and for everything else there were generally summons and the like).

 

So played through the game and without turning my characters into a walking arsenal, or even switching weapons at all, and had no problem beating the various encounters. My only reloads were generally due to me making a tactical mistake or rng gibbing one of my characters. Which means, literally, just have a balanced party. A couple of fighters with good magical weapons, a couple of mages with a variety of spells, a cleric or druid with their own spells as well as summons. A thief type for traps and later on the broken use any item ability to supplement your party with even more flexibility thanks to scrolls. Or you know whatever. And sure, quite often there'd be a fight where I hear one of my characters complaining about how their weapon was useless, or my mages couldn't really cast anything effective, or maybe only one of my party members had level drain protection so my other melees had to stand back. But the rest of the party always picked up the slack. And yes, the game also held your hand and if you were fighting specific mobs (trolls), would shower you with the methods you needed to kill them too, just in case you decided to not have mages with you for some reason. And in other cases, the fight would be completely optional (early iron golems) until you were ready.

 

I get the feeling that PE will be similar to this model, if not even more lenient, in addition to providing deus ex like options to do things like change the fight in your favor or avoid it altogether. I'm trying not to hope for too much, but I am hoping the game at least feels like BG3 for me.

[Flying Magician]

So, what exactly OP is against?

Carrying the entire armory in the backpack, or the fact the in- game rules don't allow for existence of teh one awsum weapon to kill them all?

 

Resistances are good. Without them, the game turns into a mindless, boring grind- & slashfest.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Flying Magician

[Jasede]

Hyperbole or not, in what video game do you need more than five weapons at any given time?

Precisely, not one.

 

The poll options are extremely slanted towards one outcome, as well.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Jasede

[Tsuga C]

Immunities are powerful and potentially disruptive enough that they should be rare and confined to a limited number of opponents, almost all of them higer tier (e.g. fire elementals are immune to fire, undead immune to level/hit dice drain from negative energy). Resistances and damage reduction break the game far less often. Thinking back to NWN1, rogues dealing with undead (immune to critical hits) was a source of serious irritation that generally had me hacking the module and inserting a self-created magical weapon to even the odds. I could see cutting their sneak attack damage vs undead by 50% or even 66%, but the immunity thing really got on my nerves.

[Osvir]

Icewind Dale, I never finished this game because of this reason. I managed to create a kickass party, I got to the final boss, he was immune to everything.

 

So I went to YouTube and got the ending for me. It later showed that I had sold an epic warhammer for another weapon (that I thought was better), this warhammer is part of walkthrough's and guides stating "You can take him down with this". Mind you, I was hitting on him for like 30 minutes without my party dying (neither was he, he was pretty much immune. My spells managed to bring him down to Badly Injured... was it frustrating? Quite so...).

 

And if you know Icewind Dale, entering the last area is irreversible If you enter it you can't return back to the world/shops. Basically you're in a stuck position. Please don't let this happen. Well, I practically finished the game imo anyways but still, it was quite unsatisfactory.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Osvir

[AlphaShard]

My weapon has no effect? Maybe I need BIGGER sword?

[teknoman2]

if the fight is part of a quest and you can find a suitable weapon for the enemy you face around the area of the fight, then there is no problem. like magic golems in BG2 that were vulnerable to non magical weapons only. wherever there was a magic golem, you also had a box with various non magical weapons nearby to use against it

of course if the fight is optional like the fight with Fiirkrag, you will have to come back later with bigger swords

Edited October 10, 2012 by teknoman2

[Silver6986]

Party based game => you have up to six characters to prepare for solving any possible situation.

 

Well said, I don't ever distinctly remember having to carry multiple weapons for all of my party in BG or BG2, I don't see how that ads value to the game if using OPs example you need THAT many different weapons.

[happyelf]

Weapon types are just a way to screw non-spellcasters. Unless you do the same with damage/energy types, it's just going to make playing a guy with a sword more of a hassle.

 

There are also a bunch of problems that variable damage resistance adds to a system like this.

 

A better option would be damage triggers. dnd4e did some cool stuff with this, as did some older monsters such as golems.

 

Use a cold attack on a water creature, and it slows them down. Use a fear effect on vermin or cowardly goblins, and start a stampede.

 

Even better would be if such options came with a downside as well as an upside. Smashing a skeleton with a mace does more damage, but you also take some damage when it shatters in an eruption of bone shards.

Edited October 10, 2012 by happyelf

[rjshae]

Depends on the depth of the combat system, but yeah, different weapons for different situations. A rapier for unarmored foe versus a whacking great sword for an armored knight. If you are disarmed, or the weapon breaks, then you can switch to the mace. Against somebody with a shield, then a flail.

Edited October 10, 2012 by rjshae

[Hassat Hunter]

Biased poll... :/

 

Yes, I would like variety. Too many games these days just allow you to kill everything with the same weapon. Why shouldn't the game be allowed to vary and keep you on your toes that way. Why has this gone away?

Healing undead to kill them, ending trolls with fire or acid, getting that magic weapon to finally kill the opponent that was undamagable. All some of the good parts of Baldur's Gate modern games, including Dragon Age sorely lack.

 

Also, I do disagree that if you're send out to kill a village of Werewolves, are stated they need silver weapons/ammo to hit, and you can buy it in that village it even needs silver weapon drops. It's called intelligence. I would love for some games to actually make me not feel like they think I am a retarded idiot.

 

So, all in all, the more variety in combat situations and the less "one sollution to solve all" the better... and if that means carrying more swords, so be it. Which RPG this day doesn't have 2 weapon outfits anyway with a quick change between them. Anyone?

[Silver6986]

Biased poll... :/

 

Yes, I would like variety. Too many games these days just allow you to kill everything with the same weapon. Why shouldn't the game be allowed to vary and keep you on your toes that way. Why has this gone away?

Healing undead to kill them, ending trolls with fire or acid, getting that magic weapon to finally kill the opponent that was undamagable. All some of the good parts of Baldur's Gate modern games, including Dragon Age sorely lack.

 

Also, I do disagree that if you're send out to kill a village of Werewolves, are stated they need silver weapons/ammo to hit, and you can buy it in that village it even needs silver weapon drops. It's called intelligence. I would love for some games to actually make me not feel like they think I am a retarded idiot.

 

So, all in all, the more variety in combat situations and the less "one sollution to solve all" the better... and if that means carrying more swords, so be it. Which RPG this day doesn't have 2 weapon outfits anyway with a quick change between them. Anyone?

 

That's a good point, I didn't think of those examples (regarding BG2), but tbh they are not really used all the time either, overall if you really wanted to you could for example have Minsc use dual maces throughout all of BG2 and ToB and you will be fine, if you need to kill a Troll, swap to Bow + Arrows and use Acid Arrows, if you need to slay Vampires then grab some stakes on the way there. That's pretty simple stuff, it's nowhere near as complicated as OP makes it sound.

 

That's exactly the sort of thing I would like to see

Edited October 11, 2012 by Liquid_Silver11

[Ignatius]

It's been said in one of the interviews, possibly the Tim Cain AMA Reddit, that they're avoiding the immunity thing, though certain weapon types will have bonus damage effects, which sounds better to me.

 

So, um... I vote no.

 

Having enemies be immune to weapon types isn't tactically interesting since it's just a matter of lugging around all those weapons and then figuring out which one does damage. I suppose if carrying capacity was a real issue, it might add something, but who wants that?

 

Then again, few of the IE games bothered much with weapon immunities anyway. :/

Edited October 11, 2012 by Ignatius

[Ieo]

I didn't play much DDO, but what you describe sounds like this is a symptom of MMO design and not necessarily the 3.5 D&D system. There are many creatures in D&D that have resistances/immunities to certain things, and even the core rules can create some imbalanced combat scenarios. Typically this can be easily offset with the presence of a live Dungeon Master to make certain weapon/damage types available for the players as needed. It's a little tougher to predict when creating a CRPG, but good level design can usually account for such things.

 

I think it's a safe bet to assume Project Eternity will have damage types of some kind. Once you include damage types, resistances and immunities become a powerful design tool. In my mind, a singular "damage is damage" approach is better served in pure action games. While PE will be real time (with pause), the goal is to make a tactical combat experience. The specifics of said systems are still a matter of discussion for the designers of the project, but rest assured, Project Eternity will not have a damage system that requires you to have 15 swords in your inventory at any given time.

 

 

Calling out this quote again. I liked that the IE games didn't have too many weapon immunities (or easily overcome by a broad collection of weapon types based only on magical level), and I didn't believe PE would have this problem--inventory is a critical asset for games in general. Some intelligent quest setup and world building and I think it'll work out nicely...

 

The only times I have ever seen gear swapping of that level were in the two MMOs I've played. Because MMOs are generally just combat and combat grinding with minimal storyline/lore tacked on as glue, one of the ways to keep that combat "interesting" is to require extremes in gear for exceptional situations (e.g. 24-man boss raid), both defensive and offensive. Weapons, jewelry, all armor slots, you name it--I once had to carry three different, full armor sets (7 pieces each) and three weapons for raiding, and that was on the conservative side since I didn't switch jewelry. It got pretty ridiculous.

 

 

You know what I'd love to see in PE? Temporary specific-damage bonuses that are craftable for your weapon(s). MMOs are gear-grind-fests, the complete opposite of, say, Baldur's Gate where you could go through all of BG2+ToB with only 2 weapons; for the latter, depending on just what immunities and resistances you might find out there, I think it makes sense to be prepared on the consumable side but you just really love your trusty mace that you inherited from your grandfather... However, if you run into that Dread Gazebo in your PE adventure and don't have any fire handy, you could use a flaming oil you had crafted and stored before to add to your arrows and mace...

[kabaliero]

I chose "15+ swords" but, in fact, i absolutely adored Jagged Alliance 2 inventory setup. With all the reasonable limitations and weight\stamina balance.

[Theobeau]

A degree of weapon juggling gives a sheen of strategy for weapon-specialist classes, which nicely balances off the tactical element in choosing which spell to memorise/branch of magic to specialise in for the caster classes.

 

Having a warrior carry three different weapons (range + 2 melee) isn't unrealistic or immersion breaking.

 

That said, outright immunity for common enemies is annoying. Many posters have mentioned differing damage resistance as a better option. Perhaps reserve immunities for well telegraphed powerful monsters or bosses.

[Radres]

Resistances are great. It adds to combat variance. immunities on the other hand are annoying.

 

I mean when Aerie yells for the tenth time "My weapon has no effect!" i was just striving to finish the encounter to shut her up . Those memories are still vibrant and i don't want to experience this kind of thing anytime soon.