Wapon size scaling

[cdx]

I guess this is the right time to mention item size scaling since there's work going on character, environment and object scales.

 

In Temple of Elemental Evil I remember a huge scimitar-like sword (lava red and yellow, with thick blade) that my fighter was wielding. Looked very impressive. Then I thought "Hey let's see how funny the halfling will look with this sword, it's as big as her." Then she equips it and the sword is suddenly half its previous size, matching the size of the character holding it. Um, ok..

 

It was very immersion-breaking. Items don't go from huge to tiny to fit a smaller hand.

 

It would be great if we can avoid such scaling in PE. I'm not sure if it was actually a bug in ToEE but to me it seemed intentional and a very bad choice. Or does it make sense development-wise and it doesn't bother others as much as me?

[Rabain]

I'd rather weapons where sensible sizes to begin with and there was no need for scaling.

[rjshae]

I think the premise is that magic items can scale themselves to suit the owner. That's probably not very plausible, even with magic, but it does make the game more playable since any item can be used by virtually any character.

[Frisk]

I have never noticed this in any game, but yeah, I agree - it is a bit silly. In PE, this might become an issue if you have an Aumaua weapon and give it to an Orlan character.

[Hormalakh]

Weapons aren't race-restricted in game. However I do agree with the OP: it would be interesting to see a halfling wield a larger weapon. Not sure if strength checks will be implemented, but it might be interesting to see such a thing. Of course, then we will also see things like FO:NV with the fire hydrant melee weapon.

Edited December 22, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Gorgon]

Lets not have anything anime sized at all. That should solve the problem.

[Hormalakh]

No, no. No anime size, but it would be interesting to know how a halfling carries a two-handed sword... I would imagine a claymore would be too unwieldy for a halfling. Maybe they two-hand regular longswords?

Edited December 22, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Jarmo]

ToEE had a very simple system where characters were simply XY scaled to get the desired outcome.

Humans, Dvarfs, halflings, all used the same armor and equipment models, just scaled to fit them.

 

A bunch of clothes and armor had male/female versions but that was that.

Guess it saved a whole lot of time when it wasn't necessary to make hobbit, dwarf, elve etc. animations, but there were drawbacks.

[rjshae]

Speaking of "wapon" scaling, how's this from Dark Souls 2?

 

[LadyCrimson]

I have no objection to more realistic scaling of big weapons looking big in a small characters hands. That said, for some reason in games it often still just comes out as looking silly. Even if they're a dwarf and you know they're a dwarf, when they're holding a giant axe, it makes me think of "anime-sizing" and thus seems ridiculous. Maybe it's because they're animated but rather static drawings rather than actors huffing and puffing trying to lift something.

 

I think the point of them "shrinking" to fit in games is more about having you pretend they're of a proper size for the person you decide to give it to, rather than having to create different sized gear for every race that only that race can use. You could say the same thing about suits of chainmail that magically perfectly fit any size character. At any rate, such isn't immersion breaking for me, so I'm fine either way really.

[Archmage Silver]

Weapon size scaling is a really crummy way to go about unifying character appearance IMO. There are better ways to do that, such as realistic physical dimensions for weapons to begin with - no anime influences, please.

 

IIRC, there wasn't any weapon size scaling present in the IE games, but the combat and character visuals worked just fine, even if some larger weapons looked a bit funny when used by the smaller races.