LOL, Durability has been removed

[hollowcrown]

I'm glad durability has been removed. Unless the game is going to be a survival sort of game, like Fallout or a zombie survival game, it just adds unnessecary busywork that we are better off without in an epic fantasy adventure.

 

Durability is fine (if annoying) as a plot device in BG1 but it is so annoying when your epic sword given by the gods just breaks, ala TES.

[FlintlockJazz]

 

 

 

Durability when done correctly isn't a chore, and now weapon crafting is just nonsensical.  Why can I craft a bad ass adamantite suit of plate?  I am not a trained smith, I haven't practiced, are you telling me any idiot with a instruction manual, some ore, and a forge can just make whatever?

Yes, as far as the abstraction of the game mechanics is concerned.

 

Your character doesn't start as a fetus. He/she starts as an adult person. Obviously he hasn't been "adventuring" since the fetal stage, but he/she's been doing SOMEthing up until the present. That's a lot of time to learn things.

 

A year-or-two of blacksmith apprenticeship will have you able to produce weapons and armor. Also, who says the game is obviously going to allow your character to become a master smith?

 

I haven't even studied engineering intensely, but I bet I can build a shed out of wood that won't fall over. Does that mean a professional carpenter/builder can't make something 17 times better/sturdier/more efficient than I can? No. Does his ability to make such a thing mean that someone else can't even assemble pieces of wood together into some sort of free-standing construct that functions on some basic level? Nope.

 

Oh, wait, I forgot. If we put something in P:E, it's GOT to directly model an existing implementation from another game. Drat... Darn that unwritten rule!!! *fist shake*

 

And, as Micamo said, the whole time thing is already abstracted. Why doesn't healing take you 3 weeks of sleeping, in-game? Abstraction.

 

So, yes, you could improve your smithing skill at an abstractly faster-than-real-life rate, and STILL be a novice/amateur relative to master smiths.

 

to put it simply, real life smithing is like this

i know how to bang the metal and shape it into a sword

i know how to handle iron, steel, titanium, mithril, adamantite and alchemical silver

i can turn any of the above metals into a sword.

 

EEEEEEE!  No, I have to say it's not as simple as that.  Hell, they couldn't make plate or the largest swords until blast furnaces came along, and bronze requires combining tin and copper (and was actually better than iron until new methods were developed including the aforementioned blast furnaces, people moved onto iron because it was cheap, not because it was better, and could be mass produced more easily).  Do you know how hard it is to handle titanium?  You'd probably need magic to be able to do anything with it in the middle ages.  As to 'just banging the metal into the shape of a sword', no it doesn't work that way.  Do you know why most single-edged swords are curved and most double-edged swords bulged along their length?  That's because in order to give a piece of metal a sharp edge you need to make it brittle, the sharper it is the more brittle it becomes.  The sharp parts of the sword were heated to different temperatures than the parts that were not, hence causing them to bend and curve, single-edged swords like katanas bending back along the blunt, more flexible side of the blade.  There was a reason why many armoursmiths and weaponsmiths were renowned for their skill and sought after, the Italian and German armoursmiths especially.

[Lephys]

Yeah, it's not so hard to learn to make a sword. It's tough to make a high-quality sword. Hence, we have another potential function for durability that addresses/handles the "OMG how can my adventurer make equipment when he doesn't have time to become a master smith?" question: The stuff you make kinda sucks relative to the stuff awesome smiths can make and you can buy.

 

Of course, if you just think of merchants/smiths/prices from existing games, and toss in this notion, it's not going to work at all. But, if you factor in completely different prices and a completely different implementation built around this design, you end up with the norm for incredibly high-quality stuff being rarer/pricier, and your own craftable items being a lot cheaper but far less durable. At least then, it's a lot easier to have spare weapons and such. Even in the typical durability-is-just-a-thing-that-ticks-down-with-equipment-use-and-makes-stuff-worse system, this would be loads better. Of course, I still think any durability system needs to go beyond that.