Ideas for creating items with negative attributes that people will actually use?

[Infinitron]

In many CRPGs, you'll occasionally come across items that have negative as well as positive attributes. A reinforced helmet with a penalty to your Listening score. An ugly suit of armor with a penalty to your Charisma score. Stuff like that.

 

Personally, I never use such items. Why? It's not because the penalties are particularly punishing - as you can see, the two examples I brought up both have penalties that are practically meaningless in the context of D&D, for the most part. It's because, fundamentally, I don't have to. The games are easy enough that I don't have to even consider gimping my character in even the slightest manner. Why should I? I'll just keep on using my current equipment until I find something without a negative attribute.

 

The best way I can think of to solve this problem is to implement penalties that are systemic and apply to entire categories of items. D&D actually does this - armors and shields all carry an Armor Check Penalty that can nullify your Dexterity bonus. Players don't avoid using them because they recognize that they're a standard thing that they simply have to live with if they want to use those items.

 

You can of course try to make the positives outweigh the negatives to such a degree that players will be "tempted" to use the item anyway. But that's dangerous, because it can result in overpowered items. Think "Sword of Infinite Fireballs with a -1 to hit".

 

A third idea is to try to make all penalties strictly situational (a -1 vs specific enemies, for instance) and couple them with situational benefits, while encouraging players to carry around a diverse item set with them for various situations. So, for example, you might always want to carry around your sword that's strong against orcs but has a penalty against ogres, just in case you run into any orcs.

 

A problem with that idea is that the penalty becomes effectively meaningless, since you're never actually going to use that sword against ogres. Unless, of course, orcs and ogres often appear together, but then we're back to the original problem - unless the fight is really challenging without a bonus against orcs, most players would just forgo the penalties altogether and stick with a standard all-around sword with no penalties.

 

In summary, items with negative attributes can be a compelling choice in two different gameplay situations that I can discern:

 

1) As a strategic choice, where an entire category of items comes with inherent positives and negatives, that the player incorporates into his character build.

2) As a tactical choice, where the player needs to switch between different items with different situational positives and negatives over the course of a highly challenging battle. But the battle has to be truly challenging, or the player won't use them!

 

Thoughts?

Edited August 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[Sarex]

I agree on having never used them, but I think that they will only be viable if the end game items are not better, ie. if they offer the best stats and you can't find a regular item(without negative values) with better stats.

[mcmanusaur]

Maybe I'm alone here, but I've always found weapons/armor with situational bonuses/penalties (vs. certain elements or kinds of enemies) to be one of the most dreadful tropes in this genre. Having to constantly switch items is not only annoying and inconvenient (and also probably unrealistic), but I also don't see how anyone gets any sense of accomplishment from utilizing this variable. Given that all it entails is matching items to particular enemy types (which isn't something that requires any tactical genius), I don't think it contributes to a game's tactical depth in any way, and instead it merely separates those who aren't too lazy to micromanage in this way from those who are. Personally I have never found this mechanic to be worth utilizing, even at times when I notice those spider webs and correctly assume that I'll be fighting spiders; it just seems like "tactical" combat at its most shallow.

 

Now, different kinds of weapons (shortbow, longbow, crossbow, etc.) being viable in different situations is obviously a good thing.

[Walsingham]

I would merely amplify your latter point about context. I would suggest that tactical combat needs to bring out context more. That would make weapons more situation dependent.

 

I'm not saying that would be easy, though...

[Gfted1]

Having to constantly switch weapons is a founding principal of PE combat. An entire mechanic has been created to play rock/paper/scissor regarding weapon type vs. armor type.

[Infinitron]

Maybe I'm alone here, but I've always found weapons/armor with situational bonuses/penalties (vs. certain elements or kinds of enemies) to be one of the most dreadful tropes in this genre. Having to constantly switch items is not only annoying and inconvenient (and also probably unrealistic), but I also don't see how anyone gets any sense of accomplishment from utilizing this variable. Given that all it entails is matching items to particular enemy types (which isn't something that requires any tactical genius), I don't think it contributes to a game's tactical depth in any way, and instead it merely separates those who aren't too lazy to micromanage in this way from those who are. Personally I have never found this mechanic to be worth utilizing, even at times when I notice those spider webs and correctly assume that I'll be fighting spiders; it just seems like "tactical" combat at its most shallow.

 

Now, different kinds of weapons (shortbow, longbow, crossbow, etc.) being viable in different situations is obviously a good thing.

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure how got to be so annoyed by a "trope" which barely any CRPG has historically required. I don't remember having to switch between weapons dozens of times over the course of a fight in the Infinity Engine games.

 

In any case, Project Eternity is giving every character several item slots that he or she can switch between in the middle of combat, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll be expected to use them.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[Tale]

I was taking it as assumed at this point. Has Sawyer really not talked about weapons along this vein yet?

 

Maybe I'm just filling in gaps with my vague IE recollections, where some weapons did better against mail and others did better against plate.

[Infinitron]

Maybe I'm just filling in gaps with my vague IE recollections, where some weapons did better against mail and others did better against plate.

 

That was really a minor thing, though.

 

In BG2, you might want to switch weapons to hit an enemy with gnarly resistances (like golems) but even that usually happened between battles, not in the middle of them, since encounters with golems typically had only golems.

 

It was sometimes useful to switch from ranged weapons to melee weapons as enemies closed in, of course. Icewind Dale's interface was good for that.

 

Other than that, not much weapon switching.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[Tale]

If we really want to talk about weapon switching, I really liked Mass Effect 2 for that. And that os why it is my favorite title in that series. I think lots of people prefer the other two titles so I'm not sure if the appeal of that sort of tactical activity is shared.

 

But you're right it's not generally something they had to do in BG or the like. I still remember the graveyard in NWN2 where you'd want to start using blunt weapons for a while to fight the skeletons. It's still kind of interesting to swap out weapons for a handful of encounters without needing to do it during fights with any regularity.

[Sacred_Path]

The game where I used the most cursed items by far was Wizardry 8.

 

These were usually melee weapons that you couldn't unequip without casting a high level spell or a bishop using a standard action. So equipping these cursed weapons meant losing your ranged attacks for the time being. OTOH you'd want to use cursed weapons because they were generally more powerful, sometimes vastly so.

 

Not very exciting, but cursed items ended up getting used without being ultimately superior.

[mcmanusaur]

Having to constantly switch weapons is a founding principal of PE combat. An entire mechanic has been created to play rock/paper/scissor regarding weapon type vs. armor type.

 

Weapons excelling against certain kinds of armor is something that I could enjoy, because that's a little less transparent than the usual "this is the sword that I'm going to use because that's a spider and this sword's description says that it is good against spiders".

 

 

Maybe I'm alone here, but I've always found weapons/armor with situational bonuses/penalties (vs. certain elements or kinds of enemies) to be one of the most dreadful tropes in this genre. Having to constantly switch items is not only annoying and inconvenient (and also probably unrealistic), but I also don't see how anyone gets any sense of accomplishment from utilizing this variable. Given that all it entails is matching items to particular enemy types (which isn't something that requires any tactical genius), I don't think it contributes to a game's tactical depth in any way, and instead it merely separates those who aren't too lazy to micromanage in this way from those who are. Personally I have never found this mechanic to be worth utilizing, even at times when I notice those spider webs and correctly assume that I'll be fighting spiders; it just seems like "tactical" combat at its most shallow.

 

Now, different kinds of weapons (shortbow, longbow, crossbow, etc.) being viable in different situations is obviously a good thing.

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure how got to be so annoyed by a "trope" which barely any CRPG has historically required. I don't remember having to switch between weapons dozens of times over the course of a fight in the Infinity Engine games.

 

In any case, Project Eternity is giving every character several item slots that he or she can switch between in the middle of combat, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll be expected to use them.

 

 

While I'm not "required" to switch weapons in such a way in most cRPGs, since as you suggest in most games the bonuses and penalties are generally negligible, I can still find the rationale of the mechanic to be boring and cliched. How many RPGs (including MMOs) forgo the "armor of fire/ice/lightning/poison/etc. resistance", or the "weapon of undead/spider slaying"? It's certainly a trope of the genre.

 

At best it's just a transparent attempt to further game-ify combat in an artificial and shallow manner, but then again I feel the same way about the general tendency to oversaturate weapons with magical enchantments. I'm not against the idea that a versatile warrior might switch between wielding a spear and shield, two short swords, and a bow as the situation dictates over the course of a dungeon (in fact I very much like that notion), but rather the notion that tactically advanced warriors carry around five otherwise identical suits of armor and five otherwise identical swords for equipping when they encounter a very specific kind of enemy. "Tactics" should involve more than directly telling the player when to use an item most effectively and lauding them for following directions, which is all this mechanic amounts to in most RPGs I've played.

[Infinitron]

Is it the "telling" part that bothers you, or is it the switching itself? Because it doesn't have to be so obvious.

 

Like I said, when you have to deal with several enemy types at once, in the same encounter, picking the right weapon and armor can be a dilemma.

 

Certainly, I agree that when you have enemy groups composed exclusively of one type of enemy, that stuff can be kind of boring/meaningless.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[mcmanusaur]

Is it the "telling" part that bothers you, or is it the switching itself? Because it doesn't have to be so obvious.

 

Like I said, when you have to deal with several enemy types at once, in the same encounter, picking the right weapon and armor can be a dilemma.

 

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do.

Edited August 3, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[ravenshrike]

At best it's just a transparent attempt to further game-ify combat in an artificial and shallow manner, but then again I feel the same way about the general tendency to oversaturate weapons with magical enchantments. I'm not against the idea that a versatile warrior might switch between wielding a spear and shield, two short swords, and a bow as the situation dictates over the course of a dungeon (in fact I very much like that notion), but rather the notion that tactically advanced warriors carry around five otherwise identical suits of armor and five otherwise identical swords for equipping when they encounter a very specific kind of enemy. "Tactics" should involve more than directly telling the player when to use an item most effectively and lauding them for following directions, which is all this mechanic amounts to in most RPGs I've played.

 

The  Dovahkiin does not appreciate your belittling of his 4 suits of dual-enchant dragonscale armor, 1 suit dual-enchant fine clothes, 3 dual-enchant dragonbone bows, 1 dual-enchant dragonbone dagger, and 2 dual-enchant dragonbone swords.

 

 

 

 

 

.... I got really bored on my 5th playthrough of Skyrim and decided to see just how badly I could break the system.

[Infinitron]

 

Is it the "telling" part that bothers you, or is it the switching itself? Because it doesn't have to be so obvious.

 

Like I said, when you have to deal with several enemy types at once, in the same encounter, picking the right weapon and armor can be a dilemma.

 

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do.

 

 

Fair enough. I agree with you that RPGs can do more with this stuff - I used a simplistic example in my original post simply to demonstrate my point about items with penalties.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[mcmanusaur]

 

 

Is it the "telling" part that bothers you, or is it the switching itself? Because it doesn't have to be so obvious.

 

Like I said, when you have to deal with several enemy types at once, in the same encounter, picking the right weapon and armor can be a dilemma.

 

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do.

 

Fair enough. I agree with you that RPGs can do more with this stuff - I used a simplistic example in my original post simply to demonstrate my point about items with penalties.

 

Yeah. I guess the thing to realize about "bonuses/penalties" is that they tend to be very situationally specific, or else they wouldn't be represented as such; instead the disadvantage would be systematically integrated into the item's core statistics. In fact, "penalties" can arguably often serve as an excuse to flesh out combat in a disconnected manner, rather than actually making the combat system more complex. In other words, arbitrarily adding a few external bonuses and penalties here and there is much easier than rewriting the way that the whole combat system works internally, but I think the second option (ex. generalized tradeoffs between certain weapon classes) is more rich tactically than the first (ex. situational bonuses/penalties for individual weapons).

Edited August 3, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Sabotin]

I find such items very interesting, but it's often difficult to justify their existence. If they don't do much they're unneeded. If the bonuses are substantial these items wreak havoc on the difficulty curve, with certain fights being impossible without a certain setup or, if they're not set up that way, a cakewalk.

 

Rather than a +- function I'd therefore rather see items that would change the game play in some way. Having positive and negative sides, but those being exclusively on the side of the player. Such items would probably still be exploitable in some way, but I think to a lesser extent than stacking items until you achieve godhood in a single specialization. And would perhaps feel more fulfilling for the player when figuring out what synergizes well.

[okkoko]

like swords of lets say iron do not cut well in to an armor made out of steel course steel is harder then Iron and a player with a puny strength who cant over come the power needed to cut trough a Steel plate with a Steel sword that other wise if he was strong enough could cut the armor up like a can opener and in to the soft part beside Armors have weak points where an iron dagger could punch in to the soft part.. this is both negative and positive item aspects .. like you need a diamond to cut a diamond

Edited August 3, 2013 by okkoko

[Silent Winter]

I'd also like some unique weapons/armour rather than the +/- against 'enemy A'

Not sure I've got any great ideas for them though.

 

Like a sword that drains your stamina/health continuously while equipped but deals extra damage - so you're weakening yourself in exchange for hitting harder - you can't keep it equipped while exploring but if you can finish the fight quickly or use it for a big hit at the beginning/end before switching to another weapon...?

(or instead of a continuous drain - suffer half the damage you deal out?)

 

Or a ring of light, making exploring dark areas viable (perhaps inhabited by shadow creatures that would attack you unseen without it) but paralyzing your hand/arm in position so you can't use a bow / sword / shield with that hand/arm.

 

How about making large shields actually inhibit your movement instead of being the same as small shields with extra-bonus?

 

Most of the rest I can think of involve trading accuracy for damage or protection for speed.

 

Just thinking out loud.

[Greydragon]

How about synergetic bonuses from party members using the same/complementary equipment i.e. two characters with tower shields equipped gain a small bonus when near each other: 'Shield wall' which adds defense against arrows, etc.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Greydragon

[Chrononaut]

How about synergetic bonuses from party members using the same/complementary equipment i.e. two characters with tower shields equipped gain a small bonus when near each other: 'Shield wall' which adds defense against arrows, etc.

Would lead to too much linear "armor-set" builds that you see in MMO's, imo, not enough incentive to try out combinations of vastly differing weapons and gear

[jethro]

In many CRPGs, you'll occasionally come across items that have negative as well as positive attributes. A reinforced helmet with a penalty to your Listening score. An ugly suit of armor with a penalty to your Charisma score. Stuff like that.

 

Personally, I never use such items. Why? It's not because the penalties are particularly punishing - as you can see, the two examples I brought up both have penalties that are practically meaningless in the context of D&D, for the most part. It's because, fundamentally, I don't have to. The games are easy enough that I don't have to even consider gimping my character in even the slightest manner. Why should I? I'll just keep on using my current equipment until I find something without a negative attribute.

 

Three words here are very important: "easy enough" and "Personally".

 

First of all it shouldn't be "easy enough" to play a game, the desire of creator and yourself is to give you a challenge. Basically it is the simultaneously strong and weak point of the vancian system where the difficulty is balanced over a string of combats, each one (too) easy for a rested party, and you decide with your resting frequency how difficult you want to make it. If you are able to get the balance right it makes for fun combat, if not you just have trivial encounters. It also means that you are never forced to use the best equipment because you can balance any equipment deficiency with more resting.

 

And I really think it might be your personal taste to ignore such items. I'm pretty sure that I would prefer the weapon+2,listen-2 to a weapon+1 for a fighter anytime.

 

I think such items add variety. But they need to be done with care. The negative attribute should really be balanced with the positive attribute. For example in D&D a -1 to fortitude saves might be a more fitting malus for a +1 to hit. If there are players who categorically don't use such weapons, so be it.

 

A very nice idea is to put abilities on such items. For example evasion on  a bracer for -1  to hit might really be a way to give a player another tactical option (i.e. if you know you are going into a mage tower, this might be the right item to wear).

 

I also like the idea of cursed items, sadly underused in cRPGs. Say as a ranger you find a cursed weapon. It is really really good but you can't unequip it without the help of a weaponsmith in a town (and that even might cost you a few gold). Now you really have to decide if you want to use the weapon and lose the ability to switch between ranged and melee combat for the time being. Sure, many players will automatically ignore cursed items, but as is often in RPGs the details are what makes something work or fail. Wasn't there a cursed intelligent sword in one of the IE games that did make snide remarks on your fighting abilities? Doen right this adds a lot of flavor.

[Infinitron]

Related post by Josh Sawyer: http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-121-tunin-tips-and-tricks/

 

Do not create drawbacks that are "opt-out" for the player if it still gives some benefit to the player. I.e. do not allow the player to take what is ostensibly a "drawback" that gives them a bonus to a skill pool, or some other sort of gameplay bonus, unless that drawback is very difficult/impossible to avoid. When people want to specialize a character in something, they already know what they want to do. What they don't want to do is pretty much everything but that activity. "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but -20 to damage with wooden dowels and light maces," contains an effectively worthless drawback. The only way the drawback would ever arise in gameplay would be through some asinine heavy-handedness on the part of the game designer -- for which the player will almost assuredly resent you. A more even-handed drawback would be, "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but attack 20% more slowly when using them." The benefit and the drawback are both realized within the same activity. The player cannot reap the benefit without suffering the penalty.

* When making trade-offs between items/skills/abilities, those trade offs must actually feel different in application or the player's choice isn't very important. For example, in the above case of +4 to damage with a 20% lower attack rate, there should be situations in which more damage per hit = better and situations in which faster attack rate = better. For example, if an armor system is threshold based (subtracts a flat damage value), doing more damage per shot always means that damage has a greater chance of getting through armor. In this case, the +4 bonus is better when used against opponents with armor. Against opponents with high health and no armor, raw DPS matters more than damage per shot. In such cases, having a 20% faster attack rate may be better if it outweighs the DPS value of the +4 in the overall equation.

 

[okkoko]

what if some of the item formula was like this

 

 

Quality LVL      Damage bonus if attacking lower quality items = DBIALQI

                                                                    Dam on better quality penalty = DOBQP

Noting at all                 0 %                                30 %

low                             10 %                                20 %

Average                     15 %                               15 %

medium                      20 %                                10%

Best                           30 %                                 0 %

 

I am not sure how to fix the  DOBQP , i just imaging that it was the other way around if you have better idea please be kind and share

[JFSOCC]

Beacon helmet. Allows you to see in the dark as if it were day, notifies all hostile creatures within a 30 yard radius to your presence.