John Yossarian said:
A lot of things dont make sense in this game(why not add synergies to non-combat skills?) but that shouldn't be enough to add it.
I'd say that it is - presuming that it has no other positive/negative effect on gameplay. Realism is a secondary issue, not a non-issue (whatever VD contends
). On its own it is certainly not a compelling argument, but all things being equal, it's preferable to choose realism.
Ok, if a player wants to especialize in only one weapon, and the game is beatable like this, why does he need any synergy? Whether it gives him more options is a moot point, since he will only need the one weapon he uses.
You can't be sure of that without more knowledge of the environment. Sometimes his primary weapon might be next to useless. In that situation, he'll find a backup useful even at much lower skill.
It can be possible to go through using only one weapon, but that doesn't necessarily make it sensible. You're polarizing things too much when the most interesting cases are in the middle ground.
Also, there might be times when the player will lose his primary weapon - e.g. if he's beaten in combat and robbed. At that point he might need to take whatever weapon he can find before going to get his stuff back.
OTOH, if a player wants to play a mixed character, and the game is also beatable like this, why does he need any synergy? He's already going to make sure at least two weapon types are useful, so there is no need for the game to do it.
Two, yes. Five no. He'll still be artificially useless with 60% of the game's weapons. That can only restrict his options.
And you're still polarizing things. There aren't two cases: "one weapon character" and "two weapon character" - there are a very large number of skill combinations. Pushing players into deciding to be either a strict "one weapon character" or "two weapon character" is something to be avoided. Ideally many skill combinations should be useful and interesting.
The only time I see it being useful is if you want to switch weapon types midgame without suffering much penalties.
How is it particularly useful here? To really "switch weapons" you'd want to get the second skill close to the highest, if not higher. At this point the synergy gives you nothing. It does make switching a less painful process, but this is probably a good thing, and remains more realistic.
But is this what we want?
Yes
.
What if i suddenly want to switch from my uber diplomat to a fighter, what help do i get?
Are you likely to? Switching weapon types can be done without any change to the role you're playing, so is perfectly reasonable and consistent. Switching from a pure diplomat to a fighter is a total role switch. The cases are not comparable.
All this just tells me that the only reason it was implemented was for realism.
That's a bad thing only if it harms gameplay. Does it? Personally I think it probably helps - though it might need fine tuning, and certainly testing.
suibhne said:
I think he's simply talking about different types of weapons being useful for different situations
That's what I meant. I think that's achievable, and probably already figures in AoD without much tweaking. As an obvious example, fast low damage weapons are more likely to be useful against lightly armoured foes, with high damage weapons being more suited to those with high damage resitance. A spear specialist might want to switch to dagger (say) to track down ranged enemies, since the spear interrupt is pretty useless and the dagger is faster...
I guess VD thought I meant use of a combination of weapons in one combat. That would certainly be more interesting, but harder to get working well - it'd need to be an advantage, without being an absolute requirement.
Again, I'd guess this automatically happens as things stand with combinations of Throwing/Bow/Crossbow with a melee skill. Getting combinations of melee skills to be useful might be harder.
Clearly for it to make sense for a player to use multiple weapons in the same combat, something about the situation has to change. I'm sure there are aspects which could change mid-combat, but many might start to get too complicated.
Some thoughts:
Clearly range can change, so ranged->melee will probably be a common switch.
Number of opponents in range can change. More opponents getting close might make spear a better weapon.
If opponents flee (do they?), a switch to a faster melee weapon might make sense for a melee only character.
If an enemy has very low HP, it might make sense to switch to faster weapon, since any hit will finish the fight.
Fatigue and injuries (hurt legs/arms etc.) could make a difference, but I guess these aren't in??
Opponent equipment changes would make a difference. The most obvious example might be an enemy losing a shield. Is it possible to remove an opponent's shield (through melee)? - e.g. by using a heavy hammer on a wooden shield?
Disarming an opponent (or being disarmed) could clearly change things, but I guess that being disarmed might be pretty annoying if you specialize in one weapon.
Perhaps if shields are really influencial, hammers and axes could have a chance to destroy / damage / remove a shield, but swords could be more effective against unshielded opponents (without heavy armour).
Spears are probably going to be useful in some situations without changes. For instance, a player might use a ranged weapon on the first attacker until he closes; draw a sword when he gets close; then pull out a spear as his two friends close in. After backing off, keeping them at bay for a while, he might beat two of them after a while. Then he could put away the spear and draw the sword again to more efficiently dispatch the last guy.
Fast weapons will always have their place, so I'd guess that daggers will come in handy sometimes without needing to plan for it much - for instance to finish off a badly injured, but fast / well defended opponent.
I guess that for these kind of changes to be likely, you'll have to make weapon switches fast - perhaps allow the player to pick one or two items to be "readied" before combat, so he can't be switching through ten weapons in seconds.
From a practical point of view, if changing weapons is going to be useful a lot of the time, and is going to have low AP cost (at least for readied weapons), the user interface for this needs to be very well designed. Changing weapons would need to become a one/two click second nature action, not an inventory management chore.
Getting the balance right might be hard though. For instance, if you're using hammers/axes as "shield disablers", it needs to be useful for a player to use them against a shielded guy even if the player has say sword 80, but only axe/hammer 60. A shield would have to be a very significant obstacle.
However, it still needs to be possible (if difficult) to beat a guy with a shield without using an axe/hammer.
I know axe/hammer already have advantages, but knockdown presumably only has a one turn influence, and bonus vs armour is going to be constant throughout the fight (presumably?). Having the possibility to remove an opponent's shield gives them a means to change things for the remainder of the combat, rather than only for that turn.
I know (I think?) you already have spears which can be thrown at shields to disable them (which is good), but I think a melee only alternative would be nice.
Of course the player's best tactics might change significantly if he loses his own shield, so it works both ways.
Anyway, it's worth a thought - perhaps
.