Weaponry

[Saint Faucet]

I'm back with my kitchen sink of questions.

Anyway, I was wondering what types of weapons you guys were looking at putting in the game. I'm not talking about "Will there be the basic sword?". I mean more specific types such as katanas, tachis, falchions, rapiers and great swords.

Do you guys have any idea of approximately how many different types of each weapon the game will ship with and can you give us some examples of ones you have planned?

[Slitherrr]

Weapons of all sizes sorts and shapes would be wonderful... There is too much of a basis on the sword-type weapons in fantasy, in my own humble opinion, when polearms, axes, sticks, and slings are all available. Can PC's perhaps control seige weapons too, aiming and all? And there are other questions... How many weapons will be represented fully on the model? Will NPC's react to the weapons you carry, or will they perhaps react to whether you are armed or not?

[Lordosis]

(1) We have the full range of weapons planned. Swords comprise about 10% of the types of weapons I would estimate. Other weapons include different types of axes, maces, pole arms, spears, staves, daggers, hammers, you name it. No, really, I mean YOU name it. Yeah, YOU! If you have some weapons that you'd like to use besides those you allready mentioned, post them here and we'll see what we can do. If it fits with our design, we just might implement it. Except that I think we allready decided no on slings a while back, hehe.

(2) We don't have an exact number of weapons that we expect to have. We don't want to limit ourselves. Also, they won't be hardcoded, so we will be able to add weapons after release without much of a hassle.

(3) I doubt siege weapons will be in at release. But most siege weapons take more than one person to operate, and require a high degree of skill. It would probably be more worth your while to hire an expert.

(4) Either a weapon will be represented on the player models, or we won't have that weapon. It's that simple.

(5) Hmmm, interesting idea. The only problem I see is that it would be a pain in the butt to be constantly disarming your weapon everytime you went near an NPC.... but I'm open to suggestions.

[Slitherrr]

Well, it'd probably be normal for a person to sheath their weapon when not in use anyways, so probably a hotkey for sheath/unsheath wouldn't be a bad idea...

[Rolfe]

Ya, that's a great idea actually. If we can implement it without too much hassle, I think we just might. Probably the best way to do it would be to have the weapon automatically sheath/unsheath when you go into attack mode.

[Cynycal]

i dont completely agree with that, i mean sometimes drawing your weapon can cause fear in others...perhaps make a creature roll a morale check to see if he/she/it runs or fights or whatever...i mean the drawing of a sword is a significant action n' all

[Slitherrr]

That is of course dependant on the person that's drawing the weapon... Seeing a burly barbarian swing a maul off his back with a dangerous glare in his eyes is more frightening than seeing a scholar fumble around trying to pull a dagger from his belt.

[Rolfe]

Right, well they could still do a morale check when you unsheath your sword. Attaching it to the attack button wouldn't change that. I understand that mentally it seems like it should be a seperate action, and thus a seperate key. But I don't want people making fun of Arcanity 2 weeks after release because of the message "you cannot attack, YOU'RE WEAPON IS SHEATHED!!!" I suppose we could have a seperate button for sheathing and unsheathing and then if you try to attack with your weapon sheathed, it could automatically unsheath before you attack. Something like that could work.

[Edited by Rolfe on 09-10-2000 at 12:33 PM]

[Uncle Dukey]

(double post)

[Uncle Dukey]

Haha.. I can picture that :)

That's a good way to do it, have a sheath/unsheath button, and if you press attack while it's sheathed it'll automatically unsheath. It would allow for dynamic NPC interaction while not handicapping players who aren't bothered to sheath/unsheath a bunch. Perhaps after a battle (If there are no hostiles in the vicinity) it could automatically sheath as well to streamline the process.

[Dan]

Ballista's and Catapults would ROCK! You would have to have a few people team together to use one, but the rewards would be plenty. Just imagine hurling boulders into a swarm of goblins, or Impaling the unlucky horde of Orcs who stood in your way with your Ballista. This would truly set you game apart from the rest of the MMORPGs out there. Also, if you are smart enough and lucky enough, you might be able to find and wield laser weapons, gatling guns, Gauss rifles, I name it. :-) Very Cool!

Dan

[Rolfe]

Ha ha ha ha. Imagine the experience points you'd get for killing 10 goblins at a time with a giant boulder. ha ha. Not sure how that would work, but siege weapons are a little ways off yet. They likely won't be in at release, but they'll be on our "to do" list.

[UBIK]

haha yeah that would be cool, how about being able to launch people from catapults, that would be funny, watching someone do a belly flop right into a wall or the ground haha i would have way to much fun with this :)

[Lordosis]

You can't mention seige weapons without UBIK wanting to fling other players over walls with them. :)

[Wrentia]

Back in my MUD days, I played a mud where you could move into the bucket of a catapult, trigger its release, fly through the air, and land in a hayloft for no damage. Now
THAT is something I'd like to see in a graphical online RPG....Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!

Wrentia

[Slitherrr]

You could even have a society that uses that as their main method of transportation (like the gnomes of Mount Nevermind in the Dragonlance Saga), heheh, that'd be great.

[Dyson]

It'd be interesting to incorporate some sort of "improvised weapon" skill- ie, anything you were strong enough to pick up, you could swing as a weapon. Of course, size would also factor in..while a gnome couldn't pick up a chair, an ogre should be able to. And improvised weapons wouldn't be as good as a normal weapon of their size, of course.
Skill, it'd be cool for the few people on the server who focused on the skill to be feared for their prowess with spinning wheels and beer steins. :)

Has anyone here played Die by the Sword? That had something similar, I think.

[Slitherrr]

Die By the Sword!! I loved that game, the VSIM sword stuff appealed to me. Don't see why it wasn't more popular, although I admit it could have badly used OpenGL. I could never figure out how to beat it though, I got stuck right before the last guy (if I entered the doors, he'd kill me, and there was nowhere to go).

[Ruadin]

I would like to see some weapons that are under-represented in MMOG - such as Katars, Claws - for close combat types. I think the claws would be great for the lion-like race!
Also things like morning stars, whips and cat-o-nine tails types are rarely seen in MMOG. And how about Halberds and spears?