Firearms in FP RT RPG

[sgc_meltdown]

 

[DraQ]

How is learning how to upgrade a weapon not a stat?

It's not a stat determining accuracy or weapon effectiveness in general. For example you may make an NPC upgrade a weapon for you or you may be forced to use unupgraded weapon for some time and you have your actual combat performance completely independent on the related skill.

Duh, you design the game around the system that you use.

Lolno. You design system that is robust and doesn't lead to absurdities so that you can count on it not biting you in the ass later.
If your system falls apart when confronted with the kind of situations you can expect to occur routinely, then it's shit, not a system.

I never had such a situation in Arcanum.

The Arcanum where you could tell any of technically inclined followers to create stuff for you to use? The Arcanum where you could find many firearms in the world and be a sharpshooter without ever putting a point into gunsmithy or a gunsmith without ever putting point into firearms? The Arcanum where crafting/upgrading stuff required schematics and resources, often delaying desired upgrades?

You fucking high?

That would be like saying that having guild specific armours doesn't matter because you can buy the same armour from the merchant or find it on the ground, well you can't if you make the armour exclusive, and impossible to get anywhere else wtf Draq why do I even have to explain this.

Lolno. It's like saying that guild specific armours don't matter for limiting armour use, if you can get plenty of perfectly serviceable armours that aren't guild specific. Besides, guild specific armours are meaningless if they don't come with a (non-retarded) way to restrict their availability (like having guildmembers recognize it and be not too happy if they see non-member wearing it). There is nothing inherently illogical with looting guild specific armour off living-impaired guild members.

Let's say we don't want a Diablo in first person, so substituting accuracy, damage, RoF etc. with each other for the purposes of tank/support balancing is not viable a solution (other stuff the ability to aim rapidly are ok, obviously).

Well, accuracy tends to be rather good limiter of usability.

 

[Kraszu]

Lolno. You design system that is robust and doesn't lead to absurdities so that you can count on it not biting you in the ass later.
If your system falls apart when confronted with the kind of situations you can expect to occur routinely, then it's shit, not a system.

Sorry but making a game where you can't have shit crafted to you by NPC, and where you can't find crafted weapons would be trivial, you have to hand place weapons anyway if your game is not imbalanced shit no matter what system it uses, even with random encounters you have a list of weapons that they can spawn with. Nobody was crafting weapons for you in any of the Gothic games so smith skills were useful. Nothing hard about that. Sorry but all of your examples are obvious, if you can't give an example of hard to predict in development problem then your argument is mute. I didn't suggest that game to be designed by Todd.

I never had such a situation in Arcanum.

The Arcanum where you could tell any of technically inclined followers to create stuff for you to use? The Arcanum where you could find many firearms in the world and be a sharpshooter without ever putting a point into gunsmithy or a gunsmith without ever putting point into firearms?

I didn't took technically gifted companions so I didn't know about it, nothing hard about removing such ability, heck for FPS it is better to not have companions anyway. You really think that not putting items in the gameworld that you should have to craft is somehow hard? Also yes you did found some weapons but you needed technical skill to use it, and the best weapons were still those upgraded by you somehow Toika had manage to not have them lay on the ground. There were balance problems with the game but that was a Toika fault not the system fault, how hard would it be to not give Sharp Shooter's Pistol to a gun smith in Tarant? To not have craft able weapons sold by merchants? Have merchants only sell basic fire arms, and basic ammunition.

I had not said that the Arcanum is an example of balance but that it is an example of crafting system. Badly implement system =/= bad system in principle.

If you really think that there should be 1:1 correlation between what you can use, and what you can craft then you can have a rule that you can only use craft-able weapons if you can craft it yourself. Then you could allow merchants to sell some of those weapons. I would still like to have some bonus to self crafted weapon that you use yourself.

The Arcanum where crafting/upgrading stuff required schematics and resources, often delaying desired upgrades?

What is wrong with that, good system = a system when you get uber fast, and without effort? If you didn't craft weapons before going to some dangerous location then that is your fault. If you want to complain about being in say big dungeon location then the same critique would apply to needing teachers to increase your stats.

You fucking high?

Lolno. It's like saying that guild specific armours don't matter for limiting armour use, if you can get plenty of perfectly serviceable armours that aren't guild specific. Besides, guild specific armours are meaningless if they don't come with a (non-retarded) way to restrict their availability (like having guildmembers recognize it and be not too happy if they see non-member wearing it). There is nothing inherently illogical with looting guild specific armour off living-impaired guild members.

You can't loot armours in most games anyway because that would break the economy to fast anyway, and it would make the game to easy. Also did Gothic even had such a system? You just have no means to get guild specific armour so no additional system was needed.

All you need to have guild amour meaningful is to have no way of getting it without joining a guild, and have them stronger then neutral ones.

btw. Gothic had similar system with making potions that added to stats, and stone tablets it was not broken simply because you could not ask to brew the potions for you, or translate the stone tablet for you, it is as fucking simple as that.

 

[bhlaab]

I wonder how it would feel to have an FPSRPG where it uses die rolls but hides it. Like you have the cone but instead of always using that you check a probability and if you succeed you're precisely on the crosshair but if you fail it veers off.

Also a third person game with lock-on based gun combat would feel really nice with straight up dierolls I think since it isn't directly interfering with the player's ability to aim.

 

[JarlFrank]

I didn't took technically gifted companions so I didn't know about it, nothing hard about removing such ability, heck for FPS it is better to not have companions anyway. You really think that not putting items in the gameworld that you should have to craft is somehow hard? Also yes you did found some weapons but you needed technical skill to use it, and the best weapons were still those upgraded by you somehow Toika had manage to not have them lay on the ground. There were balance problems with the game but that was a Toika fault not the system fault, how hard would it be to not give Sharp Shooter's Pistol to a gun smith in Tarant? To not have craft able weapons sold by merchants? Have merchants only sell basic fire arms, and basic ammunition.

Well, I for one like believability in my game-worlds, thank you very much. The best smiths of the kingdom only selling shit weapons while your character is able to craft über weapons of awesome +10 after levelling up a few times would be horribly retarded. Yes, this was a very exaggerated example, but it would still be retarded if there would only be basic stuff to be bought at every single market in the game while the player can forge superior stuff. It *might* be explained by a ban on high quality weapon sales to civilians, but you can't eliminate being able to find good weapons in the gameworld without making it all very unbelievable and silly. Oh look, nobody in the whole world uses weapons as good as the stuff the player can forge, and he is the only one who can forge them, neither his companions nor skilled smiths can do it, or if other people use those superior weapons you can't loot them so the only way to get them is to forge them yourself lol.

This system would be so horribly fucking retarded, and not only would it make the whole gameworld unbelievable, it would also lead to really boring dungeon crawling because you know that nothing you can find is better than the stuff you can forge.

The best and, in my opinion, only proper way to add RPG skills to an FPS is for them to affect:
1) Accuracy: either by widening targeting reticule, or just generally making aiming from the hip much less accurate, and/or making your gun sway in ironsights, have it rhytmically move up and down (cause of breathing), or similar effects
2) Recoil. This is a very under-used factor in RPG-ish shooters. A guy who's never shot a machine pistol before will have a horrible recoil and won't be able to aim properly because the recoil just rips the gun up and he won't be able to hold it steady. Heavy rifles will pull up, too - maybe even right at the moment of shooting, so your bullet will hit much farther above the place you actually aimed at.
3) Reloading speed. Especially useful with guns where you reload bullet by bullet instead of having a handy little magazine (revolvers etc). Or muskets, where skill is VERY important for reloading speed. Or, heck, in bolt-action rifles skill can even influence the speed of you cocking the bolt after each shot.
4) Failure. Likelyhood of misfire, failing at reloading, etc. Especially fun with muskets: have it accidentally go off while you reload, wounding yourself. Accidentally drop a bullet while reloading, increasing reload time and (obviously) losing a bullet. Failing at cocking the bolt and awkwardly fiddling around with it until you get it right, radically decreasing rate of fire.

So, basically what DraQ said, only that I used moar words to say it (WALL OF TEXT FUCK YEAH). Keep it a shooter, but let skill affect all the stuff I mentioned. Bing, you got a good action-FPS-RPG.

 

[Kraszu]

Well, I for one like believability in my game-worlds, thank you very much. The best smiths of the kingdom only selling shit weapons while your character is able to craft über weapons of awesome +10 after levelling up a few times would be horribly retarded.

No you don't or you would not play any game with high level magic where everything works like in mediaeval times, but disregarding that this problem can be solved as well:

1)That would depend on the gameworld, you might not have access to good smiths*, if not then limit your ability to use those weapons if the gameworld is different (I had already written about it, and Arcanum had a system for it). Just because you can buy a weapon it doesn't mean that you have enough know how on how to use it. Make self crafted weapons little better then the equivalent of the ones that you can, make the different kinds of ammunition important smiths will not sell all kinds, have exclusive weapon upgrades (Arcanum had that). I will not comment on how balanced Arcanum was because I had played the game once but the gunsmith skill was very useful, yes you could get those weapons differently but you could not get the weapons that this skills (+some other skill +schematic) had allowed you to make.
2) High varying accuracy stats are not realistic at all, nobody can define physics, and shoot with 100% precision, and nobody that is not handicapped will not be able to aim at somebody that stands few meters away from him, and doesn't move how is having difficulty with that believable? And a stat that removes recoil from the game is not retarded? My idea actually allows for a realistic way to present it but you need to adopt the world for the mechanics that is the best way to make something good, not trying to make a system that works for every game but isn't good for any of therm. Varying the accuracy, and recoil allot (or else the stats will not matter enough) will always lead to non believability that stare in your face with its big ugly aiming circle, and the bad gameplay that result from that, it will not work good in any gameworld.

*For example the setting where each guild have they own branch of technology or knows how to use magic, every guild is very secretive about it, and they would cut throat of any smith that would know they secrets, and that would try to sell weapons done with they technology, heck they would kill anybody that doesn't belong to they guild but uses they technology. All of the guilds are exclusive. That world could not require tech stat to use weapons.

This system would be so horribly fucking retarded, and not only would it make the whole gameworld unbelievable, it would also lead to really boring dungeon crawling because you know that nothing you can find is better than the stuff you can forge.

No because you must find part that you use for crafting, and new schematics so actually it would be more interesting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, of course you should be able to hit someone standing rather close to you with low skill. Sniping someone on long range, however, will be difficult, if not impossible (especially when the target is moving). Recoil would not be completely eliminated - it's only that an unskilled shooter will have more problems with it than a trained one because he's not used to it, which makes proper aiming with an automatic weapon pretty much impossible. Also, reload time and failure chance are an important factor too, especially if the game has muskets as the main type of firearm.

 

[Kraszu]

Well, of course you should be able to hit someone standing rather close to you with low skill. Sniping someone on long range, however, will be difficult, if not impossible (especially when the target is moving). Recoil would not be completely eliminated - it's only that an unskilled shooter will have more problems with it than a trained one because he's not used to it, which makes proper aiming with an automatic weapon pretty much impossible. Also, reload time and failure chance are an important factor too, especially if the game has muskets as the main type of firearm.

I don't think that the skills will be important enough if you will not go over the board with accuracy, and recoil anyway what do you think about my response is my idea on how to implement it more clear now?

All of those:
1) Accuracy: either by widening targeting reticule, or just generally making aiming from the hip much less accurate, and/or making your gun sway in ironsights, have it rhytmically move up and down (cause of breathing), or similar effects
2) Recoil. This is a very under-used factor in RPG-ish shooters. A guy who's never shot a machine pistol before will have a horrible recoil and won't be able to aim properly because the recoil just rips the gun up and he won't be able to hold it steady. Heavy rifles will pull up, too - maybe even right at the moment of shooting, so your bullet will hit much farther above the place you actually aimed at.
3) Reloading speed. Especially useful with guns where you reload bullet by bullet instead of having a handy little magazine (revolvers etc). Or muskets, where skill is VERY important for reloading speed. Or, heck, in bolt-action rifles skill can even influence the speed of you cocking the bolt after each shot.
4) Failure. Likelyhood of misfire, failing at reloading, etc. Especially fun with muskets: have it accidentally go off while you reload, wounding yourself. Accidentally drop a bullet while reloading, increasing reload time and (obviously) losing a bullet. Failing at cocking the bolt and awkwardly fiddling around with it until you get it right, radically decreasing rate of fire.

All of those can be part of my system that I had described as well. I just don't want to have them over done so you need something on top of those to make the stats important.

 

[DoctorEars]

Yeah I agree with what JarlFrank is saying, basically.

Keep it a shooter, but have RPG skills affecting your reload speed (chance of dropping the clip/magazine?), your recoil (low strength stat coupled with a small gun skill means a heap more recoil).

I think stats should affect accuracy to a degree, but you don't want to take it to the point where it is impossible to hit where you're aiming simply because your character isn't good enough. We don't want to alienate the shooter fans, do we?

 

[Kraszu]

I think stats should affect accuracy to a degree, but you don't want to take it to the point where it is impossible to hit where you're aiming simply because your character isn't good enough. We don't want to alienate the gameplay fans, do we?

Fixed, but if you only use that system in limited scope then that isn't enough to make stats important enough.

 

[JarlFrank]

Fixed, but if you only use that system in limited scope then that isn't enough to make stats important enough.

For me, they would already be important enough. Thing is, with a first person RPG you'll have to strike a balance between gameplay/realism and stat effects. Usually, making stats matter too much ends up being worse for the gameplay than making them matter too little. Personally, I prefer my FPS-RPGs to be more action-focused than stat-focused. It would still be an RPG where stats matter, but without them being a burden for general gameplay fun, and with the game still being reasonably realistic (missing the broadside of a barn from 5 meters at low skill level while being able to snipe someone in the head with a pistol from 500 meters with maxed out skill is neither fun nor realistic).

 

[Eyeball]

I'd most likely just go with making firearms much, much less accurate at longer distances. I'd then design the basic game so that there'd be a number of medium-range gunfights requiring either good gun skills or alternative tactics (sneaking, magic, summoning gundrones, whatever other skills you spent your character points on) as well as a number of fights against deadly melee monsters that you'd really want to take out before them getting close to you, thus making more accurate shooting desirable.

 

[DraQ]

I wonder how it would feel to have an FPSRPG where it uses die rolls but hides it. Like you have the cone but instead of always using that you check a probability and if you succeed you're precisely on the crosshair but if you fail it veers off.

I think it's rather spurious - you'd still have to calculate veering off somehow, and if you can calculate hit distribution, you can use it for implicitly handling probability without any additional variables explicitly responsible for difficulty of shot or a way to tell engine that you were actually trying to hit an NPC you heard behind a wooden wall, despite not seeing him.

Sorry but making a game where you can't have shit crafted to you by NPC, and where you can't find crafted weapons would be trivial

Not if crafted weapons are to supplant actual ability to shoot well and inflict damage. Then you have to give them to all the more threatening gunslinging enemies in order to *HAVE* threatening gunslinging enemies.

There were balance problems with the game but that was a Toika fault not the system fault, how hard would it be to not give Sharp Shooter's Pistol to a gun smith in Tarant? To not have craft able weapons sold by merchants? Have merchants only sell basic fire arms, and basic ammunition.

And have all the enemies equipped with basic firearms and basic ammunition as well, so that they would pose nominal threat only if attacking in droves?

Sorry, but your idea is WORTHLESS. Have basic decency to admit that.
Upgrades are cool, crafting is nice, making your own custom guns is badass, but in an RPG those cannot be sole factors determining firearm effectiveness if you want to be able to say that you have stat-based combat.

If you really think that there should be 1:1 correlation between what you can use, and what you can craft then you can have a rule that you can only use craft-able weapons if you can craft it yourself.

Which is plain fucking retarded since most people have been using all sorts of items they wouldn't be able to craft since at least bronze age.

And *I* don't think that there should be such correlation. *You* have came up with the sorry idea that crafting can substitute weapon skill, *I* know perfectly well that it can't.

What is wrong with that, good system = a system when you get uber fast, and without effort?

No. Good skill based system for determining performance is the one where performance corresponds to the skill, not where it takes skill, resources, time and inexplicable lack of certain items in entire gameworld to affect performance.

Skill - performance, skill - performance.
It's like "button - awesome" for fuck's sake, how can you not get it?

You can't loot armours in most games anyway because that would break the economy to fast anyway, and it would make the game to easy.

I'm not interested in explanations why most games are retarded, half-broken shit.

If I was content with state of gaming industry, I would be fapping all over Oblivion V: Dovahkin rather than writting jaded and bitter posts on the 'dex.

Guilds can be expected to have armouries you can break into, or bribe dishonest guard or smith. Armour doesn't magically disappear off killed people. Etc.

Besides, it's not even proper analogy - there are reasonable ways to restrict usability of looted armour - for example, plate armour was generally custom-made and fitted to a specific person. If you were to account for that and for lack of market of such armour, you might as well remove the option of looting it. Now, weapons aren't nearly as tightly associated with their owners and they can also be taken from their bodies or the ground where they have been dropped with minimum effort.

No you don't or you would not play any game with high level magic where everything works like in mediaeval times

That's why I prefer games gravitating towards weird fiction (Morrowind), sci-fi (Deus Ex), clever subversions (PS:T), or, if all else fails, self-consciously running on concentrated camp* (later Wizardries, Anachronox, Divinity 2).

1)That would depend on the gameworld, you might not have access to good smiths

But there are npcs who have and player has access to those NPCs, if only because faggots armed with matchlocks that sometimes even fire in the right general direction are not really match** for handmade gatling cannon with telescopic sights player has crafted and don't make terribly interesting encounters.

Point. Moot.

2) High varying accuracy stats are not realistic at all

Why yes they are. Firearms skill largely boils down to the ability to hit the target. It might be ability to hit the target within specified amount of time, or ability to hit the target within specified amount of time after running out of ammo in gun, but there is not much more you can work with when dealing with guns.

nobody can define physics

Ahem. I can. Comes as part of the deal with this whole "FORGING PLANES WITH MY POWER" shtick.




*) JF, stop it. I said "concentrated camp", not "concentration camp". *glare*


**) : smug :

Anyway, to the point:

To not really be something player can compensate for with his m4d 5ki11z, low level restrictions must be actual restrictions - they may, for example:

-prevent fast reloading (possibly also introducing random reload failures causing entire cycle to be repeated or causing critical failure when shooting).

-prevent fast aiming (for example by introducing severe accuracy penalties for as much as changing your aim and, obviously, for recoil, as well as increasing time required for steadying the weapon).

-prevent accurate aiming (by introducing base accuracy penalty).


Now, everything barring reloading and critical failures involves accuracy malus of some sort, for accuracy malus to be actually limiting, the error applied needs to be random since otherwise the player will learn the regularity and compensate.

The rest of the means are pure cosmetics. I'm not saying that weapon sway, or hefty visible recoil not compensated by the character are bad. I'm saying that they are inadequate - I can drag my mouse down hard to compensate for even severe kickback, I can drag it hard enough to make the non-random movement speed greatly surpass speed at which my crosshairs wander randomly, and simply hit my target in the passing. I can't, however hit the target if I don't know where the bullet will land in relation to the point I'm trying to hit, and if pattern even remotely resembles normal distribution I will be best off trying to aim straight anyway.

That's not to say swaying or hefty recoil are useless - quite the contrary, it's pretty stupid when bullets are flying sideways from a perfectly steady rifle, it creates jarring dissonance - swaying and recoil help provide necessary feedback, the only thing you need to be careful about is not making impact point predictable from the swaying animation. It should be related, but you should also use the fact that it's harder to asses the impact point when not looking straight along the barrel, and widen the distribution pattern considerably.

Also, regarding recoil, compensation should, obviously, rely on physical stats as well - a weak, small-framed girl may be a fearsome marksman in terms of accuracy, reloading and weapon control, but if you give her two .50AE DEs she will end up with a concussion plus stylish red-purple 'tattoos' on her cheekbones.

 

[Kraszu]

Sorry but making a game where you can't have shit crafted to you by NPC, and where you can't find crafted weapons would be trivial

Not if crafted weapons are to supplant actual ability to shoot well and inflict damage. Then you have to give them to all the more threatening gunslinging enemies in order to *HAVE* threatening gunslinging enemies.

In order to have threatening enemies that use firearms, in others you need know how (explained later)

Upgrades are cool, crafting is nice, making your own custom guns is badass, but in an RPG those cannot be sole factors determining firearm effectiveness if you want to be able to say that you have stat-based combat.

I didn't say that it would be the only thing.

If you really think that there should be 1:1 correlation between what you can use, and what you can craft then you can have a rule that you can only use craft-able weapons if you can craft it yourself.

Which is plain fucking retarded since most people have been using all sorts of items they wouldn't be able to craft since at least bronze age.

Not in steampunk where things are hand made, and where the technology is very raw. Also if the technology would be guild exclusive then they could incorporate mechanism that protect it from being used from somebody that doesn't know how to. If you don't know how to use you will damage it, good luck in finding a way to repair that if the only knowledge about this technology is a guild secret, and when they kill anybody who have anything done using they technology, and when they put effort into getting back any technologically advanced item that they have. With more raw technology even if you would manage to use a weapon you would not do it correctly (conservation), and it would not work for long.

And *I* don't think that there should be such correlation. *You* have came up with the sorry idea that crafting can substitute weapon skill, *I* know perfectly well that it can't.

Huh sure it could, you might think that it breaks your immersion but balance wise it could.

What is wrong with that, good system = a system when you get uber fast, and without effort?

No. Good skill based system for determining performance is the one where performance corresponds to the skill, not where it takes skill, resources, time and inexplicable lack of certain items in entire gameworld to affect performance.

Skill - performance, skill - performance.
It's like "button - awesome" for fuck's sake, how can you not get it?

I don't see a button awesome as a gold standard, what I am talking about is more advanced. You don't need a system that would work in every game for your specific setting. Gothic no skill requirements for armour would be imbalanced if not for the guild system. Does it make lack of str req in Gothic games bad?

You can't loot armours in most games anyway because that would break the economy to fast anyway, and it would make the game to easy.

I'm not interested in explanations why most games are retarded, half-broken shit.

I didn't explain why there are no armours left in corpses in game world logic, but why there are no armours in design logic. Explaining why dead NPC don't leave armour would just be a superficial improvement, lack of it isn't what make the games shit.

 

[DraQ]

Sorry but making a game where you can't have shit crafted to you by NPC, and where you can't find crafted weapons would be trivial

Not if crafted weapons are to supplant actual ability to shoot well and inflict damage. Then you have to give them to all the more threatening gunslinging enemies in order to *HAVE* threatening gunslinging enemies.

In order to have threatening enemies that use firearms, in others you need know how (explained later)

Wut.

Which is plain fucking retarded since most people have been using all sorts of items they wouldn't be able to craft since at least bronze age.

Not in steampunk where things are hand made, and where the technology is very raw.

What part of "since at least bronze age" you fail to understand?

Or are you talking about some weird, themepark variety of steampunk when everyone is fucking Nicola Tesla?

Also if the technology would be guild exclusive then they could incorporate mechanism that protect it from being used from somebody that doesn't know how to

Which is about as strong an explanation as "they banned levitation so no one knows how to levitate".

If you have multiple competing factions harbouring secret knowledge, you will have guaranteed espionage, leaks and defectors.

Plus, if you want to field an armed force of some sort, you don't make it out of your scant few brilliant inventors, which means you have grunts equipped with not very arcane and easy to use, yet effective weapons. And then there is weapon trade, where you try to make something that is good enough to be sold in spite of competition.

And *I* don't think that there should be such correlation. *You* have came up with the sorry idea that crafting can substitute weapon skill, *I* know perfectly well that it can't.

Huh sure it could, you might think that it breaks your immersion but balance wise it could.

It's like saying that cremation is effective means of curing infectious disease - sure, it kills the patient, but the disease is no more. Win?

What is wrong with that, good system = a system when you get uber fast, and without effort?

No. Good skill based system for determining performance is the one where performance corresponds to the skill, not where it takes skill, resources, time and inexplicable lack of certain items in entire gameworld to affect performance.

Skill - performance, skill - performance.
It's like "button - awesome" for fuck's sake, how can you not get it?

I don't see a button awesome as a gold standard, what I am talking about is more advanced.

No, what you're talking about is more retarded, not more advanced.

The chief idea behind RPGs is tying character skill to performance in related task. You demonstrably break this tie, then get all defensive and keep digging yourself deeper.

And since chief idea behind RPGs is about as as complex and difficult to compregend as this retarded "button -awesome" PR-speak linguistic neoplasm... I mean neologism coined by morons for morons, and since you somehow fail to grasp it, the question is - are you less than a typical moron?

You don't need a system that would work in every game for your specific setting. Gothic no skill requirements for armour would be imbalanced if not for the guild system. Does it make lack of str req in Gothic games bad?

Except you fail to grasp that there is little skill involved in wearing armour, while there is a lot of skill involved in being a gunslinger. Not a proper analogy.

Plus, there is simple way to keep armour faction exclusive without making it impossible to find and wear without belonging to a faction. Make the faction want your head once they discover that you're wearing their armour without being part of the faction (notice that they may treat you as fellow member as long as your disguise isn't blown - theft and espionage anyone?). And make the opposing factions confuse you with a proper member of the first faction and attack you on sight if they attack the members of the first faction.

There, solved - you can find and wear any armour you want, except you should think hard if superior armour is worth risking severe permascrew.

You can't loot armours in most games anyway because that would break the economy to fast anyway, and it would make the game to easy.

I'm not interested in explanations why most games are retarded, half-broken shit.

I didn't explain why there are no armours left in corpses in game world logic, but why there are no armours in design logic.

I thought we were discussing RPGs here, not fucking Mario, and in good RPGs (or any serious games, but most importantly in RPGs, since they typically allow broad array of actions) world logic trumps design logic unless there is really no way around it.

 

[Kraszu]

Sorry but making a game where you can't have shit crafted to you by NPC, and where you can't find crafted weapons would be trivial

Not if crafted weapons are to supplant actual ability to shoot well and inflict damage. Then you have to give them to all the more threatening gunslinging enemies in order to *HAVE* threatening gunslinging enemies.

In order to have threatening enemies that use firearms, in others you need know how (explained later)

Wut.

You don't to have humanoids armed in firearms as your main opponent. You could be Tesla trapped on island with some savage tribes, ruins of old civilization, and monsters that roam it.

Plus, if you want to field an armed force of some sort, you don't make it out of your scant few brilliant inventors, which means you have grunts equipped with not very arcane and easy to use, yet effective weapons. And then there is weapon trade, where you try to make something that is good enough to be sold in spite of competition.

Ok if you want to go all derp with realism

Which is plain fucking retarded since most people have been using all sorts of items they wouldn't be able to craft since at least bronze age.

Not in steampunk where things are hand made, and where the technology is very raw.

What part of "since at least bronze age" you fail to understand?

Bronze age technology don't require any know how comparable to steampunk technology wtf are you talking about?

Or are you talking about some weird, themepark variety of steampunk when everyone is fucking Nicola Tesla?

I was thinking about Gothic 1 like guilds, each guild is small polis.

Not quite learning how to make something that somebody else had created is easier then figuring out how to do it yourself almost anybody can be engineer if he put enough effort into that (and some parts could be too complex for you to make, and be the guild secret so they would give it to you so you could craft a weapon). People that show talent are drawn by the guilds, those that did worse become soldiers, and the best become inventors, they have better lives then rest. I was thinking about Gothic 1 like guilds, each guild is small polis, and they can't draw everybody because they need miners, peasants, and other workers so why not draw those that are more technologically gifted, especially since they give technology almost god like status. They might think that somebody not gifted technologically doesn't deserve better then simple hard life. They might not care about streamlining the use of they technology because they are too elitist about technology. Stereotypes, and strange believes that shape societies, and as well are bad for they progress, are the norm for humans, so I don't think that this is more ridiculous then say Church position in medieval times.

Also if the technology would be guild exclusive then they could incorporate mechanism that protect it from being used from somebody that doesn't know how to

Which is about as strong an explanation as "they banned levitation so no one knows how to levitate".

If you have multiple competing factions harbouring secret knowledge, you will have guaranteed espionage, leaks and defectors.

That would lead to war, so it isn't that easy. Defectors are assassinated if another guild would help defector then that would lead to war. Knowing the technology will not make you able to use it without first getting the needed resources, and a place to produce it. I was thinking about Gothic 1 like guilds, each guild is small polis. Technology for those people is very important, and giving it away is like betraying your country. The same with knowledge on how to use spells if you want magic/more variety. So you are a defector or a known spy, your guild can't even protect you without starting war, many of technological secrets could be kept guild specific, and you would still need to know how to make required elements for example how to make metal that is strong enough, people who know might live in separated part inside the heart of the guild, and never leave it.

No, what you're talking about is more retarded, not more advanced.

The chief idea behind RPGs is tying character skill to performance in related task. You demonstrably break this tie, then get all defensive and keep digging yourself deeper.

How is ability to use/conserve weapon not a performance task that depends on skill? No game have 1:1 correlations between your fighting defectiveness, and stats, you also have items.

No I didn't break this, the better skills you have in firearm technology the better you are, you might not craft but why would you do that? That would like increasing STR, and not using better weapons/armours. In the world designed around it what is the practical difference? It adds another element to it, but I don't see what is subtracts. In rpg you plan your character stats also taking items into account. What is important is to force you to plan, and make choices (not having ability to be the master of all), and to have progress with XP or whatever system you use for gaining power what else do you want?

It's like saying that cremation is effective means of curing infectious disease - sure, it kills the patient, but the disease is no more. Win?

You don't need a system that would work in every game for your specific setting. Gothic no skill requirements for armour would be imbalanced if not for the guild system. Does it make lack of str req in Gothic games bad?

Except you fail to grasp that there is little skill involved in wearing armour, while there is a lot of skill involved in being a gunslinger. Not a proper analogy.

There is STR involved, weak person in armour would have hard time walking for much of a distance yet alone defectively fight in it.

Plus, there is simple way to keep armour faction exclusive without making it impossible to find and wear without belonging to a faction. Make the faction want your head once they discover that you're wearing their armour without being part of the faction (notice that they may treat you as fellow member as long as your disguise isn't blown - theft and espionage anyone?). And make the opposing factions confuse you with a proper member of the first faction and attack you on sight if they attack the members of the first faction.

There, solved - you can find and wear any armour you want, except you should think hard if superior armour is worth risking severe permascrew.

If somebody will see you use technology of the guild that you don't belong to he will report you, and get the reword for that.

You can't loot armours in most games anyway because that would break the economy to fast anyway, and it would make the game to easy.

I'm not interested in explanations why most games are retarded, half-broken shit.

I didn't explain why there are no armours left in corpses in game world logic, but why there are no armours in design logic.

I thought we were discussing RPGs here, not fucking Mario, and in good RPGs (or any serious games, but most importantly in RPGs, since they typically allow broad array of actions) world logic trumps design logic unless there is really no way around it.

Not for me. In general gameplay >world logic.

 

[JarlFrank]

Ok if you want to go all derp with realism

No, DraQ just wants a reasonably logical world that isn't full of retardation and works like a world should, so that immersion into the gameworld is possible.

You want to go derp with derpism, which would lead to said world becoming horribly silly and idiotic and therefore impossibilizing smug immersion.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=bl&sr ... r=13&w=870

 

[Kraszu]

Ok if you want to go all derp with realism

No, DraQ just wants a reasonably logical world that isn't full of retardation and works like a world should, so that immersion into the gameworld is possible.

You want to go derp with derpism, which would lead to said world becoming horribly silly and idiotic and therefore impossibilizing smug immersion.

If anything only that one part would be illogical not the rest of the game world. I don't have much problem with artificial crafting system, or magic that doesn't change as much as it should. You can see that other problems are unrelated to that like who to help, should you treason on the king that had helped you but that is mad etc. All those things are independent on the crafting system.

Anyway I had given settings that would derpen the game world realism, and have the crafting that I was talking about.