Development Info Josh Sawyer on the Road to Better Armor Systems

[deuxhero]

Problem with DT systems is it's unusually easy to armor the head. In Fallout 1/2 your armor is one piece and applies to your whole body, and in New Vegas (without mods) your armor is two pieces but the sum is added to your whole body.

What should happen is that heavy torso armor either makes opponents use armor piercing weapons (warhammer, needle point arrows, solid cored bullets) that are treated as higher damage for determining DT bypass, and/or aim at less well protected parts of the body like the head and/or limbs. Armoring the head should either be less effective than equivalent "tier" armor for the torso (modern ceramic plates that will stop any small arms are relatively cheap and light, but even good helmets can't stop slower rifle bullets outside of miracle shots since the neck still has to carry it and survive the blunt force of the impact) so that armor can be worked around by focusing on the head, or carry meaningful penalties that make the wearer less effective in offense (full helm/visor down is super disorienting to the point visor goes up in melee) that allows "trickery" to be good against them.

Of course, with ballistics another problem with DT is that penetration is not actually linked directly to power. In reality for non-AP ammo speed and size is more important than raw power. A classic case is that light 5.56 from a 20 inch barrel (1,561 J) will penetrate NIJ Level 3 plates that will stop a .30-06 round that carries far more power (3,293 J) because it's much faster (3071 fps vs. 2800 fps) and much narrower (~5.56mm vs. ~7.62mm).

 

[luj1]

I was kind of hoping that after 20 years of working on RPGs, he'd have more insight to offer

That always fascinated me

Soyers design choices are so idiotic that you just need common sense to see it

- No one wants to get no EXP from monsters, it isn't fun
- Per-encounter garbage from 4.0 D&D directly takes away a tactical layer and makes every encounter same and banal
- Endurance mechanic is unnecessary, it impairs the normal course of gameplay
- 0.03% more dmg per level makes sense in a Diablo game with fast progression, not in a game where max level is 10

etc. etc.

Again, just common sense. You dont need decades of tabletop experience. The man is a master in over-analyzing and complicating things

 

[The_Mask]

I was kind of hoping that after 20 years of working on RPGs, he'd have more insight to offer

That always fascinated me

Many of Soyers design choices are so idiotic that just need common sense to see it, noy decades of tabletop experience

- No one wants to get no EXP from monsters, it isn't fun
- Per-encounter garbage from 4.0 D&D directly takes away a tactical layer and makes every encounter samey and banal
- Endurance mechanic is unnecessary, it impairs gameplay and clutters core systems
- 0.03% more dmg per level makes sense in a Diablo game with fast progression, not in a game where max level is 10
etc. etc.

Again, just common sense. So the man is a master at over-analyzing and complicating things

Man, you're so good at this. You should make your own RPG.

 

[luj1]

Man, you're so good at this.

It's very simple to see the errors, you just don't want to see them.

You should make your own RPG.

For 10 people that still play them? Why would I want to do such a useless thing?

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

sorinmask That's what I did. The RPG system, at least. I haven't coded anything beyond a macro since 2005 though, so no luck on monetizing it yet. For someone like Sawyer who has been chin deep in RPG mechanics 2/3 of their life, he's terrible at grasping the obvious.

 

[The_Mask]

For 10 people that still play them? Why would I want to do such a useless thing?

So you can find out how hard it is to be Sawyer, for starters.

 

[jackofshadows]

Oh, yeah... armor in CP2077 is completely broken. No doubt about it.
No idea what the underlying system is exactly but I never once had the feeling that my armor mattered.

There is also not really much of an armor choice in the game, as in mobile vs tanky or anything like that. You just find newer stuff with higher numbers and that's it. There are no armor types.
That flimsy shirt you find at lvl20 will have a higher armor that your lvl2 bullet proof vest...

I too don't know how exactly it works but assume very similiarly to Skyrim: essentially DR except I think it scales worse than there, becase of a few ways to get actually impactful -10% flat damage reduction bonuses.

They clearly wanted to give players as much freedom as possible in terms of which threads should one put on, basically according to how it looks not the number next to it (the default option always indicate higher number though and the game is 1st person anyway). And much emphasis was placed in implants which grants immunities, more armor, second life etc, armor is simply getting lost there.

I wonder if Josh have played (and if not what the fuck is he doing instead) Iron Tower Studio games/Underrail because there are exactly the examples he's looking for: iterations and quite successful ones on that exact old ass system.

 

[Desiderius]

sorinmask That's what I did. The RPG system, at least. I haven't coded anything beyond a macro since 2005 though, so no luck on monetizing it yet. For someone like Sawyer who has been chin deep in RPG mechanics 2/3 of their life, he's terrible at grasping the obvious.

The merely obvious is déclassé.

Enter the progtard.

 

[Fenix]

AFAIK FOT also did something with the crits which nerfed sniper builds (which were broken beyond belief in FO1/2) but I don't remember what it was.

Sniper perk was bugged so no crits from Luck, lulz, do you mean that?

 

[Fenix]

Also I like wheremechancs is trnsparent in general, BUT thee should be hidden parts that make you amuzed about how it work - one example is Elona roguelike, where there as hiden Luck stat. It felt cool to find it among other explaned parts.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

For 10 people that still play them? Why would I want to do such a useless thing?

So you can find out how hard it is to be Sawyer, for starters.

Why would anyone want to be him in the first place.

 

[luj1]

Well he made it hard for himself by trying to please everybody

 

[Fenix]

Game should be fun, and there should be something to game with.

 

[Stavrophore]

There are unlimited ways to shit on Skyrim, but you really can't say that Skyrim's armor system doesn't work. Numbers go up, you take less damage. Does what it says on the tin.

No it doesn't because it never explains that there's a cut off[logaritmic scale]. Players assumed that it was linear which it wasn't.

 

[Norfleet]

Isn't that, you know, the entire fucking point? How DOES body armor protect you against a gun meant to shoot holes through a car engine block or a fucking nuke? The answer: IT DOESN'T. Ever player should quite reasonably intuitively understand that a weapon that is meant to destroy vehicles or even entire buildings is GOING TO FUCK YOU UP.

 

[ciox]

I don't think armor is the complicated issue. It's other mechanics that are the root, but get conflated with armor. Dodging is the problem. It should not be a free action. AP/reaction should be required. Exceptionally fast attacks like bullets or lighting shouldn't be dodged without a special feat/talent. Critical hits are also another problem. In general, I think the concept should be thrown out or reserved for unique actions, like a Coup de Grace against a helpless opponent.

I would like crits happening at a steady rate determined by your attack vs. their defense, with no random component, but no one else seems excited for this but me. Maybe it's a stupid idea but I like it. I heard arguments that it's too easy to game such a system, when randomness can be gamed even harder.

Isn't that, you know, the entire fucking point? How DOES body armor protect you against a gun meant to shoot holes through a car engine block or a fucking nuke? The answer: IT DOESN'T. Ever player should quite reasonably intuitively understand that a weapon that is meant to destroy vehicles or even entire buildings is GOING TO FUCK YOU UP.

Yes, and if you want armor to protect against certain heavy attacks, you can just make those attacks inflict damage over multiple hits, anyway.

 

[Stavrophore]

Isn't that, you know, the entire fucking point? How DOES body armor protect you against a gun meant to shoot holes through a car engine block or a fucking nuke? The answer: IT DOESN'T. Ever player should quite reasonably intuitively understand that a weapon that is meant to destroy vehicles or even entire buildings is GOING TO FUCK YOU UP.

You overestimate the demographic ability to know certain stuff who play these games. New York liberal will assume that a big ass gun like bozar or minigun will be much better than the anti materiel rifle. If you don't know shit about caliber, velocity, armor penetration, plainly, you don't know shit about guns, you will regress to infant reasoning meaning "bigger = better". So the game has to signal to that demographic certain stuff in order for them to connect the dots.

 

[FreeKaner]

Just turn some of the big attacks into multi-hit attacks?

Starcraft figured this out in 1998.

You could also not do that and let there be anti-materiel rifles or such that just penetrate through armor as that is what anti-materiel rifles are supposed to do and balance them in other ways like price, availability of ammo, operation costs, aiming speed or difficulty etc. instead of trying to autistically streamline everything. Sawyer of course is not capable of not being in love with streamlining as he is a self-professed league of legends admirer.

 

[ciox]

Just turn some of the big attacks into multi-hit attacks?

Starcraft figured this out in 1998.

You could also not do that and let there be anti-materiel rifles or such that just penetrate through armor as that is what anti-materiel rifles are supposed to do and balance them in other ways like price, availability of ammo, operation costs, aiming speed or difficulty etc. instead of trying to autistically streamline everything. Sawyer of course is not capable of not being in love with streamlining as he is a self-professed league of legends admirer.

I'm not saying that a single target weapon that fires once per turn should do 1 damage in 999 hits, just that you have the option of breaking large amounts of damage into separate hits, if you really need it for a DT armor system.

Also actually even that weapon could be interesting if it's in a varied enough arsenal, with options for dealing with both armored and fleshy targets.

 

[Norfleet]

You overestimate the demographic ability to know certain stuff who play these games. New York liberal will assume that a big ass gun like bozar or minigun will be much better than the anti materiel rifle. If you don't know shit about caliber, velocity, armor penetration, plainly, you don't know shit about guns, you will regress to infant reasoning meaning "bigger = better". So the game has to signal to that demographic certain stuff in order for them to connect the dots.

Bigger = better is surprisingly applicable to this situation, though. One look at the difference between a .50 BMG round and a .223 round should nearly impress upon the viewer that there is a sizeable difference between these.

 

[FreeKaner]

I'm not saying that a single target weapon that fires once per turn should do 1 damage in 999 hits, just that you have the option of breaking large amounts of damage into separate hits, if you really need it for a DT armor system.

Also actually even that weapon could be interesting if it's in a varied enough arsenal, with options for dealing with both armored and fleshy targets.

Of course, such a weapon that does a lot of instances of lesser damage would be the opposite of anti-armor.

New Vegas already has these. It is good that Sawyer didn't get to ruin the game by streamlining these things. Asymmetric DT & DR system of New Vegas handles a lot of damage types and values, including different types of ammo like hollow points and AP rounds. New Vegas is already almost perfect system for this and I was flabbergasted how Sawyer ruined it for POE1 then even further with POE2, it makes sense now as he just lucked out accidentally in New Vegas and didn't even know what he was doing.

 

[Perkel]

Diablo 2 and DnD2.5 still have the best armor systems imho.

Because they are both based around idea of not being hit rather than being hit and getting some sort of damage reduction. I mean he literally talked about it at start and completely ommited this argument why you even need damage reduction or DT or whatever he cooks up. High armor represented either armor just stopping completely blow.

Moreover the bigger the weapon the harder it is to hit with it which naturally corresponds with this armor system. Dude has a lot of armor = it will be hard to hit it. Maybe we should use smaller weapons instead and make "death by thousand cuts" ? On other hand you still had HP which could be high or low. So barbarian in heavy armor was walking tank. Mage in heavy armor was just tomato who waited for one good hit to be smashed.

It wasn't perfect system but it was clear and you didn't need pretty much any thinking in how it works. It is completely clear to use. Get some mage and fighter and fighter with its high accuracy will make pretzel out of mage. Give mage a heavy armor and it will be a lot harder for fighter to make pretzel though he still will probably.

And it is not like this system couldn't be improved. In crpg D&D version armor didn't give you speed penalty. Just give one and voila suddenly you have reason to wear light armor for certain characters, sprinkle it with some mage limits . Like no tier 5 spells in heavy armor. Even better add to it perk system or some magic equipment etc. "Panzor Magic" - allows for spellcasting in heavy armor with no penalty or half penalty or whatever you get idea. D&D sort of tried that but they went into other rathole with numberbloat and other mechanics that complicated whole stuff needlessly.

I think the main issue here is that they don't have reasonable way to make this work in 3D games especially if player is the one swinging weapon and clearly sees weapon connecting with enemy eye. Morrowind tried it and it failed miserably.

Still doesn't exaplain why not use it in top down crpg or arpg. Also back then they had like sandwitch budget for animation so adding animation of amor being hit and producing sparks would baloon their budget to 5 sandwitches instead of 4 which was not doable.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I like how Josh always has an opinion but can never make a good game.

 

[luj1]

snake oil salesman

 

[Desiderius]

I like how Josh always has an opinion but can never make a good game.

He’s close.

If we can get him to start doing some squats so he can attract a wife to bear him some sons that should do it.