So it seems that every mmorpg has an uber weapon, and obviously this ruins gameplay. It has been brought up in these forums and I think I would like to expand on the ideas already stated. Resources. When you create weapons / armor you can get an uber weapon but lets say if you combine 5 resources to make metal x, 3 metals to make crafting material y, and finally 3 crafting materials to make weapon z, then you would have completely original weapons, and different weapons help different people. Nothing special right? Well, if you do that then you can make it more complex, a weapon x may benefit a player that uses speed than one that uses strength ( this is based on the principle that there are no classes, so players can make completely original characters and not be restricted by the developer ) This ends uber weapons and creates a world where anyone that is intelligent enough to create a weapon that works perfectly with their character and the better players would actually be good, not just the players who get an uber weapon, find a cheap build, and spend their whole lives leveling. ( although an intelligent player would still be better under these conditions, this would just create a world where those players wouldn't be very good ) But through this line of thought I hit a problem. Yes, you get originality with +10 strength, and other examples where you create how it benfits you, but how else could it benefit you. How could resources give different benfits. Maybe skills, but once again only to a degree, it would be too easy to then find the best skills and create and uber weapon, or close to one at least. What in battle benefits could you recieve froma weapon orther than stats and skills? - Jakk

Original items being produced with materials requires a rule-based system in your game that governs it. So in about one week people would figure out the system and start growing the perfect weapon/character matchups, and either skate through the single-player or dominate the multiplayer. It's a colossal task to balance a procedural system like that. You saw how quickly players found a way to exploit Morrowind's spell crafting system to give themselves infinite stats and skills.

But I like the idea of building terrific items, rather than farming them.

*Brace for EVE fanboyism!*

The fancier ships in EVE are really, really fancy, and quite expensive. They're also destructible. So you can get a ship that really gives you an advantage, but it'll cost you a month worth of money to get it. But it's not a free ticket forever, because if some dude blows it up (or a gank squad jumps you and ruins it), then you're S.O.L. and have to replace the thing. Great weapons and equipment aren't so rare that the one guy who has it is invincible, but it's not a free ticket into the top tier of toughness, either.

So if you can get great gear, but it's not an apotheosis to do so, then you can start to deal with the game, even at the highest level, as an ever-changing situation. You don't just get to the point where you are more than a match for every enemy because you have all the rare and unique gear in the game.

Your idea about having equipment complement a certain style of play is also very good. I think that it's worthwhile to let players build a suit of armor that is at a high level, but maybe sacrifices a little bit of defensive power in order to reduce its weight, or a sword that's heavier and slower, but deals extra damage. This is something that a good crafiting system could address. Alas, I don't have the experience with Everquest or other games with famous crafting systems, so I've never seen a system like this in action.

But I'd love to see one. You could even get rid of random loot drops in favor of material collection. How great would it be if mobs didn't actaully have little wallets full of gold, but their teeth and skins could be used to make awesome weapons and armor? What if killing them didn't profit you, but you had to fight past them to harvest a resource node? That's what I'm after.

Thanks for your input, but I was looking more along the lines of help. Yes, getting strength while sacraficing speed makes the weapon system more exciting, but what more can be added. If you just give stats weapons will be easier to re-create and originality won't be that big of a deal. For example, John makes a swors that gives +2 speed, and +2 weight, while Jim's sword gives +4 speed and +4 weight, that's good and all but it limits how far a player can go and nothing is very amazing.

If you were to make a world that is very hard to cross ( maybe there is a huge ocean that takes hours to cross so you have to stop at islands ) then players will create a system where items at the other side of the world are more expensive, they are rarer, and hard to get to so you'll obviously pay a ton more to buy them. But if you just give stat bonuses and skill bonuses, those weapons won't be so unique, unless you split them up by area ( i.e. speed is in the west and strength is in the west ) but this would create an unfair situation for western players who want to fight with strength, they have to pay way more.

So the major question that this problem brings about, what other benefits can you give in this type of system? As I said before skills can only go so far, and stats aren't enough, so what else is there?

Give weapons a magic 'type' such as fire, ice, lightning, silver, poisoned. By mixing magic powders into your metal. Only one 'type' per weapon. different types and different effects. Like perhaps a 'silver' type can deal double damage (or 1.5) to werewolves vampires and undead('unholy' can go against monks, angels, fairies, etc..) Fire/ice adds a chance of fire/ice burst to each attack causeing extra damage unless magicly resisted (by magic armor or certain enemys) lightning has a small chance to stun your enemy. 'Blood' can suck small amounts of hp per hit. 'Shadow' renders certain defensice magic types useless for a small time. 'Poison' deals small amounts of extra dmg overtime.

Also, along with weight, speed, and damage; you may want 'parrying chance' and 'critical chance' as well as 'stunning blow' and 'chance of serious wound' or something along those lines.
[cool]

[Edit:] Got this from my own sig. Add a 'rot' effect; after the battle if a player is infected with rot, his strength and defense is down 15% until it wears off or is healed.

You could also give your weapons not only attack power, but min and max attack power giving some weapons wide range, like 5 to 32 dmg, and others a short range, such as 18 to 24 dmg. Maybe have one kind of stone up the minimum attack whilst another ups the maximum. Also make sure you set a limit to the amount of stones you are able to mix in (one or three is best) and don't let players 'strip' their weapons either. Make the stones really expensive and the more powerful ones quest rewards or rare drops.

Also add a stone that gives a better chance to hit the enemy or one that gives a chance of a higher damage roll.

Quote:Original post by Jakk
So it seems that every mmorpg has an uber weapon, and obviously this ruins gameplay. It has been brought up in these forums and I think I would like to expand on the ideas already stated.

Resources. When you create weapons / armor you can get an uber weapon but lets say if you combine 5 resources to make metal x, 3 metals to make crafting material y, and finally 3 crafting materials to make weapon z, then you would have completely original weapons, and different weapons help different people. Nothing special right?

Well, if you do that then you can make it more complex, a weapon x may benefit a player that uses speed than one that uses strength ( this is based on the principle that there are no classes, so players can make completely original characters and not be restricted by the developer ) This ends uber weapons and creates a world where anyone that is intelligent enough to create a weapon that works perfectly with their character and the better players would actually be good, not just the players who get an uber weapon, find a cheap build, and spend their whole lives leveling. ( although an intelligent player would still be better under these conditions, this would just create a world where those players wouldn't be very good )

But through this line of thought I hit a problem. Yes, you get originality with +10 strength, and other examples where you create how it benfits you, but how else could it benefit you. How could resources give different benfits. Maybe skills, but once again only to a degree, it would be too easy to then find the best skills and create and uber weapon, or close to one at least. What in battle benefits could you recieve froma weapon orther than stats and skills?



- Jakk

Very good point. Already perfectly implemented in my current MMORPG i am playing. It's truly revolutionary.

Details:; (complicated)

The game has 5 main attributes, plus 4 less important attributes,

Combat:
STRength
- decides damage output and weight you can carry

ENDurance
- decides how well you stand melee attacks

DEXerity
- affect evasion (and evasion type skills), hitting chance and damage stability (receive/deliver)

INTelligence
- affect spell casting power, stun (receive/deliver)

CHArisma
- affect hate (as required by tanks), stun (receive/deliver)

Wind,Fire,Water,Earth are less important attributes which are spellcast/resist related.

Virtually all items are breakable, with the assumption that hardcore gamers capabable of getting super rich in comparison to relatively casual players, and that usually they prefer to high damage output pvp type characters, and some of them might prefer soloing over grouping. 2 classes are specially designed for them, namely, assasin and dual-wielder. Both requires high strength, as a result, strenght gears runs much more expensive than gears of other attributes, as required by the game mechanics itself. For example, a set of totally 300 INT may deliver a decent effect as long as INT is concerned, however, even when you get a set of 600STR gear, you'll have the desire to make it 700STR.

Virtually all items are breakable, so no matter how rich you are, financial management is required, else it sucks all your money and bankrupts you.

Take Katana as an example, for crafting, it consists of materials mined by smiths themselves, materials from the player market, and materials from NPC shops (exclusively, all craftable items behave this way).

Katana = 1 deluxe handle, 1 metal connector, 12 hardened ingots, 6 gold pieces, 10 silver pieces, 16 charcoals.

All of the materials/components can be purchased from NPC shops if you are willing to pay double to triple costs and dont plan to make any profits at all.

delux handle - 16gold if purchased from NPC, 7.5gold if from players. It's used by Smith class but crafted by the Knight class.

metal connector and hardened ingots are made from iron, copper (mined by smith class) and coal (mined by ninja, monk and mage classes but not smith).

gold pieces and silver pieces are almost exclusively from NPC shops, thou occasionally drop from mobs yet far less than enough from crafting.

charcoals are mined by ninja, monk and mage classes, same as coal.

Total cost of crafting a Katana is around 97gold, of which, 80gold contribute to NPC shopping, 8.5 from player market, 8.5 self mined and made. As you can see, the 80gold NPC purchase acts as a stopper from mass crafting. Moreover, it takes time to do both the player market shopping and mining. Simply put, even the in-game gold farmers find it difficult to make money quick enough to make RL profits. That's why there are not so many farmers in this game. After a long process, you can sell your Katana to NPC for 100gold to make a 3gold profit.

It's usually not worth the effort this way to earn only 3golds, so you need to craft something capable of selling to the player market. First, you need to tune your char to be professed in one or two special areas. My toon is good at Katana and platemail crafting, not chainmails nor polearms nor clubs...etc. So my chances of crafting a good Kanata is relatively higher (than those smiths not professed in the areas). Default damage of a Katana is 42, maximum damage is 42*1.4=58, after your toon is professed, max damage may reach 58*1.1=64.

1 out of 10~20 Katana, I will make one with damage 50~56, 1 out of 100 goes beyond that. Say, by chance i made a Katana with damage 55, can I sell it to the player market? The answer is NO, noone will buy it, coz there are process yet to go through to make your product final. (so complicated to explain)

In order to sell to the player market, you need to first enhance your quality Katana with attribut *gems* which are dropped by mobs. You can put up to 3 gems to your Katana. There is risk of failure there so you need to handle it carefully, by best evaluation of the situation. If the Katana doesn't have other good attributes than the 55 damage, I'll target the product to dual-wielders, so I'll add STR gems to the Katana.

There are +4/+5/+6 STR gems 15/30/100 gold respectively from player market and can be from mob drops. So I carefully add a +4 gem first, +4 gem is a less risky one to add first. There is a value defines how many gems can be added, the initial value is 0~5/15, for convenience, my Kanata is 1/15, each gem added will cause the value to roll +6~15. So I added the +4 gem, the dice rolls +7, as a result, my Katana now bears a value of 8/15 (+7 from 1/15). So the only chance I can add up to 3 gems is that the next roll will be +6 to make the value 14/15 (+6 from 8/15), before it reaches the ceiling 15/15.

On the other hand, a +4 gem may turn out to give +2~+6 value to the specific attribute while may do -2~+2 to other attributes.

This time unfortuately, it gives +3STR -2DEX. It ruined the Katana as DEX is also important to dual-wielders and a +3STR is not good. So I have to sell it to NPC, earning 3gold from the Katana itself but losing 15gold in the gem.

2nd attempt, added another +4 gem, it gives a +6STR, not bad, but the it pumps the slot value from 1/15 to 15/15 with a +14 dice roll. This makes the katana worthless, so sell to NPC and suffer the loss.

3rd attempt, +6STR, but the slot value runs to 10/15, no hope for a 3rh enchanting, I put in a +5 gem (instead of the +6 one) to finish it, it turns out to be a +12STR katana, with a player market price of 300gold.

4th attempt, extremely lucky this time, a 62 damage katana with an initial value of 0/15, a +4 gem gives +6STR and 6/15 slot value, the 2nd +4 gem makes it a +12STR with 12/15. Now I will add an expensive +6 gem to finish, yet there's another process (actually 2)to go before this is done.

first, you can add deluxe decorative item to the katana, which is extremely rare and will increment 1 slot value, so I spent 2000gold on the decorative item and add it to the Katana to make more unique. Now the slot value becomes 13/15 (+1 from 12/15). Then add the +6 gem, luckily, it turns out to be a +17STR Katana. Thou +18 is the ceiling value but it's like mission impossible, so all the best you can wish for is a +17 attribute.

Other than the gems, there are player crafted stones can also be used to enhance the weapon, there are 2 fixed slots for these stones. Precious stone crafting is another challenging and exciting job to do, but limited to the bard class only. Similarly, by your luck, you can merge up to 3 raw attribute stones to make a completed crafted stone, with ceiling value +17 (mission impossible +18). Another expensive stone can be added beforehand to remove the -ve attribute, this simple increase your cost in case of failure attempts, yet it guarantees no -ve attributes. Say, a +12STR -2INT stone sells at 150gold, while a +12STR stone without the negative INT attribute can sell at 350~400 gold.

A +17STR stone worth around 12000gold in teh player market. Adding of such a stone gives +15~19 STR, and -2~+2 values to other attributes. So I purchased 2 +17STR stones from my bard friend with 24000gold. Adding stones is of a more breath-taking process, as you can see. My lucky day, 1st stone makes the Katana to a +33STR one (+16 from +17), the 2nd one makes to the +50STR ceiling (+17 from +33), +50 is the ceiling value of any attribute of an item. It sells at 50000~70000gold in the player market.

As been said before, the desire for attributes other than STR is not that high, since above certain values, the effect is not obvious as the effect of STR. So exclusively, STR and thus damage output is the main desire, while only the most hardcore players can afford and willing to spend money on these breakable uber leet gears. As for other players, most likely they maintain a semi-decent gear set, it's less of a problem if it's only for rolling up a toon. An even better choice is to develop a char class other than assasin and dual-wielder (especially the dual-wielder, an extremely money sucking profession).

There are always alternatives, if I estimate that not many players can afford a +50STR uber leet katana, I can make it less expensive to suit for the market situation. Instead of putting 2 +17STR stones, you can add a pair with different values, say, one +17 with another ranging from +10~+15. Or even enhance other attributes than STR to further cut the value to suit for the market, say, add 1 +17STR with another +200hp (700gold), to sell the +33STR+200hp at 15000 to get cash back quicker.

How if to make it more expensive, say, to sell at 100,000+gold instead of 50000~70000. It's possible. A super precious raw stone called "dragon tear drop" is available at 30000~50000 gold in the player market, it's an extremely rare mob drop, it can be used on an existing crafted stone to double~triple its attribute value. In the previous example, I can buy one (instead of 2) +17STR stone, add a "dragon tear drop" on it, it gives a +34~50STR final stone (+17*2~+17*3), I dont know the failure rate in doing so, coz i never reach that richness to buy a dragon tear drop and try on it.

So with a direct +50STR stone, you can make your katana a +50STR(stone), +17DEX(gem),+17END(stone), super uber leet katana (pehaps worth like 200,000 gold). Yet prepare yourself to break it within a week, if you use it for general mob-killing purpose. Usually, such a kind of uber leet gears are used only in the occasions of taking down an extremely tough boss, and pay like 300~2000gold (depending on durability decreasing) to NPC smiths to do the durability upkeeping (yes, by paying a dear cost, you can upkeep the durability). As for other times, they are kept deep inside the owners' warehouses.

For your reference;
as a tank smith, I've got 5000gold cash with around another 5000gold worth properties, I am considered *rich* amongst my friends. I cant make more than that within my time arrangement/proportion between crafting and adventuring. It seems that the rate how my gears break keeps me from becoming richer than that. So, a 50,000 "dragon tear drop" can only be a dream to me, not to speak the finalized uber Katana. :P

As for the ebayers, roughly, 15,000gold = USD35.

Link: A lv60 dual-wielder with his uber leet gear set

[Edited by - Hawkins8 on March 13, 2006 12:45:34 AM]