[CF-Devel] RE: few things (Weapons stuff and PR)

[Mark Wedel]

David Hurst wrote:
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      >But I agree - some races could very well get minor resistances (plus and
     
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      minus).  However, if they are minor enough, there
     
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      >may not be a big point.
     
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      Following this logic there is little point in having spears, axes etc.
     
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      Because a sword is better anyway. Minor differences make characters more
     
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      unique and closer to the "actual" races =).
     
     
 My point is more than if you just have 5% protections/vulnerabilities, the sort
of create more clutter than actual use.  That 5% isn't going to make a hill of
beans difference, but is another value the player may notice.  It also adds more
confusion to choosing a race (only so many protections can be shown in the
client).

 This isn't a big deal, just a minor point.


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      >3) For the special attack skills, you have to be careful.  You certainly
     
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      can't
     
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      >use fire touch if you have weapons in both hands.  To go with the pointers
     
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      to
     
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      >ready weapons, you probably need an array then if you plan to support an
     
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      >arbitirary number of weapons.
     
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      No creature other than a fireborn has or probably will have firetouch. The
     
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      fireborn can't use weapons, I can't see the issue of having weapons in both
     
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      hands being a problem. =)
     
     
 But there are some other hand based skills like karate and punching you have to
be careful about.  You can't use punching if you have a weapon and shield in
hand.


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      Erm, if you were a hero and you got backed into a corner and all you had was
     
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      two shields, realistically would you use them? I know I would. I think it
     
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      adds a certain flair and realism if a player can equip whatever he wants in
     
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      his hands. In hindsight shields are currently quite poor with only 2 - 3
     
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      being of any great use especially in comparison to the high powered weapons
     
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      around. I really think we should not put blocks on anything that uses hands,
     
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      fair is fair.
     
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 But if both of those shields were tower shields for example, it probably isn't
very realistic (or effective) to try and use both of those at the same time. 
More so if your character is a dwarf or halfling.


Bow thoughts (in addition to previous message):
There are several reasons bows don't find use (IMO):
1) By the time you see your enemy, its close enough you only get a few shots
before he's on you.
2) too many things block the flight of arrows, like most water and other
'impassable' objects.  End result being is that prime places where you might
want to use a bow doesn't work out.
3) The things you tend to want to pick off with bows are the type of things that
have range weapons in return (breath weapons, spells) which usually do more
damage than your bow does.
4) To followup #3 above, most artifact weapons are so much better than bows,
going hand to hand is almost always preferable way of killing things.

 Some of these things can be fixed in various ways.  #1 might be helped out by
increasing the viewable size of the game map, which is one of those things on
the TODO list.  But even with the revised sizes (17x17, 21x21 or whatever), that
still ends up being 8 or 10 spaces - still not a lot of shots, especially for
most of the monsters you are likely to take on.