I'm really disappointed with how little difference having a weapon specialty and not having one makes. I've only been playing on rogue difficulty, so I'm not sure how things feel on the other difficulties. My former character had dual-wielding and swords (both maxed), and leveled roughly half Warrior and half Rogue. He had a ~35dmg and a ~30dmg swords, and his gear was oriented towards bonus damage. At level 7 of the dungeon (unfortunately, he died there), he was killing enemies in 2 hits and could survive about 4 hits back (dying on the 5th). My current character has promethean magic (maxed) and no weapon specialties, leveling mostly Wizard and 4 points of Rogue. He has gear oriented to increasing magic and magic regen. At level 7 of the dungeon (still alive), he found a 6star axe with 2 mana regen and 25dmg. I tried attacking and found that I could kill things in 3 hits and could survive 3 hits. Even without the obviously overpowered promethean tree, this doesn't feel balanced. If an untrained mage can go toe-to-toe almost as well as a maxed swordsman... :\
I agree and disagree here. Penalties for using weapons you arnt good with, and dual wielding weapons often do not outweigh the positive benefits of using them, if you find the right pieces of gear. In the early game this seems to make more difference than in the late game, depending on hits to kill and other gear, but knockbacks, stuns, sleeps, and bleeds and various other weapon critical abilities are still very handy. But at the same time, i believe that if you use a weapon that you are not good with, you might not be able to activate skills, or have your skill tree special abilities activate on attacks. (Something that i had wanted to verify for myself and look into, but forgot to test out fully.)
They've already changed the bad weapon penalties for the next patch: "- FIXED: double “bad weapon” penalties."
I'd add -20 enemy dodge reduction to bad weapon penalties. Does the current penalty even do anything? If so I haven't noticed it affecting weapon damage.
Bad weapons does cut damage to 72%, and bad dual wield to 64%. I know, I hacked my tweakDB.xml to make sure the 2 variables were actually used. Does bad weapons make a difference if you end up picking a good enough weapon early? Not at all. Dual wield penalty by contrast might not be something you want if one weapon is significantly better than the other, but is good if 2 weapons deal the same damage.
Does bad weapon plus dual wield penalty stack as far as anyone knows? There is bad single weapon, dual wield penalty, but is there a bad weapon dual wield penalty? I dont see one listed in that file, which makes me think that dual weapons are treated equally regardless of proficiency?
I believe the penalties for wielding a weapon you don't know should be: - 25% miss chance - 25% chance to hurt yourself - 5% chance to brake the weapon completely + - 25% reduced damage and/or buffs if you do hit. They should all be rolled for separately. The numbers are obviously just a suggestion, but I believe something like that looks good.
I don't think you should break the weapon completely, and the chance to hurt you self should be a LITTLE better then one in FOUR times you cut yourself, I don't think our hero is THAT bad
Considering anyone that knows how to wield a weapon (warrior wielding axes) shouldn't have much problem with other weapons, other then small penalties. - 10-15% miss chance sounds about right. Considering the above point. - 10-15% to hurt yourself, for the same reason as above. - 5% to break the weapon and destroy it completely. - 1% to remove a percentage (25%,50%,75% or even 100%) of buffs from the weapon or remove the Artifact factor from it, making all Archaeology skills on it useless. - 35% reduced damage and/or buffs with the weapon, to compensate all the rest. Again, all the numbers can be changed. Maybe 100% damage weapon but 50% miss chance? Then again, this is a rogue-like game. Looking from DoD point of view. It should vary based on the difficulty, but consider the following: - 20% miss chance. - 30% chance to hurt yourself. Look, a warrior wielding axes tries using a xbow. He turns it around not knowing how to use it and shoots himself in the eye. Or he maybe thinks you wield swords by the blade and not a handle ... - 20% break chance. Same idea as above. Maybe the hero is that retarded. This game is comical with black humor as well. There's a chance a warrior eats a shuriken, destroying it and hurting himself xD - X% reduced damage. Same thing here. If you know the weapon better, you know how to use it to your advantage and how to hit enemies weak points with it. But assassination/deadshot covers that. Again, you could deal MORE damage sometimes, be cause your lesser knowledge of the weapon made you do something stupid and discover this super-duber new attack. Maybe a durability system could come in hand here. Make all weapons have durability and if you're not proficient with them you lose it like 5x times as fast. Or there is durability ONLY for the weapons you're not good at using. Then again, you could repair durability with Smithing skill, making that skill much useful then it is now. Again everything above should vary on difficulty. A lot of options really.
While i think the penalties should be a bit stronger than they are (or perhaps simply just fixed as im not sure its working properly as is) i think taking it that far would be a bit much and would totally destroy any viability for use by non proficient users. A combination of the reduced damage and 10-20 point reduction in either chance to hit, or simply reducing your extra points to 'aim' is plenty penalty i would believe, but additional damage to yourself as well seems a bit much. The durability and weapon breaking mechanics seem like they would be better incorporated into a mod than the official game. A lot of users wouldnt care for the additional tedium that repair would place on them. It would lead to either hoarding weapons and thus more complaints about inventory space, or backtracking for repairs, both of which would slow the progression down quite a bit.
@DerpTyrant No one in their right mind would ever want a chance to break their weapon, or injure themselves. Also, I fine you 30 billion dollars for suggesting it. Seriously, the bad weapon penalty is being increased already, There's zero reason to add anything else so absurd to it. I'm not good with any weapons in real life, but I'm not retarded enough to bludgeon myself in the face with a damn mace. Or flail whip myself. Let alone stab myself in the chest with a sword, or cut off my arm with an axe. Or impale my foot with a spear. Seriously...your suggestions are absurd. Not even realistic at all. I literally am crappy at fighting, but no one is going to hit themselves in the face with a mace. Seriously, it's like a survival thing that's been that way for thousands of years. Missing makes sense, but even -25 enemy dodge would be beyond the the realm of balanced, like @jhffmn suggested. The number one rule of games, Balance must be maintained. I would be fine with reducing the damage and adding a small chance to miss, I.e Enemy dodge reduction -5. Something like crude weapons. And their base dodge reduction. Besides, if you don't use a weapon, I challenge how one could play this game, to be fair. Even wizards have staffs. Some even use tiny things, like maces. Small weak maces.
I don't even see bad weapon penalties being that big of a deal to begin with. Not only do you get a penalty, but you ALSO don't get any benefit from the skill lines. I agree that it should be increased, and so do the devs, but not to that high of a degree.... The point isn't to penalize players for using a weapon without the skill, the point is to NOT penalize players for taking weapon skills they don't need. If a mage can go into melee with a 10* mace just fine, that's making melee fighters look bad. It's like Superman in a race against Flash and they tie. The idea is to make non-proficient use LESS viable, not suicidal.
Considering that the Flash and Superman once tied a race to make sure no one could win money off of it, that's kind of an awkward comparison. Also, in that same race, the Flash and Superman detoured to an island, where Superman flattened it out, and then jumped up into the air, and slammed down as hard as he could, knocked the Earth out of orbit, , but only a little bit, and all that to prevent a laser from destroying Metropolis. And that was Bronze Age Superman, who couldn't really do much against the Anti-Monitor. Also, Superman lets the Flash win. I kid, I kid. But I'm a Superman fanboy through and through. Call me when the Flash can tow 16 planets behind him to save the lives of the billions of aliens on them. And that was just Superboy. In the sixties.. Anyhow, that's completely off topic, sorry. Yes, I do agree with you, that's why I went woo hoo crazy on my rant above.
@fishofmuu So, you know about that race? Neat. Though, I still don't get your analogy, could you explain it better? I'm really not sure.
Well Superman = mages, and melee = Flash. Flash/melee can do one thing. Superman/mages can do a lot. If mages/Superman can tie with melee/Flash on bashability/speed, the one thing that melee/Flash does, then it just sort of makes melee/Flash obsolete. Unless you're Wally West.
