The Purpose: This suggestion is designed to address a problem with knighthood weapons which arose after several changes to the way knighthood calcualtions were made quite some time ago.

The Problem: The previously mentioned changes to knighthood drastically reduced the damage knights could do, and let's face it, being able to constantly force sips while building large amounts of wounds did make for some nasty fights. The damage has been reduced in such a way, though, that the damage stat on weapons has become basically useless. This wouldn't be so much a problem except that the minimum stats across different weapon types varies. For illustrative purposes here are Blademaster weapons and their minimum stat spreads:

(Damage / Precision / Speed)

Rapier ('speed' weapons) : 33/85/136
Scimitar ('precision' weapons): 65/166/100
Boradsword ('damage' weapons): 88/96/100

Max stats for them all are 180/235/280
The maximum stat configuration for these weapons cannot exceed a sum of 480 (no-arties).

Because of the way these minimum stats spread out, the optimal weapon will always be the 'speed' weapon. Whether you want a wounding weapon, where precision and speed are both high, or a damage weapon, where damage and speed are both high. The 'speed' specced weapon is always the best choice. This makes for a very dull environment, where the vast majority of weapon types aren't used.

The Solution: As the admin have already stated that they don't want to make all minimum weapon stats identical, we need to create new ways to make these other weapon types appealing. My proposal is that we do this by applying new attributes to the underused types.

Speed weapons: These weapons already have their special niche, which is being able to manipulate the stats to be exactly what you want. Because of this, they don't need any change to make them desirable.

Precision weapons: One thing that could maybe make these weapons more desirable is a bonus to knighthood RNG calculations. It might be worth it to some players if these weapons were noticeably more likely to hit the primary bodypart on swing attacks. Also, when deciding which of the available wound states your attack procs, give a bonus, meaning you are more likely to land the higher level wound. As I understand the current mechanic, a number is rolled between 0 and the target's wounds, and where that lands is what determines whether you get the medium wound vs the light or negligable one. These bonuses RP wise support the concept of a more 'precise' weapon, and would certainly create a niche for their use, even if they are not going to put out as much raw wounds/second of a 'speed' weapon that is configured to do that. I'm not including raw numbers here because I believe this would take a pretty good amount of testing to find exact levels that would be both appealing and fair.

Damage weapons: In the current state of knighthood, this is truly an oxymoron. To fix this, why not give the opposite of the 'precision weapon' fix. Give a severe penalty to the wound state vs affliction roll, make swing attacks entirely unpredictable in which bodypart they would hit. This is in exchange for a hefty bonus to damage. This fits the 'damage weapon' rp, in that you are brandishing a much heavier weapon, one which will be difficult to control. This will also provide a niche for knights to use damage in appropriate situations, without being able to capitalize very well on the fact that their opponent's wound curing is obviously hindered by sipping. Once again, not including any numbers here, because the exact tradeoff to make this niche both appealing and fair would require a good amount of testing. Other things to consider: is this plus a set, raw amount of damage, % based on enemy health, or somehow calculated off the damage stat itself.

I realize these types of changes would probably be very hard to implement, likely requiring total rewriting of existing game mechanics, but fixing this problem is something the knight community wants, and I don't think anyone is going to come up with a solution that doesn't in some way involve a fair amount of changing to underlying mechanics. I think these changes would be more fun than the generic make all the weapons the same idea, but maybe that one would be easier to implement.

That's it! You may notice I've left out the 'Generic weapons' (longswords etc.) Those never had a niche, and have never been heavily used. I wouldn't mind them getting something to make them appealing, but didn't think of anything while I was writing this. If anyone has an idea for them, please feel free to post it!

edited for spelling

It's not that they don't "want" to make the minimums identical, it is that it is a coding nightmare. Every weapon has a current minimum, and then every +1 stat gets added on to that; that's why they can all have the same maximums, but trying to make them also all have the same minimums would muck with every existing weapon.

I've been saving these to post at some time when I wanted to try again, but just haven't gotten around to it. Basically, this is the discussion I had with Roark after the last report I submitted to have equivalent minimums.

Message #1470 sent by Roark (received: 2011/11/07 01:30:03)
All items in Lusternia have a template. When you forge an item, it zeros the stats inherited from the template and starts adding new ones on randomly. Finished weapon stats are calculated by taking the template's stats and adding that to the weapon's specific stats. (Blame Achaea.) That's the problem. To make all weapons equal, I must change those templates. That will cause every weapon in the game including runed ones, to change stat values. I can't add or subtract compensating stats to all specific weapons because they can only hold numbers from 0 to 255, and the amount needed to adjust for many would overflow or underflow that limit. Another thing, though not part of the problem but you might find interesting to know, is that when a weapon starts to be high in one stat while forging then the forging favors that stat. So if the template makes a weapon start out strong in, say, damage then it will add more damage to that weapon's specific stats.

Message #1471 sent by Roark (received: 2011/11/07 01:33:11)
I can raise or lower any of their stats, within limits. Meaning raise or lower what they average to be.

Message #1472 sent by Roark (received: 2011/11/07 01:44:35)
I suspected that making them more appealing via stats would be impossible. That is why I also suggested thinking of other types of bonuses, like resistance to parry, etc.

Right, when I said they didn't want to I meant that they wanted to avoid that option because of the problem you are mentioning, as I had read about that in a previous post.

While some things, such as parry resistance, might be easier to code than my suggestion or the older "make the stats the same" idea, I'm not sure how much I would even care for that. Parry resistance would totally ruin one of the most fun aspects of knight combat, which is finding ways around your opponent's defense. Why not just hammer all your power into their head and hack down repeatedly... Not my call, but my opinion is 'no thanks' on that.

I doubt that checks for weapon type to modify various RNG factors is something that could be easily tacked on. It could even require entire rewrites of various parts of the underlying mechanics. Then again, I have absolutely no knowledge of the backend, so I'm just throwing out an idea that I brainstormed. If this falls into the "too complicated to consider" category then I totally understand.

Anyways, do you have an opinion about the concept? If something like this could be done would you consider it a pleasing way to address the issue, and do you think it would entice players to carry around multiple sets of weapons and be happy about it, like we used to?

I think warriors are in a pretty good state of balance since the special report, so tricky to adjust without introducing new imbalance.

The idea I've been trying to flesh out for precision weapons was for them to enable a (1p for one handers, 2p for two handers?) PRECISE modifier on attacks, that would eliminate the roll that determines the affliction for that attack. So if as a Pureblade you get your target's left leg to heavy say, and then SLASH LEFT TARGET PRECISE, if it hits the left leg you get your heavy LegTendon, no random roll, no chance of Lacerates, you get the affliction for that wound state.

Damage weapons I thought was case of finding the balance point of damage/speed but there's likely better suggestion for improving out there.

Edit: Hack down precise for a behead probably shouldn't be a goer though, like other power swings.

Edit2: Hrmwrm, rather than complete elimination of affliction roll, probably better to take from yours and have it add a straight bonus to number that determines the affliction, but doesn't add to real wounding?

Ushaara:

...

Edit2: Hrmwrm, rather than complete elimination of affliction roll, probably better to take from yours and have it add a straight bonus to number that determines the affliction, but doesn't add to real wounding?

This isn't too unlike pulp for bonecrushers, except that also gets extra wounds. It's a 4 power swing attack with a one handed weapon that has bonus wounds, as well as some sort of modifier to the rng, though I never tested with it enough to tell you exactly how much more beneficial that was. This is parryable, stanceable, reflectable, but it can hit bashbrain.

I also feel like knights are seeming fairly balanced right now, but that balance is entirely surrounding the use of optimum weapons, and filling exactly one role. The 32 stat dip for using a scimitar is pretty debilitating. Whether you take the hit on speed, precision, or somewhere in between, it's going to have a severe effect on your wounds/time in comparison to using a rapier. If anything were done to increase the effectiveness of precision weapons, I would hope that the change would aim to make them just as appealing as the speed weapons in a different way, but no more or less.

As for the damage weapons, the 11 point difference is much less severe, but I think the problem lies more with the fact that a maximum damage weapon just doesn't hurt that much. The only way to make damage weapons appealing to knights is to have them do enough damage that a knight feels like damage is a worthy option over trying to 'outwound' their comrades bashing on the target's head in a group fight. As some people can tell you, I do love me some headslamming, but I really wish weapons were more relevant for those situations. Of course, this is why I want a debuff on the damage weapon as far as wounds/afflictions go, because otherwise they would be too powerful.

I used to carry around three sets of weapons in the old days, and switched between them all the time to fill different roles. Max precision, decent speed scimitars were for the high-end opponents. Max damage, kind of okay speed broadswords for the group fights where damage was king, also for extreme lowbies who easy squish (don't complain about one shot squishing, many archetypes totally still do this right now to lowbies). Max speed okay precision rapiers for hunting and midbies who didn't have resilience.

tl;dr: I'm not asking for knights to become more powerful (overall) or be buffed in any way, I just want the relative effectiveness of the neglected weapon types to more similarly match speed weapons, but perhaps fill different roles.

One thing I was thinking of, to just make them all equal, was to give them percent-based bonuses on the attributes they're most likely to be deficient in. For the sake of example, if a scimitar tends to fall behind in speed, give scimitars a speed bonus so that less has to be invested into its speed. Though, I don't even like that idea since it seems kind of messy and complicates tempering a bit.

While I like your ideas, Shikha, they have to be made really, really worth it. Right now we frequently get novices who really want to get into combat but also just really like the aesthetics of the non-speed weapons. The idea of having different sets of weapons for different roles is interesting, but it would be great if we could find a way to make these weapons good for all purposes. The damage weapon suggestion, for example, probably won't be effective at all on higher-tier opponents 1v1 unless we choose to make it slightly unbalanced. I don't think warriors are designed to fairly damage anyone to death.

I'd love for my damage weapons to mean something more. My damage won't go any lower, and it's over 100. Boost it with full artifact runes, dwarven runes, weapon aura, racial bonus, even champion bonus, and killing with damage is still not all that viable.

If the formulas are an issue to tinker with, couldn't you just make everything a rapier, mechanically? Just have the patterns for the other designs churn out weapons that point to the rapier formulae. You'd still have the others untouched, and current weapons wouldn't change, but newly crafted weapons would all have the same stat minimums.

Current weapons would have to change or the change is nearly useless.

Except that's off the table. (EDIT: At least for some variaties of "just change them all") Assuming my idea is even feasible, why not fix things going forward? People seem to agree that knights don't really NEED this, it would just be pretty awesome aesthetically. So how would it be useless to let what we have be what it is and new stuff to have more options? I don't understand the reasoning there, unless you're arguing that knights are currently broken and mechanically need fixing. Or I suppose you could be saying that it's just not worth the time and effort unless it hits everyone.

Knights aren't mechanically broken, as we've said earlier, but flavour and diversity are some of the hallmarks of this game, and the fact that there is obviously one weapon type in each knight spec that is superior is a pretty glaring error for those that encounter it with their characters.

As for changing it only going forward, it would be my assumption that that just isn't possible. The noun 'Scimitar' is a scimitar is a scimitar. They can't point scimitar to rapier without pointing the scimitars that already exist to rapier. This would create, though the most extreme examples are probably rare, some weapons in the game that had broken statistics. This is why even with credit paid customization, the primary noun an item answers to cannot change. Even if the word 'Staff' doesn't appear in a customized staff at all, it is still interactable as and intrinsically a staff.

As for the %based bonuses to make them even, I believe this would leave certain extreme stat configurations that were abusable. For instance, giving scimitars a %speed bonus would lead to people forging max speed scimitars that were faster than max speed rapiers, etc.

An inelegant solution perhaps could be taking a snapshot of all existing weapons (I presume they exist in a database of some sort?) and using a script to fix their stats? This would be a pretty brute-force method, though, and I'd rather see the different weapon types have particular roles. Having watched the way the administration tend to steer the game over the years I've played would make me think they are more open to the more flavourful solution as well.

Sorry for the double post, but forgot to address what Rivius said:

Yeah, using damage weapons 1v1, vs a high end opponent, is probably never going to be that effective. That's okay though, because there is a time to use a particular tactic and times where that tactic won't work. No other class would be expected to just blast damage with little to no afflictions in this kind of situation either, but in large group fights this suddenly becomes very effective. Just because using a damage weapon in the style that is suggested isn't going to get me solo kills against a lot of demis doesn't mean there aren't other situations where I would gladly sheathe my katana for a damage option.