As you can see in some of the dev footage you there are attack types based on the weapons they have in hand slashing ect. The most recent round table i believe it was jappa said something to the effect of we want all weapon choices to matter throughout the game even as players level up. These two things among other pieces of data I have read would lead me to belive that almost 100% weakness and strengths to certian attack types will be in the game making weapon type and choice matter, as well as provide THIS weapon is best for This situation and THAT weapon is BEST for THAT situation giving a greater value to player style and choice.
Larirawiel said:Great news! It reminds me to Baldur's Gate 2. The damage type was very important here. You needed blunt weapons for mud golems because daggers and swords had no effect on them etc.
Due to the dire lord problem (they only use slashing weapons) it won't be that big of an impact. I still hope there is a clear impact though.
A light quick sword vs a giant hard hitting two hander sword should have very different ideal targets. My hope is they focus more on accuracy and armor penetration. Can you easily hit the agile target? Can you get through the strongest of armors?
I hate the trope of every melee weapon plays out the exact same simply different delays.
BogusBooty said:Sorry if this has been answered before but I remember a while back this being a thing. A skeleton would be weak to maces / crushing damage. Did we abandon this or is it still in the game?
Docken said:The most recent round table i believe it was jappa said something to the effect of we want all weapon choices to matter throughout the game even as players level up. These two things among other pieces of data I have read would lead me to belive that almost 100% weakness and strengths to certian attack types will be in the game making weapon type and choice matter, as well as provide THIS weapon is best for This situation and THAT weapon is BEST for THAT situation giving a greater value to player style and choice.
So as @BogusBooty said, this was a plan from early on in development and in the very earliest streams we did hear a lot about this idea. They referred to 'Body Types' that would be weak or resistant to different types of physical damage such as Crushing, Slashing, Piercing, etc...
Eventually though this idea was put on the back burner. This was because some classes do not have much selection for weapon types; Dire Lord can only use Slashing weapons, and Monks may be limited to Crushing type weapons (unless we see piercing or slashing fist weapons). This means that classes with such limitations would be unable to compensate for Enemy Body type resistances to those weapon types.
In this past December's Dev Roundtable (Dec 2021) Adam “Tehom” Mostel spoke on this subject (source) and explained that this is different than Spell Type resistances, as classes will have other options to adjust too. A Wizard fighting a Fire Resistant Imp can swap over to using Ice based Spells instead of his Fire based Spells. But a Dire Lord fighting against a Slashing Resistant Enemy has no other option to swap too and thus would not have a way to adjust for this handicap.
This does not mean that they have abandoned the Body Type vs Weapon Type idea. It's just that at this time they have not decided on if and how they would want to implement this kind of system. Adam says that they have some ideas, and perhaps they will start testing some of them soon, but until then we won't know if or how this Body Type vs Weapon type system will ever be implemented.
Joppa though has made clear to us that Weapon choices will matter. In the Dec 9 2021 Live stream (source) he repeated himself twice when explaining that the weapon choice and weapon skills you advance for those weapon choices will matter throughout all levels. He did not go into detail for exactly how these things will matter, but we do have a similar promise of a deeper system tied to weapon choice from the Sept 2020 Live Stream (source) where Joppa was answering a question about Dual Wielding vs 2-Handed weapon for the Dire Lord. Joppa told us that originally they had planned for Dual Wielding to grant a Crit Chance Bonus, while 2-Handers would grant a Bonus to Crit Damage; he then explained that they have decided to go deeper than this and Promised that the choice between these would yield more complex bonuses that would make the choices more meaningful.
With these two promises we can assume that even for a Dire Lord, choice of weapon will make a difference, even if all the weapons are Slashing. A Sword might grant different effects than an Axe even though both are slashing weapons. On the Dire Lord official page they list they can use both a Great Sword and a Great Blade. While these may seem like the same thing, it's very possible that they are linked to totally seperate weapon effects that are granted based on your skill with these weapon types.
We can guess that even a Monk will gain different effects based on weapon choices even though they all seem to be tied to 'Fists' in some way.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:The most recent round table i believe it was jappa said something to the effect of we want all weapon choices to matter throughout the game even as players level up. These two things among other pieces of data I have read would lead me to belive that almost 100% weakness and strengths to certian attack types will be in the game making weapon type and choice matter, as well as provide THIS weapon is best for This situation and THAT weapon is BEST for THAT situation giving a greater value to player style and choice.
So as @BogusBooty said, this was a plan from early on in development and in the very earliest streams we did hear a lot about this idea. They referred to 'Body Types' that would be weak or resistant to different types of physical damage such as Crushing, Slashing, Piercing, etc...
Eventually though this idea was put on the back burner. This was because some classes do not have much selection for weapon types; Dire Lord can only use Slashing weapons, and Monks may be limited to Crushing type weapons (unless we see piercing or slashing fist weapons). This means that classes with such limitations would be unable to compensate for Enemy Body type resistances to those weapon types.
In those early discussions, circa late 2013/early 2014, this exact issue was brought up and the concensus at the time was that a weapon which was not optimal against a particular body type (piercing vs skeleton) would not give such a huge penalty as to be crippling, only that it would be just somewhat disadvantageous. So if you took the situation where you're facing a skeleton, the class wielding a blunt weapon (crush) might see their max hit be 110% the max hit listed on the weapon, the class wielding a neutral weapon like sword (slash) would see 100% while a piercing weapon would see 90% of their max damage. A noticeable differenc but not crippling.
If they take this idea off the back burner I would expect a similar outcome because VR is not likely to allow any class that has a limited weapon pool to be outright gimped when facing against an NPC of a body type for which their weapons are sub optimal.
Vandraad said:GoofyWarriorGuy said:The most recent round table i believe it was jappa said something to the effect of we want all weapon choices to matter throughout the game even as players level up. These two things among other pieces of data I have read would lead me to belive that almost 100% weakness and strengths to certian attack types will be in the game making weapon type and choice matter, as well as provide THIS weapon is best for This situation and THAT weapon is BEST for THAT situation giving a greater value to player style and choice.
So as @BogusBooty said, this was a plan from early on in development and in the very earliest streams we did hear a lot about this idea. They referred to 'Body Types' that would be weak or resistant to different types of physical damage such as Crushing, Slashing, Piercing, etc...
Eventually though this idea was put on the back burner. This was because some classes do not have much selection for weapon types; Dire Lord can only use Slashing weapons, and Monks may be limited to Crushing type weapons (unless we see piercing or slashing fist weapons). This means that classes with such limitations would be unable to compensate for Enemy Body type resistances to those weapon types.
In those early discussions, circa late 2013/early 2014, this exact issue was brought up and the concensus at the time was that a weapon which was not optimal against a particular body type (piercing vs skeleton) would not give such a huge penalty as to be crippling, only that it would be just somewhat disadvantageous. So if you took the situation where you're facing a skeleton, the class wielding a blunt weapon (crush) might see their max hit be 110% the max hit listed on the weapon, the class wielding a neutral weapon like sword (slash) would see 100% while a piercing weapon would see 90% of their max damage. A noticeable differenc but not crippling.
If they take this idea off the back burner I would expect a similar outcome because VR is not likely to allow any class that has a limited weapon pool to be outright gimped when facing against an NPC of a body type for which their weapons are sub optimal.
Limiting the differences to a damage bonus / penalty isn't very interesting. I would much rather see different bonuses / procs for each type, so the decision to switch is strategic and not simply min/maxing.
For instance, crushing could include a chance to damage armor and daze while piercing has a chance to cause internal bleeding. Some mobs would be more resistant to specific procs (skeletons not having an issue with internal bleeding, for example), so some weapon types are still more advantageous against specific mobs. But the difference should be more than just damage, otherwise its only about numbers, and that gets boring for many people.
Mob status / teammate abilities should synergize as well (not in a combo-memorizing way, but in a way that feels natural and intuitive). For example, if two melee characters are fighting a mob that can block, having one character attack with a slashing weapon will make the mob more vulnerable to piercing damage (because the slashing weapon parries / blocks the mob's weapon better). Thus, players can coordinate in an easy to see way that doesn't require a lot of pre-planning.
Also, it would make sense if certain weapon types had a better chance of blocking specific weapon types, but that this be visual, so it's intuitive and doesn't require memorizing every match-up. Additionally, making weapon types positional adds to the tactics and is also intuitive.
So, rather than memorizing spreadsheet match-ups, I know that my piercing weapon is more effective when used from behind and less effective vs shields, so if I see a shield, I know to switch to smashing. No Alt+Tab to reference the Wiki site needed. This can be further enhanced by having mobs sometimes switch weapons mid fight to take advantage of the same mechanic.
I have hope that this will still be significant enough to make it valuable for melees to have a selection of weapons with them at all times. Both for my enjoyment of playing melees, and as a future Crafter of Weapons.
One important piece of info hasn't been posted in this thread, which is older than the examples Goofy posted. But I don't know of it being specifically recanted by VR and gives good solutions to the 'Dire Lord problem' as well as the general limitations of various Classes being limited to only a few weapon types.
From a forum post by Joppa in 2018:
"We're considering the idea that 2H weapons (because of the size/weight and subsequent power of each strike) would bypass the penalty of a body type that may be resistant to that damage type. This would give Dire Lords the option to switch from Dual-Wield to a 2Handed weapon when fighting a Skeleton, a Stone Golem, etc. (NPCs with Body Types resistant to slashing)"
"There will be unique weapons that have a primary and secondary damage type. A Poleaxe, for example (do a google search for "poleaxe" and you'll see what I mean) - the primary damage type of a Poleaxe would be Edged, while the secondary damage type would be Blunt. Weapons like this are designed to give individual weapons the ability to be effective against multiple Body Types, allowing DL's to satisfy their Edged weapon requirement and still be effective against Body Types that are resistant to slashing."
For DL particularly, which I plan to play, I can imagine a Great Axe having Slashing & Bludgeon damage, while a Great Sword could have Slashing & Piercing damage. This would help DL (and really all the limited Classes) cover the full range of melee damage types.
I also recall from playing AC long ago that there was a weapon class (that functionally defined your 'Class' in the game) named UA. There were exactly like the weapons Monks will use in Panth. And they covered Slash, Pierce and Bludgeon with no obstacles to logic or esthetics. I know of nothing said so far by VR that suggests a Monk can't have the same range of damage types.