Rock on. I'll do a shortened list for weapons.

This is for an Adamantium one handed broadsword. The 1-10 system is in relation to other weapon types, so Daedric would be the heavier material and something like Mithril would be the lightest material for weapons.

Weather Durability 5
Enchantability 8 (Very enchantable)
Slashing damage 8 (.5 on stabs)
Piercing damage 5 on stab (0 on slash)
Blunt 1 (Not a lot, usually not a factor against armor)
Repairability 3 (Hard to repair)
Shield spell attack 6 (How well you can attack through a shield spell)
Sound 6 (Not too quiet)
Shine 4 (Reflects some light, in regard to stealth)
Attractiveness 7 (Increases with good repair, decreases with wear)
Value 7
Weight 5

Here is a listing for a http://www.toledosword.com/im/Spiked_Mace_of_Bombaata.jpg

Weather Durability 3 (can rust without care)
Enchantability 3
Slashing damage 0
Piercing damage 4
Blunt 6
Repairability 8 (Easy to repair)
Shield spell attack 1
Sound 7
Shine 3
Attractiveness 2
Value 2
Weight 7

I agree with your assessment of the magic, I hope it works that way in the games.

I don't like the suggestions, they sound too complex too.

Maybe a little effects on certain armor like 10%- Fire Resistance on fur armor for example is fine, but armor sets affecting almost every stat and skill out there is too much. You can't carry every set of armor with you and keep them for the right occasion.

In OB, it only shows percentages. However the higher quality items do have a higher durability.

@ squeekers1234: The majority of the weapons did have two or more types of attacking in Morrowind (slash, chop, or trust I believe?), but IIRC that only changed the damage output and not damage type or effectivity against different armors.
While I did play Might and Magic when I was young(er), I'm not sure about how they dealt with resistances to different damage types.

Edit: Ninja'd, next time I'll refresh the page before posting my replies ^^"

@Moosa: I understand that you won't be able to carry 4 different armor sets with you (for example) all the time, but who says you constantly have to carry everything with you, or that you need to use several sets in the first place?
During the course of the game, it'll be a factor to take into account when picking the armor pieces you're wearing.
Also, you can just keep a few different sets at your home. If you decide to go out, you can take one or maybe two sets with you depending on what you'll be undertaking.

Thanks for your feedback either way.

And Shades, thanks again at listing the factors that would be relevant for the damage calculation.
The only thing I'm not sure about (for both armor and weapons) is if attractiveness should be set, as that could be based on value I guess. Besides, that would mostly matter for disposition instead of the damage calculation, which is the main focus of this topic.

Basically this, while I think this system is totally baller, it's too complicated. Not much in the sense of too hard to understand, but there are just too many stats for everything. You can't have 10 different armor sets with you at all times and switch between them as you fight different enemies. It just wouldn't work. You can give a few stats to armor like -10% resistance to armor but not this much. This simply can't be done with armor because it weighs too much. Maybe on some other kind of item you can put alot more stats and keep just a few on armor.


Oh and btw, you can't say that you have to take different armors for different jobs because people don't always have a destination. If I'm going to aimlessly wander around searching for new stuff, what armor will I take? You'd have to divide the whole map into different sections in that for example one section is filled with fire creatures and old temples that contain liches that have mostly lightning spells. I don't think this fits TES very well, dividing the map like this.

Exactly, but you have to tailor your armor to what your character will do in any given situation. He will be underpowered in some, overpowered in others, and middle of the road everywhere else. You just have to avoid the first and seek out the second, and on average you will be more successful in general.

@tcdj and squeekers...good to know. Did they display the health rating anywhere, like if you clicked on the item? Or was it something you could only access through the console commands?

Yeah, I suppose those should be combined.

It's not like they need to shove the numbers at you in game, they can just list the highlights at the armorer's shop. They'd say people like this armor for how enchantable it is, or this one for how durable it is, and not mention much more than that.

If you're going to wander and explore, I'd say wear the armor that does little against your endurance so you have some protection but aren't bogged down. If you can't beat those liches with what you're wearing or with the weapons you have, you can come back later with a better plan. Or use the armor you've got and be fast enough to avoid their spells.

Technically Ebony isn't really metal, so it shouldn't conduct electricity very well. Besides, it would just give such players more incentive to go beyond the most mundane sense of being a tank character. As much as I've enjoyed running around Morrowind chopping everything up without worrying about being shocked to death, I would love a game where I had that concern to challenge me. THAT'S how you crank up the difficulty of a game, not by just giving everything more health.



All the more reason to implement such things then.

In that case, you'll have to find a balanced combination so that you'll be prepared for anything (as good as possible, that is).
However, in the cases that you DO know where you are going, you can prepare yourself better than before.

Don't forget, there aren't that many enemies with magical attacks. A lot of them use common close-combat attacks like goblins, minotaurs, or even rats and mudcrabs for all i care.
To me, you make it sound like it'll become near impossible to defeat enemies using certain attacks when wearing the wrong armor, but by dodging, sneaking, or simply avoiding these enemies in the case of an encounter you can save your character.

The system will be another way of giving yourself and advantage if you know what you're getting into, and allows you to gain an advantage by switching weapons to be more effective (for example switching your fire-enchanted sword for a frost or shock one).
Or as Keltic Viking describes it:





As far as I know, you can only see the maximum health in the CS. There probably is a console command, but I have no idea what that'll be.



Tonal Architect, thanks for the support

I like the idea of several stats to consider when using armor, but too many stats would just be a pain.

These would be enough I think:

• Slash resistance
  
• Piercing resistance
  
• Blunt resistance
  
• Fire resistance
  
• Shock resistance
  
• Cold resistance
  
• Magic resistance
  
• Durability
  
• Weight
  
• Enchantment
  
• Value

Edit: Added an enchantement stat that limits any enchanting made to the item. Morrowind had it.
Edit edit: Forgot to add value.

I don't want this system per say but I would like to see that for example Dwemer and Elven items don't become obsolete once you get Glass, Daedric etc
I want to wear an Elven armor set without being gimped because the rest of the world wears Glass.
I guess they could give each set it's own special abilities?

i changed my armor stats in game so that all the heavy armors were similar to other heavy armors with differences in durablity and weight. i gave slightly higher armor rating to daedric and ebony and increased its durability but i made it way heavier. steel and dwarven armor was less protective and lower health but it was lighter. the differences were so small that if you wanted to you could go the whole game with full steel armor without being gimped. glass was more protective than elven but had less durability. etc.

i also did this with most of the weapons in game since ti made no sense that the imperial legion were all using the worst swords. iron and steel were essentially the same except that i made iron less durable to simulate rust and the fact that iron is more brittle. glass weapons were the best weapons to have but they were the least durable of all of them. i made ebony and daedric weapons powerful and super durable but extremely heavy. and so on. in the end it made the game world more organic feeling and less contrived. im definitely doing the same thing for skyrim.

shades system is super indepth. id be happy with just pierce, blunt, slash, fire, frost, shock, (insert other magic here) and then the weight and durability and any physical penatiles like sneak or agility and movement speed which bethesda already does anyways.

That's not what I meant. It isn't too complicated to understand, it's just way too much values. It doesn't matter if you hide or show them, it's just too much stats.


If some overall armors were added then I guess it would work better. But they would make the whole system obsolete. Why have all these different armors for all these different situations when you can have a few overall armors. The very specific armors will just be impractical. I don't want to take all these different armors nor do I want to go get a certain armor from my house to defeat that one lich in that one temple.



That's going to weigh too much. You can't take more than 2 maybe 3 armors or you will just have no more room for loot.



It should be near impossible or atleast very hard to beat something with the wrong kind of armor otherwise the whole system would be obsolete. Because to be honest, I wouldn't take the time to go into all of this if it didn't matter all that much.

Ofcourse most enemies have melee attacks, so why take all those extra anti magic armors if you are going to encounter very few mages or magic using enemies. I don't really see the point of this.

Also I don't know what you mean by dodging. How can you dodge an enemey in the elder scrolls?



But when do you actually know what you're getting into? I remember in oblivion I rarely knew what enemies I was going to encounter, even if I had a fixed destination for a quest or something. 99% of the time I had absolutely zero knowledge of what enemies there would be.


Lastly I'd like to add that I really support these kind of things, and I'd really like to see something like this implemented into the game. But I'm just trying to imagine how this would work and trying to produce some counter arguments, because honestly I don't think it would work in this form. ( assuming skyrim's world will be similar to oblivion ). It should either be downscaled and alot less detailed. ( note this is not dumbing-down. It's rather implementing something in a good way instead of a bad way ) Or you would need to make alot of changes to the world as the elder scrolls is now. Like what I mentioned before that different parts will mostly contain different kinds of enemies. Like the volcano area has alot of fire enemies for example. So you know what you are getting into and can prepare for it. With weapons you can make it alot more complicated than the armor because it's easier to have a few different weapons than it is to have differrent armors.

A balanced combination? as in, a combination of armor pieces from different sets?

...

Characters will wear the armor they are trained for, a warrior will wear heavy armor, a rogue/thief will wear light armor and a mage/caster will not wear armor at all. Wearing a piece of each set isn't going to look nice and it could be exploited to find the best cookie-cutter set. You can't anticipate all the attacks your enemies will throw at you, even the first goblin shaman you meet in the starter dungeon in Oblivion uses both fire and lightning spells.

Materials should matter, yes, Steel is obviously a better choice than Iron. The challenge should lie in acquiring it. Perhaps simple rules for armor types like if heavy armor provides more physical protection but light armor provides more magical resistance, that would be nice but a sheet-long list of stats each piece of armor will affect is way too much, even if it is not shown.

I wouldn't mind some armor stat variables but only if they applied to armor TYPES(Heavy, medium, light).

IMO (it's all opinions anyway), I suggest they keep the old tier system of armor. As in iron < steel < dwarven etc. BUT, there should be two different sets at the highest tier which are nearly identical(stat-wise) but have minor pros and cons.

Example: The strongest heavy armor sets are Daedric and Dragonbone. They provide roughly the same armor protection but Dragonbone has more magic resistance/enchanting capability, or vice-versa.

Just sayin'.

This seems to be a common fallacy. a man in steel plate WOULD be easy TO HIT as his armor acts a lighting rod. However, all the energy would still prefer his armor over surrounding environment (namely flesh) and would pass to ground (relatively) harmlessly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
As far as fire goes, being on fire would be bad. But not necessarily as bad as being exposed to raw flame. consider touching a Bunsen burner's flame. then consider touching one with fur. Fur lights, but not instantly, and the fact that there is ANYTHING in between you and the flame is better than nothing. Also, I like to think that magic fire intended to kill outright is much hotter than the energy released by some hair on fire. It should be (mild) damage over time at best. In all cases, the armor itself should take massive damage and deplete itself fairly quickly (allowing for a real weakness to magic) armor wear in oblivion was practically just a justification for armorer skill (and hammer weight) since armor lasts so long. when was the last time you picked up an NPC's armor and noticed it was too wore out to provide any protection? how did you defeat his armor if its in 90-99% perfect condition? armor's durability should directly relate to a persons "staying" power in a fight and not just be a justification for another skill. When your armors up, its time to run, full health bar or not.

Mail is very effective armor and should not be (necessarily) considered light. It could weight as much or more as plate. Its also very effective against piercing attacks, but if anything, it would be defeated by a pierce or a bludgeon. If anything, it shouldn't be considers 'weak' to piercing, it should be strong to piercing, but strong still to slashing.
I strongly agree with this logic on elemental magic and how it relates to real world (in the game) elements.

I think shade's system adds a lot of weight to an idea that is not mainstream gaming. Swords DO have mass. they DO do blunt damage. weapons shouldn't (realistically speaking ofc) be considered slash pierce OR blunt. A staff can pierce if you put enough force behind it. How many stories have you heard of tornado's pushing 2x4s thru brick walls?

Many people are complaining about having armor that doesn't fit the situation. This is not something to complain about, it is a feature not a fault. Part of the RP experience is to make meaningful choices, if your choices all are equally effective then you have not made a choice at all. go play progress quest. http://progressquest.com/
I'm not joking. play it. You owe it to the community. No DL, play in your browser. Will only take (literally) 30 sec to start.

I'd enjoy this a lot. Gathering a collection of armor sets to actually keep for once instead of just wearing nothing but glass or Daederic after a while would be a welcome change.

Gear-up for different jobs. It's an awesome concept.

in fact metal armor should make you imune to lightning because the lightning will find the easiest way to the ground and since metal is highly conductive and people are not so conductive the lightning should mostly pass from metal to ground directly

Especially for players like me who enjoy collecting all the suits of armor. In my house in Daggerfall, I've got them in piles.

I'm glad to see so many people have different views on this concept.
With all these different minds reflecting their own view on the base concept, we should be able to reach a balanced and interesting game-mechanic.

As for the 'balanced combination' I mentioned:
I meant one set consisting of a combination of pieces, that's useful against the enemies you expect to encounter.
Obviously you don't know "there will be Liches there and bandits here" but you do know that when you enter an ayleid ruin, you're likely to encounter undead and ghosts. Based on that info, you can decide that your current gear is inappropriate for the job or you can hop in and attempt to clear the dungeon.

As for dodging: I mean moving in an unpredictable pattern, so that the AI won't hit you with their spells or arrows, or moving behind obstacles to take cover during their shots and spells.



If you ask me, this concept shouldn't cause players to run around with twenty gazillion pieces of armor and weapons, but instead it should cause them to give more thought to their choices and cause the choices to have more noticeable consequences.
There is no 'best' anymore - just a 'best' for a specific purpose.

Also, if there's a middle way it wouldn't make the system obsolete. After all, you can still vary in using 'attack a' or 'attack b' (using either different weapons or spells) depending on the armor your opponent is wearing, and in case you do have a good idea of the damage types you'll be facing you can prepare yourself for this better.

Finally, @Kitzler: if you're looking at it like that, you'll have to take into account the type of boots someone is wearing, the ground he's walking on and if he's touching a wall/roof/object with his body or weapons (and if so, the materials that touch each other).
Now that's what I call too complex

I like most of the OP ideas. Armor should have its pros and cons depending on the material they are made of. There is also a system in game already that would help with disadvantages, which is the enchanting system. Using it, you should be able to alleviate or negate the drawbacks, and customize the armor you prefer based on your play style.

I agree with this. Carrying around 3 sets of armour for differnet situations is not fun and I can't carry all my phat loot. I dont mind being slower in heavy armour and noisier but different resistacnes probably all balance out in the long run. For example - you are in heavy plate and 1 enemy gets a bonus for using his hammer while his companion's arrows bounce off you. For the sake or realsim and depth , the game becomes cumbersome while adding very little benefit in the longer term. I could imagine a player chagnig armour mid battle quickly to deal with the threat which is not realistic just to get a stat boost.

Sounds fun, but it would actually become what hardcoe mode is to me in Fallout New Vegas: Annoying. Unless it was a toggle thing, then I'd have to say no.

Yes. :foodndrink:

I'd be all for Pierce & Blunt attack vulnerability in armors; or damage bonuses from energy while wearing reactive (or conductive :shocking:) clothing.

The same outfits should have a benefit though; be it incredibly affordable, or resistant to slashing attacks; or Blunt impacts. Enchanted armor could have its enchantments dispelled (temporary or permanent); even cause penalties if the enchantments made them wearable in the first place.

Hit sounds should reflect whether its metal or leather too IMO.

How would glass sound like?

Glass armor is too goofy to allow in a TES game, but I would attack it with baseballs, so it would sound like a window breaking.