New Armor System in TES V? : The Elder Scrolls Series Discussion

» Mon May 31, 2010 7:35 pm

A crossbow could penetrate plate armor fairly well at SHORT range (the speed of a bolt drops rapidly), until the armorers began beefing up the briastplates even more. You could hurt someone with one by hitting other areas, but it was hard to kill them. Earlier, regular bows could pierce chain or even plate to a limited degree, using heavier-tipped arrows with reduced range, but still had a higher chance of glancing off the smooth plates. Eventually, the chest plates became so thick that the early guns wouldn't penetrate them, but you couldn't wear them effectively on foot; it took a horse to travel any reasonable distance. Note that the Spanish Conquistadores wore almost no armor other than heavy briastplate and helmet, yet were still very much dependent on their horses to get around.

» Mon May 31, 2010 4:20 pm

@Kovacius @Najaknevrec Thanks for clearing that up. I thought arrows and bolts were a little more effective than that. I guess I was wrong.

» Mon May 31, 2010 7:19 pm

The armor definitely needs to be the way it was in Morrowind where you could wear separate pauldrons, gloves, things like that. However; you should also have the ability to "dye" your armor different colors. I mean, if you're going to brutally slaughter things, why not do it in style?

EDIT: also, I HATED how in Oblivion the armor leveled with you and there were only about 10 set of different armors. In fact, I believe that the whole leveling with you thing needs to be gotten rid of. In Morrowind, there were a lot of suits of armor to choose from and that's honestly something I'd like to see implemented into the next TES game.

» Mon May 31, 2010 7:38 pm

yeah Morrowing armor equipment need to be back or a similar one.

I too, really really really really hope they bring back MW's equipment system

.. I was seriously disapointed when i put on a robe and the only other armor piece i coudl equip was a bloody helmet... svcked... I've never talked to anyone who prefers OB's equip system, so im prayin to Allah that Beth will listen to their fans and bring back the system we all love...

Anyway, as far as the actual system goes, I never honestly used medium armor is MW... so i wouldn't mind it not returning.. Light and heavy is fine.. (I do hope for short / long blade tho)..

Also to the guy who claimed ppl only want extra pieces of gear to enchant it, I'll be the 1000th person to tell you this, but I feel this opinion needs to be voiced loud and clear; No we don't want it to be uber powerful.. RPG's are about customizing your character, a big part of that is the gear.. therefore it's [censored]in awesome to be wearing cloth under armor and robe over it all... furthermore it's cool for RP to do "gladiator style" and only wear armor on one arm

and even if we enchant them is our choise,this is a single player game series ,it would hurt no one.

» Mon May 31, 2010 4:48 pm

My system:
Light armor is more resistant to crushing attacks like a chop from a hammer, but less resistant to sharp attacks such as stabs and slashes from swords. Heavy Armor is more resistant to sharp attacks, and less resistant to crushing attacks. But the overall protection of heavy armor would be better eg. An Iron cuirass blocks 10 damage of a hammer chop (its weakness) and a Leather cuirass blocks 12 damage of a hammer chop (its strength). But while Heavy armor would give much better protection against damage, Light armor would make it much easier to avoid being hit in the first place, using the armor primarily as a backup. There would have to be a Dodge ability, similar to blocking, but requiring Agility, rather than Endurance. Dodging in Light armor would be much more effective than Dodging in Heavy armor, as taking hits in Heavy armor is much less damaging than taking hits in Light armor.
Also, armor would not take away a certain percentage of the damage, it would take away a certain amount. If your character had 10 Damage Resistance, and you were hit with a 5-damage attack, 0 damage would get through. If you were hit with a 20-damage attack, 10 damage would get through. Armor condition would determine how much Damage Resistance is offered, as always.

Hopefully though, combat becomes more lethal, and blocking and dodging becomes your primary means of staying alive, rather than slapping on your best armor and rushing in.

» Mon May 31, 2010 6:37 pm

Segregating items that normally come in pairs makes no sense from a logicical standpoint, and it makes no sense from a game design standpoint, and Bethesda thankfully nipped that brainfart in the bud.

EDIT: And Infernal makes another good point - nobody wants to wear boots from two different sets because that would only screw up your ability to move effectively because of different thicknesses, flexabilities and weights. So why wear different gauntlets and pauldrons when that would only screw up your sense of balance and your ability to handle things with both hands? All it does is make you look like a clown or something out of some hack's Deviantart account.

Would you like to hear the most obvious and sensicle solution to your problem?

Wear Two of Each Item.

I didn't find that hard to come up with. I fail to see any problems. It wouldn't be heavier, because paired armour would be twice as heavy. It wouldn't be more expensive, because paired armour would be twice as expensive. It wouldn't have a higher armour rating, because paired armour would have twice the armour rating. It wouldn't have more enchantability, because paired armour would have twice the enchantability.

Seriously.. Some people... :facepalm:

Do you suggest that people should be forced to play into your gameplay style? Just because you like to wear two of each item, it doesn't mean everyone else does.

I always wear two of each item in Morrowind myself, and statements like this annoy me.

» Tue Jun 01, 2010 12:35 am

Morrowind's style with greater variety of armor and clothing

» Mon May 31, 2010 9:09 am

@Kovacius @Najaknevrec Thanks for clearing that up. I thought arrows and bolts were a little more effective than that. I guess I was wrong.

Arrows and bolts were effective against the majority of the lightly armored (if at all) masses of peasantry, and reasonably effective against the moderately armored regulars. It was of limited usefulness against the massively armored knights, who were essentially the "tanks" of their day, and represented a small proportion of most armies. Even then, an arrow or crossbow bolt could still inflict crippling injury, especially at shorter ranges, although typically not a fatal one. On horse, the Knight was vulnerable to having his mount shot out from under him; on foot, his mobility and vision were severely restricted, and he became vulnerable to being outflanked and encircled. First, a Backplate is not as strong as a briastplate; second, those archers also typically carried daggers, and many of the previously injured Knights suddenly became prey to gangs of the lighter troops.

The main advantage of crossbows over bows was that it took a high degree of skill and constant training to hit targets with a bow. Any conscript could point a crossbow in the right general direction and pull the release, which suddenly placed lethal power in the hands of the average peasant. The threat to the social order was far more serious than the actual military effectiveness of the weapon.

One "problem" with MW's crossbows was that they always did rated damage, even if you didn't take sufficient time to rearm them. You could "spam" bolts at an absurd rate. In actuality, the reload time is considerably more than that of a conventional bow.

» Mon May 31, 2010 9:48 pm

I really do wish they gave you the option of wearing clothes under your armour. Not in the sense that the clothes add HP to your AC but for the role playing. For that matter Robes too. That was one of the biggest things i fell in love with in MW. Id always have the brown robe with the hood on it on at all times.
Think of NPC wearing a plain gray cloak running to attack you and you don't know if he has chitin or glass under it.

i love this idea because then for all of us mages, we now can have more magicka due to enchanted clothing and armor!!

» Mon May 31, 2010 8:22 pm

The thing about armor before guns was that the stronger the metal was, the lighter the suit of armor was. The most cumbersome armor was chain mail, the least cumbersome of metal armors that were made for battle was plate mail. Not the parade or jousting armor, mind you. Soldiers always fought better and longer when the armor is lighter. This meant that whenever a stronger steel was invented, the armor became thinner to save weight while giving equal or better protection. The strongest plate armor in the game should be the lightest. It also helps that plate mail is appropriately strapped to the body to spread the weight around instead of letting most of it hang from the shoulders like chain mail. Leather armor should get heavier as it gets stronger, and there should be a great variety of animals to use the hides of. Daedra, minotaurs, imps, goblins, ogre, and so on.

A crossbow could penetrate plate armor fairly well at SHORT range (the speed of a bolt drops rapidly), until the armorers began beefing up the briastplates even more. You could hurt someone with one by hitting other areas, but it was hard to kill them. Earlier, regular bows could pierce chain or even plate to a limited degree, using heavier-tipped arrows with reduced range, but still had a higher chance of glancing off the smooth plates. Eventually, the chest plates became so thick that the early guns wouldn't penetrate them, but you couldn't wear them effectively on foot; it took a horse to travel any reasonable distance. Note that the Spanish Conquistadores wore almost no armor other than heavy briastplate and helmet, yet were still very much dependent on their horses to get around.

Also to add, the natives freaked out when they saw horses.

» Mon May 31, 2010 8:59 pm

On armor skills, one idea I'm toying around with in regards to an ES tabletop ruleset is the idea of armor skills not really influencing how protected you are so much as influencing just how much that wearing armor of a given type impacts certain other skills - Athletics, Acrobatics, Sneak, perhaps the various magic skills, so on - with higher levels of an armor skill letting you reduce or eliminate the armor check penalty from wearing it. If you're naturally gifted in attributes that control skills affected by armor, or if you simply don't give a darn about the skills that get penalized for wearing armor, you can just bypass armor skills outright.

One other reason I'm glad as hell the clownsuit system from Morrowind's gone and hopefully won't make a return is that it increases the amount of clutter that you have to go through in regards to a base suit of armor by almost 40% while insinuating a couple of lapses of logic - like who in their right mind is going to seperate a good and sound pair of gauntlets or pauldrons, for instance (besides Vivec, but he's got problems of his own - even that nutjob Almalexia can dress herself properly, for what little it's worth). And the only gauntlets/pauldrons that don't come as a pair's Wraithguard and one of those horny fist gauntlets, the second of which was an oversight by the devs, so it ain't like the devs are giving you much in the way of incentive to go all mis-matched outside of the plot mcguffen.

Segregating items that normally come in pairs makes no sense from a logicical standpoint, and it makes no sense from a game design standpoint, and Bethesda thankfully nipped that brainfart in the bud.

EDIT: And Infernal makes another good point - nobody wants to wear boots from two different sets because that would only screw up your ability to move effectively because of different thicknesses, flexabilities and weights. So why wear different gauntlets and pauldrons when that would only screw up your sense of balance and your ability to handle things with both hands? All it does is make you look like a clown or something out of some hack's Deviantart account.

I'm glad we agree on the boots thing. I strongly disagree with you on pauldrons and gauntlets though. Alot of people like the asymetric look, and who cares if it's realistic? Noone can carry such huge armors anyway... THe issue I had wiht the boots was that two different sizes of boots would cause graphical errors, not that it's silly cause of balance or anything like that. YOu are free to not look like a clown in morrowind, but it makes alot more sense to give all the players who enjoy customizing their look the ability to do so.

» Mon May 31, 2010 2:48 pm

And another thing:

Segregating items that normally come in pairs makes no sense from a logicical standpoint

Logic doesn't matter in a game. I don't want it to be overly realistic, I play games to escape from reality. In a game where people can shoot fire out of thier arms, and can summon creatures from thin air, realism has no place.

It's all about the gameplay. You don't see the magic system being banned because it's unrealistic.