» Tue Sep 07, 2010 3:51 pm Equipment
On your overall quest to survive, you'll still need to rely on your tools, in addition to your wits. Some of your equipment can be found in the Wastes, some need to be bought or earned, and others need to be made. However, I suggest some drastic changes.
Condition: compared to Fallout 3, most "factory made" items (combat armor, assault rifles etc.) have their Condition increased significantly. Makeshift weapons on the other hand will deteriorate much faster as their Condition compared to Fallout 3 has hardly changed. Of course, some makeshift weapons are so basic that they can hardly degrade (for Fallout 4, a lead pipe for example).
Availability: most factory made weapons have become scars. Compared to Fallout 3 their availability has been cut down to 33%. This however should not be much of an issue since those weapons have a greater Condition than they had before. This principle is to increase the feeling of survival; everything has become more valuable due to rarity. People are therefore more likely to cling to their possessions and defend them at all cost more than in Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 it was often too easy to find a replacement or some other item from which to repair. The player now needs to take care more of what it has rather than switch his tool with others.
Uniqueness: the amount of unique weapons will be cut down to approximately 20% compared to Fallout 3. This is to reduce the chance of players making it a personal quest to get a unique item at an early stage of the game during a replay. In other words, compared to the game world, the player would have too much an advantage over the world through the knowledge obtained from a previous run of the game. But don't worry, there is a new feature.
Personalization: Weapons that have been used extensively can become personalized. A personalization is something like your weapon getting a Perk of its own, and like the player can have multiple Perks, so could a weapon have multiple "characteristics" gained through personalization. Let's say that you killed some 28-30 people with a .32 Hunting Rifle. You receive a message that your weapon has received its first new characteristic. This new characteristic, in case of the Hunting Rifle, can be:
-increased damage
-increased % Condition and repair effect
-increased accuracy
-decreased reload & rearm time
In case of a Combat Knife:
-increased damage
-increased % Condition and repair effect
-increased Limb damage
-added/increased dmg over time
-increased attack speed
-increased Sneak critical damage (in %)
Blunt melee weapons, such as a Police Baton would not receive a dmg over time or increased Sneak critical damage, but would receive a chance to knock a target unconscious (guaranteed when Sneaking, with higher ranks of this characteristic increasing the time of the unconscious state).
There are penalties for this: dropping or trading a personalized weapon and leave it for 3 days will cause this weapon to disappear from the game world. Also, the characteristics added to the weapon will have no effect on NPCs as the characteristics are meant to create a bond between the user and the weapon. Another downside is that when finding a similar weapon in greater condition, it is often better to sacrifice this "pristine" weapon in favor of the personalized one, even if it means that most of the "pristine" condition is not transferred to the personalized weapon. Last but not least, after each personalization, a weapon needs to be used slightly more to receive a new characteristic than it would before, just as the player needs to gather more experience with each level.
None the less, through this system players will have less use of unique weapons as it is even possible for a basic weapon to exceed a unique one. Although unique weapons can also be personalized, they should do so much slower.
In short, the longer you use and maintain one and the same weapon, the better and more efficient it becomes.
(I'm not sure if after each personalization a weapon should receive a random characteristic or a player chosen one. In case of replayability, I favor the random characteristic as it would never be certain what characteristic it should receive, with the exception of sneak attacks, and the characteristic can be added instantly instead of having to wait until the player is safe. On the other hand, when it comes to player control, I can understand that players would prefer to choose the characteristics and would gladly be safe first to consider the options.)
Some technical information: every character ingame would have 100 Weapon Experience Points (WXP). The percentage of damage dealt to a character with a certain weapon would also be the percentage of WXP added to that weapon. Once 100 WXP points have been collected by the weapon, it receives a KillValuePoint (KVP). When, lets say, the .32 Hunting Rifle collected 30 KVP it gains its first personalization. Required WXP does not vary per weapon, but required KVP does. Two things happen on a first personalization:
1-Both wielder and personalized item receive the same, randomly generated unique ingame code. The wielder or "user" code starts out with a U and the item code with an I, followed by the generated digits. Also, players can (or must) give the item a new name (to better seperate it from others).
2-Players can add their first unique characteristic to the item (choosable characteristics vary depending on the type of item). The characteristic will be added to the U-code (therefor, the "user") and will only become active when the user has the corresponding I-code equipped. When handing over the "personalized" item to a companion, U and I codes become seperated, disallowing the companion to make use of the special characteristics of that item. As mentioned before, when dropping or trading a personalized item (abandoning) for 3 days (72 ingame hours) the item disappears, and with it, the U and I code, therefor removing the unique characteristics. However, when stashing the I-code item (Dresser, Safe, Desk, to name a few), both U an I codes remain intact.
The overall idea for this system is that a well used and maintained item can "level" with the player, rather than losing favor over other items. In this way, a Hunting Rifle would be useful well over, lets say, level 14 where as in FO3, its value dropped towards level 12, after that it was mostly traded for something else (Assault Rifle, or players made their hunt for a unique replacement). It should also give players the feeling of item-player bonding, and it also reduces the need for unique items as players basicly make their own unique items. Not sure how far the limit of personalizations per item should be, but players could carry more than one personalized item with them, even more of the same type.
