Different defenses can work against all types of dmg, while being functionally different. Like Resistances reducing dmg by %, and armor/defense reducing it by flat numbers. Each of these will have different strengths and weaknesses then.
But I really agree with others above, it could be interesting if armor pieces also had somewhat different amount of armor against dmg types.
Not just against physical, but all the dmg types, depending on the armor type.
Like a fur armor giving more cold reduction than fire reduction.
With P/F/C/L/P being the 5 dmg types:
Fur armor
Defenses: 800 P|500 F|1000 C|500 L|500 P
Inherent: Active Dodge recharges 5% faster
Note: Since armor/defense values are inherent to using gear, they should be fairly weak vs. resistance affixes, since using a resistance affix comes with the cost of not using some other affix. While you get the armor/defense values for free.
Then there should of course be affixes that increases armor/defense too (both flat value, and increasing the inherent values on the item by a %), and those could be similar in power to resistance affixes.
I used to really like the idea of the cloth/leather/metal armor giving unique stats like mana for cloth, dodge for leather and more armor for metal. PoE did that. Grim Dawn half way did it too.
I’d like to see something more innovative. Armor or defense is the base stat for every material type of armor. Heavier armor has a strength requirement and detrimental effects if you cannot make the strength requirement. It might be slower attack/movement speed (or more fatigue - depends on game mechanics), lower dodge and mana regeneration penalty.
Thankfully, they’re on the right track with that, as certain enemies would be more likely to drop certain item types. Just need to do the same with certain affixes.
This is basically what we have in D2: heavy armors with str req and penalties - and no one uses them because of that (useful only for mercs as penalties don’t apply there).
Eg. 1000 Armor could give you 30% Physical Damage Reduction and 20% Damage Reduction to all other Elements. That is how it works in Last Epoch.
I prefer more obvious variant for armor as an aspect of combat. Like, if you get 20 armor, you understand that each enemy attack will deal 20 damage less. Actually this refers to all combat elements. The perfect system for me is when you understand everything immediately, no need to use calculators, endless tests, read formulas, explanations etc.
What penalties are you talking about? Besides that, strength was a requirement for equipping heavy armor. I’m talking about being able to equip heavy armor regardless of strength, but if you don’t meet the strength “requirement” then you suffer penalties.
Well, you can hover over that amount in your Character Sheet and see how your Flat Value translates into a Percentage Value or both the Flat and the Percentage Value are shown in the same box. So that is not really an issue.
And also some degree of understanding can and should be expected imo. I can see that it can go too far/too complex, but the same is also true for the opposite end.
Makes no sense to have movement restrictions with all the superhuman feats our characters can do, that becasue they equipped a heavy piece of armor they move slower. If so , then the Barb should have zero mobility due to equipping 4 weapons.
Would there be no speed penalty if you had 25 pieces of heavy armor in your backpack, but wearing only light armor?
There is no need for movement/speed restrictions with gear. Leave weight to survival and full fledged RPGs.
One the one side there is Strong RPG Realism (where everything has to “make sense”, like having a backpack full of weapons & armor slowing you down), and on the other side of the spectrum Strong Streamlining (with little RPG realism, eg. no Attributes).
But in the middle you can both satisfy a degree of RPG Realism with a certain mechanic without that mechanic becoming too inconvenient.
That way you can have a backback full of armor and weapons and a Barb equipped with four weapons not slowing you down, while at the same time your Barb being slowed down by the heavy armor he has equiped.
The argument that people make who fall strongly on the “Strong RPG Realism” Scale / favor strong RPG Realism, is that thinks have to be believable an have consistent rules/mechanics that make sense in their established universe due to reasons of immersion.
If there are no consistent rules and if things are not believable and/or relatable, then the immersion gets broken and that is a fair, good and true argument and should not easily be discarded.
But this is where it isn’t believable at all because of the inconsistencies. You can carry a backpack full of heavy armor with no speed penalty, but the moment you equip 1 item of heavy armor all of a sudden you are slowed down. This is why it doesn’t need to be in a game like Diablo. What about holding 40 light armors vs 1 heavy armor?
There is no point for this type of realism because it cannot be achieved without such inconsistencies. Otherwise you’d have to introduce encumbrances. With that is gold, porions, mats, quest items and such going to count? Because if not, more inconsistencies.
My whole point from the first discussion I entered about this stuff is you just cannot cherry pick what is to be believable and isn’t. Since everyone has different views on that.
The more realism you bring into these games the less believable they become due to the ludonarrotive dissonance. I know that’s not the term, but it’s the closest I could think of. But basically we as players are being told, per the example about speed restrictions, is that heavy armor slows us down due to the weight. But you could be equipping 4 weapons of greater weight and up to 40 of the same armor that’s slowing us down in our bag without any consequence.
It would be best to say light armor has 24% damage reduction. Light 36%. Heavy 50% and call it a day. Because with all the jumping, spinning, running, and not stop combat actions we are performing, having a piece of armor equipped slow us down, but not the dozens in our back just becoms silly.
The realism aspect is irrelevant imo.
It can make perfect sense to give heavy armor a speed penalty. No matter if it is realistic or not. But because if 1) offers a counter balance to the higher defense, and 2) offers gear diversity.
That characters can carry a backpack full of armors is not an argument against speed penalty on equipped armor. It doesn’t matter that we can do that. It can be explained through all kinds of more or less silly reasons, if we for some reason wanted to. Our backpack is clearly magical, and invisible no less.
Now, since we should try to fulfill the two above goals regardless of realism, you might as well throw in stuff that the realism lovers might consider somewhat realistic. It doesnt hurt. It should never be prioritized above design of course, so if it did hurt, then ignore the realism.
But stuff like; heavier armor offers more protection, instead of making cloth armor offer the most protection? Sure, why not. It makes some amount of sense.
Anyway, imo a speed penalty is not a great penalty to use on armor types. I’d focus more on stuff like
Resource regen, Active dodge/passive dodge etc. Also somewhat like Garlands examples earlier in the thread.
Why would you ever use anything else than heavy armor then?
Btw, besides armors having inherent bonuses, which imo they very much should, such as Cloth = Lower resource cost, Leather; Lower cd on active dodge; fur: faster attack speed, plate: higher CC reduction (on top of the latter armors having more defense of course) and so on.
How about having bonuses for committing fully/mostly to one armor type?
Could be a default thing for everyone, or something you needed to pick in Passives or Paragon tiles.
Like;
If all your armor is cloth you gain 5% higher max resistances - except physical resist.
or
For each piece of cloth armor equipped you gain 1% higher max resistainces (max 5%) - except physical resist.
If all your armor is platemail you gain a 5% chance to shrug off an enemy immobilizing CC effect (Stun etc., but not Slow) within 1 sec of being CC’ed. Afterward you deal 20% increased dmg for 2 seconds.
or
For each piece of platemail equipped you gain 1% chance (max 5%) to shrug off an enemy CC effect within 1 sec of being CC’ed. Afterward you deal 20% increased dmg for 2 seconds.
Honestly if there are penalties, I’d actually perfer the penalties to be based on the type and the theme of the item. For example, armors (minus unique rarities) obtained from Scosglen region have a chance of giving cold resistance, but also have a chance to drop with negative fire resistance; or with armors obtained from Dry Steppes, having bonus fire resistance but also negative cold resistance; or armors obtained from Hawezar, having bonus shadow or poison resistance, but negative lightning resistance.
However, while I’d want that, I have no expectations of it happening.
While the end result is the same, imo just give each armor a bonus, instead of penalties. In the end, not having the bonus can be considered a penalty. But for many people psychologically, it feels better.
I think negative affixes in general have lots of potential, but for something that will be on all armor pieces, maybe skip the penalties.
So if it is just a chance to get +5% fire resist/-5% cold resist on items? Yeah, that can be a good affix imo.
For inherent resistances/dmg type defense on armors, just give less of it, instead of negative values imo.
Like above, it helps all your defenses, just some more than others.
Having the illusion of realism is better than no realism and no illusion of realism at all.
If you don’t have some degree of groundedness / realism, then people will feel too disconnected from from the game. It would feel too “game-y”.
Like in D3 you can get access to every skill and upgrade and simply swap them out almost any time you want to. You could say that this is fine because “no realism needed”, but it turned out that people disliked the system for this reason and others.
Or why shouldn’t all characters in the Diablo universe be able to levitate and shoot unicorn rainbow rays out of their eyes, or to jump from Harrogath on top of Mount Arreat?!
As I said, the point is not to get rid or explain away inconsistencies and the point is also not to not create inconcistencies in the first place, instead they should be embraced to some degree / an appropriate degree.
When you go too far into one direction of the RPG Realism - Streamline Scale, the game either gets too boring to play (like your character also having to eat, to sleep, to rest, pay their bill for for their accommodations, etc), or too disconnected / too unimmersive / not grounded enough.
That is why you want to simulate this kind of realism when you let equipped heavy armor also slow down your movement speed. It also gives these items more of a unique identity (aside from also having slightly higher defense).
By that logic it would be perfectly fine to let your Druid shoot a rainbow laser out of his eyes and then jump from Skovos to the top of Mount Arreat, because “we don’t need realism in a game where you can have 20 heavy armors in your backpack and not be slowed down by them”…
Sure, not everyone agrees on everything, but there is at least some sense of what is within or around the realm of realism. You don’t need 100% of the people to be on board with that.
And again, something like letting heavy armor also having detrimental effects (like decreased movement speed) also gives these items a more unique and grounded identity, which creates more immersion.
Letting the stuff that you have in your inventory slow you down is realistic, but it also would have a much more detrimental for the gameplay experience than it would add positive stuff in form of immersion.
Ludonarrative Dissonance is the correct term in this context, I agree.
However, Ludonarrative Dissonance does not matter in this specific aspect.
Or maybe your Character has a Bag of Holding as his backpack…
This is a mechanic I really don’t want to see dredged up from other games. Stamina in D2 was just an annoyance to bother low level characters, and then eventually be effectively ignored by high-level characters. Basic movement speed for getting around the map just needs to be a constant in the game.
Think of it like watching a movie. Do you want to watch scenes where the army is exhausted after an all day march, sits down to rest, takes off their armor, eats and sleeps? Do you want to watch the all-day march? While it’s realistic, we don’t care. Cut the scene to show passage of time and pick it back up when the army’s ready to march again. Same in a game. Cut the unnecessary parts out and just let us play the heroic part.
The way I look at it, the character sheet UI is just a model, right? It tells us what our character can do. The idea of having weight restrictions is to tell the player they’ve reached the physical limits of the character. The character can only wear so much armor. Right. That’s why there are stat and level requirements to equip the items. We’ve already modeled that restriction. The character can only carry so much loot. Absolutely right, and we model that with the size of the inventory. Collect all he can carry and your barb clicks on an item and refuses to pick it up. We don’t need additional penalties because we’ve already modeled the physical system.
The advantage of doing it this way is that it makes the choices simple and removes annoying penalties that just aren’t fun for the player that could be imposed by a different model. It focuses the player on the fast-paced combat and the loot hunt, rather on constantly trying to balance factors he really doesn’t care about.
I could see stamina return, in name only, as the resource system for the Active Dodge. Just a fun little callback.
But yeah, in D2 it was terrible.
Balancing factors is pretty much what itemization, and the character, is all about though.
For some of us, it is the game, with the action combat being secondary.
Nothing wrong with having stuff that makes heavy armor have a negative side to it, to balance its positive sides (= offering better protection).
Not for realism, but for balancing, for making interesting build choices. for having a bunch of factors we need to take into account in our builds.
Sure, I also am not a fan of slowing movement speed with heavy armor, and I seriously hate when games add weight systems to the inventory, it is first thing I mod out of Bethesda games…
But if there is no weight penalty, then we need that ‘different model’ however. It should not just be replaced by nothing.
For the equipped armor that is, not the inventory. In my view, the character stash should still be virtually unlimited, I see no reason to ever restrict that (inventory is different, it would be a mess to go through if it was unlimited, and probably also lead to bad gameplay, of picking up absolutely everything).
When it comes to different modes, please dont bring back attribute requirements They make weight systems look good in comparison…
If Blizzard go through a whole process of making a remotely decent attribute system (still waiting on that…) it would be a shame to ruin it by tying it to which armors we can equip.
Lvl requirements is not a relevant restriction. It can restrict how soon you can equip an item, but it cant exactly serve as a balance point, nor a differentiator, between cloth and plate armor.
They make weight systems look good in comparison…