Weapon Update

So I'm going to at least put forth an effort to  take this whole Devlog thing seriously, at the very least it'll help me.

So, if you're playing Act 1 you may have noticed something about the weapons.  Barring a few exceptions. every weapon has two things in Brackets [Weapon Tier] and [Subclass]. The easy one here is the subclass. There are 8 weapon types in this game. Fist, Axe, Sword, Spear, Dagger, Bow, Tome, and Staff. (Note: The order listed has a purpose.) However, while each weapon has a named equivalent that acts as the base of the weapon, for example, the main Axe class is highly defensive but lacks resistance, it has high attack and serviceable magic. The Great Sword subclass retains the good attack of it's wood hating brother but replaces it's high defense with good magic. Everyone who can wield an axe now has the choice between physical bulk, or mix attacking.

But the tier level for a weapon become a problem. How it works right now is simple,  each weapon has a set of skills tied to the main weapon and its tier. The second image lists the two attacks that you obtain automatically by wielding a tier two fist weapon, and it's sub-classes. This isn't the whole issue, but the point of weapon skills is the idea that you can just stab people, why use magic when you have a sword that's it job. But the problem with that is the sub-classes, Axes have the classes of Axe, G.S. and Hammer... Axes and Great Swords can slash at targets, but hammers? This limits the range of skills designed to flesh out individual weapons, or pulls some silly logic. In reality no really cares if you slash with a rapier or thrust with a hammer in a video game, the real problem is the scaling.

See, the other point of weapon skills is to give players more unique attacks for in-between levels, sometimes characters don't want to learn moves every level up, no problem just equip a new weapon. Except the damage scaling in this game is absurd at times, my current damage number for the strongest spell is 100 might. Even excluding the character's input this is more health than most bosses in Act 1, it'll probably get higher. But that's the issue of the linear tier system, Tier 2 needs to be much more effective than tier one, which kinda defeats the purpose of a tier system like this, in game the NPC who nudges you on this mentions the idea of a high power low quality weapon compared to a low power high quality weapon, but really unless that log boosts your attack by several digits I can hardly think of scenarios where you'd want a low quality weapon, it's not that the system doesn't work it just doesn't work well.

So, my replacement is the [Q:P] system. The Quality:Power Score (QPS) system is a bit of a expansion on the original idea,  in most RPGs that don't use traditional elements they tend to use the Cut, Crush, Pierce, Whatever system. SMT uses the first three, sometimes pierce is shot, depends. SMT is good to go off here because I basically did what it does. There are now 12 physical skills types, with many asterisks on that, but the generic damage types come from their weapons, swords and axes both can cut, while a sword can pierce like a spear, the difference is the fact that the attacks are all generic, Axes and swords both use the same cut attack but this system lets me make each subweapon different from their main weapon, plus you can't slash with a rapier now. The way you know what skills the weapon has depends on the QP Score. The Q represents the weapon quality, the higher the Q number the more different moves you have access to, while the P score tells the strength of each option you have; A [5:1] weapon would have five unique weapon skills, all the weakest one, while a [1:5] weapon would have the best versions of all its skills, but it only has one skill.

The skill types are: Cut, Blow, Thrust, Arrow, Beam, Bind, there are four special classes of skills, Draw, priority moves, Trick, multi-hit, Smash, Lowers target defense, Seal, Silence, but evil. Lastly there are two extra skills, Construction and Kinesis which are moves that hit the opposite of their damage type, Construct is for Berserkers to throw magic, Kinesis is to cast fist.

While this system has some kinks to it I much prefer it to the prior tier system solely because it lets me make the weapons more unique.