Machaera Unleashed

[MarkInMKUK]

Maybe add a quest to release the souls - or at least to give them a chance to be released. One soul would elect to stay ... and thus you'd be able to keep the enchantments frozen at the level where you released the rest, and gain a sword "companion". Of course, you have to decide - is this soul a "good" character, a "bad" character, or what?

[WarRatsG]

I like the idea, but then freezing the enchantments would halt all progress, defeating the point of the mod. The whole point is that the sword gets better and better, limited only by play time. Maybe not "release" the souls, but something similar, or find an explanation to keep upgrading. I will think on this one, as I am struggling to come up with an ending where Machaera is "defeated" but play goes on as it did.

 

Good or bad.... Machaera is a collection of souls, not all human. "Good" is simply a living thing that follows "Human Morals", so no, Machaera is not necessarily "good". What I'm trying to say is a lion will not stop eating Gandhi because he was a "decent human being". It has no morals holding it back. It is hungry, therefore it eats. Is the lion is evil? Then when a hyena steals the kill, is it evil?

 

Hopefully you can see where I am coming from with this. I'm not trying to go all "Inception" or anything as trippy as that.

[fg109]

Ideas:

 

1. Possible lightning strikes on your enemy when weather is stormy

2. Possibility of enemy running away in fear on just seeing your sword

3. Increased chances of knock back

4. Retaining poisoned status for more than 1 strike

5. Chance of deathblow that drains all your magicka

[WarRatsG]

Ideas:

 

1. Possible lightning strikes on your enemy when weather is stormy

2. Possibility of enemy running away in fear on just seeing your sword

3. Increased chances of knock back

4. Retaining poisoned status for more than 1 strike

5. Chance of deathblow that drains all your magicka

 

1. I like that one, plus I've seen it done before. It should be possible.

2. Possibly.

3. Knock back, do you mean falling over or staggering? Falling over would be much easier.

4. Great one, I'll definitely look into that.

5. Sounds decent and do-able.

[fg109]

By knock back I meant staggering, but I guess just pushing them back a couple feet is fine. Falling would give the player too many free attacks while the enemy gets back up.

 

More ideas:

 

6. Chance of transforming the enemy into a rat (or any multitude of creatures) for a few seconds

7. Draining the user's health for increased damage

8. Ability to knock enemy back ~100 feet at the cost of all magicka (for running away)

9. Ability to summon illusory allies (NPCs with 1 health and 1 damage) to distract the enemy

10. Recover a small amount of user's health after each kill

 

I'm out of ideas that I know can be done (and which doesn't sound too game-breaking).

[nosisab]

As important as the effect itself is "how" it is triggered, may be immersion breaker stopping a heated battle to choose from menus.

 

From my own experience as modder and mainly as player, a weapon should limit do do a few special things and do it well and the seamless possible. Some proposed effects would be better as spells.

 

In the end, making the user too dependable on a weapon is not good idea. As good as it sounds, attaching the weapon growth directly to it's usage has some drawbacks although not bad thing if well balanced.

 

Sorry for mentioning once again that mod but I want only to pass the concepts behind it's idea... Afinity does not try to make everything by itself still it provides motives to the player to make use of every other mean to enhance his/her own abilities, be by gulping a few potions or releasing buffering spells. It benefits specially from some attributes and skill enhancing means. It makes some "curses" more dramatic too since they reduce it's power, this is intended, these curses are one the main weapons some foes have... the player should be "motivated" to care about them and try to compensate.

 

PS: In time, I could hotkey most those potion usage, but for the video purposes I deemed better to show it explicitly.

 

Still, finding a balance is the most difficult part of such kind of weapon design (as you'll notice as soon start actual field testing), so the enhancing effects as the cursing translate in form of percentages which don't make the battle neither too much easy nor impossible (except one to one where a critical can decide it quickly)... "luck" might play a substantial role (both the character attribute luck and the player's luck too) and it showed being the most difficult to balance, to an extent I'm not sure I got it already. Luck acts on chances of critical, which can be devastating with Afinity.

 

I invite you all reading this thread to see the last video with an ingame, non edited battle between a L6 character against 5 OOO L22 Sylvan rangers. This battle is against all odds for most weapons I know which are not blatantly "godlike". She died more than once while trying to make that video... her hope was all in that which her weapon would do relatively small damage on each enemy but it would do... always it connected a hit... if her, the character (and the player) had luck it could deliver critical hits which gave some space to breath or maybe decide that clash in a flash allowing concentrate in another enemy in a less crowded environment.

 

Being too much handcapped by low level, relative low blade skill and worsen block skill, is noticeable how sometimes she is hindered almost immobilized/staggered, or just too slow to lift the shield. Careful analyzes of the video show how she managed to make use of her main advantages, being long time low values recovering health/stamina potions better for this kind of battle than high value low working time ones. having a few spells on direct hotkeys helps a lot too (I love the Hotkey casting mod). Detect life intel is a must for any mage worthy this tittle.

 

But the point is: she don't need to worry with the weapon itself, she rely on the weapon to do what is needed to survive and can concentrate totally in the other gaming aspects. She don't need to equip that weapon all the time... she could leave it on a secure container for a long while, gain several levels and improve several skills... when, maybe drove by nostalgia, take it again, the weapon will be ready for her, adapt to her new status and be as good (or better yet) as before.

Edited July 13, 2011 by nosisab

[WarRatsG]

By knock back I meant staggering, but I guess just pushing them back a couple feet is fine. Falling would give the player too many free attacks while the enemy gets back up.

 

More ideas:

 

6. Chance of transforming the enemy into a rat (or any multitude of creatures) for a few seconds

7. Draining the user's health for increased damage

8. Ability to knock enemy back ~100 feet at the cost of all magicka (for running away)

9. Ability to summon illusory allies (NPCs with 1 health and 1 damage) to distract the enemy

10. Recover a small amount of user's health after each kill

 

I'm out of ideas that I know can be done (and which doesn't sound too game-breaking).

 

All of them could be used, except maybe the drain health one. I'm not a big fan of being killed by my own weapon, and against some enemies I need every drop of health I have. Thanks for the ideas.

 

 

@Nosisab

 

I was never going to throw menus into a combat situation. That would just be insane from a design point of view.

 

A few types of criticals and a few types of constant effect that work on every strike will not destroy the game, if balanced correctly. I will do what I can to make sure of this.

 

As for your story on the level 6 winning - It was by use of tactics and strategy. I plan the sword to move at a similar pace to vanilla weaponry, so by level 6 it will be about steel/dwarven level. By the time the player hits level 20, it will be near enough daedric, if the player plays the game naturally. Of course the weapon is tied to usage - I can't help it if the player stays at level 1 forever spamming mudcrabs to power up their end-all weapon. Which makes me think I should probably make countermeasures for this kind of behaviour. Although I might change the name from "kills" to "soul points" to make this easier - after all I can't justify half a kill, or 5 kills from 1 dead person.

 

Still the point I am making is that the weapon shouldn't become overpowered too quickly with natural play. It should keep pace with vanilla weaponry. It's after vanilla stops improving that the real potential really kicks in. Until then it is a vanilla weapon, although lighter and faster.

Edited July 13, 2011 by WarRatsG

[nosisab]

I see you already got the idea, it's incredibly easy to lose control when trying to create an evolving weapon and keeping it under balance.

 

Overly powerful weapons can satisfy many but can kill the fun and the sense of danger for most.

Edited July 13, 2011 by nosisab

[MarkInMKUK]

Another quirky idea you may wish to consider:

 

The weapon only gains power-ups from souls captured from "fighters" - which can be expanded to cover anybody who is currently armed as a handy definition - "magicians" - needs to find a suitable detection mechanism - and "monsters" - anything which will inherently attack YOU. It doesn't care whether they are "evil" or "good" or "neutral" - just that they are "worthy opponents". A stealth kill is fine - it's a strategic attack so still a 2worthy" method.

 

The idea is that if you run around invisibly slaughtering non-combatants (deer/sheep/shopkeepers/farmers) then the sword will refuse such souls - it is, after all, a magical fighting weapon not an executioner's axe. In fact, you may wish to deliberately REDUCE its power for every "innocent" killed. This doesn't stop it being used by evil people, but does stop mass pointless slaughter.

Edited July 13, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[WarRatsG]

Another quirky idea you may wish to consider:

 

The weapon only gains power-ups from souls captured from "fighters" - which can be expanded to cover anybody who is currently armed as a handy definition - "magicians" - needs to find a suitable detection mechanism - and "monsters" - anything which will inherently attack YOU. It doesn't care whether they are "evil" or "good" or "neutral" - just that they are "worthy opponents". A stealth kill is fine - it's a strategic attack so still a 2worthy" method.

 

The idea is that if you run around invisibly slaughtering non-combatants (deer/sheep/shopkeepers/farmers) then the sword will refuse such souls - it is, after all, a magical fighting weapon not an executioner's axe. In fact, you may wish to deliberately REDUCE its power for every "innocent" killed. This doesn't stop it being used by evil people, but does stop mass pointless slaughter.

 

I understand where you are coming from, but a soul is still a soul, even if the strength does vary. Even so, their value is not the same, as shown by petty and grand souls, so I have changed it from 10 "kills" per point into 10 "soul points" per "upgrade point." This way I can justify certain people or creatures being far less valuable than others - otherwise people could run around killing mud-crabs in one hit and getting further than killing a level 50 monster.

 

I am working on a formula to decide how many soul points a creature is worth. I can pick from the creatures actual in-game soul level ( As in petty or grand - lore-friendly, but all NPCs would be easy points), or devise a formula from the creature's level health, magicka and fatigue. The latter would be more reliable I think, although will need a lot of tweaking to ensure balance.

 

As for mass pointless slaughter, the player will still have to face all the guards afterwards. If they want to earn upgrades that way, I won't stop them. Plus if by "invisibly" you mean with 100% chameleon, the player doesn't need a powerful weapon to kill anyone - It's basically god mode anyway.