Gameplay discussion: weapons

[KFCrispy]

With the ability to attack multiple times in Suikoden III and V (not exactly Tactics because Battle Lust raised damage by a certain percentage regardless of the animation), they should really try to balance the weapons so that someone with "weak" fists who hits 8 times isn't doing like 5x more damage than a big tough guy who swings once with his huge axe. Weapon Growth should be balanced out to better accommodate its weight that more easily allows for multi-hitting... a Fist weapon should max out with a pretty poor ATK bonus, but the light "weight" will allow the character to get lots of hits, while an extremely heavy and powerful weapon should have a much higher ATK bonus.

Dynasty Warriors 5 has a system where light weapons actually penalize your total damage while heavy weapons give you an attack bonus. It's a completely different type of game, and also characters get to find/choose their weapon weight (each character uses 1 type of weapon but you can find versions of the wpn with the different weights, and weight affects attack speed not multiple hits because it's a hack n slash), but the concept is sound.

[Mio]

is it something like this?

claws/fist - weak damage, high chance for multiple hit
2h sword/axe - strong damage, ignore defense
1h sword - normal damage, high chance for critical
Bows/Throwing - weak damage, high chance to damage multiple targets

about those alternate weapons, i'm not really for this

more than half of the SoD multiply with the number of desired alternate weapons and stats for each

thats quite grand, complex, and potentially fun

BUT i'd rather have them focus on designing each character's weapon (and subsequent ones)

and a feature to 'examine' a weapon up close

you know, really see those fine details like in devil may cry 1

engravements, runes, stuff like that

(sorry weapon freak)

[KFCrispy]

generally, yeah, but some weapons can be completely different and unique in the Suikoden series... i mean Faylon has a "glove" weapon but it should be really heavy. crossbows can hit hard and are slower to reload/shoot than normal bows. in Suikoden III the Star Dragon Sword is a big sword but it's lighter than the typical large swords.

[Mio]

yeah, there are quite a lot of unique weapons in the game

its hard to unify them into a single rule

how does being 'light' and being 'heavy' affect the weapon's performance anyway?

based on your idea

[KFCrispy]

light and heavy was just the Dynasty Warriors 5 system. the Suikoden system already includes weapon weight as a factor in Suikoden III and V for determining multi-hits, and it can continue that way... i'm just saying number of swings completely overpowers the ATK power of characters, allowing "weak" characters with 5 swings to do ridiculously more damage than strong characters... i mean in both games, the big tough slow characters with high ATK are pretty much at the bottom of ladder in terms of potential damage they can deal, and that's just unfair. why bother with Leo when an average character gets 2 swings and therefore does like 30% more damage than stronger single-swing guy?

[MatildaWhiteKnightLeader]

it would also make sense for close-range weapons to do the most damage like claw/fists and swords vs. archers.

But it mostly depends on how you train, equipment, and raise your characters throughout the game. At max weapon level, skills, etc.. yes, some characters simply do much more damage than others. But you can't expect a lvl 10 character to do more damage than a lvl 15 character or a character with normal equipment vs. a character with equipment that gives +STR, +ATK, etc...

What Leo (Suikoden III) unique was not his attack, but his "tank" defense. He might do less total damage than someone with excellent Swing, but he only takes 0-1 damage per physical hit with the proper equipment and skills. So it does balance out overall.

[KFCrispy]

i disagree... story-wise, Leo should be hitting harder than Percival or Roland, but he can't simply because those two can hit twice, and that second attack outright trumps the ATK difference between Leo and the others.. it's not even close. The fact that Leo is extremely inaccurate, has poor speed and may not even get a chance to attack during the round (because he had to take 5 steps to reach the target and his turn ended) should be made up with a devastating attack if he can pull it off. A skinny young guy like Hugo who attacks with a tiny knife will completely out-damage him by a factor of 10. sure, Hugo is extremely offensive and lacks in survivability skills, but in general slow characters (whether they're tanks or not) are simply frustrating to use, and after training them up, they still are complete crap.

Another example would be Pesmerga in Suikoden 2. Pesmerga has probably one of the poorest offenses in the game simply due to rune slots, but he's supposed to be some powerhouse. Runes allow characters to become ridiculously overpowered, and while that's a unique trait in a character, the rest of the character is too generic. *something* needs to give Pesmerga the extra "oomph" he is supposed to have. Skills in Suikoden III simply gave characters with weak weapons yet another way to overpower the big tough guy who usually gets few rune slots, few skill slots, and bad skills.