Is Armor Effective enough?

[RogueGunslinger]

Simple enough question, what do you think about the Armor in this game? I find myself wearing it mostly just to look cool, but realistically versus bone and obsidian weapons, I'm not sure it's as good as it should be.

Thoughts?

[Cabooze]

I feel like materials armors are made out of are not properly reflected in how protective some armors are. Maybe the items need to be gone through and balanced out?

[Desertman]

In the same boat. Mainly wear it just to look cool.

I do feel like it should offer more protections, but I also feel like high-level fighters should be able to bypass that protection more readily.

Basically I guess what I'm saying is I would be happy to see armor be a lot more effective against low level/mid-level fighters, and a lot less effective against high-level fighters.

And MUCH more effective against creatures/animals/monsters.

High-level fighters would know how to strike the seams/weak points in armor and would have a working knowledge of armor and it's uses so they could fight "around it" and work to get past it using their experience and skill. Animals/monsters (at least most of them) would not.

(This also gives me a chance to post this since I found it while looking for a picture for another thread and it made me laugh.)

[RogueGunslinger]

Held back voting until D-man made that excellent point. I agree with him so I picked Other:

I think it should be better in some instances, and worse in others. Which sounds like a nightmare to code. It'd be way cool if experienced fighters got +1-2 to penetration, or something like that.

[CodeMaster]

I played a character with extremely low strength.  I like to brag about that str roll every now and then.  Prepare yourself.  I couldn't wield Byn sparring weapons in one hand, and my superiors were imploring me OOC to read the docs on "reroll".  When he aged a year, there were a few more weapons he could wield, but his str was still at poor.  There were mugs I couldn't hold when full, but staff fixed them

At that time I felt like armor was too strong.  I did nil damage to anyone wearing any piece of armor in the location I hit, but whenever I got a graze in I was fistpumping irl.

[edit: oh yeah, I just remembered.  When I came out of the newbie equipment buying shop, I was kitted out in a codpiece and everything and the character was so overburdened he was venting huge amounts of stamina every room]

[Barsook]

For what D-man said, I feel like there should be an armor-use skill that could tell PC's (and players) what armor they can wear, but the problem is it wouldn't allow, "high-level fighters should be able to bypass that protection more readily", as what D-man said in his post.  It would only allow what types of armor that PC's can use- low-level can use hide and sandcloth and high-level can use shell amor.  But I think D-man's idea (for armored opponents) is better use of the armor-use skill then mine (and maybe know how to defend themselves from animals better).

Going along with this idea, I think warriors and rangers/hunters should start off with a higher skill level than the rest, but warriors have a higher (not much) than rangers/hunters.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I have some detailed thoughts here, but I can't take the time to post them. I will later.

For now, there is some ongoing work by staff in this area. Thanks to them for that. But the way things are worded in game needs to change so that you get a better idea about what your armor is doing.

The mean mul slashes you very hard on the neck, mostly bypassing your gorget.
The mean elf pierces you on the wrist, but your brace absorbs most of the blow.
The mean giant bludgeons you brutally, completely bypassing your helm's protection.

Messages like these are what I'd much rather see.

[Desertman]

Just adding a note here.

My reason or the above is actually related to a documentary I watched years ago about medieval English armies going into battle against peasants.

It explained how armor was such a HUGE advantage against relatively unskilled and unarmored foes, that it was uncommon for a English soldier to actually be seriously injured in a fight...even against multiple unarmored and unskilled opponents.

They could for the most part wade into a flurry of five or six, take multiple blows that really didn't harm them through their chainmail and breastplates, and hack people to pieces.

The real danger to them? Exhaustion and falling down after hacking a lot of people to pieces. If they lost their footing, they could then be taken out by mobs of peons....a fresh knight in full armor was the equivalent of a human tank back then. They would take dozens of shots in a fight, and ignore them, because armor was a huge advantage against the unskilled and poorly equipped peasants/wild men etc...

In Armageddon I wouldn't mind seeing armor give you some pretty great buffs when fighting relatively unskilled individuals for the above reasons.

[Marauder Moe]

And I would certainly expect someone wearing steel plate and chain to be likewise nigh-invincible fighting Zalanthan soldiers.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Dman, you played Gage, so you should remember that when you got hit, you got HIT. If you had been wearing armor, those might have turned into grazes and lightly and so forth. I don't think it's that armor isn't working, I think it's that armor doesn't tell you it's working. I think it needs to tell you what it's doing.

However, I think that armor might truly not do enough, and that the weapons we use are not the weapons we used irl, while the armor is much closer to RL armor, particularly leather armors. Chitin armors can't be called equal to steel armor, but carru leather can certainly be compared to cow hide.

[Mordiggian]

Just ducking in to share this bit from the producer thread for those of you that might have missed it.

Updating weapon values and material affects/effects.  Proposal submitted, WIP.
Owners:  Nessalin, Taijan

[Is Friday]

Along the same vein, armor should have disadvantages and exploits.

[wizturbo]

I sort of let armor explain a lack of long term injuries from a fight, and treat hp loss as temporary battle fatigue.  Mostly because armor doesn't do much.

I'd like it to do more, but I'd like there to be downsides too.  Very expensive and well designed armor should have less downsides and more protection, but all armor should degrade much faster IMO.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'd be alright with armor getting to the used phase faster, yes indeedy, but I don't think it should degrade much faster. I'd love to see descriptors though aside from used. Clawed, slashed, arrow holes, etc. These could all be added as flags per damage type.

[Patuk]

Just adding a note here.

My reason or the above is actually related to a documentary I watched years ago about medieval English armies going into battle against peasants.

It explained how armor was such a HUGE advantage against relatively unskilled and unarmored foes, that it was uncommon for a English soldier to actually be seriously injured in a fight...even against multiple unarmored and unskilled opponents.

They could for the most part wade into a flurry of five or six, take multiple blows that really didn't harm them through their chainmail and breastplates, and hack people to pieces.

The real danger to them? Exhaustion and falling down after hacking a lot of people to pieces. If they lost their footing, they could then be taken out by mobs of peons....a fresh knight in full armor was the equivalent of a human tank back then. They would take dozens of shots in a fight, and ignore them, because armor was a huge advantage against the unskilled and poorly equipped peasants/wild men etc...

In Armageddon I wouldn't mind seeing armor give you some pretty great buffs when fighting relatively unskilled individuals for the above reasons.

I was going to read past everything and ignore this thread, but history got involved, so things just got personal

tl;dr armor is fine nerf weapons

While you're entirely right in saying that metal armour was insanely effective in medieval times, Zalanthas is not temperate-climated low population density Europe.

First of all, Zalanthas doesn't have enough metal for it to be a viable source of armour, anywhere. This in itself rules out creating chainmail armour and severely limits the effectivity of plate, since blows that would scarcely dent metal will break wood, shell or chitin after a number of times. It's because of this that comparing Zalanthan armour to that of medieval anything doesn't really work.

Secondly.. Zalanthas also isn't earth in it having been static for much longer than medieval Europe ever was. Essentially, armour was so supremely useful in fighting untrained combatants because nobody'd quite figured out how to pierce armour for a while. This isn't merely a medieval phenomenon; it is, for example, commonly understood that the Persians did as poorly in land battles against the Greeks because they'd never really developed a good way to fight against people with large amounts of armored infantry. Knights could defeat greater numbers of badly equipped peasants partially because they had more training, yes, but also because most peasants were unlikely to ever really having witnessed warfare, combat, or any use of armour whatsoever. However, these factors don't translate very well to Zalanthas: the Known has had very little metal for centuries on end, and any given person on Zalanthas is extremely likely to see dozens of soldiers a day, gladiators in combat, and know several people who fight for a living as well. Zalanthas doesn't have medieval Europe's many villages of farmers who would have no martial tradition, and so its populace is likely much more acquainted with armour and the basics of fighting than earth's was.

Also, about the time thing: piercing medieval armour, especially plate, took a while to get figured out, but once weapons(other than firearms) were discovered that could get past it, things got ugly very soon. I won't go into the use of longbows here, since longbowmen required a ridiculous amount of time to train, but the use of pike-like weapons is well-documented in them being very useful against larger, better-equipped forces. Here is an example of shopkeepers and market salesmen defeating French knights using pointy sticks, and here we have some hastily-arrayed people drawn together from a few Swiss cantons defeating an army twice their size. Armour was very effective, yes, but this was largely because people had yet to catch up with developments in metalworking and invent weaponry to defeat it.

With all this in mind, I'm going to argue for the thread's exact opposite instead: nerf weapons.

Zalanthan weaponry is crazy deadly when you consider the materials it uses. Every weapon a non-Templar is ever going to use will be some animal's bone, a piece of wood, or black glass tied to a stick, and despite these materials being either fairly dull, brittle, heavy or unreliable, obsidian on a stick will hit like a broadsword and daggers made from teeth are more reliable than switchblades. This is in very stark contrast with even metal weapons, which were known to break constantly, to the point where one of the reasons knights would keep squires was to ensure they'd have extra swords on hand. Weapons are, in a sense, much too useful for the primitive technology behind them.

But even with weapons being that reliable, they are too deadly even when used in a normal fashion. Simply put, when you're not using iron, weapons can't be that deadly. It simply doesn't happen. The Aztecs, who had no knowledge of metalworking, allowed men to become their elite Jaguar Warriors after they'd captured twelve prisoners in two consecutive battles. It is generally well-understood that pre-iron age warfare simply wasn't very deadly, with battles usually killing 20% or less of the people involved, no more. It's because of this that Endemic Warfare can be a thing in societies with low technological skill in creating weapons and why you see warfare becoming much less of a ritualised, chivalrous affair and more ruthless instead as time moves on: when chances of death are relatively low, and when there is less at stake for the loss of a battle, people can afford to fight more, and in more grand ways.

So, essentially, the problem we have on Arm isn't that armour doesn't protect anyone and that it needs to give you protection like it's the 1200's, the problem is that bone swords are lightsabers and that we may want to bring them up to date with what primitive weapons would actually hit like before we consider beefing up our armour.

Something to think about.

[Narf]

So, essentially, the problem we have on Arm isn't that armour doesn't protect anyone and that it needs to give you protection like it's the 1200's, the problem is that bone swords are lightsabers and that we may want to bring them up to date with what primitive weapons would actually hit like before we consider beefing up our armour.

Something to think about.

Given how the hp system works I'd say that weapons are already not terribly deadly. Even a completely unarmored opponent can survive and still walk after a half-giant hits them with a bone two-handed sword.

It's not the I disagree with your interpretation of history, but I think you failed to account for how things actually work in game already.

[valeria]

The only thing I'd like to see is different armor being more effective against different damage types.  Your plate armor isn't necessarily going to protect you from a bashing attack as well as from a slashing attack.

[Desertman]

Dman, you played Gage, so you should remember that when you got hit, you got HIT. If you had been wearing armor, those might have turned into grazes and lightly and so forth. I don't think it's that armor isn't working, I think it's that armor doesn't tell you it's working. I think it needs to tell you what it's doing.

However, I think that armor might truly not do enough, and that the weapons we use are not the weapons we used irl, while the armor is much closer to RL armor, particularly leather armors. Chitin armors can't be called equal to steel armor, but carru leather can certainly be compared to cow hide.

I agree with this.

[Desertman]

Just adding a note here.

My reason or the above is actually related to a documentary I watched years ago about medieval English armies going into battle against peasants.

It explained how armor was such a HUGE advantage against relatively unskilled and unarmored foes, that it was uncommon for a English soldier to actually be seriously injured in a fight...even against multiple unarmored and unskilled opponents.

They could for the most part wade into a flurry of five or six, take multiple blows that really didn't harm them through their chainmail and breastplates, and hack people to pieces.

The real danger to them? Exhaustion and falling down after hacking a lot of people to pieces. If they lost their footing, they could then be taken out by mobs of peons....a fresh knight in full armor was the equivalent of a human tank back then. They would take dozens of shots in a fight, and ignore them, because armor was a huge advantage against the unskilled and poorly equipped peasants/wild men etc...

In Armageddon I wouldn't mind seeing armor give you some pretty great buffs when fighting relatively unskilled individuals for the above reasons.

I was going to read past everything and ignore this thread, but history got involved, so things just got personal

tl;dr armor is fine nerf weapons

While you're entirely right in saying that metal armour was insanely effective in medieval times, Zalanthas is not temperate-climated low population density Europe.

First of all, Zalanthas doesn't have enough metal for it to be a viable source of armour, anywhere. This in itself rules out creating chainmail armour and severely limits the effectivity of plate, since blows that would scarcely dent metal will break wood, shell or chitin after a number of times. It's because of this that comparing Zalanthan armour to that of medieval anything doesn't really work.

Secondly.. Zalanthas also isn't earth in it having been static for much longer than medieval Europe ever was. Essentially, armour was so supremely useful in fighting untrained combatants because nobody'd quite figured out how to pierce armour for a while. This isn't merely a medieval phenomenon; it is, for example, commonly understood that the Persians did as poorly in land battles against the Greeks because they'd never really developed a good way to fight against people with large amounts of armored infantry. Knights could defeat greater numbers of badly equipped peasants partially because they had more training, yes, but also because most peasants were unlikely to ever really having witnessed warfare, combat, or any use of armour whatsoever. However, these factors don't translate very well to Zalanthas: the Known has had very little metal for centuries on end, and any given person on Zalanthas is extremely likely to see dozens of soldiers a day, gladiators in combat, and know several people who fight for a living as well. Zalanthas doesn't have medieval Europe's many villages of farmers who would have no martial tradition, and so its populace is likely much more acquainted with armour and the basics of fighting than earth's was.

Also, about the time thing: piercing medieval armour, especially plate, took a while to get figured out, but once weapons(other than firearms) were discovered that could get past it, things got ugly very soon. I won't go into the use of longbows here, since longbowmen required a ridiculous amount of time to train, but the use of pike-like weapons is well-documented in them being very useful against larger, better-equipped forces. Here is an example of shopkeepers and market salesmen defeating French knights using pointy sticks, and here we have some hastily-arrayed people drawn together from a few Swiss cantons defeating an army twice their size. Armour was very effective, yes, but this was largely because people had yet to catch up with developments in metalworking and invent weaponry to defeat it.

With all this in mind, I'm going to argue for the thread's exact opposite instead: nerf weapons.

Zalanthan weaponry is crazy deadly when you consider the materials it uses. Every weapon a non-Templar is ever going to use will be some animal's bone, a piece of wood, or black glass tied to a stick, and despite these materials being either fairly dull, brittle, heavy or unreliable, obsidian on a stick will hit like a broadsword and daggers made from teeth are more reliable than switchblades. This is in very stark contrast with even metal weapons, which were known to break constantly, to the point where one of the reasons knights would keep squires was to ensure they'd have extra swords on hand. Weapons are, in a sense, much too useful for the primitive technology behind them.

But even with weapons being that reliable, they are too deadly even when used in a normal fashion. Simply put, when you're not using iron, weapons can't be that deadly. It simply doesn't happen. The Aztecs, who had no knowledge of metalworking, allowed men to become their elite Jaguar Warriors after they'd captured twelve prisoners in two consecutive battles. It is generally well-understood that pre-iron age warfare simply wasn't very deadly, with battles usually killing 20% or less of the people involved, no more. It's because of this that Endemic Warfare can be a thing in societies with low technological skill in creating weapons and why you see warfare becoming much less of a ritualised, chivalrous affair and more ruthless instead as time moves on: when chances of death are relatively low, and when there is less at stake for the loss of a battle, people can afford to fight more, and in more grand ways.

So, essentially, the problem we have on Arm isn't that armour doesn't protect anyone and that it needs to give you protection like it's the 1200's, the problem is that bone swords are lightsabers and that we may want to bring them up to date with what primitive weapons would actually hit like before we consider beefing up our armour.

Something to think about.

Them's good points too.

[Lizzie]

Just ducking in to share this bit from the producer thread for those of you that might have missed it.

Updating weapon values and material affects/effects.  Proposal submitted, WIP.
Owners:  Nessalin, Taijan

I just wanted to acknowledge that I saw this. I have nothing to add to the conversation, I don't pay much attention to what armor is or is not doing and so for me, it's fine exactly however it is.

[Patuk]

So, essentially, the problem we have on Arm isn't that armour doesn't protect anyone and that it needs to give you protection like it's the 1200's, the problem is that bone swords are lightsabers and that we may want to bring them up to date with what primitive weapons would actually hit like before we consider beefing up our armour.

Something to think about.

Given how the hp system works I'd say that weapons are already not terribly deadly. Even a completely unarmored opponent can survive and still walk after a half-giant hits them with a bone two-handed sword.

It's not the I disagree with your interpretation of history, but I think you failed to account for how things actually work in game already.

They can just as easily die, too; I don't think it's terribly unlikely that a glancing blow from such a huge being would injure you severely, but not kill you outright.

The one time where weapons aren't sufficiently deadly is for when you want to creep up behind someone and slit their throat, damn the consequences, but I think most anyone agrees backstab not being a guaranteed kill is an OOC construct more than anything.

[roughneck]

It's just inconsistent. Some heavy shells seem useless, and some sandcloth armor seems invincible. Same for weapons. When you have a multitude of different builders pumping things into the game for decades, things won't be perfectly consistent.

[IntuitiveApathy]

I voted no.  I'd like to see armour offering better protection, but with more trade-off at the same time.

An easy one would be to put in either max stamina cap reduction, more stamina per move, and/or a stamina drain while fighting (which could be potentially mitigated by high stamina bonuses, or high skill levels, etc).  This would hopefully go a bit of ways to prevent auto-flee'ers from getting away too easily with their buffed armour.  Honestly, if you're wearing inch thick obsidian plate, you should be bloody hot in the middle of the salt trying to fend off Mek #56. 

Another trade-off could just be straight cost (of the armour itself, or for repairs linked to more maintenance, or whatever).

[Sephiroto]

Can't say one way or the other, because except for deflecting blows or outright absorbing blows, there's no way to tell when or how much armor helps.  The core code is written in what,  C?  How hard could it be to add a few extra variables, case statements, and echo to your damage received messages the incorporation of armor.  Could get spammy though, but I'd love to work on a project like that.

[Clearsighted]

It highly depends on what armor you're wearing.

Some armor is great.

Some, seemingly identical armor, made out of the same or similar materials, and often described as even more protective, is complete shit. So finding the right armor is often more of a trial and error process.

[Alesan]

It highly depends on what armor you're wearing.

Some armor is great.

Some, seemingly identical armor, made out of the same or similar materials, and often described as even more protective, is complete shit. So finding the right armor is often more of a trial and error process.

That definitely sounds like an error in building. I don't like how deceptive some things can be. If it looks protective and describes as protective, it damn well should be protective.

[Dresan]

As others have said, some armors are amazing, others that should be due to cost and material don't seem that great. My biggest grip with armor has always been with their weight. Something that has been mentioned many times by others in the past  as well.

Even leather and sand-cloth armor can be surprisingly heavy. Sleeves regardless of the material, can sometimes weigh more than vest or leggings made out of heavier materials.

[whitt]

Sleeves regardless of the material, can sometimes weigh more than vest or leggings made out of heavier materials.

I wonder if this might not be intentional with the weight being figure for encumberance rather than actual weight.  A good mail hauberk, for example while weighty doesn't drag on you because it's distributed across your shoulders.  Sleeves and Leggings of the same material just... hang.  Feeling much heavier by comparison.  Just a thought.

[In Dreams]

I have no idea how it's supposed to work, but it seems like heavy armor just lets you ignore little nips, but big nasty hits seem barely affected at all.

[bardlyone]

I have no idea how it's supposed to work, but it seems like heavy armor just lets you ignore little nips, but big nasty hits seem barely affected at all.

I think it might be neat if there was something in place so there was a % chance of it ignoring the blow (HP/stunwise, with the larger blows), but knocked you prone. As though it hit you hard enough to knock you on your ass, but your armor still prevented it from injuring you. But since you're prone now... the disadvantages of being knocked prone.

[CodeMaster]

I have no idea how it's supposed to work, but it seems like heavy armor just lets you ignore little nips, but big nasty hits seem barely affected at all.

HP loss isn't the only thing that can happen when you get hit.  It's a completely invisible effect, but it's worth a lot to be able to shake out of being reel locked.

[Synthesis]

I have no idea how it's supposed to work, but it seems like heavy armor just lets you ignore little nips, but big nasty hits seem barely affected at all.

My guess is that each armor is rated to negate either a set amount of damage, or a range of damage.  (It could be set at a percentage of incoming damage, but...that explanation doesn't jive well with my personal experience.)

This set amount seems to be maaaaybe 10hp for really good armors.  Most "regular" stuff might do 6-8.  "Light" stuff 1-5.

So...the usefulness of the armor on a percent-damage-negated basis drops dramatically as a) your opponent's strength increases, b) the quality of your opponent's weapons increases, or c) your opponent starts dropping head and neck bombs.

That is, your horror-shell plate is probably really good against a city-elf wielding chipped daggers, because the most he's ever going to hit you to your body is 1-15 damage, even if you were butt nekkid.  However, that 10 damage reduction isn't terribly useful if a mek bites you to the head for 130hp (unless you happen to have 121+ hp).

[Synthesis]

Anyway, the question of whether it's effective enough kind of depends on the answer to the question..."enough for what?"

I'd say the average real-weapon PVP body-shot is like...15-20hp for human range strength, primary hand, with a nothing-special weapon?

If we assume that, then an armor negating 10 of that incoming damage is giving you an effective 50-66% HP boost, which is pretty huge.  Even a light leather armor negating 4 is giving you 20-25% effective extra HP.

[AdamBlue]

I think heavy armor should be -BUFFED- but also -NERFED-

Buffed: Increase it's strength. Heavy armor should be heavy fucking armor.
Nerfed: It's hot as balls. Make it raise thirst so that every heavily armed warrior gets pretty damn thirsty wearing that stuff after a while, and to pack extra water.
The weight is fine as long as those two changes are made, as the weight/protection ratio is somewhat low, to wearing leather stuff and being able to dodge well > wearing heavy stuff and just taking the hits.

[Delirium]

Make it easier to change in/out of armor first and then you have my axe.