Enchant Armor discussion (split)

[Noliperus_]

yeah, I got that, but it doesn't really address my worries about enchant armor...maybe enchant armor could add a random thing to armor, like -2 save v spell, or +1 intelligence, things like that...make it so you could only enchant a piece of armor once. So if you get stuck with something crappy you'll have to sac the thing and go get something else. At least something to make enchant armor not worthless. My thoughts with increasing the AC additions would make it so you could get your AC high enough to actually make a difference, or is that even possible?

[Vhrael]

So right now, enchant armor is kinda worthless. Spend like 100 mana for a "chance" at one point of AC, with a chance to vaporize your armor. Not very fun or worthwhile.

Hmmm... with this idea it'd be like having a chance at adding one line of gambled eq stats to your armor. Here's my suggestion/addendum:

Enchant armor can add the following effects:
- Saving throws
- Stats
- AC

Enchant armor CANNOT add the following effects:
- Spell effects ('Casts shield,' etc.)
- Damroll
- Hitroll
- Luck

Enchant armor has the following limitations/risks:
- % chance of destroying armor (rares included, as is now)
- Equal chance of adding negative effects (worsen stats, saves, etc.)
- Only one extra effect allowed per piece; can be faded/add another, but there's still a risk of blowing up armor

Input/feedback?

[Quiet Wanderer]

Sounds like fun, but (I don't know too much from coding end) complicated to make. Would efinitely make the skill useful again. Though maybe: better effect = increased chance to go POOF might even it. As it stands, the fading and poofing are not very prevalent right now, and if you give it that, it should have a higher poof rate for the better efefcts.

---Edit:---
Only hitch I see here woudl be some invokers or others claiming it has such and such effect from enchanting, and it dosen't, then selling it to newbs who see the name and go 'OOOHHH! UBER KEWL!'. Maybe it should be a buy at your own risk, but how hard would an indentify tag be to announce on items? Maybe have Rimath have that as a service that you could pay for? At a rate just below shops, so no one would be auctioning an item just for stats since with the placing fee it would cost more?

[Jamus]

I think if you add in a chance for small hit/dam (might be small), and then you can add in the chance for negative effects.

[Davairus]

When you suggest put STATS/HIT/DAM on enchant armor it illustrates that you don't understand the eq balance of this game properly, or maybe even have a feel for it. The imps have spent thousands of hours carefully balancing the eq of the realms, umm so you can just enchant some red dragon from the sewers into RARE calibre? Imagine how easily you can enchant some shadar items from trollocs. Enchanted trolloc armor with a +1 dex is practically a fullplate. I can't believe nobody else already posted to say that.

Go spam some gambling and you'll find some amazing items with just -1 dex.


And also, I'm really wondering why you'd even suggest more eq with same old modifiers. We've already done just about every variation of hit/dam possible.

Consider this possibility:-

Enchant Armor: Items that have been enchanted have an affinity to enchanted armors with similar properties. Wearing two enchanted items of the same properties next to each other will result in a strong force of attraction. This bond will amplify similar affects as if a third item was worn between them. However if the properties of adjacent enchanted armors are too different, there will be a repulsive force that causes undesirable affects. Some rare armors may not be enchanted.

e.g. two mithrils, 1 hit 1 dex => an extra 1 hit 1 dex (good)
e.g. mithril/red, 1 hit 1 dex & 2 dam -1 dex => -1 hit/dam (hit & dam repulsion)
e.g. mithril/silver, 1 hit 1 dex & 1 dam 1 str => -1 hit/dam/str/dex (shitty)

1) Its "new"
2) Its not making things as powerful as rares (2 items turning into 3 items is not as good as the typically double-strength rares, but good)
3) It has restrictions (affect-based, armors only)
4) It doesn't actually modify eq, so an expire-time would be fine too.
5) Its invoker-like (a play on the physics of magnetism)

I pretty much just came up with that, and its not even a serious idea, this is just a demonstration of the kind of thing that can easily be came up with instead of just doing a humdrum +1 str/dex/whatever that obviously upsets eq balance anyway. The coding for this is simple. Its not easy, but its simple. Putting the spell to effective use, that's another matter.

Finally, this thread has gone off-topic.

[Vhrael]

[Grayden]

If enchant armor was to add like 10 to armor rating, and could only enchant once, would that be better or would the spell still be perty crappy?
I do agree only getting one more to ac is kinda crappy thoe, but the set items adding stuff is really comfusing and I would hate to explain it a million times to new people.

Grayden Grim of the Bloody Fields of Flesh

[Ronus]

[Vhrael]

[_Clifton_]

Okay.. say you have winter gambled eq. A, 2/2 -1 str ascot (attained). You need to make that -1 str up somewhere, which means occupying another eq slot. Well, lets say you enchant a pair living wood greaves to +1 str. Then you don't need to use floating slot for blue stone. You can use dragonblood instead, making the gambled armor 2/3 effectively. Umm... do that with a few more pieces and you get some pretty pimped hit/dam.

[Vhrael]

Son of a... am I the only one reading my posts?

Take out +stats, period. However, if you notice, I originally also included potential for negative stats, but throw stats out of the mix entirely.

I was just looking for any improvement to this:

[Noliperus_]

I'm right with you, Vhrael. Although I didn't really think there was a problem with enchant armor till I read that AC is pretty much useless. Is there any point at which AC actually does make a difference? If so, make it so enchant armor can actually help you reach that point. I would imagine that the average AC sits around -200. If -500 would acutally help you in combat, then make enchant armor be -10 per shot, up to -40 or -50. If AC is useless from -50 to -100000 then enchant armor need to be changed..or I want my practices back .

[Matthais]

Are there any upcoming changes to make AC worthwhile?

I'm thinking that AC should play a very pivitol role in all of the combat modules. It should be just as much of a choice on how much weight and protection one wears as it is when one choses wether to wears svs vs mals or svs vs affl. Armor is a competition between weight and mobility. Generally the heavier the armor is the more it protects against physical attacks and vice versa. So why not put this into play. If you want high AC so be it. Example: I am now a fire giant wearing heavy ass armor. I can't be hurt much, by physical weapons, but I shouldn't be able to attack much either. My armor is restricting my mobility and so limits my attacks to one per round. Granted, these attacks should be more powerful because you have more mass behind the attack. Have weight or encumberence apply to everyone. It seems rather absurd to specialize so many aspects of eq and skip this one, which seems to me, to be the foundation of it all. This would also give a relevance to mage's spellcasting armor. Armor spells ideally should give the same protection as a armor but without the encumberance. I think it should be applied to more classes if possible. Having -300 armor should mean something.

On an unrealated topic, is there any additions to gender in the game? I really like the class skills difference between male/female ninjas.

[formalism]

I think all these comments about AC should probably tell the imps that people want AC to actually mean something after level 30, and not just be an arbitrary number you see on score. Might as well be spam in that case.

[Flying Hampster of Doom]

Well, maybe there should be a difference between wearing Fullplate and some rags. I have a feeling getting a mace dinged off one is not as bad as getting a mace dinged off the other.

[Davairus]

Well, its not AC that is broken actually. We don't need any modifications to anything AC, definitely not the enchant armor skill, thats for sure.

Whats broken is this thing called the "thac0" (your chance to hit a target with an armor class of ZERO). It varies by class pretty nicely, and linearly, but its been set up for levels 1-32, instead of levels 1-52. Its simple to repair, to be honest, but I assume the old imps left it that way on purpose because its a remarkable blunder not to. In any case, its to your benefit that its like that.. imagine needing 50 hitroll to beat up high level mobs? You wouldnt like it.

[Slade]

I always thought enchant weapon and armor sucked just because of how tedious they were, especially armor. Takes forever to enchant each piece and they can blow up anyway. The whole process is just a big hassle thats probably not worth it anyway. Just goes against the concept of fun.

I don't know about armor, but I thought it would be interesting if enchant weapon worked in a way that was similar to the minor added damage on weapons like the ice staff. You do your attack, then you get some minor added elemental damage. It could work like a buff, self only. You could even make it random.. like, enchant weapon, you get a random element stuck on to each weapon hit (or a percentage of weapon hits, to reduce spam). Much more interesting that way. Edit - Or it could be like, you imbue your weapon with the elements or whatever, then the additional attacks you get, say 50% connect rate, do a random elemental effect like the way Xel Morak works. Overall damage from this would be pretty damn low, more of a flavor thing + just a minor bonus.

[Noliperus_]

[Davairus]

[Burzuk]

AC is actually useful for reducing damage from all sources by a straight percentage -- directly proportional to one's AC value -- but the difference needs to be significant to be noticable. A single -5 AC won't be noticed, but stack it on every eq slot available and the difference becomes easily measurable. Remember: any modifiers on equipment stacks very quickly due to the sheer number of equipment slots out there.

It's easy to make a skill more "useful" -- just make it more powerful. It's harder and much more thought-intensive to make a skill more interesting. Since kick was cited as an illustration upthread, let me elaborate on that example. Even though kick's greatest asset is its reasonable damage output, most classes have other more interesting skills to use in its place, especially warriors. Thus, for warriors we enhanced kick by adding the winding kick effect under specific circumstances -- namely, during reflex mode (a defensive mode for warriors) and while using sideswipe (which requires, surprise, defensive combat style for warriors). Under these decreased-offense circumstances, the modest damage output of kick becomes more significant than at other times, and the winding kick penalties that are inflicted upon the target are better suited to a slower and more deliberate wearing-down style of play. Thus in a nutshell, kick is not just more powerful now (though not in the strictly damage sense), but has also become a more interesting option to use at certain times instead of, say, bash. And that's the sort of change that we Imps like to make, because they have real depth and lasting value.

Can we improve on enchant armor to make it more "useful"? Easily, but the devil is in the how. First, as a comparison to enchant weapon: notice that breaking up primary/offhand hit/dam has significantly reduced enchant weapon's usefulness, as have other combat changes such as two-handed enhanced damage bonus (which values weapon average and not hit/dam) and favoured weapon hit/dam bonuses. And these were without modifying the enchant weapon skill itself: there will likely be other adjustments to the enchant weapon skill once we get to the point of actually fiddling with it. As for enchant armor, given that equipment bonuses are extremely sensitive to stacking, we'd have to severely restrict how the new enchant armor modifiers can stack (say, no more than X piece(s) of enchanted armor that can be worn at a time, and then think of a way to scale it based on the item's power so that people actually risk enchanting/blowing up a "good" item rather than simply enchanting a easily-obtainable item to "fill up" on their enchant armor slots). And all this for what gain? In the end, it simply becomes another "free" passive bonus for invokers and their friends. If that was what we were after, we might as well just make a spell that grants those bonuses outright and bypass the equipment enchanting part entirely. In the final analysis, it would be better for us to devote the time and effort to coming up with a more interesting replacement, rather than to make the enchant armor skill "better".

As for the chances of replacing enchant armor outright, Magic 8 Ball says: way ahead of you.