Idea Info Name: RPG Weapon Mastery Index: Primary Category: RPG Submitted: 4/1/2003 11:18:44 PM Written By: Aqueous Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition Book Highly Recommended !

The help of Weapon Mastery

RPG games are known sponges for progressive play. As you play further and further throughout the game, elements within the game-play differ and usually improve. One idea I have tipped at a few times, is the idea of weapon progression with in an RPG game, rather than simple stats upheld by a weapon. Take the Final Fantasy gaming series for example, it is usual for equipment to be of a fixed value to the team member, meaning that its flexibility can be rather lacking, and its usage, rigid. Also taking into account that weapons are sometimes unusable by certain characters and how a staff can be as strong as a hammer. Weapon experience and skill mastery is an idea which progresses a weapon alike most RPG characters, with direct relevance to the character using this weapon, thus the weapon shapes to characters, not the other way around.

Different classes of weapons are usually best suited to specific classes of fighter. For example, usually sword class weapons would be best suited to knights, with medium speed and medium strength. This already makes it favourable to use these weapons with the aforementioned character class, and sometimes, impossible to use with any other. The problem that can arise here, is either lack of weaponry among other characters, or a severe imbalance in damage done, say, for a knight to be doing significantly less damage than a summoner. With so many variables within RPG games, it is easy to see how this could have been overlooked, with the variance of weaponry seemingly invisible with character stat variation. Indeed, with the variance of a character’s strength stat, damage will increase regardless of the weapon, but the idea of a character’s strength varying so much as to increase the damage possibly ten fold, can sometimes be rather cliché and simple, with disregard the skills of combat. With the addition of Weapon Experience, the character becomes familiar with a certain weapon, and thus, its efficiency with this particular character, will increase. As this weapon is used, the experience of it rises with attacks, and the character’s skill with it, becomes better and better.

Now, with this idea, it could be questioned, how would a simple dagger be a lower weapon to some “ancient crafted weapon”. Well simple, each weapon includes a maximum experience amount, where it cannot be used any better by a character, and therefore, its efficiency in battle will remain constant. Better crafted weapons start with better original stats and usually a larger experience boundary before mastery, meaning its room to increase is larger also. This integration into the battle system would mean the player would able to choose his path, whether it be to equip a standing, better weapon, or remain with his trusty side-kick. Once weapons are mastered, a dramatic increase in efficiency ensues before its constancy, drawing a border between mastered weapons and ‘well-held’ weapons. Another advantage of weapon mastery is that once a weapon is mastered, it can no longer lose experience either. If a knight does not use a specific sword for considerable time, its experience will slowly lower. With a specific weapon being mastered, his knowledge of the weapon will stay and can be referred to at will. Being said, the loss of experience of a weapon is less of a burden than lack of experience. Once the experience is lost completely, the weapon’s art must be learnt from scratch, reducing all weapons of that class, to null experience. Aside from this however, if the experience is caught before zero, the character’s learning curve back to his original point will be quicker than the original venture.

One problem that arose with this idea however, was its lack of continuity across weapon class. If a knight’s skills increased with a sword, for example “Lionheart”, why would his skills only increase with this one sword and not at least spill onto other similar class weapons? This lack of realism could be cured, with the idea of “rebound experience”. Using the weapon “Lionheart”, would also increase the knight’s skill with similar weapon classes based on the skill needed to use them. For example, “Lionheart” would have a skill reciprocal of 50, whereas “Broadsword” would have one of 5. This is because of the difference in difficulty to use the weapon and also, because of the onus of the weapon’s bias towards skilful usage rather than outright power. Bearing this in mind, this means that when the Lionheart is used, all weapons below its skill reciprocal would gain experience, a fraction based on this skill value. So a sword of slightly lower skill value would gain far less experience than the “Broadsword”, due to the usage of a high skill required weapon. Also, weapons which gain experience through this ‘class-type’ method, will lose experience from lack of usage of this weapon-class, faster than the specific weapon used to grab this experience. This loss of skill however, will be mirrored when the experience is gained again. Weapons with higher skill needed, will take less time to master due to the idea of the character’s remembrance of this art being preserved. This idea is rather like the idea of learning something complex to something simple, usually the preserved memory is of the complex display due to the need of concentration. It can take just as long to learn a skilled weapon again, as an easier weapon, due to the variance in maximum experience, but its rate of learning will favour the skilled weapon.

Weapon mastery can integrate into these ideas. Only when a sword is used, can its skills be learnt. This means that the weapon mastery experience will remain constant if the weapon is not used. More than likely this would mean a separate variable would be needed, which could either tend towards a larger or smaller value. This could also help open other possibilities, with the availability of making a mastered weapon in combat, not necessarily grant the user all the skills that could be found with this weapon. Once skills are mastered, they will be remembered by the character and available for exertion with weapons on the same class. These skills are therefore mastered by achieving certain amounts of weapon mastery experience.

This is not dissimilar to existing systems, other than the idea of progressive learning. The skills enter different stages of learning. For example, if the sword “Flame Saber”, has the sage ability “Firaga”, the stages of “Fire” and “Fira”, will be learnt during the summation of experience to the point of “Firaga”, meaning that the skills are not absolute to specific weapons. Of course this shouldn’t be assumed to be known by the player, and such stages included in the weapon’s diagnostics.

The starting statistics for weapons can also reflect their quality as weapons, but are not always weapons that include the highest experience. For example, a “Broadsword” would have a rather large attack value due to its power, but its usefulness as a weapon to be greatly mastered, questionable. This can also allow the characters the choice of skill or power, especially if certain weapons are seen as on a par with one another, only varying in terms of individualisation. Starting statistics of characters to certain weapons classes will also need to vary depending on the character type, also accounting for skill development.

Each character’s stats will also reflect their ability to learn certain skills. As an example, a knight will learn how the use a “Staff” as an effective physical weapon within combat, a lot better than a summoner. The usage and learning speed of its magical skills however, will favour the summoner. This means it is technically possible for a knight to learn the ability to summon creatures, although much more difficult than the intended counterpart to these skills. This reason that this system boosts realism, is that it would be stupid to think of a knight being incompetent of learning skills another human being has learned completely. This could also allow customisation in the opposite direction to occur, a summoner being shaped into a thief-like character, or perhaps a dark knight also being granted the power of the magician and summoner. Something else which would appeal, is the idea of the player’s intentions for the characters. It could be possible to teach one character most of the skills in the game and make them the central figure to the battles. This also allows self-sufficiency when party split-ups/singular battles occur and with possible inclusion of interactive story that seems to be popularly routed into games nowadays, this could also fulfil the combat equivalent to this, no-one likes a weak main character….

This system could also be used for shields, guns perhaps, but only with equipment that is used. Armour does not fulfil the requirements as it is not directly used, with skill, in combat under most circumstances. It could be possible to add a “burdening stat” of the armours, which burdens the character with reluctance of movement from the armour/its weight. This state could then diminish over time as the character shapes to the armour and becomes accustomed to its restriction, effectively eliminating the problem, over time.

With Weapon Experience, the player is able to experience a different environment, with the addition of combat learning and weapon individualisation. Skills to a certain weapon, only work with its class and mean that a character can possess only one type of skill, or all skills, but is restricted to using weapon skills with the required weapon class. Passive skills are those learnt from weapons without the need of this class to be equipped. Such skills are magics or summons, but receive a boost in power when using the specific weapon. Characters become more variant and individualised also, through this method, and can be shaped into totally customised characters, giving the player full control.

With Weapon Skill Mastery, the player is able to decide which skills he wishes to learn and which he may drop. With the burden of the loss of experience, combat skills will be lost once the experience of a weapon falters. Although the skill will be available in theory, its usage in battle will be futile.  Passive skills don’t adopt this approach, so a summoner may master a specific weapon, one which suits the character’s needs, and then equip all other weapons in turn to learn their passive skills before returning to the old weapon. The integration of weapon skill mastery means that characters can theoretically learn all skills, but in realist terms, even with the option of variance among the skills learnt, favourable skills would need to be found and learnt with others sacrificed, inducing an even greater endorsement of ‘choice’ into the game, for the player.