A thought on durability

In the real world we all know that gold and silver are almost malleable by hand, hence your gold whatever is only so much carat gold because its a lower percentage to make it not just squish.. we also know that we have to make some objects out of certain materials for durability.. if you covered your couch in extra fine silk, your fat butt sitting on it would wear through it in hours, and for some of us larger people we'd probably sit on it and rip it first go! so we use special sturdy well made stuff to make it last longer, we can have leather and as long as we tend to it, it will last even longer..

Why should not the same apply to our armour?

cloth armour, is more fragile, a good poke with a sword would poke holes in it, leather would be more study, but still more fragile than chain and again then to plate.. same with materials, copper is a softer metal, so would damage more easily than iron, and so on.

Can we not add this as a more immersive durability in the game?

 

Don't forget Hard Maple. Very hard. The hardest in the world. Very durable. Has all the durabilities.

 

but thats the point isnt it? the right thing has more durability, so for bows, it maybe hard as, but it may not be as flexible, but it would last more.. so maybe wouldnt make the quickest bows, but would make the longest lasting..

 

Yes, I'm just saying don't forget the bows

 

That level of realism has a lot of implications that are much more expensive to deal with. For example.. If cloth was far less durable.. you would need cotton to be readily available to make more new cloth to compensate. But you'd also have to have different calculations for durability loss.. are you getting hit with a sword? Is it a slashing blow? Is it a piercing blow? Are you getting hit with a fireball vs an obsidian arrow? and so forth as all of which wear on the cloth differently. And that's just one material.

Just how details do you want to take it and where is the threshold where you gain or lose fun?

 

From what the loading tips say, flame attacks already do less damage to players in metal than in cloth armor. Is that level of detail less fun?

 

That's not damage to armor.. that's damage to the individual in it. Apples and oranges.. we're talking gear durability based on material type AND damage types here. But if you're going to consider damage types than consider the simplistic physical damage. It's just damage.. it's not even slash, bludgeon and pierce..

Besides.. at what point did I say it was a bad thing? All I did was raise the question that any dev would raise. How far do you take it? How worth it is it compared to how much work it's going to be to implement that level of complexity? (And we're not considering the team size, budget or other priorities here). It's not just game balance to consider.. but development effort vs fun. Or in other words.. how many will enjoy that level of complexity? vs how many won't care or will find it troublesome?

 

Well, you have certainly added a LOT of extra complexity on top of material type. Slash Bludgeon Pierce is 3 more dimensions.

What if we just start with material type, and see how it goes from there? Meteoric Iron vs. cloth. I can see the point in having the Meteoric taking a lot longer to degrade.

 

Depends how you look at it. I only mention damage types because of..

would be piercing damage.. Where as your typical mace wouldn't do as much damage.. but would crush heavier armor and if you were doing durability by material then you'd want that kind of balance.. otherwise more people would feel forced to wear heavier armor

 

Assuming that one poke would not do huge damage, we can average over a mix of possible types of pokes, and use this average counting strikes, but ignoring their actual type. I suspect this is an additive model, which is already in use by devs. Now, how realistic are coefficients --- I don't know. Maybe a tweaking is in order.