Poll: Do you like having set bonuses for full suits of armour?

Set bonuses have been in for a few releases now, so I think people will have had a chance to try them out and form an opinion based on experience by now, so I'm tossing out this poll.

Set bonuses grant a 10% increase to armour values when you wear all of the same kind of armour (all plate, all leather, etc.). If your armour does not match in type, in effect you lose that 10% bonus. This can be seen as a reward for wearing all the same type of armour, and as a penalty for mixing your types of armour. The bonus can be seen as discouraging diversity in armour styles, and "forcing" full armour sets of a type to be worn (forced only in the sense of min/maxing stats, one can of course choose to give up the armour bonus for sake of armour variety appearance).

What do you think? Do you prefer set bonuses to give full sets of armour advantage over mixed armour choices, or prefer no such bonuses to present no barrier to mixing armour types as you like?

 

What would be the logical explanation for this?

 

If my opponent is wearing plate boots, plate legs, plate gloves and a plate helmet, but a cloth shirt IRL, I know where I'd aim with my blade. This is kind of meant as 'lowest common denominator' between the 'I want to wear fancy good looking stuff, but still have competitive stats'-fraction and the 'I want an immersive, at least remotely realistic combat'- fraction of players. If it would be for the 'I want an immersive, at least remotely realistic combat'- fraction alone, you'd have the protection of the 'easiest target position', which is a combination of body location and material (e.g. if you are wearing all plate but cloth shirt, you'd have the protection of a cloth shirt).

 

Armour pieces made from similar materials are more likely to be physically compatible, e.g. that leather tunic neatly overlaps the leather leggings, but doesn't quite fit right with chainmail so that there are small gaps in the overall protection.
By no means a perfect explanation but one suggestion for people who need to rationalise it. Ultimately it's a gameplay mechanic rather than an attempt to emulate real life.

I'm not strongly for or against the idea, it's an additional factor to be considered in building a suit, same as fizzle chances and available material bonuses and level of protection... not an outright advantage or penalty same as wearing plate items is not an outright advantage. It's the overall effect of the suit and skills and environment and opponents which determines effectiveness, there's no such thing as an optimum build in this game other than for specific circumstances. So I'm not worried about a 10% protection factor

 

I don't really care much one way or the other, and I don't know what the logical explanation is for this bonus. I do think it makes more sense to have a bonus for wearing all cloth rather than for wearing all plate, because if I am going for maximum protection I will wear all plate anyway. If I am a cloth wearing mage and wear plate chest armor for added protection, I am punished with fizzle in addition to not getting the set bonus. But I don't feel strongly enough about the set bonus to support one side or the other.

 

I don't mind the bonus being there but I don't care much either way.
But here are the tidbits

• The bonus is for matching. In real life this means that the joints match and there is no conflicting overlap. We see in the historical record when people have done mix and match that they will not protect as much as they should.
• The motivation in SotA is to prevent or counter min-maxing by selecting a bit of everything different.
• The grand tour 'hats' can be combined with any set of armor.
• When I last tested it only has to be the same type not from the same set. So epic plate worked with augmented parts.

 

The "incompatible pieces argument" sounds more than a little far-fetched, as there is nothing preventing crafting pieces from different materials that are actually compatible.
Also to be consistent with that logic, the game should give the stat punishment when mix-matching items of the same type but different make, for example mixing augmented plate and epic plate would also be punished. Also by the same logic, mix-matching armor from many different crafters should be given the stat-lowering punisment.

But it's a game mechanic, so there is no need for logic. I don't see any real point in attempting to prevent folks to wear what they like, in only further complicates things.

 

They are designed to fit and work together and piecemeal armor is not going to be as effective.

 

I don't mind it existing, but it's not going to affect my choices.

 

You can blend chain and plate for a set bonus so I believe its heavy vs light which means you can probably also blend leather and cloth. Id need to test the latter.

 

The Elven Archer armor plus cloth or leather gloves retains the set bonus. I'll try wearing a bronze or copper helm to see if the bonuses still hold true.

I'm not even sure what the Archer armor is made off - some parts seem to be metal.

Note : ok it's some sort of chain mail

http://sotawiki.net/sota/Mail_armor

 

I think it makes perfect sense that armor that is designed to be worn together would actually fit together better and therefor provide better protection. Since that is exactly how it worked irl, except the punishment irl most certainly was a swift and painful death rather than a 10% decrease.

 

Well, Ya... You can think in the "negative" instead of "positive" way if you like... It is a reward after all...

 

I think this bonus is sensible. It encourages people to wear similar armor types together, which makes sense, because that's the intended design, but doesn't actually keep anyone from mixing and matching and being reasonably effective. In my mind, this is primarily to mitigate the possibility of wildly different armor types coming together to outperform reasonably looking sets. It may still happen, but this should at least make such silliness less desirable.

 

This was done because player are and will use plate pieces because they have better Def but little negative for casting and use a clith chest so they can balance out like wearing a full leather set but have actually better Defense which was the problem in the past.

This solution is working perfectly.

 

I do think that having a set bonus is a good idea but if it was me i would like to make it more indepth for example instead of having the 10% dmg avoidance or whatever it is for the suit bonus should be more than that, the bonus should be is you make a whole plate armor that is nothing but dmg avoidance than you should get a dmg avoidance bonus for that armor. Same goes for resistance etc etc... but thats just me that would make things more interesting and allows for more different suit combinations.

 

I like the set bonuses, but I don't get why people are so upset over piecemeal. The benefits for each piece are pro-rated effectively.