So we all see the current changes for the combat system overhaul on the kTest server, including the skill rebalancing and equipment changes.
However, the distinctive features of Plate armor, Leather armor and Cloth armor are gone, and that’s sad, especially since all the equipment-specific stats are also mostly gone from the game and exchanged for general values of physical and magical defence.
To bring back more distinctive features to the game, I suggest to readd some of the now missing former basestats as fixed substats (meaning they won’t be affected by upgrading and transcendence) for a specific armor type.
My idea was the following:
Plate Armor:
- upper armor adds HP regeneration rate bonus
- lower armor adds HP regeneration rate bonus
- gloves add block rate bonus
- boots add stamina bonus
Leather Armor:
- upper armor adds critical rate
- lower armor adds critical rate
- gloves add accuracy
- boots add evasion
Cloth Armor:
- upper armor adds SP regeneration rate bonus
- lower armor adds SP regeneration rate bonus
- gloves add magical amplification
- boots add movement speed
Edit:
About how to implement & scale the boni, I have an alternative suggestion if the additional stats rework would be too much trouble/take too much time.
I think it would be easy to add the effect to the attributes for the distinctive armor type.
Since the game checks whatever type one equip is when you equip it anyway (because it needs to know where to equip it and which attribute bonus needs to be triggered), it would be easier to just dump these additional stats on the attributes instead of the equipment.
About how to scale these boni: It would be nice if they scaled accordingly to the level of the equipment, so the easiest way would be to take the star count of the equipment and multiply them with a specific factor [e.g. 2 or 3; Cloth Boots movement speed would be 0,2 or 0,3] to get the bonus stats for each equipment part.
Another idea that hit me would be to make the game more interesting by giving the characters a weight bonus and weight penalty, depending on their current weight.
If a character is at 50% weight limit, his penalty and bonus would be ±0%, but if he’s heavier or lighter, he get rewarded with different stat boosts depending on how light/heavy he is and what kind of armor he’s wearing.
the scale would be the following:
[<20% weight = 20% bonus],
[>20%&<40% weight = 10% bonus],
[>40%&<60% weight = 0% bonus],
[>60%&<80% weight = 10% malus],
[>80% = 20% malus]
The stats affected would be:
Plate armor set [full 4 pieces]: Stamina
Leather armor set [full 4 pieces]: Evasion
Cloth armor set [full 4 pieces]: Movement Speed
This system would make it more interesting if you’re keen on wearing a full set, because you could actually make use of the bonus or take the malus instead by overstocking yourself with potions, buff items, farmed items,etc. to farm longer/survive longer/etc.
I think a two-way penalty&bonus system would give more meaning to the weight system which has been overhauled to becoming useless.
As I’m accustomed to getting a penalty for going overweight in Ragnarok Online, I thought that it would be interesting if being light would actually provide you a bonus, so why not? 