So I heard the devs are adding sheathing weapons at a later date, which obviously is needed and super cool.
But one of my gripes with MMOs is they don't allow you to choose WHERE your weapon goes when you sheath it. So I wanted to share a couple ideas I had about sheathing weapons and letting the player choose some options.
So my first thought is every sword needs a scabbard. So why not create some scabbards you can loot, that are cosmetic only that are separate from the sword and are always either at your hip, or on your back?
Speaking of that. Let players choose where to sheath their weapons! I get often bored of the standard system. You dual wield, your weapons go on your hips. Sword at your hip, shield on your back. Let players choose!
Sword and Shield could have so many options like...
Sword on Hip - Shield on Back
Sword on Hip - Shield on Arm
Sword and Shield both on Back (Think Link, from Zelda)
Dual Weild could have so many options too! Like...
Both Weapons on Hips
Both Weapons on Back in an (X)
Both Weapons on Back Side by Side (Think | | )
Both weapons on Lower Back in an (X) ((Think Daggers for Rogues))
Casters! Let them choose how to cast spells.
Let them pick if they want to cast spells from their hands, or use their weapons as a focus.
Let them choose if they want to keep their weapon sheathed while casting or not as well!
Anyone else have some ideas? :D I'd love to hear them!
@OP,
While all those choices are nice, it's a lot of work. Then there are all the separate animations needed for both the sheathing and unsheathing from those different locations. All for what though? If, at some point, the artists and animators had nothing else to work on I could see them working on it, but right now that is not something this game needs to be included before release, especially if it would add even a single day to the release of this game.
I'm with Vandraad in saying, it's not something that needs to be implemented at launch.
There was already a thread about racial stances and how each race would hold their weapons in and out of combat. At least this aspect might be worth designing, eventhough it just adds that little more depth or diversity to the group and characters.
To allow casters to choose how they cast, is to me a bridge to far. In this scenario you'd have to include allowing rangers or other bow using classes to choose how they hold their bow while shooting.
The diversity here, would come from animations related to the combat ability being used. Rather this then the player getting to choose, that just seems too much hassle.
To play devil's advocate for the OP: If they are implementing a sheathing system with options - why cant those different options be tweaked to include all races and allow a choice? I know if i were coding something i would test fit everything to every race. "I like the ogre version, why cant i choose that for elf?"
kreed99 said:To play devil's advocate for the OP: If they are implementing a sheathing system with options - why cant those different options be tweaked to include all races and allow a choice? I know if i were coding something i would test fit everything to every race. "I like the ogre version, why cant i choose that for elf?"
My guess is that every single animation -for every single position and movement, for every class -would have to have a unique version created for each choice of position to sheath one's weapon. Which would multiply the total number of such art assets required, by the number of choices one wishes to have.
Creating unique art assets is a big job, hence the value of Unity having a library of stock assets to use for building the game while your artists are creating said assets.
I have no objection to lots of choices. I just remember how many "It's been 5 years, are we THERE yet???" complaints that keep coming up.
This is another one of those things that means so little to many and so much to many.
As in all my posts, I am all for options. In a perfect game you would have a multitude of choices of where and how your weapons are sheathed and unique animations for all of them. All of which can be turned off so you dont have to see any of it if you dont want to. I just feel that this is WAY down the list in priorities.
I know absolutely nothing about programming, scripting, animating or any other system making of games, but I have seen games that allow players to make mods from scripts to UIs and much more. I just wonder if certain aspects that the devs would like to consider could be left open for some very talented players to tinker with. Could save the devs a huge amount of time and they, of course, would have 100% decision of what they would incorporate. Just a thought.
Can of worms to be honest.
And a serious time sink for a group of dev's that are probably already overworked and stressed. It's an awesome concept, but it fits in that category of "If developers were machines and had unlimited time". I actually have many concepts I'd like to see in games that fit in this category :D, but far too often allot of those detail related things boil down to "which of these concepts should we focus our remaining time on?" and then the hot debate ensues on the forums for who thinks their concept deserves the time slot.
An example: say they had just enough time to choose either designing this concept into the game, or adding deeper and more interesting NPC dialogues, which one would win? I personally would pick the NPC dialogue. This is obviously a made up question, but it highlights the nature of the issue: things like this are very large development time sinks. So they compete with other serious times sinks, and the dev's have to decide which ones the players will get more mileage out of.
There is another old school MMO out there. it's a very small dev team (like a husband/wife combo and one other guy), and when I logged in my first impression was the graphics being very low scale, and I wasn't sure I'd play it (a.k.a. graphics weren't cool or interesting). I always considered myself a graphics guy. but after 15m of playing, I was hooked. And if someone asked me if I'd give up the cool skill systems and world building in the game for better graphics and animations, I'd say no way. So I'm glad that they decided to put their effort into making a great character and skill system over fancy graphics. Not everyone agrees with this, But it highlights the issue: with limited dev time (like pantheon has), they have to choose....so what should they choose?
Vandraad said:@OP,
While all those choices are nice, it's a lot of work. Then there are all the separate animations needed for both the sheathing and unsheathing from those different locations. All for what though? If, at some point, the artists and animators had nothing else to work on I could see them working on it, but right now that is not something this game needs to be included before release, especially if it would add even a single day to the release of this game.
I completely agree with you. Also to add: I didn’t like how it looked in WoW where a staff or sword appeared like it was ‘glued’ onto the character’s back. It just looked quite odd seeing many people running around with a staff or sword attached/superglued onto their backs. I was like ok.. that looks silly & stupid lol. I sure hope we don’t see it done that way in Pantheon, if it’s even needed at all.
Dhampir said:So I heard the devs are adding sheathing weapons at a later date, which obviously is needed and super cool.
Your welcome to your opinion and I hope your discussion goes well, but "obviously is needed"? Meh.
I play these games to be an adventurer. I'm quite happy to see weapons in hand same as I'm happy to see armor worn.
It can be interesting in games where having weapon 'brandished' produces an actual reaction from NPCs, but to be honest, this is usually more often an accidental annoyance when your avatar just happened to have them out post-fight rather than an intentional meaningful immersive mechanic or feature.
Unless it is just an occasional "oops, sorry" or a glorified emote, I'd rather just leave it out and save the dev effort.