Design Talk - Weapons & Skills

Over the past week I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with answers to some design questions which have been plaguing me ever since the beginning of the alpha. So let’s talk about weapons this week!

Designing the Weapons for Chatventure

Given that skills are directly linked to the weapon a player has equipped, every weapon type should be able to fulfill a variety of roles - so when a player wants to try out a different playstyle for their party, they won’t need to immediately level up a different weapon proficiency from zero.

In order to figure out how those roles should be distributed, I made a little overview to illustrate the various properties I’d associate with each individual weapon type.

So, we’ll start into the beta with swords, staves and bows. Each of those will have three variants, focusing on different aspects you can see in the table - that’s already giving us 9 weapons/skillsets total to toy with!

Finally, let’s take a deeper look at each weapon individually.

Swords

Sword users are obviously forced to fight in the front lines, therefore they should be able to force enemies to attack them instead of their teammates and have some natural tankyness. Their skills don’t require any resources, though repeated use of the same technique might cause exhaustion.

Longsword:

• More damage focused, has an AoE and single target attack.
• Can stun enemies by disarming them.
• Has a guaranteed first-strike attack.

Holy Sword:

• A Healer / Tank hybrid
• Has an AoE Healing over Time skill.
• Strong single target heal that can also resurrect fallen party members.
• One strong single target attack.

Shieldblade:

• Is it a shield? Is it a blade? Whatever it may be, it’s tank focused!
• Guards other party members from incoming single target attacks.
• Taunts enemies, forcing them to use a single target attack in order to attack them.
• Most of their damage will come through Retaliate - a buff which allows them to strike back at anyone who dares attacking them.

Staves

Staves will be the only source of magical damage for now - and they got a lot of that. They’ll use mana in order to invoke the elements, which in turn will regenerate over time or through potions.

Fire Staff:

• Completely focused on dealing high amounts of damage through invocations
• Single Target nuke, AoE, Damage over time… All forms of damage covered, as long as you can afford the mana costs.

Water Staff:

• Has an AoE Heal.
• Can purge negative status effects, replacing them with a healing over time effect instead.
• Strong AoE Damage spell with high mana cost.

Earth Staff:

• Deals fewer damage in total than the other elements, but is also way harder to kill.
• Earth invocations will make their user more and more resistant against physical attacks as long as they keep attacking their enemies.
• Able to “shed” their armor in order to deal high amounts of burst damage depending on how many armor stacks they use up.
• Can also buff magic resistance of the whole party if needed.

Bows

Fast and deadly from afar - bow users can disable their enemies with precise shots or rally their allies from the backlines. Some skills will use Energy as their primary resource, which is regenerated by one every turn.

Longbow

• Mostly single target and focused on applying debuffs.
• Every attack has a chance to inflict a negative status effect by focusing on the targets’ vital spots.

Harpbow

• Has multiple strings which can be played like a harp, allowing them to buff their team with their music.
• The multiple strings can also be used to fire many arrows at once, causing a swarm of arrows to rain down upon their enemies.

Shortbow

• Single target assassins.
• Use poisoned arrows to inflict status effects and damage over time.
• Can go into stealth, allowing them to dodge incoming damage.
• While hidden, they can sneak up to an enemy to deal critical damage.

Weapon tiering & upgrades

Every 10 levels, a new weapon tier will become available, featuring the same weapon skills but higher stats. In between those levels, you can upgrade your equipment by using common crafting materials and monster souls to make them even stronger.

Aaand that’s it. For now. Keep in mind that the weapon skills can be further enhanced by the armor you wear - giving you more skills to actively use as well as various passive status effects, such as enhanced mana regeneration or damage reduction… Although I’m not entirely done designing those armor effects yet. :)