The problem of new weapon skill lines.

MindOfTheSwarm

First let me say that I myself am guilty of coming up with new ideas for weapon skill lines, but after reading feedback and weighing that with what players want. It seems like there are a lot of complications. I’d like to address these below.

Crossbows, Fist weapons and or spears:

The first most obvious question here is, why should these weapons get their own skill line? Battleaxes, Greatswords and Mauls have to share a line as do the single handed weapons. If a spear line were added, it would seem out of place. Same can be said for a fist weapon line and Crossbow line.

Throwing Weapons:

This one is more possible. Just need some throwing stars and throwing knives. But the issue with this, what skills could we have to really separate from others. Especially Dual Wield that already technically has two skills that emulate throwing weapons.

A new Magic Damage weapon:

People have asked for an Arcane staff and it would be pretty easy to implement, but the issue with this one is that many Magicka players want something else. They don’t want to be bottlenecked into having a ‘big stick on their back’ as they put it. Also, many want a melee Magic option. Not another ranged option.

A Disease Weapon line:

This one also is possible but the issue here is two fold. One, should it be melee? Or two, ranged? And what would a ranged Disease weapon be. I have in last posts suggested a Plague Staff as others have suggested throwing weapons. But the question is, would the larger player base be happy with a Stamina weapon that feels like a caster?

Unarmed Skill line:

The big elephant in the room here is the lack of 2 set pieces. How do you reconcile that problem? And again, it’s yet another melee option which Stam doesn’t really need even though Magicka does.

Final thoughts:
I don’t see a real solution to this. Spears, Fist Weapons and Crossbows could be added as supplements to existing skill trees but would anyone really care if they were? Wouldn’t it just be simpler to add a weapon style at the outfitter? They can’t get their own skill line as players would complain about the other melee weapons not having their own lines and Crossbows and Bows being basically the same thing… and no dual crossbows are not a thing in Nirn.

Solution:

Why go through all the effort of creating a new skill line, would it not be just simpler to add third morphs to existing trees to take care of it?

2 Handed gets Lightning Morphs
Dual Wield gets Frost or Magic Morphs
Bow gets Fire Morphs
One Hand and Shield gets Frost or Magic Morphs
Destruction Staff gets Poison or Physical Morphs (Earth style Destro)
Resto Staff gets Disease Morphs (no more healing and becomes a damage weapon).

Would this not effectively kill all birds with one stone? Except the unarmed play style of course.

starkerealm

Two things need to be taken into consideration...

The first is that the game is pretty close to its limit on the number of animations it can keep loaded for the player. The problem is that the game needs to keep animations for all six player classes, all six weapon skill lines, and all of the active guild abilities loaded into memory at all times. The issue is that it's impossible to stream in new player animations in combat, so any new weapon line would (probably) need to repurpose existing animations... which could look really cheap, if we're being honest.

Second is that you'd need to create new motifs for most new weapons. So, for example, if you wanted to add crossbows, and fully incorporate them into the game, that's something like 140 different crossbow models to add.

I've floated the idea of unique weapons (possibly mythic ones) that swap the stam/mag setup on a given weapon line. Which would get you a disease, poison, and physical or bleed, destruction staff. Also magical melee options. At that point, you wouldn't need new animations (just new particle effects), and there could be a small pool of new gear visuals.

Jusey1

"The big elephant in the room here is the lack of 2 set pieces."

They could do what World of Warcraft did and make fist weapons a thing (some of which are even invisible for players who wants the damage of a weapon, but still fight with their bare fists). Honestly, Unarmed is the only one that would use it's own skill line... I can see spear using the normal 2h skill line just fine, but please oh please give it it's own unique animation (I absolutely hate how none of the 2h weapons or 1h weapons has unique animations... It looks so weird to use a battleaxe in this game because you hold it like a sword, it's so stupid).

MindOfTheSwarm

Hmm. I just think that third morphing fixes everything. You’re right about the motif issues though. Would create a lot of work. I’m gonna stick with my Disease Plague Staff idea. No new motifs needed. Just skill animations, particle effects and done.

Aardappelboom

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Hmm. I just think that third morphing fixes everything. You’re right about the motif issues though. Would create a lot of work. I’m gonna stick with my Disease Plague Staff idea. No new motifs needed. Just skill animations, particle effects and done.

I kind of agree, a third morph, in some cases more magica or stamina based for each weapon skill line would be good. Some added passives that have hybrid classes in mind would also go a long way in shaking things up a bit.

OP wrote a nice summary imo, while people want to have new ways to play the game they also want to have different weapons styles visually. adding a third morph and maybe a new weapon type per skill line (much like the different elemental staves behave differently in the same skill line) would probably satisfy most people (me included).

A new skill line will still have appeal though, it's always nice to have options but it should bring something really new to the table. I know I loved to just explore new weapon skill lines and experiment with different combinations. Even so, I still agree mostly with the above statements.