Freedom to choose; Good or Bad?

[Webby]

I'm just going to be straight. Is it good to have the freedom to choose any weapon whether it's an axe then after a battle you choose a dagger or any particular armor that you have on hand?


Basically ignoring the class system where you're bounded to that role. i.e: A tank with heavy armor, and axe.


Some games offer freedom like Fallout 4 (heavy suit not accepted) to have a variety that encourages the player to choose whether this weapon can obliterate 1/4 of the chunk


or an armor that can withstand the radioactive sea (idk what it's called). 


Any opinions at this? 

 

[shadefoundry]

I think it really depends on the characters you've created, as well as balancing. If you have a party of four different characters each of which has unique types of equipment that they can wear then the game is going to be far easier to balance. For example if everybody could equip everything then what's stopping your relatively squishy mage from having a suit of heavy plate armor that makes him an invulnerable nuke machine. IMO having class specific stuff makes balancing far easier since you only have to build it around a few characters as opposed to all of them, so you have more room to design with. Of course you can always have armors and weapons that cross over to multiple characters as well, but I personally feel that having certain exclusives can allow for more varied characters.


I think the best example of how allowing everybody to equip everything can be difficult to balance is Final Fantasy 2 (the original, not 4). In that game every character has different stats but since they can equip anything it's really easy to find broken combos for each character.


Hope my little ramble is of some help


-Shady

 

[VicWhite]

For me is definetly good. 


Would be better is each weapon has associated attacks, like Battle Brothers for example.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

    It really depends on what kind of game you want to make and how you balance it. Obviously for adventure/shooters like Fallout 4 or single character rpgs like the other fallouts, Morrowind ETC variety is king and you'd be stupid to limit the player to a single weapon type, and even more standard rpgs like FF2 can do really well by allowing you to choose how each of your characters develop outside of their starting stats and abilities But I wouldn't call it arbitrarily good either.


   Most of the drawbacks to be aware of involve balancing the game properly. In my experiences the more options the player has the easier it is for players to break the pacing of the game and the less consistent you can make the experience. Intuitive (or faq reading) players will likely find the perfect, most efficient combinations to use to run through your game completely invincible and destroy any sense of challenge you might have tried to instill in the game (Ramza solo Ninja/Squire Tailwind run, FFT for the perfect example... Or using Fallout 4, any character that invests 3+ stars in sneak) On the other hand, maybe players get a cool idea in their heads for a combination that just doesn't work well in practice (Maybe a knight/mage sounds awesome till you realize you've leveled as a knight and your stats are physical, but your skills are all magic in which you are weak and slow to cast and you have to restart the game four hours in because you cannot beat it with the characters you have (my first time through FFT, stuck at the very end of the prologue) and not all players are going to start over at that point, many of us will just move onto something else.


   Overall I like games that give you freedom of choice, and I like games that stick to a more linear progression for the sake of keeping the experience consistently in line with what the creator had in store for it as well. Neither are bad choices, you just need to know what kind of game you want to make and what aspects of said game are most important to you.

 

[shadefoundry]

@Alexander Amnell You, good sir, have done a better job of explaining my reasoning than I ever could.

 

[PsychicToaster]

I find it easier to balance by making equipment available to every class, but the stats aren't going to benefit classes that shouldn't technically be using it. So a mage can wear heavy armor but it will give an agility penalty. The mage could even use a sword but with row formations on, he won't be able to use it unless you plan on putting him in front. 


Your character doesn't gain core stats per level in my project, so choosing the right equipment is important to being able to play each class. 

 

[bustedradio]

I find that persona 3 FES's choice in weapons to be great.


In that game, enemies had weakness to different weapons types, strike (fists), slash(swords), and pierce(bows). Weapons also had different attributes too. Bows did less damage, but they prevented your character from tripping and losing a move during the next turn. Melee weapons had higher damage, but there was a small chancing of tripping. This allowed you to either play against enemy weakness, try to balance out your team, or let you use the main character however you wanted to. Sadly this was taken out in Persona 4 and Persona 3 PSP port.


However, I think this only worked because enemies had those specific weaknesses and the battle system in the game.


As long as the game mechanics can support the choice of weapons, I'd say go for it.

 

[VicWhite]

Never played persona, but that was a great point @bustedradio


Thanks for sharing.

 

[kovak]

About the weaponry thing, if you have specialized enemies it can change stuff drastically or not deppending on how you build them. You can do it having flexible attributes, elemental weaknesses, resources, game mechanics or mixing of them. It won't change the fact that looking at a Wizard holding an Axe with Fire enhancement is insteresting.



But can the player change equipment during combat?