Prolonged usefulness of equips...?

[Bastrophian]

In a typical jrpg, in regard to equipment and such, the idea is that you would want to find the next best piece of armor or the legendary demon smiting axe to replace the lesser equipment... but, I personally have been trying to think up ways to make all equips useful all the way up to the climax of the story....or at least for most of it. I know that in most final fantasy games, there were some staff weapons that you could use like items to cast mid range spells... and then ninjas could "throw" them too... but I would also like to think of ways that they could still be applicable as equips...

Anybody mind sharing any ideas?...

 

[Liak]

You could also just go with equipment upgrades instead of new pieces. You just put some kind of material into the chests instead of a new sword.

Alternatively, you could give equipment very unique features that can be helpful even in the late game. Like, regeneration or inflicting status elements or something. You know, raw damage vs. useful effects.

 

[whitesphere]

You could have equipment grant resistances or immunities to various effects.  And, instead of having equipment grant absolute bonuses or penalties to attributes (i.e. +10 DEF), you can have it grant a % improvement or decrease (i.e. 105% DEF) which would stack AND become more substantial towards endgame.

And, if you bind certain Skills to equipment, maybe the mid-range armor has a Revive skill (which restores to 1 HP, but invaluable if your healer goes down)

So in the end you might have Fire Armor which grants 20% resistance to fire, +0.1% Magic regeneration, 110% DEF and allows the wearer to use a Flame skill that hits an opponent for some Fire damage.

In the early game, it wouldn't do much for the player's DEF, but by the endgame, if the DEF comes out to around 250, it adds a nice chunk.

You can also grant equipment certain specialized bonuses (double Gold dropped or increase EXP gained by 50% for example), making it more valuable towards endgame.

 

[TheoAllen]

Logically, plate mail armor is better than leather armor in the terms of defense. However, since plate mail armor is made using metal, you may have bad defense against thunder attacks.

Wooden sword may have less attack point than regular sword. But they may effective to used against skeleton since wooden sword can be considered as blow attack which effective against undead skeleton.

Also, instead of using body equipment, try to use accessories instead. In my game, I use 2 slot of accessories. Each accessories has its effect like increasing the chance to evade or reflecting magic. None of them is better than anyone else. Just use it as you like

 

[Bastrophian]

You could have equipment grant resistances or immunities to various effects. And, instead of having equipment grant absolute bonuses or penalties to attributes (i.e. +10 DEF), you can have it grant a % improvement or decrease (i.e. 105% DEF) which would stack AND become more substantial towards endgame. And, if you bind certain Skills to equipment, maybe the mid-range armor has a Revive skill (which restores to 1 HP, but invaluable if your healer goes down) So in the end you might have Fire Armor which grants 20% resistance to fire, +0.1% Magic regeneration, 110% DEF and allows the wearer to use a Flame skill that hits an opponent for some Fire damage. In the early game, it wouldn't do much for the player's DEF, but by the endgame, if the DEF comes out to around 250, it adds a nice chunk. You can also grant equipment certain specialized bonuses (double Gold dropped or increase EXP gained by 50% for example), making it more valuable towards endgame.

Lol, I was just thinking the same thing, about having armor grant boosts to stats based on % . I think that might be the best rout.Ultimately, I think I'd like to use a mix of all of your ideas...

 

[Vox Novus]

A simple way to solve this type of problem would be to have Skills tied to weapons. Like a character can use certain ultimate attacks based upon which weapon they have equipped or maybe even there entire skillset is given from weapons like the original .Hack// games. Or going to the extreme of this you can have it so that weapons thmeselves provide no actually strength/attack gain and their sole purpose is to provide alternative abilities allowing the player to deal with different types of situations; maybe they can even switch weapons mid-battle to access the abilities they need.

 

[Vanilla Cheesecake]

I've always loved weapons like daggers which inflict major status ailments and such.

There was a dagger that I had a concept of that you got really early called Beestinger which basically did poison, however it's one of the few weapons which have poison that saps life % away. The weapon was relatively quick, but my game had a combo hit rate, and had a decent chance to score multi hits (Up to 5, which equalled the a little less than the same attack power as 1 of the "strong" weapon hits at end game, so balance wasn't really an issue) at the cost of being relatively weak, thus a low attack rating (About 130 a swing which was compared to 700 weapon swings), but combined with crit rates + multi hits served as a good weapon at higher levels, it wasn't actually very good at lower levels due to the weaker party's overall strength.

An alternative method is to make weapons and especially armor actually relatively minute in terms of powering up characters. Smaller stat additions to offensive / defensive bonuses and moreso basing offensive and defensive prowess off of character levels or buffs makes earlier or weaker weapons and armor seem more valuable.

Additionally, adding bonuses like status affects exclusively for weapons and armor such as a rod that, when hits, adds a healing effect, making healing/supporting roles' MP pools expand a little, or a helmet that, when used in battle casts an earth-elemental spell on the enemy based off the user's magical stats, or a body piece that is the only body piece in the game to damage enemies when they strike the body piece's wearer adds a lot more value to each individual armor piece.

You could even do something goofy like having a fake or terrible weapon with an ability that deals damage solely to MP, or the cursed Bow of Thanasalosaloa! (random name) that makes the wearer take damage from healing and be healed from taking damage.

Just a few ideas.

 

[Evalis]

I'm currently toying with this idea of keeping weapons/armor throughout the game. I fear that players may want the upgrading aspect for progression purposes though. However, I have it set up right now that heavy armor gives more health and resistance (pdr) and reduces healing and increases incoming magic damage (mdr), while light armor grants agility and evasion. They each come with their own resistances. IE: Bleeding (health degen) and stun against plate is near impossible, while slow and paralysis are near impossible against leather armor users.

Weapons are in the same category. Also don't forget that you can tie skills to weapon types, or have gear provide skills just by wearing it.

 

[JosephSeraph]

Basically, this thread already addressed the issue, but let me sum it up:

Don't make equipment linearly progressive, if you want it to remain useful. SNES rpgs are the most guilty of that.

Why have 10 different kinds of swords if all they do is deal slightly more damage, and cost double each other's costs?

Now, having completely non-linear equipment might be a bit crazy, though. But certainly doable. However, I see no problem with starting with some lowly rags that are outclassed by everything in the game.

All them gave already very interesting examples, but let me spice up some more ideas: MAge-type weapons are divided between rods (Increase MAT), staffs (Increase MP) and Blunt (Higher damage, increases RES). This already makes mage-type weapons much more interesting and variable by itself. Now, try to work on particular benefits to specific weapons inside of that range. Maybe there's a staff that's weaker overall but regenerates mana. Conversely, maybe a rod drains mana per turn. Maybe you have a Fire rod that's not much stronger than all the others, but increases damage done by fire spells... And decreases resistance to said element, by the wearer. Maybe there's a staff that adds a Fire Resistance debuff when it connects! A mace that reduces defense when it hits! Things like that. none of them are directly stronger than eachother, but nonetheless they play differently enough for the player to have to make a choice, instead of selling all equipment and buying new ones.

But it's a wasted effort if you do this and then all your enemies are carbon copies of eachother, save for more HP, Strength, Defense and Magic.