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[0.80] Encumbrance first impressions

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[0.80] Encumbrance first impressions

from Elemental Forums


After playing a little while without encumbrance, my first impressions are not very positive. In my humble opinión, the game is now a bit less deep. Weapons that before were a bit of a choice (Am I willing to assume the weight for the damage?) are now less difficult to figure. As Queen Procipinee I have found myself using the huge mace that never could use due to her limited 15 weight capacity.

Also, traits are less different now. The trait that before gave extra weight capacity now gives +1 attack, being exactly the same than an already existing perk. And also weight capacity acted as some sort of ítems limiter.

IMHO it would be more interesting to make encumbrance more gradual, and instead of two linear penalties at 40% and 80% provide gradual penalties of a percentage of initiative directly proportional to percentage of encumbrance.

Just my 2 cents.

69,414 views 54 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

encumbrance wasn't a bad design decision, they could add it back if they made something to counter the init loss for units like defender or warrior to some degree. but i think i changed it to this to have it a little bit easier with the ai programming (maybe) because now it need to be unlocked as a trait (skill tree additionally to research tree if you wanna buy it). the skill tree in generally i find a very good idea, but certain traits aren't worthwile persueing. i don't want the skill trees to be smaller, but to have more impacting choices and more variety. it takes too much time in my opinion to reach certain levels and certain heroe builds (heroe specialized in swords and chainmail for example). furthermore the specialization with the different weapon classes shines more light at another probem: weapon / armore / etc. variety!!! look at the warfare research tree.....you research just some basic weapons throughout the game. it would be nice to be able to fairly quickly research the basic weapons and then be able to have certain specialization pathes (like in the skill tree) with more variations in the different classes. as i read "more items, ..." i had hope that they would add some more items to research and therefore broaden the variety.

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

The main flaw of the FE encumbrance system is having only 2 points at which it has some effect (40% and 80%) If the effect is for each % as mqpiffle says, it becomes much more meaningful and the game is way deeper.

End of quote

Yeah this.  More granular encumbrance would have given a similar end result than what we have now (small initiative penalties for each armour item).  To prevent mages running around in full plate just put a weight penalty on the path of the mage trait.  It would have saved all the re balancing and extra work that is now required.  Seems like a waste of time... the mechanic was not bad in the first place.  There's plenty of other more interesting stuff that would be a better use of that time.   

:annoyed:

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Have not really played enough to say the final word, but different armors need to have dodge penalties as well. Obviously.

 

The only reason they are not included yet I can think of is that Derek does not want to balance two important parameters at once (init + dodge). But I sincerely hope they will make it into final game.

 

But in case they are not added, all realism goes pfffll :)

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Daynarr, reply 50
Personally, I'd like encumbrance back. Improve it, make it more gradual, have more impact but definitely back.
End of Daynarr's quote

Honestly, whatever we may think, I would assume at this point, since they have taken away encumbrance, and it seems to be part of their plan to do so, that its not going to come back.

 

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 35
I've been thinking this myself. Armor pieces are fun in some games, but I'm starting to think they're not necessary or fun in LH. And like you mentioned they could balance the initiative much easier with full suits, and maybe introduce a couple more armor types just for fun. I've also been thinking that the armor proficiency traits should not be requirements, but rather give bonuses to using those kinds of armors.

Also increasing base initiative to 100 and increasing the bucket to something like 1000 would really help with balance.
End of mqpiffle's quote

 

Looking at it I'm like 99% sure they are going to make suits all one piece. If you take a look in the research tree a the techs that unlock armor they all show armor as a single piece (for instance "leather armor: +5 defense") I think in the past it used to show each piece? But I could be wrong. I would like a few more armor types as well! I feel like the best solution is single armor types with separate head/feet/cape slots for magic items. I like your idea about proficiency traits changing to add bonuses, what about giving armor a doge penalty which is then removed if you are proficient with the armor? That way a unit or random dude would suffer some from heavy armor, but an awesome legendary hero would move like normal in it? 

 

My issue with upping the initiative is basically i feel like it would make it a lot harder to understand? I mean I already have some issues figuring out just how it works now, I know higher is better obviously, but sometimes its hard to see what difference having a say a 20 initiative vs a 22 initiative makes in the large picture. With a bigger ranger obviously some things would be clear, it would be easy to see the difference between init 50 and init 100, but I feel like it would start to be impossible to notice those bumps of one or two initiative, do I spend time when making units worrying about if it has 66 or 67 init? I would now, but i dunno if i could notice a difference. Also it would really force them to re-balance like every item and a lot of traits and they may not want to do that.