I’ll be talking mainly about melee weapons in this post.
lets look at for example an axe in 3.0 in a normal mode, it has quality and the lower its quality the lower its damage, makes sense but I’d like more visuals to how beaten up it is, that would also help the player to not only know a weapons quality just by looking at it, but it also makes sense.
and I’d like to have weapons that are at 0% to not do damage at all but instead just push back the zombies, take a look at dying light, if your weapon breaks the game tells you that your weapon is not effective, for example in dying light:
if you have an axe and it breaks, the blade of the axe wont be sharp, and it will be useless doing a little to no damage to zombies, and you’d keep it only to hit them with it to stun them so you could run away or to repair it later (btw dying light’s combat is quite complex and I dont think its the best example I can give so if you have any better ones please comment or make a better post).
(I guesd I’ll stick to dying lights system because I think its good) when you repair a weapon it wont come back like its new, if your knife breaks, you’ll see marks that show you’ve sharpened it, and also metal plates to keep it straight.
ok so the last thing is basically unnecessary but would be also cool, the ability to craft weapons out of other weapons or items, A.K.A more makeshift weaponry, in 3.0 the only melee you can craft is the spiked baseball bat, dying light has good weapons you can craft but…its too crazy for unturned’s style, like I dont think a sword hooked up to a battery and a propane tank to electrocute and burn zombies would fit unturned, but maybe a bigger variety of makeshift melee weapons is enough and its basically what I wanted to add.
I’d like to see opinions, perhaps better suggestions about this
Attachments for melee weapons are something Nelson has considered as potentially being added somewhere down the line. An axe could be made of two main parts, the haft and the head. As the axe gets used, the axe head loses durability and the weapon does less damage, but even at 0% durability, it would still do enough damage to be useful for more than just knocking enemies back (even a dull axe head is still hard and heavy enough to cause some damage.) The axe handle would degrade much slower, but once it’s durability drops below a certain point, there would be a steadily increasing chance that the head may fall off, (at which point it would basically just be useful for knocking enemies back.) Axe, pickaxe, and hatchet handles and heads could be interchangeable. Polearms, rakes, and brooms could have interchangeable shafts and heads.
Slap an improvised handguard onto a machete, wrap that fire axe in tape for better grip, or even drive some nails into that baseball bat for classic carnage.
If an item is 0% quality, you should at least do bashing damage still, equal or greater than the bash damage of your fists depending on the weight of the item. Also, I feel that there’s a chance for an item to break regardless of the quality, but lower quality increases the chance of breaking. Also, caring for your item (sharpening it, keeping it clean, etc) should decrease the degradation rate until the blade dulls or the item needs cleaned again. However, I feel that an item should never be able to go back to it’s original full quality, because though you can weld more metal onto an axe head, or tape up the handle, it will never be like it was originally. However, you’d be able to make a new one if you could forge an axe head and make a handle. Makeshift stuff is cool, but being able to make high quality artisan items would be cool too. I.E. the difference between a crude shaft of sharpened steel, and a hammer forged long sword with a walnut wood handle wrapped in cured leather, complete with scabbard.
yeah, sorry about that. I’ve just noticed it has a lot of cool mechanics that I’ve not seen used before. I know other games use similar mechanics, it’s just that Cataclysm: DDA was my first experience of them.
Can you imagine the shock your wrists will get when you hit something and it goes boom? I can see a broken wrist if you’re not wearing wraps or aren’t conditioned to heavy melee strikes.
I’m assuming 0% would be related to the item. If it is a knife, then it’s won’t do as much slashing damage, but you could still stab ok. If it was a axe head, (like harvest said) it wouldn’t be as sharp, but your still swinging around a chunk of steel. If it was the axe handle, when it reaches 0% it might snap.