We discussed the possbility of removing cold/fire/energy/poison resistances from armor in addition to removing them as damage properties on wepons.
This would basicly be a cheap knockaround to the simple system that we had during T2A I think. Wepons would only do one type of damage (physical) and armor would have the physical resistance attribute (somewhat similiar to the old AR then).
I love this idea. It looks simple and easy. Yet... I fear the implications will be tough. Using the standard RunUO setup, these are some things we need to change in the scripts (on the top of my head).
Issues1. Monster damages
Any creep that does something else than 100% physical damage will kick but! A fire elemental with 100% fire damage will destroy you.
Making all these alterations will take time
2. Magic SpellsWe said magic would be rare, very very rare. But if I am not mistaken spells do elemental damage (fire,cold,poison,energy) and will in this case be VERY powerfull against armor that cant mitigate it. In other words, you will be defenseless against magic. Spellcasting mobs (not to speak about players) will utterly destroy you.
3. Crafting systemWith only one type of resistance avaliable, the need for the diffrent ore types sort of vanishes (save for coloring purposes). Let me explain:
You can have 6 pieces of armor + a sheild. Currently, the Cap on resistance is 70. That means 70/7 items is a max of 10 resistance per piece. Anything higher will, well... make it unnesesary to wear a full suit. That might be a cool side effect.
Then we consider the diffrent armor types.
Leather, Studded, Ringmail, Chainmail and Plate.
If we then go through with the idea that Plate offers better protection than leather, it would look something like this. (just an example!
)
Full suits (6 pieces)
Leather: 30 or 5 a piece
Studded: 40 or 6,66 a piece (how do we do this?)
Ringmain: 50 or 8,33 a piece
Chainmail: 60 or 10 a piece
Plate: 70 or 11,66 a piece
Its a real mess to work out...
How do we add in the effect of diffrent ores/leathers into this? Its almost impossible.. What does the new ores do? Add durability? More physical resistance? If so, how?
4. Magic resist and the old systemWhat it boils down to is the fact that the system was completly diffrent before the introduction of resistances. Back then, when we had AR and only one type of damage, the skill Magic Resist actuly had a use.
It was the skill that mitigated spell damage! After the change, it only adds some useless "base resistance" of 40 in every resistance type at GM.
SummaryBasicly... I think its a bad idea to scrap the resistance system. It is not perfect, no. But modding it might serve our purposes better than a complete rewrite. Such an endeavour will mist likley take a LOT of time into consideration giving us nothing but a small modification.
I propose we keep resistances ingame. We can playtest some mods to it, such as implementations of diffrent quality armor/types (plate vs chail etc).