Best method for an armor system?

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
#1

My friend and I had an idea on a fighting game where players can choose what class they want to try to obtain. When we thought about an armor system, we both had different ideas and I want to ask you developers, who’s idea is better? I’ll start off with my friend’s idea first, then my idea.

Friend’s Method For Armor System
My friend wants to go for a simple approach and have the armor change the player’s MaxHealth. For example, let’s say the player wants to wear level 1 armor. When he has the armor equipped, it’ll change their MaxHealth from 100 to 125. He also wants to make it so player’s can change armor as well, such as from wearing default armor to level 3 armor, then back to default.

My Method For Armor System
My idea for the armor system is having Defense Points. Different armor will increase the player’s defense points by a different amount, reducing damage taken from weapons by a small amount, allowing players to survive blows that could be considered fatal to most. For example, Player1 has 0 defense points and Player2 has 5 defense points. Player3 hits Player1 with a sword, dealing 12 damage. Player3 then hits Player2 with the sword, dealing 10.8 damage rather than 12. Defense Points also open up new buffs and debuffs such as a damage resistance buff or a weaken debuff that decreases the player’s defense points, making the player take more damage. The player will also be able to change his MaxHealth, so he could have 20 defense points and 150 health.

Friend’s Counterargument to My Method
When I told my friend the idea of defense points. He didn’t like it as he said it’s unneeded to have a defense points system. He also says that he’d rather know how much damage he’s doing per hit, such as always knowing that he’ll deal a guaranteed 12 damage per hit. He also said he doesn’t want the player’s maxhealth to be locked onto 100, which I responded that l never intended in locking the player’s max health to 100.

My Counterargument to Friend’s Method
Doing the method my friend said can really miss out on a lot of opportunities such as having items increase or decrease other’s damage resistance. Despite the fact that you could make a damage multiplier tag, I find it better to have a system where a player feels like the armor they have is actually protecting them rather than them feeling more beefy, if the armor is also suppose to be equipable, if a player changes his armor mid-fight, he could be from 200 health back to 150 from an accident he caused. I also noticed an issue with equipping armor with his method, if a player equips the armor, his health won’t match up with the maxhealth, which means we’ll have to heal the player. However, this could also be an issue as people could take advantage in this and use it as a healing strategy.

So back to the main topic, what do you guys think is a good method for an armor system? Changing the player’s MaxHealth or having a defense point system which reduces damage or something completely different?

Best method for an armor system?
  • Changing the Player’s MaxHealth (Friend’s method)
  • Creating Defense Points (My method)
  • Other method for a defense system (Different method)

0 voters

I’d also appreciate it if you could also reply with the reason why you chose the armor system you agree with (or if you chose the third option, what do you think could be a better method).

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#2

I disagree highly with just increasing health since this will just make it where better armor = win at times.

What I used was 3 different attack stats which was blunt, slash, pierce and how much it would defend against a weapon depended on these stats vs weapons stats.

This in turn made things like warhammer etc really useful against armor.

I also made the armor require the weapon to actually hit it instead of a pair boots defending your whole body you would actually have to hit their feet for it to work. “Good thing I haves these boots. I just survived a headshot!”

Now that I’ve explained my method I’m gonna criticize the others.

The reason I’ve never liked armor increasing health is because again someone could grab boots or a chest plate and then you hit them in the head and they survive! This has always gotten on my nerves especially games like Minecraft pvp. It removes a lot of strategy and tactics and replaces them with a “find better loot if you want to live” mentality.

—

The reason I don’t like defense points is because their literally the exact same thing basically. “He didn’t like it as he said it’s unneeded to have a defense points system. ” and I think He’s exactly right about that. (And you could do buffs/debuffs with any armor system almost.)

——

So there’s my reasons. They might not fit for your game since I focused on a more realistic fast paced combat where you died within 5 hits at most practically so keep that in mind.

3 Likes
#3

I chose your friend’s method for multiple reasons:

  1. Much easier to implement, this lets you focus on other aspects of the game.

  2. Still easy to tack on to health multipliers with simple arithmetic

  3. Defense Points-like system can be accomplished through MaxHealth. Check if MaxHealth is higher than what it would normally be, then lower the damage of the item until Health is less than or equal to the normal MaxHealth.

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#4

You may be right. But you can make weapons check the armor they are hitting. Depending on armor it can do more or less damage, or if it is magic armor, it can’t stun the player. That stuff you know?

1 Like
#5

I don’t have anything to say, other than use both the methods.

#6

You could just check those things when the weapon hits the armor whether it’s values inside it or somewhere else or even just what material/color it is you can check for things. So it shouldn’t be hard to implement a system like this.

(And I’ve used both raycasting and touched event on client for this method. The best way to do the hitbox is touched event on client in my opinion and then just check the magnitude on the server for a sanity check)

#7

That’s a good point as well. But as @Ty_IsHomeSchooled said, just doing health will be very much easier to implement.

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#8

That’s true so that could end up being better but if it’s a competitive realisticish game like the one i was doing then my method could end up being worth it.

It really just depends on the game.

1 Like
#9

Closed this topic, thank you to those who participated in the poll.

1 Like