One thing that bothers me in ARPG’s are skills/skill-effects that don’t fit the character or his/hers equipment. For example the Hammer-throw of the Sentinel class is usable with swords, axes, wands or whatever.
I know this might sound ridiculous, but for me it breaks the immersion quite a bit. It really bothered me in Wolcen, because the skills and skill-effects felt so random and not in line with the character (like a melee bash attack was always a giant spectral hammer appearing over the character, no matter what weapon you carried.) For a sorcerer, i could see that, because he might be able to summon or cast such effects or weapons out of nothing. But i wish for melee and brawler type of characters to have more grounded and physically “realistic” attacks and effects. I hope it’s somehow understandable what the eff I’m talking about here. I think that this minor aspect subconsciously enhances the immersion, even though nobody else would notice this
In LE i have only encountered the “Hammer-throw without an equipped hammer” and “Shield-throw without an equipped shield” yet, that seemed a bit weird for me. I hope that future skills would take this into account. But i can understand that it might be hard to come up with skills that fit and are also interesting or powerful/useful enough.
Just some quick and kinda obvious solutions and benefits:
Hammerthrow - Restrict this ability to Hammers/Maces only Possible benefits: Affixes for hammers/maces and unique’s could be tailored towards the ability | This could create a distinct character archetype within its class/mastery
- Change the Skill to Weapon-throw and use the current weapon-model in the skill-effect Possible benefits: Actually this would only satisfy my weird fetish for immersive skill-effects…
The same would apply to the Shield-throw.
In the end, the game is already rock-solid in terms of combat and skill-variety imho and i strongly believe the devs will take the right direction, proven by what i have experienced and read so far.
Why Maces? Maces are no hammers! The bad thing about it is weapon specific benefits will make some weapons most or least wanted ehen they were videly useable to everyone before they changed stuff.
Sure it would help immersion but then again look at the whole concept. Everyone will aim for the best possible gear for build X so everyone who playes build X will look uniform at some point and it’s far worse for my immersion when I play Coop and everyone is a twin of each other. I don’t get it when big studios do this kind of stuff and dont offer thousands of recolors, different material patterns and so on and so forth. EHG is rather small so I keep myself in check and simply life with some downsides the game has because it’s awesome in many different ways.
You are right! In my head i was already thinking that we would then throw maces, haha
I was a bit to general about that i think. What i had in mind would be hammers with implicits that have +% throwing damage mixed in for example. Those would just be another weapon base-type and co-exist with the normal base-type hammers that have the +% phys damage.
The thing is that when we are looking at weapon or even armor drops without affixes, there is already and should be an increase in value of the item thats determined by increased base-stats. An axe you can find at level 1 should be inferior to an axe you can find at level 50. And adding another variant of base-weapon that has a specific implicit (which by the way is already ingame with other stats) would only add to the overall variety and not take away something (you could argue about extending the lootpool results in less good finds for your specific build but that can be counteracted in other ways). In the end there will always be the best/highest base-weapon or armor. But if this is the best item for you or not is only determined by its specific affixes.
I also agree that looking alike at the end with every character that has the same build-archetype is immersion-breaking. But thats about cosmetic individualizing and as far as i know there will be a shop later to customize your appearance. (which i hope won’t devolve like path of exiles, into an obnoxious glowing oversized seizure-inducing bullcrap store, thats not fitting the setting in any way [ye, i know thats what the big, tasteless majority of the community likes to have and they simply deliver to generate money]) But sure, i would like to have different models for high end gear thats on par stat-wise. But creating and implementing those will take time that can be spent better elsewhere.
I am with OP here. I already asked about implementing throwing weapons for throwing skills like the hammer. It a bit weird that I can scale flat damage on that specific skill not through weapons but through rings and amulets.
Also I think Shieldthrow should be only possible with a shield equipped.
What I really like is that new warpath animation that is corresponding to the weapon you use. Also Vengeance now has different attack animations linked to the weapon you wield.
Perhaps we have to look at hammer throw as a magic attack. The Sentinel summons a hammer he throws. It’s the same with Forge Strike. You summon a hammer, amboss, spear or sword, depending on your skill tree.
Yeah, Shield/Hammer Throw feel somewhat like a slightly random addition without the kind of support from gear or passives that melee or spells have. I look forward to using a bow to massively buff the damage that Shield Throw does (assuming bows will have flat added “throwing attack” damage).
I guess it all depends. If it’s a SPIRITUAL hammer (ie AD&D) then it doesn’t really bother me.
That said they could change it to “throw weapon” but that’s a whole lot of animation changes so based on past discussion of manpower, hours, visual asthetics (like gender choices, etc) this may happen but not anytime soon and certainly not before official launch.
Surely all they would need to do is rename it “spectral shield/hammer throw”, change the graphic of the shield/hammer a bit to make it more spectral-y & job done! Then it doesn’t matter what weapon is equipped.
Yeah, having the shield stats buff the damage for shield throw would be reasonable, but then presumably the weapon stats should buff hammer throw? Would both of these just be the implicit stats rather than the affixes or both?
This would be sweet. Grim Dawn has something like this. A number of skills, like the movement charge runes, can be used without shields but if you use a shield you get some extra oomph.
Well, when you mention a skill named Hammer Throw and all weapons may be used. Yes, it sounds a bit strange perhaps to be able to use all kinds weapons to throw here, but then again… One could just choose to use only Hammers and Maces as you suggest. Even though… such and such, yes.
Also read that someone thought Maces was just nonsense?
Well, maybe not. Both Hammers AND Maces are considered to be BLUNT Weapons. They are BOTH doing BLUNT damage.
And they are both doing the thing one calls Hammering Blows.
We arw in a world full of magic where meteors rain from the sky and mages shoot laser beams arround, fighters spin arround without puking over the place while they leap further then any record holders while others say F it and all of the sudden they are humanoid bears.
To be honest… the last thing I think about is why Hammer Throw only throws hammers :D.
I can see where you are coming from. But why can’t the Sentinel throw fireballs or call down meteors then? I mean its a magical world as you said. Or is it because we don’t have a single character that develops into whatever we want, but instead a system that has distinct classes or character archetypes that are known from all kinds of fantasy worlds out there.
I assume that the reason for classes in general is, that every archetype of character scratches a particular itch for fantasy lovers. One likes the master of the arcane, the mighty mage, another one likes the summoner of the dead and bringer of destruction which is a necromancer. But then there is another very popular archetype (along others), and thats the warrior, who relies on his superior training and gear to best hist opponents without magical fuzz. In my opinion it would water down this iconic archetype when we explain everything with: its just a magical world!
In my oppinion everything is watered down by a non magic user in a magical world who isn’t killed in the first fight against magical beeings by some miracle. It’s all fantasy in the end and most things happen because of plot armor. I remember a P&P D&D group that never invested in magical equipment and the first enemy that had dmg reduction against non magical attacks wiped the whole group.
Sure there are a lot of people in these worlds who don’t use magic but noone cares about them. On top of it Hammer Throw the attack that can deal void dmg all of the sudden? Used by classes that have access to a passive tree that make their enemys burn out of the blue? You must be pretty sad about such a watered down experience mate ;).
Damn, I’m not sad in any way. It seems my opinion somehow offended you, i was just sharing my thoughts and i also stated that it might sound ridiculous for someone else. Nothing more then a friendly discussion here ;).
That outta the way, I’m not against anything that deals void, poison or whatever damage. Thats because all these things are fun and add to the gameplay-experience, they give options for diverse type of builds and enable us to develop our own unique playstyle.
I think you got me wrong on the initial point and that’s understandable because it’s not easy for me to convey what this “feeling” of disconnection between character and skill is or causes for me. I’m still fine however it turns out to be at the end, because the developers have their own vision of the classes and skills. I’m just giving in my own opinion and can acknowledge different ones. No hard feelings!
I’m not offended no worrys. If I sound harsh I’m sorry. I’m just not 100% sold on it because I don’t see a big issue there. It feels disconnected and strange I’ll give you that but almos all animations don’t care for the weapon you use.
It’s not as funny as TL3 for example where you still can use your bow skills with a twohanded sword equiped :D. I’m okay how they handle stuff here but the most fun thing would be a “Weapon throw” skill. It’s the same like hammer throw but it uses the model of the equipped weapon. Throwing twohanded axes seems fun to me :D.
A last time in clear words: I get your point and I’m almost sure I understand your immersion breake but it’s no big deal for me and I think there are other important things so I got a bit picky for some parts of your answer because for me it pretty much seems like every class has access to magical behaving stuff so my immersion breake isn’t that big if a skill manifests as a hammer when you wield a pointy stick. I’m intrested in other oppinions as well thou because maybe I don’t care enough about it and it’s a big thing for the community because then it should be changed to appeal to anyone.
I can understand that. I also think this is a minor thing and nothing deal-breaking for me. And i really like that every class has access to magic! Paladin is one of my favorite character-types.
And I think the same about the weapon throw ability, would be nice and I even could see them converting Hammer throw to Weapon throw.
I’m just not a big fan of attacks that seem “slapped on” and like them to make at least a minimum amount of sense, even in a fantasy setting. Linking a weapon throw to the actual weapon the character is currently wielding, seems like a little thing, but in the end these things add up and make all the difference between a good and a great game imho.
Llama8 already made the suggestion to just convert it into a “spirital hammer throw”. That would be a legit solution even from my quirky point of view.
