Hello everyone,
First, a bit of background.
Since weapon crafting was added to the alpha recently, it is now time to revisit the entire weapon crafting system and re-evaluate all of it's components to see if they make sense and if they can be improved.
I am not proposing a drastic change to the crafting system, however I am going to put forward some specific changes that I believe will make the weapon crafting process more intuitive, logical, and most of all fun.
As it always was in Mortal 1, to craft a weapon you need three components:
1. Weapon head material
2. Core material
3. Grip material
I ask you this:
If we are crafting a sword, in which the weapon head material is steel, and the grip material is wood, what part of the sword does the core refer to?
Some basic sword anatomy:
Here's some images that all attempt to convey similar information provided courtesy of google images.
(I'll spare you the ms paint drawings this time around. You're welcome.)
The more astute among you may have noticed that the metal blade does not stop at the hilt, but continues down all the way to where the pommel sits. This tail portion of the blade is known as the tang.
Given that we now know the "core" of a sword hilt is in fact the same piece of metal as the "weapon head", what is the "core" in Mortal supposed to represent?
I thought perhaps it is supposed to represent the guard and pommel combined, and the "grip" is accurately in fact the grip material that is placed over the tang of the sword which would hopefully change based on the material we use for the grip.
If this is the case, then I propose we rename "Core" to "Guard & Pommel".
This would of course only apply when a one or two handed sword hilt has been selected in the crafting menu.
Now we apply this same question to shafted weapons such as spears, axes, poleaxes and clubs.
If the weapon head is the metal spear head, and the "core" is the spear shaft, we can rename "core" for spears to shaft.
This ties in pretty closely to the next thread i'll be making regarding shafts in general, but this sheds light on the possibility of introducing visual extras for the "grip" material, as we could then have specific grip styles to choose from when selecting a grip style, which would be changed visually depending on the grip material we use.
So to summarise, I am proposing we change the label for the "core" material slot depending on what type of weapon you are crafting.
For sword hilts, rename it to "Guard & Pommel" or just "Guard".
For shafted weapons, rename it to "Shaft".
As a bonus, provided i'm not missing some "core" concept here, this should also require no new changes to their actual crafting system calculations as from my testing the weight increases from using a metal core on a sword appear to be about right for making the guard metal opposed to wood.
I would also briefly suggest that having a wooden guard on your sword should drastically decrease it's durability, as a wooden guard would be very close to completely useless and any change made to discourage people from making swords with wooden guards to keep the weight down is a good idea.
Do you have any thoughts on this, or do you know what is meant by "Core"?
In either case, please discuss below.
First, a bit of background.
Since weapon crafting was added to the alpha recently, it is now time to revisit the entire weapon crafting system and re-evaluate all of it's components to see if they make sense and if they can be improved.
I am not proposing a drastic change to the crafting system, however I am going to put forward some specific changes that I believe will make the weapon crafting process more intuitive, logical, and most of all fun.
As it always was in Mortal 1, to craft a weapon you need three components:
1. Weapon head material
2. Core material
3. Grip material
I ask you this:
If we are crafting a sword, in which the weapon head material is steel, and the grip material is wood, what part of the sword does the core refer to?
Some basic sword anatomy:
Here's some images that all attempt to convey similar information provided courtesy of google images.
(I'll spare you the ms paint drawings this time around. You're welcome.)
The more astute among you may have noticed that the metal blade does not stop at the hilt, but continues down all the way to where the pommel sits. This tail portion of the blade is known as the tang.
Given that we now know the "core" of a sword hilt is in fact the same piece of metal as the "weapon head", what is the "core" in Mortal supposed to represent?
I thought perhaps it is supposed to represent the guard and pommel combined, and the "grip" is accurately in fact the grip material that is placed over the tang of the sword which would hopefully change based on the material we use for the grip.
If this is the case, then I propose we rename "Core" to "Guard & Pommel".
This would of course only apply when a one or two handed sword hilt has been selected in the crafting menu.
Now we apply this same question to shafted weapons such as spears, axes, poleaxes and clubs.
If the weapon head is the metal spear head, and the "core" is the spear shaft, we can rename "core" for spears to shaft.
This ties in pretty closely to the next thread i'll be making regarding shafts in general, but this sheds light on the possibility of introducing visual extras for the "grip" material, as we could then have specific grip styles to choose from when selecting a grip style, which would be changed visually depending on the grip material we use.
So to summarise, I am proposing we change the label for the "core" material slot depending on what type of weapon you are crafting.
For sword hilts, rename it to "Guard & Pommel" or just "Guard".
For shafted weapons, rename it to "Shaft".
As a bonus, provided i'm not missing some "core" concept here, this should also require no new changes to their actual crafting system calculations as from my testing the weight increases from using a metal core on a sword appear to be about right for making the guard metal opposed to wood.
I would also briefly suggest that having a wooden guard on your sword should drastically decrease it's durability, as a wooden guard would be very close to completely useless and any change made to discourage people from making swords with wooden guards to keep the weight down is a good idea.
Do you have any thoughts on this, or do you know what is meant by "Core"?
In either case, please discuss below.