More About Breakable Weapons

[thy_butcher]

I'm totally with Yuki on this... we are in Silent Hill. We are not in a standard reality. Why can't metal be bent if a gaping wound can be tended to by taking a sip of "Health Potion"? Or you know... the fact that we are dealing with monsters...
Plenty of people dislike break-able weapons in SH. The fact is, Downpour has them. And as Tillerman said, they can't make certain things indestructable. You would NEVER put down a crowbar if it didn't eventually break. It would make every other weapon pointless. It makes me think of SH1's emergency hammer.

[alone in the town]

Instead of making crowbars bendable, there could be some effort made to, yunno, give the weapons balance. Remember how the Great Knife could kill anything in one hit? Remember why you didn't keep it equipped all the time?

That's an extreme example, but there are others in the series. Heather's Maul, for instance, is extremely powerful. The game balances its power by making it slow and difficult to wield. The Katana is powerful but has a limited range. James' pipe is more powerful than his stick, but he can move while wielding the stick. Harry's emergency hammer is very powerful but he can't move while holding it ready, and it's almost useless against fast enemies. More powerful firearms have less ammo to use and are generally not as easy to fire.

The crowbar could be balanced in more believable ways than having it bend. 3 and 4 both had good ways of dealing with it. Silent Hill 3 had a fatigue system which lessened Heather's weapon power if she tired herself out, and Silent Hill 4 only let you get the most out of your weapons by charging your attacks. Those were both perfectly acceptable ways to keep good weapons from becoming gamebreakers. Making some weapons breakable is acceptable, too. Some objects are simply fragile. Some objects could never break by the stresses placed on them by a person swinging them around. Forcing them to become useless after awhile, no matter what crazy justifications, is fake and lazy, and in Downpour's case, unnecessary, because Downpour limits the number of weapons you can carry. This could be a creative way to induce players to be strategic in the weapons they choose to carry, if certain weapons are more useful in certain situations.

Seriously, if this is the best way Vatra can come up with to make combat challenging. I think those guys need to do a little more homework, and I expect better from them because they've had ideas so far that I like a lot, such as reducing the number of enemies while making enemy encounters more complex and involved, as opposed to an exercise in mowing down hordes of cookie-cutter mook monsters as has been the norm in previous titles.

[clips]

I absolutely agree with Alone....you shouldn't have to go to great lengths to explain why a crowbar would break... (the creatures themselves are causing different physical properties on the weapons??!!)...naw that's not gonna work,... trying to justify it just sounds like you're making excuses for the weak gaming mechanic.

Why can't metal be bent if a gaping wound can be tended to by taking a sip of "Health Potion"? Or you know... the fact that we are dealing with monsters...

At the end of the day, these are just games...of course there are certain aspects of gaming in general that you just can't work around...so yeah the health drink restoring your health is a bit unrealistic, but SH is based on normal characters placed in supernatural and fantastical situations...so while SH itself is mostly imbedded in psychological aspects of madness, and even tho some physical properties in SH may alter some true real life scenarios, in general when you think of issues like weapons breaking or least strong weapons like crowbars and aluminum bats breaking...those types of items should still retain their true real- life property elements...

It keeps it in line with the character being in a very abnormal place with normal everyday tools that you may find if you were actually deserted in a ghost town, but making excuses for items such as crowbars to bend just sounds silly to me...especially if the crowbar is going up against creatures that are generally made up of flesh anyway...

[Yuki]

I absolutely agree with Alone....you shouldn't have to go to great lengths to explain why a crowbar would break... (the creatures themselves are causing different physical properties on the weapons??!!)...naw that's not gonna work,... trying to justify it just sounds like you're making excuses for the weak gaming mechanic.

Why can't metal be bent if a gaping wound can be tended to by taking a sip of "Health Potion"? Or you know... the fact that we are dealing with monsters...

At the end of the day, these are just games...of course there are certain aspects of gaming in general that you just can't work around...so yeah the health drink restoring your health is a bit unrealistic, but SH is based on normal characters placed in supernatural and fantastical situations...so while SH itself is mostly imbedded in psychological aspects of madness, and even tho some physical properties in SH may alter some true real life scenarios, in general when you think of issues like weapons breaking or least strong weapons like crowbars and aluminum bats breaking...those types of items should still retain their true real- life property elements...

It keeps it in line with the character being in a very abnormal place with normal everyday tools that you may find if you were actually deserted in a ghost town, but making excuses for items such as crowbars to bend just sounds silly to me...especially if the crowbar is going up against creatures that are generally made up of flesh anyway...

I'm not understanding it at all, though. You guys have problems with a bendable crowbar, but no problem whatsoever with a wooden two-by-four that doesn't break or a pipe that doesn't even get a dent in it?

[Skele]

"I'm not understanding it at all, though. You guys have problems with a bendable crowbar, but no problem whatsoever with a wooden two-by-four that doesn't break or a pipe that doesn't even get a dent in it?"

well to be fair, we wouldn't be able to see any dents in the steel pipe now would we? not unless we can get in first person view, or weapon damage shows up when you view them on the menu screen. your argument for the 2x4 is fine, but SH2 didn't have breakable weapons, so it was one of those things that didn't make sense, but it wasn't an annoyance. that's the difference between the two, because having a crowbar that bends will be an annoyance. it may be frustrating to players because when you're surrounded by 2-3 monsters, and then your crowbar magically decides to bend, you're screwed...and if you end up dying because of it, more than likey it'll frustrate you.

we should't have to think way outside the box in order for a game mechanic to make sense. like i said before, things that wouldn't realistically break, shouldn't break. there should be other gameplay elements put in place to force the player into using other weapons, or items to use against monsters.

[alone in the town]

I'm not understanding it at all, though. You guys have problems with a bendable crowbar, but no problem whatsoever with a wooden two-by-four that doesn't break or a pipe that doesn't even get a dent in it?

None whatsoever. They're being used against soft, fleshy targets. Why should they ever break?

I mean, the stick is a possibility, depending on the kind of wood. If it is solid enough, it's not going to break being used to deal out blunt force trauma. A steel pipe would certainly withstand that kind of use without any problems, either. Our monsters are not adamantoises, and our protagonists aren't Superman.

[Tillerman]

that's the difference between the two, because having a crowbar that bends will be an annoyance. it may be frustrating to players because when you're surrounded by 2-3 monsters, and then your crowbar magically decides to bend, you're screwed...and if you end up dying because of it, more than likey it'll frustrate you.

Yeah, I think the idea is that situations like that are supposed to add tension... but I think they're more likely to cause frustration. If you're in the middle of beating down a monster and your weapon breaks, you're gonna feel obligated to finish it off, which means you're gonna scramble to find another weapon... if that kind of thing happens a lot, I think it's gonna really start to feel like a chore.

Though if there's tons of things you can use for weapons everywhere, and if they don't break too often, it might work okay. But I still feel like this game mechanic makes more sense for an action horror game than a straight up horror game.

[Pleasant Sinner]

^^^^ I can't help but to think Dead Rising 2 here. If that's the case, I wanna beat the crap out of a Screamer with a giant stuffed teddy bear.

[stopped_clock]

^A stuffed Robbie might be more appropriate.