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Metal Weapons - Should they even "break"? (And other weapon durability concepts)


TheLostBigBoss

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With B41 being a nearly complete revamp of how the game is played in order to survive, the new weapons have me thinking. 

 

Things like shovels, gardening pikes and similar long range metal base-wooden length weapons are very easy to break in the game, some of them only lasting a few zombie encounters before snapping. This can be abstracted to the wooden base of the weapon breaking, obviously not the metal end of a shovel. 

Similarly, we now have weapons which are 100% metal. Things like metal pipes may not be easy to handle or do all that much damage, but the actual "durability" of using a metal pipe on a living person, let alone someone who is decaying, is nearly infinite. Something like a Pipe Wrench has been tested with the most insane of stress tests, these things in reality do not break under any normal usage, let alone in the circumstances of it being used as a blunt vs. human flesh and bone. 

 

Which comes to the current balance of weapon durability. Some of the weapons we have come to know and love, like the Spade (which is now a shovel) have been rightfully reworked to not be as effective over any significant length of time. However, since we are now treating weapons as they should be, should not the inverse be looked at in regards to weapons which realistically would never actually stop functioning or break in combat? 

 

This goes for metal ends of weapons like axes. The weakness and "durability" isn't in the head of an axe. The clear weakness is always the handle and the connection between the handle and the head of the axe. Instead of having an axe just "break" and be unusable, the aspect of repairing it or "fixing" it should be two fold. 

Low level carpentry can try and maintain a handle/head connection with the common tools we have like tape, glue and so forth. Higher level carpentry can craft new handles to attach axe heads. This means that broken heads from old axes, both one handed and two handed, can be repurposed later in the game when you gain the skills to craft proper handles.

The weapon "effectiveness" is also impacted by the overall state of the axe head. It can chip, become dull during multiple combat encounters that requires cleaning between encounters up to resharpening the edge during downtime back at your base in order for it to keep being as effective as it should be.

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There are a lot of factors and the main one concerning durability is weight.

One way to balance durability is essentially and quite easily by having it proportional to weight.

 

Say each zombie hit reduces durability 0.1 points

Standard weapon is say 50 hits ( for easy math ) 

we can say 0.025 lbs per point of durability.

 

So we can say the weapon will way 2.5lbs ( reasonable ) 

 

That means if we want to balance metal weapons the average weight should be 5lbs + 

For blunt metal weapons

 

With bladed weapons the issue is 2 things the sharpness of the edge and the thinness of the blade.

So in that case weight is less of a factor

 

Essentially it would be one way to possibly balance it

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Yeah full metal weapons like crowbar, leadpipe, pipewrench should have infinate durability.

 

Katana should have very high durability too.

 

Honestly I never liked this short durability business in zomboid, its bad. Sure it is needed for some balance but if your shit breaks too fast its no fun, and having fun is a huge factor.

 

The broom breaks before even killing 1 zombie, its ridicilous!

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Durability for all items needs to be tweaked. I can't imagine using a butter knife once and snap. Maybe if these things were made from plastic I can see them breaking during one zed encounter. I get that they want some balance to damage but look how many zeds exist, especially in the challenge modes where they respawn. So zeds are infinite but the weapons are finite? Sure you can endlessly make spears, but I still think the spears even break too fast, where you end up having to carry 5 or 6 at a time just for a regular encounter which means carrying a lot of weight just to make the spears worth using. 

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  • 1 month later...

I feel like that instead of breaking, bladed weapons should dull and rust.

 

The idea is that if you split skulls or decapitate zombies, they'll eventually lose most of their combat effectiveness until you sharpen them and polish the rust off. I have seen moments where rusted or corroded metal could break, but a weapon like your trusty machete should be able to go for a long time before that should even be possible. But if they added a sharpening mechanic to force people to maintain their blades for optimal combat effectiveness, that may actually be better in the long run.

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The woodaxe has insane durability as a weapon, I'm still at %95  durability with over 1500 zombies killed. This level of durability should definitely be used with the crowbar, metal pipes, and other metal weapons. Like you said, their use on zombies would be practically infinite. If a new mechanic was introduced, I think bladed weapons (including, but to a lesser extent axes) should go down in damage gradually, requiring maintenance (sharpening) to the blade.

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23 hours ago, Caturday said:

With these changes people stick to few weapons forever.

I mean, if a weapon is rare and powerful, I for one think it would be great if people could stick with them for as long as they're alive. Or at least, letting the player decide, like if there was a sandbox option regarding durability.

 

You could be able to set certain weapons to having infinite durability for example.

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The problem here is you either have high/infinite durability weapons with high weight or have medium durability weapons with medium weight. The difference is when weapons break too often, you have to carry a couple of them (like i do with butter knives when i have a bag, because they break so fast), but having one weapon that can last a 100 Zs is good enough, even if it is a bit heavier than the others of the same type.

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Should we get down to the reeds and talk about conditional durability? A katana will slice through dozens of zombies with little wear, but if you tried to smack down a door with it the blade would shatter within a hit or two. Sharp, hard, but brittle. The material (wood, plastic, metal etc) isn't as important as the design and its use case. An axe and a shovel are made of the same stuff and probably about the same weight, but the head of a shovel would dent far more easily, being broad and thin compared to the dense axehead.

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Yeah I agree here, while gameplay is important so is realism. Weapons with extreme durability should be hard to find, and perhaps not be as good as weapons that break easier, but they should definitely be there.

 

Perhaps it takes much longer to kill a zombie with a metal pipe than it would with a Machete or with an Axe.

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6 hours ago, Gurluas said:

Yeah I agree here, while gameplay is important so is realism. Weapons with extreme durability should be hard to find, and perhaps not be as good as weapons that break easier, but they should definitely be there.

 

Perhaps it takes much longer to kill a zombie with a metal pipe than it would with a Machete or with an Axe.

 

I mean, it would make sense for any weapon to break over time, weapons made out of metal should be able to for a long time before that would be even possible, and in the case of metal, I've only seen metal anything break if it was super-rusted and/or corroded.

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6 hours ago, ZAMNPlayerD said:

 

I mean, it would make sense for any weapon to break over time, weapons made out of metal should be able to for a long time before that would be even possible, and in the case of metal, I've only seen metal anything break if it was super-rusted and/or corroded.

Perhaps add a rust or corrosion mechanic? Maybe the zombie infection turns the blood acidic, so eventually the metal weapons would rust and crumble? Just an idea.

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  • 4 weeks later...

A better maintenance mechanic would be good. The current repair function is a basic version of this, look at weapon repair kits and firearms. Having wet stones and honing components for bladed weapons would make sense. But like everyone has said blunt heavy weapons like the pipe and wrench could do with increased durability, the whole heavy weight/high stamina drain would counter the benefits to it being almost indestructible . The axe head should be a persistent item in itself (in my opinion) with the shaft just needing replacing when the axe breaks, then you could hone the axe head edge for increased damage and replace the shaft for increased durability. If you wanted to go even further you could have diffrent materials to make the axe shaft from with options to treat the wood for diffrent durabilitys.

This would add even more depth to the game, especially if you do an extremely rare loot game/server with no re-spawn. But that's my $0.02

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As someone who uses an axe almost daily, it always did irritate me with how fast i can break them in game. Especially because it's my melee weapon of choice. It doubles as a reliable, powerful close range weapon as well as a destructive tool. I'm pretty sure every axe I find isn't sold by harbor freight, so I shouldn't be going through them like a fish drinks water.

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It might be fun to add a "quality" mechanic to weapons for this stuff. 

Take bladed metal weapons for example. You find a bladed weapon, it has 100% durability, but only 50% quality. Quality modifies the damage output, so 50% quality means that it is doing 1/2 of it's possible maximum damage.

You use a regular stone to sharpen the blade, the durability is reduced by 2% (because this is a regular old rock off the ground), and quality is improved 20%. Alternatively, you use a whetstone and some water to sharpen the blade, quality is reduced by 1% because this is a better tool for this purpose, but quality still improves by 20%. 

The main idea is that as you use the blade the quality falls very quickly, perhaps as much as 2% quality per kill. Thus requiring frequent repairs to keep up the optimal damage output, and becoming nearly useless if you don't maintain it's edge, but the durability would fall MUCH slower than it does now. I feel like this would more accurately capture the experience of using a metal bladed weapon, especially something like an axe.

For the blunt weapons, the quality statistic doesn't make as much sense, but I could see an argument for a metal pipe being 'locked' at the damage output of a 30% quality sword, but in exchange it never needs to be sharpened. It makes sense to me that it would take much greater effort to destroy a brain inside a skull with a blunt instrument than it would to just take the whole head off with a machete or split the skull with an axe. 

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On 12/4/2019 at 6:51 AM, ZAMNPlayerD said:

I mean, if a weapon is rare and powerful, I for one think it would be great if people could stick with them for as long as they're alive. Or at least, letting the player decide, like if there was a sandbox option regarding durability.

 

You could be able to set certain weapons to having infinite durability for example.

Rare and powerful doesn't really work when it comes to balance though. In the old version, the axe was rare and powerful, but every now and then (or with Lucky, basically all the time) you'd stumble upon a bunch of them and it'd be zombie armageddon. On the flip side, sometimes you could go a lifetime without finding one, and never get to even begin with carpentry because of it.

 

I think the best bet for balance and "realism" is to change how the weapons themselves work.

 

A pipe wrench will last a lifetime...but can you really imagine swinging one around? Trying to control the follow-through of a swing? You'd get tired out quickly. Big, cumbersome; powerful, durable. That's how things like that should be.

Yeah, you swung it and cracked a head open, but whoops, lost your grip and the 6KG hunk of metal went flying out of your hands.

 

For smaller stuff like crowbars, hammers etc. that would never lose durability in a lifetime of zombie crushing, you can balance it with the risk of getting them stuck in a walking corpse.

 

As it stands, weapons really need work.

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6 minutes ago, EllEzDee said:

Rare and powerful doesn't really work when it comes to balance though. In the old version, the axe was rare and powerful, but every now and then (or with Lucky, basically all the time) you'd stumble upon a bunch of them and it'd be zombie armageddon. On the flip side, sometimes you could go a lifetime without finding one, and never get to even begin with carpentry because of it.

 

I think the best bet for balance and "realism" is to change how the weapons themselves work.

 

A pipe wrench will last a lifetime...but can you really imagine swinging one around? Trying to control the follow-through of a swing? You'd get tired out quickly. Big, cumbersome; powerful, durable. That's how things like that should be.

Yeah, you swung it and cracked a head open, but whoops, lost your grip and the 6KG hunk of metal went flying out of your hands.

 

For smaller stuff like crowbars, hammers etc. that would never lose durability in a lifetime of zombie crushing, you can balance it with the risk of getting them stuck in a walking corpse.

 

As it stands, weapons really need work.

I mean, like I said, I feel like there should be sandbox options for those who want to decide that.

 

Like, before Build 41, Hunting Knives were perfect for training up blade skills if you didn't want to risk using up your axe. But then they added the mechanic of stabbing weapons being able to get stuck in zombies. I mean, while it would be a neat idea, I feel like weapons falling out of your hands randomly would make combat even harder than it now is.

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1 hour ago, ZAMNPlayerD said:

I feel like weapons falling out of your hands randomly would make combat even harder than it now is.

I just mean for stuff that, yeah, you can use as a weapon. Like the pipe wrench. 

It should always be an option, i.e., high/unlimited durability, so you're not stuck with nothing when everything breaks. But the downside is it's not actually a weapon. It won't break, but it's dangerous to rely on it.

 

With downsides like dropping your weapon, getting it stuck, being ineffective with it etc., you're not left cautiously hoarding tools that'd never break in the real world so as to keep them from deteriorating, and fighting zombies with plentiful spoons and pans.

Instead you could actually make use of them to defend yourself with.

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