Developer quotes[]
Honestly, I do not see anything wrong with a "better" sword having, for instance, +110 damage. This is, in fact, realistic. Higher quality weapons are simply more destructive than lower quality weapons. The ideas in regard to quality vs. durability are interesting, though... however it remains to be seen as to the way durability ends up being implemented in the game.
Forums, 12th August 2005 (Jayde)
At any rate, I do like the concept of trying to implement some kind of arrow reclaiming instead of having the rangers carrying 50,000 arrows around or something... that said, one does have to consider potential technical limitations (this has more to do with what the coders say than me) and also what could happen on longer epic battles.
Forums, 12th August 2005 (Jayde)
To touch on something mentioned before, we are currently planning on having "Slow", "Normal", and "Fast" variations on weapons that may have the same "DPS", but have a different feel/rhythm to them based on personal preference. Personally, I certainly don't want to see players all using the same "best" and "cookie-cutter" equipment--and would like to see variations based on personal playstyle.
Forums, 15th August 2005 (Jayde)
There should be a difference between the Atlantean Sword ripped from the skeletal hands of a ancient king and the rusty sword picked up from a puddle of mud in Tortage. They should look different and behave different. The way we make them behave different is by applying stats on the weapons. We cannot really increase the players hit chance or damage by giving bonuses to the his characters skill, since that would make the character hit better and harder with the rusty sword as well, thus these stats needs to be tied to the weapon itself. Anyways, we represent things like how balanced, sharp, heavy etc the sword is by attaching other stats that has the appropriate effect in our RPG system. A well balanced blade that handles easily can have a bonus to dexterity as an example, that could increase how quick you hit with it, how easy you parry or dodge. We don't want to have the player reallocating skills and feats constantly to adapt to different situations in-game, a far more flexible system is to equip different equipment.
Again, we will put in a large effort to make the bonuses make sense, and the majority of the stats will come from the player and not the items.
Forums, 17th August 2005, (DaveDread)
The exact details of these have yet to be nailed down, but we're currently planning on having some variety in throwing weapons for a number of classes. So, yes, we are intending to have some other forms of throwing weapondry other than bows/crossbows.
Forums, 22nd August 2005 (Jayde)
IE a mob is wearing chainmail, thus all players wanting to attack it will want to use blunt weapons to exploit his weakness. That'll lead to players walking around with full arsenals of all types of weapons to be able to adapt to any given situation. Better to have it so that all weapontypes can do reasonably well against any armortype. Extrapolate to PvP, the opponent is wearing armor X, then I should use weapon Y to win. No fun. Especially not if you are not trained in using weapon Y.
Forums, 2nd October 2005, (DaveDread)
Yeah, we'll have throwing weapons. Spears/javelins/assegais among them. We'll probably separate throwing spears from melee combat spears tho, it's too complex for us to alter their damage output depending on whether you throw it or stab with it.
I'd guess that spears are generally "overlooked" in MMO's because it's tricky to make them look impressive. There's not very many different stabs you can do, and treating it like a Halberd and slash with it, or like a Quarterstaff and spin it around snazzily doesn't ring true. Long stabbing things also wrecks havoc if you want to have the spear tip be near the target. Any rotation will make it flail about and probably miss by quite a bit.
Forums, 7th October 2005, (DaveDread)
There won't be japanese/chinese style weapons in Conan (at least at launch). It simply doesn't fit with the world. So, no shurikens. Then again, european Hurlbats aren't that far off.
Forums, 3rd January 2006 (DaveDread)
There are loads of different weapon types and hundreds of different weapons.
Ogaming, 20th January 2006 (Gaute Godager)
Anyways, in Conan we'll have a mixture of spears, bardiches, halbards, pollaxes and so forth, and hopefully we can assign enough animation assets to them to make them look, feel and behave differently then what you've seen in other MMO's. With a Halberd you'll probably be able to stab/slash, a pollaxe should probably behave a bit like a twohanded danish axe, IE swung in large arcs and so forth. We don't want to tie too much of the limited resources to a particular weapontype tho.
Spears and polearms will use the same melee combat system as the other melee weapons, IE your six directional attacks, but they do get the benefit of larger range. You could put a swordsmen in front, a spearman behind him and they could attack the same target.
Forums, 10th February 2006 (DaveDread)