[Gang]

So well, I was annoying like everyone with this idea during the past few days

What I suggest is to make the armors do some bonus besides they already do in melee. Though, I don't agree that theres no difference between Iron and Sapphire except for color, like Emerald said in some topic. There actually is, and the difference in melee is good as it is now. The only thing is that we play on sphere replica and melee will never happen in world PvP here. I mean once people group up they stop using the weapons and begin to cast FSes, Lightnings and so on. Because of that you would never see someone ganking in sapphire in the world. I myself run in Black Rock, having hells halberd, SDK and Black widow in my pack as well, but thats only because there aren't much pvpers right now. I can die vs two people just as easy as the guy with Iron armor and halberd of nothing would, since they wouldn't try and hit me with these cheap-ass weapons, they'd FS me instead.

It requires a lot of details to be mentioned, so please take your time and read it all, because this would benefit literally everyone. Crafters in general, but also PvPers. We all bored to loot few pots and couple scrolls, aren't we? Not to mention it's not even fun when you risk good items and opponent doesn't. So, basically what I was thinking is to make spells/scrolls(only!) work a bit differently if you have different gears. But it's complicated, so I'll first explain what this system won't count:

It should ignore : Shields, protection spell, stoneskin potion(do we even have them?) , exceptional parts(!). Any virtual armor bonus you might get if theres a way.
I say shields because a guy with chaos/order shield and iron armor will have protection level above than the guy in full sapphire would. Not to mention that disarm which drops our shields to the pack as soon as we hit a cast\bandage macro will make it complicated. Also , I'd hate to see people picking the weapon/shield over two hander all the time, and thats what we'd get if shields were taken to consideration. Also about the exceptional parts - thats because here on RunUO exceptional parts proove more protection than regular ones. On sphere it would only add durability. Also, imagine a guy in a lets say full Black Diamond, all the parts of which are exceptional fighting vs a guy in full Daemon Steel, but with regular parts. The second guy has ~same protection level as the first guy, only thing that daemon steel would cost more anyway, and is harder to get. My main concern was just in sake of making items help you , to a certain level ofcourse.

So, I've been discussing it with Habibi and we came to a conclusion that spells/scrolls should deal 4% less damage on someone who has one-level armor better than you. By one-level I mean higher armor in smithing table, not the protection level. E.g. if you have full reactive you will deal 35 damage in flame strike instead of 36 on opponet in full sapphire. It should descrease damage up to half. So the maximum bonus would be 50% , or just 18 FS damage. I think it would be pretty stupid to make it descrease damage up to 1, since even newbies in iron should have chance against a rich guy in sapphire if they can get big group. Additionally I say make cursing a player who has five-level armor better than you impossible. E.G if you have black diamond and fight vs a guy in full sapphire, you can't curse him.

Also on a side but important note - It shouldn't work on tourneys and duel stones. Thats were we determine the skill you have, not the money you've earned. Plus high-end armors were used in duel stones all the time, the only place where nobody did use them is world PvP. Also, we'd need a loot arena a well , it would be a place where this penalty thingy wouldn't work and people still could fight for gear and see whos better. Not to mention that armor matters a lot it that box if u can fight. It doesn't matter in gank, since nobody uses the weapons there...

Well, I'm certain this would benefit the crafters, make economy much more stably than it's now, also the loots would be good again... I can't really see how this does any harm...

It's pretty much all I wanted to say, I might have forgot something though, so I might add something later;p

[Sphinx]

What about Goblins? We all know that they can't wear platemail, so if now they are already in disadvantage, they will be even more if the suggestions you gave get implemented.

[Emerald]

[COLOR="green"]Oh well sure there's an AR difference.... of course there are no real templates like OSI. Everyone is identical except for skill. Besides everyone uses magic so standing toe to toe pvp is unheard of, so therefore sapphire doesn't matter much over iron other than AR. A skilled pvp'er in iron could still easily beat a not so adept individual in sapphire, hence why I mentioned the iron vs sapphire in the other thread.

Now your purposed idea sounds neat, except for the 5 level immunity. I don't pvp, and yet I don't think that is fair at all. I think more of a 5 lvl difference would equal 50% reduction in all spells cast against ya. I would be more apt to agree with that vs. immunity. I think that would be nice if all negative spells cast against a sapphire guy/gal from an iron guy/gal was reduced by 50% dmg, duration or whatnot. But like I said it is a nice idea to make armor more useful in pvp and for that matter pve as well.

[/COLOR]

[Emerald]

What about Goblins? We all know that they can't wear platemail, so if now they are already in disadvantage, they will be even more if the suggestions you gave get implemented.

[COLOR="green"]Yes this would have to be redone for all armor's... and I'm not sure what Goober's can wear, but a balance would need to be made between armors to an extent. Certainly leather can not have the dmg reduction that plate does, but maybe since magic can flow better thru leather give them a bonus to spell dmg up to 50% for wearing all leather.
[/COLOR]

[Gang]

You didn't get it Emerald. Or the way it was the way I explained it... I actually meant that the PEAK OF PENALTY regardless of armor would be 50%. It would be 4% per armor level up to 50%, so if you have sapphire the guy in Iron would have same penalty as the guy with lets say Fire armor would have.... What I wrote was:

It should descrease damage up to half. So the maximum bonus would be 50% , or just 18 FS damage. I think it would be pretty stupid to make it descrease damage up to 1, since even newbies in iron should have chance against a rich guy in sapphire if they can get big group. Additionally I say make cursing a player who has five-level armor better than you impossible. E.G if you have black diamond and fight vs a guy in full sapphire, you can't curse him.

By Curse I meant curse litreally, not harm, but the spell "Curse" ^^

[Emerald]

Oh I understand ya completely about max of 50%, and I agree. I just don't like that you think the spell curse shouldn't work against ya. I think it should at a 50% reduction.

[Gang]

Yes, I knew I'd forget something, I wanted to mention the goblin as well actually. Xub Xub had neat idea where he suggested to make it possible to connect leather with ingots, thus making any kind of armor... This is less important though, this one definitely will be adapted if the thing gets implemented. It's not hard at all , just give it a little thinking and will to do so...

[Gang]

Oh.. I actually didn't think how exactly curse would work on you, for some reason I thought it wouldn't change at all... Yeah, I even like the way you say better than disabling it. At least it definitely makes more sense.

[Habibi Jones]

In my opinion, others may not agree, it would really help the armor economy/make armors useful if we developed a system to actually make them useful. I'm not sure how easy it would be to script, but the Ruski is right; you should get a spell effectiveness penalty if you are wearing lesser armor than the person you cast on. You really have to think about the fact that right now the only difference between sapphire and aqua is 19 AR... People wear garbage loot because if you're halfway decent you only need a set of mytheril and a couple power weapons... If you're ganking you don't even need armor or a weapon, so this suggestion basically solves that problem and it also integrates PvP into the economy. Seriously, if you crafters can make armors/weapons that are worth something to people, you'll be rich Far more importantly is that it makes people actually want to play the game and fight... Wouldn't be surprised if a well worked out, slight change to how certain things work here would attract a lot of people looking to get that nostalgia satisfied.

Gang and I talked about different mechanisms for how the penalty should work. He proposes that it should be based on armor level, for example if you are 1 'armor level' behind someone then you should get a 4% spell reduction against them. At the 5th interval, 20% spell reduction as well as a curse penalty (originally we thought maybe it shouldn't work). Now I think to scale it with the the spell reduction. Here's essentially how I think it should work...
4% spell penalty AND -1 curse/weaken/clumsy/feeble effectiveness per 'armor' level. That way at 5th interval there is a 20% spell penalty and a -5 curse penalty (meaning curse does -6 instead of -11).
But...
This would really only work with craftable plate, and that's not really fair to people who can't wear craftable plate, so I think that this bonus should be based on AR differential. Pretty easy to convert, saph-blackrock=12 AR so I figure each 12 AR interval should equal 20% spell penalty and -6 curse penalty. This would work great imo, seems to be the magical interval for the craftable plate. iron=28, bloodrock 39, aqua 41... Every 3 AR difference should cause 5% spell penalty and -1.5 curse/weaken/clumsy/feeble effectiveness, not counting shields, protection, or any virtual AR.

<3

[Gang]

Well if it's possible to somehow remove exceptional bonus, I mean if it wouldn't be considered by the code and it would only check protection level on every armor part you have (since full exceptional sapphire is actually 68 armor, but it still would show 62 if you arms lore it) , if the script would do that , then it's good, but otherwise ... Dunno why you think it would only work with craftables though, from scripters point of view it doesn't matter at all. I mean, while all the armors with regular parts would proove just as much protection as the smithing table suggests , the armor with exceptional parts would proove six more points(1ar per part) so actually, your way is unfair I would like to hear Taran's feedback though, what he thinks of it and how hard it is to script...

Also, no clue how exactly I counted that 4% of 36 would be 4 damage.... When I was writing this I mean:

E.g. if you have full reactive you will deal 32 damage in flame strike instead of 36 on opponet in full sapphire.

But actually I meant real 4% per level, which is 1.44damage in this case ^^ Dunno how it should be done exactly...Maybe 1 damage between Saph And reactive and then 2 damage between Reactive and Daemon? Anyway there should be a reason why you'd pick sapphire over reactive other than to look pretty like Emerald said...

[Habibi Jones]

Haha yeah I actually noticed that in your post and assumed it was just a mistake. I remember you mentioning exceptional armor and that is the main drawback to this idea, unless it can be scripted in some way to respond... Dunno
Possibly make it so that even if an armor piece is exceptional, it is still somehow recognized as a non-exceptional piece? Again I don't know if that's possible.

[Lamby]

Support!!