Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Discussion Thread: Dual Wielding Pistols
LordMaxx wrote:
Yes, great to see the poll thread bumped just about daily...but some of you are cheating signing more than once!
My question is when the developers do work on Dual wielding pistols, what should the mechanics behind it be? Im sure they already have some ideas of their own, but if we can come up with a very well balanced and professional design document they may take it into consideration.
It would be easy to say things like...well just cuts your speed in half...but that doesnt exactly evoke balance. This ability should upgrade your combat abilities, but there must also be costs...
Im assuming most of the community will want it to be a Master Pistoleer skill which is fine by me...but discuss that also if you have differing opinions.
Some of the optional Pros and Cons to dual wielding could be this:
Speed Bonuses
Damage Bonuses
Accuracy Penalty
Movement Speed Penalty
Both Weapons must be same type
Both Weapons must have same Serial
Limited Specials Use
No Specials Use
And there could be many more...think of how you could take the above bonuses and penalties and make a balanced and fair pistoleer ability. Also Im sure there are other bonuses and penalties that could apply post those also if you think of them.
If you haven't had a chance, read the clicky I had. It wouldn't be a useless novelty until master. Dual weilding geo blasters or scatters before master would have a lot of advantages...actually, being able to dual weild any weapon would be a useful,tactical decision IMO.The tactical decision just changes some at master...since then youcan dual wieldALL weapons with any allowable specials. Personally, I want to make sure we have dual wielding as a tactical choice, but I know many other have asked for it if even only as a visual option.
TelekFragger wrote:
It should be available at master pistoleer. True anyone should be able to dual weild but it takes alot of practice to be able to do effectively and if it were available at a lower block in order for it to make any sense it would be just a useless novelty until master pistoleer...
EscahiRoni wrote:
Comming from an ex. pistoleer (woudl go back in an instant if it wasn't for the damn village and lack of skillpoints atm), pistoleers should have an aoe attack similar to a melee special where it targets everything within say 5m in 360degrees.
Pistols are a quick firing profession, and if dual wielding you should be able to target multiple targets in any direction. There are specials of this nature for all(?) melee professions and personally I always felt pistols need a special of this nature.
Pointblank Area 1 at novice marksman and Multi-target pistol shot at M Pistoleer. Both specials practically scream dual-wield. Perhaps modifying these so that using them with one weapon is (for instance) 75% as effective as it is currently and using them with 2 pistols is 150% of current. (when you can get MTPS to work correctly, of course.)
Accuracy should definitely take a dip, since you are dividing your attention between two weapons. AD&D used a -10/-25 (primary weapon/secondary) type of system (or was it -25/-50? been a while 
). Something of this nature seems easiest to implement.
Speed? Now there is the loaded question (pun intended, so shoot me muahahahhah). All depends on what is decided about how the guns are firing. Are we pulling both triggers simultaneously or alternating? Either way the net result should be an improvement of our DPS, which means someone out there will end up screaming "OVERPOWERED!!" sooner or later. This part of the equation also melds into the question about what guns can be used together. The answer to that (which may offend some purists) has to be ANY pistols can be used together. Unless you are using unsliced weapons that you have just pulled out of a factory crate, every weapon will have different characteristics...that one has a speed slice and this one has a damage slice and that one over there was made with +70/-.4 krayt tissue and this one in the shoulder holster is an exceptional I looted off a dark trooper and so on and so on....and don't get me started on powerups Easiest way might be to average the speeds of the two guns, but then you have the 3.8 DE-10 in one hand and prenerf 0.3 krayt FWG in the other hand....you can see how this can get abused.
Based on that, taking the speed of the slowest weapon and using that as the base might be the most "balanced" approach...and will hopefully hold the bats at bay.
So,are theyfiring together or in succession? If together, then it's simple enough to add the damages together and only have one attack roll, normal special use, and HAM costs amounting to both weapons combined. But frankly, in my opinion that is rather unsatisfying....I would much rather see alternating fire from both (okay okay MAINLY) an aesthetic point of view (admit it, it would look SOO much cooler and in the end we are about style here) and from a game mechanic POV. Each gun fires independently of the other. Specials (and HAM costs) are based upon the gun that fires them. This would also open the door to a greater use of tactics...lets say you are a smuggler with a DE-10 and an FWG equipped...you would want to time your attacks and sync your specials so that when you do that lowblow/last ditch combo (you know it, you love it!!!) you are LBing with the FWG and saving the LD for the hand cannon. And if disarming shot actually worked (unequipped the target's weapon)....we could have a nice 5-second delay to use on all the single-weapon wielders out there.
Again, for balance we will need to use the slowest gun as the speed for both weapons, but firing seperately we are still doubling our DPS.If your slowest gun is 2.0, then we have gun #1 shooting at 1,3,5,7 and #2 at 2,4,6,8. Techically this falls apart at the speed cap, but I think a nifty way around that would be #1 at 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and #2 at 1.5, 2.5, 3.5. The riflemen will still be screaming, but they still have AR3 all to themselves.
When I was saying no specials...imagine if we did 3x the damage with keeping the same HAM cost as normal shots...slightly lower accuracy...it would essentially be like being able to spam a special..without the HAM cost hit. In todays world of buffs out the wazoo that doesnt seem like much...but remember the developers dont want us to just be spamming the same special over and over and I can see them trying to fix that.
What to do about specific game mechanics im not sure. The devs could probably come up with something alot better than I can.
I think that being able to target each pistol independantly should be considered since it is the biggest advantage of dual weilding. Would be interesting and very good for adding some tactics although probably a little difficult to impliment.
It should be available at master pistoleer. True anyone should be able to dual weild but it takes alot of practice to be able to do effectively and if it were available at a lower block in order for it to make any sense it would be just a useless novelty until master pistoleer so better to keep it simple and grant it at master.
Pistoleer only to give pistoleers a unique ability like every profession should have.
Im thinking fire both guns at once as 2 separate shots or alternate at half the average speed ignoring the cap to have the same effect
penalties to accuracy and defense make sense and seem balanced. Accuracy decreace is obvious, less defense because concentrating on firing 2 weapons distracts you from dodging and such, seems like a reasonable and balanced penalty that gives a good distinction between single and dual weild for different situations.(mowing down meatlumps you might not need that extra defense but against a nightsister it might come in handy)
Jibbrish wrote:The reason i think duel weild should be a master only skill is it essentially doubles the damage a player can do with a given weapon and adds (depending on how it's implemented) the ability to inflict more than one damage type at a time. This would be something no other profession can do. Limiting it to master would prevent dabbling and make pistoleer a profession worth mastering.
i understand what you are saying here, but i am going to have to go with the idea that dual wield would be a progressive skill, placed in the combat experience (Pistol SPECIAL Abilities) tree of Pistoleer.
it could be progressive in all aspects, speed, accuracy and weapon types, and ONLY at Master Pistoleer could equip two different types of weapon. perhaps the ability to preform specials could be implemented at master as well.
I understand and very much LIKE the idea LordMaxx suggested with there being NO specials allowed while dual wielding (at lease not until master). what he was driving at, and seemed to be over-looked was the power boost that dual wielding COULD implement. if you are firing two Scatter Pistols, or two Geo pistols, with little or no penalties to speed and accuracy it really IS just like spamming a special. you will be getting double damage at speed cap. very little programming would have to be changed and / or added (though i would VERY MUCH like to see the pistols look like they are firing alternately and not simultaneously. Just a visual preference.)
just my $0.02
Message Edited by NeoEcks on 10-16-2004 10:12 AM
Jibbrish wrote:
The reason i think duel weild should be a master only skill is it essentially doubles the damage a player can do with a given weapon and adds (depending on how it's implemented) the ability to inflict more than one damage type at a time.
'ya know...at first I thought the same thing (which is why I wanted to be able to equip different types of pistols in each hand), but the more I thought about it that's not an advantage. Look at it this way. Say your opponent has a vulnerability to both Acid & Heat. Yes, you could equip a scatter and FWG, but why? You aren't gaining anything by mixing damage types. You're rather equip whatever your two best dmg weapons are....so you might choose to equip dual scatters because those give you the most damage. Damage type doesn't matter at that point. If an opponent has 5% resists to acid and 10% resist to heat, a person would be stupid to equip a FWG in favor of two acid pistols. So, there's really no advantage in equipping different types of weapons unless you just like the visual.
The ONLY two exceptions to this would be if we could target a different target with each hand and DoT weapons. In that case, yes you might want to hit one with acid and the other with heat. However, I HIGHLY doubt this will ever come to light (we don't even have holsters). DoT weapons is another case...if we were able to apply a mind fire from one hand and mind poison from the other, it would be very effective. This ability might make wielding different weapons unballanced and could be a reason not to allow different weapons even at master. Or, just make DoT weapons not dual wieldable.