Gear Progression and Weapon Proficiency

I've been setting up a game to use a non-linear gear progression system, as I've been getting pretty tired of the tried and true method of constantly having to replace characters' gear over the course of a game. Instead, I'm putting together a system based on elements I personally enjoy using more.

What I'm currently using is a system where all the gear is roughly equal in tier, but what each weapon, armor, or accessory does varies much more widely in function. Players will be given the choice of what gear functions and stat distributions they'd like to use (such as attack heavy, defense heavy, magic heavy, what special effects, etc.) and will be given the freedom to keep using what items they like without having to worry too much about having to replace them eventually.

Lately however, I've been thinking of using an expansion to this system which does have a few tiers of improved items, but still retains focus on the element of choice with gear variance instead of constant need to upgrade. It would use a system where each character has a rank for each weapon type (or potentially armor type), which builds up in rank as they use the corresponding type of gear. Higher rank with a gear type makes higher tier gear available for that character to use, however there are only a few ranks. (Such as F to A, or potentially S.)

How viable would a system like this be, and what ways of implementing it would work best? Currently, I've been putting it together based on elements other games have used which I really enjoyed.

I'd also like to know what would be required to set this system up in a game, whether that be through events or if scripts will be required to make it function ideally.

I find it that stuff like this often depends on the nature of the game you're going for. Generally though, I think it's nice to make gear progression something a bit more than simply going to the next town and buying a weapon with a stronger attack. What I personally enjoy is when there's both linear and non-linear progression at the same time. So for example you might come across better gear as you go along the game, but every time you do that, you have choices.

For example in the next town you might have a choice of 2 or 3 weapons to give to the character and each one is roughly equal in stats but perhaps offers a different bonus. Like maybe one offers some unique resistance, whereas another one increases your critical chance by a bit, and the third one perhaps grants a unique skill, and so on. This way the player can think carefully on which one to purchase and get the one that fits their playstyle the most.

In terms of functionality, doing this is entirely possible within Ace, at least on a basic level. However, it would require a bit of rebalancing-- for each weapon to remain useful you'd have to change up the formulas used for damage dealing, and make changes to your character's ATK ramp. As it stands ATK in Ace is mostly influenced by weapons- the highest boost is 100+ which is almost half of the maximum acquirable via levelling.

So essentially, each weapon has around about the same ATK boost. You may have to change the default formulas for ATK-based skills. The rest of the effects can easily be handled by features.

Do keep in mind that while these systems are theoretically sound, your players will likely pick weapons they receive later, sticking to one preferred weapon and only switching if a boss battle or such requires it. At least, that's my experience-- KH games from the second game onwards use this kind of system, and while you do see some variation based on play style, most have a particular weapon because of the strategy reasons. If you're ok with this, I say go for it.

The gear levelling is another ball game entirely. You would probably need a script for it, since the 'gear level' is a non-existent stat, and then a way to check that stat when equipping your characters, and a way to make sure it only increases for that kind of gear. I don't think it exists at current-- you'd probably need a lot of fiddling to get what's currently available working like that, or you'd have to commission it.

So, basically, the gear automatically self-upgrades to a higher tier as the player uses the equipment more.  For weapons, that's pretty straightforward (although if Mages uses Staffs they rarely use them for direct attacks, so that is a problem), but what would that mean for, say, armor?   Would the player have to be hit to count as "using" the armor?  Or is it time-based?   

Personally, I'm much more in favor of having each type of weapon upgrade a Skill representing that type of weapon, than I am of equippable weapons improving over time.  Why?  Auto-upgrading equipment means, even if I am superbly skilled with a particular, say, Rune Sword, if I drop or lose it and equip another Rune Sword, now the equipment needs to be leveled up again.  That can quickly become REALLY tedious for the player.     And, if one player upgrades the Rune Sword to maximum and gives it to another player, does that player suddenly become a master swordsman?

But if that raises a Rune Swordsmanship Skill, mastering Rune Swords means ALL Rune Swords are mastered.  That's a lot less frustrating.  And it makes more sense, to me at least, than "The more you bash dragons with your sword, the stronger the SWORD becomes."

To answer your other question:   to make your system work well, it sounds like you would need scripts, because at a minimum, every time the player uses a weapon, the corresponding Skill needs to rise.   Or, if you really want, the weapon needs to have some internal counter which then changes the "grade" of the weapon when the weapon is used enough.

So I think the best way I'd do that type of system is a Skill raising the abilities with certain weapons, and it will require scripts to implement.

Best of luck.

@Whitesphere:  What he did not mean is for equipment themselves to be upgraded (as if individual instance equips), but how an actor can use that specific equipment type. The weapon/armor rank would be tied to the actor. The more you bash dragons with your sword on Actor 1, the stronger ALL swords become that he/she uses.

There are quite a few games that use weapon specialization ranks, like the Fire Emblem games. Each unit has a rank for each weapon type, but unit types generally are meant to specialize on specific weapon types. (Pirates generally have higher Axe ranks than sword/lance ranks, but if you really wanted you can raise the ranks of sword/lance on them by using it more) For example Pirates can move over water tiles and use Axes, but enemy Pirates also always use Axes, so a Pirate using high-specialized Lances would be great but takes work to build.

I did something very similar to this back in RPG Maker XP, for much of the same reasons.  So if you want to check out this old post from the RPG Maker Pavilion (or the surrounding thread), it might be helpful in certain ways.  One thing I did differently was instead of having characters gain access to higher tiers of equipment as they leveled the type up (which I think is also a very cool idea), I had the equipment simply do more for them - damage/defense bonuses and access to higher-level weapon skills as they reached the high ranks of Proficiency with a weapon type.

So, you asked what you would need to do to set this up.  It could be done with events and a couple of already-out-there scripts, but the whole thing will be much cleaner for the player, and scalable for you, if you script it.  That would definitely be the better way.  Here's what you'd probably want to do:

1) Add "equipment type" experience variables to the Battler class (or just the Actor class).  Note that I am talking about "classes" and "variables" in terms of programming/script editor, not the variables and character classes in the database.  Use the "EXP" variable as a guide for how to set it up.

2) Determine how you want to award Proficiency Points (experience with a certain type of equipment) to actors.  The way I did it was to give it to battlers who had X equipment type equipped when they won a battle (though I used a formula based on the square root of EXP gained).  If you do it this way, it's pretty easy.  If you want to award PP based on something like using an attack while a sword is equipped or getting hit while plate mail is equipped, you need to find the appropriate actions in something like Scene_Battle or Game_Battler, but it should be doable.  It shouldn't be too hard to check a battler's equipped weapon type - see the Compendium of Script Call Commands.

3) Show the character's Equipment Proficiency on the status screen.  Probably the hardest part.  The screenshots in the first link I gave you show this being done in XP, and it only took me a couple hours as a beginning coder.  If you don't know how to show this kind of information on a window and can't figure it out, make a topic of its own for it.  You could also forego displaying it and just let the player know when they gain proficiency, but I consider this poor design.

4) Implement the actual effects of Equipment Proficiency.  If you want the character to gain the ability to use further tiers of weapons/equipment, then make each tier a different "Armor Type" or "Weapon Type" and use a Dynamic Features script to add the ability to equip these new types of weapons/armor when the character reaches the appropriate levels.  Or if you want the character to receive enhanced benefit from equipment as they gain proficiency, you can adjust the damage calculations in the script editor to look at the battler's current equipment and their Proficiency with that equipment, and adjust the total damage as necessary.

In all, it's very doable, and I think it's a very good idea to use this kind of system to allow players to theoretically give any character any piece of equipment they want to, while not making characters such "blank slates" that they lose their unique combat personality.

I highly recommend against doing this, as you are simply shooting yourself in the foot. To explain.. let's say you have a character using heavy armor all the time and he gets rank S with that armor type, but you encounter a circumstance where light armor is more appropriate. Unfortunately this character is rank F in light armor and using it would be more crippling than sticking with his current armor type. You could make it so that the tier levels are so insignificant that they won't matter, but then the result would still be the same: Your new and nifty system now sees no use.

You would be better off letting the player choose to upgrade their equipment tiers all at the same time, or for each relevant slot - so armor gives all light, heavy (and whatever) armors a rank up, and weapons gives all usable weapons a rank up. You could do this by item, by training or by level up. For all characters, individually, or by type.

Alternatively you could dole out upgrade materials in quantities that encourage upgrading multiple items. Some limit (such as blacksmithing level) or exhorbancy of cost for each tier, could be used to limit level 1 characters from obtaining Rank S (or whatever) gear. 

Personally I'm not really a fan of upgrading gear, but I understand it's appeal.