To add longevity and allow players to prioritize certain items according to their play style, you should allow each item a lengthy addition of upgrades (if not infinite). These upgrades don't need to be unique and can simply cause a weapons attributes to scale further. For instance here is a basic weapon using my template, obviously all values are baseless and just used as pure example. The values given are the un-upgraded values and in parentheses is the scaling. "x" would be the number of upgrades. To prevent certain functions from getting out of hand, a cap can be imposed, which will be the third and final value given to each attribute. Energy Lance Battery: 100 (1x) Primary Attack: A basic thrust with the lance, perhaps a trigger allows a spring loaded tip to fire forward as it's primary function. Primary Damage: 15 (.5x) Primary Range: 4 (0x) / Melee Primary Energy Cost: 0 Secondary Attack: The tip of the lance unfolds and fires a burst of energy in a wide but short ranged cone. Secondary Damage: 30 (1x) / Ranged Secondary Range: 12 (.2x) 18 Secondary Energy Cost: 50 (2x) //Yes, the energy cost increases with each upgrade. In THIS particular weapons case, upgrading energy and the secondary cost yields no effect. This may change on other equipment. Secondary Blast Width: 10 (.5x) 15 Forgive any errors, I typed this in a hurry, but let me hear your feedback! Perhaps create some more weapons conforming to this template to let any blatant problems in the design surface, or to capitalize on how useful this could be.
I suggested this in a build tree style of upgrading, but i like this idea better. However as an example given to me prior "you dont want a wooden sword to be stronger than an iron sword just by buying upgrades.".
Yeah, sure, Firefox, ruin my 200 word post two times, why not... So I wanted to write a long text, givong feedback and such, but well, I gave up. Anyways, something along those lines would be very nice ondeed.
Yes that's one way of thinking. But why is a wooden sword carved from the demon tree of the planet blah not going to be stronger? Perhaps weapons you believe, or would be logically better have better ratios? For instance, a Wooden sword can have "Primary Damage: 5 (.1x) whereas an Iron Sword will have "Primary Damage: 6 (.15x)", see where I'm going with this? This is an interface the devs could put in place to allow nearly effortless implementation of hundreds of generic weapons. More unique weapons with diverse functions would still take a bit more work, but would STILL be made easier by a system such as this.
Interesting idea. I came up with something like this for a game concept I drew up. Basic: Upgrading is done in increments based on the attribute in question, so for example weapon damage would scale more per upgrade than firing speed. Upgrades would have diminishing returns to prevent the player from just adding max attack speed on their sniper rifle and using it like an assault rifle. Advanced: Every upgrade increases the point value of the weapon. Increasing base damage(+X/upgrade), Increasing projectile speed(+Y/upgrade), Adding a secondary effect like an explosion radius(+Z/upgrade) Every weapon type is assigned a Maximum Point Value for upgrades, thus limiting the potential attributes of a particular weapon based on certain factors such as tech level and max weapon damage. The Maximum Point Value keeps the DPS of a particular weapon from becoming excessive from exploiting certain functionalities of individual weapons. (For example, making a shotgun with explosive rounds would increase the damage versus crowds enormously, but making explosive rounds on a sniper rifle would be relatively less powerful, so the point value of "Explosive Rounds" as a modifier would be higher on a shotgun than a sniper rifle)
