Weaponry and things that go boom

Weapons
This is pretty much what tim's already suggested, but expanded upon a little. Enjoy.
The Exile (main charachter's) Weapons
You will always have two bladed weapons; your signature blade Fang in the right hand [I'll think of a better name later.] The left hand weapon can be exchanged for something more powerful, and can be a dagger or knife, a katana, a cutlass, a cleaver... or perhaps you will be able to have a gun/sword combo. Both Fang and your off hand weapon will be fully customizable; some players will want to keep their first off hand weapon and customise it until it is incredibly powerful, others will want to swap weapons around until they find one they like.
You will also always have some kind of ranged weapon. In the introductory stages this will be restricted to a simple throwing knife, which can be replaced with better ones. Later on you will acquire a pair of steam pistols that can be adapted to fire almost anything small and metallic, from screws and nails to rock debris or chunks of scrap. In the game they will never run out of ammo, but you will be able to find special rounds that do more damage or maybe have special qualities. These will be fairly commonplace.
Later on you can find a shotgun and a sniper rifle.
The Exile's weapons will all be highly customizable, but he will only be able to pick and use a very limited selection. This is because the basic soldiers armaments are rarely worth having anyway, the Exile prefers custom made weapons that are A) the right size and B) worth improving and customizing. He will be able to carry Fang + one off hand blade, both his pistols, his shotgun and his throwing knives. His sniper will only be available for certain missions, where his aim is to assassinate someone and then escape. In these missions he will have only the rifle and a sword.
He can also carry a very limited number of explosives. He will very occasionally be able to pick up a rocket launcher in order to take down a particularly tough boss or vehicle, but these are single fire and must be dropped in order to switch to any other weapon.

Other weapons
The weapons used by your various enemies/allies in the game isn't restricted to just swords, pistols, shotguns and rifles, unlike the Exile's armament: He's been trained as an assassin and as such he carries only highly portable weapons.
The various weapons generally fall into one of several categories:

Explosive
Grenades: The grenades most commonly found are standard frag grenades or the splinter bombs used by scourge. There are also some with special effects such as blinding/deafening/disorientation, as well as even rarer incendiary, toxin or nightmare grenades.
Also, the Exile can use special lightning grenades which have a large knockback effect and thus are extremely useful if you want to clear a corridor for a quick getaway.

Placed explosives: All kinds of traps and trip mines are used by your enemies. These also include a kind of man-trap plant that is grown to protect the gardens of the Templars, and thorned strangler-vines that adorn the lairs of the Scourge.

Rocket launchers: Rocket launchers are most commonly used by Mongers. There are many variations, from single shot ones to ones that fire heat seeking missiles or ones that release a huge volley of warheads at a time. One kind that is quite often seen requires the target to be tagged with a kind of tracking dart before it can be aimed effectively, but once the dart is in place it can fire of strings of rockets with brilliant accuracy. These are often carried by bosses.

Rapid Fire
Machine weapons and assault rifles are the most common armament of the Scourge, Mongers and Sentinels. These vary enormously and are too numerous for them all to be mentioned here. They generally fire solid slugs or 'bleeder rounds' (screws, nails and similar bits.) Also, armour penetrating rounds could be a good idea.

Shotguns
The Templars use lots of Shotguns. I like the idea of a kind of futuristic steam power knight running up to someone and blasting chunks out of them with a shotgun. This is the only reason.
Shotguns can vary more than you might think. A riot gun, for example, is like a shotgun with a much longer range. A stinger is like a rapid fire shotgun.

Precision
Your sniper rifle is the most obvious one. This one won't be as customizable as your other guns, because you'll rarely use it. The enemies very rarely use snipers. These don't need much thought.
However, other weapons that proper sniper rifles still fall under the precision categories. Any kind of assault rifle that fires bursts and can be fitted with a scope can be said to be a precision weapon. These will be fairly numerous among all factions.

Pistols
Pistols are fairly commonplace. Only the Exile's will be capable of firing bleeder or armour piercing rounds, the ones used by npc's will be confined to solid slugs. The rest is self explanatory.

Flame/area effect weapons
The Exile generally doesn't carry these as they are too big and difficult to transport to be assassin's weapons. Enemies will use them more.
One idea for an area of effect weapon could be some kind of large gun that fires jets of superheated steam. This will cause people to effectively boil in their own skins. Nasty, but if we decide to make this game stealthy then you need nasty ways of dying. Otherwise its not tense and becomes boring.

Close combat weapons (one handed)
Flails, morning stars and cats o nine tails are the favoured weapons of Templar fanatics and flaggellants. The Exile will not use these. Swords and knives are used by everything. Axes are the mongers signature weapon.

Close combat weapons (two handed)
two handed swords and axes are used by the same factions who use the one handed ones. Halberds, glaives, spears and pikes are occasionally seen.

Special weapons
Anything that can't be categorised otherwise goes here. Tazers, throwing stars, crossbows, or completely unique weapons belong here. For example, a gun that fires two bullets with a length of barbed wire strung between them might be one. This category needs filling, so post ideas plz.

Bayonets
These can be bought and added to guns. You can get thin ones designed for stabbing, curved ones for slicing or maybe even chainsaw edged ones.

Calm down there jacob, we want this to be simple but complexity for those who want it. Having several types of each weapon and having hundreds of weapons is a bit too much.

For ranged, there's the main weapon categories which are pistols snipers shotguns and rifles. If you're going to come up with ideas for weapons, make sure they fit in those categories. Specialised weapons like rocket launchers and flamethrowers are in a completely different category, so if you're going to go into detail with them, dont include them into the main categories as to avoid confusion.

For melee, there's several approaches to this.
You could have the 3 types of weapon being piercing, slashing and crushing. Piercing being spears and rapiers, slashing being cutlasses and claymores, and crushing being hammers and axes. There's also the aforementioned heavy and light weapons; light being spears and blades, heavy being axes and hammers. The first approach is probably the best; and as with the ranged weapons, you would have a specialised category for unique weapons like you described.

If you can place all the weapons in the categories described, it would make it much easier than just having individual weapon classes for every one of them.

Here's a template you can choose to use:

Melee


Piercing

Slashing

Crushing

Specialised



Ranged

Pistols

Shotguns

Snipers

Rifles




The other stuff you came up with, such as the rapid fire shotguns and such wouldn't have separated classes; they would be permutations that you actually add to the weapon. So say if you wanted to have a pistol that shot bullets faster, instead of buying a whole new class of weapon, you would buy a cog loading system which would mean it could fire rounds more quickly. Stuff like that. Not applicable to melee weapons obviously.

ahh yeah I like that. And I'm not saying there should be hundreds of weapons for the main charachter to use. The second bit was on about what your enemies can use against you. Lol-i know that it makes no sense to have the main guy with a rocket launcher that can fire lock on darts and massive volleys. That suggestion was more ideas for enemy bosses weapons.
Having upgradeable weapons for the main charachter I think ive mentioned somewhere. But think about it-- enemies cant just upgrade their guns so there needs to be a few variations on weapons.

Also ranged also needs to have a 'specialized' group. Dont forget that.

Also instead of having a group for snipers and one for rifles, have a rapid fire group and a precision group.

Really we shouldn’t be thinking of weapons now, once we get the story then we go to general and only after we have decided on what the gameplay is going to be like can we focus on anything else, and whenever we decide something we have to keep gameplay balance in mind, but again we cant make any gameplay ideas until we get the basic gameplay sorted.

jacob wrote:Also ranged also needs to have a 'specialized' group. Dont forget that.

Also instead of having a group for snipers and one for rifles, have a rapid fire group and a precision group.

They're the same thing with a different word, what's the point in changing it?

And if you're talking about rapid fir for all weapons, then I said something about permutations earlier. Stick to the 4 classes, and any extra thigns you want to add, make sure they are in the categories.

precision aint the same thing as sniper, and rapid fire is definately not the same thing as rifle. A precision gun can be anything designed to take down one person at a time at range, so a single shot carbine or a short burst fire rifle can also go here. What I'm trying to do is keep the categories more open than just squeezing them down to only include one kind of gun.

actually yeah stuff this for now like tom said. Think of weapons later.

jacob wrote:precision aint the same thing as sniper, and rapid fire is definately not the same thing as rifle. A precision gun can be anything designed to take down one person at a time at range, so a single shot carbine or a short burst fire rifle can also go here. What I'm trying to do is keep the categories more open than just squeezing them down to only include one kind of gun.

i'm not saying squeeze them down to include only one kind. "One Kind" is a far too broad generalisation.

I've said numerous times now that permutations can be added to weapons to make them more like you said. Single Shot carbines and short burst fire rifles as you said would go under the rifle category, or at least automatic weapons. The rifles/automatic weapons category contains all of the divisions you've come up with, and it will be the same for other weapon categories.

What you could have is the main category, then sub categories within those categories, then permutations.

For example

Rifle
|
v
3 shot burst rifle
|
v
cog loading mechanism

Hmm.. The reason I want to split rifle into rapid and precision is because the term rifle can actually cover just about anything that isnt a pistol, shotgun or too heavy to carry around. Including sniper rifles. These rifles all have very different functions but still fit under rifle, wich is why heading them all under rifle is a bad idea. Do you see wat I mean yet or do I have to draw a diagram.

Ok me and Caael have now agreed that there will be no sniper rifle category as this is only ever used for a few special missions, or possibly because only about one class will actually use it. Something like that. So now we just have: shotguns, pistols, rifles, special. And then for combat we got: Piercing, slicing (slashing?) and crushing, special. So its all nice and symetrical see.

Also, can we not have spears as stabbing weapons, because for some strange reason I hate the idea of a game using spears. They make for slow, non flowing comabt that involves you sitting at the end of a length of wood and trying to jab the enemy with the other end. The strong attack and finishing move instantly become suckish becos theres no real way to open someones defence with a spear.

You've obviously not played very many beat em ups. Spears, pikes, staves will all be included. Spears are easily used for combat and breaking defenses. You realise you dont just sit there poking an enemy with a long stick. Play Soul Caliber and you'll see what I mean.

Don't know if you guys have seen Hellboy before; but there was a villian in the first movie that used these swords similar to Tofna. I thought one would look very cool on the main character, long with his main weapon.
Tofna:

Imagine a sword edge sticking out at the short ends and you have what I'm talking about.

Meh, a bit too asian for what we're trying to get. Gracefully dancing through enemies is not what we're aiming for. We want a head on clash where one of the combatants ends up dead. They're cool and all, but not for what we're trying to achieve.

I dont see why not have them. Surely the point of making this an rpg at all is to give the player choice, not limit it. And trying to pull one of those things from somebody bleedy eye socket probably isnt that graceful really.

Play moar RPGs,

Short answer: No.

We do not want hundreds of weapon choices. If we include this, other suggestions will be made for equally unfit weapons. It's hard to explain myself, but for now just no.

I thought the game was supposed to be original. Not a copy-every-other-rpg-and-its-dog,-and-probably-that-dog's-mother. I do see where your coming from that those particular weapons maybe dont suit the theme. Thats fine. But lets not rule out every exotic weapon please. We could even make up our own weapons completely, which isnt as hard to do as you may think.
And Tom, never tell me to play more rpgs. Ive played mass effect, oblivion, fable, world of warcraft, morrowind, and some other, crappy ones that arent worth mentioning. I know they all had one problem in common: they didnt have enough to do or enough choice. Im not saying we should have hundreds of weapons, its simply too many for us to program. But we shouldnt just stick to the usual: swords, daggers, axes, maces and the two handed equivalent.
One last thing, on the subject of weapons. Ive drawn an awesome steam punk pistol (revolver.)

I've already settled the design for the pistol with steve, which is the concept I drew.

Wuh? Well... ive expanded on the concept. You lent me the picture, remember.

you asked for it

draw some stuff, bring it round at the weekend and we'll look at it. including your expanded pistol design. I dont want it changes massively because I liked the design and it pretty much fit the image I had in my head.

I didnt change the concept. Its still a revolver almost the same as yours, juust made more steam punk and with a bayonet. The bayonet is optional thoughm i just added it cos I like bayonets.

I have played mass effect, oblivion, fable, about 4 MMORPGs, 5 or something JRPGs and about a million hybrids, and the RPGS that you played are all western.

Well whatever. You cant really be saying that every rpg out there does in fact stick to the usual generic weaponry.

And how do you actually define a JRPG. They dont seem that much different from others to me, but maybe thats cos the ones I played were actually hybrids.