Dakota Strider wrote...
HOW does the character do this? I understand that the "player" can just hit a few buttons and change the looks. If Hawke (for example) who is wearing Armor A, which looks exactly the way he likes, and finds Armor B, that while is uglier, gives better protection, what is the rationale, or method that Hawke (the character, not the player) would use to be able to transform Armor B to look exactly like Armor A? Does he just make a wish, does he find a mage or tranquil that "poofs" them together, a Dwarven smith. Or does he need to find Sandal, who seems to be able to do anything?
While enchantment really has not been explained very well in DA, we can use what we have learned in DA2, that once you bind a rune to an item, that you can never remove it.
If a way could be explained, that is consistant with the magic system (that we know about) in DA, that allows the swapping the properties of items around, in a way that is not a total retcon of what we know of this world, I would be fine with it.
Okay, that takes criticisms of the suggestion down a completely different route. One where our views are a lot more similar, as it happens. As I stated previously, the SWTOR system is not necessarily the ideal method to achieve the aim of divorcing item look from item stats.
The relatively straightforward way to implement the SWTOR model into DA would be via the enchantment system. Rather than this adding a couple of additional stats onto a fixed set of base stats, all of the armour's stats (except possibly base level armour stat) would be assigned to runes (or equivalent), which would be extractable via an enchanter.
This would be an expansion of the the DA:O model where enchantments could be removed from items and transferred into another by enchanters. DA2 took a different approach, with forced binding, but as it was accepted in the lore from the opening game of the series, I wouldn't personally consider it a retcon.
It would also be possible to do something with having smiths craft new versions of items if they are able to copy an existing template. For example, you're wearing a helmet with appearance A and stats A, and acquire another helmet with appearance B and stats B. Stats B are superior to A, but you feel that appearance B is ugly and prefer appearance A.
You give both helmets to a skilled smith (or robemaker, etc.) who bashes them to bits and melts them to slag in a primitive method of reverse-engineering to understand how they were made, destroying the items in the process. However, the smith has then learmed tp craft new items with either appearance A or B, or stats A or B, allowing you to pay him to craft an appearance A stats B item (which is what you actually want). He might even be able to select a colour to dye the armour, as well. The appearances and stats would presumably be linked to armour type, so you couldn't stick heavy armour stats in a light armour appearance.
Some limitations may need to be included in order to prevent that smith manufacturing a series of appearance A stats B items for all of your companions as upgrades, but this type of approach would also allow players to separate visual appearance from stats whilst maintaining an identical, or virtualy identical, loot system to the current model.
Neither model is automatically perfect from a lore angle, but we already accept that armour that fits snugly to an Oghren-sized NPC can be taken off him and immediately equipped by a Sten-sized NPC. Then put on a female PC, where the chestpiece is instantly remoulded. And then put back on Oghren again. All without the aid of a lot of time, effort and cost in a forge to stretch and remake the armour.
Suspension of disbelief has already been accepted for gameplay purposes...the question is whether the additional development time required (if any?) and the further suspension of disbelief required (if any, depending on implementation) outweighs the gameplay benefits.
Retour en haut
