This is mostly a reaction to stuff I have been hearing come up in comments on threads around here. People repeatedly suggest the idea of a damage system similar to Warframe, where there are certain types of health and damage types that are better or worse against those health types.
(E.g. Fire, poison, and slash weapons are good against flesh health, but electricity, frost, and bludgeon damage is strong against armor)
What's the reasoning for this? The system isn't fun since it deters you from choosing certain items you might enjoy and it seems like a cheap way to make combat more thoughtful. I'm ok with the concept of health(normal hp), armor(regenerating hp), and shields(invincible until disabled somehow), but when resistances and weaknesses to damage types are introduced it becomes a major turnoff.
Why do people want damage types/resistances/weaknesses?
Why'd you put "regenerating HP" in brackets, after armor? Armors doesn't, at all, nor should it, function that way. Armor is a different type of layer of defense, besides
shields (which should be the regenerating type), chitin...etc. and it makes sense why some weapons would be more effective against certain defenses than other. It encourages diversifying roles and equipment. It means, one either has to change things up a bit and can't just bash and blast away at everything with the same big weapon they got. Instead they'd have approach an enemy, not only differently in tactics, but with a different weapon. Or rely on others to help them take down the enemy by bringing something to the fight that is more effective against it than what a single player might have. It does not deter someone from choosing items they like, at all. They just have to fight differently and/or in concert with others. I will never go for bludgeoning weapons, like hammers. I'll stick with my blade and my long-range weapon and if I need something that can more easily punch through armor, I'll find a different approach or I'll simply take my time with the enemy.
My suggestion about such a diversification of weapon-effectiveness is meant exactly to prevent the issue of any one player becoming effective against absolutely everything, with any weapon, dealing the same effective damage to any type of enemy, with any type of defense, the same way.
That is what's no fun.
That is what's cheap. For it does not require any sort of effort from the player to make a certain build, gearing towards something more specific. One could just unload into any enemy, no matter their physiology or their gear with the same effectiveness.
It is also different from jack-of-all-trades, as those would be balanced builds that could deal with generally everything, but less effectively (or much less effectively) than those builds that might deal a type of damage that an enemy-type and its natural or artificial defenses may be more susceptible to.
If one wants to take down an enemy more effectively and spend less time on it, it only makes sense they should need a specific type of gear that will give them that edge.
If one brings their favorite bread-knife to take down an giant covered in metal-plates, they
should have a more difficult time with it.
