Weapons
Some mmos that I have played allowed every character to hold a weapon and perform normal attacks with it. In those mmos some classes had unique, class skills that require a specific weapon to be equiped in order to activate.
A typical warrior would have, let's say 3-4 skills that required a polearm, 6-7 skills that required dual wield, 3-4 skills that required 1 handed weapons or two handed. Some skills could even be activate by two types of weapons.
The rogue of the same mmo could activate abilities with daggers and bows.
The knights mostly 1 handed/shield or two handed.
The archers 90% required bows. |
The mages required staves or magical swords.
All of the above classes had additional, non-attacking skills that could be activated to reinforce your stats or mobility, regardless of equipped weapon, yet when it came to ATTACKING you would see your character perform a motion with the equipped weapon and STRIKE the target. The weapon you spend so much time to craft or loot would NOT DISSAPEAR during combat.
Some supporting classes, like the bladedancer required dual wield for some skills. Most supporting classes and summoners would use a combination of bows, polearms, dual wield, 1h/shield or staves depending on the situation, however they didn't have many attacking abilities.
Many players would break the meta and use unconventional weapon combinations, sometimes making them the best players of the servers. But still. When it came to attacking, the weapon would not disappear from your hands.
Some mmos have weapon restrictions based on classes. Tera and FF14 for example pretty much tied the identity of the class to the attacking gameplay based on the weapon you'd choose to play with. Did you wannna play with a two handed sword? You'd be a tera slayer / ff14 dark knight, end of story. Did you wanna play with a 2 handed axe? You'd be a Tera berserker / FF14 warrior end of story. You couldn't have fun with another weapon, unless you made a new toon or in ff14 case (and L2) switched to a subclass.
The upside of these mmos where that classes (even though tied to a weapon gameplay) had a very distinct and rich identity.
ESO allowed every class to hold every weapon, with nice, striking animations for the skills-trees of each weapon. However, ESOs animations look glitched at competitive level, the meta is strong for rotational turtling/bursting PvP, and very small hotbars, which are mostly filled with buffs and only 1-2 attacking abilities. They ruined their combat.
I don't like BDO, but I like that they introduced two weapons per class. Their classes have also a strong, distinct identity. Ideally an mmo would create a large variety of classes that don't overlap with each other, and each of them has access to three weapons, so that people can create unique playstyles by either doubling down on one weapon, mastering it's combat, or become adept at switching weapons, covering a larger pool of roles and gameplays, based on the situation. The cherry on the top of the cake could be that all weapons could be visibly sheathed on the character like in Witcher 3, instead of pulling greatswords and bows out of their ass.
