Designer's Diary: The Armor Set Conundrum (Patreon)

This out of sequence article came about from the explorations into the armor sets and the mixed sets in the two series 'Assessing Armor' and 'Mixed Sets' both of which are nearing conclusion while I write this very piece.

I've done my best in the two previous articles to rail against the current established mindset when it comes to armors, and I don't think I can say I've been super successful. I still get a lot of feedback along the lines of 'I don't care about there rest of the armor, because Cycloid Scale and Rawhide exists' and 'I don't want to build mixed sets, because of set bonuses'. And honestly, they're not entirely wrong, while Cycloid Scale is far, far from the be all and end all - it's actually just the best 'assassin/rogue' style armor set and it shouldn't be used for tanking, archery, reach weapons (outside of the basic bitch trapper build) - but it can be, and people do that. 

The thing about all of this is; Kingdom Death is sandbox game where you should be combining 9 different pieces of gear into some cool, new configuration that maybe, no-one has ever seen before. The message the game gives you in theory is 'build what you like'; but the mechanics tell a different story; you're punished for being creative a lot of the time, building a funky mixed up grid of gear is a very high skill task - you need to be imaginative, have a vast memory/database of all the abilities and affinities and you need also to understand how most of the monsters work. 

Otherwise you have to trial and error your builds into deaths over and over - and as each death on the showdown board pushes you closer and closer to the 'no rewards' failure state, this can be a nightmare world to try and tinker in.

One of the largest stumbling blocks in the game design is the advent of armor sets. I've written a bit of detail on this in the primer for the mixed sets (here) and the short version is that the 'meta' for Kingdom Death revolves around filling 5 of your 9 slots with armor or occasionally ignoring armor altogether because you have Crystal Skin/Leyline Walker.  It's rather restrictive and in this case the restrictions are limiting creativity.

So what are the issues?

• Players naturally gravitate towards armor sets in full because they have a holistic look when completed. People like matching sets.
• Most armor sets are internally synergistic, finding cross armor set synergies is difficult.
• Set Bonuses are very strong and include both armor points and game changing abilities. 
• Set Bonuses require all 5 (usually) pieces of the set to activate.
• Hybrid Armors exist, but they are essentially alternative armor sets.
• Armor sets are either overwhelming in their generic power (Rawhide, Leather, Cycloid Scale, Rolling, Screaming, Dancer) or they are dominant in one specific category (Vagabond, Warlord, Lantern, Dragon) or they are just problematic and mostly ignored (Gorment, Silk, Brawlers)
• The "Generic" armor line is disproportionately overpowered in the early game (Rawhide, Leather).

This has brought us to a world where almost everyone has only 4 slots open and they're usually putting a shield into at least one of those, a weapon in another, an Organ Grinder gear card (Lucky Charm, Monster Grease, Fecal Salve) into the next and having basically 1 slot to do something cool with. 

This world might not be an issue for everyone, in fact I'm sure a lot of players are content with the status quo. It certainly is exciting when you complete an armor set and get that juicy power up bonus from the full set, but the longer I see people play, the more they get jaded and tired with armor sets. Their thinking crystalizes and they see only a few specific options, being unwilling to experiment with anything that's outside of their meta - see Dragon Armor for a good example of this, it's mathematically one of the best armors in the game when you put it all together and consider the 'discounts' you get on the Iron side of it from hunting the Dragon King - but people will disagree with that till the coo's come home, their minds are already made up.

The Solutions

We're here in Designer's Diary, so we're not just going to lament about the problem and try to work around it with the official rules. Here we can look at the situation, consider the issues and try to come up with an alternative, something that will freshen up the meta for players who have been playing a while - similar to the aims of the Community Edition and my Hunting Hall & Spidicules Integration Package. Both of which were designed with the focus of changing an established part of the game without re-hauling the entire experience the way that a new expansion monster or my now retired 'Heroes & Champions' class mode did.

I have a few different solutions that we can achieve for this and we'll look at each of them in turn, considering the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

Keywords: The Lantern Cuirass Solution

Our first possible option is exemplified by the Lantern Cuirass:

Lantern Armor does not have an armor point set bonus, instead the armor points are placed on the Cuirass and linked to a Metal keyword requirement.  This means that there are a number of different viable mixed builds that you can use where the Cuirass will give you +3 armor to all hit locations as long as you have the metal keyword on them.  What this solution proposes is taking this principle and passing it across to all the other body pieces.

In essence we would take the armor points section of the armor set bonus and instead place it onto the body piece for that relevant armor set. Then we would choose one or two keywords and allow the armor bonus to apply to those pieces.  For example this is what Screaming Armor could be changed to:

And the set bonus would be altered to this redacted version:

So now the armor set bonus is just the Skewer ability and the armor gain is built into the body piece - giving 2 armor to all fur locations.  This has some significant impact on the meta as follows:

• Body pieces become more powerful because they immediately provide more armor points than anywhere else.
• Other pieces that match the keyword constructed after the body piece is being worn also benefit immediately without the need for a full set.
• Hybrid Armors remain unaffected because their armor gain is a set one that is applied before other bonuses are added. The rules would be clarified to confirm the order in which these bonuses are applied - with the Hybrid sets overwriting the body piece armor bonus.
• Other sets with a matching keyword can be mixed in and get the armor bonus, for example you could use the White Lion Boots, Waist and Helm along with the Screaming Coat and Bracers.
• Does not work with Rolling Armor - but no changes required there anyway.
• Pieces of armor that don't match keywords don't get any armor bonuses at all.

This last point can be addressed in one of two manners, either the individual armor pieces get a direct bonus to their stats equivalent to normal armor gain (for example the Screaming Helm would come with 5 armor points immediately) or the keywords could be expanded further like so:

I prefer this second option because it requires less cards to be printed and it also expands on armor interactions, if every body piece has two armor material keywords linked to it you can take the 'mono' type armors, such as leather, gormskin, rawhide and so on and add a second keyword to them.  

There is no doubt that this is an overall power spike to the survivor's strength however, survivors would have more armor when they are in the process of constructing armor rather than getting that armor boost on the full set. However, this spike may encourage experimentation and diversity, which would be a very beneficial outcome.

Thresholds:  The Monster Hunter World solution

Monster Hunter World uses partial set bonuses, where you have to hit a threshold of a certain number of pieces before you turn on a set ability. This number varies from one set to another, but it's very existence has resulted in a game where people wear a wide range of different looking pieces on one set with no qualms and also a subset of people snub the power and dress as prettily as possible (Fashion Hunters Forever)!

In this version we'd take the example of Gorment Armor and work from that:

As you can see, Gorment Armor has a 'two tier' system, where the armor set has one minor bonus when you have 4 pieces and then upgrades with the addition of the L3 Monster specific gear the Regeneration Suit. This version is specifically linked to certain pieces of gear, and that's not really feasible with most armor set designs, but we could link it to numbers. 

So with this version of the armor set bonuses we would look at a fixed threshold for one bonus and then the second bonus would be added after the remaining threshold. The main decision we have to make is where to put the thresholds.

We have a few options we can decide on and there is a number of impacts from each pairing.

2 & 4

The first option can be at two pieces and then at four pieces.  This means that every armor set in the game only needs 4 pieces from it to give the set bonus. That's potentially interesting because it allows every build to consider 1 'flex' slot that could be armor from another set or even something else entirely - you'd just have less armor points on the armor-less location.

You can also build 2 partial sets with this design and benefit from the 1st bonus from each.

However, giving access to a full armor set bonus at 4 pieces is a straight buff to survivors because they'll hit the threshold faster. Likewise they'll get access to a set armor bonus to all locations a lot earlier. 

2 & 5

Two & Five allows for either 2 x 2 pieces or a straight 5 set piece for the full bonus.  This way you can jam a couple of smaller 'sets' together to hodgepodge a build (and benefit from the armor gains) or you can go for a full armor set.

3 & 5

Here in this variant you hit the first bonus at 3 pieces, so you can build a mixed set with 3 from one set and two flex choices. Or you get the big set bonus with 5 pieces. Overall this seems the least radical of the three Threshold options.

Here is an example of how the armor set bonus would look for the 3 and 5 option.

Ugly, and we'd end up designing a better way of clearly representing it, but that's how the redesign would eventually look.  When you have 3 pieces of Screaming Armor you gain 2 armor points ( maybe 1 depending on balance) and then when you have 5 you get access to Skewer.

No Set Armor Bonuses!

This last option is the most radical one of them all. It requires an extensive re haul of every single armor piece in the game right now (and I'm not doing it if the poll wins without some extra support because of the time involved).  

In essence, every single piece of gear in the various armor sets would have the armor points taken from the set bonus and transferred onto the individual armor pieces, and the other part of the set bonus would be placed onto the gear.

The advantages of this is that mixed sets and partial sets do not miss out on the protection because they get the armor points built into their armor. The disadvantage is it's again a big boost in defense for every single armor piece in the game. For example Rawhide Headband would immediately give you 2 armor points to the head instead of the current 1 and also there would be a lot of text bloat for some pieces of gear.  It's doable, it would be very interesting to experience, but it's not for the feint of heart and it is going to make the game easier for players.

And there we have it, that's the three options

There will be a poll coming out later today, and if we get sufficient responses on it (over 50) I'll turn the most popular option into a new mini-expansion.  The link when it goes live will be here.