Feedback What's the point of using anything weaker than a Riot Shield?

Out of all of the shields that I've looked at, I haven't found anything that's less durable than a Riot Shield, which has a base health stat of 85. Meanwhile, the only shields that come closest to matching the Riot Shield's base health stat are the Large Shield, the Frost Shield, and the Seashell Shield, which all have a base health stat of 70, and most other shields have a base health stat of only 50.

So what's the point of using, say, a Floran Shield over a Riot Shield of the same tier? Sure, the Riot Shield has a longer cooldown period, taking a single second as opposed to less than half a second with the Floran Shield, but one second still seems way too short for a shield as big and heavy as a Riot Shield. (I'd say that 5 seconds would be more fair in terms of balance.) I've also noticed that shields have a "forceWalk" variable, which I'd presume could be turned off for lighter shields to better encourage their use over heavier shields. Unfortunately, it seems as if every shield in the game currently has "forceWalk" enabled, regardless of their other stats, especially their shield health stats.

 

Isn't every shields generable, like you can find every models of shields and get the same defence value.

 

Yes, shields are procedurally-generated, like with weapons and monsters. Level multipliers do apply to them, and their appearances and names may vary. However, their base stats don't seem to do so.

 

They do though.
It depends on what level of planet you get them on.

 

Thanks for stating the obvious.

What I'm trying to state is that riot shields of any given level tend to outperform other kinds of shields of the same exact level. And what drawbacks do riot shields get in return? And are these drawbacks enough to balance out riot shields' unrivaled protection?

 

Well... comestics?

 

Perhaps from a design perspective, but not everyone cares about it more than they would care about its stats.

 

Bad Luck, You wont always find a riot shield so you have to use a different type of shield

 

...until you manage to stumble across a human bunker on a tier 6 world, and acquire a riot shield from a fallen guard (which seems to have a 5% chance of dropping from them), though that would take some serious persistence. That, or you could try cheating one in.

I've been thinking that maybe the game could do with some more tower shield variants, like, say, a Roman scutum-inspired design, all with similar stats as the Riot Shield. That way, maybe the game would be a bit more diverse regarding shield usage?

In case anybody hasn't figured it out yet, I'm just trying to better understand how shields work, why the Riot Shields in particular have such high defensive stats compared to the others, what drawbacks they have in exchange, and if these drawbacks (if any) are enough to balance the Riot Shields out. I know that this game is still in beta, but I'm afraid that the beta-testing phase will soon end, and when it does, I'm afraid that, as far as shields come, Riot Shields will dominate in PvP combat!

Anyone who has played Dark Souls will understand why small, large and tower shields in the game see diverse use in PvP: They all serve different roles, such as being better at parrying attacks (in the case of small shields), or causing stamina to drain slower when struck (in the case of tower shields). I wish that there was possibly more incentive to using a smaller shield over what seems to be an overpowered shield.

 

maybe this could be something for the Devs to change. maybe there could be a way for shields to have ability's or special effects for different kinds (i.e tall shield and short shield). different shields could protect different types of damage more effectively (i.e tall shields helps against ranged damage twice as well). any way this is just an idea.

 

That's a possibility, though as they're considered one-handed weapons, I doubt that they would have any alternate abilities.

I've looked a bit more into shields, and noticed this "perfectBlockTime" variable, which is currently set to 0.2 on all shields. I don't know what this does exactly (Does it negate all damage when the shield is struck while in this state?), but perhaps there are plans to make this variable more important in the future, particularly for smaller shields? Perhaps shields could be made to cause status effects (most likely a "stun" effect, though other status effects could be possible, including "burn", "poison", "slow", or "electrify" for example), either just when a "perfect block" is executed, whenever they're struck while blocking in general, or merely while they're just blocking (like an energy-draining shield)?

 

A key component of shields is the ability to perfectly block an attack without using any durability by timing your shield use with the incoming attack.

Smaller shields have shorter cooldowns, which means you can make rapid perfect blocks without using much of the durability, so they have low health.

Larger shields have long cooldowns, which makes them more about tanking the damage as you slowly push towards the enemy, so they have high health.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I'm now starting to see what some of the downsides to using a Riot Shield are.

However, it currently still seems like the smaller shields are underperforming compared to the larger shields (not counting the Riot Shields), which have the same exact "minActiveTime" and "perfectBlockTime" variables as the smaller shields (both being 0.2), but have more health, though I believe that, once broken, they'll take a bit longer to recover than small shields. I'm not convinced that the shorter recovery time of small shields will be enough to save them, which is why I'll propose forcing users of larger shields to walk instead of run when these shields are being used.

 

Well i still answered your question