So I have been reading over a lot of gripes about how the changes to armor have impacted gameplay and meta, and I would like to offer some suggestions on how to potentially add utility back to light and medium armor sets and keep all three balanced with some meaningful purpose in gameplay terms. This is all theoretical, and draws from both gameplay experience, observation of common player complaints, as well as some historical utility of what various levels of armoring would serve in a utilitarian context.
Currently the consensus is pretty much that light and medium armor sets hold no particular value with the existing changes to the stamina system and give an unfair advantage to heavy armor users in all scenarios. I tend to agree with this. First, lets look at historically what the equivalent of the three armor types would typically be used for:
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Light armor (clothing) would be used for work, day to day interactions, and stealth or covert engagements. They do not restrict movement, do not make noise, and blend into civilization pretty well.
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Medium armor would be used for scouts, survivalists, raiders, and similar groups that need to have some degree of combat protection, but also have to account for environmental considerations. Vikings armor was designed to not only afford some protection but to also protect from the elements on long ship voyages. Scouts spend at least as much time camping and navigating the wilderness as they do in any kind of comabat engagement. Raiders hit hard and fast, and withdraw before a consistent counteroffensive can be mounted. All of these would favor the equivalent of medium armor.
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Heavy armor is explicitly for war. It maximizes protection at the expense of all other utility. Even in organized warfare, heavy armor was not the standard except for vanguard, officers, and mounted cavalry because it is expensive and impractical for most other purposes.
In regard to these, I believe that a light set should maximize maneuverability and utility, medium should afford the best environmental protection against elements, rain, heat, cold, and other factors of adventure, and heavy should afford the best combat potential at a heavy cost to utility and maneuverability. This is consistent with traditional roles of various armor levels, and also affords a believable utility to each. So here are the suggestions I think may balance things well based on this understanding of the role of what each is intended for.
Light armor is mostly fine as is. It does not particularly hinder movement or carry capacity and doesn’t particularly affect stamina or climbing, which is pretty much what it is intended for already. Of the three, this is the only one that is actually meaningfully filling its intended purpose without issue, even though it is not particularly favorable in the current meta.
Medium armor ought to afford the best protection from the environment and be the most generally survivable type of armor. Medium armor is typically made from hides, leather, and furs, and may have some minor metal components for added protection in key areas. Climate wise, being encased in metal is not good in either an extremely hot or extremely cold environment, because metal is a poor insulator. If you were wearing full plate in the volcano, you would realistically be walking around in an oven and cook to death very quickly. Likewise in a very cold environment, thick organic materials are going to provide far more warmth than a metal shell. There are numerous historical examples of armies marching in cold weather and freezing to death because metal armor amplified the effects of the winter rather than shielding them from them. Medium armor is for general survivability, and covers both immediate protection adequately as well as optimal environmental protections, with a lower degree of agility than light armor would (clothing).
Heavy armor has a number of current issues that are unrealistic. The existing armor rating is pretty much fine, however there are a number of issues in how it is used in game terms. A set of field plate would likely weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 80-150 lbs. While much of this frame is self supporting on foot, it is absolutely going to hinder anyone attempting to climb (try doing a pull up with a 100 lb backpack on), and it would likewise be completely impossible to swim in such a thing. Even if you were able to stay afloat, you would find that it would quickly waterlog and make it next to impossible to breathe correctly. By this metric, there should be a very good case for heavy armor having high combat survivability, at the expense of general agility, any capacity to swim at all, and extreme difficulty climbing, because these are simply not realistic at all, and their presence removes any particular utility to choosing any other type of armor.
That stated, I think the following would lend a great deal of utility to armor in general
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Equipping armor should not be instantaneous. There should be some actual animation to equipping things which is about half a second for a light piece (how fast can you put on a shirt), 2 seconds for a medium piece (how fast can you put on a coat and buckle it), and five for a heavy piece (how fast can you put on several pieces of layered metal shell and affix the buckles securely for each of them). This removes the option to drop armor to climb effectively in combat situations or instantly swap gear on the fly if engaged, ambushed, or otherwise caught up in the fray. In a stealth operation it would still be approachable to strip heavy armor to climb effectively, however it is entirely unrealistic to be able to instantly do this to pursue an archer in a light set during an existing engagement, or to instantly pop on a sandstorm mask when someone tosses a gas orb. There should be some overhead to kitting up so that some thought about what kit to leave the base in is made ahead of time, and players who are ill equipped for a given engagement or situation cannot realistically just bulldoze through it.
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Heavy armor should not permit swimming. At all. You should sink like a rock if you try to swim in it and quickly drown if you don’t retreat. Swimming in anything even remotely resembling heavy armor is entirely unrealistic and removes a great deal of retreat options that should realistically be available to medium and light armored scouts, which consequently reduces their utility significantly.
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Heavy armor should rust in rain and standing water, burnish in extreme heat, and corrode in sandstorms. Heavy mail is not designed to resist elements, it is designed to resist warfare. Metal rusts when wet, corrodes in extreme heat, and gets gunked up at the joints when it is extremely dusty or dirty. These things affect its durability, and likewise should affect it. Leather and cloth are far more resistant to the elements and general degradation than metal is. An actual suit of heavy mail requires a great deal of upkeep to maintain, which is why they sit on a display stand at all times unless you are going to war. Wearing them in the wrong context should incur both upkeep expense as well as debilitated movement if they are allowed to fall into disrepair. Perhaps this could be mitigated by applying oil to armor to temporarily coat it with some protective layer that would negate environmental impact (which is pretty close to what was done in these situations historically anyhow).
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Likewise, armor in poor quality should be a hindrance, which likewise ought to be a stiffer penalty for better armor versions. You can move pretty freely in a torn shirt. A leather doublet in tattered condition would be a bit of a hindrance. A breastplate that is bent out of shape, ripped open, or otherwise in poor condition would be a large hindrance. You are not going to easily move an arm that has metal joints that are bent wrong or rusted closed, that will absolutely hinder you. Movement and stamina penalties should scale inversely with armor condition, and be negligible for light, moderate for medium, and stiff for heavy.
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Heavy armor ought to amplify heat/cold, not reduce them. Metal is a conduit for heat and cold, not an insulator at all. Likewise light armor affords little practical protection from elements, but medium is made from material that would be used as an insulator to accomplish this, and have historically been worn for explicitly this purpose. Light armor should provide pretty much no protection from elements but also no particular penalty either.
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Heavy armor should incur a stiff penalty to climbing, and also cause stamina to tick down slowly when hanging idle on a wall. It is extremely unrealistic to hang off the side of a cliff until morning in a 150 lb suit of metal. Nobody has arms that strong. If you have ever worn an actual suit of armor, you can actually move pretty easily on foot (the rigid structure is pretty good at supporting its own weight on a flat plane), but climbing is severely difficult.
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Heavy should give very good protection against headshots and cripple effects, and have some chance to negate gaining bleed stacks. Medium should mitigate but not negate these (except bleed stacks), and light should afford no protection at all against any of these. This is a point where heavy armor should shine, because this is specifically what it is intended for.
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Armor effects on stamina, climbing, swimming, etc, should be calculated on a per-piece basis rather than simply calling the entire set heavy/medium/light based on the heaviest piece worn. if I wear a set of greaves to protect my legs but otherwise light gear, I may have some minor difficulty getting good footing but I am definitely not impeded nearly as much as someone wearing a full suit. Armor values already reflect this, but stamina and survival effects largely do not.
These are just some suggestions to give each of the three sets of armor rating some ongoing utility and some realistic application that would reflect what they would actually be used for. The above is intended to provide some functional utilitarian purpose to choosing any size kit, and also to mitigate some of the consistent PvP and PvE meta gripes with the current implementation.