Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Role Playing Game]] ==

* Holds true in ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'', even when two shops are not only in different corners of the globe but in different ''eons''. When you go from the year 2300 to 65 million BC, you'll find armor and weapons that are ever so slightly better than the ones from the technologically-advanced future. Then, when you return to the medieval ages, you will get new iterations that are slightly better still. Especially ridiculous since this applies to guns, crossbows, and robot parts in exactly the same measure.

** The Mystic-populated Medina Village, however, gives you weapons reasonably above your current choices, but at such inflated prices that the grind for cash is not worth it. This is because the NPCs ''hate you'' (a subquest can be undertaken to fix this, but by that point you no longer need the swag they sell).

* ''[[Dragon Age]]'' does something similar, scaling the materials your equipment is made out of with your level, though some shopkeepers seem to gain access to the higher-end materials much sooner than others. Still, if there's enough Dragonbone around that virtually everything in the game can be made of it towards the endgame... why weren't they making stuff out of it to begin with?

* Vaguely [[Justified Trope|justified]] with the weapon styles and gems in ''[[Jade Empire]]'', since you start in a tiny village, before moving to a small town and then the [[Capital City]] before heading off to the temple at Dirge, at which point the hideously powerful gems you find are specifically pointed out by your companion. With the martial arts styles, magic styles and support styles the game [[Averted Trope|averts]] this trope: the styles you learn while the game progresses are not necessarily better, just different. Three of the four martial arts styles you acquire are ones you would've had right from the beginning if you'd chosen a different player character.

** ''[[Persona 4]]'' at least justifies this trope with the better weapons coming from the town smith, who makes the weapons from crafting materials you bring him from the TV world. Thus, as you unlock new worlds and meet stronger foes, you get better materials he can make better weapons from.

 

* Averted in ''[[Deus Ex]]''. You gain a lot of the better weapons early on -- the GEP gun (rocket launcher) and sniper rifle, which remain among the most useful weapons all the way to the end, can be obtained ''as you begin'' the first mission. As well, a great many of the seemingly weak weapons you get early on prove to be very useful for the entire game's run. You do gain a few more powerful weapons (a <s>lightsaber</s> [[Energy Weapon|nanosword]], flamethrower, plasma rifle and assault shotgun)... as late as a mere third of the way through the game.

** This can be partially explained by the game being skills-based; the effectiveness and usefulness of these weapons will be considerably affected by your skills in using that type of weapon, the types of weapon your augmentations complement, and the upgrades you apply to each weapon. Upgradeable weapons are so important that they were the primary means of character-building in the sequel.

* Averted in ''[[Unreal]]''. You have every weapon just past the half-way point (and it's a long game by [[FPS]] standards), and weapons that are useful to start with generally retain their usefulness, your default weapon also gets upgrades throughout the game to make it keep up (such that before being patched to weaken it slightly the fully upgraded version was a [[Game Breaker]])

* While ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' mostly follows the trope, the normally dinky fusion pistol can easily take down enemy machinery and is the ''only weapon'' which can hurt a player with the ''invincibility powerup''.

* ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' averts this completely at the endgame. You have basic phasers as a Starfleet player or disruptors as a Klingon player, both of which require the lowest skillpoint cost to be fully effective. Each weapon type has a 2.5% chance to cause a special debuff on a target: phasers cause a target's shields/weapons/engines to fail for 10 seconds, and disruptors cause a target to lose damage resistance for 10 seconds. Later you will get access to plasma beams/cannons that have a chance to cause cause (minor)damage over time, tetryon weapons that can do extra shield damage, polaron weapons that can drain enemy ship power and antiproton weapons that simply do more critical hit damage. Each of these special abilities only has that 2.5% chance to activate on a successful hit and all weapons do the same damage when fully skilled. However, the skillpoint cost of plasma/tetryon is higher than phasers/disruptors and polaron/antiproton weapons cost even more skillpoints. This means phasers and disruptors are still viable options at endgame.

** Torpedo weapons get similar treatment. Photons have the highest damage per second but low volley damage, quantums are the opposite. There are also plasma torpedoes which can hit for massive damage but can be shot down, transphasic torpedoes which are a lot weaker than photons but 20% of their damage bypasses shields (this does not make them better than photons at all), chroniton torpedoes slow down a target for a few seconds but do poor damage, and tricobalt torpedoes do insane massive damage but have the longest cooldown time (30 seconds, as opposed to 6 seconds for photons) and tricobalts can be shot down too. All the torpedo types above photon and quantum cost a great deal more skillpoints, making the first two the most effective torpedo types at endgame.

 

== [[Real Time Strategy]] ==

 

== [[Roguelike]] ==

** It can be subverted in a [[New Game+]] by bringing over the gobs of gald you obtained in your previous save. This is very useful for taking on the [[Nintendo Hard]] difficulty.

** [[Tales of Symphonia]] does something similar. You can get access to the [[Infinity-1 Sword|Infinity Minus One Weapons]] around the halfway point of the game. However, the city you buy them in, {{spoiler|Luin, was destroyed earlier.}} So you need to shell out 343,500 gald to allow the weapon shop to sell the Infinity Minus One Joke Weapons. And even then, each one costs 40,000 gald. Technically, you can have the 4th best weapons in the game (below the Devil's Arms, Colosseum Weapons, and the non-sidequest [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus Ones]], the former 2 requiring a bit of effort to get) half way through the game if you have the cash.

* Though usually the case in ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games, it is conspicuously absent in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', where the strength of a weapon is determined entirely by which upgrades have been applied, and therefore the "best" weapon for a situation is the one which has the customizations best suited to the current battle. Excepting the [[Infinity+1 Sword]], the overall "best" weapon therefore is the one with the most unused customization slots, and therefore the one that can have the largest number of useful upgrades attached to it as suits the player.

** In ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', where better weapons are obtained through crafting. It is possible to get the characters' best weapons early on in the game... but finding the materials needed is a different story. Disc 1 Lionheart is achievable, but it involves losing a one-time rare card (you can get it back with a side-quest). Of course, neither leveling nor weapon upgrades are an important way of increasing your combat power.

** ''[[Final Fantasy II]]'' manages to play it straight gameplay-wise but avert the strange implications story-wise: the big city where the heroes come from does carry the good stuff, but at first you can only afford inferior weapons because the small rural towns are the only ones not overruled by the Empire. Later you can liberate the capital and get access to the good ones.

* Subverted in ''[[Albion]]'', an RPG about a sci-fi space pilot from Earth who crash-lands on a fantasy jungle world populated by cat people and druids. No, really. You can obtain a pistol early on, an extremely powerful weapon, but ammo for it is limited and only found in small quantities in a very few places in the game. As a result, once your clip runs dry, you end up relying on local swords and shields for most of the rest of the game.

* ''[[Star Ocean the Second Story]]'' also averts this in a minor way, as all the ingredients for the game's most powerful sword for the male lead (outside the [[bonus dungeon]]) are available for crafting approximately 2/5 the way through the plot. With careful skill building, luck, and some save/reloading you can have this weapon just before the plot really takes off. The other characters are not quite so lucky, and will need to wait until later, but can still make better weapons that the shops generally sell.

* In ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'', while the characters' weapons follow this trope exactly, the best defensive items in the game can be purchased at a town no more than 1/8 way through the game. They are so expensive that you can't reasonably afford them until much later (unless you spend an eternity [[Level Grinding|grinding]]), but they are there. Also, the consumable items you use through out the game do not appreciably change as you progress.

* ''[[Wild Arms 3]]'' managed to avoid this problem by having your characters only ever have one weapon. Instead of buying new weapons, you pay to upgrade and customize your existing one. This model has been adopted for all the ARMs (guns) in the series, although regular weapons that appear still play it straight.

** And then played entirely straight in Wild Arms 5. While the ARMs themselves don't change, the parts do, and these follow the trope to a T.

** ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] 2'' seems to try and reduce the gulf in effectiveness between older and newer Keyblades, by making the stat boosts smaller and giving each Keyblade a unique ability that makes it worthwhile. At least one is actually weaker physically than the starting keyblade, but it comes with the coveted MP Rage ability.

** And ''358/2 Days'' continues this trend somewhat - while the earliest weapons don't hold on to their effectiveness for long, mid-game weapons come with some very useful abilities, such as the Magic Bracer. The game's true [[Infinity+1 Sword]] is thus an ability that puts the stat buffs of all weapons roughly equal, allowing the player to pick a favored ability set.

* ''[[Fable]] II'' subverts this as well, allowing you to buy steel weapons at the first blacksmith you find, although they are reasonably uncommon until later in the game.

* While played straight in ''[[Oblivion]]'', as noted above (and ''[[Morrowind]]'', for that matter), they are also exceptions. While almost all enemy equipment and chest contents are based on your level, items just lying around on tabletops, bookshelves, etc. are not leveled, and some of the most important equipment in the game can be obtained through simple theft, literally within minutes. What's more, due to a quirk of the leveling system, character level and power level don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. It's possible to max out most of the skills in the game (which are what determines a very large part of your overall power level) without ever reaching level 2. Even the weakest knife in the game becomes a lethal joke item when you have the ability to enchant it with maxed out Destruction magic.

** It's fairly simple to create a character capable of picking the locks on the chests in shops in the first city at level 1, allowing you access to items long before you would normally be able to afford them. Picking the locks in the capital city is harder but still easier than getting the money to buy the items.

* ''[[Phantasy Star]]'', or at least the original game, averts this. As soon as you get to Motavia you can spend a while grinding to your heart's content and get the best armor available for most everyone.

* In [[Sonic Chronicles]] you can go several chapters without access to a shop, and then when you do find one it sells equipment worse than what you've already got.

* Played with in [[Nostalgia]], where London starts with almost no gear at all. As you progress in the game and reach major trading posts, new gear is unlocked in London, which may or may not be better than what you already have or can buy in other cities. Played straight with every other shop, though.

 

== [[Survival Horror]] ==

* Used with magic spells in ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', but mildly averted in that the [[Functional Magic]] uses a system that works on three word grammar. If you've got a large chunk of the [[Instant Runes]], you don't technically need the rune translation codices or spell explanation scrolls you actually pick up in sequential order in the rest of the game; you can just "make sentences" and build all possible spells by the halfway point. You just won't know exactly what those spells actually ''do''.

** And given that those spells are drawing power from one of four [[Eldritch Abominations]], it's understandable that trying them out randomly wouldn't be too attractive.

* Somewhat averted in the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series. Increasingly stronger weapons do become available as you progress, but since they [[Breakable Weapons|break after so many uses]], you'll generally want to save these weapons for the toughest enemies, so the beginner weapons still have value even late in the game. A minor irritation is that the basic Iron weapons become increasingly hard to find in shops later in the game, even though you still need them as much as ever.

** Most Lords, and a few other characters, start with terrific (but breakable) weapons. Insofar as this trope is followed, it's that the powerful weapons become more available later on, and the powerful [[Sword of Plot Advancement]] typically comes late.

* [[Lucas Arts]] game ''Gladius'' ends the game in the town of Caltha, which is in the Imperium. Depending on which campaign you're playing, you either begin the game in the Imperium or go there second, and will only return at the end of the game. Even though the player can't fight the high-end battles in Caltha, though, they can buy the items... if they could ever afford them! The prices are sky-high, and since you can't backtrack to the Imperium after you've left, there's really no way to get a hold on these prizes.

* In [[Front Mission]] 3, because the [[Giant Robot]] parts have different balances of strengths instead of a straight progression from worse to better, it's quite feasible to use upgraded starting equipment in the endgame.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Generally this is also true in ''[[Shadowrun]]'', ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]'', ''[[All Flesh Must Be Eaten]]'', ''[[Traveller]]'', ''[[Star Wars]]'' games for non-Force-users, ''[[Deadlands]]'', ''[[Unknown Armies]]'', and most games following Science Fiction, Modern Horror, or Historical tropes. Players often ''think'' this trope is ubiquitous in RPGS because of the overwhelming popularity of D&D. It fits these types of settings much better. Using ''[[Star Wars]]'' as an example, it's much cooler to think Han's blaster is just a really well-made heavy blaster and the reason it's so lethal is because Han Solo is the [[Badass]] using it.