Quote Originally Posted by Stompa View Post
I don't personally think it makes much sense that daggers do more damage than great axes, weaponskill or otherwise.

Ask a lumberjack if he would like to chop down trees with a knife. Heavy weapons do more damage in real life, halberds and soforth were used by countercavalry divisions to cleave horses basically in half, and put the mounted knights down into the mud. You didn't see those mountcleaving divisions using knives. Knives are traditionally more effective and damaging when used by assassins, dipped in poison, to stab in the unprotected back, or to cut throats, again usually by unexpected rear attack.

Obviously FFXI is not real life, and has its own system with weaponskills, which are not the same as reality, where attacks are basically analog single strikes. So I do allow for the game/fantasy/FFXI weaponskill factor, and soforth, but even so it somehow doesn't seem right when a weapon that is basically a glorified toothpick, deals more damage than an enormous heavy countercavalry great axe.
I really do not mean to be rude, but there is so much wrong with what you think real warfare is like that I cannot even begin to address all the wrong points.

I have seriously sat here for ten minutes now typing, deleting, typing and then deleting, over and over, various responses to you. I am trying very hard not to be insulting, but I have a very bad feeling that you have gotten almost all of your knowledge in life about these things from movies, video games, and the (recent) History Channel.

Cavalry were rare. Heavy Calvary more so. Horses were expensive to feed, to train, and to keep. Those able to afford not just a horse, but a heavy war horse, trained to function in battle (which is pretty much the exact opposite of what horses want to do in that situation), but also armor and weapons for themselves (to be considered 'knights'), were the top of the top in the military at the time.

Getting a "mounted knight[] down into the mud", as you put it, was quite different than what you seem to think it was. A knight, clad in plate, trained for long years to its use, was far, far more mobile than most people seem to think they were. You could run, jump, climb, roll, and do cartwheels in plate armor. It was both far lighter, and far less cumbersome to wear, that most people think it was.

The best way to deal with an armored opponent wearing anything heavier than a soft leather is to beat them to death. Axes and swords are less use against your traditional plate-armored knight than hammers, maces, and the occasional warpick. Mail and Plate are excellent at negating the main danger posed by bladed weapons, which is being cut by them. Once this advantage of a bladed weapon is negated, the only use it really has is "how heavy is this thing so I can beat you to death with it". You wanted something like a mace, or a hammer, that let you put a large amount of force on a very small area. The pick follows the same idea. These were weapons that were most effective against the armored knight, because you could dent the armor in to them, or poke straight through it like someone (sufficiently strong) could do with an icepick to a tin can.

If you actually managed to get the armored knight close to you, to where longer weapons were no avail, you actually would use a dagger to kill them. You would shove it into their throat, under their chin, down past their collarbone into their common carotid, under their arm, into their groin, or any other spot where the armor did not protect that was next to impossible to hit on an upright, moving opponent with any degree of accuracy.

What was most likely to happen is you would beat the shit out of each other with something large, blunt, and heavy, and then once you had concussed your opponent sufficiently, they'd lay there until the battle was over, at which time you would see if they were alive. If they were, you'd decided whether they were worth ransoming, or if you should just kill them.

The commonly conceived 'long sword' or western military tradition was not a main armament. It served a purpose similar to a handgun does for the modern military today. It was your secondary, backup weapon. Archers had swords to use when the enemy closed in on them, a knight would carry a sword in case they lost their other weapon, cavalry carried swords because a cutting weapon was smarter to use on horseback when running down fleeing foes (which, that, and harassing the enemies flanks and attacking lighter formations, was what you used them for, other than sheer terror and shock value). Even then, the knight would still carry a dagger for closer, more intimate combat with others, and because they were actually quite useful, and used as utensils when eating.

You state that "heavy weapons do more damage in real life", but that is simply a function of mass and acceleration. Assuming you can wield it, a 2 pound hammer is going to do more damage to someone than a one pound hammer, just as an 8 pound sledge will do still more. And against any armored opponent, you would be better off beating them to death than trying to cut them (which mail and plate make impossible), or stab them (which is not impossible but incredibly difficult with either mail or plate).

Axes could be useful, but they fall into the same category as your typical two-handed sword in this case: it is not useful for its ability to cleave, cut, or hack. It is useful because it is a large, heavy object that you can put a great deal of force behind.

Final Fantasy XI is a video game. A fantasy video game. Reality has no place in it. Or are you going to start complaining about magic, next, since that's also "unrealistic"?

If you have real issues with Rudra's Storm's mechanics, and how it makes DNC and THF alternatives to eternal SAM and MNK spam, say them. But don't try to bring up "it's unrealistic" when you don't even know what "realistic" is.