Marathon, you are a bastard. I really believed it. Sweet idea, though.
It really is a cool idea. Something similar should happen to throwing to spice it up more too. Too many bland slight differences currently, not playing off the real differences in playstyles.
People have suggested similar changes to 2h weapons, making many very distinct subtypes of melee weapons.
Parameters of balancing being: [(Short - medium - long), (slow, medium, fast), (low damage, medium damage, high damage)] and every combination that would add up to '7' points, where each of the subsets are say,
short is 1 point, medium length is 2 points, long is 3 points. This is a simple balancing system that gives many choices. an example of a '7' point weapon currently in the game would be the long sword. (medium length[2], fast speed[3], medium damage[2]). Although I would argue, that the longsword is in fact a 7.5 making it slightly OP, since it has more of a 2.25 for damage, and a 2.25 for length. But many weapons don't add up and, say, only amount to a 6. and need to be
buffed in a non-normalizing way, but a more accentuating way. This gives weapons personality. And distinct pros and cons, not represented by price.
Our problem with melee is we don't have enough weapons with stats that are extremes, say (3,1,3) or (1,3,3). I hope I explained that in an understanding way?
I thought it was really interesting, so I just made a logical step of that for bows (only 8 of em), which is a much easier thing to do. I made it up as I went! Solid idea though
