Question for Developer Concerning Magic Items

[FalseFlag]

I want to ask, why is is that you can retroactively change items such as a ring of venom or the symbiont from Haywire from immunity to a save bonus against poison and disease, but you cannot retroactively change items like, well, all of the stuff that had new augments added? And this isn't a Gotcha or anything. I'm really curious. I don't know anything about coding, so it would seem like if you can do it some some items, you should be able to do it to the others.

I assume it's something specifically about the slot implementation, since I did notice that some weapons got the upgraded damage retroactively, but Epic items have to be altered in device to accept new augments.

[EllisDee37]

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that items point to their effects, and each item is its own entry in the item database.

Let's take whirlwind as an example, Every time anyone pulls a whirlwind, a new record is added to the item database. A new whirlwind. This item then points to its effects. All old whirlwinds point to the set of old whirlwind effects, while all new ones point to the new effects.

The change to proof against poison wasn't a change to items, it was a change to an item effect. They simply changed the effect, which means that every item that pointed to it is auto-updated by virtue of the fact that what they're pointing to is a different effect (but still in the same location.)

The change to add augments, OTOH, wasn't an effect-level change but a full-blown item change. Instead of changing one effect entry you'd have to change countless item entries.

[Antheal]

I want to ask, why is is that you can retroactively change items such as a ring of venom or the symbiont from Haywire from immunity to a save bonus against poison and disease, but you cannot retroactively change items like, well, all of the stuff that had new augments added? And this isn't a Gotcha or anything. I'm really curious. I don't know anything about coding, so it would seem like if you can do it some some items, you should be able to do it to the others.


They can change it, they just deliberately choose not to, so that by making you re-grind these items they can claim the game has more playability and lifespan.

[nibel]

They can change it, they just deliberately choose not to, so that by making you re-grind these items they can claim the game has more playability and lifespan.

There are cases also where the old item was better, depending on what you would using them. E.g., the old Silver Longbow was ML 6 and unbound, while the new one is ML 8 and bound on equip. Being able to use them at level 6, or transfer from one character to another is worth more than a 1d2 elemental damage.

This is NOT the case with the majority of the items. Most of them got a nice buff.

[redspecter23]

There are cases also where the old item was better, depending on what you would using them. E.g., the old Silver Longbow was ML 6 and unbound, while the new one is ML 8 and bound on equip. Being able to use them at level 6, or transfer from one character to another is worth more than a 1d2 elemental damage.

This is NOT the case with the majority of the items. Most of them got a nice buff.

This is likely part of the reason. If there were an across the board change to update all old items, players would suddenly find many previously bta items btc and in cases like the one noted above, worse versions of items could be forced on players. In a rare case of Turbine actually thinking ahead, they decided not to retroactively upgrade any old items. Of course it might just be that they didn't want to do it and make players regrind for some items. It's probably the latter with the former being a nice unforeseen bonus to players.

If it were a situation where every new item were strictly better in every way than the old items, then there might be a concern over why they were not auto upgraded, but even then, I think they really wanted to push the btcoe mechanic to help boost the shard exchange so it probably wouldn't have gone over well.

To answer the original question, I'm fairly certain they could allow players to upgrade to the newer version through a stone of change ritual, but they chose not to do so, probably because of a combination of extra required development work and a rapid influx of new items without grind, which defeats some of the purpose of planting the new items to begin with.

[Flavilandile]

I want to ask, why is is that you can retroactively change items such as a ring of venom or the symbiont from Haywire from immunity to a save bonus against poison and disease, but you cannot retroactively change items like, well, all of the stuff that had new augments added? And this isn't a Gotcha or anything. I'm really curious. I don't know anything about coding, so it would seem like if you can do it some some items, you should be able to do it to the others.

I assume it's something specifically about the slot implementation, since I did notice that some weapons got the upgraded damage retroactively, but Epic items have to be altered in device to accept new augments.

That's a tough one.

When they change an effect ( like weapon damage ), as pointed in the quote below, they just need to change the record for the effect in the database.


My understanding (which could be wrong) is that items point to their effects, and each item is its own entry in the item database.

Now when they change augment slots they have to take a lot of things into account :
- First there's several colors ( each color can be considered as being an effect, but it's not really an effect, more like an Effect Type )
- Then there's what is slotted in that slot ( that's is specifically an effect and could probably be mass modified like any other effect )

With the change that happened in the slots, they also changed where some effect could be slotted ( the Color where you could slot a given thing ),
so changing the already existing items would have required just clearing all the slots of all the items. I can tell you that it would have annoyed ( weak word ) quite a lot of people. Also it would probably have required a script to go through the database looking for items and clearing them up, and that takes a lot of computing power. ( and quite a lot of time )

So they went the easiest way : grandfathering, that is the old items cannot be created anymore, they are still in game ( the new version is just a new row in the item list in the database ), and if the players want to change an old item for a new one (s)he has to make an action. ( that way nobody is going to gripe that the items were changed against their will. )