Crafting shards onto any item...

[Setin_Myways]

Well, this shows the limits of being an old school guy and not staying up with all the different methods -- especially with object coding which was still on the newer side of things when I retired.

As for server vs client side I agree that more seems to be done on the server side, including stuff that I would have expected to take place client side. One simple reason for this is it prevents hacks -- or makes it extremely difficult in any case.

And yes, it is down to just a sort of sit around the bar and talk over beers sort of thing. If we drink enough and talk enough we'll solve the world's problems.

pretty old-school myself - spent my first 5-8 years programming COBOL until I got on a web project. coding for the web when people were expected to have a 14.4 modem at best has me very 'old skool' to a lot of the youngsters that come about, but they never had to really think minimalistic-ally about size or computer memory and processor, let alone bandwidth. I am by no means a game programmer - all business and eCommerce, but running a NWN world
for 6 years gave me a pretty good perspective. I would have avoided this topic normally, but i hate when people say Turbine developers suck or coding this would be easy. We have no clue what they have to work with in their organization. All i know is i really enjoy this game. The new patch is addressing some more of my concerns and this BETA is really shaping up.

[societal]

Some of these arguments are flawed. You can put greensteel recipe on any armor slot or ANY weapon. You can put deathblock on any armor with triple-neg. The results are different on armor and weapon, but they are not limited to specific slots or weapon types for continuity. Epic augment slots is another example. There is 'some' plan here but some of it makes sense while some seems random.

[kernal42]

i think it is more likely to have every item stored as a list of numbers and depending on where that item is determines how it exists in the 'instantiated' world of the game. so I get an item that is 12345 and since it is in a chest slot object, which knows to display the correct icon and name. When i examine it, the examine object knows how to determine what to display based on the numbers, when i put it in inventory or bank slots, they too know how to interpret this code. only when it goes in a body slot does it, instantiate and interact with the game engine via my toon. if everything stated as objects in a single form, do you know how much memory each toon would need? also, how would the game engine be able to tell the difference between a ring on your finger and one in your pack? they have to change as the move from a finger slot to a backpack slot...

i think it is more likely that the objects do make the combinations 'impossible', until the objects are changed.

While this is a reasonable technique, I find it highly unlikely that it is employed in DDO for a variety of reasons.

For example:
When an item is changed, unless the devs go through special effort the change is not retroactive (see epics).
The language the devs use to reference this process really sounds like the old item is being destroyed and a new one, with the correct properties, is destroyed.
If adding augments changed the object the item referenced (so that it references one with the appropriate augment), I would expect to see some case(s) where the referencing was mixed up. This is not the case.
Instead, there is the case where one of the augments is mixed up, but wrong consistently.

These are all evidence that the item in your inventory is a unique item with all of the appropriate properties saved on that particular item instance. Furthermore, this is an obviously necessary method of coding for at least some properties, such as temp/perm damage. Rather than mix and match systems, it makes more sense to have consistency.

Cheers,
Kernal

[kernal42]

If we drink enough and talk enough we'll solve the world's problems.

Except the imminent beer shortage!

Haven't seem Shaamis in awhile...

[danzig138]

I disagree, certain objects/items have an affinity with certain effects. Blindness immunity boots just doesnt make sense imo

Sure, but why can't I put negative energy absorption on a necklace? Can they just not imagine a magical amulet that absorbs some energies? They can imagine a magical amulet that generates a magical field that manages to help deflect attacks. And as someone noted with giant screencaps, why can I put a skill bonus on just about anything? I don't have a problem with item/effect affinity, I just think they current setup could use some revision. I'm pretty okay with weapon effects staying as is (even if I really want a telekinetic light repeater of bone breaking).

In the original 3.5 crafting system, effects do have an affinity for certain slots, but this can be overridden by paying extra. This might be something worth incorporating; provide some way to pay extra to put effects in unusual slots.

My first thought is to simply up the value by +1 for an unusual slot. Blindness ward is +2. Want it on your boots for some reason? +3.

I'd also like to see provisions for race and alignment requirements for modifying the item level, and while wishing, multiple prefixes and suffixes.