Item recharging is an exploit of game mechanics

[Brinkman]

I am sure this thread will be controversial, however I think it needs to be brought up.

First off, one thing needs to be said: Recharging items using vendors is classic, there is no question about it. There should be no argument on this subject.

What i am concerned about is the assumption that VI never intended for this to be able to be done, and it was a thorn in their side from day one. From what I understand it was a coding issue that they could not resolve.

Most changes to recharging items did not happen untill around 2002, and most of these changes were made because the staff of forbidden rites was being used to recover raid wipes and saving hours of CR from failed raid attemps, Killing risk vs reward in the raid game. It was also being used by monks and Necro's to " battle rez" players to be able to kill raid targets that guilds should have failed on.

To fix this problem they removed the staff from Lady Vox's drop table and made the vendor buyback price ( on this staff and other items ) absolutely insane. They did this because they had not yet figured out how make vendors tell the difference between number of charges on otherwise identical items. On Oct. 9, 2003 they made it to where vendors could finally tell the difference between item charges making recharging items impossible.

Again, I agree this is classic. My concern is that this is probably an unintended exploit that is being heavily abused here. On P99 we strive to be as classic as possible, however, we remove many things that were left on live for quite some time for balance reasons.

We remove quests that give too much experience for example, Quests that gave too much coin, tradeskills that make you a profit selling back to vendors, fixed pathing exploits etc etc. All of these are classic, but were removed for balance reasons.

Why anyone thinks its alright for a pure melee class to be able to Root, Lifetap, Bind affinity, invis, rez, gate, port, enduring breath, levitate, dispell is beyond me. Many of these items are instant cast which is even more unbalanced. The classes who actually get these spells have to sit there for 3-10 seconds casting. On top of that, some of these items are not lore, meaning people can carry around a backpack full of them ( root and invis.)

These charged items were most likely put in the game for flavor and to give players a few casts of something they cant normally do for fun. They were meant to be used up and tossed for the most part. The charges were added to keep game balance, and being able to recharge them destroys that.

We have already made changes once to a charged item ( ivandyrs hoop.) Adversly affecting its drop rate ( which is quite unfair to people who just want to quest for the item ) Do we really want to allow people to abuse these items until we slowly realize its making parts of the game trivial and fix them one by one?

This entire situation is compounded by the fact that on live a small percentage of the population knew about vender recharging. On P99 it seems nearly everyone knows about it, making the problem much worse.

I know this post will be heavily scrutinized, trolled, flamed. But I felt this needed to be brought it. Its a Real problem.

Start of edited portion below:

There is no proof that can be gathered at this time that completely proves VI was against item recharging but wrap your mind around this:

In situations like this, one can only use common sense to make an assumption ( opinion ). They started to make changes to recharing items as early as 2001, slowly changing the buyback prices of many charged items, patch after patch as they became aware of balance problems. This is a fact, the staff of forbidden rites buyback was changed well before the Crypt masters conjering stone was. Both were in patch notes.

They finally found a way to fix it, and implimented it. Breaking item recharging in 2003.
The fact that you cannot find any information on the internet ( including wayback searches ) from before 2001 about recharging items is a testament to how hush, hush everyone was about it.

And again, using common sense, if they intended item recharging, why would they require a player to own TWO of the items, make them have to sell it to an "empty" vendor in a certain order and then buy them back. This is cmplicated by the fact that lore items would cause even more issues. Why wouldnt they just put in a " recharge npc" instead.

Its all circumstantial, but all of it put together makes a very strong and compelling ( opinion ).

Its common sense and Logic. Item recharing just does not make sense.

If it sounds like a bug, and acts like a bug, it prolly is.

And bugs are not intended.

People using bugs in game mechanics are using exploits.

[Hasbinbad]

Like you said, it was the same way on live for years (still is?). Shrug. I think if they thought it was game breaking, they would have fixed it. Some things that were unintended they kept, some they didn't.

I think if individual things show themselves to be game breaking (hoop) then they should be changed. Other than that, leave it alone.

[Samoht]

Not that I disagree, but this seems more like a rant than an attempt to prove that item recharging was never intended.

Originally Posted by Brinkman [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the fact that VI never intended for this to be able to be done

Proof?

Originally Posted by Brinkman [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Later on, around 2006 or so? They made it to where vendors could finally tell the difference between item charges making recharging items impossible.

Game was SoE by then.

[Hasbinbad]

Game was always Sony..

[Bazia]

Agree with OP, it's obviously unbalanced and too powerful.

[Samoht]

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Game was always Sony..

Two different departments with two distinctly different purposes.

[Brinkman]

Originally Posted by Samoht [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not that I disagree, but this seems more like a rant than an attempt to prove that item recharging was never intended.



Proof?



Game was SoE by then.

Its not a rant, its a legitimate concern.

I dont think anyone would need to prove item recharging was not intended. Its quite obvious.

[Samoht]

Still sounds like an opinion stated as a fact. Your argument holds no water.

[Humerox]

Why would Sony acquire itself?

Brad McQuaid interview excerpt:

Question: I thought 989 was almost exclusively a sports game company? Had they done anything else? I never really understood how you guys got "in" with that crowd.


At the time, 989 (then Sony Interactive Studios America) was split into two main studios, sports and non-sports. John Smedley was the Executive Producer (and later Director of Development) of the non-sports studio. Both studios worked primarily on Playstation 1 (and later Playstation 2) games.

But John was heavily into online PC games (mostly pay-for-play games like Cyberstrike). He also really wanted to work on some, so he started development of Tanarus (a non-persistent online tank warfare game) as sort of an experiement and technology proving ground.

Some time later he felt he was in a position to get additional funding and start an online RPG, and the EverQuest project was approved (not that it had that name yet (Steve Clover named EQ), nor even a team). He also didn't really have a lot of PC-oriented developers, much less RPG-types, so he looked around for local developers.

He saw the WarWizard 2 demo Steve, I, Kevin Burns, and Bill Trost had put together. He then noted that Milo Cooper (then at 989, working on the Gameday series) had done the art for WarWizard 1, and talked with him about us.

So John hired Steve and I to being work on EQ, and I was later able to bring on board Kevin, Bill, and many others.

The online games group grew and grew until we pretty much were our own studio in addition to the sports and non-sports studio. But then when PS/2 was announced, 989 management needed to expand to keep developing PS/1 titles and expand to the new platform, and so we (the online studio) spun off into our own company (Verant Interactive).

We'd by then started work on many titles (the game that would become SW:G, EQ expansions, Planetside, Sovereign, etc.), and found another Sony company (Sony Online Entertainment) to fund those titles.

Even later, after EQ launched and was extremely successful, SOE ended up buying Verant, and the rest is history.


Question: If meself recalls correctly, methinks it went, "Red Eye Entertainment" > "989 Studios" > "Verant Interactive".


The first company was Sony Interactive Studios, which was under SCEA (Sony Computer Entertanment America).

Later, this company changed names to 989 Studios.

Even later, btw, after we were gone, 989 Studios changed it's name to just SCEA, but kept 989 Sports as a 'brand'. SCEA is still in San Diego (and many other locations) making PS/2 games.

When it was 989 Studios, we left the company and founded Verant Interactive.

For a very short time, Verant was RedEye, but there was a name conflict, so we went to Verant.

Verant Interactive, an independent company, was then later purchased by Sony Online Entertainment (a totally different Sony entity). SOE is under Sony Digital which is under Sony Pictures.

The Verant name then faded away and now they are simply SOE.

Complicated? Yeah, I can barely keep it straight.


So no...it was not always Sony. Now you know the rest of the story.

[Brinkman]

Just to add correct info, Vendor recharing was completely removed in the Oct. 9, 2003 patch. Edited my main post to reflect that.