Legacy items

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Rhys wrote:

-pissing off often long-time players by (potentially) destroying significant wealth right out of their stash.

Significant wealth? this is a video game =D

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Skellimancer wrote:

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Rhys wrote:

-pissing off often long-time players by (potentially) destroying significant wealth right out of their stash.

Significant wealth? this is a video game =D

If said game occupies ~15-25% of your day, then I'd say its pretty significant, yea.

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vaiNe_ wrote:

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Skellimancer wrote:

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Rhys wrote:

-pissing off often long-time players by (potentially) destroying significant wealth right out of their stash.

Significant wealth? this is a video game =D

If said game occupies ~15-25% of your day, then I'd say its pretty significant, yea.

Also, "significant wealth right of their stash".

Now, if Skellimancer claims that one cannot be wealthy or poor in a video game, what's there to discuss...

It's a wealth in game, which came by "wasting" time in RL, of course it matters.

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raics wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

If you would have read the last page, you would have seen arguments.

Don't worry about me, I've probably read all these threads since silverbranch.

Sorry, all those are rock-solid reasons:
- Economy clearly is adversely affected, inflation isn't the only harmful economic influence, nobody even mentioned it.

It was mentioned by at least one person prior to my refuting it - so that's at least two mentions.

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raics wrote:

- PvP is there, it's not relevant now but if it ever becomes so, it would do well for devs to remember there isn't a single game in existence that's serious about pvp and allows legacy items, it's not a question of balance, that's a basic rule.

This is not a basic rule. It is not a required rule. Specialized builds and specialized gear for a quick and overpowering win is usually the plan for most PvP builds. Very few of them rely on game play skill. Clever tricks and advantages of one build vs another are far more common than skilled game play. When most PvP players meet someone with real skill, they complain and vanish quickly, rather than be embarrassed again and again.

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raics wrote:

-- Player psychology does work both ways but only for players present at the time of nerf, and the other way work only for legacy item owners, influence on the rest of community and any new players is far more significant.

This opinion has nothing to back it up. Most players aren't that concerned with legacy items.

You can verify this by looking at the number of different posters who commented when first legacy items were created and the number of players that commented when loot allocation was changed.

From what I have seen in these threads, there are more players who want self found league (and I am not advocating for it - just comparing numbers) than people who care about legacy items.

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raics wrote:

- Current balance aside, take a look at new uniques, a bland bunch, aren't they? Since they can't go about fixing them anymore they make them on the safe side, locking an aspect of the game halts development.

This is your opinion, and is not necessarily true for others. The Solaris Lorica, for instance, isn't bland, but will help a lot of builds. As for GGG not being able to "fix them", this is also an assumption.

GGG is not trying to make them "on the safe side". They are trying to provide a lot of choices for the characters and make many of them viable.

What GGG did find, was that players are very clever about exploiting seemingly minor properties of unique items.

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raics wrote:

All you can try to do is invalidate those reasons, but you can't provide a single good one on 'why are legacy items good for the game?'

I could say the same thing - that you can't provide a single reason why legacy items are bad for the game.

There are more reasons, more logic and more evidence to support the points I have put forth in this thread, than the points you have put forth.

The primary evidence supporting your arguments is people repeating the same things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

If you want to convince people than you will need to use some logic, reasoning, evidence, emotional appeal or something other than repetition.

I'm not saying your opinion is invalid. There is nothing wrong with it as an opinion. There is also nothing to support that many or most players feel the same way.

New players coming into an old game do not expect to play version 1.00

They expect to play some sort of updated version, that has been patched, altered and many of the original bugs and exploits fixed. They also expect legacy items when there is character persistence.

PvP players expect others to use every dirty trick possible against them. They want to use every dirty trick they can get ahold of to defeat their opponents. PvP is never about balance, it is about thrashing your enemy quickly and soundly.

That is why you will never hear PvP players saying - "The game has awesome PvP. The balance is so good that it usually takes me two hours to defeat my opponents. I lose as often as I win because the PvP is SO GREAT. You know what the best part of the game's awesome PvP is?
Every player gets the exact same gear for perfect balance. That rocks. None of that gear advantage crap for me!"

What PvP players do like is the thrill of potentially being thrashed, and getting to the point where they usually win.

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Fruz wrote:

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morbo wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

Maintain what ? There are probably just as much data stored for the legacy items than for the non legacy version of those.
Nothing to Maitnain.

Maintaining separate data structures for same type of items. Seeing that a divine orb wont properly transform an legacy Kaoms into a new Kaoms, they must have separate tables for both types of the "same" item. Having this legacy database structure, means you'll have to always have to account for it when writing queries, doing backups, cleanups, etc..

There's lots of "dead data" that will have to be maintained forever. Its not how much data is stored, its how and where is stored.

Actually, afaik, divining a legacy Kaom should make a non-legacy Kaom.
I have not tried it though, so I might be wrong.
They probably just simply store the value of the item so that they don't calculate the raw result from the %modifier that change all the time you look at the item ( no impact for kaom, but they won't make exceptions )

You are correct that divining a legacy item will make it non-legacy, along with any accompanying nerfs or buffs. On Kaom's -divining it would change the +1000 life to +500 and add the fire damage bonus, for instance.

There are a lot of players who divined their two handed legacy weapons to get the updated damage bonus.

I don't recall the exact explanation, but iirc, GGG doesn't need to maintain separate tables for the different uniques. The information is stored in the record of the unique itself.

If GGG could just change the table(database box)for the item, than all versions of that item would change at the same time, and there would be no legacy version.

If you reversed it for the player's perspective -

For comparison - example 1 Below will be similar to the mod changing with the database mod record box and not needing to be divined, and example 2 below will be a mod that does not change with the record box and ends up being a legacy mod unless divined.

Example 1 - GGG says - Next patch we will be changing all "_" underscores to spaces.

Example 2 - Next patch, we will no longer allow underscores. Players with underscores must
find a new name, and it still must be unique.

For example 1 - the characters named "Justin_Bieber" "_Justin_Bieber_" and "JustinBieber_" will just become "Justin Bieber", " Justin Bieber" " Justin Bieber " and "Justin Bieber " with no effort involved.

For example 2 - the characters named as above would all have to find new names and since "JustinBieber" was already taken they would have to think of a new name or variant.

Each of those players has to do this for sixteen different characters on each of their five thousand accounts.

This is a crude comparison of why GGG currently chose to have legacy items. Whether GGG will change them and their database structure in the future I do not know. GGG's stance on this (technical difficulties aside) may very well be that they would prefer to nerf/buff/update all items and let the chip fall where they may.

In any case, I do trust that GGG will make the best decision for their players and the game.


Just got off of an long 18 hour work day, so please excuse any typos.

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DalaiLama wrote:

Divining a legacy item will make it non-legacy, along with any accompanying nerfs or buffs. On Kaom's -divining it would change the +1000 life to +500 and add the fire damage bonus, for instance.

well, apparently no.

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Fruz wrote:

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DalaiLama wrote:

Divining a legacy item will make it non-legacy, along with any accompanying nerfs or buffs. On Kaom's -divining it would change the +1000 life to +500 and add the fire damage bonus, for instance.

well, apparently no.

I stand corrected. Thank you for posting that. From this, it looks like the new mod (added fire damage is part of the item drop's record and the values are re-rolled, but it isn't treated as a new drop.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. This might explain some items taking a very large number of rolls to fuse, exalt etc., while other items get the 5 or 6 link very quickly. The items themselves could have a hidden "luck" factor, just as it has an item level.

One way to test for such a hidden mod would be for someone to use the same magic finding character to collect several of the same uniques dropped by a random rare boss vs several of the same unique dropped by an act boss.

For example - let's say a level 80 character with 300 IIR is running Lunaris 3 and Piety in merciless and collecting all the Zahndethus' Cassocks they find. The Zahndethus' Cassocks should have the same item level.

They run until they find 10 Zahndethus' Cassocks from rare bosses and at least 10 Zahndethus' Cassock's from Piety.

They then use 30 jewelers on each Zahndethus' Cassock and record the number of sockets generated.

They average the number of sockets for the rare dropped Zahndethus' Cassocks and average the number of sockets for the Piety dropped Zahndethus' Cassocks (whether there are 10, 15 or 42+ of them, so long as all of them get rolled with 30 jewelers.)

If the Piety dropped Zahndethus' Cassocks show what looks like a real difference, than we could plug the numbers in and calculate the standard deviation and find out if it was signficant (3 standard deviations) or not.

If it was, then we would be 95%* certain that the game recorded a hidden value that indicated something about the monster that dropped the item.

It would be a real pain to do something like this, but if we had players with the patience to do so, we could really delve into some interesting aspects of the game.

It's similar to the way Jarulf's Guide to Diablo was made - insights, experience and lots of actual testing.

http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-12141.html <- a few different versions here, including a PDF.


(*ish - since we only have 10 samples, if we could get 20 or 30 each, we could say with some real certainty)

We were discussing it couple of pages back :
Divining probably just re-rolls the current mods on an item according to its range.
Kaom's nerf changed the ranged and added a mod, and legacy Kaom's just got their range changed without the new mode, so they cannot get the fire damage from a divine orb now.

I don't think that there is any link between this and "luck" about jeweller's/fusings, at all.

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sidtherat wrote:

this is IT world. one of only few domains completely under human control. ive learned 10 years ago that there is no 'impossible' in IT.

Truly random numbers. Impossible. They could and would break quantum encryption.

Securing a computer when someone has physical access to it.


Here's the kicker:

Unbreakable encryption.

If it is impossible the break the encryption, then cracking the encryption is something that is impossible in IT.

If it is possible to break the encryption, then the making an unbreakable encryption is something that is impossible in IT.



You could even make a nice little IF/THEN Basic loop out of this.

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DalaiLama wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

this is IT world. one of only few domains completely under human control. ive learned 10 years ago that there is no 'impossible' in IT.

Truly random numbers. Impossible. They could and would break quantum encryption.

Securing a computer when someone has physical access to it.


Here's the kicker:

Unbreakable encryption.

If it is impossible the break the encryption, then cracking the encryption is something that is impossible in IT.

If it is possible to break the encryption, then the making an unbreakable encryption is something that is impossible in IT.



You could even make a nice little IF/THEN Basic loop out of this.

due to existence of brute force decription current (realistic, not some theoretical stuff like quantum solutions) encryption is based on entropy 'strength' compared to available decrypting 'power' measured in bits or whatever measure you use. if difference between effort required to crack the code and your solution strength is 'greater then' you are 'statistically safe' (brute force just like rng can crack it on first try..)

if you want more than less reliable rng you can use voltmeter, some resistor and build your seed from it by collecting white noise from it. simple, not-deterministic from computation standpoint, reliable, frequently used, impossible to determine the seed from outside, easy to scale.

and you perfectly know well that you are clutching at straws and ignoring the main point of my post: 'technical difficulties' listed as reason to keep legacy stuff are more than less fallacy and deception