29 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
I'm arguing against unbreakable designs, not for them. Organic systems can correct some of these mistakes automatically, as opposed to static ones, which can correct none of them.

You agreed yourself that it's very difficult to write a flawless spec. So how exactly are you going to come up with a complex, self-repairing organic system? How do you know that this fancy system isn't going to run amok and make things even worse?

What you're saying is almost like positing the conclusion as a premise. "If we had a system that could (somehow) repair itself in the face of any error, then we wouldn't have to worry about errors."

It's utterly obvious that a self-repairing system will repair errors and that it's always better to have a system that removes errors automagically. But because this is so obvious, this is an uninteresting statement. I want you to talk about how such a system would actually work, not merely that it would be nice to have.

KaVir said:
I'm not sure how I feel about such an approach, but I do find the idea itself rather intriguing.

I agree with both of your statements here. Something about it makes me feel queasy, and yet it does seem like there's something pretty interesting here. I think you (or somebody else) mentioned such a system at some point in the past; I still need to think about it a little to get a better idea of how I feel about it.
29 Jan, 2010, Tonitrus wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Tonitrus said:
I'm arguing against unbreakable designs, not for them. Organic systems can correct some of these mistakes automatically, as opposed to static ones, which can correct none of them.

You agreed yourself that it's very difficult to write a flawless spec. So how exactly are you going to come up with a complex, self-repairing organic system? How do you know that this fancy system isn't going to run amok and make things even worse?

What you're saying is almost like positing the conclusion as a premise. "If we had a system that could (somehow) repair itself in the face of any error, then we wouldn't have to worry about errors."

It's utterly obvious that a self-repairing system will repair errors and that it's always better to have a system that removes errors automagically. But because this is so obvious, this is an uninteresting statement. I want you to talk about how such a system would actually work, not merely that it would be nice to have.

How I approached it was pretty straight-forward. I'm not sure how to break it up into concepts, so I'll go with the wall of text version.

The short version is to make notes about things as they should be, and to not track alterable data about their conditions that can be falsified intentionally or through neglect.

I did this all pretty easily in Smaug, btw, before I stopped messing with it.

My approach:

For characters:
At character creation, a character would choose the six stats in order of preference. This would assign that stat a number from the list: 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8. The game tracked this selection, and I think I made it ask people later if any of the stats turned up missing. Racial modifiers were still in effect, but that was checked in stat get functions. This system used triangular numbers as a progression for skill ranks and stat "ranks", so +1 was worth 1 "point" of whatever, +2 was worth 3, +3 was worth 6, +4 was worth 10. Characters were granted a certain amount of trains per "level" and a certain amount of skillpoints per level adjusted by their base wisdom and intelligence. The also got +5 hp a level, since I didn't feel like making it random at the time.

Typical systems do this:
if ch.xp >= xp_needed_to_level:
ch.hp += hp_gain(ch)
ch.prac += prac_gain(ch)
ch.train += train_gain(ch)


I commented all "gain" code out entirely. Every character update, the game would scan the character, check that his base stats matched his stat selections. If they didn't, it would adjust one of them by one in the right direction (chosen at random). Instead of checking something like ch->level, it would then calculate what level he should be based off his current xp. It would then count up the number of spent stat trains and add that to the number of unspent stat trains. If he had too few stat trains, it would determine the percentage of the difference and roll a die to determine whether to award him another. If he had too many, it would (if the roll to act succeeded), reduce his unspent trains by one ("Available stat trains: 1" becomes "Available stat trains: 0"). If he was already at zero, it would simply reduce one of his stats by one. Since stat trains could use multiple "train" points, it is entirely possible that the point just reduced was worth 10 trains. The player isn't reimbursed for this, because it's wholly unnecessary to do so. The system will notice next check. The same process would be applied to player skills. Calculate the pointcost for the skills possessed, add that to the unspent skills. Too few? Maybe give him some. Too many? Reduce his unspent ones, or, if necessary, reduce the rank of a skill by one. The player can be screwed out of some practice points here, again, and that's totally fine, the system will catch it next tick. Then we check his hp. Is he low? Maybe give him some. Is he high? Maybe lower it some.

The net effect of all this is that I could log on a player, mset all his stats to 18 as an immortal, and the game would notice that this is wrong, and slowly fix it. I could set all his stats to 1, the game would notice that this was wrong and slowly fix it. Also, the further off something was from its goal, the more severe a move it would make to correct it.

Using a system like this, I could make a spell that would reduce a person's xp to 0. They'd slowly lose skills, stat trains, and hitpoints while the skill ran. Once it wore off, it would auto-correct.

I could give vampires a "level drain" power that would temporarily reduce the character's xp. The game would calculate his level at a lower level, and adjust his trains/skills/hitpoints/etc to fix it. When it wore off, it would auto-correct.

For items:
I ignored whatever the item level was and calculated it based off the stats, using triangular numbers. A level 1 sword could have +1 strength. A +10 strength sword would be level 55. I hacked the cost of buying/selling/repairing to be multiplied by the level, so that higher level items cost more and weren't worth the trouble if you were too low to use them. I capped their effectiveness based off the character's base stats (i.e., base + trains), also, so there was no point in using a rapier of awesome swashbucklery if you had a dex of 8.

Who cares, right?

You have a level 0 sword (which would still count as a level 1), it contains no stats. You ask your mage friend to enchant it, he does so. You get +3 hitroll, +3 damage roll. You ID your level 0 sword. It is now level 20. Your repair costs have gone up by 20x. I believe I checked for permanent effects and didn't alter the values based off temporary ones, but I forget. If I forgot, then when the spell wore off, it'd drop back down to level 0. (which could lead to some amusing repair cheatery, where you let spells lapse before you repair, but that's why you shouldn't count temporary effects anyway).

Scenario 2. You ask an immortal to make your level 0 sword a +10 damage sword. It is now level 55. This value isn't set anywhere, so you don't have to remember to do it, it's simply calculated on the fly when you need to know the value of the sword.

The great thing about this approach is that you can alter it all on the fly. Hitpoints are worth too much? Adjust it in the formula, the next time it's called, the level will be lower. Characters have too many skills? Adjust the amount of skills they are given "by level" in the formula.

I think the basic approach to all of this is to not make permanent changes to anything that you can't quantify later. Don't set the character's level as a field, calculate it off his xp. Don't give him +5 hitpoints when he levels, just check to see if he's below his derived-level's-worth-of-xp on the tick. By doing it this way, it will autocorrect if there are problems, and you can even adjust the values of things as you go. If you make it partially random as well, people won't know when to expect losses or gains and will, ideally, just accept it as part of the game. They may also throw a fit, whichever.

Also note that none of the things I've mentioned are particularly hard to implement. They may or may not require an unhealthy amount of paranoia to think up in the first place, but they're not hard to do.

Note: Also, I'm pretty sure I pulled out the racial effects too, so you could easily change people's races without it screwing up their characters. I may or may not have done the same with classes, I don't remember.

David Haley said:
KaVir said:
I'm not sure how I feel about such an approach, but I do find the idea itself rather intriguing.

I agree with both of your statements here. Something about it makes me feel queasy, and yet it does seem like there's something pretty interesting here. I think you (or somebody else) mentioned such a system at some point in the past; I still need to think about it a little to get a better idea of how I feel about it.

I feel exactly the same. I've considered using this as a solution for adjusting skill cost or skill effectiveness, but it has a number of issues.

1) Players can game the system to break things they don't like by using them with alts/friends.
I suppose you could ignore this by only counting active players, or say that it's fine as players are still spending money/xp/whatever to acquire them..

2) Players may inexplicably notice huge drops in effectiveness.
This really, really bugs me. I suppose you could adjust the "value" of things by who all is using them, so that items that everyone uses are more valuable, and people would find that their items have gone up in value, but then they could just sell them and eat profits off that. If you were to do it with skills, they might find themselves in "xp debt", but that's frustrating as well.

3) It rewards people for being the sole possessor of certain things even when this may not be something to be encouraged.
Say you have people able to craft gear or create skills. A person could make something for themselves, never share it, and it would be more powerful for that reason alone.

4) It punishes people for using commonly-used things even when this may not be appropriate.
Suppose you had a mud with two factions opposed to one another. Faction A is led by a werewolf, who bites everyone in his faction and makes them all into werewolves. If we have a skill-based application of this idea, werewolves are weaker as a result, which is good. However, Faction B now buys up massive amounts of silver weapons to fight Faction A. Faction B's weapons are now less effective even though, as half the game consists of werewolves, they should arguably be more effective.

I haven't really come up with solutions to these problems that I'm at all happy with.
29 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
The short version is to make notes about things as they should be, and to not track alterable data about their conditions that can be falsified intentionally or through neglect.

All you've done is to eliminate the "caching" of output, or if you prefer, the incremental calculation of output values implied by incremental changes of input values. In other words, you have made the output be recalculated based on input.

You haven't actually guaranteed that the resulting system is reasonable, or that there are no flaws in the system, or even that things are balanced. For example, it's quite possible that you could pick some stat bonus that doesn't imply a large level change but that gives somebody quite a bit more benefit than it should.

This auto-correction is no different from making sure that outputs are coherent with inputs. In other words, it's basically the same thing as making sure that builders can't enter values that are inconsistent with the game design. I really don't see how this scheme is detecting macro-level balance problems or "repairing" the entire system from a higher level.

It's certainly interesting and indeed very useful – I am not arguing against it as a good thing to do – but it is unfortunately not doing what you said it would be doing.
29 Jan, 2010, Tonitrus wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
You haven't actually guaranteed that the resulting system is reasonable, or that there are no flaws in the system, or even that things are balanced. For example, it's quite possible that you could pick some stat bonus that doesn't imply a large level change but that gives somebody quite a bit more benefit than it should.

This auto-correction is no different from making sure that outputs are coherent with inputs. In other words, it's basically the same thing as making sure that builders can't enter values that are inconsistent with the game design. I really don't see how this scheme is detecting macro-level balance problems or "repairing" the entire system from a higher level.

It's certainly interesting and indeed very useful – I am not arguing against it as a good thing to do – but it is unfortunately not doing what you said it would be doing.


I'm not too sure how to respond to this, so I'll just say whatever pops in my head (which is what I do anyway).

The system does correct a lot of bugs by "making sure that outputs are coherent with inputs", as you put it, and does repair them via auto-correction. If I add a new stat to the game or set one of the weights of the stat costs incorrectly in the update code, it obviously has no way of knowing this or fixing it. However, when I notice the imbalance, I can change it in the update code without having to bother anywhere else.

That said, if you want a system with a more sweeping ability to balance itself (which I, in fact, do), the system I mentioned isn't capable of that. When I wrote it up, I pretty much just considered it sanity checking. Now lets say I move the "costs" of various stats to a variable that the game can access. So we have "strength = 1", "hp = 0.2" (i.e., 5 hitpoints = 1 point) and so on. We could then utilize some sort of function designed to determine game balance to adjust these costs on-the-fly and let the sanity-checking code take care of the actual changes. This really is the hard part. How do you determine what is balanced and what isn't balanced? If we assume that whatever is used the most often is most powerful (which I don't necessarily believe), we could simply go through all the spells/equipment that is frequently used and count up the number of bonuses to each stat, possibly subtracting the number of penalties to each (or possibly adding them, since the most important stats would be more useful to penalize in opponents), then calculate some sort of percentage and apply it to our main set of "costs". If everyone in the game is using +strength skills and spells, the cost of strength will go up, after which the sanity-checking code will raise item levels and do something or another to spells to make them less "cheap".

My sanity-checking design wasn't intended necessarily to ensure "balance" in any aspect other than "what does more should be worth more, what is not worth much should not do much". I.e., I don't care if someone has a +500 damage sword, as long as it's level 125,250 in accordance with the progression of every other item. If we had a reliable "watchdog" function that could detect imbalances in items and skills, we could have a system much more capable of detecting and correcting "macro-level balance problems" as you mentioned. As far as I'm concerned, the hardest part of this entire thing is deciding how to determine what is and isn't balanced.

Anyway, I was not intending to claim that my code can detect "macro-level balance problems" or even that code to correct such problems is necessarily necessary. While I think being able to do so would be quite great (and have been trying to design a way for a "watchdog" function to reliably work), that is a great deal harder than making decent sanity-checking code, and has a bit less of a payoff, since adjusting balance formulas in a single sanity-checking function is trivial, but has sweeping effects.
29 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
My comment was to point out that your initial replies were somewhat misleading when it comes to what you actually produced. You produced a system that verifies that outputs are consistent with inputs, not a system that organically adapts to new situations etc. I thought it was a little misplaced to criticize what Elanthis wrote, and talk about very smart organic systems, only to produce a fairly straightforward sanity checker. (Again, don't get me wrong: I think that the sanity checker is very useful indeed. But it's just not addressing the problem at hand, which is the one you keep pushing back of determining what is and isn't balanced and precisely how to adjust weights etc. to maintain balance.)
30 Jan, 2010, Barm wrote in the 46th comment:
Votes: 0
How about a variant of the "A Sword is a Sword" approach? I'm going to use fantasy-style examples but you could apply it to any genre.

First, all weapons of the same base type do the same base damage – a rusty scimitar hits just as hard as anImmaculate Efreet-Forged Scimitar of the Sky.

Next, you categorize character feats and abilities by descriptive levels like;

  • miserable
  • feeble
  • weak
  • minor
  • adequate
  • average
  • impressive
  • great
  • remarkable
  • superb
  • splendid
  • outstanding
  • exceptional
  • incredible
  • glorious
  • fantastic
  • amazing
  • phenomenal
  • spectacular
  • extraordinary
  • wondrous
  • stupendous
  • astonishing
  • astounding
  • miraculous
  • legendary


Where each adjective represents a span of multiple couple character levels (or whatever advancement system you use). A level 55 monk learns to perform Splendid Claws of the Tiger.

Lastly, require the character to acquire equipment that is rated on par with their level to perform those abilities. You could either downgrade feats for inferior gear – a knight's Wondrous Wall of Thorns ability becomes a Spectacular Wall of Thorns because he only has a Spectacular Shield of Living Stone. Or, you could give items a scaling chance to break if you attempt to use them for feats rated above (or even below) their level. If you couple this with progressing repairs costs then a Glorious Rapier becomes a white elephant to a level 1 assassin.

The secret sauce is in shifting the bonuses of high-end gear from the items themselves to the characters.
30 Jan, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 47th comment:
Votes: 0
Meh. That doesn't accomplish anything useful. If I still need some uber endgame weapon to use my uber-skill, that's no different than just having the uber endgame weapon do the skill for me. I suppose it keeps it out of the hands of newbies, but it removes the diversity of weapon choices from the game.

A level 60 armed with a rusty scimitar should still do far better than a level 1 armed with God's Own Hammer. Likewise, a level 1 with a rusty scimitar fighting a level 1 who managed to wield God's Own Hammer should be at a disadvantage.

If you really want to make all swords the same, then make them the same. Add special properties, so you can have a flaming longsword that does 1d8 base + 2 fire damage, or a longsword of pestilence that does 1d8 base + 2 toxic damage. Your uber swords get more and better properties, so God's Own Hammer does base damage of 2d6 (as all warhammers), but it also has +5 holy damage, +5 lightning damage, and a proc that casts "turn undead" at a 5% chance per round.
30 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 48th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Likewise, a level 1 with a rusty scimitar fighting a level 1 who managed to wield God's Own Hammer should be at a disadvantage.

I disagree. I suspect that many people IRL would do far better with a solid stick than they would with nunchucks, for example.

In other words, some weapons take skill before you can do anything more useful than hit yourself on the head with them.

That said, I also disagree that a rusty scimitar will do just as well as a strong, solid and well-sharpened blade. The latter will obviously cut more and break less.
30 Jan, 2010, elanthis wrote in the 49th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
That said, I also disagree that a rusty scimitar will do just as well as a strong, solid and well-sharpened blade. The latter will obviously cut more and break less.


a) you don't need to be very sharp at all to cut. there were plenty of "bladed" weapons that weren't meant to be sharpened at all.

b) the fact that the rusty sword will break more often than the quality sword is an entirely orthagonal issue to which sword does more damage. In fact, that's the crux of one of my suggestions back several pages before people started taking metaphors and clearly-marked "IMO" statements and arguing them to death. :/ With an upkeep/repair system, the draw of a better blade is simply that it is of higher quality make and lasts longer, not that sharpening it magically makes it cleave through steel and bone where the duller sword fails to slice through paper plate armor.

I think sharpness gets this mythical importance to people from mass media, which has caused everyone to "learn" that ninjas had swords that cut through steel and western warriors were just brutes who swung around clubs that were made of sharp metal. The fail to take into account silly things like how a japanese sword can easily crack when struck against a solid-enough surface – including another sword – and that permanently ruins the blade. The Japanese sword arts have a lot of… awkward moves and defenses that work the way they do just to protect the damn blade, not the wielder. The western swords are softer, duller, and more flexible. A Japenese sword would do some damage to a western sword, but the western sword is likely to do more damage to the Japanese sword. Plus the western sword master can concentrate on more efficient and direct attacks while the Japanese warrior is flailing around trying to make extra sure that the edge of the western sword only ever hits the flat of the japanese sword, and vice versa. but hey, Japan only ever fought Japan and a few coastal raids from other asian empires, while Europe fought Europe, Africa, India, Asia, and the northern barbarians. Why would anyone think that European warriors might have more of a clue how to wage war than a bunch of isolated islanders, right?

So far as the chess thing goes… David, you know what my point was. :) Theoretically the "laws of physics" are unproven and might be totally bogus, but for all practical purposes we're considering them fact for now. Same for chess; maybe it is breakable, but we can fairly safely assume after the last 2,000 years that it's _probably_ not breakable.

And no, no game system of moderate complexity is unbreakable. A solid design, however, is without major holes. Minor holes in a design can be tweaked or "patched" out. It's the major glaring "we didn't even think this through at all" design issues that are the problem.

two examples: the first example is a game where magic can kill armies, kill opponents instantly, teleport users anywhere they want to go, polymorph people into either mice or dragons, and cure male pattern baldness. The entire world and story is based on this high-magic setup. Then you realize that no other character can defeat a wizard because the wizard has insta-kill effects that bypass all HP and target resistances that fighters naturally have low values in by design. You can fix this, but it's going to take a shitload of work and time and the end result is either going to drastically change the role of magic in your world or turn fighters into super saiyan ninja assassins.

The second example is where you have a small set of end-level skills based on elements, and your level designers ended up giving the best rewards to the fire-based end-game monsters, so all the players end up choosing the ice-based end-game skill and nobody ever picks the fire one. This can be fixed by simply redistributing the monster drops or adding in a bit more variety in end-game monster types. The design isn't broken, there just wasn't enough attention paid to element distribution at all levels of the game.

The former example is a systemic problem and the latter is just a small oversight. Neither is related to whether the system is organic or not, of course. Just an example of what happens when you don't analyze and think through your design and just whip things together because it "sounds good".
30 Jan, 2010, Barm wrote in the 50th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
That said, I also disagree that a rusty scimitar will do just as well as a strong, solid and well-sharpened blade. The latter will obviously cut more and break less.


I just want to reiterate that this was in response to the question of how to prevent items from being overpowered when used to twink. The idea being that advanced attacks stress the limits of the item and require superior crafting.

Both will stab a rat, but a Flying Whirlwind Slash might shatter the inferior, rusty blade.
30 Jan, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 51st comment:
Votes: 0
Getting a bit off-topic, but personally I think rust shouldn't be an innate attribute of a weapon, but should instead be just another type of damage that can accumulate and be repaired. As such, I wouldn't use it as a factor when calculating item restrictions (otherwise you'd end up with wierd scenarios, like a newbie leaving their iron sword outside until it rusts enough for them to use).
31 Jan, 2010, elanthis wrote in the 52nd comment:
Votes: 0
I agree with KaVir. If you're going to have more complex types of damage besides just a simple damage number, rust makes sense as one of those attributes. it also makes things like rust monsters more interesting, since otherwise you'd need a "rusty" version of every variation of sword for rust monsters to rust weapons, which would be a pain in the ass. You can if you're obsessed with sharpness make that a damage type, as well as cracks or chips or warping (especially for wooden weapons). You can also use different sets of skills for working on various types of damage. All depends on how intricate you want things to be.
31 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 53rd comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
a) you don't need to be very sharp at all to cut. there were plenty of "bladed" weapons that weren't meant to be sharpened at all.

That doesn't change the fact that you'll cut more with a sharper edge. :wink:

elanthis said:
The fail to take into account silly things like how a japanese sword can easily crack when struck against a solid-enough surface – including another sword – and that permanently ruins the blade.

The short answer is that I rather disagree with a lot of the statements you've made about Japanese swords, and no, this disagreement is not borne from media etc. but actual research into how the swords are made. I don't really feel like getting into a rant vs. rant, but I'd be curious if you can back up your claims with sources. What you have said w.r.t. durability is directly contradictory with what I've read in several books, including some on the forging process. In fact, the whole point of the forging process is to create hard/soft combinations. If the swords were just about cheap media tricks, I don't think there'd be quite so much academic research into the forging process, trying to recreate techniques from centuries ago. (It's rather like Damascus Swords, IIRC.) Anyhow, this is rather off-topic, so perhaps not worth getting into any further.

elanthis said:
So far as the chess thing goes… David, you know what my point was. :)

Yes I did, but you could also make the same point without saying things that are false, and you should know better. :smile:
31 Jan, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 54th comment:
Votes: 0
I found this article comparing the longsword and katana pretty interesting:

http://www.thearma.org/essays/longsword-...

At the bottom are links to rapier vs katana, and knight vs samurai.
14 Sep, 2010, Garick wrote in the 55th comment:
Votes: 0
I've always been rather against equipment restriction based on level, to be honest. If you're setting up a good questing system in which the /good/ equipment is obtained through drops/quest rewards, then I just don't see the need. The restrictions are put in place by the difficulty of the quest/area it comes from. If you base your items off of how you want them to come into play, you should already have a means of restriction in place.
14 Sep, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 56th comment:
Votes: 0
Necro much?
14 Sep, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 57th comment:
Votes: 0
Garick said:
I've always been rather against equipment restriction based on level, to be honest. If you're setting up a good questing system in which the /good/ equipment is obtained through drops/quest rewards, then I just don't see the need. The restrictions are put in place by the difficulty of the quest/area it comes from. If you base your items off of how you want them to come into play, you should already have a means of restriction in place.

That only works if equipment is locked to the player who earned it. If equipment can be transferred, those restrictions won't mean anything, as players will give gear to their alts, their friends, or even to random newbies if they're feeling generous.

Ssolvarain said:
Necro much?

I see no harm in necroing a design thread.
14 Sep, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 58th comment:
Votes: 0
I am definitely of the "a sword is a sword" alignment. What I use is a basic material setup that gives the items their basic intrinsic values then apply a crafting modifier. Using that as the base there is still a fairly wide range between a wooden sword whittled by a kid to a sword forged by a master of the best material but more or less the vast majority of the equipment falls into a fairly standardized statline.

Enchantments for equipment can push the boundaries much further but does have its own drawbacks of causing equipment decay and a fairly significant cost to the enchanter. I try and design the world with a fair mixture of vuln/resist mobs to each of the materials so to try and code-encourage a good mixture of materials used over simple min/max. The overall goal for me is to make the most important factor in performance to be the character build.
14 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 59th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't like level requirements for … most things, honestly, but equipment makes the least sense - nothing in the real world is going to stop an unskilled person from picking up an exotic weapon like nun-chucks and trying to use them, they'll just suck at it and possibly maim themselves. I tend to prefer to mirror that effect as it's the most intuitive to the general gamer. Most game systems such as D&D often have stringent requirements on the additional magical effects that these items may have, as opposed to the actual wielding of the item, which seems more reasonable than not even being able to heft the thing because Thou Art Not Worthy. (And furthermore in most game systems, if you have character levels at all you're already extraordinary compared to the majority of the world)

Maya/Rudha
14 Sep, 2010, Garick wrote in the 60th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks KaVir, that's pretty much how I saw it.

I'm not really a coder; most of my experience is with building.. So, I just found a thread I felt I could comment on, and did so.

As for what you said about the equipment being locked, I can agree with that to a degree.. I've always felt more that once a player has earned their equipment (through whatever means it took) it's theirs to do with what they please. If they decide to give it to a newbie, that's fine. The newbie has an advantage for a while, but eventually skill levels/proficiencies (If you have them) play a role, and the edge is lost.

As far as giving equipment to alts.. I've always been against multiplaying being allowed. My background is mostly in roleplay enforced Muds, and I don't think I have ever really seen good instances of roleplay, while a player was on two or more characters at once.
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