Bring back vanilla item level restriction

[Blame The Rogue]

ILR made items that would only be useful to say, a level 10 character, unusable by said character, because the item was 17 ILR

many many items in game, if the ILR were returned, would become higher than character level, and become unusable

using appearance changers raises the ILR of items

many of the best items in game are already class only, and cant be used anyway, until sufficient levels and umd investment are made

the way the game calculates ILR is hardcoded and wonky as all get out

this is why ILR was turned off, and imo, why it should remain turned off

[matelener]

ILR made items that would only be useful to say, a level 10 character, unusable by said character, because the item was 17 ILR

many items in game, if the ILR were returned, would become higher than character level, and become unusable

using appearance changers raise the ILR of items

many of the best items in game are already class only, and cant be used anyway, until sufficient levels and umd investment are made

the way the game calculates ILR is hardcoded and wonky as all get out

this is why ILR was turned off, and imo, should remain turned off

Exactly. A weapon with +3 EB and a bit of Spell Resistence? See you in the epics. People complain how removing ILR made low level items useless but it also excluded a ton of other items from ever being used. And even while ILR was still active, vet players breezed through the low level content with UMD or scrolls-casting (which was also an auto-win when it comes to the low level PvP, in theory - not that I engaged in such lol).

Also, how much time do you really spend in the lower level bracket? 5% of the total PC playtime? Is muled epic gear really overall that impactful and detrimental?

[Tanlaus]

I do recall Endy saying vanilla ILR was not workable for various reasons like Blame The Rouge pointed out not to mention some of the epic items were above what anyone was allowed to use, but a custom ILR, if possible might be ok.

I recently leveled a toon from 1 - 30 without RCR or muling to test the loot changes. One thing I did notice was how easy it was to get +4 gear on the auction these days. Easily affordable by lime level 3 or 4. It did somewhat trivialize the lower end content.

So my personal feeling is a custom ILR would be a positive change for the server since high end loot is so cheap these days. But I can also see people complaining about it as well. I guess I would try to find out what is more popular with the player base before moving to change it.

[c2k]

I was very much against it at first, but the benefits of it outweigh undesirable side of it.

Long story short, removing item level restrictions solved a lot of bugs the game had and did free up a lot of complaints the DMs were getting regarding broken items.

[Blackman D]

Also, side note. Having had just worked on the !:makeover and !:head features and looked at the OEI library for bic handling. There's really no technical reason why we couldn't come up with a process that processes the bics and makes them "legal" for use with the item restriction mode turned back on. It would be a lot of work to do, but not impossible.

enforce legal character shouldnt be on anyway so that is hardly an issue, as soon as you add anything custom to a character it is seen as illegal because its enforcing vanilla only

[Ewe]

"Enforce Legal Characters" is a separate server option from "Item Level Restrictions" they are not the same thing.

[edmaster]

But why? The script solutions I've seen are pretty crappy and super exploitable, all you need to do is walk foward a bit and equip the item, BAM, Bypassed it.

[Thaelis]

I for one find it pretty immersion-breaking when my level 8 is struggling through a dungeon only to have a level 3 join me and start obliterating everything with his 40AC and +4 Flaming shocking keen greatsword of death. Not even slightly exagerrating.

There's no RP justification for that... Maybe the sword was passed down by his great great uncle, but the shield, armor, rings, boots, cloak, helm, amulet and even the holy hand grenade?

[c2k]

I for one find it pretty immersion-breaking when my level 8 is struggling through a dungeon only to have a level 3 join me and start obliterating everything with his 40AC and +4 Flaming shocking keen greatsword of death. Not even slightly exagerrating.

There's no RP justification for that... Maybe the sword was passed down by his great great uncle, but the shield, armor, rings, boots, cloak, helm, amulet and even the holy hand grenade?

To be fair, while I agree with the lack of RP justification, the advent of Epic stores and +4 items being the norm has made it very easy to gear up a low level PC without muling.

[Steve]

To be fair, while I agree with the lack of RP justification, the advent of Epic stores and +4 items being the norm has made it very easy to gear up a low level PC without muling.

A full +4 gear "outfit" and weapon will cost a Level 3 toon 2 million coin, or more. That is impossible to acquire by Level 3, unless one would turn off the XP gain and run the Kobold Ruins 200,000 times. That is no exaggeration—I did the math, and it wasn't hard.

Related though, is that via Mudd's Consignment, and the because the economy of BGTSCC has gone to complete shit in the last few years, especially after the Rebalance, +3 gear with extras is sold on average for 6-7k per item. So, it is true that a level 3 could purchase a full "outfit" of gear for 56,000 coin, which would only take 10-15 runs, give or take.

And just a few short years ago, +3 gear with extras was considered pretty top tier for the majority of players (and their toons).

EDIT: mathematical exaggerations for your enjoyment!

[Hoihe]

To be fair, while I agree with the lack of RP justification, the advent of Epic stores and +4 items being the norm has made it very easy to gear up a low level PC without muling.

A full +4 gear "outfit" and weapon will cost a Level 3 toon 2 million coin, or more. That is impossible to acquire by Level 3, unless one would turn off the XP gain and run the Kobold Ruins 200,000 times. That is no exaggeration—I did the math, and it wasn't hard.

Related though, is that via Mudd's Consignment, and the because the economy of BGTSCC has gone to complete (#2) in the last few years, especially after the Rebalance, +3 gear with extras is sold on average for 6-7k per item. So, it is true that a level 3 could purchase a full "outfit" of gear for 56,000 coin, which would only take 10-15 runs, give or take.

And just a few short years ago, +3 gear with extras was considered pretty top tier for the majority of players (and their toons).

I feel part of the problem is CR scaling adding some +2-3 AB to most enemies thus requiring better gear to handle - even in parties if your party is RP based rather than optimization based. Thus now you must have +4 gear while in past you could manage with less except for votd and similar.

and this is just the pve needs. pvDM is even worse at making lower tier gear worthless

[mrm3ntalist]

The reason the restrictions were removed was that there were items - especially those with SR - that had high level requirements. When a character reached that level, the item was subpar. Also DM rewards with high level restriction were given to low level characters for taking part in campaigns, which meant that they wouldnt be able to use the items for weeks/months.

To a lesser degree, removing restrictions somewhat made it a bit easier for low level characters to participate in events with epic characters, especially when skill rolls are requested.

Even with level restrictions a character can be optimized to have higher AC compared to the mobs AB. It doesnt matter whether the characters total ac caps the mob's AB by 1 or 101 - the mob can only hit when rolling 20s. The advantage results only from the AB bonus from weapons and stats - to a lesser degree from damage too, but the weapons on BG have very low damage bonuses. By the time a character is able to use +2 weapons we are talking about a difference of +2 or +3 AB.

TL;DR
With level restrictions or not, all characters can be optimized to run through dungeons - if that is what they want - but without level restrictions there are no items with irrational level requirements and allows low level characters easier access to events

With level restrictions or not, one still cannot control how other players decide to play the game.

[c2k]

To be fair, while I agree with the lack of RP justification, the advent of Epic stores and +4 items being the norm has made it very easy to gear up a low level PC without muling.

A full +4 gear "outfit" and weapon will cost a Level 3 toon 2 million coin, or more. That is impossible to acquire by Level 3, unless one would turn off the XP gain and run the Kobold Ruins 200,000 times. That is no exaggeration—I did the math, and it wasn't hard.

Related though, is that via Mudd's Consignment, and the because the economy of BGTSCC has gone to complete (#2) in the last few years, especially after the Rebalance, +3 gear with extras is sold on average for 6-7k per item. So, it is true that a level 3 could purchase a full "outfit" of gear for 56,000 coin, which would only take 10-15 runs, give or take.

And just a few short years ago, +3 gear with extras was considered pretty top tier for the majority of players (and their toons).

EDIT: mathematical exaggerations for your enjoyment!

I wasn't referring to gearing up with +4 gear, but I did forget to add the part about +3 gear from consigment that is really cheap to get.

Item level restrictions were not removed because of subpar items, but because items would break and then become un-equippable by even level 30 PCs, which then required DM help to fix. One of the biggest offenders were the regen cloaks and their incompatibility with the appearance changer.

[Blackman D]

gotta love changing the look of something just for it to come out to requiring what was it? lvl 55 to use? it was something stupid that wasnt even possible

[Steve]

Yes, the SR issue on vanilla restricted Items wasn’t great by any means, that it wasn’t useful at the Level in which it would “unlock.”

But was that WORSE than a Level 1 PC having access to a SR 32 Item?!?

And yes, it was lame that regen cloaks would bug out, or that in some instances an appearance change would up the Level Use Restriction. Small price to pay for customization?!?

But obviously, if certain items with restrictions would bug and make the PC corrupt or impossible for the Player to log in, unless an admin would fix the bic offline, that wasn’t great. Was it really a burden though?

Maybe something can be done better, or maybe it isn’t worth the effort to go back or better...whatever!!

But I just want to say that the underlying issue to have restrictions is to uphold a type of character progression and Level-based enjoyment that isn’t completely “ruined” by mechanical power.

Which now in the life of the Server is far, far too easy to skew.

Maybe we would be better off by just making BGTSCC a Level 15—30 Server, and take all those pre 15 CR Areas and buff them up to EPIC CR!!!