UnscrupulousDulu posted:
There is a difference between video game currency, which as another poster has shown can be manipulated, and real-life technical limitations.
That makes a great sound bite but it is not reality. A game currency can only be manipulated “as another poster has shown†if the original game code allows for that kind of manipulation. If the game database had been designed to be a bit more robust, then your suggestion would probably be very easy to implement. If the original game code was stupidly designed, then to create some manipulations could require extensive modification of the game code (and that is the challenge that we have with the DAoC plat cap and game code).
I am sorry that you do not have the background to be able to fully understand the limitations and challenges. In many circumstances a video game currency can be manipulated. In some ways DAoCs game currency can be manipulated, but not in any way (not without extensive code changes). Your suggestions can be implemented but it is more difficult than you seem to think.
In the case of DAoC and Mythic, Mythic designed the database so that attached to each item, as part of the database, is a single FIXED 32 bit long word that is assigned as the holding place for price (in copper) and the 32 bit word creates the limit for the cap. It is a fixed limit designed in the database. This fixed 32 bit word in the database is part of the basic code of the underlying design of the database. All databases in the game and all game code is designed around the 32-bit word length being the fixed and unchanging monetary number in the game of DAoC.
Back to my previous example of the 4GB cap for ram when using a 32 bit OS. Modern computers are not limited by a physical cap that prevents the use of greater than 4GBs of ram. That limit in a modern computer is totally software coded. Just as the 32 bit OS has a fixed coded limit that caps 4GBs as the limit in a modern computer that is using a 32 bit OS, the 32-bit word length is a software coded limit in the design of the DAoC database. Also the DAoC code that deals with, and manipulates, money is also designed around manipulation of that specific 32-bit word that defines copper in the game.
It is sad that Mythic could have created a database where the monetary value was not fixed and/or limited by the 32-bit word. They also could have created more robust game code so that the code could deal with monetary values that were not limited by a 32-bit word. But they did not. Had Mythic designed the database and the games monetary code to be more robust then the plat cap would have been arbitrary and changing the plat cap would be very easy. BUT Mythic designed the database with a single 32 bit fixed word that is used to indicate copper. That is just the way it is.
The original design of the database is structured around the 32-bit word allocated for price. Everything coded in the game where money is manipulated, transferred, added, subtracted, etc . . .it is all designed and coded around manipulating the set and specific sized 32 bit word that is standard for defining cost/price in DAoC. The only way to change from the 32 bit single length word to a double length word would be to rewrite the database and then to rewrite every bit of code that had anything to do with money. Again, the complexity is far more extensive than you seem to think.
It is the same for changing the game and eliminating copper and only having silver, gold, plat and Myth. This too is possible but the code change required is also very extensive.
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