Item duplication in BG/BG2

[Bartimaeus]

I generally hate duplicated uniques, but I would have to agree that at least most of this falls outside the realm of a "fix". Some stuff like preventing unintended duplicates e.g. Tazok's gloves between his person and his treasure chest or perhaps even the Heart of the Golem Dagger +2 being on an NPC that you're not ever intended to kill I think you could make some good arguments for, but others like the Ring of Fire Resistance or Ring of Wizardry don't seem right to label as a fix to me - they were placed there by the developer, presumably deliberately. I also always kind of took at least some of those non-major artifacts (we're not talking about the Ring of Gaxx, after all) to be generics that have a unique history behind their initial creation, but the particular copy you find not necessarily being the first. Do you really want there to be only one pair of Boots of Speed, after all?

Edited April 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[The_Baffled_King]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Do you really want there to be only one pair of Boots of Speed, after all?

I don't. Far more importantly, an appreciable number of people would be outraged if items are removed and not replaced by their generic alternatives. But, as I understand it - and to use your example of Boots of Speed - the proposal is to replace Lothander's copy of "Boots of Speed: The Paws of the Cheetah" (boot01) with the generic "Boots of Speed" (bdboot05"). There would therefore be no reduction in the number of Boots of Speed available. Does that change your stance?

To reiterate my position: I absolutely don't support a fixpack reducing the number of magic items in the game (even though I think the game handles magic item placement badly). I'm gonna respond to Sam regarding the two items to which he refers, then make a point of more wider application, and then my piece is said.

3 hours ago, Sam. said:

Something about the original wording of the proposal led me to believe the suggestion was to "remove" the ring from the Gibberling Mountains.  The post has since been edited, so I can't be sure if my initial interpretation was warranted or in error.  Regardless, I still feel this is the correct place for the canonical item.

Thanks for the clarification! I'm not knocking your preference, but I was very surprised at the strength of feeling. As I said, I'm good with it being in the Gibberling Mountains.

3 hours ago, Sam. said:

I would say the description itself indicates that there are multiples of this ring and/or very similar ones (eyeing the original BG2 variant), all having the same origin.  I see no reason to swap any of these with a more generic version.  Also, I'm against messing with the original game developer's easter eggs.

There are certainly multiples, and I don't have the same visceral dislike for multiple copies of Evermemory as for other duplicates. However, my interpretation is that Sunin might say "this is my ring of wizardry, Evermemory", in much the same way as Galadriel from Lord of the Rings might say "this is my ring of power, Nenya." Ring of wizardry would be the collective noun, while "Evermemory" would be the proper noun for a specific ring of wizardry. For me, the existence of bdring08 supports this interpretation. I think it wouldn't be terrible to leave two Evermemory in the game, but replacing other duplicates with a generic copy whilst leaving two Evermemory seems off.

[Greenhorn]

Boots of speed are interesting example. Here is hypothetical situation: Thalanthyr's item upgrade mod requires one pair for one of it's item  upgrades. But then again so too that dwarf from Darkest horizons mod in FAI. That is boot01 item not bdboot05. On the other hand fair number of mods scatter magical items all around including Paws of Cheetah too. Which again defeats purpose of this proposed changes from another angle. And there is already mod which address this issue. Changes of this type are not meant to be part of FIXPACK, especially without game developers confirmation for any of these changes. Currently it is just forcing one's view how the game SHOULD be through FIXPACK which is meant to be mandatory part of everyone's installations in future, just like vanilla BG2fixpack ( which never tried to implement similar things and so is rightfully mandatory). 

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, The_Baffled_King said:

I don't. Far more importantly, an appreciable number of people would be outraged if items are removed and not replaced by their generic alternatives. But, as I understand it - and to use your example of Boots of Speed - the proposal is to replace Lothander's copy of "Boots of Speed: The Paws of the Cheetah" (boot01) with the generic "Boots of Speed" (bdboot05"). There would therefore be no reduction in the number of Boots of Speed available. Does that change your stance?

It actually pains me that Beamdog bothered to implement a generic version of Boots of Speed alongside the normal resource - like one version of the boots (or Ring of Wizardry) is somehow more special than the other, or that they could indeed somehow be differentiated from one another in the first place when item lore is just that: lore, aka information your characters have read or heard about, not concrete "this is absolutely the first item of its kind / this is for sure the one used by so and so" proof. No, indeed, I vote that all instances of bdboot05.itm be replaced with boot01.itm instead, .

If anything, this thread has actually made me more amenable to duplicates instead of less. Huh.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[DavidW]

I'm extremely relaxed about doing this as a separate component if that's the community consensus. (And to repeat/confirm: there is no developer-intent case for actively removing items.)

That said, I stick by my interpretation of developer intent:

1) There is clear evidence through both the original and EE games that duplication is accidental and unintended

2) There is active evidence in oBG2 of generic versions of items being created to avoid duplication, and of (some) duplications happening just because the developers accidentally used a copy of the (identically-named) non-generic version, usually a leftover BG1 item.

3) There is extremely clear evidence in the EEs (most prominently in SoD) that the developers wanted to use generic versions of items to avoid duplication of unique items. (Whether or not it was a good idea for them to do so isn't relevant to a fixpack based on developer intent.)

The issue for me isn't "does this fit the FP definition of a bug" (I think it clearly does) but "should we make an exception and not fix something that's a bug according to the FP definition, because a significant number of players will be annoyed" (very possibly we should).

[DavidW]

1 hour ago, Greenhorn said:

Currently it is just forcing one's view how the game SHOULD be through FIXPACK which is meant to be mandatory part of everyone's installations in future, just like vanilla BG2fixpack ( which never tried to implement similar things and so is rightfully mandatory). 

O sweet summer child, look back at the discussion threads for the original BG2fixpack sometime...

[argent77]

45 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It actually pains me that Beamdog bothered to implement a generic version of Boots of Speed alongside the normal resource - like one version of the boots (or Ring of Wizardry) is somehow more special than the other, or that they could indeed somehow be differentiated from one another in the first place when item lore is just that: lore, aka information your characters have read or heard about, not concrete "this is absolutely the first item of its kind / this is for sure the one used by so and so" proof. No, indeed, I vote that all instances of bdboot05.itm be replaced with boot01.itm instead, .

If anything, this thread has actually made me more amenable to duplicates instead of less. Huh.

BDBOOT05 is attached to a minor side quest in SoD. Replacing it with BOOT01 doesn't work without killing the side quest. And although the item description may suggest otherwise, it is also not advisable to have more than one instance of these boots in the game.

[Greenhorn]

46 minutes ago, DavidW said:

O sweet summer child, look back at the discussion threads for the original BG2fixpack sometime...

I stand corrected uncle David. Did you made those changes?  Heh, beside point.  Anyhow I always had duplicates of those items thanks to various mods no doubt despite "More Than One Copy of Unique Items Can Be Obtained" "fixes" in old ToB, likewise in BGT and Tutu. By all means you can stick by YOUR  interpretation of developer intent as long as it is separated in distinct component por favor.   

[The_Baffled_King]

7 hours ago, DavidW said:

I'm extremely relaxed about doing this as a separate component if that's the community consensus.

Thanks for that, it's appreciated. Two further points on developer intent in relation to this issue:

(1) Bioware went way over schedule and had to wrap things up. That might explain why they didn't notice unintentional duplication, but it's also possible that some duplications were conscious errors that were viewed as a necessary evil in service of commercial reality; ie the need to release the game. Is a conscious error still an error? Yes, in my view.

(2) When game devs do not want magic items to be unique in their in-game world, 99.999999999% of game devs will very easily achieve that goal by NOT painstakingly writing detailed backstories describing unique magic items and attaching said backstories to said magic items. Accordingly, given that the vast majority of duplicated items have generic descriptions, and the vast majority of items with non-generic descriptions are not duplicated, the very existence of duplicated items with non-generic descriptions is more or less all that is required to deduce that an error of some kind was introduced during development.

Even if a dev thought "despite the fact that Batalista's Passport is already in Gibberling Mountains, I am going to put a second copy in Candlekeep" then, heck, there is STILL an error - because there's just no way that the ring of fire resistance in the Gibberling Mountains would have a unique description if there was a pre-existing plan to have two rings of fire resistance in the game! In other words, in this scenario, the error is arguably not the placement of Batalista's Passport in Candlekeep; rather, it was the earlier choice to assign a unique name and identity to a ring of fire resistance - an action that is originally correct can become an error when requirements later change.

I too think that the case for this falling within the scope of a fix (applying the BG2FP definition) seems very clear.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It actually pains me that Beamdog bothered to implement a generic version of Boots of Speed alongside the normal resource - like one version of the boots (or Ring of Wizardry) is somehow more special than the other, or that they could indeed somehow be differentiated from one another in the first place

The in-game implementation of lore and the item description of the Paws of the Cheetah (and the like) suggests that they are special and can be differentiated. Also, in the real world I, and other people, have been able to differentiate between my footwear. This is despite the fact that neither I nor my footwear are anything other than ordinary. My footwear has never been rare, valuable, or had special properties. My fame has not spread for any reason, much less a reason linked to the specific properties of my footwear and a memorable related catchphrase. If this is the case, then people on the Sword Coast with sufficient lore can differentiate Paws of the Cheetah from generic boots of speed (and so on).

Anyway. It's your prerogative not to like the backstories, the way that lore has been implemented, or Beamdog's usage of new items with generic descriptions. That isn't directly relevant to the question of whether DavidW's proposals constitute a fix.

[Bartimaeus]

Yes, there is not really much of a difference between lore that you read or heard about versus modern-day first-hand brand or model knowledge where you can see and read all about them to your heart's content, much less knowing whether a very specific pair of Nike sneakers you found on the road happen to be the precise ones worn by Michael Jordan during the Chicago Bulls' 6-time championship run during the 90s. Analogous situations. On a side-note, some in-game descriptions support the opposite of what you suggest - there are a number of items like Ripper, Arbane's Sword, Periapt of Life Protection, or Evermemory that directly state there are many copies of these items that all bear the same name and properties, so they all have the same shared history which would at least heavily imply that it is difficult if not impossible to differentiate between them based only upon lore...lore being, you know, traditional/shared knowledge about something that helps preserve the memory of its history?

If some mage goes out and enchants a pair of boots and they look like and share the same properties as the famous pair, it's going to be pretty difficult to say which is which unless you have the people who created them directly on hand to identify them...well, not unless there's something I don't know about in-universe D&D/Forgotten Realms historians - are they very precisely documenting random pairs of magical boots? You can get like, what, five or six pairs of Paws of the Cheetah in BG2 - how would you even decide which one is the "original" Paws of the Cheetah if you wanted to start replacing them with generic copies in the first place?

16 hours ago, argent77 said:

BDBOOT05 is attached to a minor side quest in SoD. Replacing it with BOOT01 doesn't work without killing the side quest. And although the item description may suggest otherwise, it is also not advisable to have more than one instance of these boots in the game.

Well, at least they had some sort of reason for it, then - that suggestion was a joke anyhow.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[jastey]

Just to be clear. I'm all for reducing unique items to one specimen per game and replacing the other occurrences to generic ones. I'm just not sure it's content for an "obligatory" fixpack. And yes, I know the fixpack will not be obligatory but used it as a matter of speech, sigh.

[The_Baffled_King]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yes, there is not really much of a difference between lore that you read or heard about versus modern-day first-hand brand or model knowledge where you can see and read all about them to your heart's content, much less knowing whether a very specific pair of Nike sneakers you found on the road happen to be the precise ones worn by Michael Jordan during the Chicago Bulls' 6-time championship run during the 90s. Analogous situations.

My point about differentiating one pair of footwear from another highlighted the fact that whilst what you and I see on our screens are identical 1cm-by-1cm icons, the characters in the in-game world will perceive differences in the physical appearance of boot01.itm and bdboot05.itm. Given that the physical appearance of an item will almost certainly play a part in lore-based identification, my analogy is relevant, up to a point. I can understand why at that stage you bring up modern mass-produced and mass-marketed footwear, but it's not the right comparison, because modern mass-market production methods did not exist in Faerun.

I've lost my appetite for further discussion, so I've cut short what I had. Have a nice day.

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, The_Baffled_King said:

My point about differentiating one pair of footwear from another highlighted the fact that whilst what you and I see on our screens are identical 1cm-by-1cm icons, the characters in the in-game world will perceive differences in the physical appearance of boot01.itm and bdboot05.itm. Given that the physical appearance of an item will almost certainly play a part in lore-based identification, my analogy is relevant, up to a point. I can understand why at that stage you bring up modern mass-produced and mass-marketed footwear, but it's not the right comparison, because modern mass-market production methods did not exist in Faerun.

I very much agree that you should be able to tell the difference between two pairs of boots side by side...but you would also likely be able to tell two pairs of your own sneakers apart even if you bought them at the same time and they're the same model. Wearing them will change them physically and make them distinguishable from one another, and you are the one that has first-hand knowledge of how they changed over time based on the experiences you went through with them. When you're finding these boots in random stores, on enemies of little note, and throughout the world and such, how do you determine which ones are the Paws of the Cheetah? You didn't make them, you don't have a history of who has worn them, you don't know what they've been through, and you can't look them up online to see if their physical appearance matches the famous pair - unless in-universe lore is more a science than an art and historians are very precisely documenting and diagraming random pairs of magical boots, it is pretty unreasonable to expect someone will simply know for certain that these are the famous ones or some random artificer's duplication of their magical properties on another pair of boots.

It is precisely because mass production didn't exist at the time that it seems extremely unlikely anyone would be able to tell one Boots of Speed from another - if they're boots and they have the right properties, who's to say when nobody alive knows what the originals looked like? If someone used weird materials and decorated them strangely like Prismatic Chain, okay, yeah, they're probably not the famous boots because their appearance would have become a part of their lore, but besides that, I just don't see how anyone but the creators or the people that made them famous (who are presumably dead) would know - lore is called lore for a reason.

My previous post was unnecessarily aggressive and I apologize.

[The_Baffled_King]

23 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

My previous post was unnecessarily aggressive and I apologize.

Thank you for the apology! Right back at you, if it's necessary. I didn't think your post was too bad, by the way - my appetite died for other reasons. Anyway, if the area of discussion that we arrived at was relevant to the question of a "fix", I was a bit concerned that saying "well, isn't this idea of being able to tell the items apart stupid anyway?" ends up undercutting the case for a fix, when all that mattered was the dev logic that there are recognizably unique items with unique backstories.

Putting that to one side, there absolutely are problems with the lore system and the idea of recognisable unique items. You make some valid points. I don't think the points are as strong as you say, mind, and I think there are a few points you're neglecting to consider (or give due weight to), but I'll come back to that in a bit.

And... I think that there are far worse problems with found items. First, how come every bit of armor, footwear, and clothing you find will fit your party? How come you can later swap such items at will between your diminutive halfling and your hulking half-orc? I mean, some magic items might resize themselves, but that feature as standard stretches credulity. And why is it that someone with a Lore of 1 can differentiate between a magic item and a mundane item with 100% success, without even using the item? Odd stuff.

[marchitek]

I would say arguments that points to realism are useless here. One would need first to show that  making game more realistic is making game better, which is IMHO matter of taste (I would strongly disagree). Anyway, answer to all questions could be "magic".

I'm  not fan of this change because it is small benefit (description change) comparing to impact of change (changing resrefs of items). But on the other hand if BD already started doing this, then it would be making game more consistent, what is good.

On the third hand I like this approach:

On 4/29/2022 at 11:25 PM, jastey said:

I see this more as a tweak, too. I do see the motivation of "devs intention was to assign a generic item and grabbed the wrong one" but the aim of a fix pack is to fix things that are broken. Having several instances of unique items doesn't break anything, not in the sense of "can't play on properly".

I'd suggest to make this at least a separate component.

 

Maybe ti could be good rule of thumb: what is breaking game -> mandatory fix, what is not breaking but probably developer intention -> optional fix.