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Roxolan
Current Version
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A lot of examples, especially in the Video Games section, didn\'t fit. Many weren\'t obvious (a new player couldn\'t tell that the machinegun is less accurate than it used to be and that this prevents a gamebreaker), or were simply there to solve a bug (stopping people from walking through walls is *not* an obvious rules patch).
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A lot of examples, especially in the Video Games section, didn\\\'t fit. Many weren\\\'t obvious (like nerfing a weapon\\\'s accuracy a bit because it was too powerful), or were simply there to solve a bug (stopping people from walking through walls is *not* an obvious rules patch).
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** One of the most broken items in 3rd Edition was the Thought Bottle. One possible use for it was to \
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** One of the most broken items in 3rd Edition was the Thought Bottle. One possible use for it was to \\\"store\\\" your experience total (and consequently your character level) in the bottle, so that it could be restored later. The intention was most likely to protect against level drain or lost levels due to resurrection, but it could also be used to offset the experience point cost of spellcasting and item creation. It was subsequently reworded in errata with the intention of making that impossible, but it\\\'s been argued that the experience spent on spellcasting or crafting can still be restored if you also get some levels drained legitimately.
** The ability-boosting spells in 3.0 (Cat\\\'s Grace, etc) used to last for hours, making them perfectly acceptable replacements for costly ability-boosting items. In 3.5, the duration was reduced to minutes, making them far less appreciated.
** Also, the book Complete Psionics nerfed the Astral Construct power (a psionic counterpart to Summon Monster) \\\'\\\'while in the same edition\\\'\\\' with the rule \\\"can only have one construct at a time\\\". The rule change has reportedly made little children cry.
*** Especially crazy because the Summon Monster spell has the built in ability to summon up to five monsters \\\'\\\'at the same time\\\'\\\'.
* Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons errata has had some obvious rule patches: The Ranger ability that let you make continual attacks until you miss was errated to have a 5 attack limit as it was possible to make a build which had an almost zero chance of ever missing, even against the strongest monster in the Monster Manual. Also, the entire rules on Stealth were replaced because as written, the Stealth rules could both be interpreted as being able to be continually in stealth regardless of attacks, or never in stealth at all.
** 4E\\\'s Weapon Expertise. Weapon Focus did the same thing in just about every d20 product until 4E: a +1 to attack rolls with a certain weapon or weapon group. 4E came along and decided that bonus was too good under the new rules, and Weapon Focus was changed to a bonus on damage rolls. Then the Internets mathematically proved that players actually lag behind in attack bonus as levels go higher, and Players Handbook II included a feat called Weapon Expertise that, at 1st level, grants... yup, a +1 bonus to attack rolls.
** The wording for Temporary HP was changed, as the old one would allow certain characters to form unending buffers of THP making them damn near immortal.
* The first patch to \\\'\\\'BattlefieldVietnam\\\'\\\' altered the machine guns to be less accurate and swapped the kits around. This is because the original release allowed a U.S. soldier to have a kit that gave him an M60 [which might as well have been a laser, considering how accurate it was] and a LAW. This meant that U.S. teams were entirely composed of Rambo until the patch came out.
* \\\'\\\'Battlefield2\\\'\\\' had quite a few issues. Some absolute gems included:
** Transport helicopters had side-mounted machine guns that were almost perfectly accurate. Cue teams of nothing but transport choppers dropping hordes of soldiers onto capture points while their machine-gunners effortlessly destroyed anything on the ground short of a tank. Machine gun accuracy and transport chopper armor were promptly nerfed.
** The ability to airdrop vehicles (Usually jeeps) for your team to use was added. Jeeps could be dropped with pinpoint accuracy. Jeeps explode when destroyed. Cue \\\"Cartillary\\\", where a commander would drop a jeep onto a heavily fortified enemy position. Ground troops would shoot the jeep, causing it to explode and kill the defenders. It was promply nerfed so jeep explosions were smaller and vehicle drops aren\\\'t pinpoint accurate anymore.
\\\'\\\'{{Battlefield 2142}}\\\'\\\'
** Another one was using drop pods (From either Titans or APCs) to land on top of vehicles. The vehicle would instantly explode, killing everyone inside and around it...and drop-pod pilot would be fine. It made it not only possible, but entirely LIKELY for a lightly-armed APC to take down 2-4 Mechs/Battletanks by itself! Nerfed so that landing on top of a vehicle only does minor damage to the vehicle.
* \\\'\\\'MasterOfOrion 2\\\'\\\' had a fun little gem. There was a beam weapon that was not \\\'quite\\\' the most powerful beam weapon in the game, but had a very good weight/damage ratio. In this game you were allowed to outfit ships however you pleased, so long as you stayed under the maximum weight allowed for a given ship type. This particular weapon was perfectly balanced during the normal range of use. However, near the end of the game when the player had no more specific technologies to research the game allowed the player to put their research towards \\\"Advanced\\\" series in whatever field they wanted to. A Rank in Advanced basically gave a bonus to cost/benefit for everything in that category. The {{Game Breaker}} came about when a player rushed straight into beam technology and as far into weapons research as they could. The weapon in question became dirt cheap and very light. After that you simply load up your largest ship with a few thousand of these beams and nothing can withstand a direct hit. A patch was released that specifically upped the weight of the weapon and changed its bonus from advanced research.
* A good example from \\\'\\\'WorldOfWarcraft\\\'\\\' would be wall walking. Originally, it let you walk up a cliff if you did it sideways at exactly the right angle in the right place, letting you get pretty much anywhere. They took this out. In \\\'\\\'Burning Crusade\\\'\\\' it was discovered that while you couldn\\\'t walk up slopes now, you could still jump up walls in a variant technique, which was used in arenas to climb pillars to annoying effect and bypass areas of some dungeons. Now that\\\'s gone too.
** At one point, a new Paladin talent was added which would give its possessor an extra attack after suffering from a critical hit. The amount of extra attacks you could store wasn\\\'t limited, so a paladin went in a fight with a level 1 player and got 1816 extra attacks on himself before using them all on an outdoor raid boss, killing it instantly. The loophole was fixed within 12 hours. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGTL6BC_cg Video]].
*** More of an exploit removing update as opposed to an actual patch, but this practice is fairly common in \\\'\\\'World Of Warcraft\\\'\\\'. Recently a Mage player discovered, with a wacky talent build and clever use of invisibility potions and the \\\"Spellsteal\\\" spell, that he could solo an entire wing of the main 25-Player raid dungeon, Naxxaramas. Just like Paladin Reckoningbomb above, this was hotfixed very quickly when it became public knowledge. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ggLGj37qI Video]]. The was also a situation where kissing a certain NPC outside of the Zul\\\'Aman dungeon would grant you a small frog pet that was only supposed to be attained inside the dungeon itself. Again, fixed very quickly.
\\\'\\\'KingdomOfLoathing\\\'\\\'
** Stasis, which involved buffing yourself with Jabanero Saucesphere (restores some MP when you are hit), reducing damage while still getting hit every round and using Saucy Salve, a combat heal. This generated rather obscene amounts of MP, even with the 30 round limit. It was eventually patched by making Jabanero Saucesphere not do that anymore.
* \\\'\\\'Flash Flash Revolution\\\'\\\' and surely many other web-games had a problem when they introduced a credit-gifting system in which you could gift the in-game credits to other people playing the game. The obvious rule patch? [[spoiler:Don\\\'t allow negative numbers]].
* The changelog for the online Flash game \\\'\\\'[=GemCraft=]\\\'\\\' has a lot of these. The final level ends with a huge explosion that instantly kills all on-screen monsters; these kills no longer count towards your score. In addition, the final level at one point had a cap of 50K XP, though this has since been removed with another update. Finally, in Endurance Mode only, Experience Shrines no longer give points for each on-screen monster. Seems the author(s) dislike anybody using strategies they didn\\\'t intend.
* They didn\\\'t make these patches to the original version, but Retro Studios, in their Player\\\'s Choice re-release of \\\'\\\'MetroidPrime\\\'\\\', changed numerous aspects of the game to prevent the player from achieving certain game breaking achievements, like rearranging the layout of the room before the one with the Plasma Beam to ensure that the player cannot cheat their way to the top of the room and acquire the beam before they are meant to, or removing a glitch that allows the player to acquire the Space Jump Boots as soon as they arrive on Tallon IV (literally. They use a glitch jump to jump from Samus\\\'s ship to the ledge with the door that leads to the SJBs). This trick would lead to dozens of other tricks, such as acquiring the Morph Ball early and skipping the Hive Mecha.
GaiaOnline
** When an entire crew was killed in a boss lair, all but one member of the group would awaken in the Null Chamber. The one person who stayed behind acted as a placeholder so that the crew wouldn\\\'t have to start over at the beginning of the encounter. Even though just about every crew did this and few to no players considered it to be a cheap tactic, the devs apparently thought it had to be changed. Now if your whole crew is killed by a boss, too bad. You\\\'re automatically warped away from the boss room.
** The ability-boosting spells in 3.0 (Cat\\\'s Grace, etc) used to last for hours, making them perfectly acceptable replacements for costly ability-boosting items. In 3.5, the duration was reduced to minutes, making them far less appreciated.
** Also, the book Complete Psionics nerfed the Astral Construct power (a psionic counterpart to Summon Monster) \\\'\\\'while in the same edition\\\'\\\' with the rule \\\"can only have one construct at a time\\\". The rule change has reportedly made little children cry.
*** Especially crazy because the Summon Monster spell has the built in ability to summon up to five monsters \\\'\\\'at the same time\\\'\\\'.
* Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons errata has had some obvious rule patches: The Ranger ability that let you make continual attacks until you miss was errated to have a 5 attack limit as it was possible to make a build which had an almost zero chance of ever missing, even against the strongest monster in the Monster Manual. Also, the entire rules on Stealth were replaced because as written, the Stealth rules could both be interpreted as being able to be continually in stealth regardless of attacks, or never in stealth at all.
** 4E\\\'s Weapon Expertise. Weapon Focus did the same thing in just about every d20 product until 4E: a +1 to attack rolls with a certain weapon or weapon group. 4E came along and decided that bonus was too good under the new rules, and Weapon Focus was changed to a bonus on damage rolls. Then the Internets mathematically proved that players actually lag behind in attack bonus as levels go higher, and Players Handbook II included a feat called Weapon Expertise that, at 1st level, grants... yup, a +1 bonus to attack rolls.
** The wording for Temporary HP was changed, as the old one would allow certain characters to form unending buffers of THP making them damn near immortal.
* The first patch to \\\'\\\'BattlefieldVietnam\\\'\\\' altered the machine guns to be less accurate and swapped the kits around. This is because the original release allowed a U.S. soldier to have a kit that gave him an M60 [which might as well have been a laser, considering how accurate it was] and a LAW. This meant that U.S. teams were entirely composed of Rambo until the patch came out.
* \\\'\\\'Battlefield2\\\'\\\' had quite a few issues. Some absolute gems included:
** Transport helicopters had side-mounted machine guns that were almost perfectly accurate. Cue teams of nothing but transport choppers dropping hordes of soldiers onto capture points while their machine-gunners effortlessly destroyed anything on the ground short of a tank. Machine gun accuracy and transport chopper armor were promptly nerfed.
** The ability to airdrop vehicles (Usually jeeps) for your team to use was added. Jeeps could be dropped with pinpoint accuracy. Jeeps explode when destroyed. Cue \\\"Cartillary\\\", where a commander would drop a jeep onto a heavily fortified enemy position. Ground troops would shoot the jeep, causing it to explode and kill the defenders. It was promply nerfed so jeep explosions were smaller and vehicle drops aren\\\'t pinpoint accurate anymore.
\\\'\\\'{{Battlefield 2142}}\\\'\\\'
** Another one was using drop pods (From either Titans or APCs) to land on top of vehicles. The vehicle would instantly explode, killing everyone inside and around it...and drop-pod pilot would be fine. It made it not only possible, but entirely LIKELY for a lightly-armed APC to take down 2-4 Mechs/Battletanks by itself! Nerfed so that landing on top of a vehicle only does minor damage to the vehicle.
* \\\'\\\'MasterOfOrion 2\\\'\\\' had a fun little gem. There was a beam weapon that was not \\\'quite\\\' the most powerful beam weapon in the game, but had a very good weight/damage ratio. In this game you were allowed to outfit ships however you pleased, so long as you stayed under the maximum weight allowed for a given ship type. This particular weapon was perfectly balanced during the normal range of use. However, near the end of the game when the player had no more specific technologies to research the game allowed the player to put their research towards \\\"Advanced\\\" series in whatever field they wanted to. A Rank in Advanced basically gave a bonus to cost/benefit for everything in that category. The {{Game Breaker}} came about when a player rushed straight into beam technology and as far into weapons research as they could. The weapon in question became dirt cheap and very light. After that you simply load up your largest ship with a few thousand of these beams and nothing can withstand a direct hit. A patch was released that specifically upped the weight of the weapon and changed its bonus from advanced research.
* A good example from \\\'\\\'WorldOfWarcraft\\\'\\\' would be wall walking. Originally, it let you walk up a cliff if you did it sideways at exactly the right angle in the right place, letting you get pretty much anywhere. They took this out. In \\\'\\\'Burning Crusade\\\'\\\' it was discovered that while you couldn\\\'t walk up slopes now, you could still jump up walls in a variant technique, which was used in arenas to climb pillars to annoying effect and bypass areas of some dungeons. Now that\\\'s gone too.
** At one point, a new Paladin talent was added which would give its possessor an extra attack after suffering from a critical hit. The amount of extra attacks you could store wasn\\\'t limited, so a paladin went in a fight with a level 1 player and got 1816 extra attacks on himself before using them all on an outdoor raid boss, killing it instantly. The loophole was fixed within 12 hours. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGTL6BC_cg Video]].
*** More of an exploit removing update as opposed to an actual patch, but this practice is fairly common in \\\'\\\'World Of Warcraft\\\'\\\'. Recently a Mage player discovered, with a wacky talent build and clever use of invisibility potions and the \\\"Spellsteal\\\" spell, that he could solo an entire wing of the main 25-Player raid dungeon, Naxxaramas. Just like Paladin Reckoningbomb above, this was hotfixed very quickly when it became public knowledge. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ggLGj37qI Video]]. The was also a situation where kissing a certain NPC outside of the Zul\\\'Aman dungeon would grant you a small frog pet that was only supposed to be attained inside the dungeon itself. Again, fixed very quickly.
\\\'\\\'KingdomOfLoathing\\\'\\\'
** Stasis, which involved buffing yourself with Jabanero Saucesphere (restores some MP when you are hit), reducing damage while still getting hit every round and using Saucy Salve, a combat heal. This generated rather obscene amounts of MP, even with the 30 round limit. It was eventually patched by making Jabanero Saucesphere not do that anymore.
* \\\'\\\'Flash Flash Revolution\\\'\\\' and surely many other web-games had a problem when they introduced a credit-gifting system in which you could gift the in-game credits to other people playing the game. The obvious rule patch? [[spoiler:Don\\\'t allow negative numbers]].
* The changelog for the online Flash game \\\'\\\'[=GemCraft=]\\\'\\\' has a lot of these. The final level ends with a huge explosion that instantly kills all on-screen monsters; these kills no longer count towards your score. In addition, the final level at one point had a cap of 50K XP, though this has since been removed with another update. Finally, in Endurance Mode only, Experience Shrines no longer give points for each on-screen monster. Seems the author(s) dislike anybody using strategies they didn\\\'t intend.
* They didn\\\'t make these patches to the original version, but Retro Studios, in their Player\\\'s Choice re-release of \\\'\\\'MetroidPrime\\\'\\\', changed numerous aspects of the game to prevent the player from achieving certain game breaking achievements, like rearranging the layout of the room before the one with the Plasma Beam to ensure that the player cannot cheat their way to the top of the room and acquire the beam before they are meant to, or removing a glitch that allows the player to acquire the Space Jump Boots as soon as they arrive on Tallon IV (literally. They use a glitch jump to jump from Samus\\\'s ship to the ledge with the door that leads to the SJBs). This trick would lead to dozens of other tricks, such as acquiring the Morph Ball early and skipping the Hive Mecha.
GaiaOnline
** When an entire crew was killed in a boss lair, all but one member of the group would awaken in the Null Chamber. The one person who stayed behind acted as a placeholder so that the crew wouldn\\\'t have to start over at the beginning of the encounter. Even though just about every crew did this and few to no players considered it to be a cheap tactic, the devs apparently thought it had to be changed. Now if your whole crew is killed by a boss, too bad. You\\\'re automatically warped away from the boss room.
