This whole thread is actually from the following thread originally:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26262
I moved it all here because it was getting way off-topic and was overly long. Discussions like this should be started in the general section, not in someone's code submission. You would need to read the post linked above to understand where these posts come in.
Cavedude,
Once you get the code added to PEQ, would you mind posting exactly where and how you added the Calculate2HDamageBonus function? I still have no clue and I just need someone to say "paste this exact code into this file" :P
Chaos,
Turning off weapon damage bonus isn't really something that is needed IMO. Sure, a rule could be put in place for it, but I would personally rather see rules for hit rate multipliers, damage multipliers, etc.
Damage bonus is something that has been on live for a long time and turning it off is like turning off Strength or AC or any other stat that is standard. If you really had to have an option to turn it off, I am sure someone could post the required code so you could add it in yourself. But IMO, the rules are already starting to get to be quite a large list. We could have rules for every little thing, but not everything needs them, really.
I think that you are not understanding that the code will still calculate a scaling damage bonus even for post level 80. So, it will still scale up probably to infinite levels I guess. They are just saying that it might not be as accurate to live after level 80, but it will still scale up to simulate what their best guess is that the live equations post level 80 would be.
I think you are thinking that a level 80 with the same weapon as a level 100 would both have the same damage bonus. If that was the case, then ya, you might want to turn it off to keep your weapon damage from scaling up in a weird way. But, since they still do scale up after level 80, you won't see any kind of weirdness. As far as you and your players are concerned, you probably wouldn't even be able to notice that they didn't have the post 80 numbers in there. If they didn't mention it, you would never have been able to tell unless live went past level 80 and you were comparing bonuses and they didn't match perfectly with your server.
As far as trying to simulate live goes, it is just something that the emulator has focused on since it was created. Sure, we do get additional features that live doesn't have, but the idea is to have the core settings and calculations to simulate live as closely as possible. If they wanted to make a whole new game, then they would just make everything up from scratch, but that isn't the goal of the dev team. That goal isn't going to change. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that even though they are working to simulate live, we also try to give as many options as possible so custom servers can do anything they want as well. I think having the options to deviate from live is one of the cool features of the emulator. But in the case of removing damage bonuses completely with a rule, even I don't think that is a very useful option. Once you see how it works, I don't think you will even care to have the rule option anymore. If you do still have a problem with it, I am sure a rule can be added at any time.