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Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:22 pm
by oldmess
helbreat wrote:with the amount of active players there is at this time the ammount of stuff you can carry shouldnt be much stress on the server even if it was unlimited ;)
A. I'm not sure how you could know what would or wouldn't be a stress on the server.

B. If they did open it up and then we get an influx of new players with Outposts, they'll have to put the restrictions back. I'm betting we'll have a lot of screaming then.

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:28 pm
by helbreat
oldmess wrote:A. I'm not sure how you could know what would or wouldn't be a stress on the server.

B. If they did open it up and then we get an influx of new players with Outposts, they'll have to put the restrictions back. I'm betting we'll have a lot of screaming then.

i played a game for 5 months recently after getting bored with waiting for content here and the warehouse space alone there was massive you had 4 pages of warehouse space each page had 40 slots which could carry 999 stacks they had thousands of active players from all diff countrys and they didnt complain about it being stress

we dont want unlimited as i said in my post slots can go jump for all i care bulk is the issue

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:38 pm
by systemv
Maybe this suggestion is too late or worthless but I always wondered why they allowed players to buy more than 1 tp in the first place. I know tickets have a weird way of dissapearing but maybe that's the problem that should be addressed rather than stacking.

Coupled with a good interface change like a popup asking if we'd like to buy another ticket right after we port would streamline the whole thing.

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:42 pm
by helbreat
systemv wrote:Maybe this suggestion is too late or worthless but I always wondered why they allowed players to buy more than 1 tp in the first place. I know tickets have a weird way of dissapearing but maybe that's the problem that should be addressed rather than stacking.

Coupled with a good interface change like a popup asking if we'd like to buy another ticket right after we port would streamline the whole thing.

if it comes with a pop up blocker too thats be better than bulk on them

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:13 pm
by madnak
mmatto wrote:Jessica, does your inventory database need more storage and resources for stack of 2 tickets than stack of 1 ticket? If yes, you should fix that implementation issue as it probably causes 90% of load on your inventory db. If not, your explanation does not hold water.

Stacking of bulky tickets is useless as players won't have more than 1 ticket to each location (bulk means a lot in this game). Why to implement stacking at all for tickets? You could have just added bulk to tickets and players would have deleted duplicate tickets.
I'd like to second this as well. Like Psylo said, assuming your database is remotely efficient "quantity" will exist as a simple property of the stack. Moving quantity up from 4 to 5 to 999 won't make any difference at all. And with a static number of ticket locations, even if everyone had 999 of every ticket, that shouldn't make the slightest difference in terms of performance.

I really fail to see how adding bulk to tickets addresses this problem, assuming there is a "problem" to begin with.

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 5:37 pm
by dazman76
Thanks for the reply Jessica :)

Hmm, is it just me or is everyone missing a step here? :)

Bulk adds up to your total encumbered weight right? Have any of you ever hit the bulk limit? It isn't possible to move, at all. Now, if you can't move an inch, what good is an over-stocked inv. weighing in at 1000? Or am I missing something fundamental here? :) (Apologies if so, and please point it out :) )


With regards to bulk and data, yes the system has to use a simple storage method - meaning, items in your inv. will look something like this:

Item............Type..........Quantity.....Bulk Per 1
=======================================
Pyr Ticket.....TP Ticket....5...............0.2
Sha Amber.....Material.....100............0.2

Each 'row' in this table can be considered a 'stack' in a player's inventory, whether it contains 1 or 100 of that item. The only time more storage is required is when a new (not currently possessed by the player) item is added to the inv., or when a current stack hits it's limit of 999, and a new stack is required. A system that required a new 'row' or more storage for each occurence of an item in a stack, would quickly show it's faults during testing. Requiring a several hundred MB database to test an MMO with ten players is a big red flashing light :D (remembering that most, if not all, terrain, map, and graphical data (and more) is stored on each player's PC...)

Disclaimer1: This explanation has been 'simplified' (no insult intended) so it didn't required 10 paragraphs :) All references to tables, columns, indexes and lookup tables have been omitted, as they are quite boring for most people :)
Disclaimer2: Apologies for the boring post, I am a geek :)

EDIT Disclaimer3: Damn the formatting is naff, had to put dots in between things... pfft :)

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:19 am
by micrix
systemv wrote:Which is why everything would need a bulk, including sap crystals, which is what she meant. I think it's a better option for players to have just a bulk limit as it's rare anyone hits the slot limit on their own bag(GH and Apartments are a different story). Raising the bulk limit and removing the slots is a good idea IMO.

I'm glad for Jessica's response, thank you. Has the lack of communication with playeres over decisions like this been a language barrier issue in the past?
I think bulk will be introduced for everything. This seems to be only a first step and probably its at the current codebase not possible to have bulk on crystals too.

Surely its also a problem to allow storage of tickest on a packer with the current codebase. Which i really would like to do, but surely the software is not able to diff between a players packer/appartment and a guildhall, merchant or trade-window.

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:03 am
by blaah
dazman76 wrote:Bulk adds up to your total encumbered weight right?
hmm.. no.
dazman76 wrote:Have any of you ever hit the bulk limit?
yes, every 45 min

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:55 am
by mmatto
dazman76 wrote: Hmm, is it just me or is everyone missing a step here? :)
It is just you. You missed many of the other posts that have been pointing same issue :)

Re: Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 3:54 pm
by gecker
systemv wrote:Maybe this suggestion is too late or worthless but I always wondered why they allowed players to buy more than 1 tp in the first place.
Well there's a couple TPs in PR that always have aggro and yelk around them. Twice now I have TP'ed in and have been immediately killed by yelk gas before being able to buy a ticket. So having an extra ticket is very useful at times.