Additiona freel retainers

[Kosmos992k]

Just want to address this because I keep seeing it come up from time to time when it comes to discussing about inventory space; One player gaining extra retainers does not amount to the entire playerbase gaining the same amount. Please actually consider that. Though, I wouldn't mind an additional retainer.

I wasn't saying anything about one player getting something equating to the entire playerbase, I was simply making the point that the storage requirement for retainer space is separate from character storage, so the usual bandwidth related excuses are not relevant.

Since HW was pitched more or less as a new game in the FFXIV world/system. I think it's fair to wonder why we did not get an additional retainer along with the new jobs considering we paid the price of a new game. We got two with ARR, the cost of HW was 2/3 the cost of ARR, so we should get at least 1 additional retainer, don't you think?

[AdamFyi]

Snip

It was meant in a general sense; not just you. Retainers still take up resources, whether you like it or not.

[Kosmos992k]

It was meant in a general sense; not just you. Retainers still take up resources, whether you like it or not.

Hard disc space is cheap, as is space within a database. They are not included in the 15 second cycle of backing up character data so they have no impact on the too much data, limited bandwidth excuse. The main implication of more retainers is more retainers in the database, and so a bit more database tablespace would be needed. That has no real impact on you me or anyone else.

The only impact of a 3rd free retainer would be if anyone currently paying for additional retainers was somehow feeling slighted because now everyone would have a 3rd retainer, which they have been paying for for a year or more. On the flipside, a 3rd free retainer would be unlikely to cause people paying for additional retainers to discontinue that service since the expansion has placed additional pressure on storage, so an extra retainer would be very welcome.

Yet another thing SE seems to be incapable of doing that other MMOs manage regularly: expanding inventory.

The answer to, "What are they doing with our extra money?" can't always be, "EU datacenter".

It will be until the EU center is up and running. After that maybe it will be "combating the RMT Horde"?

[AdamFyi]

Snip

Quite disappinted that you didn't take up the consideration. Just imagine more than a million players each gaining 175 extra slots. Nonetheless, a free extra retainer would be nice.

[Ashkendor]

The only impact of a 3rd free retainer would be if anyone currently paying for additional retainers was somehow feeling slighted because now everyone would have a 3rd retainer, which they have been paying for for a year or more.

Why would that make me feel the least bit slighted? I have 7 retainers. That would give me 8 and, if they did things correctly, a maximum of 9. What, you really thought that they'd just change it to a 3 free/5 paid split instead of raising it to 3 free/6 paid in order to accomodate those of us that already have the maximum (or near the maximum) number of paid retainers? An extra retainer for everyone really is a lot of space, and when they add space they have to assume that it's going to be filled.

[Kosmos992k]

Why would that make me feel the least bit slighted? I have 7 retainers. That would give me 8 and, if they did things correctly, a maximum of 9. What, you really thought that they'd just change it to a 3 free/5 paid split instead of raising it to 3 free/6 paid in order to accomodate those of us that already have the maximum (or near the maximum) number of paid retainers? An extra retainer for everyone really is a lot of space, and when they add space they have to assume that it's going to be filled.

It wouldn't make you feel slighted. That was my point, which I may not have made very clearly. The reply I was making was trying to point out that adding a 3rd free retainer was not a negative to anyone - which is why I said I couldn't see a problem unless some people who pay for an additional retainer would somehow feel slighted that now everyone gets one - which is, honestly a ludicrous way of thinking. Of course as you say if you currently pay for 2 additional retainers you'd go from 4 to 5 if an additional free one were provided.

Quite disappinted that you didn't take up the consideration. Just imagine more than a million players each gaining 175 extra slots. Nonetheless, a free extra retainer would be nice.

Since you both mention the amount of space required, let's throw soe numbers at it. Assume 5 million accounts with an average of 5 active characters with 3 retainers a piece, and more or less 200 inventory slots a piece (including shards, crystals, clusters and gil), that's 15 billion inventory slots. Let's assume 100 bytes per inventory slot, that makes 1.5 trillion bytes of storage. Now let's add in an average of 2 additional retainers (paid) per account (which is probably a very high estimate IMHO) and that number of slots becomes 25 billion, or about 2.5 trillion bytes.

Oh, but wait there are how many servers? 64, so break that down roughly equal over all of them that drops down to 39 million inventory slots per server (just for retainers) which multiplies up to about 400GB per server for retainer storage - assuming 5 million accounts with 5 active characters and 3 free retainers + an average of 2 paid ones per account...

Given that the cost of storage has essentially fallen through the floor, that's really not a massively significant amount of space per server.

Given that the number of active account and active characters per account are almost certainly lower than my wild ass assumptions, and the number of paid retainers on average per account are also almost certainly lower than 2 per account, I don't honestly see how providing a 3rd free retainer to players could be much of a problem to anyone. It's just database storage space, there is no other real implication involved. I don't know how much space they reserve for each inventory slot, 100bytes is probably a high estimate, and with compression the effective space required would be far less in their database, but this is kind of a worst case analysis, so....

When you aggregate all of this across the entire game it sounds preposterously big, but when you break it down per world, it falls into a far more manageable framework, and really becomes a much less impressive issue with the chief impact being the need for more database space. But given the huge amount of data in the databases already, adding an additional free retainer is like dropping a stone into a pond. You'll see a ripple and then it will be swallowed up by the pond.

[AdamFyi]

Snip.

Why you seem to like to argue unnecessarily, I'll never know. For all anyone knows, you could be severely underestimating the data required for each slot. You also have to consider resources allocated to other parts of the game. Until they tell us the actual sizes, that is all just speculation.

[Kosmos992k]

Why you seem to like to argue unnecessarily, I'll never know. For all anyone knows, you could be severely underestimating the data required for each slot. You also have to consider resources allocated to other parts of the game. Until they tell us the actual sizes, that is all just speculation.

Argue unnecessarily? I responded directly to your point. I made worst case assumptions about the numbers, I've worked with Really large databases for more than a couple of decades, making space estimates is part of the job, as is understanding system architecture. You could easily have responded to the points made without attempting to belittle.

[Syrehn]

It will be until the EU center is up and running. After that maybe it will be "combating the RMT Horde"?

Sweet mother of all that's RMT, I'd gladly deal with limited bag space for awhile longer if they prioritized RMT spam. >.<

Although, I do agree that they should give everyone at least a free 3rd retainer.

[Wildsprite]

Sweet mother of all that's RMT, I'd gladly deal with limited bag space for awhile longer if they prioritized RMT spam. >.<

Although, I do agree that they should give everyone at least a free 3rd retainer.

I would be happy if they would just give us a client side editable chat log filter. it can't be that difficult to do, it would just have to be able to read text like in the link and properly be able to translate that into a filter so that text never comes through, effectivally stopping the gil spammer junk http://pastebin.com/jca7uRJ8.
though it would be harder I guess to add the text for it with a controller I suppose.

anyway back on topic,
when they announced the extra retainers being added I honestly thought they were going to give us at least one more free one