Additiona freel retainers

[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.

[AdamFyi]

Argue unnecessarily? You could easily have responded to the points made without attempting to belittle.

The way you sounded was very condescending. If you received a similar sounding reply by others, it was probably because of the way you worded your posts.

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.

As much as I want to trust your word on that, I really can't. Not that it matters though because you seem to have missed that I completely agree with your points that a third retainer would be very welcome. It was unnecessary to argue with me because I already agreed in the first place.

[Kosmos992k]

As much as I want to trust your word on that, I really can't. Not that it matters though because you seem to have missed that I completely agree with your points that a third retainer would be very welcome. It was unnecessary to argue with me because I already agreed in the first place.

I understand that, I was replying to your thought;

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.

So I took up the consideration and imagined the worst case of all characters on all accounts gaining an extra free retainer and illustrated the space required to do it. I wasn't arguing against your point, and I am not sure why you felt that I was. I certainly wasn't trying to be condescending, and I apologize if what I wrote made you feel that I was, it wasn't the intent. I was simply projecting out the worst case numbers and then blowing it back to a per world number, which turned out to be not such an unreasonable amount of additional database space...

You replied saying that I was arguing unnecessarily, when in fact I was simply replying to your post - as I pointed out - and not arguing with you. If anything your responses have been both argumentative and actively taking offense where none was intended. Why not go back and re-read my post and see if you can identify where I was arguing with your thought. I don't believe that I was.

However, I apologize if I have caused you any offense, none was intended.