Alternative solution to glamour log

[Abriael]

We did not get an inventory fix all of HW, and now we are entering SB with out one. (All they did was keep adding items to fill our retainers with for HW, more and more rare nodes, etc) I have a huge list what they can do to help, they are not trying, they just want to overcharge us for retainers. When asked about it, all they do is joke about adding more retainers for us to pay for.

What you don't seem to understand is that your "huge list" is absolutely meaningless without knowing how the game is coded, limitations on all platforms, and how the database is structured. All your solutions aren't really solutions. They're no more than suggestions from someone with an extremely limited viewpoint on the game, and you have zero idea of their applicability.

Basically, you're an armchair developer who pretends he knows what he's talking about using completely unrelated examples to throw around unsubstantiated accusations of using "excuses."

http://www.codingwisdom.com/codingwi...ss-me-off.html

[Ama_Hamada]

What you don't seem to understand is that your "huge list" is absolutely meaningless without knowing how the game is coded, limitations on all platforms, and how the database is structured. All your solutions aren't really solutions. They're no more than suggestions from someone with an extremely limited viewpoint on the game, and you have zero idea of their applicability.

Basically, you're an armchair developer who pretends he knows what he's talking about using completely unrelated examples to throw around unsubstantiated accusations of using "excuses."

http://www.codingwisdom.com/codingwi...ss-me-off.html

They are using excuses so they can get away with overcharging people with retainer rental, all it is. Lets blindly accept everything they do because coding is hard, the only thing that is useless here is the link you gave. These forums are for suggestions and lets players have a voice, not for toxic people like you or Berethos that have an objective to put people down.

[Ama_Hamada]

There is a large difference between offering constructive suggestions with a shred of respect, and demanding one's "solutions" (devised with zero knowledge of the game's back end) to be implemented, while accusing of lying, giving excuses and similar not-so-nice antics if they aren't.Before you call anyone else "toxic," you may want to learn that difference.

In the meanwhile, I'll let you into a little secret to help you out. "toxic" doesn't mean "they disagree with my opinion" nor it means "they disagree with the somewhat popular opinion." On the other hand, throwing "feedback" in form of demands, sprinkled with abundant unsubstantiated accusations and seething negativity if those demands aren't met... that does fit the definition of "toxic" basically to a T.

follow your own advice?

What you don't seem to understand is that your "huge list" is absolutely meaningless without knowing how the game is coded, limitations on all platforms, and how the database is structured. All your solutions aren't really solutions. They're no more than suggestions from someone with an extremely limited viewpoint on the game, and you have zero idea of their applicability.

Basically, you're an armchair developer who pretends he knows what he's talking about using completely unrelated examples to throw around unsubstantiated accusations of using "excuses."

http://www.codingwisdom.com/codingwi...ss-me-off.html

How is my list so different then this thread? Why are you attacking me for no reason? Yes you are being toxic to me, I am not being toxic to you, nor anyone, i was attacked first for no reason.

respect works 2 ways, they had all HW to do or even say something and have done neither but say "we can't" so yes that is just excuses at this point, do not be shocked when people begin to be frustrated. So if you want to call my list useless, your posts so far have been useless.

[Naunet]

By the way, it took 4.5 years after the addition of transmog (added in December 2011) to WoW for their appearance catalog to actually be implemented (added in July 2016), despite it being pretty much a day one request as a response (their original approach was Void Storage as a way of holding on to gear you wanted to use for glamour).

Once again: WoW is not the only MMO with an appearance log and many other MMOs have been able to implement it much earlier on in their life cycles. WoW added their appearance log AFTER it had become hugely popular in other MMOs. Stop pointing to the time it took WoW to add one as some excuse.

Their concerns are BS, by the way.

[Berethos]

Once again: WoW is not the only MMO with an appearance log and many other MMOs have been able to implement it much earlier on in their life cycles. WoW added their appearance log AFTER it had become hugely popular in other MMOs. Stop pointing to the time it took WoW to add one as some excuse.

I know of only one other AAA MMO that has a similar large scale appearance catalog, that being GW2, and quite frankly they had some of the best talent working on their backend (as evidenced by their mega-server tech as well as their ability to patch while the game is live and simply require a quick restart of the client to apply the changes)...and my point with the time it took WoW (and GW2 in development, which took 5 years to come release) was that it's not an easy thing to put together on a larger scale.

Other games tend to use what are essentially costume panels. You can save 1-8 outfits (depending on the game) by essentially equipping a gear piece in that slot on the cosmetic panel menu, then choosing to display that piece of gear over another. This approach is the more common approach. None of those games simply save the appearance in a catalog for you to use later.

So, given how infrequently the catalog has been implemented, a logical discussion is going to look at not only which games have added it but also how and when it was added. That it took 4.5 years for WoW to actually implement it is absolutely relevant, as the difficulty of designing and implementing such a system is relevant to the discussion...assuming it's feasible (could technically be added, but ends up with some nasty side effects, which means it's possible but not feasible) or possible at all.

[savageink]

I know of only one other AAA MMO that has a similar large scale appearance catalog

With out digging too much other than GW2 and WoW, I can think of Wildstar, DC Universe Online, SWTOR (clunky but has a ton of collections). I'm sure I'm missing some but I don't play every game.

[Naunet]

I know of only one other AAA MMO that has a similar large scale appearance catalog, that being GW2

Rift, WildStar, Blade and Soul, SWTOR, DCUO, and I think Champions though I'm not sure.

[edit] Oops, meant to edit and add, not double post.

[MrSmiley]

I know of only one other AAA MMO that has a similar large scale appearance catalog

Uh, most of them do now actually

and none have a system as messy as this one

[Nixxe]

Marketable items seem to have a fairly small role to play in glamour in the first place and I can't imagine there would be a drastic decrease in item value simply because you only need to acquire it once. If anything, I'd expect the price on most items to go up, especially initially, as collectors rush to fill the log. Unless there are far more alts people care enough about to invest greatly in glamour than I'd ever expect, the economic impact likely wouldn't be large.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

Exactly what evidence you have to accuse a prominent developer of lying? Just so you know "We all know" is not evidence.

From a technical standpoint, the explanation Yoshida gave appears to be perfectly sound. An item being logged as available for glamor needs to be stored into memory, and it's stored into server memory in exactly the same way an item in your inventory is. From the point of view of server memory footprint, it's precisely like creating another inventory slot.

While I can't be 100% sure because I have no insight on how the inventory is coded, that is probably incorrect (almost surely, considering Yoshida's answer). An inventory item is normally stored as a numerical ID in a table that calls on a database with all the item's data. For each character only the ID is stored, not the whole item data, which is already present in the database, and is common for all characters. To store the fact that the item is available for glamoring, you'd have to store the same numerical ID in a dedicated table. This means that the memory footprint of the data would most probably be the same.

It's not that I wouldn't love a glamor log, but accusing Yoshida of lying without the slightest evidence, technical expertise, or insight on how the game is coded sounds very, very dumb, and not at all constructive.



Server memory footprint should be the same regardless of how many times it's accessed. Lower frequency of access probably means lower server CPU load, but that normally isn't the problem.

I was going to say some stuff...
But thig guy here said practically everything I wanted to say, so I'll just defer to his post.

A gear item in inventory has not just its own item ID, but the item ID of it's glamour, another for its dye, 5 item IDs for what materia is on it, a character ID for who crafted it, a counter for tracking spiritbond, and another for tracking its condition. And while we don't know details like how many bytes each of those identifiers is, we do know that they all have to be multi-byte fields, since there are a lot more than 256 items in the game, characters on a server, and actions towards spiritbonding or dropping condition to 0.

A tick in a log, on the other hand, takes one bit. That's nowhere near the same size as an item.

A glamour log of the 9099 visible gear items currently in the game would take up 1138 bytes of storage, though of course they'd need room for new items being added, so it would probably be more like 2kb or so (which would be enough to hold 16,384 items). At a reasonable guess at the size of gear in inventory as 44 bytes each, that would be enough space to hold 46 of them.

Out of all of that, the only parts I was estimating without knowledge of their specific coding practices are:
1) I guessed 4 bytes per item ID, character ID, or counter.
2) That an an 80% increase from the amount of current gear allows them enough room for adding new items through the next couple expansions or so.

While either of those guesses could be a little off, it's unlikely that either would be off by more than a factor of two, so that 16384 to 46 ratio is reasonably close, no matter how their system is set up.


Besides which, there was the other interview, where Yoshi pointed out that it was possible, but that it was their UI team that was too busy for it at the time. That's an explanation from him that actually makes sense. I'm perfectly willing to accept what he says when he makes sense, but not when he doesn't.




The issue on this is the transfer between the game servers and backup servers. *Active* data, the kind that can change while playing, is backed up every few seconds that you're logged in. Our characters also have other data, though, (like armoire storage or retainer inventory) that can only change while interacting with that feature and isn't accessible while out adventuring. That data is only backed up when we interact with it, and not all the rest of the time.

There have been multiple suggestions regarding a glamour log, and while some (like automatic inclusion of items whenever we get them) would require it to be classified as active data, others (where we manually place items there, like the armoire) would allow it to be backed up only on access and not the rest of the time. (Note: the limited access would only need to be on adding new items to the log. Using them for glamour could still be available from anywhere, since that doesn't change the contents of the log so doesn't require additional backups.)