Whats going on with SE ?

[kikix12]

If the server didn’t send your inventory data to the duty server along with you, you would show up naked, and everyone else would look naked since their inventory data wasn’t transferred either.

I already said that the characters looks are one of the things that need to be sent at the beginning. But inventory does not need to be sent for that at all. If you want to drink something that's in your fridge, you don't need to take out of it that cheese, the eggs, those pieces of meat waiting there for dinner and all the other things that are there. You'll just take out the bottle of whatever drink you want.

And opening your inventory for the first time would then involve a wait time while the duty server sends the data request back to your world server for the data.

Yes. I've been saying that all along. However, that would be the after all the other data was loaded. That's distributing the data load over time and it decreases the risk of overburdening the hardware/choking the net.

Did you ever use multiple high-demand programs at once on your computer?! Programs that on their own caused significant slowdown?! I have. If I turned one it could have spent, let's say, 5 minutes doing its work, while I could use lightweight programs to work. Sure, not as comfortable but possible. Then I could turn the other one and same thing. After ten minutes I could use computer without any issue.
Now, if I would turn both of them at once...I would be unable to use the PC for more than 10 minutes. They would get in each others way AND completely prohibit using the PC for anything else at all. Not only would it take more time, but I could not use anything in those ten minutes, unlike if I did them one after the other.

Computers spend some time when switching between two processes. Normally it is a miniscule amount that you won't notice even with quite a lot of programs turned on. However if they are utilized to their full, having a lot of things to do to the point they have large queues of processes to attend to...it starts being a pain. Especially if those processes use a lot of operative memory. At that point they will either shuffle which uses RAM, having to write the sama data over and over into it, or they will use the data drive, which if it is HDD (or lower quality SDD) is significantly slower.

When transferring data it is the same. Overburdening your connection will result in you getting any of that data later than if you downloaded it one after another. It's more convenient, I give you that. If I plan on leaving keyboard or don't care for getting the stuff fast, just want it for later, I'll add multiple things for download and don't worry about forgetting to add anything later. But if time is of the essence...I will download any file larger than a couple dozen MB one by one. Because that's the only way to get it as fast as possible. And that also minimizes the risks of something happening, like router overheating and dropping my connection or other random events. Those may be unlikely for homes...but sorry. Final Fantasy XIV have so many instances where playing is interrupted (due to congestion, DDoS attacks and such, but also routing issues some experience that are fault of neither but are still problems) that it actually starts getting pretty relevant how much time you spend on loading screens.

Even if you only wanted useable items like potions to load, the duty server has no way of knowing about that unless it receives your inventory data from your world server.

As I said, the only items that could be loaded are the ones on hotbars. And, again, it's just a precaution more than anything else.

I have no idea, I don't work on the game. The fact is, you don't know either.
(...)
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying you can't possibly be certain that you're right, yet you're acting like your word is gospel.

I'm explaining my point each and every time, leading to some pretty big walls of text. I almost never manage to fit into the post limit, not even when answering a simple query. In comparison, most people don't give any explanations. And not only they act like they couldn't possibly be wrong, but sometimes they outright talk down to another, out of the blue.

I'm afraid that I lost interest in spending that extra time making clear that whatever I write is my opinion and/or my analysis and/or my take on the matter. Especially when people already see in my posts things that never were there and don't see things that are there quite clearly. Just look at what I wrote above. I had to type once again the same thing I did in my previous post, simply because the poster one way or another skipped past me referring to what they intended to write already.

Then there's the fact that...this is not the only MMO game out there. It's not even a pioneer of any sort. There are tons of games done before it. Those other games have various problems of their own, yes, but I tried quite a few MMO's in my time and this is the first time the game developers use volume of transferred data as any sort of issue, and the first time that everything takes so long to load time and time again, at every step.
Clearly, whatever they did, they did it wrong. In the end I don't know what they did wrong...but they need to realize that they DID something wrong and realize that they NEED to fix it. They seem to be of the mind that they can keep ignoring the issue...but that's wrong. They more time it will take for them to try and solve it, even if not completely but step by step...the worse the issue will become and the harder it will be to solve later on.

I’m not saying the code doesn’t need fixing, but how exactly can the server send you data about what other players are wearing without sending that data to your client?

Items are stored in databases of some sort and surely are identified by a number. All you need is the ID of the items that are visible for the game to fetch the images, and images alone. If they are not stored on the clients computers in the first place (there should be a reason why the game have dozens of GB, right?!). You don't need to load anything else, their stats (since characters total stats are loaded anyway), their icons, their tooltips etc. Certainly not the entire inventory.

The reason YOU would also end up naked is because the cross-data-center duties are hosted on a separate server dedicated to dungeon instances. Meaning you are playing a temporary copy of your character the moment you set foot in a duty, any changes to your character are then sent back to your world server upon leaving the duty and overwrites the character data as it was when you started the dungeon.

The server doesn't care about how you look. Graphics are applied on clients side. Your character could hop from server to server and none of them should ever send you data on how your character looks, because it should be stored on your clients side and shown to you from your clients data.

Server needs your items ID (only the visible ones) to send to other players so that you wouldn't appear naked for them. Nothing else.

Also, if you didn’t carry any inventory into a dungeon with you, how would the game need to handle someone who doesn’t have enough inventory slots open to keep everything they decided to pick up in the dungeon when they leave?

I repeatedly said that it should be loaded as demand states. Clearly adding something to inventory is a demand, so the moment you would get loot, the game would check whether you have space for it (empty or a stack that it can be added to). It would be done in background and you wouldn't even know it's being loaded. Upon opening the inventory after that you would already have it loaded, so you wouldn't even have to wait for it to load.

[Talraen]

I already said that the characters looks are one of the things that need to be sent at the beginning. But inventory does not need to be sent for that at all. If you want to drink something that's in your fridge, you don't need to take out of it that cheese, the eggs, those pieces of meat waiting there for dinner and all the other things that are there. You'll just take out the bottle of whatever drink you want.

How would that work? The server has to find the drink you want, which means searching the data for it. At that point you're loading the data.

Yes. I've been saying that all along. However, that would be the after all the other data was loaded. That's distributing the data load over time and it decreases the risk of overburdening the hardware/choking the net.

No, it does not. If this were a single player game, you'd be correct, but it's an MMO, and there's no reason to believe that distributing the same load per player over multiple loads will result in a more even overall distribution. If one person zones in every 10 seconds and then all of those people pop a potion at the same time (due to a big AOE, let's say), then the load distribution will be far worse under your model than Square Enix's. This point is just not correct.

Also, consider that when a whole bunch of players load into a zone at once, the server can stagger when they arrive in order to distribute the load. If the load occurs on need, the server must load everything immediately. Loading at the zone line allows the optimization of load distribution, in direct contrast to your claims.

Computers spend some time when switching between two processes. Normally it is a miniscule amount that you won't notice even with quite a lot of programs turned on. However if they are utilized to their full, having a lot of things to do to the point they have large queues of processes to attend to...it starts being a pain. Especially if those processes use a lot of operative memory. At that point they will either shuffle which uses RAM, having to write the sama data over and over into it, or they will use the data drive, which if it is HDD (or lower quality SDD) is significantly slower.

Server hardware is pretty robust, and I don't think switching processes is a big deal, but let's say your analysis is correct here. Wouldn't it be more efficient to do 100% of the job than doing 50% of it, switching processes, then doing the other 50% of it? The load is the same, but your model adds more switching processes, which you're laying out as a bad thing.

When transferring data it is the same. Overburdening your connection will result in you getting any of that data later than if you downloaded it one after another. It's more convenient, I give you that. If I plan on leaving keyboard or don't care for getting the stuff fast, just want it for later, I'll add multiple things for download and don't worry about forgetting to add anything later. But if time is of the essence...I will download any file larger than a couple dozen MB one by one. Because that's the only way to get it as fast as possible. And that also minimizes the risks of something happening, like router overheating and dropping my connection or other random events. Those may be unlikely for homes...but sorry. Final Fantasy XIV have so many instances where playing is interrupted (due to congestion, DDoS attacks and such, but also routing issues some experience that are fault of neither but are still problems) that it actually starts getting pretty relevant how much time you spend on loading screens.

First off, are you running a 386 with a 2400 baud modem? Downloading a few megs overheats your router? I mean what are we even talking about here.

Anyway what you're describing about downloading files is true... for HTTP/1.1. It's not even true for many web sites anymore due to the rising popularity of HTTP/2. And though I admit I don't know how FFXIV's architecture works, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they aren't using a protocol designed specifically for stateless transmissions.

As I said, the only items that could be loaded are the ones on hotbars. And, again, it's just a precaution more than anything else.

It's not "just a precaution," it's the reason (as someone pointed out earlier) that we don't have problems with item duplication. And again, how is the server only loading stuff on hotbars? Ignoring for the moment the possibility that the server would also have to parse macros, hotbars are stored locally. The server doesn't have any way to know what's on them. So again, the only way to know any item in your inventory is to search your inventory, and thus already have loaded it.

I'm explaining my point each and every time, leading to some pretty big walls of text. I almost never manage to fit into the post limit, not even when answering a simple query. In comparison, most people don't give any explanations. And not only they act like they couldn't possibly be wrong, but sometimes they outright talk down to another, out of the blue.

I was trying to be polite. You're fundamentally wrong on several technical levels, and since you asked, I am pointing that out in this post.

I'm afraid that I lost interest in spending that extra time making clear that whatever I write is my opinion and/or my analysis and/or my take on the matter. Especially when people already see in my posts things that never were there and don't see things that are there quite clearly. Just look at what I wrote above. I had to type once again the same thing I did in my previous post, simply because the poster one way or another skipped past me referring to what they intended to write already.

I don't have a problem with your lack of explanations, I have a problem with the combination of your explanations being factually and logically incorrect and the certainty with which you state them.

Then there's the fact that...this is not the only MMO game out there. It's not even a pioneer of any sort. There are tons of games done before it. Those other games have various problems of their own, yes, but I tried quite a few MMO's in my time and this is the first time the game developers use volume of transferred data as any sort of issue, and the first time that everything takes so long to load time and time again, at every step.
Clearly, whatever they did, they did it wrong. In the end I don't know what they did wrong...but they need to realize that they DID something wrong and realize that they NEED to fix it. They seem to be of the mind that they can keep ignoring the issue...but that's wrong. They more time it will take for them to try and solve it, even if not completely but step by step...the worse the issue will become and the harder it will be to solve later on.

Actually, the fact that this is the only MMO with this issue (and I'll take your word on that) doesn't prove they did anything wrong. They made different choices and prioritized different things. It's certainly possible this was a bad decision, and I'm not denying that, but it's also possible that the upsides to this design are worth the cost. My point is that I don't know, and you don't know, but only you are insisting that they "NEED to fix it."

Items are stored in databases of some sort and surely are identified by a number. All you need is the ID of the items that are visible for the game to fetch the images, and images alone. If they are not stored on the clients computers in the first place (there should be a reason why the game have dozens of GB, right?!). You don't need to load anything else, their stats (since characters total stats are loaded anyway), their icons, their tooltips etc. Certainly not the entire inventory.

The server doesn't care about how you look. Graphics are applied on clients side. Your character could hop from server to server and none of them should ever send you data on how your character looks, because it should be stored on your clients side and shown to you from your clients data.

Server needs your items ID (only the visible ones) to send to other players so that you wouldn't appear naked for them. Nothing else.

Two pretty serious issues with this logic. First, if you send along the bare minimum for visual data at first, then send the full data later, you're sending more data in total than you would be otherwise (because the visual data is redundant). This would increase server load, not decrease it. But that doesn't even matter, because the fact is the game does need to load far more than the visual data on your gear the moment you zone in, because it needs to know your stats. It also needs the durability information the first time you take any action that affects it, and so on.

I repeatedly said that it should be loaded as demand states. Clearly adding something to inventory is a demand, so the moment you would get loot, the game would check whether you have space for it (empty or a stack that it can be added to). It would be done in background and you wouldn't even know it's being loaded. Upon opening the inventory after that you would already have it loaded, so you wouldn't even have to wait for it to load.

And here's the fundamental problem with your entire point. Loading on demand doesn't address the issue of the servers being unable to handle more inventory space. You're still loading more inventory space. You're arguing that by not loading on the initial zone-in, it will limit the data, but this is only true in the case where you leave the zone without once accessing your inventory at all, which would actually be pretty uncommon. If you get a single drop, open your inventory, buy anything, use any item, or anything along those lines, you've loaded just as much data. And let me reiterate: in a game with thousands of players, when you load is irrelevant. (To be clear, it's very relevant in any specific case, but there's no reason to believe it would lead to a more even distribution of load; see above.) All that matters is how much is loaded, and your idea makes very little difference. It wouldn't allow them to increase inventory size.

[Ruf]

How would that work? The server has to find the drink you want, which means searching the data for it. At that point you're loading the data.

Theres a difference in between searching for a single item for a request versus asking for a whole 140 (including empty spaces)

I understand that. Why do you care? If in 2023 we have 140 inventory slots and four different types of saddlebags each with 140 more (a la FFXI), is that so much worse than having 700 inventory slots? Hell, it might be better because it'd be easier to organize the important stuff in the first four tabs instead of going through five times as much.

No one is denying that saddlebags are a workaround for this server limitation. What I'm asking is simple: so what?

I care, I'd rather have 700 inventory throught one window than a saddlebag & an app.

I mean, it's better than nothing. But it's not better than what could have been done without the server limitations being so severe. Of course, if they didn't make each raid tier have six different currencies that aren't counted as currencies, that might help too.

Ok so speak to that npc to get base armor (third option) then pick fourth option to get that item x20, then back out of menu go trade theses 20items for that single token with that other npc to the left & then come back to the first npc & then exchange it all for augment!, yea i'd rather deal without a labyrinth for a 10iLv. upgrade
Ps:Oh my bad sorry, more than one token is required & you are limited to one a week! (sure none of this route is accurate... but its pretty darn close) nxt patch rince & repeat

[Talraen]

Theres a difference in between searching for a single item for a request versus asking for a whole 140 (including empty spaces)

You're right, there is a difference: searching each time is far less efficient in the long run.

The server doesn't know where your item is, so it has to search blindly. In a bag with 140 items, assuming you have one stack of the item, it's going to have to load an average of 70 items to find the one you need. (And note, sorting is on the client side, so you can't assume the data is orderly at all on the server side.) If you use one item, that's better on average. If you use a second item, you're breaking even on average. Use more than that and you're behind. Even loading all 140 slots the first time you use any item is a much more efficient method. Loading them all up front is far better than either method for a variety of reasons.

With how clunky it is to organize things, not really. Pulling stuff off multiple retainers one at a time so I can craft something is not better than simply crafting it. In this day and age, a unified storage system and appropriate filters/searching would be better than having six different inventories (because housing storage is also a thing).

Added complexity isn't a good thing. It isn't accessible when doing things like crafting.

I mean, it's better than nothing. But it's not better than what could have been done without the server limitations being so severe. Of course, if they didn't make each raid tier have six different currencies that aren't counted as currencies, that might help too.

This is all true, but it's been true since 2.0 launched (to say nothing of 1.0's intensely less convenient inventory system). They aren't "adding complexity," and nothing is getting worse. In fact, between the extra 40 inventory slots and the stack size increase, you can hold many more items for crafting than you used to be able to.

So yes, it could be better, but the idea that it's going to do harm to the game when it's exactly the same as it's always been is a reach.

[Tridus]

The server doesn't know where your item is, so it has to search blindly. In a bag with 140 items, assuming you have one stack of the item, it's going to have to load an average of 70 items to find the one you need. (And note, sorting is on the client side, so you can't assume the data is orderly at all on the server side.) If you use one item, that's better on average. If you use a second item, you're breaking even on average. Use more than that and you're behind. Even loading all 140 slots the first time you use any item is a much more efficient method. Loading them all up front is far better than either method for a variety of reasons.

Indexes and fast search algorithms exist for just that. If they're simply doing a linear scan on your entire inventory when you search for one item specifically, then there's really no hope for the technical end of things. That said, getting your whole inventory makes the most sense because it can be done once, and searches after that can be done client side, where it's going to be blazing fast. (That's how the search feature in the game right now works.)

There's lots of reasons why loading the entire inventory client side is a good idea. It just doesn't need to be resynced constantly.

This is all true, but it's been true since 2.0 launched (to say nothing of 1.0's intensely less convenient inventory system). They aren't "adding complexity," and nothing is getting worse. In fact, between the extra 40 inventory slots and the stack size increase, you can hold many more items for crafting than you used to be able to.

So yes, it could be better, but the idea that it's going to do harm to the game when it's exactly the same as it's always been is a reach.

Leaving it the same when the rest of the market is advancing is effectively falling farther behind. The landscape today isn't what it was when 2.0 launched, and the less said about 1.0 the better. Improvements that reduce server load would open up a lot of options for them for advancements going forward beyond just better inventory systems, although those would be nice too.

Saying "it was good enough in 2014 so it's good enough in 2018" doesn't really hold water in the gaming industry.

[Remedi]

Saying "it was good enough in 2014 so it's good enough in 2018" doesn't really hold water in the gaming industry.

True, 1.0 was effectively based on that premise and we know how well that went

[Ruf]

You're right, there is a difference: searching each time is far less efficient in the long run.

The server doesn't know where your item is, so it has to search blindly. In a bag with 140 items, assuming you have one stack of the item, it's going to have to load an average of 70 items to find the one you need.

Oh please, its 2018, i dont believe in that statement at all whatsoever, with the spaghetti code maybe, but with a proper code, it should be much faster to pinpoint one item right away as long as the route to the search is flawless. (I in no way bite to that argument) well coded the search shouldnt even happen.

Indexes and fast search algorithms exist for just that.

saying that a proper code isnt possible is a lame excuse & its a pretty poor excuse for this game obviously with the programming power & catering this game have recieved already years ago, & now what do we get? crumbs for our money

[Tridus]

Oh please, its 2018, i dont believe in that statement at all whatsoever, with the spaghetti code maybe, but with a proper code, it should be much faster to pinpoint one item right away as long as the route to the search is flawless. (I in no way bite to that argument) well coded the search shouldnt even happen.

Except that it's actually not. If you have the whole inventory client side, you can search it in memory, locally, with no network IO at all. Nothing will be faster than that.

If you only actually needed one item client side, a search would be faster than retrieving the whole inventory, yes. But inventory is used so often that it doesn't make sense to do that 80 times when you could sync the whole thing on login and then do things locally (and send update events to the server). When something is needed so frequently, it becomes more efficient to eager load it and cache it than it does to load it on demand every time you need it.

For fishing, ruf is right in that GP is useless for gig fishing. But for normal fishing, gp is worthless beyond a certain point. You only need 650ish or so for that, or even less if you just straight up ignore fish that you know are worthless to you. GP even is a bit worthless for miner and botanist, 600 GP is all you need for collectables, and you can't really raise it enough to where it would help past that.

Higher tier nodes often penalize you if you only have 600 GP, like the 70 one star nodes IIRC need at least 650 to have any HQ chance whatsoever.

[Ruf]

Except that it's actually not. If you have the whole inventory client side, you can search it in memory, locally, with no network IO at all. Nothing will be faster than that.

If you only actually needed one item client side, a search would be faster than retrieving the whole inventory, yes. But inventory is used so often that it doesn't make sense to do that 80 times when you could sync the whole thing on login and then do things locally (and send update events to the server). When something is needed so frequently, it becomes more efficient to eager load it and cache it than it does to load it on demand every time you need it.




Higher tier nodes often penalize you if you only have 600 GP, like the 70 one star nodes IIRC need at least 650 to have any HQ chance whatsoever.

Have i said to not load the inventory completly at all? but everytime? no, it should be loaded one time completly then held, + to be honest, im not even sure,,, do you know how many items are useless in your inventory into the dungeons? In other terms, a slice&dice image could be created to cut half of the issue already imo & if that can be done, then yes, the search is minimized & so i really dont see why it cant be pinpointed, cache is a good point

[Talraen]

Oh please, its 2018, i dont believe in that statement at all whatsoever, with the spaghetti code maybe, but with a proper code, it should be much faster to pinpoint one item right away as long as the route to the search is flawless. (I in no way bite to that argument) well coded the search shouldnt even happen.

This isn't about how well-coded the search is, it's simple math and very simple theory. The server knows absolutely nothing about your inventory, because it hasn't loaded it. The inventory is not sorted or indexed, so you can't take advantage of any kind of tree searching or any other fancy methods. I would love to see your pseudocode for how you're finding something in a set you know absolutely nothing about faster than looking at each item in turn.

There's lots of reasons why loading the entire inventory client side is a good idea. It just doesn't need to be resynced constantly.

I couldn't agree more. I am baffled by why the data needs to be sent so often. I've only been responding to suggestions which I am qualified to point out the specific flaws in. As a programmer myself, armchair programmers make my life more difficult so I am biased against them.