Extra bank space with PoR

[Doomspark Deathfire]

I'll be getting the expansion purely for the extra bank space. That's why I bought LoY originally, as I recall.

All my INT casters have at least two 10-slot bags full of spell research components. My necromancer has five. My 'chanter has an additional two boxes of quest items, and one box of keys from Plane of Sky.

Most of my characters do tradeskills, so figure that each has at least five or six ten-slot boxes full of various tradeskill items, and another box of tradeskill gear (including Geerloks and stat-boosting items). And let's not forget about tools - smithy hammers, cooking utensils, needles, etc.)

The extra space will be a godsend. And yes, I will outgrow it within a month.

[Angelsyn]

Don't use the 20 slot bags then. It was only an idea not a requirement. If you want to swap bags out use 10 slotters BUT if you have stuff you don't take out by the bag full use a few 20 slotters.

It was an idea of a way to increase bank space. If you are going to remove the bag don't use a 20 slot bank only bag.

But what about people who accidentally pull a 20 slot bag out of the bank?

All I'm saying is, the idea has a lot of dangerous holes just waiting to trap the unsuspecting.

[Bobaten]

To better understand the problem with bigger bags you have to change your perspective to what inventory slots look like behind the scenes. The game sees your bank as containing 176 slots. 16 main slots, then 160 slots that you can unlock with different sized bags. So for example slots 1-8 might be the old 8 general inventory slots, then slots 9-18 would be the slots in the first bag, slots 19-28 the slots in the second bag, etc. Allowing for a bigger bag (size 20 for example), requires making new slots. Either tacking them on to the end (so slots 9-18 are now the first 10 slots in bag 1, but slots 130-139 are the second 10 slots), or inserting them in the middle and bumping all the other slots around. Not only do they need to allow for the extra 10 slots in all of your bank spaces, they need to allow for them in all of your general inventory spaces, in the spaces for items held on your cursor, and for the spaces for items on your corpse. It's not code that they really want to tinker around with too much, because a mistake very likely means lost items game wide ("We're sorry that everyone lost the first item in every bag, GM's will be reimbursing items over the next month, enjoy the Double XP week").
On the other hand, adding more bank slots is easier, because they can just tack new numbers on the end of the current list for 8 new bank slots and 80 new bank bag slots.

[Doomspark Deathfire]

Someone suggested somewhere - I don't remember where offhand (haven't had my caffiene yet this morning) - that it would be wonderful to have the ability to dye bags/boxes different colors. This would make it easy to sort out which container holds what components. As I'm forever going through all my bags to find things (and with 20+ characters, sometimes this gets time-consuming!), this would be useful.

I think it might work better to dye the bank slots, as they do with the inventory slots for armor.

By the way, does EQ have a command like EQ2 to toggle *all* bags open?

[Nolrog]

Someone suggested somewhere - I don't remember where offhand (haven't had my caffiene yet this morning) - that it would be wonderful to have the ability to dye bags/boxes different colors.

/em points to the Top 10 list number three (be sure to scroll down to the last two posts in that thread.)

[Ilona]

I am SO looking forward to the new bank space, it is the nr1 selling point of this expansion to me.
I estimate it will take me about a week to fill the lot

[Itek]

*sigh*

Ok, let's reality check here.

Will more bank space be better than NOT HAVING more bank space?

Yes.

Fin. End. No quibbles. Stop. I mean it.

Will there be more stuff from Ro that will fill bank space...

gee, ya think? Always has been, always will be. Mud-Flation. Get used to it.

(On related notes where will the best gear and exp be found.... Ro. Golly gee alert the MEDIA, the marketing people and the money people want the expansion to sell??)

Now on to the coding aspects....

CAN something be done? Yeah. No really it CAN. No, no matter what secret developer talks you've had, it CAN be done.

The question is "How HARD is it to do?" Which no one here, with the possible exception of Ngreth, has an answer to, and which he (presuming he did in fact know the details) would be legally enjoined from revealing. (NDA for programmers can be draconian.)

No, the bank isn't 176 slots with some locked and blah blah blah...

They are an array of pointers. Those pointers point, potentially, to other arrays. (If you put a single item in a main bank slot the pointer points to that object, if you put a bag in a main slot the pointer points to that bag object, which is also a pointer to the array for the spaces inside it.)

Bank is an array of pointers, to objects, which (potentially) point to an array of pointers to yet more objects. Do you see now why you can't put a small bag in a bigger bag?

If you are confused by references to objects and pointers let me simplify.

Coding is hard. Really really hard. If you don't know PRECISELY what you are doing massive errors can result.

"You lost the first object in every bag you have." nice... but not the worst error.

Imagine with me a stack overflow error which invades the IVT of the OS and crashes the computer. The computer being the EQ server. OOps.

Can they make 20 slot bags? Sure. But they may not want to, or may not consider it a priority.

Here's a thought....

Do away with putting bags in bank slots and putting stuff in the bags. Have each person have (if they have Ro) 240 slots into which they can put any (empty if it's a container) object. Then 20 slots in the shared inventory.

How would you like to be the guy assigned to that task?

"Ok, we've got the new system in place, now we need to convert EVERY character in the game from the old system to the new system... Um, Boss, how do I make people log in and shuffle around their entire inventory?"

Simple suggestions that sound reasonable to non-programmers are enough to give programmers a case of the nervous twitches.

Take the extra bank space and run.

[KyrosKrane]

By the way, does EQ have a command like EQ2 to toggle *all* bags open?

Yes, but you have to assign it a keystroke. Open your options window, go to the Keys tab, then select Commands in the drop down box. At the bottom of the list, you'll see two settings for opening and closing all bags. Assign them keys and off you go. =)

Edit: Actually, that only affects your inventory, not your bank. At least, I've never tried using it when my bank was open.

[Lillanu]

Aha! you rule kyros!

[Millye]

PO Boxes and Bank Security Boxes....

I had an idea while reading this thread. Do what real banks do, rent out security or po boxes. Pay a monthly fee, get a key. Default on paying and bank keeps whatever is inside after 90 days of non-payment or so. You could rent a single (non-container) slot, or rent a 100 container block of slots. And if they do go with the key idea, I think the key should be tradeable to make transfers of items a lot easier.

This could be a painless way to help drain excess cash from the economy. To some, paying 10kpp a month would be minor compared to having more storage room, to others 1pp to rent a slot for a day might be worth it.

And, yes, before someone says it.... coding likely doesn't allow this to happen. Just a new idea to kick around, if you like it add it to the top 10 list.

Millye

[GrimwoodCT]

Put a guy in a room one day of food and water and a computer station. When he has 20 slot bag coded let him out.

Repeat as necessary till 20 slot bags are available.

[Itek]

ROFL. Not at the suggestion, which I read unedited, but at the edit.

Coding, at this level, isn't done that way. This isn't your high school coding homework that you can kludge together in an afternoon. Just linking the code to the artwork would take longer than a day, presuming (as I said they have to WANT to do it first) they had the go ahead to do it.

I'd go into detail of what goes into coding in a project like EQ. But it would take me, literally, years. And volumes of books. No, I'm not kidding. Getting my degree in CS / Software Engineering is taking years, and I'd gladly let you carry the 60 POUNDS (no, I'm not joking) of textbooks I bought for this semester alone.

Average production of code for a professional Software Engineer after VnV and peer-review sessions is about one new LOC per hour. (GOTO 120 .. ok, I'm good for the next hour) Code fragments shorter than this post usually take me 2 to 3 hours to write and debug and those are student assignments which won't cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour in lost revenue if I mess up.

20 slot bags .... or Fletching Path to 300 for non-Karana ... which would do the most good...

Now we've wandered into the "Project Manager" territory, which I studiously avoid as it smacks of witchcraft and philosophy.

Really, you can't just say "code me a 20 slot bag, lemme know when you are done" and expect things to magicly work properly. Would that it were...

[Rawckett]

*sigh*

Ok, let's reality check here.

Will more bank space be better than NOT HAVING more bank space?

Yes.

Fin. End. No quibbles. Stop. I mean it.

Will there be more stuff from Ro that will fill bank space...

gee, ya think? Always has been, always will be. Mud-Flation. Get used to it.

(On related notes where will the best gear and exp be found.... Ro. Golly gee alert the MEDIA, the marketing people and the money people want the expansion to sell??)

Now on to the coding aspects....

CAN something be done? Yeah. No really it CAN. No, no matter what secret developer talks you've had, it CAN be done.

The question is "How HARD is it to do?" Which no one here, with the possible exception of Ngreth, has an answer to, and which he (presuming he did in fact know the details) would be legally enjoined from revealing. (NDA for programmers can be draconian.)

No, the bank isn't 176 slots with some locked and blah blah blah...

They are an array of pointers. Those pointers point, potentially, to other arrays. (If you put a single item in a main bank slot the pointer points to that object, if you put a bag in a main slot the pointer points to that bag object, which is also a pointer to the array for the spaces inside it.)

Bank is an array of pointers, to objects, which (potentially) point to an array of pointers to yet more objects. Do you see now why you can't put a small bag in a bigger bag?

If you are confused by references to objects and pointers let me simplify.

Coding is hard. Really really hard. If you don't know PRECISELY what you are doing massive errors can result.

"You lost the first object in every bag you have." nice... but not the worst error.

Imagine with me a stack overflow error which invades the IVT of the OS and crashes the computer. The computer being the EQ server. OOps.

Can they make 20 slot bags? Sure. But they may not want to, or may not consider it a priority.

Here's a thought....

Do away with putting bags in bank slots and putting stuff in the bags. Have each person have (if they have Ro) 240 slots into which they can put any (empty if it's a container) object. Then 20 slots in the shared inventory.

How would you like to be the guy assigned to that task?

"Ok, we've got the new system in place, now we need to convert EVERY character in the game from the old system to the new system... Um, Boss, how do I make people log in and shuffle around their entire inventory?"

Simple suggestions that sound reasonable to non-programmers are enough to give programmers a case of the nervous twitches.

Take the extra bank space and run.

My head just exploded

[Grolyn]

translation: 20 slot bags probably not in this lifetime

non karana path ro 300 fletching should be live by now.

when you consider the original EQ and some of its code is now 7 years old and buried under 11 expansions you're looking at billions (perhaps trillions?) of line of code to wade through just to add a tweak or 2 and there's always a risk of adding a bug because the new code conflicted with the older code.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I doubt there's even 1 billion lines of code... that would be insane.