A Storage proposal for Tradeskillers

[Nolrog]

How do you designate a quest item from a tradeskill item? What about quest items that are used in tradeskills? It is not a bad idea, but I think there are too many quest items and too many tradeskill items to designate on such broad terms.

Items are already flagged (for the most part) for quest or tradeskill, so this bank can just use these flags and display things with that flag. If it's both quest and tradeskill, then it would show up in either tab/filter.

[Aldier]

Items are already flagged (for the most part) for quest or tradeskill, so this bank can just use these flags and display things with that flag. If it's both quest and tradeskill, then it would show up in either tab/filter.

But this is not like you have a list of items of what is in the bank and you are sorting by a filter. This is, you have a separate slots that only hold one type or the other. I just don't see how that would help. I know there is a flag for those but I think that a separate bank for just items flagged tradeskill wouldnot be as helpful as some think. Also, some items would be able to go in multiple tabs and I am not sure why you would want these special items having multiple locations they could be stored, they are no different than other items. I don't think separate slots for quests or tradeskills are needed. If you choose to save tradeskill supplies in your bank, then you have that option. If we could consolidate the amount of tradeskill supplies the average tradeskiller would need to carry then that would help.

As I mentioned, I emptied out a bag of lower level patterns, I still have no room in my bank though. I had other things that filled that space up. I didn't gain anything by switching items, I still have the same number open bank slots.

[MareeTP]

If you want a little touch of reality in your online game, lets have a new type of bank put in - can be a duplicate of your regular personal bank - Call it Niami's Savings and Loan or Artisans Repository or Nygreth's Credit Union. Have it in your home town and/or a central location such as POK. Link the shared bank to that Savings and Loan and/or create a separate no-drop shared bank that can only be used between the same char name in both banks. Make the secondary bank in the guild bank format - that way people who like to sort by bags can still do so, and people that like to see neatly alphabetized lists of items that they can remove without opening bags will be happy too.

Will open up another full empty bank for use by each character. The idea is not unprecedented... look at the SOD quest items pirate banker.

If they can do that there, why not give us another banking system we can use, seeing as the current one is so overloaded.

[Ame]

Why not just overhaul banks altogether?

It would be much better to convert banks into a list system (similar to guild bank) combined with a container holder area (similar to existing bank window).

characters would then be able to list (and sort) all of their equipment and the list could be unlimited (although a limit would probably be preferable). beside the list would then be 8 slots to hold containers for quest combines, tradeskills etc that do not have a token version.

I know overhauling the existing bank system is not possible under the basic structure. what i propose is to create a NEW bank system that sits alongside the old. 90% of players would most likely switch to the new system but those that dont (or those accounts that are inactive) would remain unaffected. At release you simply replace the old bankers in all the zones with a new one and have a single old bank (probably a good choice would be Mr. Pitt in PoK) so players can access the old version still.

While people may utilise both banks for things, by making the new ones more accessible and the old one less appealing (like Mr. Pitt charging characters to access their old bank) eventually the new banks will replace the old entirely.

[thomenthechanter]

Call me hidebound if you wish, Ame, but I will scream bloody murder if folks try to convert player banks to guild-bank style. I can't imagine any tradeskiller actually wanting what you suggest, and the 90% number seems to come from the same place many statistics appear.

Bear with me, now, and hear me out --- think on what you're saying as I describe this scenario.

I have 20 bags of tradeskill materials, sorted by tradeskill (with room to spare in the bags). I can swap out from adventuring to a particular tradeskill in less than fifteen seconds.

Going to guildbank style would mean now I have all my tradeskill components mixed up with one another. Porous Loam mixed up with Papyrus, Papers, Picnic Baskets, and Potions... Soluble Loam with Spell Scrolls, Superb Silks, the Satyr Legbone I've got for sale in trader sacks... and so on.

Suddenly, instead of fifteen seconds of swapping, I'd waste several minutes of time spent scrolling through a list of 240 items to find the items for a particular tradeskill, and then minutes to find all of my adventuring gear when I go back to hunting. And I know myself --- I'll forget something like the stack of Distillates of Celestial Healing and realize it when I most need them.

Now, the one thing I can see is providing an alternate interface to *search the contents of* the 24 bags alphabetically... but don't take my 24 bags away, or I'll find a way to beat you over the head with every single one of them. There's an Autobank button for people who don't care about organization. But going to guildbank style smacks the folks who *do* care about organization.

[Deviator]

please dont take away the bags!!! the tabbed system doesnt HAVE to be specific items per tab... could just be 24 more general bank slots on each tab, 4 tabs and you got room enough for even someone who does all trades and all quests.

[Aldier]

please dont take away the bags!!! the tabbed system doesnt HAVE to be specific items per tab... could just be 24 more general bank slots on each tab, 4 tabs and you got room enough for even someone who does all trades and all quests.

24 slots on 4 tabs?!?

That is a TON of room no one could possibly need that much.

24 bag slots X 10 slot bags per slot X 4 tabs of slots = 960 items

[Deviator]

look man, put as many as you want on each tab, i dont care... i was just saying, 4 tabs would be more than anyone would need. no need to get upset, most likely none of this will ever happen anyway. i havent even played in over a year, im just trying to offer up some suggestions here.

[Wanyen]

I think the guild bank style system would be a lot better received if players had some limited ability to tag items using player defined tags (and simple rules that utilized those tags), and then use those tags (and rules) to filter, sort, and permit/restrict view and access. Of course, that is speaking as someone who works with data systems on a fairly regular basis.

If the guild bank style system was used as the basis for additional individual character storage, tags and rules could be accessed through a license-lease model where the players could define their own tags up to the number of tags that they have licensed. If they decide to change a tag, it would not cost much if anything (to minimize complaints over perceived injustice in input errors by players). However, to add more available tags would cost, the cost would be progressive, with each additional tag at a characters disposal costing more than the previous.

Using a license-lease model to add additional supplemental storage managers styled after the guild bankers seems to make a lot of sense to me too, and something I proposed a while ago. If guilds want to offer members more storage space, they could lease, not purchase (like mercs) additional "guild bankers," but with seperate (non-shared) persistance for the items they hold. There should be an initial fee to enable the additional banker, and an upkeep. If the upkeep payment lapses, the banker would lock access, and purchase of additional storage would be denied until upkeep was made current (to deter, not necessarily deny, cheap "long term" storage; yet still avoid loss of items for inadvertant non-payment). They could even use different tiers of storage that offered varying maximum capacity, maximum user defined tags, free initial tags, number of assignable supplemental bank accessors.

EDIT:

Auditing and Reporting: It would be both basic inventory -and- activity reports could be retrieved on the guild bank. It would be nice to know at the very minimum who when and what was deposited and withdrawn. It would be nice to have the option to track when permissions change and to what for whom. It might be nice to be able to annotate transactions.

EDIT2:

To transition to the tagged, guild-bank style system -- simply provide 24 free, initial tags, which would correspond to old bag slots of the character bank, and for each item that was in the bag, tag it with "Slot 1," "Slot 2," etc. up to "Slot 24"

EDIT3:

To help alleviate loading unncessarily these extra bankers in the guild hall each time it loads up, you could make it sort of like a safe deposite box access, where you need to first speak with a normal bank manager/operator. The bank manager/operator would then call or summon the secondary storage managers.

[MareeTP]

I personally don't see any logical reason to pay for bank storage. In-game plat, doubloons, chronobines etc do not translate for any known reason into cash in SOE's pocket to pay for the extra coding time.

However, the extensive quests requiring upwards of 20 no-drop items to complete, the extensive tradeskilling supplies... all of those things are SOE's inventions to keep the game interesting, fun, progressive and playable.

Therefore, storage facilities to accommodate the in-game innovations created by SOE should be made available to the players free of charge.

Developing quests and tradeskill items should carry the equal responsibility of providing the answer of "where are the players going to keep all this stuff" without further penalizing the players for participating in these activities.

So in that respect, I disagree with suggestions that players "hire" banks or storage facilities. Storage space should be inherent within the game.

I do use the pirate guy for SOD quest rewards. And am happy he's there. However, in principle, I disagree with having to purchase additional storage space. So I am not supportive of suggestions that we encourage this practice.

[Wanyen]

If you are a packrat, sentimentalist (have a long-list of keepsakes or tokens of accomplishment), tradeskill, quest fiend, or exhibit symptoms of all these and more, the current hard constraints on volume of warehoused items is a real concern.

The proposed cost is not necessarily to take money from the game or to penalize anyone else who wishes to use supplemental space; however, it is to help offset the extra physical resouce utilization and to help incentivize/foster deliberative choice/priority.

If a player or guild decides they need more space because what they have is inadequate they are going to tie up sever resources in maintaining the extra inventory and in spawning/recalling a supplemental storage manager/liason NPC to access that extra inventory. With no cost component to the player, what incentive is there to choose what is saved and what is determined not worth saving under any circumstance?

Certainly, I feel that there should be a minimum of free, on-demand storage for every character as it stands; however, speaking for myself, a lot of it could be put in elective, longer-term storage so to speak -- stuff that I am unwilling to destroy because they are tokens that represnt past accomplishments and experiences through a 9+ year history; warehouse items that I will use for skilling up tradeskills of secondary interest (for instance, my wizard is primarily a researcher, but is also a fairly skilled tailor; my rogue is primarily a smith, but at some point -- once the anticipated revamp of poison goes in will probably switch focus and the bulk of time and space to that activity), but won't need for at least several days to weeks. My primary characters of play save quest pieces because I intended to finish them, but sometimes got sidetracked -- sometimes I get back to them sooner, than later -- sometimes I don't. There is no requirement that my characters be all and do all. It is elective.

The reason to pay for supplemental storage is encourage players to make a choice -- am I willing to store my 25 keepsakes for 300 pp a month, warehouse my stockpile of 100 stacks of tradeskill items from all trades I work on for 800 pp a month, keep the 40 quest items from content designed for 30 levels under my current level for 500 pp a month, build a personal library of all known books of lore and instruction for 1200 pp a month?

If there are 1000 active players on a server at a given time, and 100 are using supplemental storage at the same time, that could potentially be an extra 100 NPC's the server would have to maintain. If each supplemental storage manager NPC could track and store 100 piles of things, that would be an extra 10,000 stacks of items that would have to be in memory. If each stack could ignore normal stacking rules encountered in a player inventory, and each stack could hold 100 of the same item regardless of the item, that would be 1,000,000 extra items that would need to be maintained at the same time. If each item requires 12 bytes of data, thats 12 million bytes of extra memory needed just for having that extra storage that would need to be available (easily over a 10 gigs of extra ram/vram if fully utilized under this fairly conservative but ficticious scenario per server, yes? -- of course there are techniques of software trickery to optimize that number down to something a little more managable during run-time; the point is supplemental space, even an extra 10 or 20 slots per character, or 100 or 200 per guild would not be insignificant). Now I have no idea of the usage patterns for the bankers in guild halls, but I bet my scenario is pretty conservative in terms of necessary peak capability. It does not even look at the memory costs of the extra 100 NPCs, nor is it fully realistic -- some player invenstory stacks can go to 200 units. It does not consider the extra persistent storage needed to maintain these supplemental warehouses. If 60 percent of the server participates electively in supplemental storage, you would expect to need at least six times the memory in terms of disk space just for a single record of those items. Introduce redundancy, which I expect they have in place, and multiple that out even further depending on the scheme they are using.

That is why a cost is needed, IMO. Extra storage may be cheap and achievable, but its not free. Utilizing extra storage should be elective, and there should be a mechanism of ensuring that those that really feel they need it, or want it, can express that need or want -- the most straightforward and non-preferntial IMO, is through a pricing mechanism.

EDIT:

I would rather pay for it in the universal Norrathian financial instrument -- cold, hard platinum rather than alternative currencies nor with real cash in the form of higher monthly account fees, or in the form of non-primary accounts serving simply as mules.

[Aldier]

I personally don't see any logical reason to pay for bank storage. In-game plat, doubloons, chronobines etc do not translate for any known reason into cash in SOE's pocket to pay for the extra coding time.

However, the extensive quests requiring upwards of 20 no-drop items to complete, the extensive tradeskilling supplies... all of those things are SOE's inventions to keep the game interesting, fun, progressive and playable.

Therefore, storage facilities to accommodate the in-game innovations created by SOE should be made available to the players free of charge.

Developing quests and tradeskill items should carry the equal responsibility of providing the answer of "where are the players going to keep all this stuff" without further penalizing the players for participating in these activities.

So in that respect, I disagree with suggestions that players "hire" banks or storage facilities. Storage space should be inherent within the game.

I do use the pirate guy for SOD quest rewards. And am happy he's there. However, in principle, I disagree with having to purchase additional storage space. So I am not supportive of suggestions that we encourage this practice.

They fixed the problems with the pirate in the lobby. He now wants Chronobines for the items he is holding. Also, if you want to "give" him an item, he buys it from you for 1 chronobine and then charges you 1 chronobine to withdraw it again. This change, Rytan posted is going in with the next patch. So all the collection quest drops, and all the timeshear parts in SoD are covered.

[MareeTP]

I understand your point. I just think that the point of the fixed bank capacity was designed way before these subsequent expansions and very few of the expansions have upgraded it.. while the trend for quest and tradeskill components seems to have expanded way past reasonable storage space. So for that reason, I feel there should have been some balance in the game to accommodate that issue. The cost is so minor for the storage items at this point, that it isn't really a significant discouragement.

However, I agree if its going to be a cost, that it be universal currency - plat.

I know its not hard to get other kinds, assuming you have a character that can perform successfully in those instances. So I guess it makes sense to give old Flavin chronobines, as you get them as part of the quest reward you are asking him to hold.

If there is a possibility of additional storage space for other droppable and no trade items such as a tradeskiller would use... please let those be paid for in plat.

[Aldier]

I think you misunderstand.

You complete a quest. You receive an item for the collection sets or for the Timeshear fragment. You sell it to the pirate, he will give you 1 chronobine. When you have them all or want it back, you can purchase it from the pirate for 1 chronobine. There is a 0 net cost. It is simply there to serve for functionality of having a cost. So this is another banker that only holds SoD quest items that you collect. If you destroyed the part or earned it during the preview, that is the only time it would "cost" you anything to receive your quest reward.

Perhaps, an NPC similar to this one could be designed and setup to store other items that require a lot of space for storage. I do not think the cultural patterns/symbols/molds would be a good option for this style of merchant as quest pieces neither stack nor are needed in such a quantity. However, I know Ngreth at one point looked into "tools" and the idea of a toolbelt, and this could be a possible toolbox style merchant where a set list of tools, so you don't necessarily have to include every possible tool, just the ones you choose, and have him purchase them from you and sell them back to you. I do not know if this will work because the pirate recognizes a flag on your character that you completed the task and he then offers you the part. This would have to set a flag for each tool you give to him so he would know to offer to sell your tools back.

[HaelonTT]

That many flags sounds to me like a lot more coding then just adding tabs to the current bank, but Im not a software writer so I couldnt say for sure.

Well Ngreth, Im sure you are following this discussion there bud. I started this post to see what ideas it generated in the hope that it would help you or others at SOE should this topic ever come under serious consideration.

I do hope it will get serious consideration, and I do hope that the ideas generated here help.

My 2 cents, after reading the various ideas, is to throw out my original idea. I believe I like the tabbed bank idea best. Use the current bank layout and add tabs to additional pages at the top. Maybe it can be coded in such a way as to allow you to add 1 page now, and a 2nd or a 3rd later on down the road, allowing future flexibility in the bank setup.