*facepalm* I have repricing to do. Thanks for enlightening me.

545 395 items... Would be possible to request a cap of 500 for org shops if selling by design/pattern isn't viable?

Edit: Missed the reagents.

I wouldn't mind 500 items base myself. I only stock 60, but a little wiggle-room is always nice.

One of the reasons the 250 item cap is going to work in Achaea while causing frustrations in Lusternia is because we have so many trade items. In Achaea there's essentially clothes, jewelry, and armour. Denizens stock vials, and unlike in Lusternia clothes and jewelry are purely aesthetic.

City shops are going to be hit particularly hard, which is sad, because I always try to find things in the city shops first, and I have an easier time directing novices/taking them to a city store, rather than trying to overwhelm them by explaining the Aetherplex immediately.


I definitely am a fan of reducing the lag. I just really wish it was possible to sell multiple enchantments without having to sell several hundred rings.

Perhaps make city shops be able to carry more items, in order to encourage their use?
Perhaps a 250/500 cap on manse (pre-artifact or whatever) and a 350/700 cap on city shops (also expandable with artifact?).

foolofsound:

Perhaps make city shops be able to carry more items, in order to encourage their use?
Perhaps a 250/500 cap on manse (pre-artifact or whatever) and a 350/700 cap on city shops (also expandable with artifact?).

Expanding a city shop rift would never be a good idea, as there is no promise you'll have it for forever. I wouldn't mind them having a bit more than the base, so it's better than a manse shop with no upgrades, but I think it will have to stay inferior to upgraded versions to be sensible. Just my two cents.

You can't make city shops expandable with artifacts, since they aren't static the same way manse shops are. A city can seize a shop for any reason, after all.

Maybe a city can expand its shops for gold/credits then?

Expanding a city shop rift would never be a good idea, as there is no promise you'll have it for forever. I wouldn't mind them having a bit more than the base, so it's better than a manse shop with no upgrades, but I think it will have to stay inferior to upgraded versions to be sensible. Just my two cents.

It's even impossible to do in city shops, just like with the dingbat bin artifacts. Probably for that very reason.

I think 500 as the base is reasonable, when you consider how much a manse shop costs. Still only let people buy upgrades to 1000 items max and I think it would be just fine.

(I also am suggesting this as someone who doesn't own a manse shop, so I'm not saying it while sitting on top of a treasure hoard and stroking my 8,000 origami cranes, if that sort of thing concerns you.)

May I ask why it's not possible to do the enchantment-type-cube idea? Is the coding too hard or another reason? It just seems like it would help a lot. It would also be nice to be able to match up a jewelry design I like with the enchantment I need instead of either hoping to find a nice combination in a shop or spending RL days hunting down a jeweler and an enchanter.

I also like the idea someone suggested of making items disappear when stocked, and run off a tally. Unless there's a huge coding problem, I think that's probably the best solution.

I normally don't read the forums, so I'm sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere, but... Do I correctly remember a recent announce news post about manses being able to have more than one shop in them? If that's not already in place, it should be. Then we could have limited stock in each one, but still have the full array spread out among all of them, without having to buy whole new manses for each one. This would especially be nice for specialty shops, which sounds to be something lots of players would prefer in lieu of Lusternian Wal-Marts. For example I could have my tailoring shop, and next door my friend could have a jewelry shop, etc. I'm envisioning something like an old world marketplace.

As for the pricing and limits... Maybe a limit of 1000 items, keeping the 1000cr price for the first shop, and then 500-700 apiece for each shop in the same manse after that (sort of like how you pay less for subsequent rooms than for the fulcrux). I say 1000 items because in my experience as a shopkeeper, that seems to be a reasonable amount for items that are actually for sale. This is assuming we DON'T make any changes that affect how items are counted.

Like currently I have quite a bit of clothing, as that's my specialty, but I try to stock only 1 or 2 of each design at a time, especially since clothes are a slower-selling item. I have poisons and curatives and beverages in kegs, empty vials, flowers (I'm sorry but what's the point of selling flower pots if we're not expected to sell the flowers? They're half the price of any other shop so it's not like I'm "hoarding" them, I'm trying to sell them as fast as I can), and a few miscellaneous items like a cube and a painting and a bracelet. I don't consider that to be too extraordinary, but that adds up to 1575. That could be taken down to 888 JUST by consolidating the empty vials into one of each type. And then down to 534 by combining the flower types. So just by changing these two things, my item count is reduced by 2/3 - without forcing me to give up 3/4 of my wares for 1000 credits, which I think would be disastrous.

Arimisia's right about this being unfair to the point of chasing people out of the game. I've been saving for many months for a shop (as I don't have RL money to spend on credits), but if this "charge full price for 1/4 of the product" idea goes through, there is NO WAY my savings is going toward that - or anything else, as I'd most likely quit the game. In the couple years I've been playing, I've seen one change after another making it increasingly difficult for people to enjoy the game without plenty of disposable income. I really think you should exhaust every other feasible option first, please. It's really cool that you came to the players asking for input, and I think people have put forth some great ideas that are worth a shot. The 250-cap-for-1000cr idea should be the last resort, not Plan A.

I wanted to ask about the 250 items thing. 250 kinds or 250 total. Either way has its flaws... 250 total items means if you carry 200 vials you are almost empty, if 200 vials counts as 1 item, then 2000 powerstones would too. How many shops exceed this?

Either items like vials, powerstones, etc need to be riftable, buyable from rift (buy 5 garnet as vial), or the idea of weighted capacify where they count for fractions. I would prefer riftable powerstones if full myself because thats many thousands of items, I can see at least 2500 just from the aetherplex. Are my other ideas of increasing uses not useful though to try to combat it?

I would love to see some artys offset bloat like... Allow arty vials to hold up to 1000 sips and get 100% more of whats put in (the current doubling effect). This would mean if I get 1 vial of senso I could replace the 5 I currently need of it! This would also encourage sales of the minor artys (which further reduces the bloat).

I still suggest my prior ideas of course, especially if we limit stockrooms. This way stocking origami and powerstones for instance would not be so bad.

Estarra, is it 250 TYPES of items (all garnet vial is 1) or 250 total items? :/

EDIT: Some quick info I pulled together.

1) Doubling how much a basic vial holds would remove, on average at least 50 vials per combatant. Answers were 70-200. So we are talking probably a few thousand if you factor everyone. This does not include if arty vials held up to 1000.

2) Making powerstones inriftable when full would remove a minimum of 2000 from just the shops in the aetherplex

3) Origami was less influenced from the plex, assuming you made them only need 1/5th you remove about 400ish items.

4) If high enchant items allowed splitting.. say a brooch could hold 20 of one enchant, and 20 of another. crown could do 20/20/20/20/20, etc then we are talking about at least halfing many peoples enchant counts. It may not be a huge savings overall but it also means we would need less items that the enchants are placed on.

These are just the things I can readily check mind you, and based purely on the shops I can see. Have an admin check the shops for powerstones and vials and such and we can narrow it further I imagine. I would buy more arty vials if they held more, I own... 4? and 3 iron ones I think. From promotions mostly, but I would get more if they saved me needing to have several.

How are items tracked now? Is each item a full copy of itself, or do they reference a masterlist?

For instance, let's take 5 black robes and analyze the differences in storage:

- There's a ton of redundant information among these items, mainly, everything but the stats. The examined, appearance, dropped, etc all are the same. Does the current storage mechanism account for this redundancy or does each item store a separate copy of all the information?

- If not, a new structure can be implemented: For the robes, you could end up with <12345> <23455> <25> <60><60> to represent id, reference object, decay, cutting, and blunt stats.

- Unfortunately, each type of item would probably have to have it's own type, but I imagine that it's like that now.

- Fortunately, this would (hopefully) be busy work converting the items over. Obviously you wouldn't manual each one individually, but do every type and then write a conversion script. Additionally, the long term benefits would be great.



So, here's how it works more technically. There would be "two" databases, one that tracks the items and a dictionary that contains a single copy of the redundant information. A set of robes might look like this:
- unique id
- database reference to redundant information
- item specific information (and if there is a limit here of options, you could hash this, so rather than having a value that consumes 8 bits, you might reduce it to 4.)
- cartel name (reference to a list of cartels)
- designer name (reference to a list of designers)


Also, do you all use huffman codes to store information? It's late here, so I'm not sure if this would work, but if each shop got their own huffman code and the key for it, you'd have the best lossless compression possible. The problems might be having to update it each time someone buys something or adds to storage, etc. That might be the bad thing, but ideas such as that might be a good thing.

Why not reduce the price tag of a shop to 500 credits?

edit:
also, let items be grouped up if they are the same type in the shop stockroom please. Rings with the same enchants for example. I'm at 2271 items, and if rings were able to be grouped up, as well as letters and clothing, then it would be down to around 160 items instead.

edit2: If more things can be grouped together and take one space, then wouldn't that make all the items reach under the 80k limit? Then we wouldn't need to put a cap with shops, right?

We can't do grouping for items that decay, have stats, or are crafted. This means jewelry, armour, clothes, robes, food, etc can't be grouped, as grouping behaves much like rifting. All the items but one are destroyed.

Redundant information isn't taking up tons and tons of space, a reference system is used, for both mobs (ie all Celest's archon guards aren't described separately, they reference a mother that holds the redundant information) and for crafted goods (they reference the design).

The reality is we have to cut down on item bloat, ie no matter how much redundant information is or isn't occurring, we can't have thousands upon thousands of items in a given stockroom as the norm - and we can't just start grouping seemingly 'like' items, as it does not work that way (Sahmiam's suggestion, which I admittedly just skimmed, more or less sounds like how the replica database functions - ie, the bloat problems would continue to exist, we'd just be shifting it to a different, super-bloated database. Actually, on re-reading his post, that's exactly how the system functions, by the looks of it!).

"I don't like this idea" is fine, but try to follow it with more than "There's better ideas". If you don't like the current thought, tell us which ones you do like.

(I mean, we /could/ do grouping on items, but there'd be things like - if you group 100 identical robes, then break them up, their stats will all be the same (probably matching the lowest pair in the group, to prevent abuse) and they'll all have the same decay time (again, the lowest decay time in the group, to prevent abuse). So you would potentially ruin hundreds of robes by accidentally grouping in 1 bad pair. Obviously this A.) is not desirable and B.) makes no sense from a roleplay standing, so I sincerely doubt it's something we'd even consider.)

Eventru:

We can't do grouping for items that decay, have stats, or are crafted. This means jewelry, armour, clothes, robes, food, etc can't be grouped, as grouping behaves much like rifting. All the items but one are destroyed.

Redundant information isn't taking up tons and tons of space, a reference system is used, for both mobs (ie all Celest's archon guards aren't described separately, they reference a mother that holds the redundant information) and for crafted goods (they reference the design).

The reality is we have to cut down on item bloat, ie no matter how much redundant information is or isn't occurring, we can't have thousands upon thousands of items in a given stockroom as the norm - and we can't just start grouping seemingly 'like' items, as it does not work that way (Sahmiam's suggestion, which I admittedly just skimmed, more or less sounds like how the replica database functions - ie, the bloat problems would continue to exist, we'd just be shifting it to a different, super-bloated database. Actually, on re-reading his post, that's exactly how the system functions, by the looks of it!).

"I don't like this idea" is fine, but try to follow it with more than "There's better ideas". If you don't like the current thought, tell us which ones you do like.

I don't like half of the idea, namely the part where they intent to sell upgrade packages. If they are selling upgrades to 1000 items then that either means:
- The database can handle 1000 items per shop in which case one can just give it to shopkeepers straight out.
- It means it can not handle it for all shops, but then at the very least it should be able to handle 500 per shop and they should just give that to every store.
- It really can't handle even that, in which case you might as well hold off on selling upgrades as you are going to be in the same problem as before soon enough.

And unless the the finances gained from those upgrades goes straight to new hardware and/or getting a faster database it really just seems one is trying to profit off the sympathy players have for this problem.

One idea that would cut down a bit is to make all stockrooms work as if they had a key, eye, monolith and palm sigil in them, so people won't need to have one of each of those in the room. Sure, nobody can steal as it is, but I still don't want people loitering around in my stockroom.

^great idea.

Anisu:

I don't like half of the idea, namely the part where they intent to sell upgrade packages. If they are selling upgrades to 1000 items then that either means:
- The database can handle 1000 items per shop in which case one can just give it to shopkeepers straight out.
- It means it can not handle it for all shops, but then at the very least it should be able to handle 500 per shop and they should just give that to every store.
- It really can't handle even that, in which case you might as well hold off on selling upgrades as you are going to be in the same problem as before soon enough.

And unless the the finances gained from those upgrades goes straight to new hardware and/or getting a faster database it really just seems one is trying to profit off the sympathy players have for this problem.

That's a fair argument. I can't speak for Est, having not discussed the current 'top idea' (so to speak) with her nor was I there if/when it was discussed, but I look at it as though a low limit is closer to the range of what would be 'healthy' for the game. Allowing people to expand beyond that is a courtesy, which has to be regulated somehow (with scarce resources, there will always be the 'haves' and 'have nots'), thus a cost up to what might be a riskier but more palatable limit.

I'd like to think that, after all this time, people have more respect for the admin than to think it's all some evil plot to price-gouge, but I can be a bit of an optimist sometimes.

(And that would cut down on, what, 1140 items at most, Kiradawea. :P At a glance there's roughly 100 or so shops at the aetherplex (PORTAL SEARCH SHOPS), add in the max per city possible x 6 that comes to around 280 shops (We can even assume there's 100 shops I'm not seeing), so 380 shops total. That's 1140 sigils, which doesn't account for how many won't be removed (abandoned) and is on the super optimistic side (IE it assumes all cities and communes have 30 shops - which it doesn't, Hallifax has 11, Celest has 23, Seren has 21, Mag has 18, Gaudi has 12, and Glom has 20 - that's 75 less shops than expected, so 225 less sigils, meaning only a possible 915 sigils are removed from the system. This also assumes there's as many shops I can't see as I can, on a quick portal search, which isn't super likely!).

Which is still 1140 items.

In my eyes, making stockrooms behave as if they always have an eye/palm/monolith sigil in them would be a courtsey to the shopkeeper and not to reduce the items in the game. Instead of having to take three spaces out of 250 (before, it was three out of practically unlimited), they'd get that effect for free, allowing them to stock three more regular items. Not a whole lot, but still a little favor to them.