Player Associations Archive
Thread: A reasoned argument on the Lot to Item storage Ratio.
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narzy
Sat Nov 27, 2004 4:51 pm
#1
I am currently facing an issue with my guild, My guild is primarily a rare loot guild, we work to get some of the harder items in the game such as bounty hunter armor, RIS armor, DE-10s, Bezzerker rifle ect...As we collect more and more of the rare game items we like to display or show them off at our guild hall. This is where I run in to the problem, I run out of space. Now I know this argument / debate / issue / concern / call it what you want...has been discussed before, however with the recent Loot revamp I would like to address it once again.
If we look at lot allication we can see that the guild hall might need to be tweeked as to the number of items it can hold. If I lay down a small planetary house it takes 2 lots and holds 150 items with 10 lots I can set down 5 houses and hold 750 items in all of the houses combined. Now lets relate this to the guild hall lot to item ratio
A guild hall takes 7 lots and holds 250 items
2 small houses take 4 lots and hold 300 items
6 small houses take 6 lots and hold 450 items
The ratio oh small houses is 75 items per lot meaning in theory the guild hall should have a storage of 525 items. With the size of the guild hall this makes sense, this give you an opertunity to show off most if not all loot items your guild has, as well as utilize the basement for some rather cool decores.
in conclusion, please increase the PA hall storage limit to a lot to item appropriate level.
If we look at lot allication we can see that the guild hall might need to be tweeked as to the number of items it can hold. If I lay down a small planetary house it takes 2 lots and holds 150 items with 10 lots I can set down 5 houses and hold 750 items in all of the houses combined. Now lets relate this to the guild hall lot to item ratio
A guild hall takes 7 lots and holds 250 items
2 small houses take 4 lots and hold 300 items
6 small houses take 6 lots and hold 450 items
The ratio oh small houses is 75 items per lot meaning in theory the guild hall should have a storage of 525 items. With the size of the guild hall this makes sense, this give you an opertunity to show off most if not all loot items your guild has, as well as utilize the basement for some rather cool decores.
in conclusion, please increase the PA hall storage limit to a lot to item appropriate level.
Rothin
Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:18 pm
#2
I agree with the upcoming loot changes that I wish we could get some more attention dropped on this issue as Guild leaders and the 7 lots it takes for a PA. I know that they've been reworking the database to make it more efficient and control some of the other systems people were abusing for storage (like the old unlimited vendor one) and such. But we've yet to really see any benefit back from those changes.
I think that PAs, since they are supposed to be an achievement in the game, should have a much higher storage limit. Right now the 250 leaves very little room for decoration, which is why you only see the main rooms in most PAs decorated fully and the rest scarce, if anything at all in them. While 525 would technically be what it should be, I think most of us would appreciate it if it even went up to say 400, though the higher the better.
The PA halls mostly become a burden for PAs since most like to do what yours does and that's collect items to show off as decorations. It gives us a sense of pride and accomplishment and with the current system it doesn't leave us with any options. This has always been one of our top 5s and hopefully with the new Correspondent it will stay that way and get sent to the devs for consideration again.
AudioOrgana
Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:43 pm
#3
Rothin wrote:
I agree with the upcoming loot changes that I wish we could get some more attention dropped on this issue as Guild leaders and the 7 lots it takes for a PA.
Honestly, don't hold your breath. The only PA hall that always took 7 lots was the Tatooine, the rest of the halls only taking 7 lots is a new feature.
My feeling is that if they were going to increase item count, they wouldn't have reduced lots. I think it was a response to "hey, this takes so many lots yet we get no extra items over a large house?" - so instead of doing what we begged and increasing storage limits they reduced the cost. So, in their eyes, it's "even" now, you pay the one extra lot for the guild terminal features.
This weekend I am finally taking my PA hall down. I'm not guilded, but I moved into a Tatooine PA hall about a year ago after I fell in love with the architecture. The sunken living room just screamed "throne room" to me and I've had one ever since. I have meticulously decorated the main floor and the two small upstaris rooms and 250 items was just about enough to cover it. However, I have a HUGE lower floor that has never been used - I actually block off the entrance with a statue.
There are a half-dozen rooms down there that I've had dreams and plans of how to fill when they eventually upped item limits - but this weekend I've given up. I'm tired of waiting, and wasting seven lots when I could just display my loot in a medium house and be done with it. Don't even need a large - I'll just put the "good" stuff in a small gallery and that will be it.
It's really sad to me - we watch them fill up the database with useless, redundant crap all the time (and I'm not talking about the new loot - which I love) and they give us these huge, beautiful buildings and then tell us we'll never be able to fill them more than half-full. Honestly - this is the most depressing thing about SWG to me. It's like giving you a big, magnificent canvas to paint on and telling you that you can only use two colors and can only paint in one corner. If you aren't allowed to make full use of it, what's the point?
AO
AO
CaseytheHutt
Sun Nov 28, 2004 8:04 am
#4
Actually, while most houses follow the 75:1 rule you can actually do better storage-wise, since factories actually let you store 100:1 items:lots. So it's logically reasonable that a guild hall could step up to even 700 items. I really do not understand why the cap isn't raised. I understand that they want to control the total number of items in the game - hence the 75:1 or 100:1 limit. But to set guild halls at around 36:1 is basically penalizing the owner for creating a guild (or even for just placing the building) by reducing their total item storage from 750 or more to 475. It's grossly unfair.
Rothin
Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:49 am
#5
AudioOrgana wrote:
Rothin wrote:
I agree with the upcoming loot changes that I wish we could get some more attention dropped on this issue as Guild leaders and the 7 lots it takes for a PA.
Honestly, don't hold your breath. The only PA hall that always took 7 lots was the Tatooine, the rest of the halls only taking 7 lots is a new feature.
Don't worry, if I were holding my breath for a change I don't think I'd be posting here anymore! 
It is something that needs to be addressed in the game though. They've made all kinds of stride to improve the database on their end and we've yet to see any benefit out of it except a little more frustration. I don't think asking to increase storage space, even just a small amount, on houses is asking too much at this point. Just with the space they saved when making the merchant changes should make nearly enough room for a small change in housing storage. If you consider that some merchants were hold many thousands of items as storage and then on top of what they were actually selling I think it makes sense.
While I don't expect to see these changes soon, it doesn't mean we shouldn't still voice our concern over the matter. If we don't keep speaking up about a matter, they'll assume that we don't need it addressed anymore and that wouldn't be very healthy for any structure owner. Maybe we can team up with the Architects and voice it that way since it effects them even more so than it does us.
CaseytheHutt
Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:58 am
#6
Personally, I'd really like to see them equalize everything out with factories - 100:1 storage to lots on all structures equally. Merchant tent and that round small Naboo house : 100 items. Small & medium houses : 200 items. Hospitals, cantinas, and theatres : 300 items. Large houses : 600 items. Guild halls : 700 items. The only perplexing part would be civic structures that don't take up lots, though I don't know if you even can place stuff in a cloning facility so the only real issue is a city hall. Having struggled with decorating a city hall, I can attest to the current 250 limit being inadequate - ideally I'd like to see them with 600 units like a large house but I could live with 450-500 I suppose.
Chavabegga
Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:56 pm
#7
I would agree, having everything balance to factories would be great. However, I would be satisified balancing with the small house 75:1 ratio. But even if you its not increased that much, it needs to be increase by some. So do large houses. If I can place three small houses and use 6 lots and store almost double what I could in a large house or PA hall at 6 and 7 lots then there is something wrong.
But this is a LONG standing issue. All the database work was to accomodate JTL and the new loot I would think.
It is rather silly. We are given all this cool stuff to place in our homes. Then we are given even more stuff. We are given a large number of items we need to store in order to craft. And then we are told we can only store so much.
But this is a LONG standing issue. All the database work was to accomodate JTL and the new loot I would think.
It is rather silly. We are given all this cool stuff to place in our homes. Then we are given even more stuff. We are given a large number of items we need to store in order to craft. And then we are told we can only store so much.
CaseytheHutt
Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:15 pm
#8
Honestly, I've often pondered the practicality of a "warehouse" structure that would use something like 5 lots but offer much larger storage limits (like 1K items or such). Why should the devs do that? Because if done right it could actually LESSEN the load on the database server. Here's why : instead of having stuff in a warehouse all be sitting in the house as active items the warehouse should work like a vendor stockroom but with a delay. Meaning items requested from the warehouse take a few minutes to load in. Why? Because what's actually happening is when an item is placed in the warehouse the items are being removed from the active database and archived to a seperate, low performance / high volume database. See, the problem with the database is not that you can't make a database big enough to handle all the items. The problem is that trying to make a database with enough storage to handle all the items AND enough performance to prevent any lag in the game is a monumental task. So why not move the bulk of the unused items to a seperate store and have them accessed in such a way that performance is a non-issue?
Rothin
Mon Nov 29, 2004 8:03 am
#9
The last idea of the warehouse structure is very interesting idea and seems pretty feasible that it could be done. If done correctly it certainly would lessen the strain. As far as a transfer of the items to the new one, that would be done when people moved items into the new structure and then free up more space on the current db.
It would probably need a good deal of testing and they'd have to back up two sets of DB vs one incase of crashes, but I think it'd pay off for performance overall.
CaseytheHutt
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:17 am
#10
Yeah, it's another of those things I've been batting around in the back of my head for a while trying to poke holes in. But it seems pretty much a win-win all the way around.
Arg0nus
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:22 am
#11
As has been stated before, there's a DBase issue.
How many of you have actually worked with Oracle? It's the DBase program they use.
Oracle is evil. It doesn't take kindly to changes without crashing, repeatedly and hard.
As long as you don't try to make major changes to the DBase...It runs great. But the minute you try to update or change something....It explodes with not so nice results.
While I 100% agree that the Lot/Space ratio should be increased....It's doubtful it will happen.
CaseytheHutt
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:35 am
#12
Heh - I think that's a little overstated. Oracle is one of the most commonly used db servers on the planet and is the foundation of the datasystems of many of the companies we deal with on a daily basis - and none of them routinely crash their servers. It's not quite as idiot-proof as say MSSQL but it's hardly a jalopy held together with toothpicks and bubblegum. Besides, the warehouse solution I'm talking about would require absolutely no changes to the current database infrastructure. All they would need to do is add an additional db server with MUCH lower performance requirements and a huge (yet very cheap) datastore to hold all the "extra" parts not actively being used.
Rothin
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:39 am
#13
Arg0nus wrote:
As has been stated before, there's a DBase issue.
How many of you have actually worked with Oracle? It's the DBase program they use.
Oracle is evil. It doesn't take kindly to changes without crashing, repeatedly and hard.
As long as you don't try to make major changes to the DBase...It runs great. But the minute you try to update or change something....It explodes with not so nice results.
While I 100% agree that the Lot/Space ratio should be increased....It's doubtful it will happen.
This is a reason for testnig the process thoroughly before trying to impliment, not a reason not to try it. That's why test center and other test clusters exist, for testing purposes. If they refused to do anything that messed with the database then they wouldn't make any changes from day one.
I've worked with Oracle a bit in my time and yes it's not the greatest thing when it comes to changes but that is no reason to refuse a possible change that could increase game performance overall.
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