So Kabam, crystals bog down servers, solution?

CainCain Member Posts: 559 ★★
in General Discussion



Take away inventory caps for max level player or at least TB players (or the new title that may come with completion/exploration of Act 7)

Without inventory caps there is virtually no reason to hoard any crystals. Sure it may take a little from sales but would be less taxing on the servers for sure I imagine based on conversations I’ve seen here? For instance I have a ton of 4hr crystals, AQ crystals, T1-4 class cat/frag crystals etc.

If there was no risk of them being wasted I’d open them all tomorrow?

Thoughts from the team and community?

Comments

  • Collector3000Collector3000 Member Posts: 13 ★
    Why don't you trade CC4 shards for CC4 crystals in the shop? I always do that!
  • CainCain Member Posts: 559 ★★
    Wicket329 said:

    This assumes that holding an unlimited amount of catalysts in your inventory would not also bog down the servers, and I don’t think we can make that assumption.

    That’s a fair point that I didn’t think of, and I’m not trying to tell devs how to do their job. it’s just an idea and if its wrong and wrong 💙🤘🏼. I wouldn’t think that resources require as much processing/storage because there are less variables? But that could be totally wrong 🤷🏼‍♂️.
  • ErcarretErcarret Member Posts: 2,951 ★★★★★
    I don't think infinite inventory is the way to go but I found that my own stash of t4cc fragment crystals dwindled pretty quickly when I got the Sigil and through it the ability to trade those in for full t4cc crystals. I think these kinds of trade-ins are QoL things that shouldn't be behind a paywall, and I think they could be expanded upon to keep people's crystals in check. If you could easily trade t3cc crystals into t4cc crystal fragment crystals and then those into full t4cc crystals, my t3cc crystals would probably disappear in a flash since I almost never need them but am always in need of t4cc.

    I think you could do something similar with arena boost crystals. Let us trade regular ones that no one uses for greater ones that are what people use. Now I just have a ton of regular ones that serve no purpose whatsoever.

    And finally, fix quest crystals. Preferably in a manner that makes them worthwhile to open individually, but moving the (again) QoL Sigil feature to convert 100 of them into something more worthwhile into FTP would allow people to get rid of them. Because when I'm FTP, I just can't be bothered with opening those.
  • ZeraphanZeraphan Member Posts: 324 ★★★
    Cain said:

    Wicket329 said:

    This assumes that holding an unlimited amount of catalysts in your inventory would not also bog down the servers, and I don’t think we can make that assumption.

    That’s a fair point that I didn’t think of, and I’m not trying to tell devs how to do their job. it’s just an idea and if its wrong and wrong 💙🤘🏼. I wouldn’t think that resources require as much processing/storage because there are less variables? But that could be totally wrong 🤷🏼‍♂️.
    It totally depends on the internal design. If catalysts for example are just a variable that holds a numeric value of how many you have, then the actual value of that number doesn't change the memory size. So in that instance infinite catalysts wouldn't effect anything. If on the other hand catalysts somehow have some element for each one, then they would be no different than crystals in the memory usage.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,619 ★★★★★
    Mobile_P0tat0 said:

    So... when are you going to open up the egg?

    Sometime in the morning.
  • RandomnamegenRandomnamegen Member Posts: 1 ★
    Oooo, it's a question of database storage. Let's say there are 1000 players and each has 5 different types of crystals (maybe gold, greater gold, t4cc, t3cc, etc.) that's 5000 rows in the database (think row like in Excel or Google sheets). If a player gets another crystal of a type they already have, it just increases some counter for that row rather than adding a new row. If they get a new type of crystal, that's a new row.

    Now we need an efficient way to look up how much of each crystal each player has so it can be used places like on the crystals screen. That means we need an index that has the player and crystal. Think of the same data mentioned above, but sorted in a super special way (how data is stored, the order that it's stored in, and how it's retrieved is a really in depth topic that I'm going to gloss over). Each type of crystal means another in instance of the index, and storage can get really expensive really quick. Also, too much data in an index that contains too much info in a level of the index (like number of players or types of crystals in this example) becomes less useful and data retrieval is slower.

    Anywho, I could be horribly wrong but that's my take based on my experience with databases and other stuff. I'm sure this is a drastic oversimplification especially since the number of players greatly outweighs everything else.
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  • LeNoirFaineantLeNoirFaineant Member Posts: 8,675 ★★★★★
    You could get rid of some crystals entirely, like regular arena boosts. I have 1938 of those. Quest crystals could go away.
  • DiablordDiablord Member Posts: 598 ★★★
    Ercarret said:

    I don't think infinite inventory is the way to go but I found that my own stash of t4cc fragment crystals dwindled pretty quickly when I got the Sigil and through it the ability to trade those in for full t4cc crystals. I think these kinds of trade-ins are QoL things that shouldn't be behind a paywall, and I think they could be expanded upon to keep people's crystals in check. If you could easily trade t3cc crystals into t4cc crystal fragment crystals and then those into full t4cc crystals, my t3cc crystals would probably disappear in a flash since I almost never need them but am always in need of t4cc.

    I think you could do something similar with arena boost crystals. Let us trade regular ones that no one uses for greater ones that are what people use. Now I just have a ton of regular ones that serve no purpose whatsoever.

    And finally, fix quest crystals. Preferably in a manner that makes them worthwhile to open individually, but moving the (again) QoL Sigil feature to convert 100 of them into something more worthwhile into FTP would allow people to get rid of them. Because when I'm FTP, I just can't be bothered with opening those.

    Maybe allow selling of crystals? Crystals like the map 3 aq crystal, tier 3 class catalyst crystal and t3/t2cc crystals are pretty much useless.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,832 Guardian
    Randomnamegen said:

    Oooo, it's a question of database storage. Let's say there are 1000 players and each has 5 different types of crystals (maybe gold, greater gold, t4cc, t3cc, etc.) that's 5000 rows in the database (think row like in Excel or Google sheets). If a player gets another crystal of a type they already have, it just increases some counter for that row rather than adding a new row. If they get a new type of crystal, that's a new row.

    Now we need an efficient way to look up how much of each crystal each player has so it can be used places like on the crystals screen. That means we need an index that has the player and crystal. Think of the same data mentioned above, but sorted in a super special way (how data is stored, the order that it's stored in, and how it's retrieved is a really in depth topic that I'm going to gloss over). Each type of crystal means another in instance of the index, and storage can get really expensive really quick. Also, too much data in an index that contains too much info in a level of the index (like number of players or types of crystals in this example) becomes less useful and data retrieval is slower.

    Anywho, I could be horribly wrong but that's my take based on my experience with databases and other stuff. I'm sure this is a drastic oversimplification especially since the number of players greatly outweighs everything else.

    You're probably in the general ballpark, but the game has to be using a different kind of data architecture. If it was doing it the way you're describing, they would have to use sparce inventory records (vis-a-vis the number of players you mention). But sparce records would eliminate the benefit of crystal clean up. There's probably some meta caching or other level that the crystal clean up helps.
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