So Kabam, crystals bog down servers, solution?

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

Wicket329

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.

Colinwhitworth69

When laymen try to tell developers how to do their jobs….

unknown

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Collector3000

Why don't you trade CC4 shards for CC4 crystals in the shop? I always do that!

Zeraphan

If crystals are bogging down the servers that leads me to the assumptions that in the code when you get a crystal you actually get an Object of that type of crystal. So every new crystal is another full object in memory. I remember seeing at one point that the champion is chosen (internally) when you get the crystal and that if you opened a Featured it would have the pool of champs from when you got it instead of when you opened it.

For champion crystals this might be the best way to maintain things the way they are. For things like Gold crystals this seems like a huge overhead that is unneeded. If instead when you get a Gold crystal it just increases a counter of how many you have and opening one decreases the counter, that counter variable would take up the same amount of memory regardless of its value.

No_oneuk

Why don’t they just remove gold crystals and just give gold directly to your wallet when you’d normally earn crystals

Cain

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 🤷🏼‍♂️.

Ercarret

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.

Zeraphan

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.

Kabam Miike

Hey there! Some insight: It's not people holding on to a large number of crystals that is a lot of Data, it's the number of Crystals that exist. This is why we do a large opening of crystals every now and then on outdated crystals, so we can remove them from the game files when it's done.

It's not a problem that somebody might have 2000 of 1 Crystal, it's that somebody might have 1 of 2000 different crystals, and even then it's not based on how many any Summoner has... just that the data exists.

Disclaimer: I am not an engineer, and this is my rudimentary understanding of the situation.

Mobile_P0tat0

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

GroundedWisdom

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

Sometime in the morning.

Randomnamegen

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.

unknown

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LeNoirFaineant

You could get rid of some crystals entirely, like regular arena boosts. I have 1938 of those. Quest crystals could go away.

Diablord

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.

DNA3000

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.