Some questions about new skills and transfer.

Parasaurolophus

When Rich Lambert was asked about new skill lines, he said that the game engine has limitations on animation memory and that they can't add new skills because of that. At the review of the new class, he also added that it was years of work on optimizing the game that made it possible to add a new class to the game with new animations. And this is quite strange, considering that every year several new animations appear in the game - mementos or emotes. That is, how does it happen that new animations are actually added to the game, but it is for combat that memory is needed? Does this require some other kind of memory?

The second thing I would like to pay attention to is the transfer. The ZoS has repeatedly stated that it is very difficult technically and they have no plans to work on it. However, characters on the EU server are transferred to the test server, which runs on the US server, every PTS cycle. Why can't you do the same on live servers.

In no way do I want to accuse the company of disinformation. I often support many changes in the game and try to prove to the rest that the changes were correct. But these two points make me think. I just wanted to bring more clarity to these points. Thank you!
@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

Amottica

I’ve never seen Zenimax state that it’s technically difficult to do transfers. In fact, once the tool is created.

All Zenimax has said, that I’m aware of is that they don’t plan to build such a tool.

Considering how simple it can be and that they can generate revenue from transfers the only logical reason I can see is that this comes down to a contractual clause with at least one business partner.

Zenimax would remain silent about the actual reason if it did involve a business partner since it’s extremely bad business to toss a partner under the buss.

Also, transferring to the test server is not the same as it is not a live sever. Ugh kire care is required when transferring to a live server and there are no naming issues when transferring to the PTS since characters from one server are on the PTS at any given time.

PeacefulAnarchy

the transfer issue is about merging not copying. notice that on the pts there's an eu cycle and an na cycle. it's not an issue to copy the data it's an issue to mix the data. a lot of those issues could be resolved with effort and creativity, but definitely would take work to do it and not have errors.

tomofhyrule

They've mentioned why the transfers work and have worked as they do and why it wouldn't work in the way others envision several times. In short, they're doing a copy/replace. The PTS doesn't have NA and EU characters - it's NA or EU, and it gets wiped every time there's a change.

If the target database is empty (so the console databases before they released, or the PTS after the data is wiped), then it's not a problem to copy things into that database. What they can't do is copy things into a database that already has things in it, at least not without MAJOR work trying to change things. As it stands, the only way they could copy the PS server to PC would be to delete everyone currently on PC in the process.

Imagine it this way. Player 1 on PC makes three characters names A, B, and C. Player 2 then makes D and E, Player 3 makes F, G, and H, and Player 4 makes I. So the database has nine characters in in across four players. Imagine also that the console Player 1 has A and B, and then Player 2 makes C, D, E, and F; and then Player 3 (who is an alt account of PC player 2) makes G and H.

Now, let's say console player 2 wants to move to PC. That means that:

• A blank account (Player 5) on PC needs to be created
• PC already has a "player 2," so a temp file needs to be created so all references to Player 2 (console) can be set to point to Player 5 (PC)
• Characters C, D, E, F need to have names and references changed
• All references to old Player 2 (console) need to be removed
• etc.

This is not a trivial process. A lot of people think it's just copy/paste a folder, but there are references all over the game to all of the housing, storage, bank space, etc, and every one of those elements would need to be changed over manually. That would essentially be someone's full-time job, to move a player into a different server. And let's not even pretend that that won't end up with fragmented data and the high potential for bugs and glitches.

Besides, there is definitely some legal-ese in allowing one system to poach from another server. I can't imagine that things like Crown or DLC sales will not give some revenue to the consoles as well, and I can't imagine a company like Sony being very happy about losing more profit potential to Microsoft by letting players jump around.

zaria

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

the transfer issue is about merging not copying. notice that on the pts there's an eu cycle and an na cycle. it's not an issue to copy the data it's an issue to mix the data. a lot of those issues could be resolved with effort and creativity, but definitely would take work to do it and not have errors.

This, all database records has an primary key, this is an number for your account, all characters has an character id and an account id who is linked to the account. Inventory I guess is linked to account and character and if no character id its in the bank. Unlocked stuff like costumes has an account id. Houses also has an account id, but also have an house id used to mart the furniture in them.

The problem with transfer is that these id numbers are likely in use so you need an new, this new id has to be used for all the records under account and the same for character.
You can make an program for this but its work.

Tandor

The other problem is server space. We've already had to sacrifice individual character tracking/achievements because they needed to reduce pressure on the database, and there have always been server performance issues with the present number of players on each server - a number that has continued to grow over time anyway through population growth.

Adding more players to individual servers through transfers would add even more pressure to the database as well as exacerbating performance issues, not least when you consider that the transfer traffic would be essentially one way, as virtually all the demands for platform transfers relate to console players wanting to switch to PC.

Parasaurolophus

Thanks @tomofhyrule for the detailed clarification. But what about combat animations?

zaria

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Thanks @tomofhyrule for the detailed clarification. But what about combat animations?

That confused me to, animations don't take up lots of memory compared to models who again is less than textures.
And we keep getting new emotes like playing instruments and stuff who is much longer than many combat animations.

fizl101

I believe that the statement about animations etc was made quite a while ago (which is where it was mentioned about consoles) but since then they did some significant re-engineering work - you may remember a year or two back everyone had to redownload the game fully, which is when it was then said it was no longer about console limitations. I have a feeling it was discussed on the slashlurk twitch streams which aren't available any more to grab info about it, and search here is having a broken week or two for me