A metrics-driven case for unlimited furnishing storage

tinydog

I propose (as others have) that ZOS should offer an *unlimited* furniture storage option, akin to the craft bag. I understand that there is a forthcoming Furnishing Vault that will contain 500 slots - but if you look at the numbers, that is not nearly enough.

There are over 7800 total furnishing types, of which 3042 are craftable, 573 purchasable from the luxury vendor, 81 from the master writ vendors, 32 with alliance points, 1116 from the crown store, and 779 "other" (including antiquities). Luxury vendor items are only available periodically, once every few months (or sometimes years), so there is a strong incentive to "stock up while you can". Many of the crown store items are only available for a limited time, and/or via crown crates, so again you have to "buy now, use later". Same with event-related furnishings (such as the Jubilee items). Antiquities leads are thrust upon us simply by playing the game, and they expire in 30 days, so again there is incentive to "dig now, use later".

Anyone who participates in housing has encountered major storage challenges, even with ESO+. I have 1624 different types of furniture items stored for future use, 1119 of which are clogging multiple notable homes, where the items do not stack (they take up 2100+ slots). Needless to say, using homes as furniture depots has the unfortunate effect of preventing you from using the home as, you know, a HOME. Instead it's just a dumping ground for excess furnishings. Almost all of my 360 home storage chest slots are full of furnishings. The remaining 158 furnishing types are cluttering my bank and guild bank.

Even with the upcoming Furnishing Vault, housing people such as myself will still need to find a place to store 1000+ excess furnishing types, consisting of many thousands of individual items. Every chapter introduces dozens of new furnishings, many DLCs a few more, every week there are new furnishings at the lux vendor, every event there are yet more new furnishings. The library of furnishings is ever-increasing - which is great - but we have nowhere suitable to store it all!

Please, ZOS. The players have been pleading for unlimited furnishing storage ever since housing became a thing. 500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

virtus753

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8294259/#Comment_8294259

This summarizes what was said in the stream about why they feel they can't do that. Breaking the database server doesn't sound like it would be a pleasant outcome.

LunaFlora

btw you can purchase the new Jubilee and Jester furnishings whenever you want from the Holiday Achievement Furnisher in Elden Root, Mournhold, Wayrest, Vivec City, and Alinor

tinydog

virtus753 wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8294259/#Comment_8294259

This summarizes what was said in the stream about why they feel they can't do that. Breaking the database server doesn't sound like it would be a pleasant outcome.

Software developer here, with 25 years of database experience. Players already have thousands of pieces of furniture stockpiled - in their bank, guild bank, character inventories, house storage, and placed in their houses. The database records containing the locations of all those items already exist: container ID, furnishing ID, quantity, and/or home ID, coordinates and orientation. Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS, I'm unsure how the addition of a new container with no limit on quantity would adversely affect the database. Indeed it should *help* the database and server, because players wouldn't have to physically place "stored" furnishings in their homes. Incrementing a quantity number shouldn't incur any extra load on the database. Unless, perhaps (and this would seem a strange fear) ZOS is worried that if players have unlimited furnishing storage, they will en masse dump all 7000 types of furnishings into their vault, creating a huge number of additional database records that wouldn't otherwise exist. Realistically, very few players would swan dive into furniture stockpiling like that.

LunaFlora wrote: »

btw you can purchase the new Jubilee and Jester furnishings whenever you want from the Holiday Achievement Furnisher in Elden Root, Mournhold, Wayrest, Vivec City, and Alinor

That's good to know, but I already have the jubilee items: many, many of them. 20 characters times 7 writs per day = a lot of jubilee furnishings.

Dragonnord

tinydog wrote: »

Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS..

ZOS is, so they know what they can or can't do.

Pevey

virtus753 wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8294259/#Comment_8294259

This summarizes what was said in the stream about why they feel they can't do that. Breaking the database server doesn't sound like it would be a pleasant outcome.

This is not a reasonable explanation. Consider that a player bank has 240/480 slots, and any item in the game can be put in or taken out (not just furniture). Does this break the game? Similarly, each character has it's own inventory. Does that break the game?

It sounds like for efficiency, the craft bag is designed a bit differently. Each player has one row in the craft bag, and there is a column for each crafting item. Designing a furniture bag in the same way would result in too many columns. I can buy this. But there is no reason the furniture bag data would have to be modeled in the exact same way.

Consider player collections and stickerbook. Fragments, achievement, etc. Sooooo many different items, and more added to the game all the time. And they manage to model this data.

It can be done.

Pixiepumpkin

Dragonnord wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS..

ZOS is, so they know what they can or can't do.

They also were not able to fix the mail bug until MS bought them out. I would guess an MS engineer helped to solve the issue.

They also said they were at a cap for animations. Again, MS engineers seemed to help solve that issue.

Arunei

Rich explains the Vault
Just for anyone who missed it and wants to see for themselves.

The thing is, there are what, between 600-700 unique crafting mats now? Compared to over 3k different kinds of Furniture. If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like the database for the Craft Bag has a column for each mat hardwired into it, the columns exist whether you have any instance of that item in the Bag or not. Thus Rich saying "it's easier to just count up", which would imply that all the database needs to do is track whether there's a number greater than 0 in any column or not. Having 600-some built-in columns isn't too hard for the database.

However, it sounds like for the Furnishing Vault, there are no built-in columns, and it only creates any when you actually put that item (or a stack of it) into the Vault. Because trying to have a database that has 3,600+ columns at all times is a LOT harder on the server than having a database of 600-ish.

As an example, let's say 10,000 people have ESO+ and that we have 650 unique crafting mats. That's 6.5 million columns the Craft Bag is always tracking. If the Furnishing Vault worked the same way, 10k people having Plus and using 3,600 as the number of unique Furnishings would be 36 million columns the database would have to keep track of all the time. Making the Vault hold 500 unique items means at any given time, if those 10k people have it full, it's only tracking 5 million columns, which is obviously a LOT less than 36m. And I doubt the number of people with active subs is as low as 10k.

So yeah, I can definitely see why it's so limited. It's possible they'll be able to add more slots at some point, but we know they've hit database limits in the past because of why they implemented AWA the way they did.

SilverBride

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

Arunei

SilverBride wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

Boy I wish that was the case for me. I've got so many spare furnishings that I've had to split up stuff between two Houses as well as having stuff in my bank (bigger houses too, Doomchar and Strident Springs, both with 600 slots from ESO+). I only got Doomchar FOR storage because I suck at building from scratch, but being able to free up Strident Springs for actual decorating will be nice.

SilverBride

Arunei wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

Boy I wish that was the case for me. I've got so many spare furnishings that I've had to split up stuff between two Houses as well as having stuff in my bank (bigger houses too, Doomchar and Strident Springs, both with 600 slots from ESO+). I only got Doomchar FOR storage because I suck at building from scratch, but being able to free up Strident Springs for actual decorating will be nice.

I hope the Furnishing Vault helps you to free up your Strident Springs house! I think the Furnishing Vault may more helpful than is obvious at first because it does stack furnishings that take up a slot each in a storage house.

Dragonnord

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS..

ZOS is, so they know what they can or can't do.

They also were not able to fix the mail bug until MS bought them out. I would guess an MS engineer helped to solve the issue.

They also said they were at a cap for animations. Again, MS engineers seemed to help solve that issue.

What mail bug?

Arunei

SilverBride wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

Boy I wish that was the case for me. I've got so many spare furnishings that I've had to split up stuff between two Houses as well as having stuff in my bank (bigger houses too, Doomchar and Strident Springs, both with 600 slots from ESO+). I only got Doomchar FOR storage because I suck at building from scratch, but being able to free up Strident Springs for actual decorating will be nice.

I hope the Furnishing Vault helps you to free up your Strident Springs house! I think the Furnishing Vault may more helpful than is obvious at first because it does stack furnishings that take up a slot each in a storage house.

Thanks lol. I'm wondering if maybe things go well with the Vault if there's any way they might add more space to it in the future, if the database handles it well with the current limit.

Dragonnord wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS..

ZOS is, so they know what they can or can't do.

They also were not able to fix the mail bug until MS bought them out. I would guess an MS engineer helped to solve the issue.

They also said they were at a cap for animations. Again, MS engineers seemed to help solve that issue.

What mail bug?

I'm assuming they mean the mail bug where it wouldn't show up after someone sent you something or after buying something from a trader. Tho...it hasn't been fixed, I was getting it last night still. You get this message that you have undelivered mail because your inbox is full and the mail will pop when you make room...even if your inbox has plenty of free space or is even empty.

tinydog

Arunei wrote: »

Rich explains the Vault
If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like the database for the Craft Bag has a column for each mat hardwired into it, the columns exist whether you have any instance of that item in the Bag or not.

If that is the way their database is designed, I hope they have a good reason for it. Having a table with hundreds of columns is almost always a BAD IDEA - especially if you have to periodically add new columns. Databases are optimized to index and process thousands (or millions) of ROWS, not COLUMNS.

A "properly" normalized table for a furnishing bag should need just a few columns: Account ID, Container ID, Furnishing ID, Quantity. That's about it.

Arunei

tinydog wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Rich explains the Vault
If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like the database for the Craft Bag has a column for each mat hardwired into it, the columns exist whether you have any instance of that item in the Bag or not.

If that is the way their database is designed, I hope they have a good reason for it. Having a table with hundreds of columns is almost always a BAD IDEA - especially if you have to periodically add new columns. Databases are optimized to index and process thousands (or millions) of ROWS, not COLUMNS.

A "properly" normalized table for a furnishing bag should need just a few columns: Account ID, Container ID, Furnishing ID, Quantity. That's about it.

Yeah, I don't know anything about coding, so I'm not sure if my understanding is right or not or if I'm using correct phrasing. Someone with more experience than me will need to listen to Rich's explanation and say if I'm right or wrong.

At the very least it sounds to me like for the Craft Bag, the space for any given mat is always allocated in the database, regardless of whether there are instances of that mat in a person's Bag or not. For example, Bugloss has a spot in the Bag allocated to it whether someone has Bugloss stored or not. But for the Vault it sounds like that space is only allocated once an item is put into it. For the Vault, there's no spot in the database for a Daedric Throne until one is put in there, and if it's removed, that space becomes empty again. Sorta like with computers, space is only taken when something is "physically" allocated installed on a hard drive, and then when that thing is uninstalled or deleted, the space goes back to being free for whatever to use.

Of course I could be completely wrong, but it makes sense (at least to me haha). Craft Bag = a computer having a certain amount of drive disk space ALWAYS allocated for critical system files and the like, Vault = all the rest of the space on the drive only being allocated to a specific thing as long as it's installed/present.

Pevey

I don't think they're concerned so much about the storage size of the data as they are about the performance of update queries, so the way the craft bag is designed might make perfect sense. I'm not passing any judgement on that. I'm just saying, there is a way. Anyone who has done any database work knows there are multiple ways to model furniture bag data. You try a few different ways, do some benchmarking, and pick the way that optimizes for the operations you care most about.

Ruthless

SilverBride wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

I just have a guild bank full of lux furnishings and its not enough just for them

Ruthless

would cold Storage Vault work... where you have 500 active furnishings and the rest are in cold storage ?

dont know how data base works but make cold storage slow or something

SilverBride

Ruthless wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

500 slots is perhaps adequate for casual homeowners, but it's not nearly enough for people who actually DO housing.

I do housing. I have decorated 50 houses so far and 500 slots is way more than enough to hold all my furnishings.

I just have a guild bank full of lux furnishings and its not enough just for them

The main reason I don't have a lot of lux furnishings is that there are very few of those that I like enough to buy. I'm not into dead animal bones, or Daedric stuff, or Clockwork, or glowing plants, etc.. I do purchase the Mammoth and Bear Figurines when they are for sale because I put them in all my houses. And I buy the red Imperial curtains because I use them a lot, too. But that's about it.

spartaxoxo

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

tinydog wrote: »

Though I'm not familiar with the specific database schema used by ZOS..

ZOS is, so they know what they can or can't do.

They also were not able to fix the mail bug until MS bought them out. I would guess an MS engineer helped to solve the issue.

They also said they were at a cap for animations. Again, MS engineers seemed to help solve that issue.

They announced they had been at cap after they had already solved it and it was only for some odd months.

zaria

Pevey wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8294259/#Comment_8294259

This summarizes what was said in the stream about why they feel they can't do that. Breaking the database server doesn't sound like it would be a pleasant outcome.

This is not a reasonable explanation. Consider that a player bank has 240/480 slots, and any item in the game can be put in or taken out (not just furniture). Does this break the game? Similarly, each character has it's own inventory. Does that break the game?

It sounds like for efficiency, the craft bag is designed a bit differently. Each player has one row in the craft bag, and there is a column for each crafting item. Designing a furniture bag in the same way would result in too many columns. I can buy this. But there is no reason the furniture bag data would have to be modeled in the exact same way.

Consider player collections and stickerbook. Fragments, achievement, etc. Sooooo many different items, and more added to the game all the time. And they manage to model this data.

It can be done.

Now I assume the furniture vault will be an furniture like the storage chests, this has the major benefit for ZoS that they are not loaded until you enter an house you own. People already uses chests to store furniture and this expands on it.
People already using free houses as furniture warehouses, you can still do that for items you have one of and use the vault for the things you have multiple off.