Sealed Master Crafting Writ Adjustment

Defatank

ZOS,

When we receive master writs instead of giving us a sealed writ that we open that we may not be able to craft, can you please change it to where we are given the master writ knowing what it is and then we can choose to seal the writ which would then become stackable? It kind of defeats the purpose for sealed writs if I open them and I cant craft them and I cant reseal the ones I cant craft to save space.

Thank you,
Defatank

code65536

That's impossible.

The reason that they are stackable is because in their sealed form, the master writ inside does not yet exist. So they are all identical, which means that the server can record a stack of 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "20 copies".

Once you open it, that's when it actually creates the master writ, which generates new information (the writ's requirements) that the server must now track. So if you unsealed 20 writs, you've now generated 20 new separate and unique pieces of information for the requirements of each of those writs. And so it is now no longer possible to describe those 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information as you could before.

To go back to recording 20 writs with just two pieces of information, you'd need to destroy that extra information that's unique to each writ, but then that opens up exploitative behavior. E.g., someone might unseal an Enchanting writ and see that it asks for Hakeijo, reseal it, and then unseal it to "re-roll" the writ in hopes of getting something different.

I highly doubt that ZOS would be okay with "re-rolling" behavior, in which case resealing will never be a thing.

This, BTW, is the exact same reason why only unused siege can be stacked. Once a siege is used, it gains a new, unique piece of information (its remaining hitpoints), which prevents it from being lumped in with the other unused siege.

Defatank

code65536 wrote: »

That's impossible.

The reason that they are stackable is because in their sealed form, the master writ inside does not yet exist. So they are all identical, which means that the server can record a stack of 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "20 copies".

Once you open it, that's when it actually creates the master writ, which generates new information (the writ's requirements) that the server must now track. So if you unsealed 20 writs, you've now generated 20 new separate and unique pieces of information for the requirements of each of those writs. And so it is now no longer possible to describe those 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information as you could before.

To go back to recording 20 writs with just two pieces of information, you'd need to destroy that extra information that's unique to each writ, but then that opens up exploitative behavior. E.g., someone might unseal an Enchanting writ and see that it asks for Hakeijo, reseal it, and then unseal it to "re-roll" the writ in hopes of getting something different.

I highly doubt that ZOS would be okay with "re-rolling" behavior, in which case resealing will never be a thing.

This, BTW, is the exact same reason why only unused siege can be stacked. Once a siege is used, it gains a new, unique piece of information (its remaining hitpoints), which prevents it from being lumped in with the other unused siege.

Nothing is impossible to do. The question is how do we make it possible. The devs could very easily create an object labeled "sealed <craft> master writ" this object stacks regardless of stats on the roll of the master writ. Right clicking on a Master Writ and selecting "seal" would simply label it as a "sealed <craft> master writ" while preserving its stats and then when you go back into your bank / inventory and click the "sealed <craft> master writ" it would open a pop window with a scroll bar that you could go down through and select which rolled writ you want to pull out of the sealed group to your inventory. This would take care of a couple of issues.

1. You wouldn't have to reseal all your writs just to get one out of say the middle of the pile.
2. It allows you to conserve space in your bank for master writs you dont yet know but working on getting the capability to make.

Going with my suggestion could be some database issues of course having to stack up all that data of what the rolls are so in that case I would suggest making the sealed writs stack in groups of 10 or 20 because lets face it by the time you get that high in writs you're probably going to chip away at whats there anyways and 2 anything you didn't know you're probably going to have some things researched / new styles etc to make some of them and still stacking in 10 or 20 still preserves alot of space.

We definitely do not want people to be able to "reroll" master writs simply by sealing / unsealing, but it does raise the question... What if there was a reroll option? <x> amount of gold to reroll? <x> amount of resources? a cool down <x> per day you can reroll? Maybe another crafting line focused around master writs with passive perks to sway stats, cooldown reduction, more rerolls per day? I can keep coming up with more ideas here but hopefully we all see that the "oh its not possible" route is just not using our imagination enough ESO absolutely redefined alot of things of "thats just how MMO's work" and I believe we need to continue growing the game in that manner of pushing the limits, giving freedom and quite frankly doing things that other MMO's dont do / do things in a much more efficient manner.

code65536

Defatank wrote: »

The devs could very easily create an object labeled "sealed <craft> master writ" this object stacks regardless of stats on the roll of the master writ. Right clicking on a Master Writ and selecting "seal" would simply label it as a "sealed <craft> master writ" while preserving its stats and then when you go back into your bank / inventory and click the "sealed <craft> master writ" it would open a pop window with a scroll bar that you could go down through and select which rolled writ you want to pull out of the sealed group to your inventory.

You're completely missing the point. It doesn't matter if they just take up zero space in your inventory, or if they make a special bottomless bank to hold them, or if they make a container that sits in your inventory to hold them--those are all just different ways of dressing up the same thing. What matters is what's actually going on inside.

The important thing here is this: For sealed writs, you need only 2 pieces of information to describe any number of writs. Got a stack of 10 writs? 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "10 in this stack". Got a stack of 100 writs? Still only 2 pieces of information. Even though you have 10x more writs, the amount of information needed doesn't change.

But once you unseal them, then going from 10 writs to 100 writs will require 10x more information to be stored by the server. It doesn't matter if you stuff them into envelopes or whatever scheme you can dream up of, because the only thing that matters is how much information storage they are costing.

In case you haven't noticed, ZOS has been on a crusade to trim the information storage fat. It's why character achievements were made account-wide. It's why mail expiration times have been cut. And this whole sealed writ thing actually saves them a lot of storage space because someone hoarding 100 alchemy writs will now only take 1% of the information storage (at least until they unseal them, but most people will likely only unseal them when they're about to do them, so they won't linger around for long).

Defatank

code65536 wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

The devs could very easily create an object labeled "sealed <craft> master writ" this object stacks regardless of stats on the roll of the master writ. Right clicking on a Master Writ and selecting "seal" would simply label it as a "sealed <craft> master writ" while preserving its stats and then when you go back into your bank / inventory and click the "sealed <craft> master writ" it would open a pop window with a scroll bar that you could go down through and select which rolled writ you want to pull out of the sealed group to your inventory.

You're completely missing the point. It doesn't matter if they just take up zero space in your inventory, or if they make a special bottomless bank to hold them, or if they make a container that sits in your inventory to hold them--those are all just different ways of dressing up the same thing. What matters is what's actually going on inside.

The important thing here is this: For sealed writs, you need only 2 pieces of information to describe any number of writs. Got a stack of 10 writs? 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "10 in this stack". Got a stack of 100 writs? Still only 2 pieces of information. Even though you have 10x more writs, the amount of information needed doesn't change.

But once you unseal them, then going from 10 writs to 100 writs will require 10x more information to be stored by the server. It doesn't matter if you stuff them into envelopes or whatever scheme you can dream up of, because the only thing that matters is how much information storage they are costing.

In case you haven't noticed, ZOS has been on a crusade to trim the information storage fat. It's why character achievements were made account-wide. It's why mail expiration times have been cut. And this whole sealed writ thing actually saves them a lot of storage space because someone hoarding 100 alchemy writs will now only take 1% of the information storage (at least until they unseal them, but most people will likely only unseal them when they're about to do them, so they won't linger around for long).

Absolutely agree with what youre saying about trimming down storage and that is a good thing.

Maybe the better solution here would be to focus on my other recommendation? Having a rerolling option for master writs? Additional crafting skill line specifically for Master Writs to help with rolls / rerolls?

LootAllTheStuff

Defatank wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

That's impossible.

The reason that they are stackable is because in their sealed form, the master writ inside does not yet exist. So they are all identical, which means that the server can record a stack of 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "20 copies".

Once you open it, that's when it actually creates the master writ, which generates new information (the writ's requirements) that the server must now track. So if you unsealed 20 writs, you've now generated 20 new separate and unique pieces of information for the requirements of each of those writs. And so it is now no longer possible to describe those 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information as you could before.

To go back to recording 20 writs with just two pieces of information, you'd need to destroy that extra information that's unique to each writ, but then that opens up exploitative behavior. E.g., someone might unseal an Enchanting writ and see that it asks for Hakeijo, reseal it, and then unseal it to "re-roll" the writ in hopes of getting something different.

I highly doubt that ZOS would be okay with "re-rolling" behavior, in which case resealing will never be a thing.

This, BTW, is the exact same reason why only unused siege can be stacked. Once a siege is used, it gains a new, unique piece of information (its remaining hitpoints), which prevents it from being lumped in with the other unused siege.

Nothing is impossible to do. The question is how do we make it possible. The devs could very easily

I'm going to jump in right here and ask if you know what the game code actually looks like, what object dependencies this might affect, and how it will impact data storage. It's very easy to say that something is very easy, but that doesn't make it so.

Anyway:

create an object labeled "sealed <craft> master writ" this object stacks regardless of stats on the roll of the master writ. Right clicking on a Master Writ and selecting "seal" would simply label it as a "sealed <craft> master writ" while preserving its stats and then when you go back into your bank / inventory and click the "sealed <craft> master writ" it would open a pop window with a scroll bar that you could go down through and select which rolled writ you want to pull out of the sealed group to your inventory. This would take care of a couple of issues.

1. You wouldn't have to reseal all your writs just to get one out of say the middle of the pile.

And how are you going to find the one you want in the middle of the pile? To do that, you'd either need to unstack every single writ until you find the one you're looking for (and that could very easily be a hundred or more judging by posts in other threads about writs), or ZOS would have to create a new level in the inventory interface so you could 'enter' and select from a sub-list of writs within the stack.

2. It allows you to conserve space in your bank for master writs you dont yet know but working on getting the capability to make.

But as @code65536 pointed out, this doesn't reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored if you want the contents of each writ to be preserved.

Going with my suggestion could be some database issues of course having to stack up all that data of what the rolls are so in that case I would suggest making the sealed writs stack in groups of 10 or 20 because lets face it by the time you get that high in writs you're probably going to chip away at whats there anyways and 2 anything you didn't know you're probably going to have some things researched / new styles etc to make some of them and still stacking in 10 or 20 still preserves alot of space.

But limiting the number of sealed writs per stack doesn't actually reduce the number of bytes of information being stored at all; if anything, it increases it because you now have n stacks of m writs, each of which has all their associated data. It just makes it more complicated.

Let's face it: the game is 11 years old now. ZOS has found a way to graft on a feature that looks somewhat like the one people were requesting on top of that code base. It doesn't function exactly how many players want it to but, at this point, ZOS have already incurred considerable technical debt in terms of code dependencies and data structures that limit what can be done. If the requested feature had been built in from the beginning, it's likely it would be more intuitive and user friendly, but that's not what happened.

Defatank

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

That's impossible.

The reason that they are stackable is because in their sealed form, the master writ inside does not yet exist. So they are all identical, which means that the server can record a stack of 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information: "sealed writ" and "20 copies".

Once you open it, that's when it actually creates the master writ, which generates new information (the writ's requirements) that the server must now track. So if you unsealed 20 writs, you've now generated 20 new separate and unique pieces of information for the requirements of each of those writs. And so it is now no longer possible to describe those 20 writs with just 2 pieces of information as you could before.

To go back to recording 20 writs with just two pieces of information, you'd need to destroy that extra information that's unique to each writ, but then that opens up exploitative behavior. E.g., someone might unseal an Enchanting writ and see that it asks for Hakeijo, reseal it, and then unseal it to "re-roll" the writ in hopes of getting something different.

I highly doubt that ZOS would be okay with "re-rolling" behavior, in which case resealing will never be a thing.

This, BTW, is the exact same reason why only unused siege can be stacked. Once a siege is used, it gains a new, unique piece of information (its remaining hitpoints), which prevents it from being lumped in with the other unused siege.

Nothing is impossible to do. The question is how do we make it possible. The devs could very easily

I'm going to jump in right here and ask if you know what the game code actually looks like, what object dependencies this might affect, and how it will impact data storage. It's very easy to say that something is very easy, but that doesn't make it so.

Anyway:

create an object labeled "sealed <craft> master writ" this object stacks regardless of stats on the roll of the master writ. Right clicking on a Master Writ and selecting "seal" would simply label it as a "sealed <craft> master writ" while preserving its stats and then when you go back into your bank / inventory and click the "sealed <craft> master writ" it would open a pop window with a scroll bar that you could go down through and select which rolled writ you want to pull out of the sealed group to your inventory. This would take care of a couple of issues.

1. You wouldn't have to reseal all your writs just to get one out of say the middle of the pile.

And how are you going to find the one you want in the middle of the pile? To do that, you'd either need to unstack every single writ until you find the one you're looking for (and that could very easily be a hundred or more judging by posts in other threads about writs), or ZOS would have to create a new level in the inventory interface so you could 'enter' and select from a sub-list of writs within the stack.

2. It allows you to conserve space in your bank for master writs you dont yet know but working on getting the capability to make.

But as @code65536 pointed out, this doesn't reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored if you want the contents of each writ to be preserved.

Going with my suggestion could be some database issues of course having to stack up all that data of what the rolls are so in that case I would suggest making the sealed writs stack in groups of 10 or 20 because lets face it by the time you get that high in writs you're probably going to chip away at whats there anyways and 2 anything you didn't know you're probably going to have some things researched / new styles etc to make some of them and still stacking in 10 or 20 still preserves alot of space.

But limiting the number of sealed writs per stack doesn't actually reduce the number of bytes of information being stored at all; if anything, it increases it because you now have n stacks of m writs, each of which has all their associated data. It just makes it more complicated.

Let's face it: the game is 11 years old now. ZOS has found a way to graft on a feature that looks somewhat like the one people were requesting on top of that code base. It doesn't function exactly how many players want it to but, at this point, ZOS have already incurred considerable technical debt in terms of code dependencies and data structures that limit what can be done. If the requested feature had been built in from the beginning, it's likely it would be more intuitive and user friendly, but that's not what happened.

1. My apologies that I didn't make my statement more granular for understanding the overall difficulty of the task. Yes its going to be hard thats part of the "question is how do we make it possible" no matter what the task is, figuring out how to do it is always the hard part. It still doesn't take away my original statement that nothing is impossible to do. Is it feasible to make it happen? Thats another question. My point was to just "oh its not possible blah blah blah" is near sighted thinking. To answer your question of my own capabilities its been quite a few years since I've done coding, I've done it in my days but my expertise is actually in networking

2. I actually commented in my reply about the database requirements of doing something like that and mentioned that possibly making stacks smaller to accommodate the requirements which leads me into the next point... I'm not sure how difficult finding 1 item in a stack of 10 would be? but for some maybe it would? Now if you had 10 stacks of 10 yea that would be a bit annoying to have to peek in 10 stacks for 1 item, but again the focus of sealing them would be to contain the ones that you CANT craft until you CAN craft them and then do them to get them out of your inventory, get the reward and move on to finding more of the master writs which leads me into my third thought of your reply...

3. Going back to my last proposal of rerolling master writs, this would greatly help cut down the number of master writs you CANT craft as it most likely would give you something that you CAN craft with a reroll. Maybe that would be something else to consider with rerolling that when you reroll maybe the master writ binds to your account? Or its a guarantee that it'll be something that you can craft? Again ALOT of thinking and great ideas could still come from this suggestions that would help keep master writs out of your inventory / bank and keep you making writs you can do or maybe want to sell (if you dont bind them on reroll)

Final thought WoW is 20+ years old and they're making huge changes to their game to adapt to features that ESO has had from the beginning. So the argument of "ESO is old leave it alone" is also near sighted thinking and it goes back to what I again originally said. Nothing is impossible... the question is how do we do it. Yes its much easier said than done, I never said the task being completed would be easy. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it to make millions of dollars on a digital IP. Kudos to the devs for what they have created and will continue to create

SeaGtGruff

code65536 wrote: »

In case you haven't noticed, ZOS has been on a crusade to trim the information storage fat. It's why character achievements were made account-wide. It's why mail expiration times have been cut. And this whole sealed writ thing actually saves them a lot of storage space because someone hoarding 100 alchemy writs will now only take 1% of the information storage (at least until they unseal them, but most people will likely only unseal them when they're about to do them, so they won't linger around for long).

Guilty as charged.

Not so much with Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning master writs, and to some extent Jewelry master writs, because I have the knowledge needed to do all of those, and can usually buy any materials I need for them but don't have on hand (rare trait materials or rare ingredients).

But definitely with Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking master writs, because there are a large number of those that I can't do until I learn the requested styles.

I could buy the appropriate motif style pages, but that's costly and it takes time to view each master writ, check my journal library to see if I know the style yet, search for the style page on TTC, and then travel from guild trader to guild trader looking for the lowest-priced listing that's still available. Consequently, I tend to let those master writs pile up and then try to do some of them from time to time when I'm not more focused on other activities.

The new sealed master writs isn't helping with the master writs I already have, but it's helping with new ones that I get.

UrQuan

Defatank wrote: »

Nothing is impossible to do. The question is how do we make it possible.

No, the question is "Do the benefits of this justify spending a large amount of limited development resources on building a brand new system to allow us to do this, along with all the testing required to make sure that this new system not only works but also doesn't break anything else." Rule 1 of IT project management: you focus your limited development and testing resources on the highest priority items with the biggest impact and the low-hanging fruit that can give you quick wins with very little development and testing effort. What you're suggesting is neither a high priority item nor low-hanging fruit. It's a nice to have, which means that it won't happen until everything that's higher priority or easier to do with little effort is already done (in other words, it won't happen).

Defatank wrote: »

Going with my suggestion could be some database issues of course having to stack up all that data of what the rolls are so in that case I would suggest making the sealed writs stack in groups of 10 or 20 because lets face it by the time you get that high in writs you're probably going to chip away at whats there anyways and 2 anything you didn't know you're probably going to have some things researched / new styles etc to make some of them and still stacking in 10 or 20 still preserves alot of space.

Except that doesn't help with database issues, you still need to vastly increase the database resources because now every single inventory/bank slot could potentially be storing as much data as 10 or 20 inventory/bank slots. Also, your assumption that by the time you get that high in writs you're probably going to chip away at what's there is wrong. Before I burned through a few hundred of them leveling subclass skill lines, I was sitting on about 700-800 master writs. I only do master writs when I need more writ vouchers for some reason, or when I want to pop an XP scroll during a double XP event to earn tons of XP for some reason, or when I need to clear a few hundred inventory/bank slots, and I know lots of other people who do the same.

wolfie1.0.

Question: could master writs be curated? So that you only receive ones that you can create?

code65536

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Question: could master writs be curated? So that you only receive ones that you can create?

If such a thing were to exist, then people will exploit that by unsealing all their master writs on a character that only knows the basic racial motifs.

Thematically, master writs are intended for master crafters. Being a master crafter means having extensive crafting style knowledge. There shouldn't be shortcuts around that.

SeaGtGruff

code65536 wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Question: could master writs be curated? So that you only receive ones that you can create?

If such a thing were to exist, then people will exploit that by unsealing all their master writs on a character that only knows the basic racial motifs.

Thematically, master writs are intended for master crafters. Being a master crafter means having extensive crafting style knowledge. There shouldn't be shortcuts around that.

Also, master writs for styles you don't know yet give you an incentive to learn more styles.

IsharaMeradin

Master writs are a crafting related item. They could have flagged them to be added to the craft bag if they so desired. But they did not. We got what we got and I'm happy with them stacking in the bank until I am ready to see if I am able to do them.

MasterSpatula

Just have to reiterate what Code has been saying is completely correct. You can't put toothpaste back in the tube.

katanagirl1

I won’t see exactly what this looks like until next week, but it sounds like it is going to make my crafting much more complicated than it should be. If it is then I will be unhappy that they have catered to hoarders rather than players like me who do master writs every day. Seems like a negative QoL feature to me.

code65536

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

Master writs are a crafting related item. They could have flagged them to be added to the craft bag if they so desired. But they did not.

They don't belong in the craft bag for the exact same reasons detailed earlier in this thread.

Each master writ is unique. Adding 100 master writs to your craft bag will mean storing 100 more pieces of unique information. Adding 100 ruby ash to your craft bag doesn't entail adding 100 pieces of information: it requires updating just one piece of information. The number of different unique types of crafting materials is not that high, and most importantly, it's bounded. That is not the case for unique master writs.

(Survey maps, on the other hand, ought to go into the craft bag, since they are much more like crafting materials than writs: a limited number of unique types, and that there are often multiple copies of each one.)

It's the same reason why the new "craft bag for furniture" has a 500-slot limit.

The number of unique pieces of information is what governs all of these things.

Elvenheart

I haven’t tried this yet, what happens if you try to open a writ envelope and your inventory only has one or two empty slots but the envelope has 10 writs in it?

code65536

Elvenheart wrote: »

I haven’t tried this yet, what happens if you try to open a writ envelope and your inventory only has one or two empty slots but the envelope has 10 writs in it?

Each writ envelope contains only a single master writ. And it's not a traditional inventory container: you don't get a loot window. You just use it and it is converted into a master writ that appears in your inventory.

The envelopes can stack, so you can have a stack of 10 envelopes, but you still open them one by one.

UrQuan

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I won’t see exactly what this looks like until next week, but it sounds like it is going to make my crafting much more complicated than it should be. If it is then I will be unhappy that they have catered to hoarders rather than players like me who do master writs every day. Seems like a negative QoL feature to me.

It's not negative at all. If you want things to work exactly the same as they did before the update, you just open your envelopes as soon as you get them. If you prefer to save inventory space and not know the details of your master writs until later, then you don't open them until you want to know what's in them. That's it. The only possible negative to the change is "oh no, one extra click."

DenverRalphy

code65536 wrote: »

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

Master writs are a crafting related item. They could have flagged them to be added to the craft bag if they so desired. But they did not.

They don't belong in the craft bag for the exact same reasons detailed earlier in this thread.

Each master writ is unique. Adding 100 master writs to your craft bag will mean storing 100 more pieces of unique information. Adding 100 ruby ash to your craft bag doesn't entail adding 100 pieces of information: it requires updating just one piece of information. The number of different unique types of crafting materials is not that high, and most importantly, it's bounded. That is not the case for unique master writs.

(Survey maps, on the other hand, ought to go into the craft bag, since they are much more like crafting materials than writs: a limited number of unique types, and that there are often multiple copies of each one.)

It's the same reason why the new "craft bag for furniture" has a 500-slot limit.

The number of unique pieces of information is what governs all of these things.

The issue is likely that ESO development was poorly planned from the outset, with not enough forethought into expansion and scalability. There is a solution though, and should not be that difficult.

Instead of trying to utilize their homebuilt proprietary (I'm assuming) database, they should instead add a new structure to work alongside it.

1 double-word byte can contain all the information needed to store what's in a master writ and then some. 64 bits available. 10 bits to represent a possible 999 motifs (extreme overkill but hey, scalability and all that). 4 bits to represent the trait (again overkill but allows for scalability). 10 bits to represent the sets (again scalable to 999). 3 bits to represent quality (green, blue, purple, gold). And that's it. With a LOT of bits left over to use in whatever other manner they may imagine in the future. Heck, each byte could hold 2 master writs if desired.

Now all a storage container needs be is a simple flat array to store those bytes. With the added benefit that the array could be searched and interpreted enabling the ability to pick specific writs to pull. Or put back in if necessary.

[Edit] Yes I'm aware 10 bits can range 0 - 1023. I just arbitrarily chose the value 999 because simpler numbers are easier to grasp for the non techy reader.

code65536

DenverRalphy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

Master writs are a crafting related item. They could have flagged them to be added to the craft bag if they so desired. But they did not.

They don't belong in the craft bag for the exact same reasons detailed earlier in this thread.

Each master writ is unique. Adding 100 master writs to your craft bag will mean storing 100 more pieces of unique information. Adding 100 ruby ash to your craft bag doesn't entail adding 100 pieces of information: it requires updating just one piece of information. The number of different unique types of crafting materials is not that high, and most importantly, it's bounded. That is not the case for unique master writs.

(Survey maps, on the other hand, ought to go into the craft bag, since they are much more like crafting materials than writs: a limited number of unique types, and that there are often multiple copies of each one.)

It's the same reason why the new "craft bag for furniture" has a 500-slot limit.

The number of unique pieces of information is what governs all of these things.

The issue is likely that ESO development was poorly planned from the outset, with not enough forethought into expansion and scalability. There is a solution though, and should not be that difficult.

Instead of trying to utilize their homebuilt proprietary (I'm assuming) database, they should instead add a new structure to work alongside it.

1 double-word byte can contain all the information needed to store what's in a master writ and then some. 64 bits available. 10 bits to represent a possible 999 motifs (extreme overkill but hey, scalability and all that). 4 bits to represent the trait (again overkill but allows for scalability). 10 bits to represent the sets (again scalable to 999). 3 bits to represent quality (green, blue, purple, gold). And that's it. With a LOT of bits left over to use in whatever other manner they may imagine in the future. Heck, each byte could hold 2 master writs if desired.

Now all a storage container needs be is a simple flat array to store those bytes. With the added benefit that the array could be searched and interpreted enabling the ability to pick specific writs to pull. Or put back in if necessary.

[Edit] Yes I'm aware 10 bits can range 0 - 1023. I just arbitrarily chose the value 999 because simpler numbers are easier to grasp for the non techy reader.

ZOS is perfectly aware of how to efficiently use bits; their achievements, for example, take 128 bits of storage; a 64-bit timestamp field and a tightly-packed 64-bit data field that encodes everything else about the achievement, including all the progress of each of the subrequirements that an achievement might have.

And yet, despite each achievement taking only 128 bits, it was apparently important to them to consolidate that to one copy per account instead of one copy per character.

And yes, master writ details can be similarly encoded, and judging from what we can see of how they encode item information in general, that's almost certainly what they're already doing.

At the end of the day, it doesn't change the fundamental fact that on one hand, you have a constant amount of storage for any number of writs, and on the other, you have storage that scales linearly with the number of writs. All you're doing is saying, "but the constant in that linear scaling isn't that high!". So what? It's still a linearly scaling cost vs. a flat non-scaling cost.



(Nitpicker's corner: In x86, byte=8bits, word=16bits, doubleword=32bits, quadword=64bits. "Double-word byte" is nonsensical.)

Sarannah

Love the way master writ envelopes work now, the only change needed to them is making a distinction between golden and purple envelopes. So that players who need writ vouchers can open only the golden ones for vouchers.

Ishtarknows

As a console pleb I've been getting prepped for the xp grind we face next week, by pre-making my master writs. I can see there's little point in allowing Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking writs to stack as there's such a large number of options and combinations, but when you have 20 identical alchemy writs it makes no sense that they don't stack.

I group alchemy writs with the same traits so I can just make 80 essences and 17 poisons or whatever at once. Saves me looking up the mats in an online calculator. Now this would be a QoL improvement.

mrreow

Stacking writs should work by showing every writ type and rarity in inventory as one stack, after you click or hover on it you can take out the writ you want from the list that shows. Basically each stack is a container in itself containing all the writs of given type (eg.: rare, jewellery) that are at this point of time in inventory. New writ you loot is automatically sucked into the stack. When you put the writ in bank it is automatically stacked in the bank stack.

DenverRalphy

code65536 wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

Master writs are a crafting related item. They could have flagged them to be added to the craft bag if they so desired. But they did not.

They don't belong in the craft bag for the exact same reasons detailed earlier in this thread.

Each master writ is unique. Adding 100 master writs to your craft bag will mean storing 100 more pieces of unique information. Adding 100 ruby ash to your craft bag doesn't entail adding 100 pieces of information: it requires updating just one piece of information. The number of different unique types of crafting materials is not that high, and most importantly, it's bounded. That is not the case for unique master writs.

(Survey maps, on the other hand, ought to go into the craft bag, since they are much more like crafting materials than writs: a limited number of unique types, and that there are often multiple copies of each one.)

It's the same reason why the new "craft bag for furniture" has a 500-slot limit.

The number of unique pieces of information is what governs all of these things.

The issue is likely that ESO development was poorly planned from the outset, with not enough forethought into expansion and scalability. There is a solution though, and should not be that difficult.

Instead of trying to utilize their homebuilt proprietary (I'm assuming) database, they should instead add a new structure to work alongside it.

1 double-word byte can contain all the information needed to store what's in a master writ and then some. 64 bits available. 10 bits to represent a possible 999 motifs (extreme overkill but hey, scalability and all that). 4 bits to represent the trait (again overkill but allows for scalability). 10 bits to represent the sets (again scalable to 999). 3 bits to represent quality (green, blue, purple, gold). And that's it. With a LOT of bits left over to use in whatever other manner they may imagine in the future. Heck, each byte could hold 2 master writs if desired.

Now all a storage container needs be is a simple flat array to store those bytes. With the added benefit that the array could be searched and interpreted enabling the ability to pick specific writs to pull. Or put back in if necessary.

[Edit] Yes I'm aware 10 bits can range 0 - 1023. I just arbitrarily chose the value 999 because simpler numbers are easier to grasp for the non techy reader.

ZOS is perfectly aware of how to efficiently use bits; their achievements, for example, take 128 bits of storage; a 64-bit timestamp field and a tightly-packed 64-bit data field that encodes everything else about the achievement, including all the progress of each of the subrequirements that an achievement might have.

And yet, despite each achievement taking only 128 bits, it was apparently important to them to consolidate that to one copy per account instead of one copy per character.

And yes, master writ details can be similarly encoded, and judging from what we can see of how they encode item information in general, that's almost certainly what they're already doing.

At the end of the day, it doesn't change the fundamental fact that on one hand, you have a constant amount of storage for any number of writs, and on the other, you have storage that scales linearly with the number of writs. All you're doing is saying, "but the constant in that linear scaling isn't that high!". So what? It's still a linearly scaling cost vs. a flat non-scaling cost.



(Nitpicker's corner: In x86, byte=8bits, word=16bits, doubleword=32bits, quadword=64bits. "Double-word byte" is nonsensical.)

Storage is not the issue. Storage is cheap and plentiful. The issue they constantly battle is CPU cycles and processing power. Something that could be improved upon with some actual renewed development.

Everything from the game engine, graphics engine, database design, network design, all of it, was poorly planned. As a result there is very little support for scalability. They've effectively painted themselves into a corner.

Even from the very beginning, no other MMO has ever suffered as frequent and lengthy downtimes as ESO. The resulting hallmark weekly maintenance of ESO is completely alien to all other MMOs.

Over the past few years, there's arguably very little growth other than what could be done with the content and premade tools they created a decade ago. Nothing actually brand new developed from the ground up. Even Scribing follows a very recognizable rigid set of rules set forth by initial development of the skills system.

It's akin to a website that is built with a pre built CMS. While talent, creativity, and artistry can go a long way. It's still limited to only what the CMS is built to do.

The core elements of ESO are in dire need of upgrades. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be in the stars. I'm not prepared to say the game is in maintenance mode (because I don't think it actually is yet). But I do believe that development is set to Cruise Control.