Can We Have - Extra Character Slots in the Crown Store?

NobleNerd · July 2015

Myself, I am an altoholic. In all my MMOs I love to create multiple characters and toy with all the different features of appearance and class options. I would have already purchased at least 2 extra slots to do so if this feature was in the Crown Store!

BBSooner · July 2015

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

Halke · July 2015

I RP and PvE. I recently went from AD PvE over to EP. I can't delete any AD toons because I RP on them or they are my crafter, so I am just sort of stuck. I know a lot of people are just buying a second account.

Banky71 · July 2015

What about using the other server?

Faulgor · July 2015

Just recently deleted a VR1 character because I was out of slots.

Seriously, this is unacceptabel.

Mitchblue · July 2015

If I'm not mistaken 8 fits into your "multiple character creation" plan. And in truth, we need about a 1000 more things done before adding more character slots.

djyrb · July 2015

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

Interesting take on it, but I sure hope you are wrong, as I too am eagerly awaiting more character slots to purchase as well. This is a topic that is never addressed by ZOS in any way, except Paul Sage's somewhat dismissive response to the question on an ESO Live months ago. He didn't really explain why and seemed sort of surprised that someone asked the question.

It seems to me like selling extra character slots would be even more of a consistent, steady Crown Store seller than racial changes, which would probably only be used a handful of times by most players, yet that type of item is mentioned frequently as something that may come in the future.

Halke · July 2015

djyrb wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

Interesting take on it, but I sure hope you are wrong, as I too am eagerly awaiting more character slots to purchase as well. This is a topic that is never addressed by ZOS in any way, except Paul Sage's somewhat dismissive response to the question on an ESO Live months ago. He didn't really explain why and seemed sort of surprised that someone asked the question.

It seems to me like selling extra character slots would be even more of a consistent, steady Crown Store seller than racial changes, which would probably only be used a handful of times by most players, yet that type of item is mentioned frequently as something that may come in the future.

Pretty much. Some of my character's don't match up with the race/class meta. But since I RP I can't just change their race. I am however more than willing to grind for ages just to make myself that little bit better, but that isn't an option if I can't get more slots.

BBSooner · July 2015

djyrb wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

Interesting take on it, but I sure hope you are wrong, as I too am eagerly awaiting more character slots to purchase as well. This is a topic that is never addressed by ZOS in any way, except Paul Sage's somewhat dismissive response to the question on an ESO Live months ago. He didn't really explain why and seemed sort of surprised that someone asked the question.

It seems to me like selling extra character slots would be even more of a consistent, steady Crown Store seller than racial changes, which would probably only be used a handful of times by most players, yet that type of item is mentioned frequently as something that may come in the future.

Agreed. It would seem, from a profit point of view, that this would have been a core service for the Crown store as it does exactly what ZOS has been pushing for so long: Recycle content.

This is the basis for my speculation, there has to be some reason for the lack of a feature that would otherwise be an easy and lucrative service.

UrQuan · July 2015

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard ZOS say that it would be technically very difficult for them to add character slots. If we're right in our suspicions, it would be a fairly massive effort to change their DB structure, with a large potential for screwing things up.

Halke · July 2015

So, if the speculation is right, what would you all think about if they offered 'sister' accounts? You can only take advantage of this if you are subscribed with some way to verify who you are and that the same person is in control of both accounts. Then you could have access to your bank, guilds, dyes, etc. but also have eight more character slots.

djyrb · July 2015

Halke wrote: »

Pretty much. Some of my character's don't match up with the race/class meta. But since I RP I can't just change their race. I am however more than willing to grind for ages just to make myself that little bit better, but that isn't an option if I can't get more slots.

Same here - as insane as it sounds, I do like to level alts every so often, as it gives me something to do when my friends/guildies aren't on, or I just feel like going into offline mode and spending some time in game solo with no interruptions. Right now there just isn't a lot of solo repeatable content to kill time before jumping into group activities. I just got my 6th character to VR14, so I'm dreading the lack of slots left.

BBSooner · July 2015

Halke wrote: »

So, if the speculation is right, what would you all think about if they offered 'sister' accounts? You can only take advantage of this if you are subscribed with some way to verify who you are and that the same person is in control of both accounts. Then you could have access to your bank, guilds, dyes, etc. but also have eight more character slots.

Equally as daunting as changing the other issue (again, assuming it's the case). There are likely countless checks involving billing, character loading, etc to make sure that when you log in as the character in your first character slot you load in with exactly your information and nobody else's.

RazzPitazz · July 2015

UrQuan wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard ZOS say that it would be technically very difficult for them to add character slots. If we're right in our suspicions, it would be a fairly massive effort to change their DB structure, with a large potential for screwing things up.

The game is already hard coded for more than 8 slots, at least the console beta was (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/167487/about-those-16-character-slots-on-console). I remember there being an official response to this but cannot seem to find it.

UrQuan · July 2015

RazzPitazz wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard ZOS say that it would be technically very difficult for them to add character slots. If we're right in our suspicions, it would be a fairly massive effort to change their DB structure, with a large potential for screwing things up.

The game is already hard coded for more than 8 slots, at least the console beta was (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/167487/about-those-16-character-slots-on-console). I remember there being an official response to this but cannot seem to find it.

I thought that was a display bug only, and during the console beta it was still impossible to actually create more than 8 characters. That's what I remember hearing, anyway.

BBSooner · July 2015

RazzPitazz wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard ZOS say that it would be technically very difficult for them to add character slots. If we're right in our suspicions, it would be a fairly massive effort to change their DB structure, with a large potential for screwing things up.

The game is already hard coded for more than 8 slots, at least the console beta was (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/167487/about-those-16-character-slots-on-console). I remember there being an official response to this but cannot seem to find it.

Apparently it was potentially a bug to see 16? Though it would be indeed disheartening if the slots were confirmed to be hardcoded instead of dynamically indexed. I guess silver-lining would be that if there are indeed 16 slots (and the bug was just that it showed more than 8) then maybe they have 8 more slots potentially for purchase in the store eventually.

CapnPhoton · July 2015

Mitchblue wrote: »

If I'm not mistaken 8 fits into your "multiple character creation" plan. And in truth, we need about a 1000 more things done before adding more character slots.

Yeah I would prefer other things get addressed. But maybe I am biased since I still only have 1 character that I play.

Banky71 · July 2015

Isn't the 16 8 on one server and 8 on another server?

Personofsecrets · July 2015

correction OP, your title should have been this.

"can we have extra character slots"

UrQuan · July 2015

Banky71 wrote: »

Isn't the 16 8 on one server and 8 on another server?

That's what's available in the current system, but during console beta there was an issue where it showed 16 slots available on the character creation screen. There was speculation that this was to allow PC transfers to console to copy over all of their characters from both EU & NA servers, and there was speculation that this meant that everyone was getting more character slots just because, and there was also speculation that this meant extra character slots would soon be in the crown store. The last I remember hearing about it, though, was that in the end it was just a display bug.

Hiero_Glyph · July 2015

Currently Green Man Gaming is selling 8 additional character slots for $12. You can even mail items to these 8 characters. While not an option in the Crown Store it is far cheaper than anything it would offer.

Reznique · July 2015

Banky71 wrote: »

What about using the other server?

I would definitely choose the NA server, however the high ping would make it impossible to play PVP. *sadface*

NobleNerd · July 2015

I really don't think buying additional accounts is the best way to resolve this. I too have bought a another account from GMG but it was for additional reasons.

Not sure why they would want to stick to only 8 characters per account, but I know for a fact in GW2 they got my cash many times for additional slots and any other MMO that offered it... FFXI and even FFXIV I opted for the larger slot sub.

stevenbennett_ESO · July 2015

A second account is great if all you want is more storage, and in fact is the way to go if you're interested in more slots just for storage reasons (or because you want more hirelings, or anything else like that), because that way you also get a second bank.

But if you want to actually *play* more characters, a second account is highly inconvenient compared to just selling more character slots. You don't have a shared bank, you don't have anything you bought with crowns (or an ESO Plus subscription), your champion points don't apply, and you have to maintain different friends lists, guild memberships, etc.

I've considered many times getting a second account because I play PvE casually with different combinations of friends, and each combination needs a character for that group so they stay in relative sync with each other. I keep concluding that it's not the right choice for me, and thus keep hoping that someday, Zenimax will offer additional character slots in the Crown Store.

Honestly, I predict they *will* do this at some point, but it might take a while...

Banky71 · July 2015

Ahhh thanks @OLIVI3R

NobleNerd · July 2015

stevenbennett_ESO wrote: »

A second account is great if all you want is more storage, and in fact is the way to go if you're interested in more slots just for storage reasons (or because you want more hirelings, or anything else like that), because that way you also get a second bank.

But if you want to actually *play* more characters, a second account is highly inconvenient compared to just selling more character slots. You don't have a shared bank, you don't have anything you bought with crowns (or an ESO Plus subscription), your champion points don't apply, and you have to maintain different friends lists, guild memberships, etc.

I've considered many times getting a second account because I play PvE casually with different combinations of friends, and each combination needs a character for that group so they stay in relative sync with each other. I keep concluding that it's not the right choice for me, and thus keep hoping that someday, Zenimax will offer additional character slots in the Crown Store.

Honestly, I predict they *will* do this at some point, but it might take a while...

Some great information t consider for many.

Myself, I did purchase a second account... mainly because of guild growth and not being able to be the actual guild leader of only 1 guild. The additional character slots are nice, but as you said an inconvenience because all the hard work on the one account does not travel to the new character slots on the second.

stevenbennett_ESO · July 2015

BTW, I've read a number of discussions regarding the technical issues, and as someone who does a lot of DB programming, having a fixed number of character records is not a challenge to fix. Even if they had 8 columns assigned to slots, or a fixed structure, increasing the size or number of columns wouldn't be all that difficult.

What *would* be difficult to fix, and the only possible reason I could possibly think of for why changing the number of slots might be any kind of challenge, would be if there was some bitfield mechanism in play for tagging things in a memory efficient fashion.

For example, lets say that there was a common mechanism in place for identifying a character, either for network packets or somewhere in the DB, and this mechanism was a 32 bit number where the top 29 bits were an account ID, and the low 3 bits were the character slot ID. (I could see this, especially on the network packets, as a way of reducing the packet size…)

*That* kind of mechanism would be difficult to add character slots to because you're limited to *exactly* 8 characters with only 3 bits of identification. You'd need an extra bit to allow up to 16 characters, but if the bitfield were tightly packed with no extra bits available, you would have to rework how that identifier is used completely. The fact that it's 8 instead of, say, 10, is highly suggestive to me that something like this might be the case.

On the other hand, the console beta showing 16 is suggestive to me that they're already in the process of converting whatever they were doing to use at least one extra bit, and highly encouraging that more slots are on the way. Possibly they're waiting for the 64 bit version of the PC/Mac client, which is almost certainly on the way, although I don't expect it until the fall at the earliest.

ontheleftcoast · July 2015

Faulgor wrote: »

Just recently deleted a VR1 character because I was out of slots.

Seriously, this is unacceptabel.

I did something similar -- deleted an Imperial Templar VR2 to make room for a new NB so I could play the game from scratch. I had been away for 6+ months and wanted to see what changed at every level. So far mostly cosmetic changes and the new toon is nearly VR12. Though stamina builds are now much better than they were pre 1.6. Oh, and that halfway implemented justice system and teaser for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. I guess that deserves a mention. Sigh. I'm probably going to have to bury another VR toon to play those thru when they finally get implemented. Or worse, break down and buy another copy of the game just to get 8 more slots. Which is probably what ZOS wants us to do.

stevenbennett_ESO · July 2015

ontheleftcoast wrote: »

Or worse, break down and buy another copy of the game just to get 8 more slots. Which is probably what ZOS wants us to do.

Before it went B2P, that made sense. Now it makes a great deal more sense for them to sell additional character slots. They would sell a LOT more extra character slots in the crown store than they would get people to buy additional copies of the game.

Slurg · July 2015

While I want to like this idea every time it comes up, I just can't get over the fear that whatever development needs to be done to enable extra character slots would also cause me to lose half my inventory and all my achievements and dyes, randomly change my characters' appearance and levels and probably delete some of them, and transform my guar into mewling cats.

NobleNerd · July 2015

BBSooner wrote: »

RazzPitazz wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

I remember interviews where (now gone) Paul Sage was firm on not allowing for more than 8 character slots. Pure speculation: This led me to believe that the 8 slots are hardcoded as 1 through 8, not a dynamic character slot index. The former could potentially be incredibly troublesome to alter, which would explain the hard stance on not monetizing additional character slots - considering from a customer point of view it would appear to be a lucrative service. Again though, pure speculation, I have no knowledge to their DB structure.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard ZOS say that it would be technically very difficult for them to add character slots. If we're right in our suspicions, it would be a fairly massive effort to change their DB structure, with a large potential for screwing things up.

The game is already hard coded for more than 8 slots, at least the console beta was (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/167487/about-those-16-character-slots-on-console). I remember there being an official response to this but cannot seem to find it.

Apparently it was potentially a bug to see 16? Though it would be indeed disheartening if the slots were confirmed to be hardcoded instead of dynamically indexed. I guess silver-lining would be that if there are indeed 16 slots (and the bug was just that it showed more than 8) then maybe they have 8 more slots potentially for purchase in the store eventually.

Or they will wait until we forget about it and release the 8 slots as a DLC.