Transmog Plans Confirmed, NO Housing Storage Plans confirmed

Elsonso · June 2017

Rouven wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert

Does Matt's comment mean your post from December is no longer valid and/or is this limited to item storage but not furnishing slots?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3578721/#Comment_3578721

Some clarification about the direction of housing would be appreciated

The added storage that he was talking about turned out to be the ESO Plus double bank space, I reckon.

Edit: I never assumed his statement was related to Homestead and house storage.

Rox83 · June 2017

I hope Transmog is just a costume tab for each equipment slot

Rouven · June 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert

Does Matt's comment mean your post from December is no longer valid and/or is this limited to item storage but not furnishing slots?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3578721/#Comment_3578721

Some clarification about the direction of housing would be appreciated

The added storage that he was talking about turned out to be the ESO Plus double bank space, I reckon.

Edit: I never assumed his statement was related to Homestead and house storage.

Perhaps, could well be that the "result" was/is the ESO+.

I'm confused about your edit, not sure if you mean Matt or Rich, but in both cases it seems to me to be very much house storage related - Homestead for me is just the initial term of the patch/launch. But since this is seemingly such a technical issue it would be nice to know where we are at in terms of furnishings etc. I can't remember if this was in an ESO Live but I very much remember the statement of paraphrased "this is the best we can do for now but we are not satisfied with it and (my dreaming starts) we will find ways to improve".

cyclonus11 · June 2017

Motif prices skyrocket in 3..2..

Elsonso · June 2017

Rouven wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert

Does Matt's comment mean your post from December is no longer valid and/or is this limited to item storage but not furnishing slots?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3578721/#Comment_3578721

Some clarification about the direction of housing would be appreciated

The added storage that he was talking about turned out to be the ESO Plus double bank space, I reckon.

Edit: I never assumed his statement was related to Homestead and house storage.

Perhaps, could well be that the "result" was/is the ESO+.

I'm confused about your edit, not sure if you mean Matt or Rich, but in both cases it seems to me to be very much house storage related - Homestead for me is just the initial term of the patch/launch. But since this is seemingly such a technical issue it would be nice to know where we are at in terms of furnishings etc. I can't remember if this was in an ESO Live but I very much remember the statement of paraphrased "this is the best we can do for now but we are not satisfied with it and (my dreaming starts) we will find ways to improve".

The way it was worded seemed odd to me, like they were looking for ways to add storage, but not necessarily as part of housing. Not too long after that, ESO Plus got double bank.

They did say that they are not done with housing, but my personal feeling regarding that is that they are resolving this by adding property and furniture to buy. I don't know if they will ever make changes to the system. The system seems to exist for no other purpose than to separate players from Crowns, with a secondary purpose as a gold sink. As such, it seems to be doing quite well.

grizzledcroc · June 2017

Bad thing is motif prices increasing buuuutttt means collecting em now wont be so worthless knowing at least its coming.

vyndral13preub18_ESO · June 2017

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Bad thing is motif prices increasing buuuutttt means collecting em now wont be so worthless knowing at least its coming.

Should pan out well for you in 3-4 years

Yolokin_Swagonborn · June 2017

Inb4 "transmog stones" sold for 3k in crown store.

zaria · June 2017

Sigtric wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

Your two examples are common knowledge that is taught in elementary school.

Developing a game is quite a bit different. I'll give you a hint. There's a very legit and common reason that storage space is an "issue" for players in nearly any given mmo ever. Use that thinking and logic on Google and go inform yourself.

Storage space is an issue in all MMOs because it's a primary mean of monetization. Simple as that.

Thinking and logic. I'm not saying monetization isn't a driving factor, but it's certainly not the only one.

Don't you think, with as greedy as everyone likes to say ZOS is, that logically they would have no limits on storage allowing you to buy as much as you'd like, allowing them to rake in the money?

If it was simply monetization there wouldn't be caps. Cash shop monetization has only been prevalent within the last 5 to 10 years. Prior to this in the old MMOs (especially before wow) this was unheard of. There were still systems in place to limit your inventory and bank space.

MMOs don't have the luxury a single player game does where all the data is stored locally on your machine. In Skyrim if you wanted to console command in a million and a half pieces of cheese and it lagged your computer down that's on no one but the person who did it.

In an online environment the servers handle the storage for a number of reasons. The actual data itself has to balance out size against performance.

ZOS staff touched on this when they were talking about housing on ESO live, comparing to the unlimited crafting bag.

I don't know how many different crafting materials there are so let's just say it's 300.

An inventory (data) container holding 300 items with 100 each or 1000 each is relatively the same size. When accessed it only has to ever read 300 different items.

On the other hand your regular bank or inventory can hold a limited number of thousands of different "physical items. This takes significantly longer to read to display what's in it.

An example: One game I came from had several servers in the cluster for any given game world (server/realm). Specific machines handled specific zones. There was a point when your character would pass from one map to another with no loading screen, but your data would be handed off from the physical machines that hosted the previous zone to the next zone.

On higher level characters with a full inventory there was a noticeable lag as you passed through, because of all the data had to physically move.

On low level characters who didn't have as much data associated, it was only noticeable during heavy load times, and at that, barely noticeable.

This was going on long before any mainstream MMOs were monitizing storage.

Tldr: inventory size in MMOs must be balanced against performance because of the requirement that the data is ultimately held server side.

True, however this actually make house storage preferable over bank. Your bank has to be hold in memory on server together with your inventory as you access the bank with the summoned banker or by using any crafting station.
You house is an instance the same way an group dungeon or solo quest instance is.
Its created on entry, this is why its an loading time to enter, this can be done on any server with low load.
Now furniture in house and storage in house in just stored on drive until you enter
And its not insane amounts of data. a item just take up some hundred bytes maximum. Probably far less if somewhat optimized, 200 items * 200 bytes is 40KB, one million players and its 40GB.
Much the same with alts, they are only on disk then not used

Sigtric · June 2017

zaria wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

Your two examples are common knowledge that is taught in elementary school.

Developing a game is quite a bit different. I'll give you a hint. There's a very legit and common reason that storage space is an "issue" for players in nearly any given mmo ever. Use that thinking and logic on Google and go inform yourself.

Storage space is an issue in all MMOs because it's a primary mean of monetization. Simple as that.

Thinking and logic. I'm not saying monetization isn't a driving factor, but it's certainly not the only one.

Don't you think, with as greedy as everyone likes to say ZOS is, that logically they would have no limits on storage allowing you to buy as much as you'd like, allowing them to rake in the money?

If it was simply monetization there wouldn't be caps. Cash shop monetization has only been prevalent within the last 5 to 10 years. Prior to this in the old MMOs (especially before wow) this was unheard of. There were still systems in place to limit your inventory and bank space.

MMOs don't have the luxury a single player game does where all the data is stored locally on your machine. In Skyrim if you wanted to console command in a million and a half pieces of cheese and it lagged your computer down that's on no one but the person who did it.

In an online environment the servers handle the storage for a number of reasons. The actual data itself has to balance out size against performance.

ZOS staff touched on this when they were talking about housing on ESO live, comparing to the unlimited crafting bag.

I don't know how many different crafting materials there are so let's just say it's 300.

An inventory (data) container holding 300 items with 100 each or 1000 each is relatively the same size. When accessed it only has to ever read 300 different items.

On the other hand your regular bank or inventory can hold a limited number of thousands of different "physical items. This takes significantly longer to read to display what's in it.

An example: One game I came from had several servers in the cluster for any given game world (server/realm). Specific machines handled specific zones. There was a point when your character would pass from one map to another with no loading screen, but your data would be handed off from the physical machines that hosted the previous zone to the next zone.

On higher level characters with a full inventory there was a noticeable lag as you passed through, because of all the data had to physically move.

On low level characters who didn't have as much data associated, it was only noticeable during heavy load times, and at that, barely noticeable.

This was going on long before any mainstream MMOs were monitizing storage.

Tldr: inventory size in MMOs must be balanced against performance because of the requirement that the data is ultimately held server side.

True, however this actually make house storage preferable over bank. Your bank has to be hold in memory on server together with your inventory as you access the bank with the summoned banker or by using any crafting station.
You house is an instance the same way an group dungeon or solo quest instance is.
Its created on entry, this is why its an loading time to enter, this can be done on any server with low load.
Now furniture in house and storage in house in just stored on drive until you enter
And its not insane amounts of data. a item just take up some hundred bytes maximum. Probably far less if somewhat optimized, 200 items * 200 bytes is 40KB, one million players and its 40GB.
Much the same with alts, they are only on disk then not used

Right, but the point is (why I wrote that replying to someone), is that there's much more to inventory (bank, personal or otherwise) than just monetization as they suggested.

Monetizing storage is likely a driving factor, but if it was the only factor as they had suggested, we'd see unlimited storage (unlimited purchases of 10slots) for sale in the crownstore . If only it were that simple!

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2017

Rox83 wrote: »

I hope Transmog is just a costume tab for each equipment slot

Im not sure how theyll implement transmog but im pretty sure theyll find a way to monetize it.

grizzledcroc · June 2017

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Bad thing is motif prices increasing buuuutttt means collecting em now wont be so worthless knowing at least its coming.

Should pan out well for you in 3-4 years

I mean I dont really lose out on anything just consuming em lol.

vyndral13preub18_ESO · June 2017

grizzledcroc wrote: »

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Bad thing is motif prices increasing buuuutttt means collecting em now wont be so worthless knowing at least its coming.

Should pan out well for you in 3-4 years

I mean I dont really lose out on anything just consuming em lol.

True. And I wasn't trying to be a total troll. I just keep seeing so many responses that give the impression that now they think transmog is right around the corner. And the article really doesn't say a whole lot besides we jave talked about it and it is complicated.

Im happy too. It is something I really really want. Just think it will be some time. Maybe they will prove me wrong.

kvlou79 · June 2017

@ZOS TRANSMOG= APPEARANCE TAB. Let's not make this difficult. You know the way crown hats "overwrite" the equipped helm? Yeah, use that same code under a new section under Inventory Tab. Sell a Master Crafters Tome for each of the 3 trades (2500-5000 crowns each)... you win, we win.

Vanthras79 · June 2017

Let me sum up ZOS's response to request for ETAs:

SOON

Tannus15 · June 2017

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

AdamBourke wrote: »

I AM a programmer - and I can see why there might be technical difficulties with storage. Take special note of the fact that he says that ESO is not built for that.

The problem is not that it is hard to do. I could probably write a quick application in half a day that had a fairly complex housing-inventory management system. But there are three problems I wouldn't need to deal with: Scaling, Speed and Legacy.

Scaling: Firstly, what is easy for one person is not easy for 10 million people. It would include more storage (only a few Terabytes) and more connections to the banking system (Players might only go to the banker on special occasions, but would look through the containers in their houses more often - especially if it was done properly and each container had a separate storage space!)

Speed: Have you noticed that when you open a chest or urn etc the contents appear immediately? That's because the client generates that information. For a storage system in a house you would need to connect to the servers to check the contents.On a slow day this could take a while. If you have a large number of items in your bank it could take longer. People would get irritated by this, so it would need minimising as much as possible.

Legacy: One of the hardest problems to solve in any programming job. You (or the people that came before) didn't write the original code in the way that would make this easy.There's lots of good reasons that this happens, and some bad ones - but it virtually always happens. IT can be fixed, but it's often hard and leads to bugs. Imagine you are building a house. You start with the foundations, and then the walls and the roof. But someone later says they actually want a tower - it's easy conceptually, you just add higher walls - but the foundations aren't strong enough to hold it - that's Legacy Issues, and it's why Matt Firor says that ESO is not built for it.

Having said all of that... I can't see what the problem with a Transmog system would be, since it's already in the game for Morag Tong and Imperial!

Scaling
Scaling is mostly a factor of raw storage on ZoS's side ~ aka more hard drives. It's a cost that pretty much guarantees they're probably not going to give it away (ever).

Speed
Speed could be remedied by having the container contents 'load' when you enter the house, and update when you exit.

The content list could then be held client side (encrypted, for the love of Azura).

One additional bit field could be added to indicate if an item had been updated server side or not. Anything not yet updated server side (sync'd) could not be sold, only moved back and forth.
This would server two purposes.
One would ensure nothing gets dupe'd (Oops, I accidentally DC'd after withdrawing my $200k gold items. I shall now reload...)

The other would ensure nothing goes into limbo.

In either case, log in with non-synced items in your inventory and it reverts to the container (the original server side copy). Even if someone is playing from multiple locations, there is no realistic reason why they should not have clean disconnects.

To prevent Guild-Bank level loading delays, the container could be restricted to owner-only access.

Update the contents again when you exit the house or log out, and all is right with the world.

Sure there would be additional loading screen time, but this is the price you would pay for having storage access.

Legacy
Legacy should not be an issue. (Then again, it never should be.) Granted, people code differently, but the API is already in place, and for the most part, a container is a container - it simply needs a different ID than current ones available. If they hired people that did not properly document their code / the API, it is a problem. It's just more of a management issue than a programming one.

The biggest task here is converting the old item format to the one with the new bitcode. This should be the easiest part. At the same time, this is probably where the biggest 'train wreck' could happen.

If they have programmers half worth there salt, it could be implemented. I suspect it's more about whether they want to invest in those resources (storage and manpower) and their inability to determine the exact price point that won't completely *** everyone off at once.

I'd think they'd have an equally difficult time with transmog, as far as the database is concerned, as they would have to add a new field to indicate the visual aspect of the item in addition to its function, where now the two are inseparable.

You're making a whole pile of assumptions here around the legacy issue.

Lets look at what we know about the game and then extrapolate from there.

NO containers in the game allow you to put item into them.
NO containers maintain their contents once you logout.
All containers randomly generate their content when you enter the area. (delves for example)
All containers have different contents for every player

I think it's fair at this point to guess that the developers have used these constraints to make their lives easier and to improve performance.
So, lets look at the refactoring they will need to do.

You can place items in containers.
Containers will remember their contents for all time.
Containers will not randomly generate their contents when someone steps into a house and containers might have permissions applied to them.

I think it's fair to say at this point that reusing containers as they exist in the game right now would actually be more trouble than it's worth and a new form of container would need to be created from scratch.
Housing containers would have to be entirely new functionality, more akin to banking than containers.
It would probably be easier to make housing "containers" be a bank account attached to the house which only the owner can access with a filter based on which "banker" is accessed.

starkerealm · June 2017

AdamBourke wrote: »

Having said all of that... I can't see what the problem with a Transmog system would be, since it's already in the game for Morag Tong and Imperial!

Note that the transmog system in the game doesn't interact with drop set items. These are the items people are actually interested in transforming, and they're also items that (as designed) can never drop in alternate motifs. (Incidentally, the Trainee set can be transformed.) That suggests the records don't retain motif data the same way normal items would. Which could cause issues if you suddenly tried to retrofit that data onto them.

Ostacia · June 2017

Will we be able to transmog disguises? If so, will we be able to dye them?

kvlou79 · June 2017

Sigh, smh. Making this too complicated. Appearance Tab: Head, Shoulder, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Legs, Feet, 2 Main Weapon slots, 2 Backup Weapon Slots. Don't count towards carry capacity. Or Hell, make them count..don't really care. No need to morph/alter/anything. Just click it

AdicusDio · June 2017

Don't see why adding home containers would be an issue? Some guildies have the largest homes with numerous dwarven dummies, mundus stones, clutter and trophies everywhere, etc. (I'm guessing they are at the limit cap for everything) and other than taking a couple seconds longer to load the area (still loads faster than Grahtwood where I can sometimes make it to the Undaunted chest before the ground even fills in and I have SSD), it loads. A chest just needs the yes/no and how much, right?

An easy work around if you have lots of home stuff, is buy the cheapest places, then offload everything into the room. Doesn't have to look pretty, just place and forget. This way you won't have gold items taking up bank space. And it's not like they can patch it out

BTW, the cheapest homes are still cheaper than the last tier of the bank space upgrades, so.....

robertbmilesb14_ESO · June 2017

Skjoldur wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I wonder if they use an pretty weird method to store style for items.
Theory: dropped sets uses style id stored in the set, together with the set bonuses.
Has any dropped set ever changed racial style for used items? thinking one tamriel mostly here?
Do the ones who made armor preview know?

Crafted sets and non set items has style stored in item itself.
This is why imperial transform can not covert dropped sets.

That's exactly why configurable sets of outfits like in Lord of the Rings instead of changing the look of an item are the easier and better solution. Better, because as a side effect they could provide multiple slots for outfits.

I agree. They already have it available for costumes. I do not know why they just don't create a "costume" doll/equip for putting in pieces for appearances (akin to LotR, EQ2, Age of Conan, Wildstar). Looking at it objectively, I understand the difficulty this may be with weapons though.

Jaazer · June 2017

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

Transmog...... so happy ive been holding on to Volars Crescent Daggers

Just don't hold your breath waiting on it to be implemented...

Father_X_Zombie · June 2017

Transmog better be available to everyone. No ESO+!!!! I would pay crowns for it but grudgingly. Imo transmog was one of the best features of DCUO. It really should have been a free feature from the start

Elsonso · June 2017

Father_X_Zombie wrote: »

Transmog better be available to everyone. No ESO+!!!! I would pay crowns for it but grudgingly. Imo transmog was one of the best features of DCUO. It really should have been a free feature from the start

It will cost real world money. The feature is purely cosmetic, and it is a high end request. If they want people to do it a lot, it will be relatively cheap, possibly free with ESO Plus. If they want people to do it only occasionally, it will not be ESO Plus, and will require a relatively spendy "something" from the Crown Store.

jcaceresw · June 2017

Father_X_Zombie wrote: »

Transmog better be available to everyone. No ESO+!!!! I would pay crowns for it but grudgingly. Imo transmog was one of the best features of DCUO. It really should have been a free feature from the start

I agree is meant to be available for everyone but I dont agree it should be ESO+ exclusive or paid with crowns. Should cost real in game gold and materials.

Maybe for ESO+ the benefit will be that we can do the transmog for free or with a much reduced cost.

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2017

jcaceresw wrote: »

Father_X_Zombie wrote: »

Transmog better be available to everyone. No ESO+!!!! I would pay crowns for it but grudgingly. Imo transmog was one of the best features of DCUO. It really should have been a free feature from the start

I agree is meant to be available for everyone but I dont agree it should be ESO+ exclusive or paid with crowns. Should cost real in game gold and materials.

I really doubt theyll do it that way. It will be monetized, just like dyes.

zaria · June 2017

robertbmilesb14_ESO wrote: »

Skjoldur wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I wonder if they use an pretty weird method to store style for items.
Theory: dropped sets uses style id stored in the set, together with the set bonuses.
Has any dropped set ever changed racial style for used items? thinking one tamriel mostly here?
Do the ones who made armor preview know?

Crafted sets and non set items has style stored in item itself.
This is why imperial transform can not covert dropped sets.

That's exactly why configurable sets of outfits like in Lord of the Rings instead of changing the look of an item are the easier and better solution. Better, because as a side effect they could provide multiple slots for outfits.

I agree. They already have it available for costumes. I do not know why they just don't create a "costume" doll/equip for putting in pieces for appearances (akin to LotR, EQ2, Age of Conan, Wildstar). Looking at it objectively, I understand the difficulty this may be with weapons though.

it would be more flexible, as you say it would be an issue with weapons.
Guess its harder however, transmorg can mostly be seen as crafting.

Wonder if we can use the broom and bucket for transmorg? they would work as costume

mb10 · June 2017

Will only cost you 3000 crowns per sword!!

Delpi · June 2017

Probably they will do Transmog wrong. I was so excited when they announced dye costume. What happened? They put it with ESO+... and it was like 'Meh...' They want you to pay twice, one for the costume and eso+ for customize it. Ridiculous.