Save Times and Unused accounts

[Faust]

Faust, its best not to limit the optons to those alone.

Like debt, people can learn to reduce their expenditures based on their own behavioural choices.

The only way we can do this is to act and not talk, those of us who feel like we can help, should do so. The solution lies in a more internal experience.

We can't only rely on Derrick to fix these issues, we have to find ways to co-exist with the limitations around us.

That is not the problem as Derrick has already previously stated.

Of the 8 Million Items on the shard, 5 million are player items. These are bank/backpack contents, and worn clothing/equipment. Of the 190k mobiles, 142k are players characters in 81,851 accounts. Of the 142k characters: 51,613 characters logged in in the last two months. Those 51k characters represent only about one million of the 5 million player items. (the other three million are items in the world, such as in houses, deco, etc).

The majority of the trouble is in the character items rather than world items I think, as the items in the world will tend to level off over time, but the growth of character items is unrestricted.

I'm sad to report that I did a test, deleting all accounts over a year old who were not house owners or guild members, and whose skill total did not exceed 400, less than 5k in the bank, and less than 2 hours of game time. This deleted 32k accounts, but only about 500k items; a pittance.

The problem is clear rwuser based on Derrick's comment about what is going on with the server.

The items that you are referring to will eventually 'level' or 'top' out since there is only so much limited housing locations, bank space limits, backpack limits, etc... the problem is the mounting accounts/characters that will continue to build over the years this shard is running. When a character is created that adds more saved data in the world that in returns add more processing requirements and save times for the server. UO Second Age does not delete accounts as of now. There is a huge chunk of this data that is just sitting there wasting away and this is not just the case with inactive accounts. There are many active accounts with useless junk that mounts over time as well. This problem will continue to grow no matter what you, Tom, Dick, Harry, or me does to try mitigating the problem.

The only way to resolve this ever growing problem is through some sort of mitigation that Derrick will ultimately have to decide upon down the road.

[Blaise]

The only way to resolve this ever growing problem is through some sort of mitigation that Derrick will ultimately have to decide upon down the road.

Shard wipe every five years.

[Godsend]

what about only saving house contents when the house is refreshed, either at that time or marked for save upon the next savetime. As you cannot recall into a house, it will be refreshed when you enter. Chances are the only time anything will change in your house without it being refreshed is if someone logs on just to organize, and then they will just have to remember to refresh it.

What about house looting?

You know, I hadn't thought of that. You make a very good point, but there must be some way of identifying whether a house has been altered.

What is saved in each save? Is it currently duplicate information; such as offline players, static items that will never move, and the like? If so, is there and way of maybe a layered save and load? Save all unaltered items at the end of the day and altered items on each save and then reload the unaltered items first and the beginning of the day or after a crash, followed by the altered save. Shouldn't that cut items saved to less than 30%?

[jekkis]

It's a neat suggestion, but the trouble is that there I don't know if there are a million items to be found in the world to throw away. I stated this a few pages ago but threads get long and details get missed.

There are only 3 million out items in houses etc, including all the static decoration in the world. I don't know if the greatest push could eliminate a third of them. However if if we did get rid of a million items, and those items didn't quickly come back in hording, in anticipation of another even like this; it's only 1 out of 8 million items on the shard: 12.5%: less than 2 seconds of save time.

Hording really isn't the problem; it seems like it when you see all these items in houses; it's hard to conceptualize how many items are in a million.

Again, I think we are resolved to handle this with hardware and software; hording is part of the game.

With no statistical data available as to the growth rate of world items, I'm just going to assume the idea would serve better as a measure to keep world item count in check rather than overnight erase one million items off the server. This in the case if it was not made a one time offer, but rather a continuous option - which would also limit how special can a house with enhanced lockdowns become, as they would always be possible to achieve, but require a bit of a grinding. So rather than seeing it as a overnight solution, it'd be more of a way to limit the growth of world item count.

Just how much is one million items, though? Roughly 8000 backpacks full of items - indeed an amount very hard to fathom. I don't even know if I've ever seen a 100 backpacks at one house.

[Loathed]

feb thru dec 1999 is our goal yes?

Post subject: Re: exact time frame?Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:47 pm


Derrick wrote, "
Generally, Feb through Dec 1999. We stick with feel and opinions within that timeframe, but also try to keep fom having system which conflict with eachother. We wouldn't intentionally add anything outside of that timeframe, but are aware there are some things in game currently that do need to be removed."

so I was poking around and found a great site for some stuff anyhow- item decay in houses (in non secure containers or locked down) were subject to decay

11/99

here's the link - this is an old site http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories/story166.htm

[jekkis]

Correct that the date of that article is 11/99, but when was the decay actually implemented? The article does mention "a few weeks later", but without the exact date it's hard to say. Also, as Derrick mentions we stick with feel of that timeframe, in other words if 99% of that timeframe was no decay in houses, would it really be sticking to that feel if house decay was implemented?

[Loathed]

if you scroll down you will patch day and it is still dated 11/99

[Loathed]

Correct that the date of that article is 11/99, but when was the decay actually implemented? The article does mention "a few weeks later", but without the exact date it's hard to say. Also, as Derrick mentions we stick with feel of that timeframe, in other words if 99% of that timeframe was no decay in houses, would it really be sticking to that feel if house decay was implemented?

something as big as reducing the save times even further and basically put an end to hording (not an end but a nice change) and well it's era- we can't go by whole well most of the time it was like this thing cuz that just leaves the gray area way to wide.

[Rammar]

if you scroll down you will patch day and it is still dated 11/99

Phase 3 (item decay) was not patched in until jan24 (same time pre-casting was "fixed"). The article you quote was likely written following the nov23 patch which changed the lockdown/secure system.

[Loathed]

hoping it can be looked into further since the time line it shows reveals different info but only thing it gives is month/year and also the official link to the update patch notes is an invalid link since it was some time ago (

[smart86]

One thing to think of about making it so items in houses decay is that people wouldn't be able to decorate their houses as lavishly. A lot of decoration has to be done by blocking off areas with lockdowns because there aren't enough lockdowns available to do certain decorations otherwise.

[Loathed]

one of the many costs to achieve accuracy.

[Rammar]

hoping it can be looked into further since the time line it shows reveals different info but only thing it gives is month/year and also the official link to the update patch notes is an invalid link since it was some time ago (

There's nothing in doubt here. The story you posted was about the expected implementation of item decay that was to follow the nov23 patch.

The wiki has copies of the relevant patches; if that is insufficient here is the one where decay was activated:
http://web.archive.org/web/200706262043 ... n_146.html

[Godsend]

I don't know if this is helpful, stumbled across it and thought I would let the pros decide. If I am reading this correctly, as long as the despawner can be set to a time roughly equal to the maximum respawn time it should go unnoticed by players but may help with save times. That is, if it hasn't already been employed.

http://xmlspawner.15.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=56

[Derrick]

Smart spawning doesn't help up very much as the NPC's that are in the world represent only a pittance of the item/mobile count. The big trouble with the Smart Spawn though (last i looked at it) is that it doesn't save what a creature may have looted from players, although that could be fixed.