Save Times and Unused accounts

[Derrick]

This mornings 11am save was 15.96 seconds with about 8 million items, and 190k mobiles on the shard.
In January of 2011 when we moved the shard to it's present server, with Solid State Drives and all that we were running around 11 seconds, which is was a huge improvement over the previous hardware with just under 6 million items, 141k mobiles; prior to this move, we were running around 28 second saves, which was unbearable.

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).

We're currently running on nearly the best hardware imaginable, so this can't likely be solved again by a hardware upgrade.

This save time is going to continue to creep up as time goes on, and I'm going to look at some code approaches to attempt to increase the save times, at the expense of save file size.

We feel it's very important to not delete developed accounts of any age, as old players are constantly returning to Second Age. However I'm considering deleting old undeveloped accounts; such as those which were created over a year or so ago and which have only minutes of playtime, don't own a house, aren't members of a guild, etc...

I'm going to try and gather some statistics on how much could be cleaned up with a purge such as this; but more importantly I'm interested in player feedback on this.

A topic like this is bound to initiate some suggestion of how we could optimize saves etc, such as not loading account characters until they are logged in, or doing differential saves. Do to the nature of the RunUO architecture, it's necessary to have all the mobiles and Items loaded. We could possibly do some more optimization to the save algorithms, but it's going to be hard to make a dent in the time it takes to process this many millions of entities.

[Hydroxide]

I, for one, have typed in the wrong username and created new, accidental accounts.. I wouldn't mind losing those. PURGE!!!

[Pirul]

I'd vote to axe any account crated over a year ago, which has not logged-in in the last six months and has under 100hrs of play time.

As to why I'm throwing 100hrs out there, I think it'd be really hard for anyone to really "develop" a character in game in that time (unless they went straight to taming without working any other skills first) so I'd say it's no big loss. If the char was somewhat macroed up, he can macro another char up in 4 days, so no biggie.

[AshBorn]

I actually don't mind the long saves, just the frequency.

15-20 seconds is fine to me as long as its not every 30 minutes.

But I do understand it will get worse and worse. If an account has only been played a few minutes, there is no reason to keep that thing around at all.

[Captain Awesome]

I'm by no means an established member of this community, just a fairly new player, but here's my opinion for what it's worth.

I see no reason why you couldn't purge 1+ year old accounts with say no houses and less than a certain threshold of skill points. I don't know the appropriate number, but it wouldn't have to be very high. Say 700.

Now for the feedback that wasn't really requested, but I'm gonna give it anyway, because it is pertinent. If you feel this derails any discussion, feel free to delete everything after this point.

Another possible cure would be to place stricter limits on house placement. Grandfather all current houses, but limit the number of houses that can be placed in the future, as houses encourage hoarding. I'm honestly not sure what the current house limit is, but I'd say 1 per account makes a lot of sense. (I know OSI went that route eventually) It's easy for me to make this suggestion, as I only have 2 houses (on 2 accounts) but I think it would actually be beneficial to more than just save times in the long run.

Another option, and I'm just spitballing at this point, would be to address houses owned by inactive accounts. I don't know if it's much of an issue at all here, but other shards have lots of houses that are just refreshed by friends of the house or co-owners rather than the actual owners. Maybe condemn some of these houses, but write some sort of gump where when it's refreshed by the non-owner they get a message saying the house will be condemned in 1 months time (random time) and they may claim the house for themselves or let it fall. First friend/co-owner to claim it gets it. If you went with my stricter house placement idea also, any houses claimed in this manner would ungrandfather all current houses on the account. So the player would have to choose between saving their friends house or keeping their own houses grandfathered.

Unfortunately even these ideas apparently wouldn't address the biggest issue, which is bank hoarding, as per your numbers listed. The only way to really deal with that is through some sort of CUB system.

[Sir Trammelite]

Everyone appreciates the effort being put forth by you derrick. However, iin order to maintain excitement and playerbase, I encourage you to work on getting events back. Save times are increasing but it's not a big deal.

However, listen to whoever has a gold name. They're the foundation.

I typed this on my phone in a minimum amount of time so I apologize for the grammar. Or lack there of:)

[Pirul]

You don't need to be a vet for your opinion to carry weight here. Any player new or old can bring great ideas to the table!

However I don't particularly agree with your feedback for the following reasons:

1.- Limiting housing is NEA, and you really don't want to go down THAT road here.
2.- Houses ARE condemned here when an owner doesn't log in for 6 months (maybe this could be reduced to 3 months?)

The only way to really deal with that is through some sort of CUB system.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: CUB rewards hoarding, hoarding leads to longer saves, do not reward longer save times.

I bet a lot of the items currently in the world are being held on the hopes of another CUB.

[Pirul]

However, listen to whoever has a gold name. They're the foundation.

They are the people that help Derrick keep the server running, but the foundation are the noob bards you kill at air eles, or the alchemist you buy your kegs from, or the t-hunter that sells you your +25 vanq hallys.

Notice how the "foundation" does not need trammel, and much less in a thread that had NOTHING to do with it.

[Derrick]

Thanks for the thoughts.
We do have a condemned house rule, if the owners account hasn't logged in for a few months, the house becomes non refreshable.

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.

I would always prefer not to delete anything, so I think my efforts for now will concentrate on possible code optimizations, however this option should remain up for discussion as it may become necessary in the future.

The save frequency is a good point. We have been pretty stable since we did the chassis swap due to overheating a couple months ago, but prior to that we were seeing a crash or two a week. The loss of an hours time could be devastating to many players and something that we really want to avoid. Some consideration will be given to easing the frequency a bit.

ps: Ditto on Piruls CUB comments, the CUB system does not have a noticable effect on shard item count, and may even tend to increase it due to anticipation of another. It worked on OSI because of the house decay changes which we will not be implementing.

[Captain Awesome]

1.- Limiting housing is NEA, and you really don't want to go down THAT road here.

I agree and I don't agree. Yes, house limits weren't era accurate (I assume NEA = not era accurate) but the entire shard is NEA because there's no pay to play system. The balance of no house limit was that you had to pay extra money to get more than your first account's houses. That balance doesn't exist here. HOWEVER, if the policy of the shard is to adhere to era accuracy above all else, then that's the policy. It was just an idea I threw out there.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: CUB rewards hoarding, hoarding leads to longer saves, do not reward longer save times.

It certainly is a catch 22. CUB may reward hoarding, but it gets rid of all those items at the payoff. However, not having a CUB certainly doesn't get rid of hoarding, ever.

FYI, I'm very happy playing on this shard just the way it is. I have no agenda with my comments, was just trying to help by providing potential solutions to the question at hand.

[a_llama]

I say do the purge anyway. But for an optimization can you code an item for how long it has been around?

For example. The items that have been around for a month or more are all kept in file A and items that are less than a month old are kept in file B. You only update and save items in file A once a day and items in file B are updated twice a day. Where things like skills and any item created that day will save on every save.

[Derrick]

I just verified that we haven't had a hardware failure or shard crash since March 9, which is before we moved to the new chassis.

I'm proposing that we move to hourly saves. (currently 30 minutes)

[UsualSuspect]

SERVER WIPE!!

[Soma]

I think that the last poll on the forums supported a longer delay between saves, considering Derrick noted that crashes are infrequent and that the saves place a huge toll on the system I'd be keen to see longer delays at least get tested for a while.

Also, while we're on the topic, would it be possible to get a final word on CUB, I know the general opinion is negative for a second CUB event, but without a 100% certainty people will continue to hoard on the off chance that there might be a use for that durable dagger of ruin stashed in the deep recesses of their castle.

It certainly is a catch 22. CUB may reward hoarding, but it gets rid of all those items at the payoff. However, not having a CUB certainly doesn't get rid of hoarding, ever.

I remember during the last CUB the most frequently donated item for a few days was heating stands, I would argue that during that period MORE items were brought into the game than taken out, relative to any other period.

I would also like to see a decrease in the length it takes for a house to become condemned, logging in once every 6 months to maintain tens of thousands of items just doesn't seem fair. They add to the save times considerably and all the ghost houses have made it so that the prices for housing is getting silly, towers now sell for up to a keep deed, I can imagine lots of players getting irritated after finally saving up enough for a tower, only to realize that they need 50-200k more to actually live in it, even though the majority of the standing housing is actually completely unused. I know it's era accurate to pay absurd amounts for houses, but those houses were actually used because people maintained monthly subscriptions, the same model cannot function here effectively.

Regarding the inactive accounts, would it be possible to save the information from all of the accounts (inactive and active), then wipe the accounts which have been inactive for more than a year.
At that point something could be set up which allows users to "reactivate" their accounts on the forums or otherwise, which will access that old full save and copy the account data over on the next real server save. In the meantime, 'dummy' (empty) accounts could be put in place so that no one overwrites an account name accidentally, this would also allow the login server to differentiate between active and inactive accounts which would support a message when trying to login with an inactive account e.g. "Your account has been flagged as inactive, please visit my.uosecondage.com to recavate" etc, I know there's a message when you try to login while banned (:P) so maybe something similar could be setup.
I have no clue how the saves work so I doubt it's even possible, but since we're throwing out ideas I remember doing something similar when playing around with databases.

[Mirage]

I think this is your call Derrick, there's going to be a lot of useless suggestions, and suggestions varying on both ends of the spectrum to expect a definitive answer from here. Old accounts that haven't been used and don't have a significant amount of playtime on it really have no use. I personally don't mind the save time, I remember sitting through saves for a lot longer than here on OSI. Frequency like you said should be changed, especially since the shard rarely ever crashed. 1 hour as you suggested sounds better. I know it's not really popular, but I stockpile items not really for the possibility of a CUB but just in case I want to sell/smelt them. If you decided to run a CUB it wouldn't necessarily have to be era accurate, maybe you could run one and reward people like 1 silver for a ridiculous amounts of items or something, just food for thought.