Minimum Bank Storage Capacity [Multi-Select POLL]

Just what comes with my pledge.

Yes. I have a right to do that. Part of that is wanting the game to be good. If the game is not good then the value is also destroyed.

No.

No. That's a great idea though.

Also, I wasn't trying to convince anyone. I was discussing. There's a difference. I remain convinced. I just felt that it was something I should put out in the open to see if there was a valid counter argument. I didn't think there was.

 

Ok, I wasn't trying to be misleading. I was assuming (maybe not smartly) that when you put items into a chest they would count towards the limit. Do we have dev confirmation that it will work one way versus another?

 

People who say the game is Pay to Win have no clue what they are talking about. An MMO cant be pay to win, since an MMO never ends. You cant win a game that doesnt end. Winning in this game is whatever each persons personal goals are, be it crafting, PvP, gathering or whatever. The only person you can win against is yourself, making the Pay to Win argument ridiculous.

What they really mean in their clunky way is "Pay to Get a Game Changing Advantage", which would be a valid concern to watch out for, though I dont think anything in the store currently fits that bill.

 

That item limit was a 'decoration item' limit. The chest is one decorative item, no matter how full it is. Players running by your lot cause all the decorations to render, hence the limit. items inside the chest don't have to render, so they are not part of the count.

 

Currently perhaps but I assume that's an exploit that is planned to be fixed in short order. The devs are not going to give people limited storage in a bank but unlimited in a house. Hoarding would be as bad as the original UO.

I may be wrong, but I believe that you'll eventually get to store exactly what those numbers are listed above. Also, RIGHT NOW, if you take a chest to a bank it forces you to remove all the items from the chest so it can count all stacks individually as one item.

 

Considering that those are decoration limits, I hope we can store on top of those numbers, or else people with fully decorated houses will have to keep all their 'storage' at their banks.

 

That is a fair statement and I lean toward that opinion. I have read so many opinions, its interesting and frustrating at the same time. Obviously, we are all in this for the long haul.

 

And basements, and obtain add-on bank storage.

 

Just because it's something I hadn't thought about before, (arbitrary item limits), I'm thinking of some interesting what ifs..

Say player 1 has a small lot, with a chest. they can keep 349 items in that chest.

Player 2 has the same lot, but decorated it nice and inviting with 340 decorative items, and strategically placed 10 chests, hoping to make his home a sort of player-town bank. But wait, he reached his item limit and can't fit any items inside any of his chests!

These arbitrary limits don't sit well with me.

I guess instead of a flat item limit, there should just be a limit on the number of usable containers?
So row/village/town/city/duke/castle could have 5/10/15/20/25/30 usable containers on the lot?
Then each container could keep it's own inherent item limits and if you want more chests on your lot,
you'd get a warning that they are decoration only (can't be opened) beyond the container limit.

**The fact is, I'm a hoarder my nature, and not accustomed to being limited in any way, so this is scary territory for me. I'm not used to people telling me I can't store as much of whatever the heck I want on my own property or in my basement.. The collectors out there are all cringing at these professed limits.**

 

Drocis, you keep referring to hoarding in UO like it was something that destroyed the game, and you're honestly the first person who I've ever heard refer to it in that manner. I'd like some inkling of what gave you that opinion, if you'd care to share...

Point blank - those who are arguing FOR substantially limited bank storage are, for the most part, arguing from a position of selfishness. A "I paid thousands of dollars to play this game, and anyone who didn't should suffer!" mindset. On the other hand, those arguing AGAINST substantially limited bank space are doing so from a gameplay/playability perspective.

I'm not someone who is going to drop hundreds, much less thousands, of dollars on a game that is still being developed. (Props to those of you that have) But I have purchased the same GAME as everyone else here, and expect to have the same level of playability from the outset as anyone else. Now, I don't say this out of any sense of entitlement - I say this because THAT is the audience the Devs will have in mind when it comes to essential game systems or mechanics. Because no matter how much money y'all have spent on your episode 1 pledges, it's the players this game hasn't even reached yet who will determine the fate of Episodes 3 and beyond. Pledges are putting the staff to work right now. SALES will KEEP them there.

Normally I can proofread my posts a bit better and ensure they don't come off too "snippy", but I'm on my phone right now... So I apologize for any errors or ruffled feathers.

 

You just gave me an interesting idea... what if we could export items locally (to collect). Complete with all necessary data, photos, perhaps a spinnable model. Or maybe have an ingame scrapbook for storing them.

I'll go add this to the suggestion box...

 

Well, there's this:
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html

and there's this:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/uoeconevolution.shtml

and this 2001 article in the New Yorker!
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/28/pimps-and-dragons

and of course there's the fact the Darkstarr specifically mentioned "hoarding" as a reason for the bank limits.


I wasn't around in UO at that time, but it's my understanding that the whole reason UO has limits now is that hoarding was so bad. I really wish I could find the article about the guy with 1 million chairs in his tower (or something like that) - that was great!

This is one of those "Wisdom of Solomon" type questions. What's more important to you, the baby's life or having half of the baby for the sake of it? Because the devs can very easily put no limits on banking, or push the limits to the very brink of what the game can handle. But the trade off is well documented, you're going to have server lag, longer load screens, a deflationary economy that may eventually lead to hyperinflation, and ALL so little bobby can have 20 sets of pants in his bank instead of 2.

Then when Episode II arrives, we'll find out what kind of effect cheap and easy storage has on the housing market. My concern would be that it would make people spend less on housing, which is the primary driver for all funding in the game. I could be wrong, no one can guess the future, but as both a home owner AND someone that wants this game to have the best chance to succeed financially, I have this concern.

 

That is an unfair statement and I don't lean toward that opinion. I have read so many opinions, its interesting and frustrating at the same time.

Pay 2 Win for YOU means that. For other's winning can simply be getting to a certain level, or completing all the quests in the main quest line, or becoming a master craftsman of whatever trade, or even still, just running a PUB in a game.

Just because you have no "end" does not mean other's abide your definition.

Winning can also be very literally taken in PVP when/if they start selling items that can help in PVP. A guild who decides to buy all the new sword of slaying from the store and hand them to members, who in turn go and burn down rivals can be seen as straight up PAY TO WIN.

Obviously, we have not seen "items" for sale that will unbalance that (yet***) but the road to this course is already lined with markers, just not paved.

 

That's not winning the game, since the game cant be won. Its just setting arbitrary "limits" for each person based on their own playstyles.

 

The term "pay to win" usually is associated with one player gaining advantage over another player, simply because of them spending more money. It doesn't need to mean "winning" the actual game.

Picking it apart like this is pure semantics.

 

Thats how its being used in this thread though. What you are trying to say is "Pay to Gain Unfair Advantage", not Pay to Win

 

But people don't say that.

 

Not really. You are taking the literal words of p2w and applying it as you read.

That is like saying, "gimme some bread" and you literally hand them a few slices of bread, when bread actually means money.

Perhaps it is an idiom and knowing the history of MMOs problem.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pay-to-win

"Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying."

key phrase is "largely unbalanced".

 

Those numbers in the R9 instructions were the decoration limits, not the storage limits. With the exception of bank slots, right now containers have no limits but we know they eventually will. That has been confirmed here. We just don't know what those limits are and I suspect they will be variable depending on size of the containers.

So housing can be used for additional storage, especially considering homeowners will undoubtedly have many crafting stations which will have chests of resources sitting next to them. And each container will likely only use 1 decoration slot in that lot's decoration limit. But we'll see.

 

I am not really sure how having more storage will be a pay2win mechanic, its more a convenience thing for some play-styles than anything else, it is usually possible in an MMO to live off what you can carry, anything that needs storing is usually something spare or required in another process or at a later time (quests, crafting, consumables).

I have heard arguments before of crafters having an advantage with a bigger bank, however that does not mean that a crafter with a smaller bank cannot be just as profitable. You have to approach a situation differently depending on your means in almost any RPG no matter if it is online or not.

Lets take crafting as an example, what are possible methods to make more money than the competition? Here are a few examples:

Getting to market before anyone else (skilling up faster, finding rare recipes, buying rare crafting mats as soon as they become available to buy)
Reading the market well and making what sells
Having a good location to sell - static vendor/house, good word of mouth advertising
Gathering your own resources rather than buying them to lower prices and undercut competition
Gift of the gab - good sales patter, works well for direct sales, on the move

Not all of these examples need lots of storage to run. For instance a good direct sales player can make one or two high price items and because he is not tied to a vendor and does not need to be near a bank can pick a spot where players gather to sell, he can also move to a new spot if one is not panning out that day. A guy in a house with a vendor needs footfall at his vendor to sell anything more than he needs storage.

Being a trader tends to require storage to work well - buying resources when there is a glut and selling when later crafters come shopping for those same resources or even trading in rares. There is always a way to gain wealth and other advancement without storage.

---

My very first UO character prior to owning any form of home was a smith, he started as a warrior, all he had was the suit on his back, a spare weapon, some bandages and a pair of scissors to cut new bandages. His inventory other than that was purely the gold he collected that he banked each time he went out to hunt, he might have spare cloth bolts in his bank (and a dye tub to dye his cloak, awww bless, what a noob he was).

I saw mining as profitable so I switched to that for a while, used a pack animal to move more weight of ore and mined at the edge of brit (passage to the west of town). Again my inventory consisted of very little, some light armour a pick, some food for the mule and that was it, I dropped off my ingots after each smelting run at the bank (or came to town to replace my mule when mishaps occurred).

I eventually turned to smithing as I liked the banter at Brit smithy and even with a couple of smiths players came for repairs and equipment regularly. Even when I got into this I carried just my gear and some ingots ( not too many for a large order of a full suit of armour and weapon I ran to the bank, made it and came back). Sometimes I would use my trusty pack animal if I had items in the bank left to sell.

All this time I felt I did well in the game and needed nothing more than maybe a third of my bank storage. In fact it was not until I played additional characters and had a house that I started to want more storage than the bank offered and moved into trading goods and buying rares, by then I could afford it.

The morale of this story - make do with what you got and eventually the rest will fall into place, plus sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination