Is there any reason for ArenaNet NOT to sell more than 17 bank tabs?

[Glott.7239]

I think they mentioned some database issus before and that "weird things" start happening if they push the system to much because of some antiquated tech, but that was a few years ago and i believe the limit was even lower back than.

Another concern is the prevention hoarding behavior and insentivising players to sell of unneeded goods to keep the economy afloat.

[Atoclone.4810]

44 minutes ago, Glott.7239 said:

I think they mentioned some database issus before and that "weird things" start happening if they push the system to much because of some antiquated tech, but that was a few years ago and i believe the limit was even lower back than.

 

If I remember my database lessons right you had to specifically set an amount set the point of creation as drive space is at a premium. 

 

This was back in the 90s though so I may well be wrong. These days you just abuse excel for everything

[Sweetbread.3678]

I'm sure Homesteads will have some sort of storage setup for the furnishings similar to Guild Halls. There's no doubt that a huge part of the reason that it took 12+ years to get housing out is that they had to figure out how to solve all of the data storage issues with every single player having a custom house with up to 1000 placed objects. So just from Homesteads even existing, the issue must have already been solved. But in all honestly...

On 6/24/2024 at 6:06 PM, Zera.9435 said:

There is no need for more than that. People should instead get off their hoarder mentality and only keep what they actually need. Go clean your room.. err.. bank!

...this. 17 bank tabs is already pretty excessive; I'm pretty sure you could simultaneously do Mawdrey and every single legendary collection in the game and that would only temporarily take up like 6 of them at most. There are actual technical limits to stuff like storage, so at some point people need to be able to put their neuroses aside (myself included, I've fallen into the hoarder trap) and look at how the game is logically designed to be played (e.g. selling/discarding items that serve no purpose) and use the myriad tools available to them to figure out what's worth keeping (wiki, fast farming, efficiency, etc.).

Honestly I'm kind of glad they're technically limited to 17, because if you have a game with tens of thousands of items and a portion of the playerbase that becomes emotionally attached to every single lorebook (that they'll never read again) or develops a hoarder mentality over every single trash drop that miiiight be useful in the future (it won't), then offering unlimited paid storage expansions would essentially be a psychologically exploitative business practice.

Edited June 26 by Sweetbread.3678

[Danikat.8537]

Have Anet ever actually said bank tabs are restricted by technical limitations?

I know they said they have to be careful about what they add into material storage, but that wasn't just due to setting up slots for new items - for example they deliberately delayed including some PoF items because they'd previously noticed players wouldn't sell them new materials until they filled up their storage, which lead to artifically high prices for new ones.

I know they've said various other things couldn't be done because of the way the game was set up originally, although some of those they figured out some sort of work-around (the ones I remember is shared inventory slots - we were told it was impossible, then a few years later we got them). But it seems like over the course of this thread posts have gone from asking if there is a technical limitation to speculating on what exactly it might be to acting like it's been confirmed there is a technical reason they can't add new tabs without any actual sources.

[Solvar.7953]

With software, most anything is possible - the question is how much work it is.  To some degree, until the code is written, there is a technical limitation in that whatever feature just does not exist.

No one outside of the developers really know how hard it is to add more bank tabs.  It could be as simple as increasing the constant that defines the number of banktabs, and just releasing an update, or could be very complicated in require changes to the database, UI, date types, etc.  Everything is just speculation from the playerbase at this point.

Anet might also look at current stats on bank tabs.  If only 10% of the active player base are maxed out on bank tabs, that is your potential new sale size.  It may be that Anet looks at the number and says 'likely amount of money we will get by increasing bank tabs is $x, but it will cost $3x to make that feature, so not worth it'.  Even if the cost is less than they will make, it also means taking resources from something else (you just can't hire someone and say add more bank tabs - there tends to be a fairly long learning curve for complex software),  Anet may also be looking at something like that and making a decision that having that developer work on features for the next expansion is worth more than adding more bank tabs.

[Robban.1256]

21 hours ago, Atoclone.4810 said:

These days you just abuse excel for everything

That can become very expensive, if you work with tons of data. " UK government loses data because of excel mistake."

Tldr: excel is not a data base.

Edited June 27 by Robban.1256

[Atoclone.4810]

5 minutes ago, Robban.1256 said:

That can become very expensive, if you work with tons of data. " UK government loses data because of excel mistake."

Tldr: excel is not a data base.

Knew that would trigger people who know their stuff. The problem is excel will do it and is accessible to a lot more users. Up until it doesn't. That's a fantastic example of why not to.bbuy perfectly on brand for how we dealt with the whole pandemic. Suitcase of booze anyone?