[Unmentioned 3rd Party Software]

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by magman, Jun 12, 2020.

  1. Moege Augur

    Just for sellers, No idea what the limit is on buyers (probably worse as you can trade for other items also)
    100 items, amount and their prices, growing the character files even bigger I will take a pass thankyou.

    It is currently stored client side so do not have an impact on character files
  2. Willowtree Journeyman

    It is not only Scandinavian, this is the rule for any problem - solving it and make it a Win-Win-situation. A good idea. But this is something for DGB/Darkpaw to realize. It reminds me on all that MP3/MP4-fight. One part fought the idea and went into the court - the others made a new concept and sold it via the web. Now Netflix, Spotify and Co are so big and for inexpensive 8 Euro a month only a very small amount of people would still spoil their media fun with trojans, viruses, crappy stupid merchandizing from some wannabe hackers or horrible bad quality anymore - the world constantly changes, people who stick to old dogmas will die out. If Everquest would evolve, the next step would be to program your own mercenary (or the behavior of that). Going beyond that programming/designing your own merc army (merc groups) would be the next step. Everything correctly planned with all features which are at moment present in the usual 3rd party tools but in a way incorporated that it does not harm the gameplay of all other groups, that would be a genious move.

    The problem as always is never the tool. It is the way how these tools are used. It is the same like having weapons. You can kill with a car, with a household knife and with a sword. But they don't kill - it is the responsible and mature human being with their proper or wrong education who do or don't.

    There were some games out there which had such features on old Atari and Amiga computers. The "normal" single player is not used to that but evolving Everquest to a new level with the possibility of having a community which is contributing to that game is, what makes games like Minecraft so appealing. Housing in Everquest was a nice try but all these bugs have made it so annoying (disappearing items, clunky tools and difficult usability to realize the dream house) so that it is sadly nearly a wasteland. But from time to time I visit other houses or guilds and I am always again amazed what you can do with these crude tools. It surely needs money for additional development but all the 3rd party tools are thriving, why not in EQ itself? But there is a ton of developement done there. Make the players to developers and coordinate the development. Use the community!

    Another idea would be to make it level and experience dependent. If you have a main who experienced enough then you get the ability to form an own mercenary (quest related). If you have your levels there then you could start your own mercenary groups which have the same feature like your toons but it is your responsibility or the creativity of the community to enhance and optimize that mercenary code or mercenary group code (THIS is the success of Mindcraft). On a bigger scale this could lead into building an army (raid) of your own designs and group with others who are also owner of self-built-mercs, groups or armies and work together to conquer something (raid - multiraid). Ideas and possibilities are endless and these features will drag people into EQ who never thought to play that game. There could be defined in which areas in the zone these army can work on automatic (I know, this does not prevent people exploiting the opposite because it is a constrain, but there are always people harrassing others and this is the job of the support to solve that or measurements in the game itself). Instances are always safe and don't disturb others. Some quest areas could be a no go area to not interfere with solo/molo/groupers who are working on their quests. Some tries with a more flexible way to play have been successful in the past (Plane of War, Ancients in FM, etc). Having that additional feature would be highly interesting but with everything it has to work without the usual crappy bugs like the housing stuff and it should work with your own toons instead of a poorly built merc routine - then nobody can complain about his merc anymore - its a matter of your coding/optimizing method or that of the guy who offers the code to you. Special rules and flags for being on "bot" like done with the "bazaar buyer/seller bots" while the PC is offline would be possible. For example: places for "bots" are allowed and the "new rule": >botters with the "botflag"< outside of the allowed areas can be trained with every means (instead of the usual ban/suspension/warning). This gives everybody the means to fight the guys and some have fun in exactly doing that - a game of its own (greetings to the guys doing that atm as a fun part of the game).

    There will be for sure again people who neglect everything but the world consists on dogmatic people who merely preserve the ashes instead of ignite the spark. But people who are igniters make the world go round. All others are only the consumers who pay for it. Finding a Win-Win-Situation is the best solution instead of making compromises. A compromise cuts away from both sides. A Win-Win-Situation should always be more then both sides together!

    Training a bot crew is then allowed and a part of the game...I get used to that idea...
  3. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    I'm missing your point.

    If they just brought up the same sellers (or buyers, whatever) who had been on when they took the servers down, I don't see how that causes any issues at all. Totally don't get when character files have to do with this.
  4. Moege Augur


    To be able to bring them back up they need to know what the items/prices was set as, that has to be stored somewhere so character files needs to expand to remember this info. It is not as simple as say just bring them up again, take it further and think how that has to be done.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  5. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Got it. Didn't realize they didn't have the ask prices server-side.
  6. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    They do. He's wrong.

    Wait, how do you think /baz search works? There is a server-side ledger updated every time a buyer/trader clicks "Begin". Are you suggesting that DBG queries every person's computer for item price data every time someone does a /baz search? That latency would be absolutely insane. They'd have no idea who was even trading without server persistence.

    It's unclear what you mean by...

    I'm assuming by character files you mean database rows. There are no character files stored server-side.

    Back to my original point, though, they should not bring servers down every day just so MQuest is a little less convenient. The MQuest devs would just re-write the client to be dependent on something other than a timestamp/hash.

    In fact, the only reason MQuest "needs" to be updated every time is to coax people into donating (people who donate get it earlier than everyone else).
  7. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    No, what he's saying is, the base files are not stored server-side (I just found mine, he's correct, they are stored on the PC).

    There's a difference between loading the values (from your PC) into memory, as each trader is "instanced" in programming terms, and actually storing them server-side, for later reference, which I'm pretty sure they don't based on his comments, and thinking it through.

    If they did the latter (which you imply you think they do), that would be a HUGE amount of data that would do them no good to store. I can only sell 100 items at a time, but my price file could have 100s or 1000s of items in it. And then there are the people who only occasionally sell, and all the people who haven't played in years, but have sold? That would be MILLIONS of lines to search.

    When you do a search in Bazaar, it's only searching what's currently for sale by current sellers, which is a much smaller list. And it's just held in memory.

    So, I like my idea of bringing the sellers back up after downtime. Moege says they can't, cause they don't have access to your pricing file. True enough, and too bad :(

    However, they could still have access to the in-memory list of sellers, items, and prices from before they took the zone down. So, it MIGHT be possible for them to do this without needing access to the player's PC, if they kept that data before shutting down :)
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  8. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    I don't know where you're getting this idea that they have to store everything in your file on a server, or why you'd think this would be millions of lines. Or even where you thought I suggested they stored everything in the file. The ledger of items for sale is stored in memory, which has a secondary index to the buyer/seller.

    A memcached table would look like this, for example:

    Table A: Item ID | Sellers
    Cloak of Flames | <seller id1>,<seller id2>,...
    Rusty Sword | <sellder id1>,<seller id2>,...

    Table B: Seller ID | Item ID | Price
    <seller id1> | Cloak of Flames | 50000

    When someone with a CoF hits "Begin Trader" or "Update Price":
    1. A request is sent to the server with items and prices, max 100 items
    2. The server verifies you actually have the items in your inventory or the money to spend (database request, not memory)
    3. The server then either adds your ID to the list of CoFs, or adds a new line if no one else is selling
    4. When you log out or remove yourself from Offline mode all it has to do is remove your ID from Table A and Table B.
    When someone does a /baz search:
    1. A request is sent to query memcache for the item
    2. The item and its sellers is returned, which then queries the seller table to retrieve the prices
    3. The response is appended then returned to you
    Thus:
    • This not a (O)^2 problem. The maximum number of rows would never exceed the total tradeable items in the game.
    • There is no need to "instance" a trader (that term doesn't apply here).
    • Even querying millions of rows (again, they don't) would be trivial in NoSQL.
    • Millions of lines is not massive. Welcome to 2020.
    Also, they wouldn't have a list of items in memory if the server reset. It would... reset... That's why you have a file locally to save you the trouble of manually re-entering everything.

    Nothing anything ever involving the exchange of items or platinum even remotely comes from a file on your computer.
  9. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    We obviously got our wires crossed. That's what I was saying.

    The issue brought up was that the game needs to see your file when you initially go into trader mode, so it knows how much you're asking for each item. Nobody thinks it's going to your PC when people do a Bazaar search. Especially if you're offline selling ;)

    But, if they kept a copy of the cache when they took the zone down, then they could bring the traders back up, as they would already have the info for what you're asking for the items you were already selling.

    Oh yeah, and LOL "Welcome to 2020". This IS EQ we're talking about ;)
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  10. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    Oh ok, I was going off of...
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  11. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Meant to say "which you imply HE (Moege) thinks they do"
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Xyphen like this.
  12. IblisTheMage Augur

    This thread is so beautiful. Sniff.

    Thanks for making my morning-coffey a great experience.
  13. Vumad Cape Wearer


    I read through the end of page 4 and my only take away from this thread is that the guy who is talking about respect stereotypes all young people which I find to be pretty disrespectful. Your dad thought your generation was disrespectful, and his dad thought that about your dad and so on.

    One day I was around a group of older guys complaining about younger guys and I pointed out that the younger guys were just emulating their behavior and if they wanted the younger guys to behave differently they should set a better example. It was pretty poorly received, but the truth usually is.

    And no, I'm not 20. I just don't think of respect as a one way street. People younger than me don't deserved to be grouped together and given the same label. But I get where you're coming from. Age is a protected class, but only 45 and older, because young people aren't worth as much, or something, I guess.