Bags (of holding)

[NegInfinity]

Proposition:

A PC can get one bag. The bag is non-tradeable, cannot be dropped, and a character can only have one bag in the inventory.
A PC can then upgrade the bag for weight reduction, in 20% steps. So it becomes 20% weight reduction, then 40, 60, 80, and then 100 (bag of holding). Upgrades cost gold. (for example, the last upgrade costing 20..50k).

This solves issues of lowstr characters and is less work/trouble than horses.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Due to the myriad of issues we have presently with item loss and the time of recovery, bic inflation from the items and the potential therein by descriptors, I don't see this happening. The workaround using db functionalities might stave off the technical issues.

[AC81]

There are some bags of holding currently in-game. Do they cause massive issues with performance of the system?

[NegInfinity]

Due to the myriad of issues we have presently with item loss and the time of recovery, bic inflation from the items and the potential therein by descriptors, I don't see this happening. The workaround using db functionalities might stave off the technical issues.

You are going to deal with item losses either way, because you already rolled a custom system with horses, which required much more work than bags ever needed, and will need much more time to get it right.

The part about "bic inflation" should be dealt with by imposing the limit of 1 bag per character I mentioned. Bags have limited number of slots, so it is not like they're "infinite". With that in mind, I'm uncertain where should the "bic inflation" come from.

In addition to that, bags of holding are active on sigil, in large numbers, and so far I do not recall a single case of character file going corrupt.

In addition to that, bag of holding of holding can be provided "as is without warranty of any kind", like current auction system. Or horse system.

Also, I'd like to see some proof of bags corrupting bics. Because it is a story people keeps retelling, yet I don't recall this actually ever happening. For me at the moment it looks like the 1 bag per char limit would shut down possibility of corruption. If not, then a case that results in bag corruption could be identified and elimiated.

Either way, as far as I can tell, this is simpler, faster, and more convenient than the current horse system.

[Thorsson]

My understanding also was that the technical problems have now been overcome in the community and that includes the issues around BICs. I think 'arrow' bags (other missiles are available), gem bags, potion bags, scroll bags, would make sense, even if unlimited carrying was not seen as a good thing.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

The part about "bic inflation" should be dealt with by imposing the limit of 1 bag per character I mentioned. Bags have limited number of slots, so it is not like they're "infinite". With that in mind, I'm uncertain where should the "bic inflation" come from.

Easy. Item descriptions. Players are already putting multi paragraph descriptions into their items now, from books to gems, scrolls they prepare to pass around among one another.

In addition to that, bags of holding are active on sigil, in large numbers, and so far I do not recall a single case of character file going corrupt.

We are not another PW. What works elsewhere may not work here, and vice versa. This is described frequently with a number of our systems that we've had provided for us by a third party.

In addition to that, bag of holding of holding can be provided "as is without warranty of any kind", like current auction system. Or horse system.

The former placements should be resolved with as much effort as possible to alleviate mishaps. This would be no different. There's no reason to continue on the idea that things need to be in some beta stage permanently.

Also, I'd like to see some proof of bags corrupting bics. Because it is a story people keeps retelling, yet I don't recall this actually ever happening. For me at the moment it looks like the 1 bag per char limit would shut down possibility of corruption. If not, then a case that results in bag corruption could be identified and elimiated.

Either way, as far as I can tell, this is simpler, faster, and more convenient than the current horse system.

PMs from players whose characters either crash the server at logon, or crash the client that a staff member has to go in and fix.

[NegInfinity]

Easy. Item descriptions. Players are already putting multi paragraph descriptions into their items now, from books to gems, scrolls they prepare to pass around among one another.

Has this been actively tested this or is it a guess?

Because sigil has multi-paragraph books on the server, and players stuff those in the bags. DFMI tool with renaming functionality is also available on the server, though I don't recall if modification of descriptions is unlocked on it.

[dedude]

Yet it adds nothing to the game except to let characters hold more items in their inventory. From a technical perspective, it's much better for the game/server to utilize the item storage to offload the item footprint to a secondary process/file. The pack horses also use that. Both systems will go out of BETA state as soon as we feel confident in them.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Easy. Item descriptions. Players are already putting multi paragraph descriptions into their items now, from books to gems, scrolls they prepare to pass around among one another.

Has this been actively tested this or is it a guess?

Because sigil has multi-paragraph books on the server, and players stuff those in the bags. DFMI tool also is available on the server, though I don't recall if modification of descriptions is unlocked on it.

Tested, proven, and easily repeatable.

[NegInfinity]

Yet it adds nothing to the game except to let characters hold more items in their inventory. From a technical perspective, it's much better for the game/server to utilize the item storage to offload the item footprint to a secondary process/file. The pack horses also use that. Both systems will go out of BETA state as soon as we feel confident in them.

I've posted feedback on horses earlier. My experience with horses is the reason for requesting bags.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

There are some bags of holding currently in-game. Do they cause massive issues with performance of the system?

Less performance, more impacting of the character. It throws a race condition issue and an unhandled underflow happens if OnExit event is raised at the same time. If the server hiccups, you end up with garbage filling out the rest of the bytes in the file. The more stuff you have to write out, the higer the chance of it occurring. Inherent issues in nwserver, and had this problem on a NWN1 PW.

[NegInfinity]

There are some bags of holding currently in-game. Do they cause massive issues with performance of the system?

Less performance, more impacting of the character. It throws a race condition issue and an unhandled underflow happens if OnExit event is raised at the same time. If the server hiccups, you end up with garbage filling out the rest of the bytes in the file. The more stuff you have to write out, the higer the chance of it occurring. Inherent issues in nwserver, and had this problem on a NWN1 PW.

But that just means that all characters are subject to a chance of random corruption and not that bags are causing it.

Likewise, if you're talking about large descriptions, then inventory has 128 slots on it, and you can fill them all with unique multi-paragraph-description items.

Effect would be the same - increased chance of corruption.

So, it is not a bag issue, but a large description issue.

[Flasmix]

I was wondering... Couldn't one get something called a 'bag of holding' but instead of having it be an individual bag, it opens the storage menu without having to go to an NPC?

[NegInfinity]

I was wondering... Couldn't one get something called a 'bag of holding' but instead of having it be an individual bag, it opens the storage menu without having to go to an NPC?

They could.

Normal bag would've been more convenient (storage has pauses for processing), but this would work as well.

[dedude]

It comes down to what direction the DM team (lore) and dev team (mechanics/game design) want to take for the server. So far the idea has been denied (it has come up many times).