Bank Rework, what's your opinion?

Only Lilly · « **on:** December 21, 2018, 18:53:39 »

What a mess, that's safe to say.

What are your thoughts?

Hello everyone,

It goes without saying you've vocally expressed your displeasure at the recent comment about the bank rework and bank placeholders.

There had been replies through the day but none really getting to the point of actually clarifying what our future plans are for this.

First of all, let's just clarify a few things then we'll get into the nitty gritty.

As originally stated, there were no plans for Bank Placeholders, this is not true, as mentioned by /u/JagexHunter last night (one of the developers of the initial bank rework concept) bank placeholders are currently in the process of being prototype by the engine team. This has been very under the radar, even more so internally, as you can imagine we're just as excited about the thought of it as you.
The prototype being under the radar was simply due to the fact that we didn't want to raise expectations especially when it's still possible this approach won't work, but it's better to say that it's being prototyped than to incorrectly say it's not worked on or planned.

So, can't you give us more bank slots?
For this I'll take a direct quote from what we've said on a recent Developer Q&A stream while at the same time diving into the specifics to help clarify.

Bank space is something we're always looking into. People are aware that we're technically at our limits in terms of bank space, so we need to do further work to remedy that. There are two aspects we have to consider:

Save-game size:

Think of an item with the most amount of variables attached to it (Augmented, both gizmos etc) - this item is the most costly per bank slot server side. Multiply that up by the number of bank space, then add a bit more. Now multiply that by the maximum amount of players that you need. That's the amount of storage space we need to make sure we always have allocated at all times to make sure we can always save the player's game state.
Adding a little bit of bank space per player equates to a huge amount. We're aware of the problem, and we're not unsympathetic to the issue players have.
We did a study into how many people it affects. It affects quite a decent chunk but not as much as you'd expect.
This is why our emphasis on content has been focused around "inventories", one example is the upcoming Player Owned Farm farmhand update which we're using to help save on your bank space.
Impact on other content:

Adding extra slots to the bank also affects other content, such as things that check whether you own an item. A recent example of the potential impact of this is in the Diango system, that stores items for you and allows you to retrieve them. As recently as last month we had a bug with Diango which led players to crash the moment they clicked on him (this was hotfixed immediately). This was a result of enabling him to search additional inventories for your items. Adding additional slots to the bank could have a similar effect on other content.
Why did you not announce it at RuneFest?
The Bank rework and loyalty point rework were not spoken about because the reveals for things that are definitely coming out before February 2019. At the time of RuneFest the previous status of the bank rework had not changed.
Why can't we do what Old School RuneScape has done?
(bits taken from /u/JagexHunter 's post)

It's the most frustrating thing about it for sure, why can they get these features that we can't?

The key answer there is in items. Old School placeholders are automatically generated objects, like notes. This means each item actually has multiples types, for example:

Item
Item (Noted)
Item (Placeholder)
Being the game from 2007, Old School has a significantly lower amount of items. We can't take this approach as it would push the item ID over the current limit. That limit can be raised, but a lot of non-game features would need to be updated. That's things like GE, adventurer's log, forum avatars, and many more like that which becomes a huge amount of work. Additionally stuff in particular such as the GE will also impact Old School as both games share that module (same as how both games have to receive the same friends chat updates at the same time)

Why shelve everything else?
First thing to say here is that this has been the status for a long time. It doesn't mean it would never be picked up in future, but that the benefits the rework offers don't offer as much as we could get from other smaller engine features that have also been requested over the years.

The rest comes down to the sheer complexity. To start a game engine update is very different to a regular content update, if it breaks you have to turn the game off until you can fix it. That can be mitigated through beta servers of course, but it's still makes large-scale changes risky.

It's especially risky, as to the engine all inventories are practically the same thing. Shops, worn equipment, beast of burden, bank, etc... are all the same thing at the core. Game scripts generally define the behaviour for the inventories. That means making a change in the engine to support bank features doesn't just have the potential to break the bank, but practically the entire game.

On top of that there's part-deprecated systems that need to be supported. Any changes that were made to the engine which the client needs to know about would need to be implemented in NXT, java, and HTML5 (in which the comapp is based). All very different languages, which could break in very different ways. It's not straightforward to just turn these off, but it's obviously ideal only to implement in one location.

Why did we say we were doing it to start?
We were experimenting with ninja taking on larger-scale projects which were Quality of life rather than the typical ninja fixes which had less impact on gameplay than when ninja first started.

We had the means to do engine work in-team and looked into a lot of the technical complexity to feel like it was possible, even if it would take a long time. Ultimately it wasn't possible, but that didn't become apparent until months after we made the announcement at RuneFest 2016.

TL;DW

In short the bank rework as a whole is shelved; we are not working on it and will not be for foreseeable future.
We are investigating bank placeholders on its own as a feature you want. It is at this stage purely an investigation into feasibility, and we make no promises about being able to deliver this.
As a note, due to how extremely close to Christmas it is and with staff taking holidays, etc our replies will be pretty stagnated, but we'll try to respond over the holidays where we can.

Thank you for reading

Amy · « **Reply #1 on:** December 21, 2018, 19:12:05 »

Its a shame its not coming any time soon

Miss Mudds · « **Reply #2 on:** December 21, 2018, 19:22:29 »

Let me guess this is on reddit, not actually communicated across the runescape website

This was the one update I actually looked forward to, most people know I don’t deal well with bosses, so things like Solak, ED2 (and 1) etc don’t interest me at all, yet bank rework was something to include everyone, and a much needed update.

Maybe if they remove all the useless stuff in game, and the dead content and not bring out stupid updates that last for a day then no one ever does them again, they may free up some decent space.

Kinda curious to look back on all the “shelved” projects and find out just what has been let go.

~Mudds

Nikkie · « **Reply #3 on:** December 21, 2018, 20:04:04 »

Not even surprised.

I don't know of anyone who actually wants the mining/smithing rework...?

JC · « **Reply #4 on:** December 21, 2018, 20:41:40 »

Personally I feel like placeholders would be helpful, until they ever bring those in I'm happy sticking with the current work arounds. I rarely find bank space an issue, just keep on top of what you have and don't hord junk imo

Cherrycrush · « **Reply #5 on:** December 21, 2018, 22:07:22 »

I'm not too bothered, this update should have happened years ago. The biggest issue is bank space, however buying a bank booster every 6 months or so when they're on sale fixes this issue.

I'd rather them focus on other stuff at this point, although placeholders would be nice

Nikkie · « **Reply #6 on:** December 21, 2018, 22:21:32 »

Quote from: Cherrycrush on December 21, 2018, 22:07:22

The biggest issue is bank space, however buying a bank booster every 6 months or so when they're on sale fixes this issue.

But that's still a rip off. Gotta spend irl money for that.

Cherrycrush · « **Reply #7 on:** December 21, 2018, 22:24:45 »

Quote from: Nikkie on December 21, 2018, 22:21:32

Quote from: Cherrycrush on December 21, 2018, 22:07:22
The biggest issue is bank space, however buying a bank booster every 6 months or so when they're on sale fixes this issue.

But that's still a rip off. Gotta spend irl money for that.

You can just buy bonds ingame and convert to runecoins, thats what I do anyway. Pick them up when they're 50% off.

Nikkie · « **Reply #8 on:** December 21, 2018, 22:31:01 »

Quote from: Cherrycrush on December 21, 2018, 22:24:45

Quote from: Nikkie on December 21, 2018, 22:21:32
Quote from: Cherrycrush on December 21, 2018, 22:07:22
The biggest issue is bank space, however buying a bank booster every 6 months or so when they're on sale fixes this issue.

But that's still a rip off. Gotta spend irl money for that.

You can just buy bonds ingame and convert to runecoins, thats what I do anyway. Pick them up when they're 50% off.

Ooh. Didn't know you could do that. Shame bonds are 23m atm

Cool like Redtunnel · « **Reply #9 on:** December 21, 2018, 22:36:31 »

Quote from: Cherrycrush on December 21, 2018, 22:07:22

I'm not too bothered, this update should have happened years ago. The biggest issue is bank space, however buying a bank booster every 6 months or so when they're on sale fixes this issue.

I'd rather them focus on other stuff at this point, although placeholders would be nice

Bank spaces are a ripoff and it does not solve the issue.

I expect nothing and I'm still disappointed by Jagex's decisions...The bank NEEDS a rework. The current bank system we have now is totally out of date and requires updating.

The amount of space available is ridiculous too. They release tons of new shit every year but not a single bank space has been added.

Redtunnel · « **Reply #10 on:** December 22, 2018, 00:20:54 »

If using too much storage is a problem (it really shouldn't be, storage isn't that expensive), there are plenty of ways to make it more compact for e.g. a list of items in a bank per player. One such example would be to target accounts that have not logged in for a while and start sharing data between them to get better compression rates. It's unlikely they would all login at once.

There are many possibilities that revolve around the idea of compressing further data that is used less frequently, and the only cost per se is slightly longer load times when it is then used. If you predict that properly, it can work well. If you haven't logged in for a year or so, it might take a few seconds longer to load your bank the first time, but that doesn't seem like a huge problem to me. So, for example, instead of describing items that are in each player's bank individually, you could start grouping sections of players' banks that are similar together, and describe the items that are in all their banks collectively, then more concisely describe who has what without needing to state the id once for each player.

I dunno how well that specific suggestion would work, but there are many variants of the idea. When you start grouping things you can use small ints and then recalculate it later when you want the full version. That's fast to use for real-time, and that's even better if you can group similar with similar because then you can compress too.

What patterns would work well depends on what patterns are common in banks, like how common an item is, how often there are many of it, etc etc, probability stuff. You could even maybe use other data as well, e.g. the odds of someone having item x in their bank is 0% if quest x is incomplete. Not all items are equal after all. Some items are more popular, some colours are more popular etc. That means theres some compressibility there! CAN YOU HEAR THAT JAGEX? THERE ARE SOLUTIONS TO YOUR PROBLEMS AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO TAKE YEARS TO BUILD!!

I can't speculate on how difficult that would be to do to their setup though, because I have no idea what the server side code is like or how they manage it or how capable their devs are, but I like to imagine how great this game could be if it was open source and the community could just contribute with solutions to these issues.

Nikkie · « **Reply #11 on:** December 22, 2018, 00:25:15 »

@Redtunnel ngl half of the time it's like you're talking another language, but it sure does make you sound smart af. @ them on Twitter or something 😂

DeltaDirac · « **Reply #12 on:** December 22, 2018, 01:39:04 »

I don't mind that much. I only play my Ironman at the moment and my instinct is to hold onto everything since I can't use GE. But any time I get to new content like the Arc and need some more slots I can find stuff in my bank I haven't touched in months and don't need. A limit on bank space feels good for me in a way since it forces me to curb hoarding tendencies. I did buy 4 bank boosters about a year ago I think, but haven't bought any in some time despite accessing a ton of new content. Storing stuff in Diango, the costume room, and the treasure trail hidey holes all helped me a lot with bank space.

I feel for the people who want placeholders to help organize the bank, but that was never a big deal for me. So overall I'm pretty ambivalent about this news.

It does seem like a disaster how the process has played out though, especially with communication.

Only Lilly · « **Reply #13 on:** December 22, 2018, 12:01:13 »

@Redtunnel post this on discord id like to see the reactions

Aqua · « **Reply #14 on:** December 22, 2018, 13:32:11 »

Ive been struggling with bank space for years..

and i have all the bank boosters for years now, im always at the max and have to drop or sell stuff. (i bought all the boosters when bonds were like 12m each)

I dont even hoard, or keep a drop tab, bc thats not even possible..

they keep adding new stuff to the game.. but you cant even store it.
especially with this mining and smithing rework, its going to add soooooo many new items. (new ores, new bars, new armour and weapons, new tools, etc.)
cant store them. i dont have space. fun.

An extra thought;

cant they make something like a second bank account?

If i make a new account to store things, i get new storage. Why cant that storage be on my main account, as a second bank account?
So i would have to go a different bank to access that storage.. i dont mind doing that if i can get an extra 1000 space bc of it.

Bank Rework, what's your opinion?

Only Lilly

Bank Rework, what's your opinion?

Amy

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Miss Mudds

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Nikkie

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JC

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Cherrycrush

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Nikkie

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Cherrycrush

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Nikkie

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Cool like Redtunnel

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Redtunnel

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Nikkie

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DeltaDirac

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Only Lilly

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Aqua

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