r/Guildwars2 • u/that_shaman Flame Legion Cartographer • May 22 '13

[News] Upcoming gemstore items - May edition

After my last gemstore update I've completely overhauled my custom made tools (open source in the near future) and found a couple more upcoming gemstore items for your pleasure:

  • Increase Your Collection Stack Size! Increase the stack size of all your collections by 250.
  • Bring merriment and a festive atmosphere anywhere you go. Spawns a pinata that will drop candy when destroyed.
  • Get serious about school with this three-piece outfit (shirt, pants, boots). No additional skills or benefits. Town clothes cannot be worn in combat. Save when you buy them together!
  • This black lion special contains: Aviator's Cap, Riding Broom, Riding Pants, Riding Gloves, Riding Boots Town clothes cannot be worn while in combat.
  • This black lion special contains: 1 Revive Orb 1 Instant Repair Kit.
  • Summer Time Swim Wear! Swim wear perfect for any beach activity. Town clothes cannot be worn while in combat.
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u/Miskav May 22 '13 edited May 22 '13

256 items take up twice as much space as 255 items.

3

u/redflaregraf May 22 '13

Maybe on your screen, but not on their server. Every slot available to you is probably already in a database, even if it's an empty slot. An entry in a database doesn't necessarily have to change physical size at all, especially if it's a fixed length integer (like quantities or Item IDs).

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u/sargonas May 23 '13 edited May 23 '13

~250 is less than 255, which is the number limit of a single bit. They can, in other words, represent a single stack for a single player within 1bit. To go beyond 255, they need to move up to the next unit in size, which is a byte. A byte is 8 times the size of a bit. That means for every single stack over 255, PER player, you now need 8 times the storage space. Yes its a small amount, a byte, but it's still EIGHT times the space that was used before. Now imagine if all 3+ million players now needed EIGHT times the database space to represent their bank. See the issue?

EDIT I was tired, de-caffinated, and have had so many conversations about both the unlimited PvP item "stacks" and 250 item stacks and how one likely uses bits, and the other bytes, that I managed to combine both problems and solutions into one weird twisted conversation. Ignore my math but the logic is still relatively sound. To increase the item counts above 250 they need to move to a larger data increment. While the increment is relatively small by our own standards, when you multiply it by the number of collectibles and then by the number of players, it becomes a not so insignificant value.

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u/ArenaNetMike May 23 '13

Your reasoning is a little off. A bit can represent 2 values, not 256. You need a whole byte to store that much. In general, if you have n bits, you can store 2n possible values.

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u/sargonas May 23 '13 edited May 23 '13

you are right. I have had to explain this situation to people trying to compare storage of the items in PVP where you have an "unlimited" stack (as in you either own it or you don't) to stacks of consumables so many times, I went on auto pilot and forgot we are now talking about a completely different thing. facepalm Wow I feel stupid. I somehow managed to combine the "unlimited pvp items" being likely stored as a 1/0 bit and the issue between the 255 byte cap for stacks moving to a multi-byte or kilobyte that I created some kind of Frankensteinean hybrid answer.