I don’t hoard. I only have seven characters, one from each class, and that’s all I’m going to stick to. That said, in a game where one of the biggest and probably most iconic sources of enjoyment is finding special items, it is kind of lame that the game doesn’t give you enough space to actually collect all the said special items.
At a minimum, you should have enough space to be able to complete a Holy Grail challenge while playing online.
Forget it you are just going on my list of people to never take seriously or respond to again. Its no use you are beyond braindead.
Path of Exile makes you pay for character slots because there is a cost associated with every character and item saved.
Would you be in support of a pay-for-slots system? Or an optional subscription model that generates revenue to support and develop the game, which features more slots? Or do you think a $40 purchase should grant you as much storage as you want, to be retained and accessible forever?
I feel the gravity of this loss in my core. I must now find a way to carry on…
If Blizzard comes out and says outright that the financial cost associated with giving people extra stash slots is really that high (and provides the documentation to prove it), then sure. Though my own suspicion is that this isn’t the reason.
That seems a bit entitled to me.
Financial reasons are exactly why companies place limits on storage. Everyone’s 40 dollar purchase needs to cover staff and hardware for the next x years. You think Blizzard should just let the maintenance costs run up as high as you want? You know, with a dev team and servers, it is possible for the game to lose money. Every single game that hosts player data like this has some limits on how much they will store per account.
That is a byproduct of dollar and cents evaluations.
We’re not talking about cloud storage to upload gigabytes of cat videos. In fact, “storage” in general seems like bad terminology to use here. I mean sure, within the immersion of the game we’re “storing” items in our stash but that doesn’t mean it has the same economies of scale as storage (as in the actual computing resource) given to users to do whatever they want with.
As for whether it’s entitled or not, that depends on Blizzard. If they reveal to us that they’re barely breaking even under the crushing costs of the six stash slots they’re giving to people, then sure, I’ll cut them some slack. But if it’s not a major driver of cost (and again, I strongly suspect it isn’t) then it’s neither here nor there.
Well that’s just not true at all now is it? That is exactly what we are talking about. Hard drive space. Maintenance. Backups. CPU and RAM on Servers have to serve up 500 character character screens. Additional staff to service more hardware. Literally just utility bills. Hosting is expensive af. Character saves take up space. Each character slot has a cost to Blizzard in $. This is why every single modern game makes sure to structure their game so that each player covers these costs with their purchase or subscription. Profit, sure. But businesses do not operate without costs.
Here’s the thing though. Right now, in order to evade the three slot “limit”, people are creating mules. For each mule that people create, that’s another character for which the game will have to keep track of stats, skills, equipment and quest progress. I’m not sure how much that costs in the way of computational resources, but what I can tell you is that right now 100% of those resources are being wasted on characters that will never step outside the Rogue Encampment.
Meanwhile, the shared stash is something that already exists in the game, and seems to have functioned well enough that the game is up and running now after the better part of a year. Unless there’s some really weird eccentricity to the way it was coded, it should be simple to just expand it to allow for more slots. Overall, Blizzard might actually come out ahead once people stop making mules and just use the shared stash instead.
what are yo rambling about? what does any of that have to do with ppl TODAY feeling like they need more characters and 10 not being enough slots?
There wouldnt be complaints if there wasnt feelings of frustration that are imacting them
back then you could make as many accounts as you wanted without rebuying the game. The disc allowed you to install the game and you could create multiple accounts (8 on each) for free and have as many as you wanted. There was a workaround that was free. You didnt need a friend to transfer items, just needed to perm a game.
The limitations of expired characters and no respecing has no bearing on current character slots limitations
you’re rambling about non issues and conflating with what ppl have actual gripes with - and its going to get MUCH worse as ladder starts and ppl who are maxed will need to delete characters to make room for new ones
20 isnt enough slots for a LOT of ppl (if you’re a 1-10 character andy, im happy this isnt an issue for you, but just cause its not a problem for you doesnt mean its not a problem at all or for many others) - what does it take to get that through your head?
I don’t mean any offense but I really get the vibe that you’re not a techy person. That’s fine, but maybe I can explain some things.
That’s true, and people want more slots (unlimited slots, according to some) to do more of this and have 20+ characters on classic, expansion, ladder, and non ladder each, with standard and hardcore versions of all of that, stored until the end of time. Read the thread. Like you’re saying, and I’m saying, that all has cost in $ to Blizzard. My company hosts servers (I am a software developer for a Healthcare company that offers SaaS (software as a service), kinda like how video games are a service, but for healthcare). Our largest expense isn’t our development, sales, marketing, operations or administrative personnel. It’s not our rent on office space. It’s the cost of maintaining servers, backups, etc and the very largest part of that is literally terabytes of fast NVMe hard drives that can deliver data quickly.
Yeah, let’s add 100 stash tabs to the shared stash. It would solve the character save game space problem. Except no, it wouldn’t. One, all those items are still being saved to disk. You might save some overhead on the character bits like quest and such true, but youre still expanding storage costs. Then you also run into another more serious problem - every single time you load into a game, open your stash, etc, the server has to deliver 100 stash tabs worth of data to your game client. Massive game load times and server load delivering all that stash data would lead to massive complaint threads on the forums and a worse game experience.
It’s not like I’m ideologically opposed to more character slots, but people need to be realistic and not pretend to know what’s involved when they do not. People also need to stop acting like they are owed things that they are not. Increased costs to operate the game means the game is less profitable, which means we don’t get continued support and it goes into maintenance mode like d2:LoD.
So, that is why I would actually like a way to purchase character slots, or an optional subscription with benefits like more character slots. It supports the game and keeps it running.
$40 up front and never bringing in another dollar from that player while having continuous, recurring costs associated with that player using your service is a tenuous situation that does involve cost and profit analysis. It’s just the way things are.
I keep pointing people back to Path of Exile. Yes it’s a free to play game, but they make a ton of money off of their micro transactions. It’s easy to knee-jerk response and scream ‘greed’ but paying wages, taxes, benefits, and operating costs like server hosting costs a lot of money. IMO D2 needs some recurring revenue.
we’ve seen this in D3 before - ladder season participation rewards an extra stash slot - thats fine with me, there is a number where ppl will be happy
D2 is a game where every item is unique and matters, its not just dps. So there is a reason to keep a lot of different items for different builds for different classes. While this is a space issue, im bringing more attention to the character class issue. Im going to have multiple sorcs and necros and barbs - space is less of a concern than actual characters, but space is still a major part of it because more characters require more space as well for their own personal inventories. This is compounded with several different modes: hardcore/ladder/classic. honestly, stash is less of a concern than characters for me.
i dont get how they expect ppl to participate in continuing to create new characters every ladder and then not run out of room.
Also the ppl that play the most have the most characters, this affects them as much as the traders and collectors - these are GOOD and healthy things to have in the game to keep interest maintained in the game, so when ppl come along and start saying:
basically in the sandbox that is D2, when ppl are finding their own ways to stay engaged in a game with no endgame (same way they have always done before), ppl coming along and telling them “no you are NOW doing it wrong and need to stop doing it that way” - well that is only going to kill the interest that is keeping ppl engaged.
seriously, up it to 40 or 50 and ppl will have enough wiggle room and leeway.
money isnt the issue with this, it hasnt been before 20 years ago with D2 or with D3, the issue is the devs actually believing that ppl who want more character slots want it for stash space rather than to be able to play more characters & that ppl who are playing this game a lot or seriously dont actually need more than 20 slots - this is an arbitrary number that does not match the math just in how many game modes and classes there are - of course its a problem, why WOULDNT it be?
Stash space is a different issue than more characters to play with - there is overlap but too many ppl are conflating the 2 issues because of the overlap and assuming that infinite inventory will make the complaints go away - for some it will, for ppl like me, i want to play more characters and more stash space isnt going to help with that…
“Stash space is a different issue than more characters to play with - there is overlap but too many ppl are conflating the 2 issues because of the overlap and assuming that infinite inventory will make the complaints go away - for some it will, for ppl like me, i want to play more characters and more stash space isnt going to help with that…”
(reposting above excerpt from a previous reply cause i know ppl dont actually read long posts)
even with a currency tab for gems/runes and 10 more stash tabs…i would still like to make more than 20 different characters (its a different issue). Reason why i suggest 40 minimum is also somewhat arbitrary - i paid 40 bucks, 40 characters would be nice, but 50-60 is ideal for ladder seasons as well.
For people who have no issue with char slots or stash space. Good for you.
But why are you stopping people from having more?
We are not talking about male pattern baldness, or weather, where we have little control over. In which learning to live with it make sense.
We are talking about things that can be improve for vast amount of people, and people that do not need, are not negatively impacted ( unless you scrap barrels) .
It’s a one time effort for developers And improve game experience for many players , if not most.
The only questions IMO are,
Is it worth the effort from dev, and my answer is a “hell yes”, and the 2nd question is the how or how much.
My suggestion is 50 char slots. 50 inventory slots and a currency tab.
Go big that most people are satisfy and we never have to revisit this topic again
Again sadly if you watched Blizz in their interviews they get this shady glint in their eyes every time character limit is mentioned and laming make a “tech limitation” excuse.
It’s just a money thing for them.
Tokens aren’t new with D2R, they were added to the legacy game, which by then also had like 18 character slots per account. Rerolling stat and skill points still leaves you with having to store the build specific items and if you enjoy multiple builds its ridiculous to expect to farm tokens constantly to play both versions. With 2 characters I can play my WW barb then switch to my frenzy barb the next run 2 minutes later if I want. Using tokens to switch between multiple end game builds when you have the gear isn’t sustainable, IMO.