you can believe it or not. But Homer and plenty of others here have witnessed the system bogging down. Everytime the game loads or you load into a GR, the system’s memory reads every little piece of data that is in the stash, and it is apart of the memory. Why in their infinite wisdom they did this, idk. but unfortunately thats how the cookie crumbles.
I still don’t believe it because every piece of gear can be stored as a small text string, especially small if every possible combination of stats is assigned a file in the game “hard drive” storage that is just referenced by an item ID number/variable.
It then just needs to store that text document of those item IDs along with other character data in RAM that is large enough to hold much more.
Think of it this way. There are MMORPG games with a LOT more items and a LOT more storage of said items all being shared in real time across thousands of players simultaneously…and this game somehow gets bogged down with a small 350+60 item IDs per person in a maximum 4-person game?
Hell, even Path of Exile doesn’t have that much trouble on the same consoles with much more complex itemization and crafting and many more players simultaneously in the communication links.
This is an old game that worked apparently just fine on Xbox 360, which is no longer being updated, and supposedly has trouble with RAM on the Xbox One with much more RAM? Hell, this was even a concern before the lower powered Nintendo Switch port of the game, but somehow the Xbox One made no improvements over the Xbox 360 to its RAM or drive space or ethernet connection and internet speeds have not improved in the last however many years? I call BS. But even if it were true, they could have max stash space variable based on console version especially since there is no cross-play between different consoles.
It definitely seems this is an outdated old excuse for older hardware they aren’t even supporting anymore so it’s actually false now.
FYI, the only limit on any games now is either how much is going on with the graphics or how much is actually constantly being updated over an internet connection, and that only matters for necessary real-time-variable information and slow internet speeds(under 1 mbps). I happen to have experience running the MMO City of Heroes and World of Warcraft both on a very old computer I built on a budget in 2004 on an internet connection that was 256kbps(0.256mbps) and having very little trouble except with graphics lag.
Here is a video of some of the shenanigans and amount of real time buffs we experienced showing a group of around 40 players with a zone limit of 50(because of all the NPC calculations and player abilities actually overwhelming the servers sometimes) all with area of effect buffs mostly constant based on range from the person with it toggled and also timed applied ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_AHuCSSSc
This game is definitely not as heavy on the system as it would have been on older consoles where that excuse would have held water; these days, there is no excuse for such a low item storage on consoles. In fact, the PC storage method of “shape based” storage is ridiculously more storage intensive than the console “item number” storage just because of the many permutations of “2 slot” and “1 slot” item positions in each “visual stash tab”; it’s a terribly inefficient way to handle item storage visually versus numerically.
This is why I just don’t believe the “performance would be horrible with just a little more stash space” argument. It has so many flaws.
Edit:
For example, I remember being told my graphing calculator, in the year 2001, had many times the power and memory of the Apollo space program computers from the 1970s. Considering “Moore’s Law” and the general acceleration of computer technology and people just learning better ways to use the same tools…it’s not like Diablo 3 is going to have issues with a bit more stored data on consoles that were built in a time when the weakest part of any console is the limited graphics capability.
Just look at what Nvidia did with bringing real-time ray tracing which took Disney/Pixar movies hours to do for a few frames of video just a few years ago.
i bumped up two topics,
you may wanna read through those.
FYI, the Nintendo Switch has less power than the PS4 and the Xbox One, by far honestly, and I don’t see long load times. Even starting up the game takes only about 30 seconds, maybe less but the “make sure you have your strap on your motion controls” screen is slowing that down. I never notice greater rift load slowdown even at GR80.
How is it that I don’t see issues on a Nintendo Switch with less power that a PS4?
I’m betting it’s because the servers are not new or optimized or the personal internet connections of all players involved are not all that good and everyone pretty much is a slave to the lowest performing connection in an online game requiring synchronizing all player interactions to prevent disconnects and bad experiences.
Edit:
Also, this is mostly code from years and years ago that hasn’t been optimized as much. Maybe the Nintendo Switch has been and could deal with more stash space while older consoles may not be able to. Why can’t we Switch owners then get more stash? It would sell more Diablo 3 copies for Switch and those consoles if somebody doesn’t have one and is willing to switch to it for that.
I also find it funny that one post you quoted claims “PC is reaching its limits too” so won’t get more stash space but PCs are always being upgraded over time with internet speeds being upgraded. I’ve had at least 3 PCs over the last 7-8 years since the game’s release, all with more storage and RAM and internet speeds have went from 256kbps to 10mbps, just for me while most internet connections have gone from 15-30mbps to 100 then 200 and optional Gig speeds in just the last 6 years.
Storage and information transfer is not an issue anymore for Diablo 3. The trouble is what they actually “need to communicate at all times”. They shouldn’t need to communicate stash contents while all players are not interacting with the stash. They really shouldn’t need to communicate stash contents unless it is a first time load and/or it updates anyway. They could code in a “stash update timestamp” for the code to check to see if it needs to update even to save on the resources required for the check on updates also.
This is a joke. It’s a reason to get people to defend lack of support and “get off their backs” about doing a major quality of life update that would be free and not sell any copies, as far as they think.
they probably learned their lesson and didn’t tie the stash to the memory. currently on PS4 and Xbox, as a SOLO player, you can still experience lag on the systems.
https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/22989462/patch-265-now-live-5-14-2019#qol
In addition, we encountered a lot of [technical issues] with increasing overall stash space for players. Unfortunately, as these issues caused significant degredation of the overall gameplay experience, we ultimately had to take a step back on this quality of life improvement and table it for now.
and this was in response to PC losing a stash tab, that originally they were getting.
Like I posted above, the “visual spacial storage” that PC stashes have is probably the issue.
Why the hell did they even decide to go with “jenga”/“inventory Tetris” storage system for PC anyway? Just the dragging and dropping item visual would take up system resources to animate needlessly when you already know where the item is going based on what windows are open and what button is pressed.
I think the “issues” were not actually “technical” with the addition, but I can’t follow the dead link from the blog post you linked to find out even the most basic info. It still sounds like more of a “we don’t know how to add another ‘Tetris level’ to this mini-game storage we have” than an actual “we can’t add more without breaking the performance”.
Maybe they should apply the Switch optimizations to other consoles and even PC then to give the game a new lease on life and more performance headroom. They must already have the code documented. It could just be a “reverse port”. Then PC could even get optional gamepad play, which is what is preventing me from playing on PC most of all.
Oh well, it’s a lost cause as the game is in maintenance mode, even with new sets and updates to keep a trickle of new sales coming. I only really remembered this game existed, after not even having a console to play it, after years because of the Nintendo Switch version; hell, I had an Xbox One temporarily just before the Switch that I never even looked for Diablo 3 for because I didn’t remember it at the time.
Edit:
After some investigation I found a few posts, notably by MVP MissCheetah, that players were NOT HAVING ANY ISSUES with an actual implemented and functioning additional stash tab(s) on the test realm.
It seems the tabs were canned for the same nebulous “too much work” reason I assumed, and/or they possibly found their server load increasing too much when they had no hope for an upgrade on a “if it ain’t broke, don’t upgrade it” server. That server excuse seems a bit unlikely considering the players testing it had no issues and that would hardly be an issue if they also improved the way stashes worked at the same time anyway.