Inventory Management

I'm not sure I exactly understand the system you propose, but if your suggesting that anything you use gets sent to your client and then deleted server-side... Uh, no, that's probably open to a lot of weaknesses (Corrupt transfers from packet loss, system crashes, etc).

read again: your objects gets downloaded to your pc "as a copy". then when you use them in any way they would be compared to the original still in the server for signs of tampering. This way, if you lose your object, you can always retreive another copy. If you sell it or transfer it, then an object status update would be sent to the server and that object would move to the recipient's directory on the server.

Wow, I would HATE that.

Nope, I haven't read any responses to this 'cause I wanna just rant and scream about how much I would HATE that.

I *would* like to put stuff away better to archive stuff I don't think I'll need for a while... especially if it would speed things up.

But 'cause I'm a creator and everything takes time to build, and I can't save the stuff I make down to my own computer, I'd hate to have to pick and choose which of my artwork to destroy cause I didn't have the money.

I'd also hate having to *go* somewhere to pick up my stuff in storage.

Frankly this seems really dumb for a world where you're hoping the players are gonna make the stuff that attracts people. It's bad enough that the new camera weirdness makes it twice as hard to build tiny things.... >_<

Why not make monsters and things attack you while you're trying to build things? Other 'games' do that too!

I WOULd LOVE TO HAVE A BETTER WAY TO ORGANIZE MY STUFF AND THROW AWAY OR PUT AWAY JUNK!

But you know, that's not the opposite of having all my inventory with me...I STILL WANT ALL MY INVENTORY WITH ME AT ALL TIMES!

Gawd, right now I'm so frustrated with the way SL has changed over the last six months:broken camera, low stipends means fewer sales means my tier isn't payed for. I'm just not motivated to make stuff any more. I just hang out with friends and play Primtionary...

Two constructive ideas after ranting:

1) Allow us to move more than one item at at time between folders! Frankly that's the biggest reason my inventory is big and messy, it's too hard to clean up!

2) Give us folders that are archived. You can get to them at all times from your inventory, but they don't load immediately. You have to open them up and it's okay if it takes a long tome to open or move stuff out of them.

well now i have a project to do when i get home... log in.... buy memory tvs load with embarrassing pictures of Flipper, delete photos and move on. woot.

In another game the bank terminals couldn't do multiple selections, and the number of items viewable at once was far too small. There were also problems with lag and reliability.

Could we backup our parcels or the warehouses? Could we also share inventory warehouses using groups?

Reliable storage is more important than immediate access.

This would work out better than the current system for me. Having a limited on hand inventory would force me to manage my inventory more often. Id be more inclined to clean and streamline my inventory. I hate the black hole it has become.

D

I support Huns' archive approach.

Look, people will use whatever capacity you give them. You can improve design, yes, but people will ALWAYS max out resources. It's in our nature. There has to be reasonable limits, and if you need to go over those limits, you should be required to pay for it.

So...

- Provide an active inventory of X size (please make it BIG), and if you want to go above that you must pay for it.

- Provide an even LARGER archive space for things you don't need to access all the time but you are not willing to delete. If you need to go above that archive limit, you would also pay more.

The pay-for-more amounts don't have to be very much, just enough to give people an incentive to pay attention to their resource consumption. This would hardly be price-gouging.

I *definitely* oppose tying inventory levels to land, and I am a land-owner. I also like the idea of making it easier to mass-move snapshots to and from the hard drive, and you would also have to change the $10 save/load structure in this situation, otherwise user behavior won't change.

Torley Torgesun, just yesterday I was at a mall somewhere that had a product that sounds like what you may be looking for to organize photos. In fact that was listed as only one of its many functions. Its a "Thinc" product. So maybe if you run a search on that. I'm sorry I can 't remember the name of the mall cause when I go shopping its all a blurr later lol. Good luck.

I agree with Pen!

Combine this with Huns' suggestion about the structure of the personal archive (especially maintaining the same folder structure) and I'm sold. I make lots of widgets to test out ideas, and I store those so I can re-use what I learned. If I haven't touched something in 30 days, move it to the archive and I'll check there. This would even save me some effort, as I currently make my own archive folders for things I'm using currently.

I'm not sure how inventory searches would affect this plan. Ideally I'd want to be able to search everything in the archive as well as my current active inventory.

I'd be mad as hell if you forced me to go to a central place in world to get my items.

If you could do it within the context of the inventory browser, it might be okay. You could have an ARCHIVE folder for example in the inventory. And put a limit on how much you can hold in your normal inventory. If you fill up the normal inventory, you could copy unneeded items to ARCHIVE. Things in ARCHIVE would not be directly usable. You'd have to copy them back into normal inventory to use them.

As long as I can do it from the inventory browser, I probably wouldn't mind. But please don't make me go to a "Bank".

You know what!

For all those that want us to pay for resources why dont you pay for Anshe,Cats, and MY teir then you will quietly shut the hell up.

Shadow

Shadow, given that you already pay tier, you are clearly not someone who expects to get something for nothing. Land resource consumption is a separate issue from inventory resource consumption.

There needs to be a balance here -- even gmail doesn't give you unlimited resource consumption. They give you a LOT, but not unlimited.

I believe that membership should include (built into the price) a HEFTY inventory and a HEFTY archive (and i do mean hefty -- this world is about building and collecting to a large extent). But there are those whose inventories will extend beyond what is reasonable, and they should pay for that luxury.


Side note: if you want something to be scalable, you need to design both the technical architecture and incentives/constraints on user behavior. The fact that LL didn't plan for this level of resource-consumption reveals a little naivete regarding human psychology, but hell, they were building a world with limited startup resources... not surprised they overlooked a few things.

One other idea, similar to the way Blackberrys and other devices with limited real estate use taken to another level. (Looking at low-cpu power devices is normally a good spot to find efficiency) They don't show you all your icons (inventory) by default, unless you select "Show All Icons".

How about the ability to tag folders/items with a priority? Your must have, always use items, you set to Priority 0 (top). Let's say you can make any folder / item 0, 1, 2, or 3. By default, when you log into SL and do a search, it only search priority 0 items, and you use a dropdown or something to set the prior you wish to use:

Default - 0 - would only search priority 0 items
Change to 1 - would search both priority 0 and priority 1 items
and so on.

- Items that were used or rez'd in world or given to someone from your inventory would automatically be bumped up a priority level (toggle in preferences).

- Items that haven't been used in 7 days are automatically lowered a priority (down to 3, or whatever the bottom of the scale is).

- Empty trash of any non-priority 0 (to avoid accidental deletion) automatically after items have been there for 7 days.

Just curious... can we get a LinDev to take a look at the data and let us know that if this was implemented tomorrow, how many priority 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 items there would be? My guess is the vast majority of items would be priority 1, 2 or 3. These wouldn't be fetched unless the client specifically requested them.

Many casual users don't know they should empty their trash. I suspect many think their items are on their computer, not streamed. Casual users should definitely be able to play just like the rest of us, and I think this gives a fair solution to everyone without having to have a Oracle cert to understand how inventory works!

Okay, too tired, I hope that made sense. Sleep well folks!

-Flip

I can't help but point out the delicious irony of this thread:
One of our moderators is posting on the wrong forum.
This belongs in Feature Feedback
Everyone report Pathfinder!

First of all, can we see the resource consumption of our inventory? That would be a nice start.

Once that's in place, I do agree that people well beyond the realm of reasonable standards should cover the cost involved. The problem here comes right to what I continue to call the Path of Least Resistance with regards to human psychology - people will take the easiest path through a given situation.

That easiest path here is to store lots and lots and LOTS of useless crap, send it quick and often, and do it all as much as possible to maximize personal gain. Moneyballs, itemballs, notecard spammers, llGiveInventoryLists, etc etc - all on demand, all with low delays, and in aggregate it doesn't surprise me to see the system cough up a hairball over all of that.



So let's start with some ideas that have been thrown at me.

Reward people, monetarily or systemically, for using fewer resources.

This approach can be the carrot or the stick, both. A little bird suggested that people should pay Lindens proportional to the actual consumption of a texture file, for example - and reward people for "scaling down the resolution" of that texture by having them pay less for an upload.

Same applies for ludicrously large inventories. If you want to make drastic changes, people should need to cover the systemic cost - or at the very least be warned of the ramifications.


Don't tie inventory to tier unless it's absolutely necessary.

Active resources are one thing. Static, or seemingly static data, another. It makes more sense to cover inventory separately than force people to cover the additional cost of persistent server cycles.


Get the knowledge out there.

Forums are beneficial, but at many times the best announcements lie hidden here. A Town Hall on this, ironically enough, would really help IMO.

Get the torches!!! Burn the transgressor!!! Maketh his inventory withorith as if it has been placed in a bank from wence he might retrieveth for a pittance.

Hi Pathfinder, I'm probably going to be repeating what many have already said, but I think you are also looking to see how many folks feel about this as well, so I'll go ahead and post.

There are two areas that most of us have a lot of stuff in. One is snapshots as Torley mentioned and the other is notecards. For those who build, and/or create clothing the objects folder and textures folders can be huge as well.

I would like to see multiple drag being implemented as well. I've taught an Inventory 101 classes and I'm always asked why we can only drag one thing at a time.

In the meantime I guess we can all just sit down and take the time to
1) Store/Sort things on notecards
2) Store things in prims or storage boxes like ThiNc (Toneless Tomba) offers
It is understood that if put 200 things in one prim/storage box and take it into inventory it reads as one item
The same goes for a notecard with 500-1000 textures on it and so forth
3) Empty trash on a regular basis.

Now for the suggestions about tying storage amounts to land tier. I think this is not such a good idea, for many of the reasons already listed.

I know that as a noobie clothing designer I had tons of textures, a whole clothing line in folders and in boxes as well as my personal clothing/textures etc, and at that time I did not own land and then only had 512m for many months.

There are plenty of incentives towards land ownership in place already, lets keep this particular idea outside of that realm.

I also think that many including myself have lost items already that have been stored or placed (furniture etc) inworld; and until there is more stability in that area, there will not be a lot of confidence in this idea.

You ask if we would use such things as storage warehouses? I personally would not until there is a clear indication of stability. Until then, I'm going to toss out what I don't need/use and reduce the rest into storage prims and notecards within my inventory.

I agree that having the tools in order to EASILY keep our own inventories under control might be something to implement first and observe over 2-3 months to see how/if that is working towards solving the problem, while everyone is notified of the new systems and begin to use them. Too many quick fixes have been disasterous of late, and taking the time to test, research and observe is highly reccommended.

If those tools seem to be working, (or not) then you can implement additional opportunities for storage for those who need it.

Being able to have folders within storage prims would go a long way to helping as well.
Having a How-to on inventory posted in an easily accessible area of the website and also available to new (and old!) residents inworld (perhaps added to the Info areas at the WA and Waterhead hub) would be of help as well.

Education goes a long way. I find that when I am working with noobies on very very basic things like rezzing items, there is always that initial confusion about items that are copiable, and most tend to take back items instead of deleting, not realizing they already have an extant version in their inventories.

As another way to reduce intake into inventories you might consider the notecards that you get automatically when landing in a welcome area or new user hub.
They might be keyed to date of birth, and not be triggered again after 2-3 weeks for example. These tend to pile up in new residents notecard folders and/or trash.

I agree that we have been "spoiled" by having no limits like in other MMORPGs, and I hope that we can find some good solutions if/when we transition into inventory limitations.
But please please please do NOT tie it into land ownership.

I like this idea, and I'm also with Brace to *not* tie it in with land ownership.

Could be useful .... if there was like a drag & drop option or some thing right from your comp to sl av ..... give ppl the chioce ... maybe to download all there inventory to there own comps and have where you can burn it to a cd so it is always there ? . and have inventory in a different catagoy then like uploading make these option free for ppl .....just a thought
have like a spearte program where ppl could rez and sot out there stuff on there comps make where they can make a female or male av right onhe there comp to try on and make there choices right from there comps before even going in .... ?"?????

Could someone chime in on whether the problem here is physical storage or access to the data? I'm 99% sure its the access to the data, not the storage space, that is the problem.

If so, auto-aging priorities as I've described above could cut load ten-fold. Just remember, every time you're searching for "widget" in your inventory, it has to parse every object you've owned since the beginning of your Second Life. Amending the where clause of the query with a priority would surely help me without requiring mass purging.

Regards,

-Flip

Being able to filter by a specific folder would help. You could force people to search specifically in the objects folder or the textures folder etc.

I like the current Inventory setup. It makes SL feel more like a digital world and less like a MMORPG.

Restricting by Tier would suck badly. If eventualy you keep restricting things by tier (script memory, inventory space, whatever else), hardly anything will seem "free" anymore.


Ideas...

Showing the memory our inventories take up would be an excellent thing. I think once people realize how big it is, they might start to scale down (I know I would). Also possibly seeing how much space a certain inventory item takes up (if one type does actualy take up more than another).

Also perhaps seeing the created date on all items. And maybe a popup, or folder, that puts "untouched" items from a certain period of time. Like if I haven't used a certain inventory item in months, or years, it would be put in a special folder, or ask me "Hey this hasn't been used, do you want to delete it?".

A bank wouldn't have to mean traveling across the world to wait in line for a teller. It could be as simple as a button on your UI to access a secondary "banking" server to grab an item you don't use very often. It would definitely decrease the accessing load on the main inventory server, having less to load and search through, as long as you could somehow encourage folks to dump seldom used items into the secondary "bank" server. Perhaps by imposing a strict size limit on the main "backpack" inventory.

hey pathfinder, since you kicked it off, have any official thoughts on this thread and functionality suggestions contained within?