Lag Reduction and Mailbox Limits: Last Call!

[Cordovan]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

[Steve_Howe]

Anticipating much drama in the coming days...can't wait!

[skorpeon]

Anticipating much drama in the coming days...can't wait!

I have not been able to log in for a couple of weeks, and have not been playing the last couple of months. Thing is I have just got back from caring for my brother after an op. So is there a way that you do the action only after a person has logged in again?


I am not even sure I have a big mail box anyway I am premium so I think my mail box is limited anyway?

Is it a VIP feature or am I underestimating the size of my mail?

Anyway I may have to beg to log in tomorrow (While my wife packs for the family holiday!) yeah thats probably not going to happen is it! :-(

[Qhualor]

If you haven't done so already, I would put this last call on social networks and launcher.

[JackLV]

It is going to get loud

[dunklezhan]

Aye, get it on the Launcher. Make a you tube video about this and this along to reach subscribers. And so on!

[Enoach]

Knowing that each character has their own mailbox, and while if you listen to forums it makes it sound like people only run one character. My question is, is that number Players or is that number Characters?

If it is Characters, then I would say that number does not seem very high (except for the comment where some of these have 1K+ mails that just sounds nutty)



..{Understandable reason}

Anyway I may have to beg to log in tomorrow (While my wife packs for the family holiday!) yeah thats probably not going to happen is it! :-(

I get your reasons. A short term solution - Do this when everyone is asleep. This could be late at night or early in the morning. Make sure you give yourself a 2 hour window just in case. If you choose the early morning and find you don't need to worry then you can grab a shower, get/make coffee and be the one that makes sure everyone else gets up in time. If you choose late night, you are going on holiday so being a little sleep deprived will not stick out :)

[Cordovan]

This is in the launcher and on social media. We will be starting by being selective, targeting accounts we know are active, but at some point we're going to have to get to everyone.

[Cordovan]

Knowing that each character has their own mailbox, and while if you listen to forums it makes it sound like people only run one character. My question is, is that number Players or is that number Characters?

If it is Characters, then I would say that number does not seem very high (except for the comment where some of these have 1K+ mails that just sounds nutty)

I believe it's characters. Agreed! Most folks have already done the work if they needed to, but we're down to needing to take the next step.

[rsking]

i'm suprised no one had made a pun on the year yet so I will...

1916: a time when nascar was still trying to figure out what direction it was going
http://www.simeonemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/historic/1916-stutz-bearcat-c-historic.jpg

[sudzz]

Mail is supposed to time out on delivery of a message after 3 weeks, the people that have thousands of mail messages just where are these coming from? As VIP I can post30-40 items to AH and another 20 to ASH so assuming I put maximum numbers into both for minimum 8 hours and don't take anything out of mail responses 3 periods of 8 hours in a day * 21 days in three weeks * 60 items is 3,780 items assuming none sell. If folk are using this as some sort of storage area to this extreme then start deleting the inboxes of older than 3 weeks messages, if folk worry about losing items in this way they will stop using the mail system for an unintended bank purpose and things will level out on a 50 limit sooner.






As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

[Uska]

I have not been able to log in for a couple of weeks, and have not been playing the last couple of months. Thing is I have just got back from caring for my brother after an op. So is there a way that you do the action only after a person has logged in again?


I am not even sure I have a big mail box anyway I am premium so I think my mail box is limited anyway?

Is it a VIP feature or am I underestimating the size of my mail?

Anyway I may have to beg to log in tomorrow (While my wife packs for the family holiday!) yeah thats probably not going to happen is it! :-(

That would defeat the purpose of it since they said some are people that haven't logged in a long time who almost might never again so they would continue to generate lag and mail boxes got bugged so even VIP was going way over the limit and mail wasn't self deleting as it should have been after the timer had expired.

I would suggest just popping in quickly and checking

[losian2]

I have not been able to log in for a couple of weeks, and have not been playing the last couple of months. Thing is I have just got back from caring for my brother after an op. So is there a way that you do the action only after a person has logged in again?


I am not even sure I have a big mail box anyway I am premium so I think my mail box is limited anyway?

Is it a VIP feature or am I underestimating the size of my mail?

Anyway I may have to beg to log in tomorrow (While my wife packs for the family holiday!) yeah thats probably not going to happen is it! :-(

The mail was always supposed to be limited but wasn't properly working.

The problem with waiting until logging in is.. well.. if there are 1900 some people with huge boxes, and only 200 ever login again.. that doesn't really alleviate the problem.

It sucks, but I dunno what people expect with this kind of stuff. The devs are already being browbeat over fixing a long standing bug, and I get it that it's frustrating, but these kinds of limitations exist for a reason, and the ongoing abuse of male for storage, however innocuous, is something that needs to be fixed and they've been great at giving lots of heads up and warnings.

[Andu_Indorin]

... and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...)

Thousands? Thousands?!?

[mikarddo]

Sounds good. Go for it.

[Enoach]

The mail was always supposed to be limited but wasn't properly working.

The problem with waiting until logging in is.. well.. if there are 1900 some people with huge boxes, and only 200 ever login again.. that doesn't really alleviate the problem.

It sucks, but I dunno what people expect with this kind of stuff. The devs are already being browbeat over fixing a long standing bug, and I get it that it's frustrating, but these kinds of limitations exist for a reason, and the ongoing abuse of male for storage, however innocuous, is something that needs to be fixed and they've been great at giving lots of heads up and warnings.

This is a good point, except the Known amount of characters with 50+ is a Known.

These could be:

Player that has not logged in
Shelved Character of an Active Player
Bank Character of an Active Player


I agree I like the communication they have provide is great and outside of not reading any of the media or listening to Guild/Friends would be the only reason you don't know about this happening.

However, if this was working with the expiration from AH emails the issue may not be as big as it is today.

[Thar]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

perhaps it's time to upgrade the mail system to hold more than one item per mail....

[ColdBrewer]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!


Dauntless Cordovan,

I understand that this mailbox revision needs to happen to de-bloat the system, but please tell us exactly how much time do players (In my case, on Sarlona) have to finish clearing the mailboxes across their account before the system will disintegrate the items stored within? I have been pruning my mailboxes across my various characters since the initial announcement, but I still need a day or two to finish cleaning house. I fear that when I get home and log in tonight, my old (6 year +) mail will be gone forever. As always, thanks for the community updates Cordovan!

[Thar]

Mail is supposed to time out on delivery of a message after 3 weeks, the people that have thousands of mail messages just where are these coming from? As VIP I can post30-40 items to AH and another 20 to ASH so assuming I put maximum numbers into both for minimum 8 hours and don't take anything out of mail responses 3 periods of 8 hours in a day * 21 days in three weeks * 60 items is 3,780 items assuming none sell. If folk are using this as some sort of storage area to this extreme then start deleting the inboxes of older than 3 weeks messages, if folk worry about losing items in this way they will stop using the mail system for an unintended bank purpose and things will level out on a 50 limit sooner.

two points:

Email system should be large enough to hold AH items from both auctions and a handful of misc emails.

If people are using this for storage then perhaps more bank space is needed.

[Zzevel]

Anyway I may have to beg to log in tomorrow (While my wife packs for the family holiday!) yeah thats probably not going to happen is it! :-(

Step 1: Get up in the middle of the night to go to the loo
Step 2: Come back to bed an hour later
Step 3: Celebrate the hording of a ton of thins that are outdated if you haven't been on for months; there is no profit



While you are in the mail code can you add a couple of digits to the number of coins you can mail to someone? At least 3 :)

[Thar]

Thousands? Thousands?!?

i couldn't imagine that mess....

that's 1000s of shards lost too? that's big money.

[Saekee]

50 seems generous--I would:
1) reduce it to 20
2) make it so people can access it out-of-game

[skorpeon]

Step 1: Get up in the middle of the night to go to the loo
Step 2: Come back to bed an hour later
Step 3: Celebrate the hording of a ton of thins that are outdated if you haven't been on for months; there is no profit



While you are in the mail code can you add a couple of digits to the number of coins you can mail to someone? At least 3 :)

Nice try, ohh you were being helpful?

Problem computer is in the bedroom. You should try being married it's not that easy!

Well I guess I am should not really worry, I don't have that much mail and most of the stuff is only plat AH stuff I wanted to offer to others (I actually put stuff on AH to sell as I think it is helpful to others playing the game, weird concept I know). The few shards that I am no doubt going to loose will be regained if I actually do log in again anyway.

[cdbd3rd]

50 seems generous--I would:
1) reduce it to 20
2) make it so people can access it out-of-game

Ack! No, no. Let them be generous. 50 is fine. :)

Mailbox limited to 20 would also cut off active auctions to 20.


Out-of-game access would be a whole new batch of coding as opposed to just setting a limit and scripting a quick purge command.



...

Problem computer is in the bedroom. You should try being married it's not that easy! ....

LOL'd! :D

[ThreadNecromancer]

I have one message that keeps returning a stupid bound small ingredients bag to me, so I leave it in my mailbox hoping it deletes itself.

That **** bag doesn't go away. Maybe it's cursed.

[koluka]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.



I am a culprit here and just wanted to give a little insight.

I put everything I loot on auctioneer and the stuff that doesn't sell goes to my inbox. I let it accumulate till I figure it is time to disjunct for tradeskilling materials.

Thing is, I always put off disjuncting it coz the tradeskilling is so laggy and going to and from the tradeskill zones is inconvenient.

If we could have a "disjunct all" button on the mailbox, my mailbox would be empty almost all the time. Or even, a disjunct option as well as a delete option on mail. Real life post offices provide a huge variety of totally unrelated services - no reason in-game mail boxes couldn't do the same.

[cdbd3rd]

I am a culprit here and just wanted to give a little insight.

I put everything I loot on auctioneer and the stuff that doesn't sell goes to my inbox. I let it accumulate till I figure it is time to disjunct for tradeskilling materials....

It's like doing dishes. The chore isn't as bad if you don't let stuff pile up to the ceiling. ;)

[Krelar]

I have one message that keeps returning a stupid bound small ingredients bag to me, so I leave it in my mailbox hoping it deletes itself.

That **** bag doesn't go away. Maybe it's cursed.

Now's your chance! Just get 50 newer mails and wait for them to prune your inbox! ;)

[Duana]

I am a culprit here and just wanted to give a little insight.

I put everything I loot on auctioneer and the stuff that doesn't sell goes to my inbox. I let it accumulate till I figure it is time to disjunct for tradeskilling materials.

Thing is, I always put off disjuncting it coz the tradeskilling is so laggy and going to and from the tradeskill zones is inconvenient.

If we could have a "disjunct all" button on the mailbox, my mailbox would be empty almost all the time. Or even, a disjunct option as well as a delete option on mail. Real life post offices provide a huge variety of totally unrelated services - no reason in-game mail boxes couldn't do the same.

Real life post offices charge real life money.

Tell you what, you find me a real life post office that provides real life magic item disjunction, and I will get behind you 100%.

[CongorKill]

What about the buy back option that contains, on just one of my toons, thousands of items? Spread that across all players on all servers, you're talkin' about millions of items - as opposed to less than 2000 people have >50 items in e-mails. Arent those supposed to drop off after 3 weeks anyway?

Just curious.


As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

[duntduntduuun]

most of these are going to be old defunct Chinese gold spam bots that has scripts running to play the AH for gold also players who run scripts to play the AH game of buying all clean +6 con items and reselling them for 250,000 so that all the +6 clean con items are monopolized. I seriously doubt the people running these scrips even give a **** any more as no one is buying clean +6 con items any more yet they still relist them over and over endlessly.

very few of these will be actual player who play the game, probably a few people will lose almost entirely garbage items (old random loot is pure junk now as you can get better bonuses at lower levels with new random).

so hey someone should post this to general forum as most players prolly dont read the dev tracker you should also spread the word to your guildies. but yes there will be some hoarders who slip between the cracks and are really upset by this so if you have a guildy who's over in Afghanistan try and get ahold of him or her and let them know if they are mail hoarders to let the wife or guildy log in and clear stuff.

again 99.99% of this stuff is going to be garbage that wasn't worth anything you ever watched a hoarder tv show?

[jaedom]

I can imagine its a problem having the mail system used as storage. It might be time to ask why people use it for storage. The tr system sucks your soul when it comes to that cache. It takes some people hours to move things over it is so laggy. What is faster? That is right put it on the ah if it sells yay if it goes to your mail box yay either way it is a win win. Where do we not want it ? In our Cache ie. the black hole of doom, loot hell, or more fondly called the arm pit of ddo.

Seriously, its time to do something about the way the cache is set up.
First, add a search bar. This is desperately wanted by players.
Second, add a loot first 20 items from cache button some way of making multiple item removal possible.
Finally, something I have heard from players for years about is breaking the cache into item type similar to our current bag system. I realize this one is least likely to happen but thought i would throw in the suggestion.

When players use something for unintended reasons like mail for storage its not to mess up anything it is typically the game is lacking a needed component. Current purchasable storage especially character bank isnt sufficient to hold the amount of bound items. At least by triple completionist. My cache would give most people nightmares. Btw if your wondering I dont use my mail for storage, but I know many who do. We have all seen the random items on the ah for 2 mil or better yet the shard exchange for 1k. Anyhow its great that mail issues are being addressed but I hope at some point they also look into the reason for the problem.

[Dungeoner49]

two points:

Email system should be large enough to hold AH items from both auctions and a handful of misc emails.

If people are using this for storage then perhaps more bank space is needed.

Ether that, or people are horders when it comes to video games. But seriously, the fact that you lose the extra bank slots from House Kundarak favor (you can earn them back just like you did before) when you True Reincarnate is NOT something I like, despite the temporary TR storage we get (should be both). If we simply had a base of 4 bank slots (60 item stacks) and gained up to 4 more that are purchasable via plat once you had enough House Kundarak favor and aren't lost on TR then we wouldn't have so much need for using mailboxes as storage. Well, that and if the random loot generator didn't have a mind of its own to give you gear for a specific build that you DON'T have on that server. My necromancer is on the server ORIEN, not the server cannith RLG!!

[arkonas]

two points:

Email system should be large enough to hold AH items from both auctions and a handful of misc emails.

If people are using this for storage then perhaps more bank space is needed.

that or people need to stop hoarding. i mean i have toons that hold gear but i never used the mailboxes to store my items. honestly i agree that this purging does need to happen.

[rarothrock]

I have been playing for almost 8 years. I've never used the mail system to store things. I've always pulled returned AH items before the 3 week time limit and either vendored them or reposted them immediately.

My thinking is this: The mailbox tells you you have 3 weeks to get the item. I say delete every single item older than 3 weeks old. If someone whines tell them to suck it. If the system had worked properly they'd have lost it anyway.

Honestly I think people whining about a bug that they exploit is deserving of no consideration what-so-ever, and I bet a majority of players feel the same way (they are just not willing to speak up and sound inconsiderate).

[koluka]

It's like doing dishes. The chore isn't as bad if you don't let stuff pile up to the ceiling. ;)


Agreed,but i find it a pita going to the tradeskill instances themselves. Kundarak and Cannith may as well be in another galaxy. That is why I leave the mail build up - coz it is inconvenient going to Kundarak and Cannith. It's one of those little things that sucks just a little fun out of the game - and fun is 100% of the reason I pay for a subscription.

If the devs understand the reasons why some people let their mail build up, then they can look at compromises that work instead of having to rely on the big stick. Better to have people like me happily emptying their mail on a continual basis than letting 40 messages build up and having to go tradeskill when they really don't feel like it. The result is better all around. Less lag. More happy players. More ongoing subscriptions. More money to create new content.

[koluka]

I have been playing for almost 8 years. I've never used the mail system to store things. I've always pulled returned AH items before the 3 week time limit and either vendored them or reposted them immediately.

My thinking is this: The mailbox tells you you have 3 weeks to get the item. I say delete every single item older than 3 weeks old. If someone whines tell them to suck it. If the system had worked properly they'd have lost it anyway.

Honestly I think people whining about a bug that they exploit is deserving of no consideration what-so-ever, and I bet a majority of players feel the same way (they are just not willing to speak up and sound inconsiderate).

lol while i wouldn't express it quite as harshly, i would prefer this option too. I think the only times i have had stuff sit in mail longer than 3 weeks is stuff i've sent to alts, and i've since decided saving stuff for alts is just wasted overhead.

[Cleanincubus]

I have been playing for almost 8 years. I've never used the mail system to store things. I've always pulled returned AH items before the 3 week time limit and either vendored them or reposted them immediately.

My thinking is this: The mailbox tells you you have 3 weeks to get the item. I say delete every single item older than 3 weeks old. If someone whines tell them to suck it. If the system had worked properly they'd have lost it anyway.

Honestly I think people whining about a bug that they exploit is deserving of no consideration what-so-ever, and I bet a majority of players feel the same way (they are just not willing to speak up and sound inconsiderate).

I agree. Players have also had over a month (June 8th) to get rid of their excessive amount of mail. It's their own fault if they lose it when this purge takes effect.

I didn't even know about the bug until a month or 2 ago. I lost items and plat in the past, when things were working properly. I had no one to blame but myself, certainly not Turbine.

[Michaelaz2]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!


Ahh so this will finally be the end all lag fix , like the 2 hand weapon nerf ? or like barb nerf ? what will be the next nerf ? And Yes, Im one of the 307 , I say it with pride.

[koluka]

Real life post offices charge real life money.

Tell you what, you find me a real life post office that provides real life magic item disjunction, and I will get behind you 100%.

lol, I pay real life money every month for my subscription. And I would expect that would cover performance issues. My mail typically is never older than 10 days. I don't use it for storage, just catching what doesn't sell on auction from stuff I have looted. I mostly only run 1 to 3 zones a day except on weekends and I don't run zones every day. So in fairness, I would expect to be covered by the real life money I pay every month for my subscription.

[illuminar]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

Wait... so even players that are not logged in and playing are causing lag. That's disappointing... but makes me think that the first purges should be based on last login for non-Premium/non-VIP and maybe a 365 day TTL for mail for all non-Premium/non-VIP players. A 50 item limit is good, but it doesn't stop people from making a ton of free accounts just to store their items and therefore continuing the problem.

If the players that are not logged in are not contributing to the problem, then limiting logged in time to 30 minute sessions for players over 50 should accomplish the same goal without making players feel like anything has been taken from them. They can always reach out to a GM if they prefer the automated process to being kicked out ever 30 minutes.

That said, none of my mail boxes have anywhere near 50 items so no skin off my back either way.

[Aelonwy]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat.

Lag caused by character data bloat?

So what about those people who have broken buy back tabs? You know 80+ pages of character buy back items (@20 items per page) that never seem to expire or even disappear upon TR? Does that not cause character data bloat and by extension lag?

Is this issue being looked into?

[Ghost000]

When an account goes from paying to non pay, the chars available drop to base level. (plus purchased extra ones) I assume the other chars not picked get put in a backup storage, or at least off the playing servers. Could we do that same type thing with players not logged in over 6 months, and take their pile of items off the servers that way? Then, upon log in, they would get a similar start screen, instead of "pick only 2 chars" it would be "click here to restore your dusty, cobwebbed account back to life" and then they have to re-log in after say half hr for the backup to be brought live to the servers... or more realistically, the next down time of the servers. But better they wait less than a week, than loose everything forever. I mean, after all, they waited over 6 freaking months since last log in, lol. So, is it doable?

[koluka]

It seems the problem is people using mail to store large volumes of items indefinitely.....

But the proposed solution is going to hit at a totally different group of people.

I regularly go over 50 items in my mailbox, but not through storing stuff. My mail is typically less than 10 days old.

On weekends, I tend to run one zone after another and shove everything on auctioneer between runs.
I've only been playing 6 months and typically it will take me at least 45 minutes to run a zone. Sometimes hours coz real life takes me afk midway through a zone.

These auctions expiring will take me over the 50 limit for mail - just simply through regular play on weekends. I would be a bit surprised if this was considered excessive in any way.

Yet, I will often finish a weekends play having posted as many items on auctioneer as I can and still have more items in my bags to be posted. The new mail limit means I have to store that stuff elsewhere so I can unload my mailbox to disjunct and then go pick that stuff back up out of storage so I can list it on auctioneer.

I do not use my mail to hoard stuff.
I typically don't store anything for longer than 10 days and since understanding it is a problem, have made an effort to limit my mail to 5 days.
I rarely repost stuff - if an item doesn't sell first time it is listed, I disjunct it.
I don't do the rounds of the pawn brokers and buy stuff for the purpose of reselling.

Everything I list for auction is either something I have looted personally or something I have purchased for my personal use and no longer want.

I am not a plat farmer - I currently have 435k plat, which is the most I have ever had.

I would really like to see a time parameter added to the purge - even if it is only 5 days. ie: if people have more than 50 items, only items more than 5 days old are purged.

Or alternatively, as I suggested earlier, adding a disjunct option to mail - at least for VIP accounts as an extension of the 50 item limit for auctioneer. It is questionable having a 50 item limit for auctioneer for VIP's if it means stuff that doesn't sell may get purged. If I had a disjunct option on mail, my mailbox would be empty virtually all the time.

I would much prefer a time limit on mail rather than an item limit, even if that time is as low as 5 or 10 days. I really don't want to have to keep watching my mailbox and my auctions so I can be ever-ready to run to either Kundarak or Cannith to disjunct stuff. It will really suck the fun out of the game for me by creating a whole heap of maintenance overhead.

[huntdawumpus]

Agreed,but i find it a pita going to the tradeskill instances themselves. Kundarak and Cannith may as well be in another galaxy. That is why I leave the mail build up - coz it is inconvenient going to Kundarak and Cannith. It's one of those little things that sucks just a little fun out of the game - and fun is 100% of the reason I pay for a subscription.

If the devs understand the reasons why some people let their mail build up, then they can look at compromises that work instead of having to rely on the big stick. Better to have people like me happily emptying their mail on a continual basis than letting 40 messages build up and having to go tradeskill when they really don't feel like it. The result is better all around. Less lag. More happy players. More ongoing subscriptions. More money to create new content.

You don't have to go to Kundarak and Cannith for crafting, there's a guildship amenity for that. Buy it for yours or beg to use another guild's. People used to do that all the time for the Shroud altars, back when cap was 20. I'd be surprised if there weren't a few generous souls on each server that would invite you on for some disjuncting.

[zagler]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

Can you explain how exactly how the mailbox affects lag? How is having things in the mailbox different from carrying things on your toon? If I buy bank space to accommodate everything in my mailbox, wouldn't that just transfer the "character bloat, turning it into "bank bloat?" If it's "character bloat" that's causing the lag, how is it in quests? There are no mailboxes in quests. And, if it's the mailboxes, why is House K virtually lag-free (in the public areas) but the Market is always sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo laggy? Like why would it affect only certain areas and certain quests? Like, for example, Lagning Star--er, I mean Evening Star is alway laggy--really bad, I might add. I can barely walk in there.

I have to say, the lag has gotten worse since you switched the servers; not better. How much of the lag is based on ones internet connection v. game IT stuff (yes, I'm whipping out those technical terms!) Maybe if you could explain it a little better, people (such as myself) would understand it a little better. Thank you.

[Duana]

lol, I pay real life money every month for my subscription. And I would expect that would cover performance issues. My mail typically is never older than 10 days. I don't use it for storage, just catching what doesn't sell on auction from stuff I have looted. I mostly only run 1 to 3 zones a day except on weekends and I don't run zones every day. So in fairness, I would expect to be covered by the real life money I pay every month for my subscription.

Dammit. I was really hoping you knew of a post office that blew up magic stuff. That would make an awesome tv show.

[jalont]

Can you explain how exactly how the mailbox affects lag? How is having things in the mailbox different from carrying things on your toon? If I buy bank space to accommodate everything in my mailbox, wouldn't that just transfer the "character bloat, turning it into "bank bloat?" If it's "character bloat" that's causing the lag, how is it in quests? There are no mailboxes in quests. And, if it's the mailboxes, why is House K virtually lag-free (in the public areas) but the Market is always sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo laggy? Like why would it affect only certain areas and certain quests? Like, for example, Lagning Star--er, I mean Evening Star is alway laggy--really bad, I might add. I can barely walk in there.

I have to say, the lag has gotten worse since you switched the servers; not better. How much of the lag is based on ones internet connection v. game IT stuff (yes, I'm whipping out those technical terms!) Maybe if you could explain it a little better, people (such as myself) would understand it a little better. Thank you.

Attempt to pull the hundreds of items people store in their mail to bypass the limits Turbine puts in place and then find a place to put it on your toon. You're describing the actual problem....

[Nuclear_Elvis]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

So, if we had 0-5 emails in our mailbox from the time this problem first surfaced, and still maintain that low number, do we get a participation trophy for helping to prevent Lag :)

Of course, I'd equate such an honor like getting a perfect attendance certificate for school. It feels good to have the teacher hand you something, and then you realize years later that it's not a reward you really want to brag about.

[Nuclear_Elvis]

I totally did not think of this until now - this is the first time that Wayfinder has beaten all the other servers in a statistically significant issue.

Wayfinder Wins!

(starts the "Wave" only to realize that 25 players are logged into Wayfinder...)

[koluka]

Dammit. I was really hoping you knew of a post office that blew up magic stuff. That would make an awesome tv show.

lol can we have a like button please to vote up the funniest comments. or is there one and i just can't see it. i'm an old woman with failing eyesight.

[koluka]

Attempt to pull the hundreds of items people store in their mail to bypass the limits Turbine puts in place and then find a place to put it on your toon. You're describing the actual problem....


so could we perhaps have some extra tags for tagging items in our inventory? or would that bloat stuff as well?

[gravisrs]

Regarding that mailbox limit and players that weren't logging for a long time. Before truncating their mailbox some way of archiving it's content would be nice to allow players to appeal from this step later.

I have 2 guildmates on Argo who having a longer break and I'm pretty sure their mailbox is full of precious stuff - and they gonna back to game sooner or later. I don't want them being ****ed off and having even longer break (like ethernal) after they find out what happened to all their stuff.

If you want to make players empty their mailboxes make their life harder:
- display a confirmation dialog every 2 minutes (that covers rest of UI)
- make them heavy encumbered

If you really need to take an action against (especially inactive) players. please consider:
- moving mailbox content to TR cache (shards convert to inventory version, plat also if possible ?)
- easy way for GM's to bring back deleted items of appealing player
- auto-detach all emails that has just the plat (till limit) or shards
- sending an email (real one, not in-game) to all those players

[Kza]

Mail should expire after 1 month if not opened. How can ppl ask for developer time used for those ppl that exploit this bug to save their crappy obsolete loot?

Just nuke it and call it a day.

You ppl that whine over this and want coders work hard on solutions for so few players that exploit the mail system and probably not even playing anymore? I dont understand you.

Nuke all mails over 50, less talk more action vs lag! :-)

Thanks and best regards to all

/Kza

(When i have used bugs for my "winning" i have never had the stomach to whine on forums afterwards when devs have corrected the issue)

[drwho1985]

Maybe a few days before you hit the magic button, you do a world wide server announcement (like when you're bringing the servers down).

Or some type of warning at log in and / or character selection.

There still we be much weeping and gnashing of teeth but I applaud your efforts to improve game performance.

[Careall]

Is it folks that are logging in and have excessive mail that are causing that lag? I certainly don't understand why someone not logged in could possibly impact anything regarding lag, though I suppose I could understand how (yes, I am a hobbyist programmer and know enough to be dangerous).

Just a wild, but not unreasonable, guess: Is it that little icon in the corner that tells me I have new mail causing the lag? Is it reviewing all mail in an inbox every few minutes? If so, perhaps fix that to be more efficient. Or, at least have it only check for new mail when folks log in and maybe only once per 12 or 24-hours. Also, not updating it in dungeons might be a thing. I don't know if anyone really needs such an up-to-the-minute update on new mail; "oh sorry, can't rez you atm... need to run off and check mail... brb." Maybe try this: Turn the new mail icon/checking off for a week or two and see if that helps the lag. I don't think folks would complain... much... or maybe they will.

While I believe you could come up with a better solution, as far as notices, imho you've done your job.

1) The rule has been in effect, if not enforced, for a long time. You have also provided several notices about pruning mail, which you did not need to do. However, it is good customer service to provide such notices.

2) Active players with excessive mail, which would likely be causing the lag, should know by now and have had opportunities to reduce their mail. Lost mail, items, plat, shards, and so on are on the players. This does not however, reconcile the space problem of where to put attachments, so this might be another problem I suppose. It certainly is a grey area between an exploit and a feeling of necessity. Maybe you could accept support tickets from the occasional folks with such dilemmas? Hopefully this is not an overwhelming number of cases.

3) Inactive players/toons are another case, which could be problematic later if/when they log back on. As mentioned, some folks may be temporarily away to return later. However, they would have to fall in the category of gone today - here tomorrow, the category of excessive mail, and the category that the excessive mail has value to them. Therefore, the number of players impacted should be relatively small. Still, the notices have been placed; see #1.

[Blarg1976]

the fact of the matter is that ddo mail (just like the TR cache) was never meant to be used as storage. players have come to expect to use both for item storage but that is not their function
ddo mail explicitly has a disclaimer of expiring- anyone that was using the mailbox for storage past that expiration was taking a calculated risk- they cannot get upset at turbine for housecleaning



* but i was curious to know though whether the pruning command is going to be an automated function going forward that is applied to ALL mailboxes? as other people mentioned, sometimes when expired (unsold) auctions are being returned, it brings the mailbox count to over 50. does this pruning/culling mean that there will be a strict 50 mail count going forward so that anything beyond the 50 gets wiped, including returned auction items that have not sold?

* if you are going to start trimming down the game mailboxes to reduce lag............ then is it not sensible ALSO to start deleting or archiving accounts/characters that have been inactive for more than 5 years? if the excessive # of mails from inactive accounts has been causing lag then it seems reasonable to assume that inactive accounts themselves are bogging down the system as well. there have been many arguments that it would dissuade retired players from coming back to the game- so maybe archiving old accounts/characters would be possible (taking them out of the game database and storing externally where a customer service agent would need to reinstate them).
but i am sure that the game database is bloated with characters that have been forgotten/abandoned.

* someone mentioned letting players check mail externally outside the ddo client. that would be really nice - just a simple gateway to the ddo game that lets us check mail, auctions- it would just be gravy if the ddo api was brought back to let us see our character sheet/inventory

[silinteresting]

Lag caused by character data bloat?

So what about those people who have broken buy back tabs? You know 80+ pages of character buy back items (@20 items per page) that never seem to expire or even disappear upon TR? Does that not cause character data bloat and by extension lag?

Is this issue being looked into?

on sarlona in my guild this has already happened, the other day i had 173 pages in my
buy back. i went to bed woke up the next morning re logged on and found my buy back empty.
im guessing as all my guildies had the same thing happen this happened server wide.

your friend sil :)

[Enoach]

Nice try, ohh you were being helpful?

Problem computer is in the bedroom. You should try being married it's not that easy!

Well I guess I am should not really worry, I don't have that much mail and most of the stuff is only plat AH stuff I wanted to offer to others (I actually put stuff on AH to sell as I think it is helpful to others playing the game, weird concept I know). The few shards that I am no doubt going to loose will be regained if I actually do log in again anyway.

I am married, and I will say that having the computer in the bedroom is just a bad decision. Of course I don't believe a TV should be in the bedroom either. The bedroom should be a place to escape technology.

I'm sorry you won't be able to check your mail to see if you are one of the people with a character that has more than 50 emails.

[Enoach]

Can you explain how exactly how the mailbox affects lag? How is having things in the mailbox different from carrying things on your toon? If I buy bank space to accommodate everything in my mailbox, wouldn't that just transfer the "character bloat, turning it into "bank bloat?" If it's "character bloat" that's causing the lag, how is it in quests? There are no mailboxes in quests. And, if it's the mailboxes, why is House K virtually lag-free (in the public areas) but the Market is always sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo laggy? Like why would it affect only certain areas and certain quests? Like, for example, Lagning Star--er, I mean Evening Star is alway laggy--really bad, I might add. I can barely walk in there.

I have to say, the lag has gotten worse since you switched the servers; not better. How much of the lag is based on ones internet connection v. game IT stuff (yes, I'm whipping out those technical terms!) Maybe if you could explain it a little better, people (such as myself) would understand it a little better. Thank you.

As a developer I can only guess...
With mailbox they monitor to see if you have new mail to give you a notification. This is monitored on a time interval so when you login and on the interval your UI is getting checked and updated. Additionally, the updating of what is in your mailbox is dynamic.

With the bank the data only needs to be loaded when you open the bank. Also, it is not monitored for updates as the only time the bank is updated is when you are accessing it.

[JOTMON]

a good place to start would be deleting all the mail notifications for favor benchmarks... we don't need mail notification for that.

[AnEvenNewerNoob]

Since I assume you have the ability to send a mass email to all people with an account, you MAY want to send one to let people know about this.

I mean, It's going to be an effing awesome forum week when you finally clean things out anyways.......but this might make it a little more tame.

[Ziindarax]

I thoroughly second this notion - perhaps a special storage should be created when people have their mail removed, but a message needs to pop up in the mailbox telling them where their stuff went (and how to access it).


Regarding that mailbox limit and players that weren't logging for a long time. Before truncating their mailbox some way of archiving it's content would be nice to allow players to appeal from this step later.

I have 2 guildmates on Argo who having a longer break and I'm pretty sure their mailbox is full of precious stuff - and they gonna back to game sooner or later. I don't want them being ****ed off and having even longer break (like ethernal) after they find out what happened to all their stuff.

If you want to make players empty their mailboxes make their life harder:
- display a confirmation dialog every 2 minutes (that covers rest of UI)
- make them heavy encumbered

If you really need to take an action against (especially inactive) players. please consider:
- moving mailbox content to TR cache (shards convert to inventory version, plat also if possible ?)
- easy way for GM's to bring back deleted items of appealing player
- auto-detach all emails that has just the plat (till limit) or shards
- sending an email (real one, not in-game) to all those players

[Enoach]

Just a thought, but since Turbine can know the character, they should know the Account and could possibly send them an email letting these accounts know what character needs to have their Mail accounts cleared. They could give notice to the individual even if they might not be in game still.

[trevitt]

I am fully behind this idea. Everyone complains about the lag in ddo and how the devs are not doing anything to fix it. This lag is actually caused by certain players and the devs are trying to fix it.

So prune away devs. They have been warned. I would rather someone loose 300 items they clearly don't use then have unneeded lag.

Yes, yes I know. 'I may be using it in a different life.' Pretty sure that's what your tr bank is for. Don't make the rest of the game world suffer because you want to horde your trophies.

[Cordovan]

Wait... so even players that are not logged in and playing are causing lag. That's disappointing... but makes me think that the first purges should be based on last login for non-Premium/non-VIP and maybe a 365 day TTL for mail for all non-Premium/non-VIP players. A 50 item limit is good, but it doesn't stop people from making a ton of free accounts just to store their items and therefore continuing the problem.

If the players that are not logged in are not contributing to the problem, then limiting logged in time to 30 minute sessions for players over 50 should accomplish the same goal without making players feel like anything has been taken from them. They can always reach out to a GM if they prefer the automated process to being kicked out ever 30 minutes.

That said, none of my mail boxes have anywhere near 50 items so no skin off my back either way.

Technically, if a player never logs into the game, they are not contributing to the problem, unless they log in (which is something we'd like them to do, of course.) We are targeting active players when possible.


Lag caused by character data bloat?

So what about those people who have broken buy back tabs? You know 80+ pages of character buy back items (@20 items per page) that never seem to expire or even disappear upon TR? Does that not cause character data bloat and by extension lag?

Is this issue being looked into?

Yup, which is why we're working to fix the broken buy back tabs on Sarlona.


Can you explain how exactly how the mailbox affects lag? How is having things in the mailbox different from carrying things on your toon? If I buy bank space to accommodate everything in my mailbox, wouldn't that just transfer the "character bloat, turning it into "bank bloat?" If it's "character bloat" that's causing the lag, how is it in quests? There are no mailboxes in quests. And, if it's the mailboxes, why is House K virtually lag-free (in the public areas) but the Market is always sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo laggy? Like why would it affect only certain areas and certain quests? Like, for example, Lagning Star--er, I mean Evening Star is alway laggy--really bad, I might add. I can barely walk in there.

I have to say, the lag has gotten worse since you switched the servers; not better. How much of the lag is based on ones internet connection v. game IT stuff (yes, I'm whipping out those technical terms!) Maybe if you could explain it a little better, people (such as myself) would understand it a little better. Thank you.

The mailbox is different because it uses the mail system. That said, yes, one of the main reasons we've limited the amount of available character bank space and inventory is because it can and will cause issues if it gets too big. In regard to why it can cause lag in X, think if it like a cookie. If you have to eat a cookie in order to move, it matters whether the cookie is the size of an Oreo or the size of a living room. Remember that there is never one single cause of lag, so the "state of lag" in Kundarak compared to the state of lag in the Marketplace is not relevant regarding this particular source of lag.


i couldn't imagine that mess....

that's 1000s of shards lost too? that's big money.

At least in one case it appears that someone may have put EVERY SINGLE ITEM ever acquired from random gen loot into the Auction House that could be put there, then if it didn't sell, left it sitting in their mailbox because why not, there was no reason to worry about it. Add several years to the mix and you get a very large inbox.


Dauntless Cordovan,

I understand that this mailbox revision needs to happen to de-bloat the system, but please tell us exactly how much time do players (In my case, on Sarlona) have to finish clearing the mailboxes across their account before the system will disintegrate the items stored within? I have been pruning my mailboxes across my various characters since the initial announcement, but I still need a day or two to finish cleaning house. I fear that when I get home and log in tonight, my old (6 year +) mail will be gone forever. As always, thanks for the community updates Cordovan!

Remember that our plan is to start by targeting the largest inboxes, so this isn't a "press button everyone affected" event. We'll be running this command as necessary in the coming weeks. We're getting the word out now because we don't want people waiting until the last second to clear out their inboxes if they are concerned about losing stuff. If you are concerned - take care of it.

[Stenky]

Go ahead and fix the problem; no further wait time, or notices are warranted. I have no sympathy for people who abuse/circumvent the rules/intent of the game.

[Loromir]

Go ahead and fix the problem; no further wait time, or notices are warranted. I have no sympathy for people who abuse/circumvent the rules/intent of the game.

I disagree....a Notice (On the Game Launcher as well as Twitter and Facebook) that purges will commence on "X" date. Announce that if you have anything you don't want to lose...remove it from mail before that date.

[duntduntduuun]

a good place to start would be deleting all the mail notifications for favor benchmarks... we don't need mail notification for that.

correction: if you're a grizzled vet you don't, if you're a newb they basically the only thing that lets you know there's such a thing as favor and what you just got and who you need to go talk to.

without the mails new players will run around with uncollected favor rewards. those mails also expire automatically so I don't seen this as anything but a vet player callously suggesting something that will make the game more new player hostile than it already is.

[Cantor]

correction: if you're a grizzled vet you don't, if you're a newb they basically the only thing that lets you know there's such a thing as favor and what you just got and who you need to go talk to.

without the mails new players will run around with uncollected favor rewards. those mails also expire automatically so I don't seen this as anything but a vet player callously suggesting something that will make the game more new player hostile than it already is.

I agree. But easily solved, link them to the show hints option.

[gabbatastic]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

Why does my inbox not have a delete all function. The mail interface is horribly cumbersome to manage.

[Aelonwy]

on sarlona in my guild this has already happened, the other day i had 173 pages in my
buy back. i went to bed woke up the next morning re logged on and found my buy back empty.
im guessing as all my guildies had the same thing happen this happened server wide.

your friend sil :)

Good to know.



Yup, which is why we're working to fix the broken buy back tabs on Sarlona.


Good job! Was this the only server affected by this issue?



At least in one case it appears that someone may have put EVERY SINGLE ITEM ever acquired from random gen loot into the Auction House that could be put there, then if it didn't sell, left it sitting in their mailbox because why not, there was no reason to worry about it. Add several years to the mix and you get a very large inbox.


Holy cow! I would nuke from orbit with extreme prejudice just for the audacity, but that's just me.

[LightBear]

Go ahead and fix the problem; no further wait time, or notices are warranted. I have no sympathy for people who abuse/circumvent the rules/intent of the game.

It isn't the players that broke the game.

A lot of players (used to) post the good stuff up the AH for low prices.
Not to make gc but to help others out get their twink gear.
(That's also why there are active craftsmen out there helping others get their stuffs.)
If it didn't sell then you could always repost it at a later date or just wait for the mail to expire as you know you'll get something similar or better the next life.
Somewhere along the way the mailboxes didn't get emptied anymore.... and then you blame it on the players.
As said before, we didn't brake the game and I seriously doubt there is intent and foul play at hand.

Now what concerns me is that such few players could cause so much lag, this really makes me doubt the technical design of the game.

[LucidLTS]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

So as long as you're making changes in the mail system code, if this doesn't fix lag, will you remove the annoying and outdated 3 week timer on mail? I know it hasn't really worked and that's allowed people to get huge mailboxes, I don't mean put it back to allowing huge mailboxes, I mean if somebody takes 4 weeks instead of 3 to pick up their 5 auctions, let them still be there.

There was a time, years ago, when DDO was a hot new game and you wanted to keep people logging in regularly. The mailbox limit helped with that. But those days are long gone. The player base has a lot more casual players who take breaks because that's the nature of casual gamers, and new content is a thin stream at best so hard core games have played through it for many weeks ahead of the next update. The assumption that you can keep players from taking a break from the game isn't valid for today's game.

What you can do is make it more welcoming to come back from a break. And removing the 3 week limit would do that.

With the limit, when somebody thinks about coming back, there is a good chance they will wonder if they lost valuable mail to the 3 week limit, and that makes people sad. Your 3 week limit causes people to associate coming back to DDO with feelings of sadness and regret. You could remove that by keeping your "no send mail or use the auction house if you have 50 items" rule, but removing the "you lose mail after 3 weeks" rule. You keep the benefit of smaller mailboxes, and gain the benefit of people feeling happier when they think about returning.

[Stenky]

It isn't the players that broke the game.

A lot of players (used to) post the good stuff up the AH for low prices.
Not to make gc but to help others out get their twink gear.
(That's also why there are active craftsmen out there helping others get their stuffs.)
If it didn't sell then you could always repost it at a later date or just wait for the mail to expire as you know you'll get something similar or better the next life.
Somewhere along the way the mailboxes didn't get emptied anymore.... and then you blame it on the players.
As said before, we didn't brake the game and I seriously doubt there is intent and foul play at hand.

Now what concerns me is that such few players could cause so much lag, this really makes me doubt the technical design of the game.

Anyone who allowed their email to become a mass storage for game items, is indeed showing intent, where it be from action, or lack of action. To blame it on the game designers is beyond pathetic. I stand by my original assessment. Btw...it is "break", not "brake."

[LucidLTS]

Regarding that mailbox limit and players that weren't logging for a long time. <snip>
- sending an email (real one, not in-game) to all those players
This should be the first, and for at least a few months the only, step. You require an email address to sign up, so use it for a serious change like this. If they don't read their email, or didn't keep it up to date that's one thing, but if you don't even try that's a really crappy thing to do to your players, even if they aren't currently active. People take breaks, don't make them hate you.

[FullMetalAlchemist]

Let me have the nuke button.
Problem will be resolved in a few hours. :D
AHAHAHAHA DUKE NUKEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KIKKU
:eek:

[jalont]

It isn't the players that broke the game.

A lot of players (used to) post the good stuff up the AH for low prices.
Not to make gc but to help others out get their twink gear.
(That's also why there are active craftsmen out there helping others get their stuffs.)
If it didn't sell then you could always repost it at a later date or just wait for the mail to expire as you know you'll get something similar or better the next life.
Somewhere along the way the mailboxes didn't get emptied anymore.... and then you blame it on the players.
As said before, we didn't brake the game and I seriously doubt there is intent and foul play at hand.

Now what concerns me is that such few players could cause so much lag, this really makes me doubt the technical design of the game.

Right. You're giving THESE players the benefit of the doubt? Have you ever been to the "other" forum? I can guarantee a majority of people with filled mailboxes were using it as storage. Why wouldn't they? It's a lot easier than the hoops everyone had to jump through to dupe.

[skorpeon]

correction: if you're a grizzled vet you don't, if you're a newb they basically the only thing that lets you know there's such a thing as favor and what you just got and who you need to go talk to.

without the mails new players will run around with uncollected favor rewards. those mails also expire automatically so I don't seen this as anything but a vet player callously suggesting something that will make the game more new player hostile than it already is.

Yeah I agree, I have been around a fair time and I still use this notification about the rewards. After all you need to know who to see to collect the reward right? This is probably the only mail that I keep until I have made the run to the said patron.

[ColdBrewer]

Dauntless Cordovan,

I understand that this mailbox revision needs to happen to de-bloat the system, but please tell us exactly how much time do players have left to finish unloading their mailboxes across the various characters of their account (In my case, on Sarlona) before the system disintegrates the items stored within? I have been diligently pruning my mailboxes across various characters since the initial announcement about lag and mail concerns, but I still need a day or two to finish cleaning house. I fear that when I get home and log in tonight, my old (6 year +) mail will be gone forever. As always, thanks for the community updates Cordovan!

[DreamingReality]

First, I completely agree that once mailboxes have been trimmed to 50, I hope the developers allow at least 5 weeks for us to open the mail instead of 3. We may love DDO, but unfortunately we cannot physically open a portal to Eberron and truly live there. (I suppose this is best since this would create problems of its own, including increasing lag.)

Second, perhaps a compromise would be offering an ability to buy more "mail slots." VIP could maybe get an automatic 50. (Note: I am not VIP and would actually not become VIP for this, but it seems like a lot of the VIP feel especially hurt by the decision to trim the boxes, so this might be a good compromise.) Then, other players could use TP or maybe an additional 50 (or 25) could be a favor reward. Just like bags and bank space, there would be an upper limit on mail (maybe 200 for VIP and 150 for others).

Again, I do not have thousands of letters and am slightly in awe of those who do, but I can definitely see that 50 mail limit being reached. One of my characters is a guild leader, so after sending out stuff for that (and sometimes getting it back because the player has not logged in), and posting items on the auction, I frequently hit the 50 limit max. (Keep in mind, if you post 40 items on the auction, you will get 40 pieces of mail whether you sell it or not.) I do not have this problem with any of my other characters, so I see it as being something unique to the way I use the character of my guild leader and the frequent communication with others in my guild that this requires.

As to favor notifications, yes, I like those because you do have to find a person and talk to them. It is the same with TP- I don't want to keep opening the DDO store to see if I have earned it. However, once seen, these can generally be deleted immediately- especially those with TP. The way we have to delete mail (without a "delete all" button) is clunky. That in itself might keep people from easily purging their inboxes.

[JonD]

As to favor notifications, yes, I like those because you do have to find a person and talk to them.

I also find the favor notifications are useful, but they don't have to be provided via in-game mail. We get an icon for "you can advance a level" and "you have enhancement points to spend", so an icon for "you have crossed a favor threshold" with details of who to talk to in the tool tip could work.

JonD

[Denegrator]

First, I completely agree that once mailboxes have been trimmed to 50, I hope the developers allow at least 5 weeks for us to open the mail instead of 3. We may love DDO, but unfortunately we cannot physically open a portal to Eberron and truly live there. (I suppose this is best since this would create problems of its own, including increasing lag.)

Second, perhaps a compromise would be offering an ability to buy more "mail slots." VIP could maybe get an automatic 50. (Note: I am not VIP and would actually not become VIP for this, but it seems like a lot of the VIP feel especially hurt by the decision to trim the boxes, so this might be a good compromise.) Then, other players could use TP or maybe an additional 50 (or 25) could be a favor reward. Just like bags and bank space, there would be an upper limit on mail (maybe 200 for VIP and 150 for others).

Again, I do not have thousands of letters and am slightly in awe of those who do, but I can definitely see that 50 mail limit being reached. One of my characters is a guild leader, so after sending out stuff for that (and sometimes getting it back because the player has not logged in), and posting items on the auction, I frequently hit the 50 limit max. (Keep in mind, if you post 40 items on the auction, you will get 40 pieces of mail whether you sell it or not.) I do not have this problem with any of my other characters, so I see it as being something unique to the way I use the character of my guild leader and the frequent communication with others in my guild that this requires.

As to favor notifications, yes, I like those because you do have to find a person and talk to them. It is the same with TP- I don't want to keep opening the DDO store to see if I have earned it. However, once seen, these can generally be deleted immediately- especially those with TP. The way we have to delete mail (without a "delete all" button) is clunky. That in itself might keep people from easily purging their inboxes.

Sorry, but this is a horrible idea. The whole purpose of the mail cull was to reduce lag, you're proposing a system where mail can continue to bloat? Yes it sucks that people will lose a few items, but then again, why are they hoarding that much? Do they really need the stuff?

[Tetsugin7]

If this is causing lag issues for the rest of the community, sorry... all that needs to go.
We run into this issue at work all the time. Mail in it's original incarnation was not meant as a storage place at all.
Outlook even starts to have issues once 5,000+ emails appear in inboxes.
I can't imagine this barely functional email inside a game.
Perhaps people are skirting inventory limits and whatnot, but I don't care.
No b*tching, no crying.... be Nike... just do it!
Prune away Turbine, Prune away. I would prefer less lag. :D

[twinstronglord]

A Delete All button is the worst idea in the history of anything, ever.

[Ash21]

I don't think people were 'exploiting' the mailbox for increased storage as such. I used to auction all my loot gen and just let the stuff that didn't sell sit, there was no other reason (provided) to move it. If the timer for mail worked it should have deleted itself anyway. People just didn't want to spend the time to move it. And many don't use the forum, there was no in-game notice that said: "DO NOT USE MAIL FOR STORAGE".

Furthermore, (and this is not all rather encompassing), but in my guild, the cannith crafting amenity is right next to the Orion express amenity, and as you can access the airship from a lot of places, it is very easy to disjunct. (Yes I realise some may not have this amenity, but they can change that by getting in a guild that can, or buying one)

[Ash21]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

Also can (Cordovan or) someone else official tell us whether this update will also cause the mail expiry timer to work correctly, and thereby delete all mail that has been on '1 day left'?

[trevitt]

It isn't the players that broke the game.

A lot of players (used to) post the good stuff up the AH for low prices.
Not to make gc but to help others out get their twink gear.
(That's also why there are active craftsmen out there helping others get their stuffs.)
If it didn't sell then you could always repost it at a later date or just wait for the mail to expire as you know you'll get something similar or better the next life.
Somewhere along the way the mailboxes didn't get emptied anymore.... and then you blame it on the players.
As said before, we didn't brake the game and I seriously doubt there is intent and foul play at hand.

Now what concerns me is that such few players could cause so much lag, this really makes me doubt the technical design of the game.

SERIOUSLY! It took you unlit a small thing like the mailboxes getting a overhaul for you to complain about the technical design of the game.

I love this game and have been playing in for over 5 years as a VIP but I started doubting the technical design a looong time ago.

[myddosstegner2]

As you may know, we recently implemented a system in DDO that limits your mailbox inbox to 50 mails. This was done to start addressing an issue where exceptionally-large inboxes were causing lag due to character data bloat. When we implemented this system, we asked everyone to voluntarily reduce their inboxes, and the system itself began preventing people from sending mail or posting things in the Auction Houses if they had more than 50 mails.

We appreciate everyone's efforts to address this issue. Remember that we won't see a lag reduction until players have smaller mailbox inboxes, so it's been up to you to help improve things by reducing your inbox. We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox.

As of Wednesday, July 20th here's the player count of folks with 50+ mails in their inbox:

Argonnessen: 273
Cannith: 245
Ghallanda: 311
Orien: 216
Khyber: 219
Sarlona: 300
Thelanis: 307
Wayfinder: 45

Total: 1916

Some of these may be folks who are no longer playing the game, or who haven't logged in in a very long time, but we know some of these numbers include active players, so we're putting out this final call to voluntarily reduce your inbox size if you have more than 50 mails prior to running a command that will automatically prune things. Thank you!

Would it be possible to "eliminate" the mail notifications of Favor and have quick notifications posted after every quest as to the amount of favor earned in a separate window (NOT the center notification window that I would like to move out of the way) and in the general chat windows.

[Burdigalos]

This is very nice that turbine have some solutions to implement in Order to reduce the lag.
Please perform the purge as quickly as you can. If that not done already.

[jalont]

A Delete All button is the worst idea in the history of anything, ever.

Charge 250 TP to add a confirmation popup for the amazing people who seem to not be in control of their fingers, and it would be fine.

[SisAmethyst]

... We're now at the stage when we need to take the next step. We have a command that allows us to prune inboxes down to fifty mails, and we will soon be running that command starting with the characters that have the largest inboxes (we have a couple that are literally in the thousands...) Consider this your LAST CALL. [U]Please get your inbox down to 50 mails if you are above this limit and are concerned about losing anything in your inbox... Thank you!

Hi Cordovan,

I think you may want to put that into the launcher I just stumbled over that post by accident and surely not everybody read the forum frequently ;)

[Krelar]

Hi Cordovan,

I think you may want to put that into the launcher I just stumbled over that post by accident and surely not everybody read the forum frequently ;)

It's been in the launcher since the 21st.

[PrimeMoverX]

Cordovan and All,

I am one of the guilty active members on Thelanis. Not 1000s guilty, but maybe 300? Like several others that have posted, I am mostly guilty of allowing expired things from failed AH sales to sit around. I used to be very diligent about not letting things pile up because of that scary countdown timer within the mailbox itself telling me that my mail only had "1 week, 4 days left," etc., then when it got down to only a few days I would mill it. But then a funny thing happened: I wasn't able to log in for over a month due to computer issues, and when I came back, none of the mail that I had expected to have derezzed was gone! It was all still there with a "1 day" tag on it. I thought at first it would disappear when I tried to reclaim it, but no! There it stayed. So I got lazy. If something didn't sell I didn't rush to recycle it, I just let it sit, live to try on another day's economy I guess. For that I am guilty, though I had no idea the effect it had on gameplay until your post last month. Now that I have been made aware of the problem, I agree that a correction is in order.

But here's the rub, though I have been trying to reduce the backlog little by little, it is difficult to do if the primary means of unloading said loot, i.e. the AH, is denied to us. I can certainly understand not letting players with overfull mailboxes BID and BUY at the AH, but why are we blocked from SELLING? How then, do we clear out named loot that cannot be deconstructed?

During the time of The Great Purge, could not we, the repentant, be granted a small reprieve and be able to sell off rather than simply delete the excess?

With Appreciation,
PMX

[Caarb]

2 things:

1) Clearly this is an attempt to fix a mailbox exploit not fixing gameplay lag
2) Expect a legal challenge from Europeans who by EU law own their digital items (not license) and EU law trumps the EULA. (Same reason why EA had to refund Fifa points to people it banned)

[SisAmethyst]

It's been in the launcher since the 21st.

Uhhhh sorry, then I must have clearly missed it. I have only seen the info about Update 31 and the Downtime Notice and usually not scroll down to see older messages.
But I see that Cordovan pushed it back up to second place, thanks!

[Uska]

Cordovan and All,

I am one of the guilty active members on Thelanis. Not 1000s guilty, but maybe 300? Like several others that have posted, I am mostly guilty of allowing expired things from failed AH sales to sit around. I used to be very diligent about not letting things pile up because of that scary countdown timer within the mailbox itself telling me that my mail only had "1 week, 4 days left," etc., then when it got down to only a few days I would mill it. But then a funny thing happened: I wasn't able to log in for over a month due to computer issues, and when I came back, none of the mail that I had expected to have derezzed was gone! It was all still there with a "1 day" tag on it. I thought at first it would disappear when I tried to reclaim it, but no! There it stayed. So I got lazy. If something didn't sell I didn't rush to recycle it, I just let it sit, live to try on another day's economy I guess. For that I am guilty, though I had no idea the effect it had on gameplay until your post last month. Now that I have been made aware of the problem, I agree that a correction is in order.

But here's the rub, though I have been trying to reduce the backlog little by little, it is difficult to do if the primary means of unloading said loot, i.e. the AH, is denied to us. I can certainly understand not letting players with overfull mailboxes BID and BUY at the AH, but why are we blocked from SELLING? How then, do we clear out named loot that cannot be deconstructed?

During the time of The Great Purge, could not we, the repentant, be granted a small reprieve and be able to sell off rather than simply delete the excess?

With Appreciation,
PMX

Plenty of notice has been given

[Steve_Howe]

2 things:

1) Clearly this is an attempt to fix a mailbox exploit not fixing gameplay lag

ROFLMAO!



2) Expect a legal challenge from Europeans who by EU law own their digital items (not license) and EU law trumps the EULA. (Same reason why EA had to refund Fifa points to people it banned)

Good luck with that.

[PrimeMoverX]

Plenty of notice has been given

Uska,

The notice has been given, but the means of compliance greatly restricted. My point is not really to request more time, but rather more access. I can easily delete the items myself instead of forcing the script to do it for me, but in trying to extract the greatest remaining value from them, it would be helpful to be able to post them back to the AH a few more times before they expire for good. As it is, I have given quite a few things away, random acts of kindness as it were.

It seems like the natural attrition would take place if the mailbox timer just started working the way it was intended: let us go back to posting items on the AH, but when they return to the mailbox, they will expire automatically at the end of 3 weeks as the messages say them should. If the coding fixes what is actually not working properly, then the intended process will carry itself out without the Devs having to do individual maintenance on almost 2000 accounts.

That's all I was asking for, Uska, a little forbearance, not a full pardon.

~PMX

[Uska]

Uska,

The notice has been given, but the means of compliance greatly restricted. My point is not really to request more time, but rather more access. I can easily delete the items myself instead of forcing the script to do it for me, but in trying to extract the greatest remaining value from them, it would be helpful to be able to post them back to the AH a few more times before they expire for good. As it is, I have given quite a few things away, random acts of kindness as it were.

It seems like the natural attrition would take place if the mailbox timer just started working the way it was intended: let us go back to posting items on the AH, but when they return to the mailbox, they will expire automatically at the end of 3 weeks as the messages say them should. If the coding fixes what is actually not working properly, then the intended process will carry itself out without the Devs having to do individual maintenance on almost 2000 accounts.

That's all I was asking for, Uska, a little forbearance, not a full pardon.

~PMX

They have given more time than they should have people knew it wasn't working right and they took advantage of a bug they deserve no extra consideration

[ArtyWarrior]

And there lies the truth, you [PrimeMoverX] are really just trying to get the greatest value for your items. You could sell them to a store vendor or barkeep. Quit being greedy!



Uska,

The notice has been given, but the means of compliance greatly restricted. My point is not really to request more time, but rather more access. I can easily delete the items myself instead of forcing the script to do it for me, but in trying to extract the greatest remaining value from them, it would be helpful to be able to post them back to the AH a few more times before they expire for good. As it is, I have given quite a few things away, random acts of kindness as it were.

It seems like the natural attrition would take place if the mailbox timer just started working the way it was intended: let us go back to posting items on the AH, but when they return to the mailbox, they will expire automatically at the end of 3 weeks as the messages say them should. If the coding fixes what is actually not working properly, then the intended process will carry itself out without the Devs having to do individual maintenance on almost 2000 accounts.

That's all I was asking for, Uska, a little forbearance, not a full pardon.

~PMX

[Nuclear_Elvis]

Up Front, full disclosure: I have not, nor ever will, use the Mail system as alternate storage for my characters. I have far too much Guild related mail as-is and use Mail as primarily intended, to communicate with other players. The only items I ever have in mail queue are the few AH items that don't sell.

Having said that - this entire issue is a failure on multiple fronts:
- DDO's Storage options are not expanding faster than the game's new content and resultant loots.
- DDO's Storage/Banking User Interface has not been updated to streamline the way loots are handled.
- Character items must load entirely and this causes Lag, which is a failure in Game Design.

- As result of one or more of the prior three, this Mailbox issue is now present, but it is the resultant of these other issues, and thus, at its core it is a failure in Design and/or storage options. It is not always both. A FTP player could be using this mail system instead of purchasing storage upgrades, but let's use logic here - if that FTP player stores 50 items in Mail instead of buying 3 x backpacks (60 slots) for their character, is there really a net difference in Lag? No. The FTP player could use their precious few TP to buy those 3 x backpacks, store 60 more items, discontinue to use the Mailbox entirely and increase lag for the additional 10 items in their backpacks (60-50=10).

[Cordovan]

Cordovan and All,

I am one of the guilty active members on Thelanis. Not 1000s guilty, but maybe 300? Like several others that have posted, I am mostly guilty of allowing expired things from failed AH sales to sit around. I used to be very diligent about not letting things pile up because of that scary countdown timer within the mailbox itself telling me that my mail only had "1 week, 4 days left," etc., then when it got down to only a few days I would mill it. But then a funny thing happened: I wasn't able to log in for over a month due to computer issues, and when I came back, none of the mail that I had expected to have derezzed was gone! It was all still there with a "1 day" tag on it. I thought at first it would disappear when I tried to reclaim it, but no! There it stayed. So I got lazy. If something didn't sell I didn't rush to recycle it, I just let it sit, live to try on another day's economy I guess. For that I am guilty, though I had no idea the effect it had on gameplay until your post last month. Now that I have been made aware of the problem, I agree that a correction is in order.

But here's the rub, though I have been trying to reduce the backlog little by little, it is difficult to do if the primary means of unloading said loot, i.e. the AH, is denied to us. I can certainly understand not letting players with overfull mailboxes BID and BUY at the AH, but why are we blocked from SELLING? How then, do we clear out named loot that cannot be deconstructed?

During the time of The Great Purge, could not we, the repentant, be granted a small reprieve and be able to sell off rather than simply delete the excess?

With Appreciation,
PMX

I appreciate that you want to get the most value from expired Auction House items, but if we allowed people above the mailbox limit to post on the Auction House, that'd simply send expired items back into the mailbox. it may not be your desired way to sell things, but you can detach the items and sell it to vendors, brokers, and tavernkeeps.

[Impaqt]

People have had weeks, if not Months or YEARS to "Get the maximum value" for their mail exploit items.

Times up. deal with it.

[Gratch]

Hmmm... while helping Turbine's servers remove lag is a good thing... if this removes half of the Potency Greatsword of Ghostbanes from the AH... that will be an even better result.

Much faster to go to a general vendor and SELL ALL then to individually price and place every item of JUNK on the AH. We already have the reincarnation item moving game... why play "ITEM-MOVER" outside of reincarnation?

[Thar]

People have had weeks, if not Months or YEARS to "Get the maximum value" for their mail exploit items.

Times up. deal with it.

having two AH that hold almost the full complement of mail (20+20) makes it difficult to have much of any mail other than AH items. That has nothing to do with mail exploits.

[Tilomere]

possible?

[aislabylad]

ha reminds me of the days of filling someones mail box with lots of single arrows/bolts since you have to empty the mail before deleting it that was around update 4.2 so good work on the mail system :)

[koluka]

having two AH that hold almost the full complement of mail (20+20) makes it difficult to have much of any mail other than AH items. That has nothing to do with mail exploits.

exactly. and this seems to be totally disregarded.

i applaud the developers for taking steps to reduce lag. i think they have done an excellent job of putting the word out there.

but i feel it is being totally disregarded that people can easily go over the 50 mail limit with non-exploitive, non-farming game play, and not using the mail as auxiliary storage.

my partner and i mostly solo or play with a third friend. we don't do raids. we don't run 50 zones in 2 seconds. we don'y buy stuff off pawns to list on auction.

the primary avenue through which i upgrade my gear is buying stuff from auction house.
the way i get plat to buy stuff is through selling stuff on auction that i have personally looted from quests.
i don't habitually relist stuff - i've probably relisted about 5 items in my six months of playing and I don't do it any more. if it doesn't sell, then i disjunct it.

i really would like to see a time buffer, like 5 days or one week, added to that 50 items prior to purging. ie - only mail older than 5 days is purged if the mail count is over 50 but less than 70. that way, if people try to recycle hundreds of mail, they will get purged. but the non-farming, non-exploitive player using AH to sell personal loot isn't. i don't think that is a big ask considering one of the perks of VIP is being able to list 50 items on auctioneer. kind of questionable if it gets deleted if it doesn't sell.

edit: i'd also like to add that my mail isn't habitually over 50, but it does climb there sometimes. it is often completely empty and very often has less than 10 items.

[Silverleafeon]

I appreciate that you want to get the most value from expired Auction House items, but if we allowed people above the mailbox limit to post on the Auction House, that'd simply send expired items back into the mailbox. it may not be your desired way to sell things, but you can detach the items and sell it to vendors, brokers, and tavernkeeps.
+1

If something does not sell the first time I post it (for full time), I sell it to a vendor.

[Grosbeak07]

having two AH that hold almost the full complement of mail (20+20) makes it difficult to have much of any mail other than AH items. That has nothing to do with mail exploits.

Folk will just have to get used to stopping at the mailbox a bit more often is all.

Not a big deal and a fix long overdue in my opinion.

[Uska]

having two AH that hold almost the full complement of mail (20+20) makes it difficult to have much of any mail other than AH items. That has nothing to do with mail exploits.

To many try to use the ah as storage as well people need to learn to let things go

[Impaqt]

having two AH that hold almost the full complement of mail (20+20) makes it difficult to have much of any mail other than AH items. That has nothing to do with mail exploits.

And yet, after 10 years of playing this game, I've never once gone over 50 mails in my inbox. Inconceivable!

If your items arent selling, your asking too much, people simply dont want the item, or you are exploiting the not really deleted bug.





exactly. and this seems to be totally disregarded.

i applaud the developers for taking steps to reduce lag. i think they have done an excellent job of putting the word out there.

but i feel it is being totally disregarded that people can easily go over the 50 mail limit with non-exploitive, non-farming game play, and not using the mail as auxiliary storage.


/fail

If you were not trying to exploit the system, you would remove the items from your mailbox because there is a warning that they are going to be deleted if you dont.

Turbine COULD of just turned this on and let the cards play.... they are trying to give folks notice here.



my partner and i mostly solo or play with a third friend. we don't do raids. we don't run 50 zones in 2 seconds. we don'y buy stuff off pawns to list on auction.

the primary avenue through which i upgrade my gear is buying stuff from auction house.
the way i get plat to buy stuff is through selling stuff on auction that i have personally looted from quests.
i don't habitually relist stuff - i've probably relisted about 5 items in my six months of playing and I don't do it any more. if it doesn't sell, then i disjunct it.

i really would like to see a time buffer, like 5 days or one week, added to that 50 items prior to purging. ie - only mail older than 5 days is purged if the mail count is over 50 but less than 70. that way, if people try to recycle hundreds of mail, they will get purged. but the non-farming, non-exploitive player using AH to sell personal loot isn't. i don't think that is a big ask considering one of the perks of VIP is being able to list 50 items on auctioneer. kind of questionable if it gets deleted if it doesn't sell.

edit: i'd also like to add that my mail isn't habitually over 50, but it does climb there sometimes. it is often completely empty and very often has less than 10 items.

[JOTMON]

Thousands? Thousands?!?

Lumps of coal mailed one at a time....

[JOTMON]

I appreciate that you want to get the most value from expired Auction House items, but if we allowed people above the mailbox limit to post on the Auction House, that'd simply send expired items back into the mailbox. it may not be your desired way to sell things, but you can detach the items and sell it to vendors, brokers, and tavernkeeps.


Is it possible to add longer durations to the AH (for a premium price of course)
or even relisting options before mailing back to players.

Thinking about casual players and weekend warriors that may be cycling mail and only log on in longer duration spurts..

[koluka]

/fail

If you were not trying to exploit the system, you would remove the items from your mailbox because there is a warning that they are going to be deleted if you dont.

Turbine COULD of just turned this on and let the cards play.... they are trying to give folks notice here.[/QUOTE]


seriously???

so if i play on the weekend, finish a zone, logout while there are items in my mailbox, I am exploiting the system? does anyone really believe this? seriously?

have you never finished a zone and been like "I need to go to bed now", and not felt like running to the mailbox to empty your mail so stuff from your auctions doesn't get deleted if you don't log on for three days?

have you never gone 3 days without logging on in your 10 years of playing? do you make room for the possibility that others might go three days without logging on?

is it now a requirement that we are expected to run to our mailboxes and empty them every time the mail symbol appears? seriously??? then why is there a three week timer for mail? why don't we make it a maximum of 5 days instead or 24 hours, or 30 seconds after the symbol appears? ahhhh... that would be because players aren't expected to go rushing to their mailbox every time the symbol appears, and maybe, just maybe, it is considered reasonable to not check ones mail for a few days.

and i have never, ever, seen a warning in-game on my mailbox, apart from once, recently not being able to list items on broker because my mail was full. i don't leave my mail to accumulate for weeks on end.

edit: also, an exploit is when you do something outside the agreement - for example - if i was to find a way of listing 70 items on AH instead of 50, but the conditions of VIP clearly state that we can have 50 items on auctioneer - that is part of the service i pay for. additionally, the 50 mail limit is a change to previous conditions. it is new, that is why it is being discussed, so the suggestion that i am exploiting is not only offensive but absolutely unfounded and just straight out WRONG!!!

[PrimeMoverX]

I appreciate that you want to get the most value from expired Auction House items, but if we allowed people above the mailbox limit to post on the Auction House, that'd simply send expired items back into the mailbox. it may not be your desired way to sell things, but you can detach the items and sell it to vendors, brokers, and tavernkeeps.



And there lies the truth, you [PrimeMoverX] are really just trying to get the greatest value for your items. You could sell them to a store vendor or barkeep. Quit being greedy!


Thank you both for the reminder about vendors and especially pawnbrokers. I had quite forgotten that they could traffic named loot; I was thinking that they only traded in random lootgen, which I mostly deconstruct anyway. As always Cordovan, you are direct while remaining considerate, and your reserved tone is always appreciated. ArtyWarrior, I openly admitted my motivation, but there is a difference between greed and fair profit. I am not a zerger, and for the limited time that I get to play, I try to maximize my returns. That being said, I have made a great many random gifts this week. :)

I support the fix, and anything to help reduce lag, especially if it improves the issues with instancing and allows the Devs to bring back Mabar someday!

~PMX

[Cordovan]

Is it possible to add longer durations to the AH (for a premium price of course)
or even relisting options before mailing back to players.

Thinking about casual players and weekend warriors that may be cycling mail and only log on in longer duration spurts..

It's not possible given our current system, so it would require additional development.

[Impaqt]

/fail

If you were not trying to exploit the system, you would remove the items from your mailbox because there is a warning that they are going to be deleted if you dont.

Turbine COULD of just turned this on and let the cards play.... they are trying to give folks notice here.


seriously???

so if i play on the weekend, finish a zone, logout while there are items in my mailbox, I am exploiting the system? does anyone really believe this? seriously?

have you never finished a zone and been like "I need to go to bed now", and not felt like running to the mailbox to empty your mail so stuff from your auctions doesn't get deleted if you don't log on for three days?

have you never gone 3 days without logging on in your 10 years of playing? do you make room for the possibility that others might go three days without logging on?

is it now a requirement that we are expected to run to our mailboxes and empty them every time the mail symbol appears? seriously??? then why is there a three week timer for mail? why don't we make it a maximum of 5 days instead or 24 hours, or 30 seconds after the symbol appears? ahhhh... that would be because players aren't expected to go rushing to their mailbox every time the symbol appears, and maybe, just maybe, it is considered reasonable to not check ones mail for a few days.
[/quote]
OK, maybe I missed a more detailed announcement, but the stuff doesnt expire every night, or even every 3 days. Its still THREE weeks isnt it? that means you can post something on teh AH for 3 days, and then not come back online for 23 days and your stuff would still be in the mailbox waiting for you.

If there is statement somewhere that says all mains are going to auto delete in 3 days from now on, please let me know because I will be hapy to make my displeasure known in that thread.




and i have never, ever, seen a warning in-game on my mailbox, apart from once, recently not being able to list items on broker because my mail was full. i don't leave my mail to accumulate for weeks on end.


sorry, but there is an expiration listed on each mail item. thats absolutely a warning, the fact that people figured out that the stuff doesnt actually delete is a BUG.



edit: also, an exploit is when you do something outside the agreement - for example - if i was to find a way of listing 70 items on AH instead of 50, but the conditions of VIP clearly state that we can have 50 items on auctioneer - that is part of the service i pay for. additionally, the 50 mail limit is a change to previous conditions. it is new, that is why it is being discussed, so the suggestion that i am exploiting is not only offensive but absolutely unfounded and just straight out WRONG!!!

exploit..... taking advantage of...... Semantics.

people using mailboxes as indefinite storage are taking advantage of a bug in turbines system.

is that wording better for you?

[Lord_Asmodeus]

Just clear the mailboxes already, if people can not be bothered to empty them by now they deserve to lose them. They have had plenty of time it is time to say this is the cutoff date, empty to below 50 by "X" date or lose them.

[Galidur]

sorry, but there is an expiration listed on each mail item. thats absolutely a warning, the fact that people figured out that the stuff doesnt actually delete is a BUG.

Sorry, but I can't help feeling that I need to defend koluka on this one... He was relatively clear in his statement that he has never (apart from once) seen a warning in his MAILBOX warning that how full it was would prevent him from using the AUCTION HOUSE (or at least, I assume that he was referring to the AH when he said broker, instead of the pawn brokers. If they're now preventing the use of the pawn brokers when your mailbox is full, that would be a new and somewhat worrying change). He was not saying that he hadn't seen a warning about mail item expiry, so your comment is either directed at the wrong poster (and there have been plenty in this and related threads for whom your response would have been appropriate), or is merely irrelevant.

[Ykt]

Just clear the mailboxes already, if people can not be bothered to empty them by now they deserve to lose them. They have had plenty of time it is time to say this is the cutoff date, empty to below 50 by "X" date or lose them.

I'll laugh so bitterly hard when the mailboxes are empty and the lag is still there.

Remember Lantern-Archons-that-emit-light, we will not forget you.

Did I mention the change to TWF back in 2010 or something that was also supposed to reduce lag?

[Steelstar]

I'll laugh so bitterly hard when the mailboxes are empty and the lag is still there.

Remember Lantern-Archons-that-emit-light, we will not forget you.

Did I mention the change to TWF back in 2010 or something that was also supposed to reduce lag?

Both of those examples contributed to actual, quantifiable performance increases; perhaps not visible to every player on every piece of hardware, but if it was not actually helping we wouldn't have done either of those. (Believe me - I liked the Archons too and wish we could put them back.)

Those changes weren't a miracle cure for all lag (there isn't one), but rather parts of the larger puzzle, much like what we're doing here.

[Mindos]

Both of those examples contributed to actual, quantifiable performance increases; perhaps not visible to every player on every piece of hardware, but if it was not actually helping we wouldn't have done either of those. (Believe me - I liked the Archons too and wish we could put them back.)

Those changes weren't a miracle cure for all lag (there isn't one), but rather parts of the larger puzzle, much like what we're doing here.

There has to be a limit somewhere! Staring at a blank screen with no (runearm) sound might be 100% lag free, but...

[bracelet]

Both of those examples contributed to actual, quantifiable performance increases; perhaps not visible to every player on every piece of hardware, but if it was not actually helping we wouldn't have done either of those. (Believe me - I liked the Archons too and wish we could put them back.)

Those changes weren't a miracle cure for all lag (there isn't one), but rather parts of the larger puzzle, much like what we're doing here.

Bring the archons back! Put a switch in the UI to enable or disable spell light (including archons). The lighting effects were one of the coolest graphical things that DDO had going for it.

[Raeaddil]

I would find it useful if on the character select screen if there was an icon letting you know if you have mail on that character. I have a tonne of alts and it's tedious to log them all in to check if they have mail. An icon on the character select screen would be very useful. Sorry if this has been brought up. I haven't gone thru this whole thread yet.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

I'll laugh so bitterly hard when the mailboxes are empty and the lag is still there.

Remember Lantern-Archons-that-emit-light, we will not forget you.

Did I mention the change to TWF back in 2010 or something that was also supposed to reduce lag?

As long as the eardwealler leaves my mailbox, I can't detach it etc. lol, though just tired of the drama about the whole mess. Sure I used it that way for temp storage myself, but anyone can make a free alt account, get a cheap guild airship and use it for storage of non BTA/BTC stuff.

[Michaelaz2]

yeah lets nerf TWF,archons,mail instead of switching data centers and flying blades that serve no purpose

[koluka]

Could I please get some clarification from one of the devs regarding the mail limit?

For example, let's say I finish my weekend play and put 50 items on auction to expire in 2 days. Before I logout, I put a bid on 5 items on astral broker that are going to end in 8 hours. I also bid on another 10 items on the plat auctioneer that are ending in 24 hours. I finish my play, I go to bed and I don't log on for three days. Let's say, to make the example easier to follow, that none of my auctions sell in the first 24 hours of listing, only the last 24 hours.

During those three days that I don't log on, I win some auctions and some I don't. But I get notifications for all of them. I get shard/plat refunds for the ones I lose and the actual items for the ones I win.

Lets say, I won 2 astral shard auctions and lose three. So, I get three mails containing 50 astral shards each, because I was outbid. I get two mail containing the items I won. My mailbox was empty before I logged off, so that is a total of 5 items in my mailbox after 8 hours, assuming I haven't been outbid on any plan auctions yet.

I get outbid on all the plat auctions (yeah sadly that is true, I often get outbid on plat auctions) so I get another ten mails with my plat refunds. That makes a total of 15 items in my mailbox after 24 hours.

Another 24 hours passes and all of my auctions have either sold or expired. I get a mail for each item listed whether it is the item being returned to my mail or the plat I receive for selling the item. Lets assume that all of my sales were in the last 24 hours of the listings, so all of the mails for my auctions come after my purchases. Regardless of how many items sell, I will get 50 mail for those 50 auctions. This makes a total of 65 items in my mailbox.

Three days ago my mailbox was empty, but during those three days that I didn't log on, I got 65 mail notifications.

The first 5 mails to arrive in my mail contained astral shards and items that I paid astral shards for? Given that they are the first items to arrive in my mailbox, and the total number of items in my mailbox has exceeded the 50 item limit, will they still be there when I log in after 3 days of being absent?

The next ten mail items are all plat refunds for items I did not win on auctioneer. Will I still have that plat or will it have been deleted as my auctions sold/expired, bringing the total number of mails received (and not attended to) over the last three days to 65 items?

Or, do I have the grace period of three weeks to attend to my mail before any of it is deleted, even though I have exceeded the 50 mail limit.

[Impaqt]

TLDR

What happens of we get more than 50 mails over the course of a few days?

I would assume they would accumulate normally and you would be prevented from posting more auctions until your under the limit.

but if first ins are getting purged, that would be good info to know.

[koluka]

TLDR

What happens of we get more than 50 mails over the course of a few days?

I would assume they would accumulate normally and you would be prevented from posting more auctions until your under the limit.

but if first ins are getting purged, that would be good info to know.

Thank-you. I have been trying to get this question answered since the notice was first posted, but I obviously haven't expressed it clearly enough as people keep on accusing me of trying to exploit the system. So this is my effort to ensure that what I am asking is not ambiguous.

Yes devs, can you please advise if first-ins(or last-ins or any other ins) will be purged in the event of getting more than 50 mails over a few days.

[Cordovan]

Thank-you. I have been trying to get this question answered since the notice was first posted, but I obviously haven't expressed it clearly enough as people keep on accusing me of trying to exploit the system. So this is my effort to ensure that what I am asking is not ambiguous.

Yes devs, can you please advise if first-ins(or last-ins or any other ins) will be purged in the event of getting more than 50 mails over a few days.

I'm not sure what you mean by first-ins, but so far we've targeted particularly large individual mailboxes. The process is "remove mail if more than X amount in mailbox", so when that amount was reached is irrelevant. That said, we haven't been draconian about it, hoping that people will take care of the issue on their own while targeting specific large mailboxes that are causing problems on particular worlds.

[koluka]

I'm not sure what you mean by first-ins, but so far we've targeted particularly large individual mailboxes. The process is "remove mail if more than X amount in mailbox", so when that amount was reached is irrelevant. That said, we haven't been draconian about it, hoping that people will take care of the issue on their own while targeting specific large mailboxes that are causing problems on particular worlds.

Thanks Cordovan.

I am specifically asking about the implementation of the 50 mail limit.

Let's say I have an empty mail box but I have posted 50 auctions expiring in 8 hours. I bid on an astral auction ending in 2 hours and then log off and don't log back in for three days. I am outbid on the astral auction just after I logoff so my shards are returned to me via the mail. 8 hours later, I have 51 items in my mail box as all my posted auctions have either sold or expired.

When I come back after three days, have my astral shards been deleted because they were first to arrive and removing that first mail brings me back to the 50 limit?
Or is it, over 50 and everything goes?
Or is it a different scenario altogether? If so, what is that scenario?

[Blivit]

I'm not sure what you mean by first-ins, but so far we've targeted particularly large individual mailboxes. The process is "remove mail if more than X amount in mailbox", so when that amount was reached is irrelevant. That said, we haven't been draconian about it, hoping that people will take care of the issue on their own while targeting specific large mailboxes that are causing problems on particular worlds.

Let's phrase this question in another manner that is less likely to elicit strong feeling of abuse. What if some people are running a quest and there is a hamsplosion. Rejoice! Hams for everyone! What if these people, out of the goodness of their hearts, send all their hams to Kargon? What if Kargon doesn't log on for a few days, and his mailbox fills up with nothing but hams? Will he cease to acquire new hams in his mailbox until the mail drops under 50? If so, will the not-acquired hams queue up and appear in his mailbox once it drops below 50? Will the hams that arrive while at 50 vaporize (Kargon not happy)? Will the hams bounce back to their original senders (Kargon hope nice people send hams again)? Will all 50 hams be deleted (Kargon not happy)? Will the first hams that had arrived in his mailbox (first-in) be deleted to reduce the size of the mailbox to 50 (Kargon still not happy, better than losing all hams)? Or will the last hams to arrive (last-in) be deleted first to reduce the size of the mailbox to 50 (order not matter to Kargon, lost ham is lost ham)?

[Krelar]

Thanks Cordovan.

I am specifically asking about the implementation of the 50 mail limit.

Let's say I have an empty mail box but I have posted 50 auctions expiring in 8 hours. I bid on an astral auction ending in 2 hours and then log off and don't log back in for three days. I am outbid on the astral auction just after I logoff so my shards are returned to me via the mail. 8 hours later, I have 51 items in my mail box as all my posted auctions have either sold or expired.

When I come back after three days, have my astral shards been deleted because they were first to arrive and removing that first mail brings me back to the 50 limit?
Or is it, over 50 and everything goes?
Or is it a different scenario altogether? If so, what is that scenario?

This was all covered in the thread about fixing the mail box limit. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/476361-Upcoming-Change-to-In-Game-Mail) (Rather than this thread which is about culling excessively large mail boxes)

In summary:

You will not be able to receive mail from other players.
You will not be able to send mail.
You will not be able to post or bid on the auction house.

No mail will be deleted, you will have to delete them yourself to get below the 50 mail limit before the above restrictions will be lifted.

[koluka]

Let's phrase this question in another manner that is less likely to elicit strong feeling of abuse. What if some people are running a quest and there is a hamsplosion. Rejoice! Hams for everyone! What if these people, out of the goodness of their hearts, send all their hams to Kargon? What if Kargon doesn't log on for a few days, and his mailbox fills up with nothing but hams? Will he cease to acquire new hams in his mailbox until the mail drops under 50? If so, will the not-acquired hams queue up and appear in his mailbox once it drops below 50? Will the hams that arrive while at 50 vaporize (Kargon not happy)? Will the hams bounce back to their original senders (Kargon hope nice people send hams again)? Will all 50 hams be deleted (Kargon not happy)? Will the first hams that had arrived in his mailbox (first-in) be deleted to reduce the size of the mailbox to 50 (Kargon still not happy, better than losing all hams)? Or will the last hams to arrive (last-in) be deleted first to reduce the size of the mailbox to 50 (order not matter to Kargon, lost ham is lost ham)?

I have woken up in this demented alternate reality where using the stuff you buy is abuse.

You can buy ham but you cannot eat it.

It is a magical mystery world where people for some strange reason people pay for subscriptions and buy items from the DDO store with no intention of ever using them.

I bought bags to carry my stuff, but I am not allowed to use them. I must carry each item one at a time, putting it neatly in its spot before I pick up the next, leaving my paid for inventory slots empty.
I pay a subscription, but dare not use the 50 auction slots that come as part of that.

No running a saga from end to end without emptying bags. That is abuse.
No running an entire wilderness area without returning to base after every random encounter or quest. That is abuse.
No clearing out my bags in one fell swoop. That is abuse.
No listing my unwanted loot on auction. That is abuse.

I wonder, what incentive would anyone have to pay for a subscription or extra inventory slots if actually using them is abuse? Then how would the developers get paid to develop the game?

It is demented that people think I should be apologetic for letting my bags fill up and sticking all my stuff on auction at once. That is the whole point for me of having extra inventory slots - so I can play for a day and not have to run back to vendors and auctioneers after every quest.

/shakes head. crazy. demented.

[koluka]

This was all covered in the thread about fixing the mail box limit. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/476361-Upcoming-Change-to-In-Game-Mail) (Rather than this thread which is about culling excessively large mail boxes)

In summary:

You will not be able to receive mail from other players.
You will not be able to send mail.
You will not be able to post or bid on the auction house.

No mail will be deleted, you will have to delete them yourself to get below the 50 mail limit before the above restrictions will be lifted.


Thanks Krelar. I thought that was just a first stage and ultimately the culling would apply to all mail boxes with more than 50 items.

[Cordovan]

TLDR

What happens of we get more than 50 mails over the course of a few days?

I would assume they would accumulate normally and you would be prevented from posting more auctions until your under the limit.

but if first ins are getting purged, that would be good info to know.


This was all covered in the thread about fixing the mail box limit. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/476361-Upcoming-Change-to-In-Game-Mail) (Rather than this thread which is about culling excessively large mail boxes)

In summary:

You will not be able to receive mail from other players.
You will not be able to send mail.
You will not be able to post or bid on the auction house.

No mail will be deleted, you will have to delete them yourself to get below the 50 mail limit before the above restrictions will be lifted.

You are correct Krelar. If your mailbox is above the limit, the summary listing applies.

There may come a time in the future where we have to do a mass purge, but we haven't done that yet. To answer the longer questions about three-day activity processes, there may come a day when the answer is, "don't post so much junk on the auction house", or if absolutely necessary perhaps we'd be forced to put in place various checks to make sure you don't do things that lead to such a large mailbox. That day isn't today, though.

Again, at this point we REALLY want people to do this themselves, both for their own game experience as well as the experience of others. That said, it's not like there's a magic threshold where that 53rd mail causes a lag spike. It's a cumulative thing server-wide.

[UurlockYgmeov]

You are correct Krelar. If your mailbox is above the limit, the summary listing applies.

There may come a time in the future where we have to do a mass purge, but we haven't done that yet. To answer the longer questions about three-day activity processes, there may come a day when the answer is, "don't post so much junk on the auction house", or if absolutely necessary perhaps we'd be forced to put in place various checks to make sure you don't do things that lead to such a large mailbox. That day isn't today, though.

Again, at this point we REALLY want people to do this themselves, both for their own game experience as well as the experience of others. That said, it's not like there's a magic threshold where that 53rd mail causes a lag spike. It's a cumulative thing server-wide.

at that threshold, then it becomes:

http://www.clutch24.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Skurrilit%C3%A4ten.jpg

[koluka]

You are correct Krelar. If your mailbox is above the limit, the summary listing applies.

There may come a time in the future where we have to do a mass purge, but we haven't done that yet. To answer the longer questions about three-day activity processes, there may come a day when the answer is, "don't post so much junk on the auction house", or if absolutely necessary perhaps we'd be forced to put in place various checks to make sure you don't do things that lead to such a large mailbox. That day isn't today, though.

Again, at this point we REALLY want people to do this themselves, both for their own game experience as well as the experience of others. That said, it's not like there's a magic threshold where that 53rd mail causes a lag spike. It's a cumulative thing server-wide.


Thanks for the clarification and confirmation Cordovan. Appreciated. I will continue to keep my mailbox empty most of the time to assist with this, but....

Regarding the "don't post so much junk on the auction house" comment, I wanted to draw a distinction between mail and auction. I have been experiencing quite a bit of auction shaming on this site. I think that type of comment encourages it and I don't think it is fair. Six months ago, as a free to play member, being able to post 50 items on auctioneer was very heavily pushed as a reason to subscribe. Now that I have subscribed, it seems I am being shamed for using the service that was so heavily promoted as an incentive to subscribe.

Keeping mail indefinitely and posting 50 auctions are not the same thing. One is a bug exploit. The other is a service that was actively marketed to people, that people pay for via their subscriptions. I would expect to be free to use anything I purchase either via subscription, expansion or from the DDO store as I choose, without being shamed or penalised. For example, I wouldn't expect my mail to be halted because I purchased 25 craft boosters and used them all at one time. But this is exactly what is happening with auctions at the moment. They are a service that is paid for every month, and when I was free to play, they were a service that was very heavily marketed as a reason to subscribe. If I post all my auctions at once and don't log back on till after they expire, then I am unable to use my mail and unable to use the auction system.

There are other options that could have been implemented to improve on user experience when using auction house while greatly reducing the impact on the mail system. For example, I would be absolutely thrilled if there was an option that caused everything that did not sell on auctioneer to be automatically broken down into essences and the accumulation mailed to me once a week. One mail item, once per week. No drama with big mail queues. Totally consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe. Greatly reduced mail lag. I'm happy. You're happy. We're both happy people even if there is a 50 mail limit.

People could also be given the option to have their unsold items auto-vendored and the coin mailed to them once a week. Again, a reduced impact on the mail system. Totally consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe. Happy people.

Or maybe a clicky somewhere on one of the character tabs where people can claim their essences or coin from auto-vendored or auto-essenced unsold auction items.

This way, not so good. The user experience for me has been awful, both from the perspective of having to jig around with stuff I didn't have to before if I don't catch my mail on time, and from the hate and shame on forums for using a service that was actively marketed to me, that I pay for every month. Not so good for you, coz you have to deal with people who see you as a boogie man when you don't want to be. Maybe DDO should stop promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe if there is not the willingness to verbally and functionally support it.

By functionally support it, I do not mean give people the option to keep mail indefinitely. I mean giving people the means to manage 50 expired items without penalty. It might be via the measures I suggested above. It might be making the mail limit 52 or 55 so that people can manage all their expired auctions at once without being hampered. It might be by divorcing the auction system from the mail system. Maybe introduce a requirement for people to have their items auto-vendored or auto-essenced if they wish to post more than 25 auctions at a time. These measures are consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe.

[Impaqt]

Thanks for the clarification and confirmation Cordovan. Appreciated. I will continue to keep my mailbox empty most of the time to assist with this, but....

Regarding the "don't post so much junk on the auction house" comment, I wanted to draw a distinction between mail and auction. I have been experiencing quite a bit of auction shaming on this site. I think that type of comment encourages it and I don't think it is fair. Six months ago, as a free to play member, being able to post 50 items on auctioneer was very heavily pushed as a reason to subscribe. Now that I have subscribed, it seems I am being shamed for using the service that was so heavily promoted as an incentive to subscribe.

Keeping mail indefinitely and posting 50 auctions are not the same thing. One is a bug exploit. The other is a service that was actively marketed to people, that people pay for via their subscriptions. I would expect to be free to use anything I purchase either via subscription, expansion or from the DDO store as I choose, without being shamed or penalised. For example, I wouldn't expect my mail to be halted because I purchased 25 craft boosters and used them all at one time. But this is exactly what is happening with auctions at the moment. They are a service that is paid for every month, and when I was free to play, they were a service that was very heavily marketed as a reason to subscribe. If I post all my auctions at once and don't log back on till after they expire, then I am unable to use my mail and unable to use the auction system.

There are other options that could have been implemented to improve on user experience when using auction house while greatly reducing the impact on the mail system. For example, I would be absolutely thrilled if there was an option that caused everything that did not sell on auctioneer to be automatically broken down into essences and the accumulation mailed to me once a week. One mail item, once per week. No drama with big mail queues. Totally consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe. Greatly reduced mail lag. I'm happy. You're happy. We're both happy people even if there is a 50 mail limit.

People could also be given the option to have their unsold items auto-vendored and the coin mailed to them once a week. Again, a reduced impact on the mail system. Totally consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe. Happy people.

Or maybe a clicky somewhere on one of the character tabs where people can claim their essences or coin from auto-vendored or auto-essenced unsold auction items.

This way, not so good. The user experience for me has been awful, both from the perspective of having to jig around with stuff I didn't have to before if I don't catch my mail on time, and from the hate and shame on forums for using a service that was actively marketed to me, that I pay for every month. Not so good for you, coz you have to deal with people who see you as a boogie man when you don't want to be. Maybe DDO should stop promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe if there is not the willingness to verbally and functionally support it.

By functionally support it, I do not mean give people the option to keep mail indefinitely. I mean giving people the means to manage 50 expired items without penalty. It might be via the measures I suggested above. It might be making the mail limit 52 or 55 so that people can manage all their expired auctions at once without being hampered. It might be by divorcing the auction system from the mail system. Maybe introduce a requirement for people to have their items auto-vendored or auto-essenced if they wish to post more than 25 auctions at a time. These measures are consistent with promoting 50 auctions as an incentive to subscribe.

maybe they should just reduce the number of active auctions to 40? or 30? that would solve it as well....

Or maybe just get your stuff out of the mailbox when its there... Seems like thats the easiest thing to do...

[koluka]

Six months ago DDO were actively and aggressively promoting being able to run 50 concurrent auctions as an incentive to subscribe to free to play members.

I imagine they still are, but as I am no longer ftp I do not see that marketing.

If DDO do not want people running 50 concurrent auctions they should not be promoting them as an incentive to subscribe.

If DDO are unwilling to verbally and functionally support people in using these auctions, they should not be promoted as an incentive to subscribe.

People who actively use services that have been heavily marketed at them, that they have paid for in good faith, should not be demonised, shamed, penalised or disadvantaged in any way for making full use of those services.

I support efforts to reduce lag. I am keeping my mailbox mostly empty. I would support a reduction in the number of auctions that can be posted at a single time to create a differential between the expiry of auctions and the mail limit.

I do not support the shaming of people using services that have been heavily and deliberately marketed at them. I do not support inconveniencing people using services that have been heavily and deliberately marketed at them. Neither of these measures reduce lag or mailbox size. They just bring out the worst in people.

[Impaqt]

Give it a rest dude. its over. nobody's "Mailbox shaming" anyone. As long as you get your mail on a regular basis, there's no issues.

[koluka]

Give it a rest dude. its over. nobody's "Mailbox shaming" anyone. As long as you get your mail on a regular basis, there's no issues.

Impaqt,

I've gone back over this thread and found that every time anyone has tried to make any comment about being inconvenienced by the system, you leave the goading type of comments that leave people in the position of either being put down or being mis-represented by your comments or having to make a response to correct your misrepresentation. Just like that one.

Stop doing that and this rubbish will cease.

Some people are exploiting bugs in the system, but

There are some people who are not exploiting the system in any way, who are inconvenienced by the changes. These are NOT NOT NOT people who are recycling auctions, exploiting mail bugs or hoarding years worth of failed auctions.

Give it a rest dude. Let it be said. Is it really that hard? Maybe if people are permitted to speak of these things, civil conversation can be had.

The devs have done a great job with reducing the lag. The new crafting system seems lag free, I'm not noticing any staggering in marketplace and there is a massive improvement in black loch. There might have been more space for folks to talk about these aspects if they felt they could just have their say about the stuff that impacted them without the snipes. I'm done with this. I'm just sorry I let myself get dragged into your stuff. If you wanna continue to snipe, go ahead. I'm just gonna keep calling it out for what it is and that's what I should have done from the beginning. All you'll get from me now is a single sentence response, pointing out to people that you are sniping again. This 6 season mini-series is over.