Bill's Master Rahool's Vault Storage System.

You get 12 7 vaults that you can cycle between.

Either way, I don't think I use Compare at all when at the Vault, so whatever.

^This^

I think you're seriously underestimating how completely exhausted the ram on the 360 and PS3 is just to run these games.

Then it is simply a misallocation of resources. The tower should have used 2 or 3MB less geometry and textures, or however much it takes to display a few thumbnails.

memories of h2 texture popping.

Even just removing things from memory can be slow, when you're removing specific things and doing it safely/properly.

Have you ever taken an engram to the Cryptarch and been given a piece of armor for a different character class? Next time that happens, try to inspect the armor. You can't do it. The stats load, but the polygonal image won't appear.

Remember how Bungie couldn't add new armor as DLC to the Halo games because all the armor was actually saved as part of each map file? So adding armor would mean modifying every single map file. I think there's something like that going on in Destiny, except the armor files are tied to character class files instead of map files. So if you're playing as a Hunter, the game only loads the hi-res previews of Hunter armor into RAM.

You can still inspect other players to see those items. The polygonal image won't preview on your guardian because that item is modeled and fitted for a different class, each of which have slightly unique animations. I would be very surprised if the game was not loading those models on-the-fly, given how many there are...

Yeah, I've always thought it was dumb that you can't see a warlock bond that's in your inventory when you're a hunter, but you can inspect another player's warlock who has the same bond equipped and view it right there. Obviously the game is capable of showing that item.

But that circumstance only happens if that other player has that item equipped. If that other player changes that item, on the 360 at least, it takes sometimes almost a whole minute to reflect the change, because the game prioritizes your class gear and other characters' current gear, but nothing else. When that player changes things, you can watch the hard-load happening on the older systems.

They can limit what you can see in your inventory to help maintain memory, but they can't really limit other players changing their gear when they need to. So those overlaps can happen sometimes when a player is using an item you tried to see.

On the 360, I think you can more easily understand these limitations because you really feel the load times for everything.

Adding features in February that we asked for during beta is not something I consider good. It's too little, too late. It's not just that I feel burned out on Destiny. I feel like I've been burned by Bungie. If the pre-launch PR hadn't been so completely different from the actual game, I probably wouldn't feel this way now, but the hype was incredible and the game doesn't live up to half the things that were said which made me excited to play it.

I think it's just that whatever they do is considered a disappointment.

I really do appreciate that they are doing anything at all. I really do.

However, it just seems they are not trying very hard. Take this, from the update:

Our challenge was to provide an increase in storage that fit within the memory constraints that limit how many items can be displayed on one screen.

Why are they even trying to fit it on one screen? If that's where the memory problems are manifesting, they should just HAVE MORE THAN ONE SCREEN. Everybody and their mother who has requested more vault space or mocked it up with cool videos has had page tabs sorted by item type. Have a page for weapons. Have a page for armor. Have a page for everything else. Let us cycle through them like we do with our roster, character, inventory, and settings menus. It seems so obvious, especially since they say the issue with memory is because it all has to fit on one screen. So don't try to do that!

There are 60 slots now, so we know 60 items can be displayed on a screen. So, have multiple screens with 60 slots each. Boom. Done. Or am I missing something because I don't make games and don't realize how hard it apparently is?

You and I are reading his words quite differently. I read "sometime in the future" to be "we have no actual plans to do that in the next 6 months" which - to me - means they aren't doing it, because I'm out after House of Wolves. The game would need dramatic and immediate changes to keep me interested in buying anything related to it that I didn't already foolishly preorder at this point.

Then we aren't reading it differently, you are just giving up before it's here. That's fine, no one is preventing you from leaving, but just because you are giving up before comet doesn't mean Bungie won't deliver before comet. Take these quotes:

"As we get closer to the House of Wolves content update, we knew we had to expand the Vault or the community would not have enough space to store the new Exotics we’re making!"

Note how it specifically calls out HoW and it's new content as the problem they are trying to solve. They are solving nothing beyond that.

"Different players have different needs, but our goal was to find a solution that could deliver more Vault space to the greatest number of people in the short term. "

Contrasted with the... long term solution? Yes, that's right, a long term solution.

"We opted for making sure that players would have enough slots for all Exotics from Launch through House of Wolves"

Though HoW, but not beyond. Meaning they will provide a different solution in the future.

"We know there are a bunch of players in the world who don’t have enough space for Armor and General items. We’ll have a solution for you in the future."

And that's the final nail. Your reading comprehension can provide you whatever you want, but *MY* interpretation of this is that, after describing everything they are providing NOW for HoW, they will provide ADDITIONAL mechanisms post HoW.

Adding features in February that we asked for during beta is not something I consider good.

I rarely get upset, but since when did you get to make requests during beta of ANY software and feel @#$%ing entitled to get that in the next 6-8 months? Did you really have the expectation that you could walk into beta on a 10 year project, make a request, and BAM! You'd get it? Are you paying some sort of insanely large subscription fee to make such requests? Get off your high horse. [/rage mode off]

It's too little, too late. It's not just that I feel burned out on Destiny. I feel like I've been burned by Bungie.

I can completely and calming understand if it's too little too late for you. But please don't try and convince me that I shouldn't be having fun when I am. And don't try and convince me that Bungie is lying and tricking me when they aren't. It's rude and is apt to make me defensive and hostile.

If the pre-launch PR hadn't been so completely different from the actual game, I probably wouldn't feel this way now, but the hype was incredible and the game doesn't live up to half the things that were said which made me excited to play it.

Call me silly, but I didn't get any PR promising anything more than I got. And whenever I did set my expectations high, it was specifically because the company making it was called "Bungie", and I am familiar with all of their previous titles. I had expectations based on their history, which, I acknowledged prior to the release of the game is not fair. They are not and can not be the same development house they were when they made games solely for the Mac platform. Call me a pessimist, a realistic, or just observant, but Destiny for me met the PR expectations and met the price I paid. I personally don't think Bungie lived up to the Bungie name, but that's MY expectation that is placed on them, not something they gave me to me.

If you feel burned by Bungie and are not having fun now, then there is nothing Bungie can realistically do to fix it. For those of us having fun, and have minor problems that could use solving (like vault space) Bungie is doing alright in my book. Could they move faster? Sure. They certainly aren't solving problem before I bump up against them, which would be the ideal time to solve them. Still, they are shooting above par despite not having a perfect game.

May I seriously suggest that you not even play HoW, and save whatever forgiveness you have left and play HoW just before Comet. You'll have given the burn-out a good chance of subsiding, have all the updates between now and then, and miss none of the content you paid for. You might enjoy it more, even if you don't decide to dive into Comet.

If you want a video game that came out about half a year ago to completely scrap a system and port it over to a new location, then you need to get a better understanding of what goes into these kinds of changes.

I made games for 13 years. I understand.

Also, Destiny already did a major overhaul about a year before it launched, right?

Did it? Like, got a source for that?

If you want a video game that came out about half a year ago to completely scrap a system and port it over to a new location, then you need to get a better understanding of what goes into these kinds of changes.

I made games for 13 years. I understand.

Also, Destiny already did a major overhaul about a year before it launched, right?

Ah yes, and I'm sure we are both familiar with the technical details of that overhaul, the resources required from each department, and what it caused to be cut. Or not. No, neither of us are. All we know is "a bunch got removed and changed or redone". The question of vault changes is solidly rooted in technology and implementation hurdles. That much we DO know.

I think the idea is that, just like a lot of bungie games, you don't get to stockpile everything under the sun to use whenever you want. Sometimes the choices we are forced to make help us to make more meaningful choices.

Not saying this is their design, but it may be.

That doesn't make any sense. There are more currencies in the game than there are slots in the *expanded* misc. section. So the choice is "which form of money do I throw away?" That's beyond awful design. Give me a currency exchange, and I'll take it, but right now I simply can't put all of my currencies into the bank at one time, which is, like, the fundamental purpose of a bank. To store currency.

Eh. I'm pretty sure between the vault slots and the misc section of one character you'd have more than enough space to keep all the "currencies". Would I like to see the Vault further be expanded? Sure! Are you really having to choose what to throw away? Almost certainly not.

am I missing something?

How many empty equipped weapon slots do you have on your characters?

Just like damage, those values have no upper limit, and will grow with the game and level. Compare that to Stability, which will always be on a 0-100 level. Once you have perfect stability (100%) it makes no sense to add 10 stability, or to increase stability by 50%. Same for reload, or most attributes.

At the end of the day, FPS only players that want a pure FPS won't like Destiny, and RPG players that want a pure RPG won't like it either. It's a hybrid, which means not only taking elements from both, but also tossing out elements from both. Destiny isn't such a hard core RPG that (imho) we need numbers for everything. In fact that would take away from the "jump in and have fun fast" that they were aiming for.

I don't see how, there's nothing making you look at the numbers, and you already have several to keep track of if you want to get the most out of what you do. On top of that you have numbers appearing whenever you do damage to an enemy. It seems wrong to me to show the player how much damage they're doing but not why they're doing that amount of damage. Numbers would only give part of that-- I and others tried and failed to figure out the other parts-- but it would be a good start.
I don't know, maybe it's the wrong approach, maybe we're supposed to intuit how good a weapon is, it's supposed to be one of those things you can tell just by looking (at the bars). Unfortunately intuition isn't my strong suit, and neither is accurate color perception. Bungie is helping me in one of those areas, I wish they'd help me in the other one too.

I'll dissolve all these arguments in the morning.

When currency to buy guns in the Tower is rare (it theoretically takes a full week and change of playtime to gather enough marks to buy weapons), "use it to evaluate" simply does not work.

I guess it all boils down to the feeling that, since they HAVE the number displayed in some form or another, why not simply display it as a hard number?

The practical value is in how much. How much better or worse is gun A than gun B in these specific areas? That is the perfect time to use numbers, questions of how much are the reason numbers even exist.

No that is the perfect time to shoot the gun yourself, and see if you like it better. Oh, this hand cannon takes two shots to kill a Vex Goblin, but this one only takes one? That's practical knowledge you have in determining the gun's usefulness that you don't get with numbers. I don't need to look at any numbers to know that Black Hammer hits hard; it kills Hive Knights in the Crota Raid in one shot. Icebreaker takes two.

That, sir, is slander. :P

Numbers alone tell you jack shit, whereas USING THE GUN and playing the game tells you everything. The numbers should be completely hidden in my opinion, which they are (aside from damage).

Well they're not. Like it or not, Those bars represent numbers. As much as you might hate them, they're not going away, so we might as well make the most of it.

You're right. Numbers alone are meaningless. but when you use a scout rifle with 10 impact, and see another that the vendors are selling has 20 imapact, why is it so bad that I use that information to deduce that the vendor gun will do precisely twice as much damage per bullet at the same range?

You are playing a first person shooter, not a spreadsheet simulator. The bars exist to just give you a general sense of whether you'd want to use the weapon or not.

Oh, come ON. NO game advertises itself as a spreadsheet simulator. but when your first person shooter has as many guns as Destiny does, don't you think it's kind of impractical to expect a player to try every single one? Isn't it much more efficient to compare guns based on their stats, instead of grinding out marks for weeks on end, just to purchase a gun I might not even end up wanting to use?

Clip size is the only exception, since that number represents something meaningful.

Why is clip size so important, compared to Rate-of-Fire for example? As far as I know, there isn't a sniper rifle in the game that holds more than 6 rounds a standard clip. Therefore, The bar for sniper rifle clip-size would be full at 6, and half at three. Other weapons would follow suit.

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I spent way to long laying awake last night concocting a scenario that illustrates why numbers are useful, so here it is:

House of wolves comes out. I get a 365 handcannon from a legendary engram. It's got really low impact, but a very high RoF. I level it up, and then we all go play the new raid together.

The raid throws a bunch of stealth vandals at you, and to succeed it's important that you kill them before they can close and start hacking away. Problem is, Due to it's Damage Cap limitation, Fatebringer takes a little more than 2 head-shots to kill, and your new handcannon takes a little more than three ("little more" meaning they have a sliver of health left).

Neither of these feel powerful enough, so you limp back to the tower, looking to purchase a new, better handcannon- hopefully one that can just one-shot the vandals.

The tower crucible vendor has two handcannons for sale, "Lefty" and "Righty". Due to the way the game currently is, you can only compare vendor items to your currently equipped weapon. Fatebringer's lower attack stat will make for inaccurate comparisons, so you equip your new 365 HC and use that to compare.

Here's what you see:

Lefty:

Righty

At a glance, the stats look very similar, but "Righty" has the Outlaw perk instead of feeding frenzy. Outlaw is faster reload, so we buy that one.

So you spend the next day and a half grinding out the XP to max it out, then take it back into the raid, hoping to one-shot those pesky vandals.

You can't.

The impact is *just* low enough that the vandals still require two shots to take out. Boo.

However, if when you go back to the vendor, you're able to compare The two HCs against each other, and see that "Lefty" has a little bit more impact. Too bad you have to grind out another 150 crucible marks over two weeks to get that one.

But what if we had numbers?

I know from expereince that it takes a little more than three shots to take out the vandals. Therefore, at the same range, I need a handcannon with a little more than three times as much impact for a one-hit kill.

Numbers would help determine which HC will help me accomplish this, and which would fail:

Lefty

Righty

Now I'll admit that this is a very specific example. But I don't see the downside to including the numbers. Giving the player more information is rarely a bad thing.

The practical value is in how much. How much better or worse is gun A than gun B in these specific areas? That is the perfect time to use numbers, questions of how much are the reason numbers even exist.

No that is the perfect time to shoot the gun yourself, and see if you like it better. Oh, this hand cannon takes two shots to kill a Vex Goblin, but this one only takes one? That's practical knowledge you have in determining the gun's usefulness that you don't get with numbers. I don't need to look at any numbers to know that Black Hammer hits hard; it kills Hive Knights in the Crota Raid in one shot. Icebreaker takes two.

Numbers alone tell you jack shit, whereas USING THE GUN and playing the game tells you everything.

You do realize two and one are numbers, right? They could base the numbers in something very practical, like how many shots it takes to kill some enemy, that would be fine. Even without that, if I know the numbers and how they interact, I can make that determination.

The numbers should be completely hidden in my opinion, which they are (aside from damage). You are playing a first person shooter, not a spreadsheet simulator. The bars exist to just give you a general sense of whether you'd want to use the weapon or not.

I thought it would be clear by now, but maybe it's not: I don't want just a general sense of whether to use a weapon or not, I want to know which one is the best choice. If the bars made that completely unambiguous I wouldn't be complaining. I know there are multiple factors in what makes a weapon better but as it stands I can't even get a good look at those factors without going to some website or going and testing the weapon, and even in testing, I'm bad at estimating and I have a bad memory, so I can easily miss a difference that might be clear to someone else.
As I said, maybe I'm coming at it wrong and the point is just to intuit or guess or even just mostly ignore the bars, I just don't want it to be that way.

Clip size is the only exception, since that number represents something meaningful.

I don't see how you can argue numbers that we aren't seeing wouldn't be meaningful if we could see them. In particular, reload could easily be put in terms of seconds, and rate of fire could easily be in rounds per minute, as it is in real life. Having numbers for those would be both meaningful and helpful.