New Vault

[macdadg]

A thought:
If Manual Sorting puts a load on the system, with lots of positional data up loaded, and leads to lag, then perhaps an intermediate suggestion.

• Give each Chest it's own query or sort.
• Allow only one Chest to be manually sorted/arranged.
• Save the manual arrangement as a player parameter that is loaded/saved on a deferred transaction.

This would mean that only people with a manually arranged Chest will see a delay in the system; much of which will be absorbed during the first several minutes of play. So, if you don't go to the Vault keeper first thing, you may not notice the deferred load, but if you do, then you may have to wait 8-10-12 seconds to get you custom arrangement to trickle through...

Not perfect, but it may be more in line with performance goals of the management. I don't know. All we can do is suggest and try to work with them...as long and painful as that may be for us...at least it has a chance of change.

I've thought about it and I can't see the manual sort being the reason behind the lag. It can be done using a sorted array of bits, and done in under a data call (being 64 bits on a 32 bit system). Using 11 chests (1 main plus 10 extra) you will only use 4 bits to determine which chest an item is in. Supposing you are only using 1 chest and using all 150 possible spots, that uses only another 8 bits. That is 12 bits our of 64 for positional data, leaving 52 bits left for items and stack size. Making a stack size maximum of 100 takes 8 bits, leaving 44 for items. At 44 bits, that's a total of 8*10^12 items (8 trillion). So in effect, you can have a stack size of 100, with positional data for 8 trillion items using a single data call. And considering a data call takes 1 clock cycle, that probably isn't the cause of the lag.

Turbine probably didnt code it like that, for whatever reason, but as you can see, it doesn't theoretically take a ton of overhead for this kind of simple data storage.

[recnalkrad]

As you might imagine, this week has been rather crazy for me, but finally made it through this thread.

First an update on the new features - I've been able to get most of what everyone has been asking for implemented. QA has yet to take a pass through it, so it's possible that something will be found to be terribly broken and will need to be pulled, but so far so good.

You will be able to resize the vault (and shared storage) horizontally, rename chests, and turn off item name display.

The major piece we weren't able to get to is manual sort. I'm sure we'll catch a lot of flak over it, but it just didn't fit in the schedule. Instead, there will be a new kind of sort that automatically sorts some items within the vault for you (for example IXP runes by value). Over time, this automatic sort can be extended to become smarter and smarter.

Manual sort is still on the list of possible improvements, but now looks like it probably won't make it to the next major update.

There are also other improvements that you haven't asked for, but I think will like a lot .

Ransroth, I feel for you. The new features of the vault would be the greatest thing ever if one could manually sort items, say, ingots, by tier, in a chest. but you can't. even when you look up, for example, via the filter for resource, all my tinker mats, food items, ingots, polished stones, are jumbled up together alphabetically. Manual sorting is what is required, and Turbine has taken that ability away, and, from text and tone above, Turbine appears to not want to give back manual sorting. so now crafters and crafting have yet another nerf to deal with. I understand that LOTRO does not have a player-based economy and that Turbine could care less about crafting in general, unlike other MMOs such as SWG and EVE where crafting reigns - but those are player based economies. but to take away what, from a user side, appears to be an easy function -manual sorting - to replace it with auto sorting? at least let us turn off auto sourcing. I'd like to group my ingots, by tier, together, followed by my polished stones, and cook mats, etc. I'd love it if I could seperate out by chest...I had all my ingots lined up by tier so I could tell at a glance what I needed to go harvest, farm, prep for cooking...etc...and now I get to push lots of buttons trying to find a resource which is probably staring right at me as I'm trying to find it...I am one sad panda. At least I have EVE to get me through my crafting addiction needs. Thanks for listening to my complaint - I know you've got a lot of stress on you as well as the rest of the DEVs - ... oh, while you are out fixing the Vault, could you fix HIPS as well?

[Ayrolen]

Manual sorting is what is required, and Turbine has taken that ability away, and, from text and tone above, Turbine appears to not want to give back manual sorting.

"Manual sort is still on the list of possible improvements.."

How exactly do you read that and decide it means Turbine doesn't want to give us back manual sorting? Also.. what tone? /boggle Oh wait, I know... since he said it probably won't make it into the next update, that means they don't want to give it to us AT ALL, right?

[Ransroth]

I've had the below post queued up for awhile, but then ran into some problems with the forums and then got busy, so only posting it now. Need to catch up on the thread, sorry if this is out-of-date.

I wonder if it could be possible to "unhook" one or two bags at a time from the new vault, if we could even just do one or two at a time so we could trade back and forth between those that would be great!

This was something that was bounced around a bit, but didn't make it in the current set of improvements.

right now, th e issue of lack of inventory space makes organizing and getting things out of the vault really hard. I had to mule out three empty bag spaces, unload half of my bank vault at a time to organize them into bags, it was a pain.
So I'd love to have just even a couple bags we could unhook from that main space for item trading like we used to do between our own bags.

You should be able to right-click on the items and send them straight to the bag you want without ever taking it out to your inventory.

One thing that I used to reorganize my Live characters' vaults was to set the filter to for example "Crafting: Ingredient" - then right-click on each item and if it wasn't already in chest 1, send it to chest 1.

Two things I'd like to see implemented would be:

• Drag-and-drop functionality between chests
• Multiple-selection of items

Drag-and-drop between chests is something that is in the next set of vault improvements.

Multiple-selection unfortunately is a major can of worms and isn't in the plan as of right now.

Regarding toggling item descriptions, will that be a global setting or will we be able to set it for individual bags? For example, have item descriptions on for the bag that contains my cosmetic items because so many of them use the same icon, but have descriptions off for my barter items since it's easy to see at a glance what's what.

I suppose if it's global I can just check/uncheck as needed (I'm assuming that the checkbox will be located on the vault window).

There are buttons to select the kind of view you want - it's a global setting, not per-bag.

[Ransroth]

If I recall correctly the Vault was part of the LUI API they released. Hopefully someone will come up with something that will be flexible enough to please everyone.

As others have pointed out, Vault Lua API is not available yet - it's on the list of APIs to develop, and pretty high up there in fact, but there are some significant challenges.

Oh and it's "Lua", not "LUA" .

It's visual overload for me when I first open the vault and everything looks like a mess with the item names taking up 2/3 of the space. It probably would work better for me if there was some kind of separation for each chest when viewing All.

This is coming in the next major update (as always, pending terrible problems appearing ).

Without the ability to manual sort items, the new vault will still be problematic for me and others. Asking for the ability to manual sort items doesn't mean alpha sort shouldn't continue to be an option. Give me the option to make the vault work for me as well as it works for others.

I think that manual sort is a good idea overall. I'd like to have it happen in some form of another. Part of the problem is that designing and implementing it is quite a bit of work - and our time right now is needed on dealing with other issues. There's been a lot of work done on the vault for the next release, and it'll be interesting to see if the need for manual sort will be as strong after people have a chance to play with it as it is right now.

For example - IXP runes. As it stands right now, they get ordered alphabetically, which is bad. Manual sort would allow you to drag them around and with enough pain arrange them by size. I've done this on live with characters who are waiting for that perfect legendary, and it is (to me) a pain in the neck. Adding a new rune involves manually shifting all the existing runes bigger than that rune to the right by one spot. With the way the vault will be after the updates to it go live, the new rune will automatically go to exactly the right slot (organized by size). This will save you a lot of fiddling with manually dragging items around.

Similarly for legendaries - organizing them alphabetically doesn't make sense, and having the manual sort in the old vault allowed you to sort them just the way you wanted. However, it was a pain to do - you had to again make room when you got a new legendary to put it in exactly the right spot. With the new vault coming up, they'll automatically be sorted by level (among other things). Probably the automatic sort will not be exactly what you want - but it will save you so much work over manually sorting them, that maybe it's worth it.

Once again, I am not trying to argue that manual sort is a bad idea or that we don't want to give you the option to do it. I'm trying to point out that the automatic sort will reduce the need for it, and quite possibly the effort of implementing it will end up being better put elsewhere.

I wanted to call out Killevan for putting together a rather awesome mockup of the way manual sort would work earlier in this thread.

Which opens JUST as slow if not SLOWER than the previous vault did.

The first time you open the vault, it opens very slow because it converts the old back end storage to the new. After that, it should open faster.

A Simple Idea: (...that grew =)

• Add /Tabs\ for each of the chests which Tear Off
• Give each Chest a separate sorting choice.
• Each Chest Tear Off remembers it's size and position.
• Each Chest has Text/No-text, Big Icon/Little Icon, setting.
• Click-n-Drag items to a new Tab.
• Highlight the Tab, when you drop an item in.

Thanks for a well-thought-out post.

Some of this is already implemented and ready for the next major update. The "tear-off" bit is not ready, but very much on the radar.

Ransroth, I feel for you. The new features of the vault would be the greatest thing ever if one could manually sort items, say, ingots, by tier, in a chest. but you can't. even when you look up, for example, via the filter for resource, all my tinker mats, food items, ingots, polished stones, are jumbled up together alphabetically. Manual sorting is what is required, and Turbine has taken that ability away, and, from text and tone above, Turbine appears to not want to give back manual sorting. so now crafters and crafting have yet another nerf to deal with.

Just because you want your crafting materials to be sorted by tier, and by profession - doesn't mean that manual sorting is required. I'm very much hopeful that when the new new vault comes out, it will automatically sort your crafting materials by tier, then by profession, which will be strictly better for you than having to manually do it. The person who will complain is the one that wants to organize their crafting materials by profession and by tier, where the automatic sort may organize them by tier, then by profession. But it isn't obvious that the amount of manual tinkering the automatic sort will save them may not be worth adjusting the way they see the vault.

I understand that LOTRO does not have a player-based economy and that Turbine could care less about crafting in general, unlike other MMOs such as SWG and EVE where crafting reigns - but those are player based economies. but to take away what, from a user side, appears to be an easy function -manual sorting - to replace it with auto sorting? at least let us turn off auto sourcing. I'd like to group my ingots, by tier, together, followed by my polished stones, and cook mats, etc. I'd love it if I could seperate out by chest...I had all my ingots lined up by tier so I could tell at a glance what I needed to go harvest, farm, prep for cooking...etc...and now I get to push lots of buttons trying to find a resource which is probably staring right at me as I'm trying to find it...I am one sad panda. At least I have EVE to get me through my crafting addiction needs. Thanks for listening to my complaint - I know you've got a lot of stress on you as well as the rest of the DEVs - ... oh, while you are out fixing the Vault, could you fix HIPS as well?

For what it's worth, I just had an absolutely awesome experience with the v3b2 vault on live. I finally had the recipe for the new level 60 captain herald armaments drop and sent it over to my tailor. I was able to type "extrao" in the search box and immediately be able to pull out the extraordinary pads and such that were in my vault. Typing in "magni" made it clear that I didn't have the magnificent cloth - even though I had stored up some cloth of a different tier. Getting the needed materials for crafting was *much* easier (for me) than it would have been with the old vault. If I had put in more effort into organizing my vault earlier, carefully designing it so that each tier was its own row or whatnot, then it may be comparably easy, but I would have had to spend a not-insignificant time into that original organization.

[Ransroth]

One more thought - Shift-dragging out of the vault.

I put in a bunch of thought into how this would work yesterday - and there are some distinctly awkward scenarios. I'm pretty sure that their awkwardness is worth the benefits, but wanted to point out that not all is as simple as it seems.

The problems lie with the assumption in the new vault which is that there is at most one partial stack of any given item.

Imagine that you have a full stack of 100 hides in chest 1 and a partial stack of 60 hides in chest 2.
Scenario 1:
You shift-drag out 90 hides from chest 1. The 10 remaining hides will jump to join the 60 in chest 2 and there will be 70 in chest 2 and none in chest 1. This will cause some people to be confused and complain.
Scenario 2: You shift-drag out 50 hides from chest 1. The resulting arrangement will be 100 hides in chest 2 and 10 in chest 1. (or 100 in chest 1 and 10 in chest 2, or 100 in chest 1 and 10 more in chest 1). Any of these results are going to make someone confused and possibly thinking they lost some hides.

[Thoroval]

There are buttons to select the kind of view you want - it's a global setting, not per-bag.

I figured that'd be the answer. Oh well. No biggie clicking the appropriate view button based on which bag I'm viewing.

Will there be tabs for quick switching between the bags? I think the biggest pain right now is having to use the drop box to switch between bags. A workable substitute would be if I could mouse over the drop box and use the scroll wheel to quickly scroll through the list to switch bags.

And I'll try this question again: What happened to the 121-135 and 136-150 vault upgrades? Are they broke? Were they pulled at the last second? I'm annoyed that I have that Get More button, but the Store won't sell them to me. I know others have somehow managed to purchase more slots, but never received them. If you can't answer the questions, could you at least pass this on to someone who can get us some answers? Thanks.

[Ransroth]

I figured that'd be the answer. Oh well. No biggie clicking the appropriate view button based on which bag I'm viewing.

When/if we get detachable chests, we'll probably want to introduce the ability you are talking about to change the view on each one

Will there be tabs for quick switching between the bags? I think the biggest pain right now is having to use the drop box to switch between bags. A workable substitute would be if I could mouse over the drop box and use the scroll wheel to quickly scroll through the list to switch bags.

Yes for tabs

And I'll try this question again: What happened to the 121-135 and 136-150 vault upgrades? Are they broke? Were they pulled at the last second? I'm annoyed that I have that Get More button, but the Store won't sell them to me. I know others have somehow managed to purchase more slots, but never received them. If you can't answer the questions, could you at least pass this on to someone who can get us some answers? Thanks.

A decision was made to not offer them at this time.

[Thoroval]

When/if we get detachable chests, we'll probably want to introduce the ability you are talking about to change the view on each one

Glad it'll be considered if detachable chests are implemented.

Yes for tabs

Excellent!

A decision was made to not offer them at this time.

Thank you for that confirmation!

And big thanks for the effort you're putting in on the new vault. It's a big change after 3+ years, but I feel pretty confident the vault changes are in good hands. I'm really looking forward to the next rev.

[Maggwin]

I think that manual sort is a good idea overall. I'd like to have it happen in some form of another. Part of the problem is that designing and implementing it is quite a bit of work - and our time right now is needed on dealing with other issues. There's been a lot of work done on the vault for the next release, and it'll be interesting to see if the need for manual sort will be as strong after people have a chance to play with it as it is right now.

For example - IXP runes. As it stands right now, they get ordered alphabetically, which is bad. Manual sort would allow you to drag them around and with enough pain arrange them by size. I've done this on live with characters who are waiting for that perfect legendary, and it is (to me) a pain in the neck. Adding a new rune involves manually shifting all the existing runes bigger than that rune to the right by one spot. With the way the vault will be after the updates to it go live, the new rune will automatically go to exactly the right slot (organized by size). This will save you a lot of fiddling with manually dragging items around.

Similarly for legendaries - organizing them alphabetically doesn't make sense, and having the manual sort in the old vault allowed you to sort them just the way you wanted. However, it was a pain to do - you had to again make room when you got a new legendary to put it in exactly the right spot. With the new vault coming up, they'll automatically be sorted by level (among other things). Probably the automatic sort will not be exactly what you want - but it will save you so much work over manually sorting them, that maybe it's worth it.

Once again, I am not trying to argue that manual sort is a bad idea or that we don't want to give you the option to do it. I'm trying to point out that the automatic sort will reduce the need for it, and quite possibly the effort of implementing it will end up being better put elsewhere.

Just because you want your crafting materials to be sorted by tier, and by profession - doesn't mean that manual sorting is required. I'm very much hopeful that when the new new vault comes out, it will automatically sort your crafting materials by tier, then by profession, which will be strictly better for you than having to manually do it. The person who will complain is the one that wants to organize their crafting materials by profession and by tier, where the automatic sort may organize them by tier, then by profession. But it isn't obvious that the amount of manual tinkering the automatic sort will save them may not be worth adjusting the way they see the vault.

For what it's worth, I just had an absolutely awesome experience with the v3b2 vault on live. I finally had the recipe for the new level 60 captain herald armaments drop and sent it over to my tailor. I was able to type "extrao" in the search box and immediately be able to pull out the extraordinary pads and such that were in my vault. Typing in "magni" made it clear that I didn't have the magnificent cloth - even though I had stored up some cloth of a different tier. Getting the needed materials for crafting was *much* easier (for me) than it would have been with the old vault. If I had put in more effort into organizing my vault earlier, carefully designing it so that each tier was its own row or whatnot, then it may be comparably easy, but I would have had to spend a not-insignificant time into that original organization.

To start with the last paragraph first - please don't conflate the unhappiness generated by the lack of a manual sort ability with the happiness that search does bring to the vault. Search and sort are different beasts that just happen to look similar from a certain angle

While adding lots of default automatic sort algorithms to the vault may sound like a great idea that will help a lot of people, and these initially may look like a good use of developer resource, I think you are storing up a major maintenance nightmare for yourself.

The simple fact is like the UI, how people like to store their stuff is truly personal. You will never get it right for everyone. This fact seems to have been accepted by the inclusion of Lua scripting for UI elements. To then go and say that "you" know how to organise your stuff better is somewhat jarring.

My plea - don't waste time on to many more automated sort rules, "as it is now" will be ok for 50%; get manual sort and Lua support out the door and leave it to the community to handle the vast hordes of awkward odd ball organisers. Disclosure - I am one of those awkward odd ball visual organisers

[Digero]

For what it's worth, I just had an absolutely awesome experience with the v3b2 vault on live. I finally had the recipe for the new level 60 captain herald armaments drop and sent it over to my tailor. I was able to type "extrao" in the search box and immediately be able to pull out the extraordinary pads and such that were in my vault. Typing in "magni" made it clear that I didn't have the magnificent cloth - even though I had stored up some cloth of a different tier. Getting the needed materials for crafting was *much* easier (for me) than it would have been with the old vault. If I had put in more effort into organizing my vault earlier, carefully designing it so that each tier was its own row or whatnot, then it may be comparably easy, but I would have had to spend a not-insignificant time into that original organization.

The thing is that I'd have found both my extraordinary and magnificent hides in under a second, without typing, in the old vault. I kept them in specific slots. For me, the search is just an extra hoop to go through: first I have to click the search box, move my hand from the mouse to the keyboard, think of what the name is, type it, then move my hand back to the mouse. I suppose it's not that much time, but it is orders of magnitude slower than it used to be.

I don't think having search is bad, and it may have come in useful occasionally in the old vault, but I used to have better ways of finding my stuff.

I have to say that I'm excited about the new sorting options: I wasted plenty of time keeping my LI XP runes sorted by value in the old vault .

One more thought - Shift-dragging out of the vault.

I put in a bunch of thought into how this would work yesterday - and there are some distinctly awkward scenarios. I'm pretty sure that their awkwardness is worth the benefits, but wanted to point out that not all is as simple as it seems.

The problems lie with the assumption in the new vault which is that there is at most one partial stack of any given item.

Imagine that you have a full stack of 100 hides in chest 1 and a partial stack of 60 hides in chest 2.
Scenario 1:
You shift-drag out 90 hides from chest 1. The 10 remaining hides will jump to join the 60 in chest 2 and there will be 70 in chest 2 and none in chest 1. This will cause some people to be confused and complain.
Scenario 2: You shift-drag out 50 hides from chest 1. The resulting arrangement will be 100 hides in chest 2 and 10 in chest 1. (or 100 in chest 1 and 10 in chest 2, or 100 in chest 1 and 10 more in chest 1). Any of these results are going to make someone confused and possibly thinking they lost some hides.

With the auto-stacking of items in the vault, does it make sense for different stacks of the same item to be able to exist in different packs? What if all 160 of the hides appeared as one stack, with some indication that they were taking up 2 slots in the vault? That would get around the problems you described above. [Edit] Of course, it'd have problems of its own, like what happens when you drag the "superstack" into your bags: do you get all stacks, just one, a popup asking you? Maybe give some affordance on the "superstack" in the vault to let you drag only one of the stacks at a time.

As a side note: will the next release of the vault auto-stack items in my bags when i withdraw them? In the old vault if you right-clicked to remove an item (but not drag/dropped), it'd auto-stack with items in your inventory; the new vault doesn't do that.

[Alfrodul]

A decision was made to not offer them at this time.

Any idea what will happen to those of us who bought them? The TP was deducted from my account but my vault never expanded and the TP wasn't refunded. I submitted a request to Account Management but I'm sure I'm not the only one who bought them during the Head Start period when they were available and is wondering what's up now.

[Ransroth]

With the auto-stacking of items in the vault, does it make sense for different stacks of the same item to be able to exist in different packs? What if all 160 of the hides appeared as one stack, with some indication that they were taking up 2 slots in the vault? That would get around the problems you described above.

I've thought about that too, but it creates a whole bunch more work as well. Which is not to say that it can't be done, but it has to be considered as to whether the benefit of the change would justify the work.

As a side note: will the next release of the vault auto-stack items in my bags when i withdraw them? In the old vault if you right-clicked to remove an item (but not drag/dropped), it'd auto-stack with items in your inventory; the new vault doesn't do that.

Haven't changed anything in this area. I'll take a look asap as to whether this is easy to do.

Any idea what will happen to those of us who bought them? The TP was deducted from my account but my vault never expanded and the TP wasn't refunded. I submitted a request to Account Management but I'm sure I'm not the only one who bought them during the Head Start period when they were available and is wondering what's up now.

AFAIK, the expansions beyond 120 were not available in the store during Head Start as well. If you have a situation where you bought something from the store and didn't get it, submitting a ticket is the correct thing to do and the GMs will hopefully be able to help you out.

[SlmJmOSUMB]

I certainly hope you don't automatically assume that a bunch more random filters/auto sort will take away the need for a true manual sort. For me, the vault without manual sort is a total deal breaker (account has been cancelled since this went live). I've been keeping an eye on this thread to see if/when manual sort will be included. As long as it's not, I will not be returning to LotRO (and I've been here for several years). It's just not worth the aggravation of not being able to sort things in a comfortable manner. So, thanks for the effort, but until manual sort comes back, there are still going to be many unhappy players...myself very much one of them.

PS - I also find it incredibly scary that in less than a week we've gone from "we're still looking at putting manual sort in, as it's very much asked for" to "this new set of tools will probably make it so we don't need it anymore." It very much validates my feelings on the issue...if it doesn't go in now, it's never going to.

[cold_realms]

I too was very much against the new vault (And still think we need the option to have smaller icons/no text) until i spent some time with it last night during the server issues. After spending a good deal of time I learned to like the system. The filters are a snap, the search is fast, and sorting into "chests" that i can view/search separately is wonderful.

Most of my negative reaction to the vault was based on the common dislike of the unfamiliar (See Vista which ran better than XP but was universally hated due to it's newness). If you give something new a chance sometimes it will surprise you.

I certainly hope you don't automatically assume that a bunch more random filters/auto sort will take away the need for a true manual sort. For me, the vault without manual sort is a total deal breaker (account has been cancelled since this went live). I've been keeping an eye on this thread to see if/when manual sort will be included. As long as it's not, I will not be returning to LotRO (and I've been here for several years). It's just not worth the aggravation of not being able to sort things in a comfortable manner. So, thanks for the effort, but until manual sort comes back, there are still going to be many unhappy players...myself very much one of them.

PS - I also find it incredibly scary that in less than a week we've gone from "we're still looking at putting manual sort in, as it's very much asked for" to "this new set of tools will probably make it so we don't need it anymore." It very much validates my feelings on the issue...if it doesn't go in now, it's never going to.

[Jadzi]

Most of my negative reaction to the vault was based on the common dislike of the unfamiliar (See Vista which ran better than XP but was universally hated due to it's newness). If you give something new a chance sometimes it will surprise you.

Yes and no. Part of the hate for Vista because some of its "features" actually made performance worse. The widget bar was a nice idea, but if it didn't fit into your style, it only became an annoyance and drag on resources. And speaking of resources, Vista was horribly structured and took up a lot more memory to run and space to store than either XP or 7. Conversely, Windows 7 came out and almost everyone I've spoken with about it has raved about it, even though it brings in a number of new features itself. It's just a more elegant OS than Vista ever was.

Similarly, this incarnation of the vault has two issues facing it: its actual limitations, and the poor reception it garners from people who suddenly had to change from something that worked well for three years. While I agree the majority of the contempt probably comes from the latter, that doesn't mean there isn't merit to the complaints. While people do blow things out of proportion, underneath there is usually a seed of truth.

With any luck, the next incarnation will be to this vault what 7 was to Vista.

[SlmJmOSUMB]

I too was very much against the new vault (And still think we need the option to have smaller icons/no text) until i spent some time with it last night during the server issues. After spending a good deal of time I learned to like the system. The filters are a snap, the search is fast, and sorting into "chests" that i can view/search separately is wonderful.

Most of my negative reaction to the vault was based on the common dislike of the unfamiliar (See Vista which ran better than XP but was universally hated due to it's newness). If you give something new a chance sometimes it will surprise you.

I'm glad you like the new vault now. That's awesome. However, I had plenty of chances to play with it and get used to it in Beta and it's just not gonna work for me. So, again just to be clear, it's not a matter of just getting used to it for me (and many others like me). It's the fact that until we get a more customizable manual sort system (like we used to have), the vault will remain unplayable.

[Alfrodul]

AFAIK, the expansions beyond 120 were not available in the store during Head Start as well. If you have a situation where you bought something from the store and didn't get it, submitting a ticket is the correct thing to do and the GMs will hopefully be able to help you out.

Perhaps not in-game but if you clicked on the link in your vault to go to the store, you could buy them in the store as of 9 September, I got the receipt emailed to me and the TP deducted but it never showed up in game and now it's not showing up under my "Recent Buys" either. As a matter of concern, now that I look at the store, neither is my expansion for shared storage. Which did show up immediately and was full.

Here's a copy of my receipt:



---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Lord of the Rings Online <no-reply@turbine.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 6:33 PM
Subject: Order Delivered Notification
To: anthony.d.arndt@*****.com


Thanks for using the LOTRO Store! This email confirms your purchase of Items at the LOTRO Store.

Order Number: 001-007004-05942107
Receipt Date: Sep 09 2010 4:33 PM GMT
Order Total: Turbine LOTRO Points 95 Points
Purchase Summary:
ITEM PRICE QUANTITY TOTAL PRICE
Bank Upgrade: 15 Additional Slots
Turbine LOTRO Points 95 Points
1 Turbine LOTRO Points 95 Points

The items/services listed above have been added to your character's inventory or have updated your account! Be sure to check the LOTRO Store often. We're always adding new items or running special deals.

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[Eliel]

Ransroth, is there any chance of adding multi-tagging? So instead of picking from the filters "Crafting: Resources", "Crafting: Ingredients", and "Crafting: Components", there could just be a filter "Crafting" that encompasses all those things?

That would be a big improvement in my book, and one I haven't seen you talk about.

[Ransroth]

Perhaps not in-game but if you clicked on the link in your vault to go to the store, you could buy them in the store as of 9 September, I got the receipt emailed to me and the TP deducted but it never showed up in game and now it's not showing up under my "Recent Buys" either. As a matter of concern, now that I look at the store, neither is my expansion for shared storage. Which did show up immediately and was full.

I can't really help you with this - a ticket in-game is the right way to deal with this problem - the GMs should be able to help you.

Ransroth, is there any chance of adding multi-tagging? So instead of picking from the filters "Crafting: Resources", "Crafting: Ingredients", and "Crafting: Components", there could just be a filter "Crafting" that encompasses all those things?

That would be a big improvement in my book, and one I haven't seen you talk about.

There are two possible ways I can read your request:
1. Ability for the user to select multiple filters from the list - like some kind of checkbox scheme where they say they want to have Crafting Ingredients and Axes shown.
2. Some added entries to the list which combine other filters - for example "Crafting" which everyone would see and would when selected show the various crafting items

The first seems to really require a different UI for selecting filters - and the UI is already quite crowded.

The second is something we can do with the existing UI, and was something that was considered for this round of vault improvements but ended up being cut for time.

There are some improvements coming for the filters, but for now not these.

[Alfrodul]

I can't really help you with this - a ticket in-game is the right way to deal with this problem - the GMs should be able to help you.

That's cool. I didn't expect that you would, I just wanted to let you know that it had been possible during the Head Start since you've been responding to questions about the vault.

[Eliel]

There are two possible ways I can read your request:
1. Ability for the user to select multiple filters from the list - like some kind of checkbox scheme where they say they want to have Crafting Ingredients and Axes shown.
2. Some added entries to the list which combine other filters - for example "Crafting" which everyone would see and would when selected show the various crafting items

The first seems to really require a different UI for selecting filters - and the UI is already quite crowded.

The second is something we can do with the existing UI, and was something that was considered for this round of vault improvements but ended up being cut for time.

There are some improvements coming for the filters, but for now not these.

I meant the second one. The first one sounds mighty cool, but I understand how it wouldn't necessarily fit in the UI design. I also think it would have the potential to get very confusing.

I guess my larger point is that not everyone knows the difference between an Ingredient, a Resource, and a Component, so a handy filter that gives you all of those at once would be useful. (I know the difference between them for most of the professions, but I get totally lost when talking about cooking and farming). But a similar filter would be handy for armor and weapons, as well.

[TheREALify]

I certainly hope you don't automatically assume that a bunch more random filters/auto sort will take away the need for a true manual sort. For me, the vault without manual sort is a total deal breaker (account has been cancelled since this went live). I've been keeping an eye on this thread to see if/when manual sort will be included. As long as it's not, I will not be returning to LotRO (and I've been here for several years). It's just not worth the aggravation of not being able to sort things in a comfortable manner. So, thanks for the effort, but until manual sort comes back, there are still going to be many unhappy players...myself very much one of them.

PS - I also find it incredibly scary that in less than a week we've gone from "we're still looking at putting manual sort in, as it's very much asked for" to "this new set of tools will probably make it so we don't need it anymore." It very much validates my feelings on the issue...if it doesn't go in now, it's never going to.

This - summarizes my feelings well. I haven't 'played' since this went live and not because I don't want to - it just doesn't work for me like this. I also share the same fear: we'll get a few more bells and whistles, visual sorting will be pushed to the back burner and the vault will be left like this indefinitely.

[macdadg]

First let me commend you and hand out cookies ransroth for coming onto the forums and posting as much as you have on a Sunday. I believe we all appreciate the hard work you are doing and trying to make a very difficult situation better for all involved. I am really looking forward to the improvements coming down the pipe.

One thing that I used to reorganize my Live characters' vaults was to set the filter to for example "Crafting: Ingredient" - then right-click on each item and if it wasn't already in chest 1, send it to chest 1.

That's nice for people who don't mind looking through every bag just to see if their crafting ingredients were in other bags. Taking everything out of the vault and into personal inventory and relocating it into chests was the only way I could even hope to get it done on my characters.

I am not trying to argue that manual sort is a bad idea or that we don't want to give you the option to do it. I'm trying to point out that the automatic sort will reduce the need for it, and quite possibly the effort of implementing it will end up being better put elsewhere.

For those of us who are visual sorters, I can say that there is no amount of automatic sort that will make up for manual sort, and you will end up doing more work than necessary by continuing down this path. My suggestion, ditch the automatic sorting and put the effort into manual sorting, it will be well worth the while. And don't forget to include intentional blank spaces.

The first time you open the vault, it opens very slow because it converts the old back end storage to the new. After that, it should open faster.

It should, but it doesn't. I get more errors opening my vault now, and I wait longer to open my vault now than I ever did with the original vault. That may be because of the high number of people playing currently, but I sure don't see any increased performance.

The "tear-off" bit is not ready, but very much on the radar.

This needs to be a priority, right up there with manual sorting. We visual people need to be able to see everything at once, and need our items to stay were we put them. Not being able to see everything at once is a huge problem for me.

Just because you want your crafting materials to be sorted by tier, and by profession - doesn't mean that manual sorting is required. I'm very much hopeful that when the new new vault comes out, it will automatically sort your crafting materials by tier, then by profession, which will be strictly better for you than having to manually do it. The person who will complain is the one that wants to organize their crafting materials by profession and by tier, where the automatic sort may organize them by tier, then by profession. But it isn't obvious that the amount of manual tinkering the automatic sort will save them may not be worth adjusting the way they see the vault.

Manual sorting is required, it isn't just for crafters. No amount of automatic sorting and filters you do is going to be able to replicate what I want to do in my vault. Stop wasting your time making filters that only slow down the search process and make the manual sorting happen.

When/if we get detachable chests, we'll probably want to introduce the ability you are talking about to change the view on each one.

Yes, please make the chests detachable, and let us see everything in all of them at once. This functionality is required by visually oriented people.

To sum up:

You will not be wasting effort doing manual sort, you will be wasting effort continuing to create filters and tags and searches that cannot duplicate manual sorting.

Yes, please make the chests detachable and let us see everything in them all at once.

The performance issues that were trumpeted are currently non-existent on the user side.

[Unique]

You will not be wasting effort doing manual sort, you will be wasting effort continuing to create filters and tags and searches that cannot duplicate manual sorting.

You are not the only one in the world here, personally I look forward to the new filters and such - they are not wasting their time on them.

He never said that they had given up on manual sorting, he just said that it wasn't going in at this time. I am sorry you are having a hard time figuring out how to make the new vault work for you, maybe when you actually see the improvements you will have more of an open mind instead of insisting that it must work exactly as you want it to or it's broke.