It's not mentioned here, but on Gitter Chip told us that the saved variables are written in a background thread, so there should not be any stutter or performance issue, unless you use a single core CPU or limit ESO to one core.

Actual writing is a different stage of the process than serialization. In order to do it while the addon system is running, Lua cannot be allowed to execute any code or you'll have the possibility of data corruption. This means it needs to be done with the UI thread or at least lock it meanwhile. Locking the UI thread either way means the UI will be unresponsive for the duration and when that happens, it ties up the rendering engine as well. It's a cascading effect.

Just because something runs on a different thread doesn't mean thread locking doesn't exist, it's a necessity in certain applications.

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for the feedback! I have another question, then I'll give a bit more info:

Can you provide me with some numbers on how big your addon's saved var files typically are? As many real examples as you can give me. If you know someone else's I'll take that too. I'm trying to get an idea of what's small, what's large, and what's typical.

As for the feedback, I can tell you that performance is a big focus here, and we will be trying a number of different avenues to ensure we aren't causing spikes. You're not the only ones concerned about that, believe me it's on our minds too. We may look into using some of your suggestions for that, as well.

As for auto on vs auto off, assuming performance is under control, a key to this feature is that not every addon developer is going to think or remember to enable this, nor will the many addons that are fully functional but not maintained anymore. We want this to help as many people as possible while not causing issues. We will strike that balance between speed and size to find a way to allow the most number of addons to leverage it. And priority saving will always be available to those whose addon is too beefy to do it automatically but they still want to save.

So I have 64 add-ons with saved variables. 25 have a file size less than 10 kilobytes.
10 have a file size between 10 and 50 KB
5 are between 50 and 100, and another 5 between 100 and 200.
There's just two between 200 and 1000
For the next few, I'm ignoring the MM00-MM15 files.
2 are between 1000 and 2000, and then there's one at 7.1 MB.


If you include MM, the lowest is 3.8 MB, largest is 8.5, and the average is 6.2 MB, with a deviation of 1.4 MB.

I do have a spreadsheet with the names of the addons and sizes here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing


For one of my addons, the Set Crafter, I tried to see what some reasonable sizes would be.


With no use of it, it's about 6 KB (0 items). What I'd consider normal use (20 items) was about 50 KB Moderately heavy (80) was about 160. Very heavy use (200 items) gave me a size of 410.

The Writ Crafter uses 32 KB for me, and I don't think that the size will vary a lot.

With regards to saved vars size, are we talking raw file size? Number of lines? Size of tables? All of the above?

My SavedVars folder weight is ~124 MB - yes, I'm addons addict, more than 60 addons overall (if not count all MM clones) :D Not all of them are enabled on all characters tho...

So, ~124 MegaBytes, 78 files, there is some from uninstalled addons, sure, but their weight aren't big.
Most heavy files are at image. This is only 38 files, so also 40 more with size less than 70 KB

36.4 MB

https://i.imgur.com/nEoxpfd.png
The average is 3.1mb per file.
When looking at my SavedVars folder, I feel like the files with more than 1mb are not important to be auto-saved.

The really large files (MM**.lua and ArkadiusTradeToolsSalesData**.lua) contain sales data from the guild history. If saving data of the current play session fails, the data is simply re-obtained upon the next login when scanning the guild's history. So I don't think these are files that would require auto-saving.

The HarvestMap**.lua files contain locations of crafting resources. If these files are large, then the player typically used some external tool to obtain data, in which case it is also not a big issue, if the data is lost.
However, if the files are small, then they typically only contain data collected by the player themself. In that case the player would be rather sad to lose the collected data from the current play session.
Personally, I think I would use the optional save request for HarvestMap to accommodate for these two different cases.

After trimming some old files my saved variables folder has ~200MB where ~150MB are Master Merchant files. Second place is HarvestMap with 8.15MB and third comes QuickEnchanter with 8MB. Then I have 10 more files with a size between 1 and 6MB, 10 between 100kB and 1MB and the rest (59 files) below 100kB with an average size of 13kB (but most of them are <10kB actually).

My addon savedvariables folder:
I'm not using Master Merchant so my savedvars folder is "only" about 60MB in total

HarvestMap with 8.07 mb.
3 other addons with about 7 mb.
2 with 4 MB where 1 only stores set item data and won't be updated often (only manually) -> Would be cool if the savedvars would only save the "changed addon data" and not the "non changed set items database" on autosave!)
Several with 1-2 mb size
Several >250kb and < 1 mb
Several 10kb to 250kb
Lots of 1kb to 10kb

MM is largest with 213M
CraftStore is next largest at 7.7M
Furniture Catalogue and Inventory Insight are about 1.7M each
Everything else is 700k or smaller

Saved vars directory:

57 files

I'm not sure all addons need an autosave. Maybe just being able to program a save within the addon, will save a lot of unnecessary saves. In Cashier for example, it only needs to be saved when a transaction has occurred with the bank. Otherwise it does not care. I would prefer to not have it autosaving every X minutes wasting processing power when it does not do anything. But if I disable the autosave, I would like to be able to program into the code that it causes a save when its data is changed. So no lost data will occur.

if its true, why when MM saving data after a scan of a new guild i just joined, game become a slide show for 30s at 8-core cpu?

sirinsidiator was talking about the future auto saving of savedvariables, not about anything that currently exists in the game.
btw the MM lag has nothing to do with saving data. the lag does not come from saving something to the hard drive. in the current game version, saving is only done when you logout or /reloadui.
the lag comes from mm scanning and processing the guild sales history.

Avg: ~ 218kb

Holy cow, my request got through?!?!?! I will happily do anything required to help test, integrate, and even design this feature!!!

And, your requested file size information:

Here you go:

I'm the developer for Notebook 2018. A fan of the addon (yes, a fan! lol) directed my attention to this post.

At this point, ANY solution is welcome. Opt-in only for "large" savedvars files strongly preferable. My addons savedvars are generally "small", but the content is only user hand-made, so losses are terrible.

Also, when it is added, I wouldn't mind getting some notification with clear instructions / explanation. Be it a message here or an email as an addon developer. :) It'll be a celebration!