I initially thought of cloud save issues to, but that wouldn't seem to line up with the 8 MB limit. And the problem manifesting at that limit seems too coincidental and reproduceable already to be uninvolved.
Let me post this link again, from the TW3 days. Does anything there seem to line up with what you're seeing here? It still feels very similar to me.
There are several things about the game right now that are definitely inconvenient or odd, but obviously done purposefully. (This savegame size cap and keyboard keys being hard-bound are the two that stand out to me.) Again, the only thing I can infer is that the limitations are somehow there to prevent errors from occurring. Not really that far of a stretch to think they might be causing still other errors.
Of course, I think they knew that players would do it. I think TW3 made that clear. But on the same token, that doesn't mean that the engine could be made to allow for it to happen. Since this seems to happening so quickly, though, I think it's more down to a script or inventory glitch.
It's all theory right now. That's the fun of troubleshooting! But yes, I agree that what's happening does seem to be in line with the "bloat" idea. I was speculating earlier about it maybe being a script associated with crafting that would never correctly terminate, so that every save would add another instance of it that would also never terminate.
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Whatever the case, be sure to send the issue into CDPR Support if you have it. A before / after save file would probably help, just to be sure they can try to recreate the issue.
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I was about to get some sleep, but my brain had some trouble letting this issue go. It's an interesting one, but I started to realise it might actually be a very impactful one.
This is a big if, but if the system is a copy from the TW3 version and it hasn't received updates concerning the unique identifiers and the biggest number the integers are set to handle are 65k, then this issue might start to impact a lot of players now, and/or in the future.
I'm not sure if you've got a direct line to support or to some magical instance within CDPR. I do know for sure that the developers are swamped. I've been in the situation where software had to be released even if that meant that all the great idea's should be put in a backlog and the outstanding issue's needed the most simple and quick solution to them possible. It's a shitty and emotional situation, but IF this part of the game is from TW3 I as a developer would want to know about this issue.
They either know they've changed the values and upped the caps, or they need to know that people are hitting 65k resources and are reaching the 8MB file limit.
Because simply upping the 8MB limit will only ask for more players to reach the 65k on resources or other instances. It won't fix the issue's.
Cyberpunk drops resources and items by the millions. The Witcher 3 way less so.