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Actually, there is - and it should mostly negate the conflicting name issue. If they can iron out all the issues with a temporary server hop (SG membership, friends list, etc) - you just have EVERYONE hop to the Cross-Server Server.|
Originally Posted by LineNoise
I think that open-ended cross-server teaming is probably a pipe dream. Because even in something as scripted as a Task Force still has open-ended stuff in the outer world, and there's just no clean way to do cross-server open-world.
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If I temporarily hop to a crowded server, it's likely my name would be taken. If the entire team temporarily hops to a server that's only used for cross-server teaming, that shouldn't be a concern.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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This is what I thought the suggestion was also, working with open league trails only. |
Originally Posted by Seldom
I'm pretty darned sure that any cross-server system would use an opt-in crowd gathering system of the LFG tab, which means the devs get much fuller use from that system and allow for a much more direct means of recruitment. Example: it's 2 in the afternoon, Player #1 wants to form a BAF. only 10 50's are on, and half don't want a trial. Rather than telling the half that do want to to transfer to the next server for a larger group to coalesce, they all hit the LFG, and every player from every server who wants in gets dropped into the trial, stopping at the limit.
Yes, I know that brings up the issue of a blind invitation system, 'unblanced' teams, and all that stuff that people don't like about the LFG engine. But it does solve any pick up teaming complaints by taking an immediate account of all logged in and willing players at once, as soon as they join such a queue. |
Also under this method the name issue is not a problem, all they have to do is stop any two characters with the same name joining the same league. As the trails themselves are fully instance there is no chance they will meet someone else with the same name from a different server. The chance that two characters of the exact same name would be in the queue for the same trail at the exact same time would (I think) be extremely low anyway, at worst one of them will have to wait a couple of mins for the next open league to fill up.
To further avoid issues they may also have to restrict tells to those within the same instance as well (for obvious reasons).
But who really knows what the delevopers have in mind...
They are adding a 'lfg' channel in i23.........
My guess is that they're looking at doing cross-server trials like the Incarnate and DFB trials. Those occur in single instances, whereas regular trials occur in the open world and require starting and stopping several instances.
Doing Incarnate/DFB/DiB/Halloween/Winter trials would be a logical first step. I think this would be a great thing for them to do, having the potential to make it possible for everyone to get enough incarnate trials regardless of their home server population.
A nice feature would be the ability to specifically indicate who you're in league with on another server.
It might be possible later on to create a "virtual" server that would be populated only by the team running regular TFs like Positron, but that might use too many server-side resources to be viable.
What I don't get is the whole "No I loves my server with all my friends - it's just hard to find teams." Uhmm where are all your friends? Seems a tad contradictory.
Personally I am "meh" for cross-server teaming... not against or for it. Then again I left my first home server due to it being such a lower population and I wanted to experience more team content.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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I could see Cross-Server Teaming way back when there was a fairly active PvP subculture. Previously the test server was the only place where characters from different servers could meet.
Now, not so much.
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I'm "meh" for it as well, even if I do stand to benefit from it on my fairly low-pop server.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Personally I am "meh" for cross-server teaming... not against or for it. Then again I left my first home server due to it being such a lower population and I wanted to experience more team content.
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I'm just hoping that however this gets implemented, we aren't forced to be called "[character name]@[Global name]" in chat like in some other games our old development company when on to make. (although I don't really see any other way around it if two of the same character name get put on the same team through cross-server teaming. It just really breaks the immersion for me.)
"My inner mind has become a reality-cracking overgod. He torments me! Help!"
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Actually, I'm handwaving the two reasons I could already think of why cross-server teaming would be superior to free unlimited server transfers, to see if there's a more convincing basis than "I don't want to lose my name" and "I don't want to lose my SG".|
Originally Posted by LineNoise
Why did you bother making this thread if you weren't actually going to read any of the replies?
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Not that those aren't good reasons; they're perfectly good reasons. My names are crucial to me; I wouldn't want to lose them. (SGs less so, but that's a personal preference.) I'm pretty sure, in fact, those are the reasons that "cross-server teaming" is being worked on.
It just seems to me that "ensuring that people who are on lower-population servers who want to team are able to without losing their name or SG membership" is a pretty thin reason for a project that, it's been implied, has already eaten a fair bit of development time, and would likely eat a fair bit more to get to a functional state.
*shrug*
Now, that's all right; I'm not excited about Water Blast, or Circle of Thorns costumes, either. But there, at least I get why those things are exciting to people.
Cross-server teaming just leaves me cold, and I was hoping someone with real enthusiasm for it could explain it's benefits in a convincing manner, so I'd be able to get on board; there's so much enthusiasm, I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.
Thus far, they haven't convinced me of their passion; again, that's fine - different strokes, n' such.
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Surprisingly, my friends, being other people, have things going on in real life and vice-versa that means we are not always on at the same time as each other. Unless your friends are you (and you can't friend yourself in this game), I would guess the same is true for you. /sarcasm|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
What I don't get is the whole "No I loves my server with all my friends - it's just hard to find teams." Uhmm where are all your friends? Seems a tad contradictory.
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Anywho, it is those times that I would love to have cross-server teaming. When they are offline and I would like to do a bit of teaming.
--Rad
/whereami:
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Just because an argument is weak to you doesn't make it a weak argument.|
Originally Posted by ThatGuyThere
It just seems to me that "ensuring that people who are on lower-population servers who want to team are able to without losing their name or SG membership" is a pretty thin reason for a project that, it's been implied, has already eaten a fair bit of development time, and would likely eat a fair bit more to get to a functional state.
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There were many things in this game that we were told would never happen due to time and tech restraints and slowly but surely they have made their way into the game. Power Customization anyone?
And for what it's worth, I can even see a story element to Cross-Server teaming.
A faction of Oroboros realizes that not just the time-stream is being altered in our reality, but other realities as well and has called upon all able heroes and villains to assist in fixing things.
You enter a zone similar to Oro (a loading zone basically) and are able to enter other realities (servers) through portals in that zone. After entering, you're put into a similar zone on the other server from which you can roam free and do whatever.
Hell, you can even use the argument that the Batallion is so strong that you need the might of multiple realities to combat the threat.
On a more selfish note, this would make Hami raiding quite fun for me since they raid on various servers and I could basically attend them all with the same toons
/2inf
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If server transfers are fast and either free or very cheap (say about a quarter), then, to me, they are the same thing as cross server teaming (assuming naming/SG things are solvable).|
Originally Posted by ThatGuyThere
Can someone explain to me the allure of cross-server teaming, as an idea?
What I'm unclear of is this: What problem does cross-server teaming address, that inexpensive (free is better) and immediate server transfers doesn't? Assume you could solve "The Name Problem" (which I agree is an immense, intractable mess of a problem, but pretend there's a mythical everyone's-happy solution to it, for a moment). |
Honestly, I still think the method should be be, log in, choose character, choose server/shard/instance/whatever you want to call it. Community here exists through global channels, not broadcast chat on a server.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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It's that simple. Thread could have stopped there.| Because it increases the pool of potential teammates |
The highest pop server will never have as many players available as every server combined, because every server combined implies the highest pop server plus even more. Basic arithmetic, people.
Also keep in mind "I do not care about this personally so this isn't worth caring about" is not a valid argument, not here nor anywhere in life. Some people like having more people to team with. Even on high pop servers and at US peak hours, some people like having to wait just 30 seconds to get a team instead of 2 minutes. And so on.
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I love this solution!!
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Originally Posted by SolarSentai
Just because an argument is weak to you doesn't make it a weak argument.
There were many things in this game that we were told would never happen due to time and tech restraints and slowly but surely they have made their way into the game. Power Customization anyone? And for what it's worth, I can even see a story element to Cross-Server teaming. A faction of Oroboros realizes that not just the time-stream is being altered in our reality, but other realities as well and has called upon all able heroes and villains to assist in fixing things. You enter a zone similar to Oro (a loading zone basically) and are able to enter other realities (servers) through portals in that zone. After entering, you're put into a similar zone on the other server from which you can roam free and do whatever. Hell, you can even use the argument that the Batallion is so strong that you need the might of multiple realities to combat the threat. On a more selfish note, this would make Hami raiding quite fun for me since they raid on various servers and I could basically attend them all with the same toons /2inf |
If I had to guess (standard code rant and all) I would say that cross-server teaming is totally different from server transfers from the devs' point of view because of server load balancing. Moving a character to a new server changes the load on both servers. Cross server teaming doesn't do anything to server load, because all mission instances are already on separate mission servers. I would further guess that this is a Big Deal to the devs. The fact that it also bypasses the need to worry about name reservations and super group membership is just icing on the cake. But, of course, I'm not a dev.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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This is not true at all. There are actually very few things the devs have said would never happen. There is a huge difference between saying they'd like to add a feature right away but they can't because of the amount of work involved will take a long time and no they aren't going to develop a feature at all.|
Originally Posted by SolarSentai
There were many things in this game that we were told would never happen due to time and tech restraints and slowly but surely they have made their way into the game. Power Customization anyone?
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Power Customization was always on their to do list some day. It was players on the forums that twisted what the devs actually said into "it'll never happen" in their responses to the frequent Power Customization request threads.
Some items the devs have actually said would never happen are
Total respecs out of Power sets and AT's
Open world PvP
Allowing players to send offline SG invites to characters on the same account
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Sort of a Crisis in Infinite Paragon Cities and Crisis in Infinite Rogue Ilses type of thing?|
Originally Posted by SolarSentai
And for what it's worth, I can even see a story element to Cross-Server teaming. A faction of Oroboros realizes that not just the time-stream is being altered in our reality, but other realities as well and has called upon all able heroes and villains to assist in fixing things. You enter a zone similar to Oro (a loading zone basically) and are able to enter other realities (servers) through portals in that zone. After entering, you're put into a similar zone on the other server from which you can roam free and do whatever. Hell, you can even use the argument that the Batallion is so strong that you need the might of multiple realities to combat the threat. On a more selfish note, this would make Hami raiding quite fun for me since they raid on various servers and I could basically attend them all with the same toons |
Gee. I wonder why none of the comic book companies have ever tried something like that.
The old JLA/JSA team-ups using the Crisis on Y format were some of my favorites growing up.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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Add "Being able to use Lightning Rod 1/4" off the ground" to the list. (It was a PM from Castle.) Cuz, sweet-b'jeebus, that's just crazy unrealistic!|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Some items the devs have actually said would never happen are
Total respecs out of Power sets and AT's Open world PvP Allowing players to send offline SG invites to characters on the same account |
[/PersonalRant]
CoH has been unique in the sea of cloned MMOs.There are years of possibilities still
in such a well designed, well supported and well loved game.Shutting it down now doesn't
make sense on any level except, perhaps, on some spreadsheet�s bottom line. I do not
consider this an act of a company that has the interests of its customers at heart.This
calls into question why I would want to be part of any further ventures involving NCSoft.
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I don't remember if this was something they said would absolutely "never happen," but I remember at one time the Devs were against the idea of merging the markets. A red name said they had run some projections on what would happen and didn't like the results. And then Going Rogue was introduced and suddenly the markets were merged and everything seemed fine. I still have no idea exactly what it was they were worried about.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Some items the devs have actually said would never happen are
Total respecs out of Power sets and AT's Open world PvP Allowing players to send offline SG invites to characters on the same account |
I'm all for it.
We need to also consider the new/other players as well. The players who have yet to get a lvl 50 on every server, the players who don't know about the Global chat channel, the players who only work night shifts and can only play coh at 4 in the morning when all of their friends and a vast majority of players are asleep, the players who have ran out available server space and want to make new toons ect.
I think that they will either use global names or attach a number at the end of you name if there is a duplicate name on the team.
I don't see how Transferring a toon is less work than Cross server teaming. To transfer you have to move the toon over (sometimes it goes into queue and takes several minutes to transfer...imagine if a few thousand of us was doing this EACH DAY), Rename the toon participate in the team, Transfer back (wait for in queue again), Possibly have to rename the toon again and potentially lose your SG/VG membership. I guarantee you that this would anger the majority of coh players and this method is time consuming. Who would want to do this each week let alone a few times a day?
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Back before Going Rogue was even a whisper they said that they had some serious concerns about what would happen if the markets merged. Once side-switching was introduced, the opportunity for "smuggling" was felt to be a bigger problem than the market merger would have been. |
Originally Posted by Red_Raccoon
I don't remember if this was something they said would absolutely "never happen," but I remember at one time the Devs were against the idea of merging the markets. A red name said they had run some projections on what would happen and didn't like the results. And then Going Rogue was introduced and suddenly the markets were merged and everything seemed fine. I still have no idea exactly what it was they were worried about.
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And yeah. I'm not sure what they were worried about. They said something about the large stockpile of blueside inf pricing all the poor villains out of being able to buy stuff, but.... That's going to be a serious issue for *maybe* a week before the network effects of having more people playing in the same pool would completely dwarf any stockpile effects. Which is exactly what happened.
Ideally, CoH would operate in a serverless environment, but if that's not possible, the cross-server teaming offers the biggest scope for lettign everyone team with everyone else.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I think that all the concerns about merged markets originated in the idea that Infamy and Influence would remain independent currencies that would be linked only through the auction house. While I was all for merged markets, there were some arguments I thought were sensible about how "economic" problems could arise in such a situation.
However, pretty much all the legs were lopped off of all those theories when they went whole hog and removed any currency barriers whatsoever - Inf is Inf is Inf. I think most of the forumites debating the topic would have known that such a merger would been almost completely painless, but no one actually imagined they would take the merger all the way to the currency level. I'm pretty sure everyone talking about it assumed there would be an "exchange rate" between two distinct currencies.
But then the devs tried adding a third currency, realized along the way what a colossal pain in the posterior they were creating for themselves, and just merged it all completely. And I am incredibly thankful they did.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I recall someone saying that Power Customization was extremely unlikely to happen. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
This is not true at all. There are actually very few things the devs have said would never happen. There is a huge difference between saying they'd like to add a feature right away but they can't because of the amount of work involved will take a long time and no they aren't going to develop a feature at all.
Power Customization was always on their to do list some day. It was players on the forums that twisted what the devs actually said into "it'll never happen" in their responses to the frequent Power Customization request threads. Some items the devs have actually said would never happen are Total respecs out of Power sets and AT's Open world PvP Allowing players to send offline SG invites to characters on the same account |
Still, saying "We'd do it if we have time" is ambiguous in that it could potentially be put on the back burner indefinitely.
My point was that if the players want something bad enough, it doesn't break gameplay and is doable code-wise, we generally get it. (Regardless if they say they can do it or not).
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Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Sort of a Crisis in Infinite Paragon Cities and Crisis in Infinite Rogue Ilses type of thing?
Gee. I wonder why none of the comic book companies have ever tried something like that. The old JLA/JSA team-ups using the Crisis on Y format were some of my favorites growing up. |
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| Home Server: Virtue |
Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]
| Home Server: Virtue |
Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]
Quote:
This would be the best thing since Ninja Run (and it would be way better than Ninja Run).
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Ideally, CoH would operate in a serverless environment, but if that's not possible, the cross-server teaming offers the biggest scope for lettign everyone team with everyone else.
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Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
I think cross-server teaming is a superior solution than what you've proposed. However, in my case, I don't need either. My home server is Infinity. My brother and his wife mostly play on Triumph. Their only 50's are on Triumph and they have some trouble with high-end content because the SG doesn't have any high level tanks. So, I made a tank on Infinity, spent maybe a couple months getting her to 50 and all 'incarnated', and transferred to Triumph. Problem solved - for me. I fully recognize that most people would not find that an acceptable solution - spending 6-7 weeks leveling a new toon.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project