League-size Decrease or Cross-server teaming?
By
AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2012-06-10 22:17 in Suggestions and Ideas
The huge group sizes for trials is one of the things that puts me off of them. It becomes so chaotic that I can't really tell what's going on. I just keep an eye on the chat to get a vague idea of what I should be doing, click powers and hope for the best.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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this is kind of how i see trials lol, more like a bunch of cat herding with little in terms of strategy|
Originally Posted by Tenzhi
The huge group sizes for trials is one of the things that puts me off of them. It becomes so chaotic that I can't really tell what's going on. I just keep an eye on the chat to get a vague idea of what I should be doing, click powers and hope for the best.
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to OP, on victory i would say prime time is 5 pm to 11 pm EST mon-thursday, friday the prime time is usually extended by 1-2 hours and on weekends its essentially all day until about midnight
personally i dont like the trials, the rewards are awful because its still a random drop, the random component on the incarnate level story arcs is perfect since you can solo, but when you are relying on 12-24 poeple to work together to complete a task, getting a common from the random table feels like an insult, and to add insult to injury if you happen to get DC'd for any reason the system heavily penalizes you, you could be in the trial for 90% of the time, dc on the AV fight get back in and then you get the threads table for lack of participation
that alone is much why i prefer the incarnate story arcs over trials, the 2 biggest reasons is A) i dont have to rely on other poeple and B) the reward feels more worth it and it doesnt penalize you for how fast/slow you are or if you disconnect
not to say though i do have friends who do run trials constantly (mostly BAFs and LAMs)
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First, it's only some players that reject non-unique names. Many players actively want to have non-unique names, and many players don't really have strong feelings one way or the other: there are pluses and minuses either way.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
The Devs have given us tantalizing hints before that this is possible, but that it's also tied to no longer having unique names, which players seem to strongly reject.
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Given that names on each server aren't truly unique (Sally, Sa11y, S4lly, and Sallie aren't unique in any meaningful sense), I would wager that most players find the argument moot.
Second, it seems unlikely that at this stage of design the devs would (or could) be able to definitively state that cross-server teaming would mandate non-unique names across all servers.
Obviously, characters with the same name from different servers participating in the same cross-server instance would require a mechanism to make them unique within that instance (perhaps based on server of origin or global name). But one could certainly envisage a system in which their name would remain unique on their home server, or a system that requires players to choose a unique cross-server character name if there's a collision the first time they join a cross-server instance, or some kind of "seniority" system based on character creation date.
Players who do not wish to suffer the indignity of having their name qualified by some ugly differentiating decoration or the slight of taking a different name could simply stay on their home server.
But this is all idle speculation at this point, because we don't really know how the system works internally and can't really know what sorts of limitations the devs have.
Instead of dictating design decisions to the devs, I would instead propose a basic requirement for cross-server teaming: no characters should be required to have their name changed on their home servers. And the corollary is that anyone who never teams across servers will never notice a change, or know that they have doppelgangers with the same name on other servers.
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They would have to do something that would not affect players names, from personal experience of the sham that was the global name merge, it took a direct hit on my home server, as many were disgusted by the way we were treated, and as other servers may not have noticed this much, we sure did.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
First, it's only some players that reject non-unique names. Many players actively want to have non-unique names, and many players don't really have strong feelings one way or the other: there are pluses and minuses either way.
Given that names on each server aren't truly unique (Sally, Sa11y, S4lly, and Sallie aren't unique in any meaningful sense), I would wager that most players find the argument moot. Second, it seems unlikely that at this stage of design the devs would (or could) be able to definitively state that cross-server teaming would mandate non-unique names across all servers. Obviously, characters with the same name from different servers participating in the same cross-server instance would require a mechanism to make them unique within that instance (perhaps based on server of origin or global name). But one could certainly envisage a system in which their name would remain unique on their home server, or a system that requires players to choose a unique cross-server character name if there's a collision the first time they join a cross-server instance, or some kind of "seniority" system based on character creation date. Players who do not wish to suffer the indignity of having their name qualified by some ugly differentiating decoration or the slight of taking a different name could simply stay on their home server. But this is all idle speculation at this point, because we don't really know how the system works internally and can't really know what sorts of limitations the devs have. Instead of dictating design decisions to the devs, I would instead propose a basic requirement for cross-server teaming: no characters should be required to have their name changed on their home servers. And the corollary is that anyone who never teams across servers will never notice a change, or know that they have doppelgangers with the same name on other servers. |
Giving the players a chance on losing there main characters names could well be the last straw for many on my server, which would offset any positives from cross serving teaming.
Too many 50's to list here's a few you may know.
Slazenger, Area51, Area53, Area54, Erruption, Mind Plague, Thresher, Sheath, Broadside, Debt
My main server is Triumph, and in general I haven't seen very many Itrials run during my normal hours of play. (The Magi Trials have picked that up a bit.)
I'd be VERY happy if we could have cross server teaming ... not just for Trials, but so that my friends and I could play whatever toons we wanted together.
That being said, I'd be satisfied with a Cross-Server for Trial only option option. Perhaps with the global name added to the character name for that event.
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Yeah, Victory pretty much rolls over and goes to sleep at 11pm.
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Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
to OP, on victory i would say prime time is 5 pm to 11 pm EST mon-thursday, friday the prime time is usually extended by 1-2 hours and on weekends its essentially all day until about midnight
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Cross-server teaming would hopefully just be a step towards a serverless environment.
@Golden Girl
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Meh; having separate servers allows for different server cultures. The powerlevelers/farmers can hang out on Freedom, RPs on Virtue and so on. I'd prefer to keep a servered environment, even if the servers were only virtual.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Cross-server teaming would hopefully just be a step towards a serverless environment.
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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
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Actually because of the size and diversity of players that are on and have moved to freedom the old stereotype does not apply. Freedom is like the US of servers in it's overall diversity, it has all types of people from all the servers.
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Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
Meh; having separate servers allows for different server cultures. The powerlevelers/farmers can hang out on Freedom, RPs on Virtue and so on. I'd prefer to keep a servered environment, even if the servers were only virtual.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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"Sham"? "The way we were treated"? What nonsense is this?
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Originally Posted by Slazenger
They would have to do something that would not affect players names, from personal experience of the sham that was the global name merge, it took a direct hit on my home server, as many were disgusted by the way we were treated, and as other servers may not have noticed this much, we sure did.
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Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
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This.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
First, it's only some players that reject non-unique names. Many players actively want to have non-unique names, and many players don't really have strong feelings one way or the other: there are pluses and minuses either way.
Instead of dictating design decisions to the devs, I would instead propose a basic requirement for cross-server teaming: no characters should be required to have their name changed on their home servers. And the corollary is that anyone who never teams across servers will never notice a change, or know that they have doppelgangers with the same name on other servers. |
Infernal and Malaise share their names with their Praetorian counterparts, why can't we?
For cross server teaming, i would not mind some bit append to names to ID their home server during the cross server teaming.
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what is the culture difference between pinnacle, protector and infinity?|
Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
Meh; having separate servers allows for different server cultures. The powerlevelers/farmers can hang out on Freedom, RPs on Virtue and so on. I'd prefer to keep a servered environment, even if the servers were only virtual.
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I can see wanting 4 different servers for English. But the number we have is ridiculous
I recently received a marketing survey for Cityof and one of the questions was about cross-server teaming. To which I replied that Yes, I would be interested.
I tend to think of each server, or Shard as it's been referred to as in the past, as parallel universes to each other. Then one day there would be a major event in which those seperate shards were some how joined, and all players from every shard could participate in the conflict.
Once resolved, the result of which was that there was a conduit / portal that now connected these previously seperate shards to one another.
Super / Villian groups would still be bound by their main server so that if you want to join that particular group you either need to transfer or create a character there. But for general, incarnate, and pvp content, teaming would be possible across the servers.
The name issue is easily resolved via a server tag. The "alternate universe" explaination at least provides an in-game reason for characters of the same / extemely similar names to occur. They don't even need to be alternate versions of the other, just a hero from another universe with the same name.
This would be great for low population servers where finding a team during off-peak hours could be difficult.
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I believe this is what they said would happen if cross server teaming ever came to pass. Each server would still retain its own list of unique names, but I'd show up as something like "[Victory] Chad Gulzow-Man" if I joined a team elsewhere.
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Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
For cross server teaming, i would not mind some bit append to names to ID their home server during the cross server teaming.
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Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Culture and community exists through global channels. I play with many great people on Guardian, Liberty, Protector, and Pinnacle (and I play on other servers, but not enough to join any communities). When I am on Liberty, there are tons of times I wish I could switch to a character I have on Guardian. When I am on Guardian, there are tons of times I wish I could switch to a character on Protector. When I am on Pinnacle there are tons of times I wish I could bring a character on Champion.|
Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
Meh; having separate servers allows for different server cultures. The powerlevelers/farmers can hang out on Freedom, RPs on Virtue and so on. I'd prefer to keep a servered environment, even if the servers were only virtual.
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The global channels I am part of are my communities. Sometimes one of my communities is doing something I really want to join, but sadly I cannot with the character I really want to join with. Nothing would be better for the game than cross-server teaming, IMO.
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I believe the poster in question is referring to the Global Server (List) Merge--when the EU servers were moved onto the same server listing as the US servers.|
Originally Posted by Tyger42
"Sham"? "The way we were treated"? What nonsense is this?
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Part of this process involved EU players losing their original global names because they were already in use by players on the US servers, with no regard whatsoever to who happened to have that global the longest. (I.e., if someone were using the global name @Magic Man on the EU servers since they first became available, but someone else chose to use it on the US servers the day before the merger, the US player would still be favored over the EU player.)
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Ah. I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic at hand, but okay. I can understand why it worked that way, though. Paragon, being based in the US, was preferring the "home" players over the "away". That shouldn't be unexpected.
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
I believe the poster in question is referring to the Global Server (List) Merge--when the EU servers were moved onto the same server listing as the US servers.
Part of this process involved EU players losing their original global names because they were already in use by players on the US servers, with no regard whatsoever to who happened to have that global the longest. (I.e., if someone were using the global name @Magic Man on the EU servers since they first became available, but someone else chose to use it on the US servers the day before the merger, the US player would still be favored over the EU player.) |
Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
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"Server-less" does not mean "one server". It means "many servers displayed as one large server".|
Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
Meh; having separate servers allows for different server cultures.
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In an environment such as that, you can easily allow rules divisions for players to choose, similar to how zones get multiple copies in this game.
It's actually a rather simple idea.
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I've tried Trials, and it feels like I jumped into a tumble dryer full of cricket balls. They're confusing, they overload my senses and I can simply never keep up. I'm not sure I'd want to train the ability to keep up, either.|
Originally Posted by Tenzhi
The huge group sizes for trials is one of the things that puts me off of them. It becomes so chaotic that I can't really tell what's going on. I just keep an eye on the chat to get a vague idea of what I should be doing, click powers and hope for the best.
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As for cross-server teaming, my biggest wish is that one day we'd dispense with the idea of separate servers entirely and just all join one global server comprised of everybody. For me, this has nothing in the slightest to do with population, so much as it has to do with the fact that most of the people I know are on Pinnacle while over half my characters and most of my 50s are on Victory.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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For cross server teaming, why can't characters be temporarily referred to as Toon@Server? If you want to be really cool, only use that convention when there is a clash, so most characters will simply have their character name. I would guess this would be handled through the LFG tool anyway, so surely it could handle it.
I usually get to play either really early in the morning or really late at night. I finally got to go a Mag iTrial last night, and got 25% of the AIXP needed to unlock Hybrid. Hard to imagine being able to run the trial another 3 times given my current schedule, but with cross-server teaming... who knows?
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Also, thanks for saying this because I feel the same way. I usually ask everyone to point out when I need to be doing something atypical in the trial, but even if they do point out stuff it gets drowned in the noise of the League channel or combat itself.
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
The huge group sizes for trials is one of the things that puts me off of them. It becomes so chaotic that I can't really tell what's going on. I just keep an eye on the chat to get a vague idea of what I should be doing, click powers and hope for the best.
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Honestly, another game already did the thing CoH should have. It's from the same original company.|
Originally Posted by InOnePiece
For cross server teaming, why can't characters be temporarily referred to as Toon@Server? If you want to be really cool, only use that convention when there is a clash, so most characters will simply have their character name. I would guess this would be handled through the LFG tool anyway, so surely it could handle it.
I usually get to play either really early in the morning or really late at night. I finally got to go a Mag iTrial last night, and got 25% of the AIXP needed to unlock Hybrid. Hard to imagine being able to run the trial another 3 times given my current schedule, but with cross-server teaming... who knows? |
The best thing they could do was have character names be whatever you want while only global names would need to be unique, then you could have the same names across multiple servers, or even on the same server.
I think the problem is that character names are the "file names" for all the character's data.
If they had a generic file name based on creation date and account number(instead of global name) then you could change the character and global name whenever and even share it among multiple accounts, with the usual file name stipulations of identical ones having a "1, 2, 3..." after them to sort them out.
It's more complicated than I state here, but it would be better for several reasons.
It just won't happen in this game.
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That analogy amuses me way more than it should, I think. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I've tried Trials, and it feels like I jumped into a tumble dryer full of cricket balls.
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Virtue Server
Avatar art by Daggerpoint
I really, really like the new solo and team-oriented Incarnate content. The Mot story and the Belladonna arc are both great. More of this, please. It's great to grab a friend or two and be able to progress through the incarnate system.
With the new trial in the system, however, we're buffeted by the fact that NCSoft would like us to REALLY, REALLY PLEASE YOU GUYS SERIOUSLY DO TRIALS IN GROUPS OF 24, PLEASE!! PLZ! OMG! PLZ!
Yes, yes, we get that you want us to do trials in big groups. The fact that you tied the new incarnate experience type to the new trial and the new trial only broadcasts that clear and loud. There's also the fact that you're rushing a patch to the trial to try to eliminate a bug that discourages large groups. I'd have loved to sit in the prioritization meeting for that one.
However, some servers can't field a group like that off peak times.
Good example: Victory, my 'home' server, goes from being able to populate a single league of 24 at peak times to not being able to field 12 players for a trial after 11:00 PM Central. We have some great leaders on Victory. We have folks who are willing to recruit on Victory and actively try to do so.
What we do not have is lots of folks. It's rare that we can field more than one 12-player incarnate group at a time.
This effectively locks anyone who plays off-hours out of the new content that NCSoft seems determined to hammer into the 'League or Bust' mold.
Victory is a medium-low population server, in my opinion. There are less populated servers, so I can only imagine the grief they're having.
There are two solutions to this issue. NCSoft seems unwilling to consider the solution that players want: Decreased league-size requirements.
Magisterium is actually a LOT of fun, especially if you do it with the minimum team. That also minimizes the impact of the nasty bug affecting the last fight in the trial. I'd LOVE to do this with a team of 8 rather than 12. However, everything we HAVEN'T heard from NCSoft seems to indicate that this is COMPLETELY off the table.
So, let's look at the other direction in which it's possible to fix this problem: Cross-server teaming.
The Devs have given us tantalizing hints before that this is possible, but that it's also tied to no longer having unique names, which players seem to strongly reject.
However, if it were implemented, cross-server teaming would allow those who wanted to play this content off-peak hours to do so. It would also solve the problem of players who like to live on a 'low population' server having a difficult time getting trials together if they can effectively recruit across multiple servers.
Ultimately, this is the same problem introduced with BAF and exacerbated by Keyes and UGT: CoH is a team-oriented game, and the playerbase doesn't mold well into raid-oriented play. Magisterium has only intensified that problem, since it introduces further limits on who can participate.
However, if you insist on keeping the raid-oriented play, can you guys at least make it possible for us to ASSEMBLE a raid team one way or the other?