Scout Archive
Thread: Proposed Change: Camp Logout/Login
In researching the Holocron's Knowledge Base (Holocron -> Customer Service -> Knowledge Base), I do find a reference in article soe3848 regarding part of this request:
Scouts have the skill to create camps to make a secure log-out location, ...
It's an early article, so I don't know if they couldn't implement it or not, but from observing other players log-out in camps, it doesn't appear that they behave any different from when they log out in the wild. Of course as well, this doesn't address the problems with logging in on top of a red, either...
I'm not the kind to campaign for changes in the game, but after playing a Scout for a while I'm of the opinion that one change would have an enormous benefit on a number of aspects.
A lot of times, I'd like to move away from the city and go exploring or surveying. If I know I don't have a zillion hours available, it's difficult to move far, because of the uncertainties of logging out outside of town. I tried it once and had the bad luck to log in next to a red dot (a shapaut who incapped me immediately).
Which leads me to my suggestion: wouldn't it make sense to allow players to log out in a camp and log back in (with the camp still in place)? The advantages seem, at least to me, obvious:
- This could contribute somewhat to alleviating overcrowding in the cities, which should translate into less lag. Right now, it appears that 95% of the players are always near a city
- It would allow non-power-gamers the chance to go exploring and not have to run back to a city when their available time is up
- Advanced Scouts could enjoy the protection of their advanced camps when logging back in
- It would allow for better dispersion of players across planets
I don't know the architecture of the game (I'm assuming it's written in C++ with the usual module approach), but from a requirements standpoint it doesn't seem to difficult, It seems like the only change would be persistence of the camp object, and thus blocking spawning of other static objects on top of its location. There would be undoubtedly other changes needed to the player profile as it regen'd as well.
I'm thinking that this would be a worthwhile enough change that I'll make the efforts to bug SOE on a persistent basis. What do others think of this idea? Any suggested modifiers?
Parsifal,
I'll bring up this idea to the Devs. I don't know what the programming requirements are, though. I'll let you know when they respond.
B
Parsifal.
I've been playing very casually for about 2 weeks now. I seldom log out in town. I am almost always exploring. I have yet to log in next to a red (I guess maybe I"m lucky). I guess what I am saying is that it doesn't happen often enough to worry about. For example , I logged 2 nights ago with multiple reds in 2 directions at the edge of my 64m radar. When I logged back in yesterday the reds were still in same location. I built a new camp got the xp and moved on.
I hope this helps some.
ILIADo
I do not work for Sony or SWG, so take this for what it is worth. I can tell you that what you suggest would make sense from a game playing perspective, but from a game mechanics perspective, it would be very difficult to implement. The reason is that you would essentially have to maintain each character and any associated objects, like the camps, pets, etc., for every PC on the server whether they were logged in or not. That would have essentially the same memory requirements as if all players in a particular galaxy were always logged in all the time, permanently slowing game performance.
As it is, when you log out, they can save your character's status and location to disk and delete the related objects from the server memory. When you log back in, all they have to do is "spawn" the PC in the location it last occupied at its previous status: cleaner, simpler, anddramatically more efficient.
Yes, the chance of being taken out by an aggro NCP or creature just for logging in is frustrating. I can go one better. Twice last week, I was on when the server went down. Both times I was not near any creatures when the connection was lost. When the server was brought back up and I could log in again, both times, I "woke up" next to an aggro creature. The first time, it just incapped me, but the second time it killed me. Not good, but the only thing they could do is make you invulnerable for an amount of time after logging in, but you know that would be an exploit. Players having their posterior handed to them by an aggressive critter would simply exit the game, then immediately log back in so that they become invulnerable long enough to get away or, worse, kill the creature.
Your idea is good, but, sadly, I would not get my hopes up.
Sotaudi
Sotaudi,
That's a very good point. One of my ideas for exploration XP was already vetoed by the Devs as impossible, due to the inordinate amount of space each character would take up. According to my contact, characters in this game already take up an exponentially higher amount of space than characters in any other MMORPG on the market.
If I hear back about this, I'll will - of course - let you all know.
B
I'm not sure I follow your rationale from a developers standpoint. The only change that would need to be made would be an additional flag set for any given player (ie, if this player was a Scout, was he/she camping).
There would be no additional resident memory requirements. The players location is already saved, now when logging on, just determine if the player was ina secure camp or not.
From a developer stand point, the change is fairly trivial IMO.
A "mileage odometer"? What does that mean? What does that have to do with being able to log back in to a secured camp as opposed to logging back in to a hostile environment?
Maybe I'm not understanding what the original poster meant.
When a user logs out, I assume the following additionalinformation is saved: Planet, X/Y coords. Everything else associated with the character are already saved via the normal process (inventory, stats, etc).
Why would it be difficult to add 'Camp Type' to the information being saved on logout?
InVino,
I thought we were talking about adding in Exploration XP. It was late last night. 
I think the answer that was given above, about an exploit, is the primary answer to this question. I really would like to get a feel from the community as to whether or not this is a serious issue - I've actually never had this happen to me.
B
InVino,
Rereading the posts with a full cup of coffee in my system, here's what I think.
The issue was having camps reappear if you've logged out with them. My response about the exploration issue and the "mileage odometer" was to demonstrate that the Devs have a limited amount of space per character, and adding in a feature to allow camps to stay up, etc. when a character goes LD or logs out creates all sorts of space issues. Not only that, but you've got the problem of coming back online on another camp, etc.
On second thought, I'll try and get an answer on this issue, because it seems to me that this is more of a techincal question then a balance or creativty one.
One thing I've learned throughout my career, though, is that things that seem to have easy solutions (or be relatively easy to fix) rarely do. I always have to tell myself that just because I don't know how to do something doesn't mean that its easy for someone who knows how.
B
In,
Here's the direct quote from the Scout dev:
"I can't do a "mileage odometer" even though I like the idea because of
storage issues. I'm limited on the amount of extra data I can store on your
character sheet."
I don't know what the exactly means, but I'm willing to take his word for it.
B
and maybe a few (2-3) of these could be placed on some of the planets that dont allow building.