We must have characters locked into servers, no server-hopping!

[Razicator]

Having characters stay on the same server, assuming nothing catastrophic happens like server population death, would be the best thing for the game. All MMOs depend on community to survive, and one of the steps of building a community is being able to stake a reputation on a server, whether that be an individual reputation or an outfit reputation. If individuals, or outfits, can jump amongst the dozens of servers at will, then it'll be nothing more than Planetside matchmaking, and we all see how the anonymity of Halo/CoD matchmaking transferred into the community. Whereas something more permanent, like WoW characters, allowed for people to become notorious in their community, especially in PvP. But see how WoW's battlegrounds and arenas essentially became matchmaking after a patch, where you never face the same people ever again? That's when the PvP community really fell apart imo.

Permanence forces people to become attached to a server and a server's community. It also helps to decrease the anonymity of a player, which rewards skill and good reputation, while helping to counteract known hackers and griefers. Thoughts?

[laelgon]

I see no problem with character transfers as a premium service. People should be able to play with friends without having to restart the character they've spent time improving.

[Gandhi]

AFAIK this is already the plan. Characters are locked to server and empire.

[Fuse]

I see no problem with character transfers as a premium service. People should be able to play with friends without having to restart the character they've spent time improving.

SOE practically invented charging for character transfers, lol.

[CutterJohn]

Who cares if someone wants to switch? Go for it. Heck, Ideally, you'd just log in and decide what server to play on. The only thing that can hurt in a traditional mmo is the economy, and PS2 has none of that.

One of the worst aspects of server shards is meeting people who play the game. "You play [X] too? Cool! We should play together. What server? Oh. Nevermind."

And then, on the rare occasion that you're on the same server..

"Whoa! We're on the same server? What faction are you? Oh. Nevermind."


I'd rather be able to play with friends than have notoriety.

[basti]

I just wrote down the most epic rant about this thread, and almost posted it.

Then i remembered that i have to play nice. Damn. :/


But srly, its at least 1 character, locked to a specific server and faction. No reason to ever assume anything else.

[CutterJohn]

But srly, its at least 1 character, locked to a specific server and faction. No reason to ever assume anything else.


Some day, someone is going to have to describe to me why its a good thing to have to grind through all the game again to play with the other teams stuff.

[Fuse]

Screw community, this is the real issue: if faction 'X' is doing poorly on server #1 but well on server #2, is it hard to figure out what will happen? There will always be people who jump ship if things aren't going their way. Eventually you end up with 4000 'X'ers on server #2 and 10 on server #1. Conflict stagnates. The game dies. Transfers must and will be restricted.

Some day, someone is going to have to describe to me why its a good thing to have to grind through all the game again to play with the other teams stuff.

This seems a bit obvious, a bit repetative, but... Maybe the same reason there's an experience system in the game at all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning
It's almost like they are trying to get you to play their game! :lol:

[Razicator]

Who cares if someone wants to switch? Go for it. Heck, Ideally, you'd just log in and decide what server to play on. The only thing that can hurt in a traditional mmo is the economy, and PS2 has none of that.

One of the worst aspects of server shards is meeting people who play the game. "You play [X] too? Cool! We should play together. What server? Oh. Nevermind."

And then, on the rare occasion that you're on the same server..

"Whoa! We're on the same server? What faction are you? Oh. Nevermind."


I'd rather be able to play with friends than have notoriety.

You forget though this is a Free to Play game. Want to play a game with a new friend? Make a new character easy. If you want to keep your same character, pay for a server transfer.

And I don't quite understand what you mean by "what faction are you? oh nevermind." Are you arguing for allowing people to not only hop servers at will, but to hop empires? That would destroy the community, make it pointless...

Screw community, this is the real issue: if faction 'X' is doing poorly on server #1 but well on server #2, is it hard to figure out what will happen? There will always be people who jump ship if things aren't going their way. Eventually you end up with 4000 'X'ers on server #2 and 10 on server #1. Conflict stagnates. The game dies. Transfers must and will be restricted.

Actually that's a very good point. That's why a lot of the server lockouts in PS1 happened: people with an alt on the winning faction would jump ship and join the very enemy they were fighting. Apply this server wide, and you'll end up like some WoW servers with 99% horde 1% alliance due to people getting frustrated at losing PvP due to the very population imbalance that it started with.

[Sledgecrushr]

It would be freaking awesome if youre whole outfit can pull up roots and go to another server and basically conquer a whole new world. I am all for moving from server to server whenever you like.

[CutterJohn]

That would destroy the community, make it pointless...

Not everyone cares about the community, or pays attention to it.

If given the option, would you always be switching around? I wouldn't. I'd stick with my outfit most nights. But I'd have the option to do other stuff if I felt like it.

People are always going on, sometimes to crazy extremes, about their faction loyalty. If thats as important as people say it is, then the majority of the time they wouldn't be switching anyway.

The people who would, are the zerg. Because they don't care. But you also don't care about them, because they are zerg. They have no community, they're an army of lone wolves looking for enemies to shoot.


The other consideration is, why does your desire for a closer knit community outweigh their desire to play as they wish? Food for thought.


Actually that's a very good point. That's why a lot of the server lockouts in PS1 happened: people with an alt on the winning faction would jump ship and join the very enemy they were fighting. Apply this server wide, and you'll end up like some WoW servers with 99% horde 1% alliance due to people getting frustrated at losing PvP due to the very population imbalance that it started with.

Its not a good point. You can restrict actions without prohibiting them. What does every single FPS do when you try to switch to the overpopulated team. It tells you no, you can't.

[Xyntech]

Not everyone cares about the community, or pays attention to it.

If given the option, would you always be switching around? I wouldn't. I'd stick with my outfit most nights. But I'd have the option to do other stuff if I felt like it.

People are always going on, sometimes to crazy extremes, about their faction loyalty. If thats as important as people say it is, then the majority of the time they wouldn't be switching anyway.

The people who would, are the zerg. Because they don't care. But you also don't care about them, because they are zerg. They have no community, they're an army of lone wolves looking for enemies to shoot.


The other consideration is, why does your desire for a closer knit community outweigh their desire to play as they wish? Food for thought.

Pretty much this. As long as those players interested in community have the option to keep playing on their favorite server (aren't forced to join a random server each time they log in), it will take care of itself. Those interested in community will stay put, and thus keep running into those other community oriented players who are also staying put.

Who cares if random zergling #3971 gets replaced with random zergling #9283 from another server?

There is a big difference between fostering and supporting things like community and team work vs trying to force them.

But as it stands, characters are locked to servers. Not my first choice, but I'm not extremely against it either.

[Goku]

I don't really have any problem with moving between servers just due to this being F2P. Lets people move off of potential queues for their main server or if they are tired of that particular one they can move on. I don't see community being a issue as with what CutterJon is saying as well.

[basti]

Some day, someone is going to have to describe to me why its a good thing to have to grind through all the game again to play with the other teams stuff.

Because its an MMO.

If you allow people to just switch around servers as they please, you destroy the community. And not just that, you also destroy the game itself. Suddenly the only thing that keeps you playing is the group of people you actually play with, and the very game itself. If the group leaves, its just the gameplay itself, and we all know that every single game in existence is boring after a while. We know this, because we arent playing Duke3D right now.

What keeps gamers in a game is the community, nothign else. Never have been anything else, never will be. If you attach yourself to the community and become a part of it, you will enjoy coming on, talking with the guys you know (friends and foe), have a rant at that one due who just kills you every damn time, get a squad of the usual folks around who dont belong to your usual guild/outfit (anyone remember those late night ops? For me, it was always the same folks + a few extras every night :) ), etc.


Fact is, having one character for every server, allowing you to switch around as you please, will destroy your fun.
Thats why we tend to play on the same server in most games, and hate matchmaking.

[Xyntech]

Fact is, having one character for every server, allowing you to switch around as you please, will destroy your fun.
Thats why we tend to play on the same server in most games, and hate matchmaking.

What about switching your character to another server being a semi weighty decision. Like you can only do it once a week, and you can never switch to a server that currently has more than a certain percentage of your empires population.

Still room to transfer if you decide you don't like a server anymore, without having to get rid of potentially years of unlocks on a character.

[Fuse]

Because its an MMO.

If you allow people to just switch around servers as they please, you destroy the community. And not just that, you also destroy the game itself. Suddenly the only thing that keeps you playing is the group of people you actually play with, and the very game itself. If the group leaves, its just the gameplay itself, and we all know that every single game in existence is boring after a while. We know this, because we arent playing Duke3D right now.

What keeps gamers in a game is the community, nothign else. Never have been anything else, never will be.

Making blanket statements that apply to every gamer? I've never played shooters for the community (PS being the sole exception), but I still have played the hell out of the good ones. I played Counter-Strike almost every day for ten years, never joined a clan, only became a regular on a couple of servers (because they always had admins on-line but they weren't on power trips). I played because the game was good. I still frequently will hop on to play a round or two on a completely random server. WoW is the exact opposite. Most of my friends played it, people who didn't play any other game. I didn't like the game so I did not keep playing it. If I wanted to talk to my friends I called them.

If I want community there are forums and chat rooms, and they're free. I don't mean it doesn't help a game, but it is pretty far down the list behind things like game play. (Maybe it's because growing up few of my friends gamed, where as my earliest memories are of computers. Gaming was never part of my social life.)

[Sirisian]

If you allow people to just switch around servers as they please, you destroy the community.
You're making an assumption that people will log into a random server every time they login. I think it's a bit unrealistic in an MMO for players to do that even if your character isn't locked to a server. That might be an assumption on my part with how I'd choose servers. That is I'd choose a server where my friends were playing. For the same reason I imagine most of PSU will try to be on the same server. That is Planetside is special. It has outfits which create a community. Locking players to a server is a pointless thing to do. If you want multiple characters just create another one. You shouldn't have to be forced to start fresh on a new server. (I didn't play Planetside for the grind).

However, you skipped one of the more important reasons why they are doing this other than the reward model to keep players playing. Monetary reasons. If they can charge for people to switch servers then they can make small amounts of money. However, if they can get the community to believe that switching servers is bad then they can charge people that are too lazy to unlock things via the item shop. I'm guessing this is their main goal and why they haven't talked about things much.

[xIIDeAdLyIIx]

I believe people will eventually have to switch servers after the game dies down after launch.

Make it so server changes are only possible from overpopulated servers/to underpopulated servers.

[Mechzz]

This is easily the most unbalanced poll title I have yet seen on this forum, and that's saying something :)

[Razicator]

This is easily the most unbalanced poll title I have yet seen on this forum, and that's saying something :)

Unbalanced as in inherent bias? :( I tried to purposely make it as brief and concise as possible to remove any bias, as well as removing any adjectives or adverbs that might suggest one side.

[CutterJohn]

This seems a bit obvious, a bit repetative, but... Maybe the same reason there's an experience system in the game at all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

Thats fine for an mmo. They need to stretch out the content to make it last a decent amount of time. Its unnecessary to do this in an FPS, because other players ARE the content. The point of the game is the fight, not the new shinies.

:)


Unbalanced as in inherent bias? :( I tried to purposely make it as brief and concise as possible to remove any bias, as well as removing any adjectives or adverbs that might suggest one side.


Your title contains 'We must have characters locked into servers'. The poll title is saying the first option on the poll is a must. Pretty biased.

If I made an identical poll titled 'We must not have characters locked into servers.', what would you think of it?

[Mechzz]

Unbalanced as in inherent bias? :( I tried to purposely make it as brief and concise as possible to remove any bias, as well as removing any adjectives or adverbs that might suggest one side.

My bad. I am referring to the name of the thread - that is biased, and indicates, I guess, your feelings on the poll.

The name of the poll is fine, but I only read it since you worded your answer so well :)

Personally I always assume the name of the poll is the same as the name of the thread. Will try to do better in the future.

[Rumblepit]

i dont think people understand the scale of the game yet. there should be no less then 40 servers at launch, if its a decent launch. people will need to move around a bit and you can be sure soe is gonna make money off that. people are gonna play, then find out their old outfit from ps,cod,bf,halo, is playing or their coworkers ,friends ,family so on so forth and they will want to play with them..not allowing players to change servers will hurt the game in the long run and lower soe's income. THIS WONT HAPPEN. you have a better chance of seeing Elvis playing ps2. ill stay on a locked east or west coast server if i have that option, dont want to be playing with any high pings.

[Fuse]

Thats fine for an mmo. They need to stretch out the content to make it last a decent amount of time. Its unnecessary to do this in an FPS, because other players ARE the content. The point of the game is the fight, not the new shinies.


Agreed, but everyone knows how easy it is to keep most people playing after the fun using these systems. I can't really blame them for using it... Hell, look at stretch goals on Kickstarter. Practically the same thing.

So long as the underlying game is good I don't have a problem with it. If your game is dull and driven purely by the grind (Diablo 3 after 10 hours), that's when I have an issue with it.

[Eyeklops]

Why I would like to be able to move my toon to any server within my REGION at will:

1. My regular server has a 80+ queue and I would like to play sometime within the next hour.
2. I would like to escape hacker(s) gone wild late in the night.
3. I have just plain gotten sick of the people on my current server.
4. Another server in the region has more pop/a better fight.
5. I feel that my empire is over dominating population wise, and want a server with more targets.
6. I want to fight on XX continent, but it has a massive queue.


If PS2 explodes like they are expecting, there could be 10 or 15 servers in Vegas alone. This isn't WoW where PVE content can fill in the entertainment during low population times. I would guess most players will want to go play on the fullest server with the lowest entry queue.

[psychobilly]

If you want to play on another server... suck it up and start from scratch. It's free so quit bitching.

[Sirisian]

If you want to play on another server... suck it up and start from scratch. It's free so quit bitching.
Think about it though. Why put a constraint into the system for no reason. It seems extremely arbitrary like someone sat down and was like "okay so what restrictions do we want to put on characters?" and someone was like "well how about they can't go between servers like in WoW so players have to make new characters on each server? That worked really well and there was never any problems with it" and no one asked "why? What does limiting players on a server give us or reinforce that the outfit system doesn't already? Are we afraid a whole outfit will up and move between servers everyday? How will this effect casual players that log in for the zerg experience and just want to play on a specific continent? Is it important to stop them from switching servers for a better fight to control populations? Obviously forcing them to start from scratch is a huge incentive to trap them on a server they aren't having fun on. That will really help the game. What if they find a friend who plays the game? Is it important to have them start from scratch on their friend's server and manage multiple characters now with their own cert trees? Obviously we can get a monetary gain for getting them to unlock things faster on alts, but is it the right thing to do? When a server's population drops randomly do we charge everyone to move characters knowing full well they have no one to play with or do we move people between the same regional servers as populations fluctuate to keep battles high?"

I digress, there's too much rationalizing in this thread and not many people asking why this is the default behavior that SOE is taking. The poll alone shows how little people are thinking about this topic. :rolleyes:

[Eyeklops]

Think about it though. Why put a constraint into the system for no reason. It seems extremely arbitrary like someone sat down and was like "okay so what restrictions do we want to put on characters?" and someone was like "well how about they can't go between servers like in WoW so players have to make new characters on each server? That worked really well and there was never any problems with it" and no one asked "why? What does limiting players on a server give us or reinforce that the outfit system doesn't already? Are we afraid a whole outfit will up and move between servers everyday? How will this effect casual players that log in for the zerg experience and just want to play on a specific continent? Is it important to stop them from switching servers for a better fight to control populations? Obviously forcing them to start from scratch is a huge incentive to trap them on a server they aren't having fun on. That will really help the game. What if they find a friend who plays the game? Is it important to have them start from scratch on their friend's server and manage multiple characters now with their own cert trees? Obviously we can get a monetary gain for getting them to unlock things faster on alts, but is it the right thing to do? When a server's population drops randomly do we charge everyone to move characters knowing full well they have no one to play with or do we move people between the same regional servers as populations fluctuate to keep battles high?"

I digress, there's too much rationalizing in this thread and not many people asking why this is the default behavior that SOE is taking. The poll alone shows how little people are thinking about this topic. :rolleyes:

I was typing up something similar. Agree 100%

[wraithverge]

as long as servers are locked per faction I don't see a real reason why not.

[Razicator]

Think about it though. Why put a constraint into the system for no reason. It seems extremely arbitrary like someone sat down and was like "okay so what restrictions do we want to put on characters?" and someone was like "well how about they can't go between servers like in WoW so players have to make new characters on each server? That worked really well and there was never any problems with it" and no one asked "why? What does limiting players on a server give us or reinforce that the outfit system doesn't already? Are we afraid a whole outfit will up and move between servers everyday? How will this effect casual players that log in for the zerg experience and just want to play on a specific continent? Is it important to stop them from switching servers for a better fight to control populations? Obviously forcing them to start from scratch is a huge incentive to trap them on a server they aren't having fun on. That will really help the game. What if they find a friend who plays the game? Is it important to have them start from scratch on their friend's server and manage multiple characters now with their own cert trees? Obviously we can get a monetary gain for getting them to unlock things faster on alts, but is it the right thing to do? When a server's population drops randomly do we charge everyone to move characters knowing full well they have no one to play with or do we move people between the same regional servers as populations fluctuate to keep battles high?"

I digress, there's too much rationalizing in this thread and not many people asking why this is the default behavior that SOE is taking. The poll alone shows how little people are thinking about this topic. :rolleyes:

Thing is my main concern is making friends within the servers and feeling attached to a community. If at any point anybody can log into anywhere and fight anyplace at anytime, then ultimately you are fighting a bunch of nameless enemies who might as well be AI, for after that night you will never see that same person again. It's great that we all have dozens of friends in real life who all play Planetside, but it's also great to make friends within the game.

Think about the number of friends you guys made on Xbox live during Halo or CoD multiplayer matchmaking. One... two? Maybe negative, lose a friend? Doesn't matter, you can hop in a lobby with real life friends and blast more nameless people. What about in WoW? How many friends have you made? One... two... dozens? Again, it's not difficult to roll a new character on a friend's server, or at worst spend money to transfer. Hell, Planetside is even EASIER, because it's not like the gap between new and veteran characters in WoW. Or if you guys can't make friends in games, which games can you see yourself making friends easier, in another life?

You can get around this problem by joining an outfit, but if half of the people on one outfit are spread among 50 servers, it doesn't really give a sense of community.

[Sirisian]

Thing is my main concern is making friends within the servers and feeling attached to a community. If at any point anybody can log into anywhere and fight anyplace at anytime, then ultimately you are fighting a bunch of nameless enemies who might as well be AI, for after that night you will never see that same person again. It's great that we all have dozens of friends in real life who all play Planetside, but it's also great to make friends within the game.
You'll be joining squads and friending people I'd imagine to talk to them with the in game voice chat. Under ideal circumstances your real-life friends and in-game will be part of the same outfit. That and most of the people in the game are probably going to choose the same server every time they login merely because they form a habit or know others that choose that server. Statistically speaking you'll join the game as will everyone else and notice 80% of their friends are in the same server. Unless there is a shift these interconnected set of friends will continue to play on the same server since they all see each other on the server. For an outfit this means statistically there might be a person on the server all the time marking the server essentially as the main server.

Think about the number of friends you guys made on Xbox live during Halo or CoD multiplayer matchmaking. One... two?
I tend to play on private servers and I don't own any consoles so I can't relate. :) I guess you're assuming there will be hundreds of servers and people will forget which one they played on and not play on the same regional server every time they login. Personally simple stuff like allowing players to mark their favorite or default server seems like enough. Depending on the population there might be over 100 servers at launch though so anything is possible.

[Eyeklops]

Thing is my main concern is making friends within the servers and feeling attached to a community. If at any point anybody can log into anywhere and fight anyplace at anytime, then ultimately you are fighting a bunch of nameless enemies who might as well be AI, for after that night you will never see that same person again. It's great that we all have dozens of friends in real life who all play Planetside, but it's also great to make friends within the game.

Think about the number of friends you guys made on Xbox live during Halo or CoD multiplayer matchmaking. One... two? Maybe negative, lose a friend? Doesn't matter, you can hop in a lobby with real life friends and blast more nameless people. What about in WoW? How many friends have you made? One... two... dozens? Again, it's not difficult to roll a new character on a friend's server, or at worst spend money to transfer. Hell, Planetside is even EASIER, because it's not like the gap between new and veteran characters in WoW. Or if you guys can't make friends in games, which games can you see yourself making friends easier, in another life?

You can get around this problem by joining an outfit, but if half of the people on one outfit are spread among 50 servers, it doesn't really give a sense of community.

If your outfit and friends are playing on a server you can't get into because of a massive queue, what fun is that? If toon's are region portable then the whole outfit can just move to a server with open slots so members don't have to wait to play with them. And why can't a "region" be a community?

I can already see servers becoming popular based upon what gaming backround an outfit/player comes from. I am sure most of the remaining PS1 players / PSU forumgoers will all try to jam into the same server to be with friends. The BF3/COD players will probably populate another server. I see this as the *second division of the overall PS2 community. If toons are at least region portable there is a much greater chance of the whole community mixing together which I feel is better for the game in the long run.

And I don't mean "region" as in the whole "region lock" debacle. EU's would still be able to play on US servers and vise versa, but the region that toon is created in is the region that toon stays in.

I am just trying to mitigate the massive wait times to play. If you lock players onto 1 specific server you force them into a choice.
A - Pick a less populated server and potentially deal with low pop during off hours.
B - Pick a popular server and potentially deal with long queues during peak hours.
C - Waste tons of time grinding alts for little to no real purpose.

Why force this choice? Why not let them pick the most populated server with the smallest queue? Why not give large outfits the option to find a server that can fit all their members during peak time easily, but still have the ability to "go where the pop is at" during down times?

*This first division of the PS2 community will likely be by region cluster playstyle. In PS1 playstyles on Werner, Emerald, & Markov were all different.

[The Kush]

Having characters stay on the same server, assuming nothing catastrophic happens like server population death, would be the best thing for the game. All MMOs depend on community to survive, and one of the steps of building a community is being able to stake a reputation on a server, whether that be an individual reputation or an outfit reputation. If individuals, or outfits, can jump amongst the dozens of servers at will, then it'll be nothing more than Planetside matchmaking, and we all see how the anonymity of Halo/CoD matchmaking transferred into the community. Whereas something more permanent, like WoW characters, allowed for people to become notorious in their community, especially in PvP. But see how WoW's battlegrounds and arenas essentially became matchmaking after a patch, where you never face the same people ever again? That's when the PvP community really fell apart imo.

Permanence forces people to become attached to a server and a server's community. It also helps to decrease the anonymity of a player, which rewards skill and good reputation, while helping to counteract known hackers and griefers. Thoughts?

100% agree

[Zulthus]

No. I do not think they should allow server switching. Community may not be important to some people but this game should not degenerate into a matchmaking type with little to no community.

Most people from PS1 talk with pride about what server they're from, people form rivalries and friendships because we always stayed on one server. We know almost everyone we see on the battlefield and we recognize names... community is the most important thing in the game and shouldn't be plagued by something like this. I highly doubt the concerns of servers always being full so your outfit can't play together one night will happen.

[Rumblepit]

if you want to move a account it will cost ya 10$ in the market place. why give any of you this for free??????????? this is a free to play game, and if at some point you dont like playing on your server or wish to move for other reasons then have at it. but you have to pay and meet ping requirements!!!

[SKYeXile]

LOCK EM IN!

too many games now allow for the shit when you can switch and change servers, change name, these servers build no sense of community or faction pride that was one of the things that kept the game great and kept us playing and needs to be brought back in PS2.

If people really want to switch, then they can pay the gold price which im sure SOE will include.

[Xyntech]

if you want to move a account it will cost ya 10$ in the market place. why give any of you this for free??????????? this is a free to play game, and if at some point you dont like playing on your server or wish to move for other reasons then have at it. but you have to pay and meet ping requirements!!!

It does seem fair enough. Still an option to get the fuck out of a server who's community has gone to shit without losing everything you've put into a character, while still keeping it from being an everyday ordinary thing.

I still don't think it's as big a deal as people make it out to be though. I guess I'm not thinking of any good examples either way. Does anyone have a good example of an MMO where players could move their characters from one server to another freely and it destroyed the community? Because if there isn't any good examples, we're all just speculating out our asses.

[Rumblepit]

It does seem fair enough. Still an option to get the fuck out of a server who's community has gone to shit without losing everything you've put into a character, while still keeping it from being an everyday ordinary thing.

I still don't think it's as big a deal as people make it out to be though. I guess I'm not thinking of any good examples either way. Does anyone have a good example of an MMO where players could move their characters from one server to another freely and it destroyed the community? Because if there isn't any good examples, we're all just speculating out our asses.


that is debatable. but it is financially stupid to allow people to do this for free. will they allow people to do this for free or make bank off it? even though its f2p they paln to make alot of money off this game.

[Sirisian]

too many games now allow for the shit when you can switch and change servers, change name
What MMO allows that? I'd really like to hear some stories about this.

No. I do not think they should allow server switching. Community may not be important to some people but this game should not degenerate into a matchmaking type with little to no community.
Are you sure these two ideas are related? So server switching means there can't be a community? I think you're making the same illogical statement others are trying to go for. That is you're assuming that people will switch servers and that a community cannot form if people can freely switch servers. I've never seen anything from an MMO stance that would reinforce that line of thinking.

[Raka Maru]

Think global. If you keep your name, you are the same character. I personally don't mind the fee if it comes to that, I just want to be able to move if I want to.

[SKYeXile]

What MMO allows that? I'd really like to hear some stories about this.


Are you sure these two ideas are related? So server switching means there can't be a community? I think you're making the same illogical statement others are trying to go for. That is you're assuming that people will switch servers and that a community cannot form if people can freely switch servers. I've never seen anything from an MMO stance that would reinforce that line of thinking.

WoW allow its, go read the server forums, see if you can get any sense of community at at.

there can be a community if theres transfers sure, but it wont be the same, not when whole outfits just decide to up and move, new ones decide to come in etc.

[NCLynx]

My first thought was "Why not?"

But after some additional thought, I feel like giving the option to be on w/e server you choose whenever logging in will take away from the "community" aspect. (Probably a poor way to phrase that)

In the original you got this sense of excitement (or at least I did) knowing that a certain outfit on the server was attacking your base or you knew they were at a base you were about to attack. If it did so happen to be a case where it was an enemy outfit you knew could do some damage it also put a sense of urgency into things since it wasn't just some zerg squad.

Allowing anyone to choose any server any day could possibly take away from that.

[kadrin]

A great idea Blizzard has is the RealID friends list. Lets you talk to and group with friends from other servers to do BGs or LFDs. You can even talk across their games (WoW, SC2, and D3).

Maybe adding something similar in PS2, so people can freely join whatever server they want, and if they run into a couple of guys they like, they can add each other to that. Have some sort of system so you can see which server your friends are on before you log in so you can join them.

[Raka Maru]

My first thought was "Why not?"

But after some additional thought, I feel like giving the option to be on w/e server you choose whenever logging in will take away from the "community" aspect. (Probably a poor way to phrase that)

In the original you got this sense of excitement (or at least I did) knowing that a certain outfit on the server was attacking your base or you knew they were at a base you were about to attack. If it did so happen to be a case where it was an enemy outfit you knew could do some damage it also put a sense of urgency into things since it wasn't just some zerg squad.

Allowing anyone to choose any server any day could possibly take away from that.

Not really, you can pick your home server. Those who call that place home too will see you often. I for one would like to see familiar faces (names), but being stuck somewhere you spent $100s and having to start a new char? If I move, I wanna bring my stuff, thus my ID and char name.

The Berlin wall kept people in, see how that turned out.

[Toppopia]

Not really, you can pick your home server. Those who call that place home too will see you often. I for one would like to see familiar faces (names), but being stuck somewhere you spent $100s and having to start a new char? If I move, I wanna bring my stuff, thus my ID and char name.

The Berlin wall kept people in, see how that turned out.

I know, if only it had been reinforced better, maybe make the wall thicker and twice as high and went 10 feet underground, would have worked :lol:

[Eyeklops]

No takers on debating my post (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=704576&postcount=32) I see. I guess that means I win. YEY!

[Razicator]

One example guys:

One outfit is split amongst all the servers, playing with friends or because better action over here or maybe original server is full. One guy says "Help! NC are attacking this base and we need help! Come outfit!"

The rest of the outfit responds "I'm at another base on another server that the NC are attacking, who cares about your base."

No reason to jump to another server to defend a base, or assault a base, when you can do that on any other server. No sense of "home."

[Sirisian]

WoW allow its, go read the server forums, see if you can get any sense of community at at.
I've only played the game for a week since my friends asked me to try it, but my brother was part of a small knit group that played for over a year together. That seemed like a horrible example on your part. I mean you had 40 man raids with guilds all the time in that game. It seemed to have a really huge community from what I could remember. (My brother was on TS talking to these guys for hours while playing). Reminded me just like Planetside 1 when I was with Wolfpack on TS.

No takers on debating my post (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=704576&postcount=32) I see. I guess that means I win. YEY!
I think the people arguing against this concept are basing this mostly on a gut feeling that they'll lose the Planetside 1 experience somehow by allowing players to go between servers. They're probably just idly dismissing the arguments since they think anything that locks characters to one server will help not just faction loyalty, but server loyalty. I mean who wants to play on another server even if it's dying if they have to start from scratch and everything is mostly time based to unlock skills? Pretty much no one that I know of.

Seriously the really sane way to handle things is 1 character name with a single character for all 3 factions. You login then select your faction then select the server you want to play (or just select from your favorites) and hit play. Simplest system with no unnecessary locks for players and with a sane cert system so players have absolutely no incentive to make more accounts. It's sad that I have to say this, but if you think really hard about this and draw out every pro and con you'll realize there is absolutely no problem with allowing that. (I mean really think about it critically and draw out all the hypotheticals that players will go through). (Hard thought problem: Think about how Tribes Ascend works with 2 "factions" and how it differs from Planetside's theoretical faction loyalty).

[laelgon]

One example guys:

One outfit is split amongst all the servers, playing with friends or because better action over here or maybe original server is full. One guy says "Help! NC are attacking this base and we need help! Come outfit!"

The rest of the outfit responds "I'm at another base on another server that the NC are attacking, who cares about your base."

No reason to jump to another server to defend a base, or assault a base, when you can do that on any other server. No sense of "home."

Well at that point it's no longer one outfit if it's on multiple servers. You couldn't make a game like Planetside 2 be operated like that, having multiple channels of the same continent on one server. I can't see SOE passing up the opportunity to cash in on character transfers, since it's such an easy process.

Honestly I don't see why they've bothered restricting people to one empire per account for a server since with the game being free to play anyone can create a second character on another faction with minimal effort. Seems like little more than another hoop to jump through for someone who wanted to spy on an enemy. I guess the only real reason is that SOE sees they can get people to pay for the same customizations a second time since a character on another faction on another account would need to buy everything again.

[SKYeXile]

I've only played the game for a week since my friends asked me to try it, but my brother was part of a small knit group that played for over a year together. That seemed like a horrible example on your part. I mean you had 40 man raids with guilds all the time in that game. It seemed to have a really huge community from what I could remember. (My brother was on TS talking to these guys for hours while playing). Reminded me just like Planetside 1 when I was with Wolfpack on TS.

That was a horrible example on your part, im not talking about 1 guild, im talking about servers as a whole. there is no sense of anything in wow.

people apply to guilds cross server, transfer in, things go bad or they ninja an item, be a general spaz or ninja a gbank..whatever they change server, change name. theres no accountability what so ever.

the size of population has no bearing on the community, there is no community in wow, it is a PVE game sure so its alittle different, but nobody cares about the other guilds or whats going on on the server, its become even more meaningless with phasing and cross realm pve/pvp.

If they allow people to transfer outfits in an out, there's no chance for alliances to build and if a large or powerful outfit moves in or transfers out it can effect the balance of a server.

[Sirisian]

That was a horrible example on your part, im not talking about 1 guild, im talking about servers as a whole. there is no sense of anything in wow.
[...]
the size of population has no bearing on the community, there is no community in wow, it is a PVE game sure so its alittle different, but nobody cares about the other guilds or whats going on on the server, its become even more meaningless with phasing and cross realm pve/pvp.
You act like there was something between outfits in Planetside 1. Also population does matter. I knew some people in Planetside when playing, but I generally the only people I really knew were in my outfit. Maybe you took extra care to memorize everyone you could even outside of your outfit, but that's purely possible because of the extremely small population in Planetside 1 and the closeness of all the player interacting in PvP with each other. At most 400 people in a small area. In WoW you had 7K give or take spread out across a world in small groups.

Comparing WoW's community where players were generally spread out based on level is also a poor comparison further dividing players. It's something you won't see in Planetside 1/2 allowing more people more time to interact in one area.

If they allow people to transfer outfits in an out, there's no chance for alliances to build and if a large or powerful outfit moves in or transfers out it can effect the balance of a server.
Definitely in a PvP game if a whole outfit decided to raid a server that could happen. Though fighting on a continent where you're largely outnumbering the opponent wasn't very fun in Planetside 1. I doubt it'll be a huge incentive for outfits. Now having one outfit notice another outfit is raiding and then jumping across a server with another huge outfit to stomp that would be hilariously fun.

Regarding building alliances between outfits I really think that kind of stuff should be done via actual systems in the game. We didn't have any alliances really in Planetside as far as I know and I was over the years part of like every main outfit on Emerald when my friend and I was jumping between them.

[SKYeXile]

If you havnt played wow, you should probably stop talking about it, i dont mean to be offensive, but iv played it alot iv seen its decline, pre transfers and xrealm, there was a great sense of community on the servers. I cant say that it was specificity transfers that killed it, but that and xrealm were large contributing factors for sure. prior to that there was server IRC's, you you know who you were fighting, you would typically see the same players runnings around in AV all the time and the realm forums were active with the general hate and trash talking you probably remember from planetside.
There is absolutely none of that anymore in wow.

[Razicator]

If you havnt played wow, you should probably stop talking about it, i dont mean to be offensive, but iv played it alot iv seen its decline, pre transfers and xrealm, there was a great sense of community on the servers. I cant say that it was specificity transfers that killed it, but that and xrealm were large contributing factors for sure. prior to that there was server IRC's, you you know who you were fighting, you would typically see the same players runnings around in AV all the time and the realm forums were active with the general hate and trash talking you probably remember from planetside.
There is absolutely none of that anymore in wow.

You just... had to BE there for the rise and fall of PVP, rise and fall of raids, rise and fall of balance, the rise and fall of community and reputation...

The horrors man. Thank god I got out while I could... Good experiences though overall, mostly in the beginning.

[SKYeXile]

You just... had to BE there for the rise and fall of PVP, rise and fall of raids, rise and fall of balance, the rise and fall of community and reputation...

The horrors man. Thank god I got out while I could... Good experiences though overall, mostly in the beginning.

The hardest part of wow these days is staying subbed to it.

[Neurotoxin]

I say everyone should have 1 character that is used on every server. I don't wanna have to buy the gold trim for my pulsar on 5 different servers, and level up 5 different characters in 5 different outfits.

Share outfits across servers, share character databases across servers. That way outfits can raid servers they aren't usually on to mix up the action.

[Jayballz]

I think a big factor for me when it comes to this topic is from what I have seen is there is a huge amount of loyalty that comes with the Planetside Community. I feel not being able to switch servers on the fly helps reinforce that felling of loyalty. I think that it would be a good idea to make it a micro transaction. I could see that being a good idea for example if I found a awesome outfit online that was currently recruiting but they weren't on the same server as me and I wanted to join then, I feel would be a good reason to make it a micro transaction. If it was free and on the fly people could switch servers specifically to get on a server where their Empire is winning. I could see some population issues with it being free.

Even in WoW with a $25 server fee there are big population drops and inclines because of Battlegroups doing better then others. I even did it with My alliance on Mannoroth who I switched over to Illidan Horde just because the population difference was almost 10:1 on the server and Illidan had a huge PvP community.

[Raka Maru]

Shackling me to one server will not stop me from going to another server, it will inconvenience me and piss me off when I have to buy my favorite shop items again.

Forcing people to stay somewhere never works. It doesn't work in real life, and it won't work in a FTP game.

Why put in an infrastructure to enforce this as the OP states?

We're talking about community, not inmates. I stay on my server Because I want to be there. I want to be there with my friends, my outfit. Not because of a game mechanic that can easily be bypassed by a new account that is FREE.

[kasiraghi]

...I don't wanna have to buy the gold trim for my pulsar on 5 different servers...

This is the point I was going to make, and I'm surprised it took four pages for this to come up.

Neurotoxin has asked a question that I have (that I couldn't find an answer to) in regards to unlocks/purchases that weighs-in heavily here.

Intrinsically I am AGAINST server-moves completely, but that is based on a couple of assumptions.

Being F2P with (what seems so far to be) a sensible 'purchase' system, if we buy something does it then become available to all chars over all servers? It should really... this means that a 'server' move would only impact us until we earned enough XP to unlock the upgrades we want.

This seems to make a server-swap fairly easy with relatively few down-sides.

But what if unlock costs are slightly lower and you have to buy seperately for every server? It's not impossible and makes swapping penalising to a much greater degree. (The money thing is an aside to me, if I love it I'm going to be spending at least as much as it would cost to buy a non-F2p in the first month probably)

It seems it's going to be difficult to seperate these points in an argument over whether server-swapping is going to be allowable/easy/sensible.

[Jayballz]

Raka Maru- We're talking about community, not inmates. I stay on my server Because I want to be there. I want to be there with my friends, my outfit. Not because of a game mechanic that can easily be bypassed by a new account that is FREE.

You have a good point and I agree.

[SgtMAD]

I have the answer

don't let ppl move their characters across servers, that way when they get sick of playing on their server, they can just quit playing instead of sinking all the time/cash into another char.

/sarcasm off

[CutterJohn]

Thing is my main concern is making friends within the servers and feeling attached to a community. If at any point anybody can log into anywhere and fight anyplace at anytime, then ultimately you are fighting a bunch of nameless enemies who might as well be AI, for after that night you will never see that same person again. It's great that we all have dozens of friends in real life who all play Planetside, but it's also great to make friends within the game.

Not really. People would tend to go to the same place. Every FPS I've played, I tend to find favorite servers and stick with them. Yes, theres a constant steam of people hopping in and out, but you learn the regulars.

Think about the number of friends you guys made on Xbox live during Halo or CoD multiplayer matchmaking. One... two? Maybe negative, lose a friend? Doesn't matter, you can hop in a lobby with real life friends and blast more nameless people. What about in WoW? How many friends have you made? One... two... dozens? Again, it's not difficult to roll a new character on a friend's server, or at worst spend money to transfer. Hell, Planetside is even EASIER, because it's not like the gap between new and veteran characters in WoW. Or if you guys can't make friends in games, which games can you see yourself making friends easier, in another life?

Matchmaking is a completely different beast to picking a server, since you have no choice where you go or who you're stuck with. There is no point making friends because you'll never see them again.

Making a new account/character means you give up your connections. Your friends no longer know you're online, you can't talk to them. People will not recognize your name. You're actively hurting 'community' by requiring the new account/character. You're suddenly a random person again to others.

You can get around this problem by joining an outfit, but if half of the people on one outfit are spread among 50 servers, it doesn't really give a sense of community.

FPS clans manage just fine.

[SpcFarlen]

Im not opposed to having people pay some fee to switch, but i dont think it should be too cheap either. I just dont want there to be an "abandon ship" mechanic where just because they may only have a base and a handful of outposts outside their warpgates they feel that they need to leave that server to have fun. Many games with 2 factions are destroyed by this, SWTOR for instance. Usually with a 3 faction system it is much harder for that to happen, but it still can.

[Eyeklops]

Im not opposed to having people pay some fee to switch, but i dont think it should be too cheap either. I just dont want there to be an "abandon ship" mechanic where just because they may only have a base and a handful of outposts outside their warpgates they feel that they need to leave that server to have fun. Many games with 2 factions are destroyed by this, SWTOR for instance. Usually with a 3 faction system it is much harder for that to happen, but it still can.

When I was playing PS1, if the battles sucked ass, or the population was being retarded, would usually say "fuck it" and go play a different game. However, if I could have easily just logged my main into another server I probably would have done so and kept playing. So if the "players" are the content, you really want them to be playing as much as possible, regardless of what server it is.

[CutterJohn]

I find it interesting that roughly 2/3s of the people do not want the ability to transfer servers. Which means, roughly 2/3s of the people wouldn't use the option if it were available. In other words, a very sizable static community.

So whats the problem again?

[Gandhi]

Which means, roughly 2/3s of the people wouldn't use the option if it were available.
It doesn't mean that at all.

[Xyntech]

I find it interesting that roughly 2/3s of the people do not want the ability to transfer servers. Which means, roughly 2/3s of the people wouldn't use the option if it were available. In other words, a very sizable static community.

So whats the problem again?

Well this community is biased towards people who stuck with a dying game for years on end. I don't think characters jumping servers would be too huge an issue, but this isn't exactly a good sample pool for the general PS2 population.

[Dreamcast]

I don't see the problem.


Some people will switch...The majority will not....Obviously people shouldn't be hopping back and forth whenever they want, their would probably be a timer or Planetside will charge which will make people want to change servers even less.


and for those talking about how it ruins communities...No it doesn't....Persons would stick with their server if they were familiar rather than try a new server.

If anything it enhances the community because friends can play with friends.....If a guy is willing to go to another server for a friend then the server he is on must no be that special to him which means the guy must not be that special to the server thus it won't ruin the community because the community doesn't give a damn about the guy.

[Raka Maru]

I don't see the problem.


Some people will switch...The majority will not....Obviously people shouldn't be hopping back and forth whenever they want, their would probably be a timer or Planetside will charge which will make people want to change servers even less.


and for those talking about how it ruins communities...No it doesn't....Persons would stick with their server if they were familiar rather than try a new server.

If anything it enhances the community because friends can play with friends.....If a guy is willing to go to another server for a friend then the server he is on must no be that special to him which means the guy must not be that special to the server thus it won't ruin the community because the community doesn't give a damn about the guy.

Well said.

[Razicator]

I find it interesting that roughly 2/3s of the people do not want the ability to transfer servers. Which means, roughly 2/3s of the people wouldn't use the option if it were available. In other words, a very sizable static community.

So whats the problem again?

Admittedly the thread title is just a teensy bit biased :)

[Shogun]

my concern with server locked chars as we are used to is the serverpopulation.

in peak times you could get kind of stuck in sanc on ps1 when some conts were poplocked in being forced to go to an empty cont. now we got a f2p game with only 3 conts and filling those 3 conts will be no problem.

now what happens when you cannot play on your server because it´s full all the time? you would have to start over and rebuy all your stuff, find a new outfit, etc.
with a char that can play on all servers, your outfit could choose to switch servers if too many of their members are locked out.

and without santuarys i am not sure if the servers will have a buffer when they are full. in ps1 i think there was no limit on the sanc. only the conts were locked. so you could wait at the sanc for a slot to open in your favorite cont.

[Eyeklops]

my concern with server locked chars as we are used to is the serverpopulation.

in peak times you could get kind of stuck in sanc on ps1 when some conts were poplocked in being forced to go to an empty cont. now we got a f2p game with only 3 conts and filling those 3 conts will be no problem.

now what happens when you cannot play on your server because it´s full all the time? you would have to start over and rebuy all your stuff, find a new outfit, etc.
with a char that can play on all servers, your outfit could choose to switch servers if too many of their members are locked out.

and without santuarys i am not sure if the servers will have a buffer when they are full. in ps1 i think there was no limit on the sanc. only the conts were locked. so you could wait at the sanc for a slot to open in your favorite cont.

Finally somebody agrees with me..

[Raka Maru]

Finally somebody agrees with me..

What do you mean? Lots of people agree with you, including me.

[KnightHawk ECID]

Yes, please someone say one thing that would outweigh the cons of server locking, please.

[Gonefshn]

Why not just allow one free server transfer per character. That way if you start playing and find out your friends are on another server you can switch, but once you make that decision your stuck there unless you pay for the switch?

That way your not screwed if you find out youd rather have started on another server, and it's unlikely you'd change again so I think thats a perfect answer.

[Sirisian]

Why not just allow one free server transfer per character. That way if you start playing and find out your friends are on another server you can switch, but once you make that decision your stuck there unless you pay for the switch?
Why not just allow unlimited free server transfers per character. That way if you start playing and find out your friends are on another server you can switch, and once you make that decision your not stuck there and you don't have to pay for the switch?

// I have to agree with the person that pointed out in the poll that at least 2/3rd of the players would stay with the same server and don't even feel it would be necessary to allow server switching. That kind of statistic makes server switching a really viable plan since according to this most people wouldn't use it.

[Gonefshn]

Why not just allow unlimited free server transfers per character. That way if you start playing and find out your friends are on another server you can switch, and once you make that decision your not stuck there and you don't have to pay for the switch?

For all the reasons posted above by others who advocate against it. To sum it up.

-Doesn't help foster community
-Allows people who feel like they are "losing" to find a new server where they aren't anytime they want.
-Community. Again. It's the only reason you keep playing MMOs.

Also, this poll is taking place in a forum that is still highly populated by veterans of the original Planetside not the massive audience of shooter fans that will enter the final game. And the majority of those people will be used to round based shooter (because thats all that really exists besides PS1) and picking a new server every time you play. The results of that poll are biased by a high population of PS1 vets

[Razicator]

For all the reasons posted above by others who advocate against it. To sum it up.

-Doesn't help foster community
-Allows people who feel like they are "losing" to find a new server where they aren't anytime they want.
-Community. Again. It's the only reason you keep playing MMOs.

Also, this poll is taking place in a forum that is still highly populated by veterans of the original Planetside not the massive audience of shooter fans that will enter the final game. And the majority of those people will be used to round based shooter (because thats all that really exists besides PS1) and picking a new server every time you play. The results of that poll are biased by a high population of PS1 vets

This. And also if you can jump into any server, it'll just be like the many servers of Battlefield 3. Choose whichever side is winning, and jump in. Never be on the losing side! Of course, EVERYONE here will stick to their home server unless they got friends on other servers, but what about the masses of new people? They'll just jump from server to server. That's what happens anyways in round based games. Are you losing? Switch servers! People know you're griefing and calling you out? Switch servers! An enemy outfit is tactically holding all of a resource in your side, preventing you from spawning certain things? Why bother fighting back, switch servers!

There are pros and cons to both. We just think that the cons outweight the pros.

You guys are essentially saying you want to switch servers based on friends. Be good friends and tell them to join your server in the first place. Or roll a new character.

Pro-switch people: What if all customizations you bought were account-wide? But you can't switch servers? In other words, you have to make a new character on another server, still have to put in the time, but no need to buy the same thing twice? People handled it fine in other MMOs, including PS2.

[CutterJohn]

Pro-switch people: What if all customizations you bought were account-wide? But you can't switch servers? In other words, you have to make a new character on another server, still have to put in the time, but no need to buy the same thing twice? People handled it fine in other MMOs, including PS2.

If? Thats an absolute minimum necessity.


Describe the difference, in detail, between switching from one continent to another and switching from one shard to another.

Instead of 'We need reinforcements on Cyssor!' its 'We need reinforcements on Gemini!'

Instead of people bailing on a continent because they are losing(which is apparently fine), they are bailing on the server. I cannot see a difference.



If they said, tomorrow, that they are not even going to have shards, just one world with 50 continents, people would be cheering at the prospect. In fact, the number one thing people say they love about single shard games is how it broadens the community. You're a part of everything!

Yet I can see zero difference between the two. The *only* difference, the only difference at all, is that you'd have 50 different continents rather than 3 cloned a dozen or more times.

Stop considering the different servers as some competing product. Its the same game, same community.

[Sirisian]

-Doesn't help foster community

I don't think it would harm a community. Making a opinion that allowing casual players to switch between servers that aren't in an outfit isn't affecting anyone. Especially in a F2P game with a lot of transient players. If anything the claim that locking people to a server fosters a community is exaggerated in my opinion.

-Allows people who feel like they are "losing" to find a new server where they aren't anytime they want.
I can't be the only person who preferred defending bases rather than assaulting them.
-Community. Again. It's the only reason you keep playing MMOs.
I don't play MMOs. I played Planetside because I had real life friends who played it for years and the gameplay was fun. I've tried other MMO games and stopped after less than a week.


You guys are essentially saying you want to switch servers based on friends. Be good friends and tell them to join your server in the first place. Or roll a new character.
No we don't want to switch servers. Say we are in an outfit and meet someone and want our friend to join our outfit we want to bring them to out community. It's a F2P game and there will be beginners joining random servers. I don't want them to feel like they are trapped on a server forever because of some dumb luck. (I've already talked to all my real life friends and we're going to plan out our server well in advance :) ).

Pro-switch people: What if all customizations you bought were account-wide? But you can't switch servers? In other words, you have to make a new character on another server, still have to put in the time, but no need to buy the same thing twice? People handled it fine in other MMOs, including PS2.
It's a nearly time based certing system. If you make a new character for me it's like you're starting from scratch. It's why I can never play EVE online. I always felt like I was 100 years behind my friends who had been playing 7 or something years since it came out and had unlocked all the good stuff.

[Noivad]

The numbers don't add up for XX servers to pick from. Why would you want to play on a regional server that gave you bad ping / fps then the one closest to where you live in a FPS game.

PS2 may have a server for each region - Euro - East Coast- West Coast - Asia?

PS2 = 6000 persons per map @ current 3 Maps = 18000 per server at any one sec in time. With a possible 4 servers = 72000 persons. Add just one map to each server and add another 24000 people possible.

Eve online has one sever for everone.

Eve online - In March 2012, EVE Online reached over 400,000 subscribers on one server.

On January 23, 2011, Eve Online claimed a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 63,170 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server.

PS2 can add more maps / servers for each region. Planetside 1 had 10 maps. I have seen as many as 3 or 4 conts/planets Pop locked at one time. That was just < 1200 people.

PS2 currently you can be only in have one empire. Hope they keep it that way. No Empire Hopping in PS2 please. And your stuck on the server you pick. :evil:

[Dagron]

Hey guys, i'm new to PS but i've been reading this thread and i have a few questions and concerns.

First of all, let me say right now i'm a little inclined towards "locking" characters in their servers. I'm talking about having a micro transaction or a long cooldown to switch, not irrevocably locked.
That said...

- 1st question/concern:
Being F2P with (what seems so far to be) a sensible 'purchase' system, if we buy something does it then become available to all chars over all servers? It should really... this means that a 'server' move would only impact us until we earned enough XP to unlock the upgrades we want.

This seems to make a server-swap fairly easy with relatively few down-sides.

But what if unlock costs are slightly lower and you have to buy seperately for every server? It's not impossible and makes swapping penalising to a much greater degree. (The money thing is an aside to me, if I love it I'm going to be spending at least as much as it would cost to buy a non-F2p in the first month probably)

It seems it's going to be difficult to seperate these points in an argument over whether server-swapping is going to be allowable/easy/sensible.
Has anyone said anything about how this might actually work?
I agree that paying for stuff that is 'Character Specific' vs 'Account Wide' has influence over this discussion and it should be established before this topic can go much further.
It seems like on one side of the argument, many people's point is something similar to "I would hate to start over when i'm locked in a server i spent $XXX", while everyone on the other side seems to be assuming that paid unlocks are account wide and therefore not an issue.

Speaking of which: If? Thats an absolute minimum necessity.
I agree 100%.



- 2nd concern/question:
... if you can jump into any server, it'll just be like the many servers of Battlefield 3. Choose whichever side is winning, and jump in. Never be on the losing side! Of course, EVERYONE here will stick to their home server unless they got friends on other servers, but what about the masses of new people? They'll just jump from server to server. That's what happens anyways in round based games. Are you losing? Switch servers! People know you're griefing and calling you out? Switch servers! An enemy outfit is tactically holding all of a resource in your side, preventing you from spawning certain things? Why bother fighting back, switch servers! ...
This seems like the most compelling argument for the "keep servers locked" side so far.
Some people argue against that by saying "only the zerglins do that, ignore them", thinking the point is just community.
But what about population balance? I haven't played on a 3 faction game yet, so i can't really say i know what will happen, but the experience i've had with MMOs so far makes me afraid.

I played WoW for a long time in a couple of well balanced mid-pop servers and it was ok. Due to some mass free-migration situation, i ended up with my friends in a 90% one sided hi-pop server and it was awful. Granted by then pvp was already dead, it still ruined what little world encounters i had with the opposing faction... there were none of them, the whole world was green and everybody held hands. The sad part was: they offered free transfers again to balance the population and even more players joined our overflowing slums, while the other side tucked tail and ran to other servers.

This makes me believe that however irrelevant zerglins may be individually, their masses can make a game flow or stop if they're left to roam free, it's unpredictable. I'm sure there could be balance mechanics in place to stop people from joining a winning side, but there is no way to stop people from leaving the losing side (forcing people to play is just a horrible, horrible idea).

So i ask the PS1 veterans (or anyone with a good notion about this), how did free hopping affect the original game? Am i just paranoid or should we be concerned about that?



- Also, just a quick stab at it (i didn't really think this one through):
Describe the difference, in detail, between switching from one continent to another and switching from one shard to another.

Instead of 'We need reinforcements on Cyssor!' its 'We need reinforcements on Gemini!'

Instead of people bailing on a continent because they are losing(which is apparently fine), they are bailing on the server. I cannot see a difference.
This may be the case:
If people are stuck on 1 server they could run away to other continents when they are losing, but chances are they will have a hard time finding an almost empty continent to roll over (depending on the time of the day), so they are more likely to stand their ground a little more.
With free server hopping, they're much more likely to find an empty continent on an empty server at any time of the day, with the added advantage that the other guys will have a harder time figuring out where they went and won't have much reason to follow them, so the runaway-prone teams will be more tempted to give up on hard fights.



Ok, better stop for now. I probably had more questions at first and the ones i did ask probably made more sense when i first thought of them... but by now my head is a mess, sorry.

Thank you for your attention and patience. :)

[Eyeklops]

The numbers don't add up for XX servers to pick from. Why would you want to play on a regional server that gave you bad ping / fps then the one closest to where you live in a FPS game.

PS2 may have a server for each region - Euro - East Coast- West Coast - Asia? Correct me if I am wrong, but there will be no "East/West" server. The north american server(s) will be in Vegas.

PS2 = 6000 (2000) persons per map @ current 3 Maps = 18000 (6000) per server at any one sec in time. With a possible 4 servers = 72000 (24000) persons. Add just one map to each server and add another 24000 (6000) people possible.

Eve online has one sever for everone.

Eve online - In March 2012, EVE Online reached over 400,000 subscribers on one server.

On January 23, 2011, Eve Online claimed a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 63,170 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server.

PS2 can add more maps / servers for each region. Planetside 1 had 10 maps. I have seen as many as 3 or 4 conts/planets Pop locked at one time. That was just < 1200 people.

PS2 currently you can be only in have one empire. Hope they keep it that way. No Empire Hopping in PS2 please. And your stuck on the server you pick. :evil:
Numbers were way off, Fixed

[Razicator]

Numbers were way off, Fixed

Wait, only Vegas servers? Using pingtest.net, I'm getting 118ms ping from east coast to Cedar City, UT, which is only a couple hundred miles from Vegas. Damn, this will be annoying.

[MedicDude]

I will not be paying for character transfers.

If players want to switch servers, let them do so at whim and for free. I'm willing to bet +90% of players will not switch on a regular basis, they will tie themselves to an outfit on a particular server.

For the other 10%, when they want to hop over and play a few hours with friends on a different server, they should be able to. Easily and at NO cost. PS2 has absolutely ZERO to gain by forced fragmentation between servers.

Further, from a technical standpoint, it makes much more sense to save all player data to a central database system, connected but separate from the servers hosting the maps. Content fragmentation makes cluster scaleup/down (adding removing servers) much more complicated, just like the headache we saw with PS1 merges.

Ask yourself, will YOU be switching servers? I thought so. Let it be an option for the rare occasions that you DO want to.

[Eyeklops]

I will not be paying for character transfers.

If players want to switch servers, let them do so at whim and for free. I'm willing to bet +90% of players will not switch on a regular basis, they will tie themselves to an outfit on a particular server.

For the other 10%, when they want to hop over and play a few hours with friends on a different server, they should be able to. Easily and at NO cost. PS2 has absolutely ZERO to gain by forced fragmentation between servers.

Further, from a technical standpoint, it makes much more sense to save all player data to a central database system, connected but separate from the servers hosting the maps. Content fragmentation makes cluster scaleup/down (adding removing servers) much more complicated, just like the headache we saw with PS1 merges.

Ask yourself, will YOU be switching servers? I thought so. Let it be an option for the rare occasions that you DO want to.

I agree on all points.

[maddoggg]

No just no...
For those of us who have friends and actually intend to support SOE by giving them some money,that would really REALLY suck.
So say i spend 60$ on a char at one server.
And than the server dies or my friends decide to play on another.
And i have to go there,make a new char and grind it all again?
No thx.

[Stew]

I dont know been lock on the same servers mean playing with the same people all the time same ennemies same allies i dont know if its a good thing or not ...

been able to merge your caracter if your servers do not fit your need or if you want to switch servers to join new friends etc.. i think this have to be allowed but not on a daily base !

[Kayos]

I doubt you will be able to jump servers when ever you want.
Maybe put in for a character transfer to another server but it would be stupid if you logged on to a character and then had a choice of servers to pick.

[megamold]

No just no...
For those of us who have friends and actually intend to support SOE by giving them some money,that would really REALLY suck.
So say i spend 60$ on a char at one server.
And than the server dies or my friends decide to play on another.
And i have to go there,make a new char and grind it all again?
No thx.

in the event of a server being shut down im sure they will tranfer all characters to a server of choice for free ( like devs have done in pretty much every mmo ever, and was also done when ps1 was shutting down servers )

and where is the voting option for a character transfer costing money ?
wich would be the most logical, most used, most tamper proof and most financially sound option.

honestly i dont even see why this needs to be polled, all mmo's use basically the same system and it works.
if it aint broke dont fix it?

[Sledgecrushr]

If? Thats an absolute minimum necessity.


Describe the difference, in detail, between switching from one continent to another and switching from one shard to another.

Instead of 'We need reinforcements on Cyssor!' its 'We need reinforcements on Gemini!'

Instead of people bailing on a continent because they are losing(which is apparently fine), they are bailing on the server. I cannot see a difference.



If they said, tomorrow, that they are not even going to have shards, just one world with 50 continents, people would be cheering at the prospect. In fact, the number one thing people say they love about single shard games is how it broadens the community. You're a part of everything!

Yet I can see zero difference between the two. The *only* difference, the only difference at all, is that you'd have 50 different continents rather than 3 cloned a dozen or more times.

Stop considering the different servers as some competing product. Its the same game, same community.


If Cutter John was a girl I would kiss her.

[Mechzz]

If Cutter John was a girl I would kiss her.

Not if he was a "butch toon" surely?
:)

[Sledgecrushr]

Would be like a roll in the hay with a wildcat, I love it.

[Morphic]

I wonder if they will have the faction lockout if u have characters on same server you gotta wait a certain amount of time before u can switch to them. like a VS character to an NC character.

[Haro]

Having characters stay on the same server, assuming nothing catastrophic happens like server population death, would be the best thing for the game. All MMOs depend on community to survive, and one of the steps of building a community is being able to stake a reputation on a server, whether that be an individual reputation or an outfit reputation. If individuals, or outfits, can jump amongst the dozens of servers at will, then it'll be nothing more than Planetside matchmaking, and we all see how the anonymity of Halo/CoD matchmaking transferred into the community. Whereas something more permanent, like WoW characters, allowed for people to become notorious in their community, especially in PvP. But see how WoW's battlegrounds and arenas essentially became matchmaking after a patch, where you never face the same people ever again? That's when the PvP community really fell apart imo.

Permanence forces people to become attached to a server and a server's community. It also helps to decrease the anonymity of a player, which rewards skill and good reputation, while helping to counteract known hackers and griefers. Thoughts?

Whoa whoa whoa whoa

Server migration vs cross-server instancing is a HUGE leap, logically, mechanically, philosophically... several other -ly words... It's a horrible comparison.

Anyway, I don't see any issue with server migration. If it someone likes a server, they stay. If they don't, either because of issues with an old outfit, other players, or just not liking it for some reason, then they should be able to move. People generally don't just switch servers on a whim, unless they have absolutely no connection to a server, in which case they could have every reason to go to another server: maybe there are friends there, a certain outfit they may like, or just a different atmosphere. But it takes time, and often has a fee involved.

On the other hand, what if a player desperately needs to move to a new server for some reason? What if he has a character he put hundreds of hours into? Should he be forced to start over, or to remain with a server he doesn't like or can't really play in for some reason just to keep the fruit of all his effort?

Server migration needs to be in. People will find themselves in these types of situations, and they will be pissed if they find everything they've done is locked in one place. Basic customer service.

[proxy]

Server transfer with a cost, or cooldown, maybe both. Easy.

[proxy]

Also, polls with a clear bias are misleading and not a good poll. :D

[Zolan]

A single character on each server is a good thing for PS2.

Less grieving potential. Less spying. Greater community ties. Greater faction loyalty. No outfit bonus exploiting, etc. etc.

You can do everything on one character anyway, why would you need another?

Transfers are fine in select circumstances, but not on a whim.

[Otleaz]

Community is an absolutely wonderful thing that the developer has to create. A lot of people haven't properly experienced it, but it is fantastic and is core to the long term experience.

I can guarantee that the vast majority of PS1 players stuck around with community as the main reason.

Locking players to a server will help create that, among other things.

[FrivolousSam]

Disagree with this heavily. PS2 is a game you may want to play with friends from other countries, but you don't want to have to play a lowbie character for that, or have your main locked onto a server with massive latency issues for you.

I also dislike the idea that there can be as many other people with the same name as you as there are servers. Dilutes any sense of "reputation".

Furthermore, this is a FREE TO PLAY GAME. The community is going to be 99% terrible morons. Planetside would have been my dream game back when I was 13, but being pay to play kept it out of my reach and honestly, I would have probably been a stain on the community at that age. Since anyone will be able to make an account and play, F2P opens the floodgates to literally every worst thing the internet has to offer. There will be no sense of community.

[Sirisian]

Less grieving potential. Less spying. Greater community ties. Greater faction loyalty. No outfit bonus exploiting, etc. etc.
You'll have to explain these. They sound more like hopes than guarantees. Players can make new accounts on a whim and new characters on any server under the current system. (Also this thread is more about locking a single character to a server, so a lot of these things you suggest make very little sense).

People have suggested solutions for managing grief via exponential systems for beginners that slowly fade over time, but none of them have involved server locks. Needs an explanation.

Less spying is a pipe dream concocted by players. If you can only use one character at a time on a server your fine. What does jumping servers to spy on another server get you anyway? They're outside your community most of the time.

The community ties and outfit loyalty already exist without any added restrictions. Kind of a moot point.

"No outfit bonus exploiting" is one I don't understand. How does one outfit bonus exploit by switching servers?

You can do everything on one character anyway, why would you need another?
Experience the other 2/3rds of the game I guess or to play with friends. I get bored easily doing the same thing. Same problem happened in PS1 after a few years of playing the VS for me. Wanted to see and try out the other side on the same server. Different strokes for different folks. I imagine you're in the majority though for wanting to stick with one faction and never change on the same server. I only got like BR 18 NC and TR though or something since I found the grind boring.

[Trafalgar]

I would personally like to try more than one faction, and it would be a shame if I had to make characters on servers I don't want to play on simply to try them out (and having to throw away the characters and make a new one unless I can predict, before ever playing PS2 and having never played PS1, which outfit I will want to join, whether they will accept me, and which faction I will like best and choose to play, and what server that outfit will even be playing on).

[Raka Maru]

You can already make 3 accounts and put them on the same server. This locking that is being proposed sounds like something a guy says when people abandon a boring party. This ain't inmateside.

For me, I will first go where my buddies are and have a good ping. If that server fails to deliver, I will go and will want all my purchases to go with me and my earned XP.