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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by basti

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.

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

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!

[Razicator]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Razicator

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.

Originally Posted by Razicator

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]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

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]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

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]

Originally Posted by basti

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.