Omni Mode

[Gorbadoc]

There are two logistical annoyances that I want streamlined.

First, if I log on and want to make myself available to anyone who needs any of my characters, I'm out of luck. There are workarounds. I can look through the LFMs and send a tell saying, "Yes, I have a level 15 wizard; let me switch". I can also make sure my guildies know what characters I have. The first work-around requires that I find the party; a party leader cannot find me, even if I want to be find-able. The second workaround makes me available to only a small number of people. I want the option to show up in the social panel as ANY of my characters.

Second, I want to be able to look through the inventories and banks of all my characters at once. I have many items in storage, either because they're useful for leveling or because I like having stuff to trade. In both cases and especially in the second case, it's a nuisance to have to log in and out over and over to find that darned <insert item> that I might or might not own.

The workaround here, of course, is that I organize my characters' inventories and banks. This is stupid. I'm paying to be able to fight monsters in dungeons. I understand that inventory management is a necessary logistical exercise. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be streamlined. Make it easier for me to manage my inventories so that I can spend more time helping my fellow players get through dungeons.

What I suggest is this:
An omni-login. Let me be on as all my characters at once. Let me access all my banks and inventories, and let me show up on the social panel as whichever characters I'd be willing to play.

Also, add an auto-sort feature to inventories and banks. I know the game can sort stuff; my Sell list mysteriously comes up in a particular sorted order no matter the order of the stuff in my inventory.

[Arcticwarrior]

interesting but thats what shared bank is for, if you want to view all your banks, you're out of luck because of the f2p/premium factor

[Calebro]

interesting but thats what shared bank is for, if you want to view all your banks, you're out of luck because of the f2p/premium factor

I think you miss the point. He wants to see what his other characters have in their individual banks. That is not the shared bank.
While I understand his pain, there are much MUCH better things that the Devs should be devoting their time to.

What I suggest is this:
An omni-login. Let me be on as all my characters at once. Let me access all my banks and inventories, and let me show up on the social panel as whichever characters I'd be willing to play.

I cannot support this either. Do you have any idea what the Who Panel would look like if this were implemented? It would take virtual hours to load, which means that no one would use it, thus defeating the purpose you claim as the reasoning behind your proposed change. No thanks.

[Dwane_Diblie]

Ok I agree that most of that is too stressful for the game conection to run. But how about this for an alternat idea. Have the ability to filter classes when searching WHO IS ON but have it show up everyone that has a character of searched class weather that character of that player is loged on or not. EG: I am playing my Wizared. Someone searches for a Cleric and I get listed as online but I have a character that is a L6 Cleric/L2 Fighter. That player could then send me a tell asking if I could come and help with my Cleric.

So instead of listing all that information (especialy with Multiclassing characters) you could just get a list of players that have that class type.

As for the Invantory/Bank idea. They could implement an option on the Log on screen that allows you access to all your characters Invantorys all at once to look at. You can organise them and swap stuff from your bank to your character befor loging on. And you could move items from one inventory to another at the same costs as mailing the item. With a shared bank you would beable to sircomvent this just like you could ingame. This would make things easier without changing the way you would have to do it ingame now. Just alows you to do it more convieniantly.

[Ormindo]

Yes ? Someone called me ?

Oh, OMNI. Tsh.

[Gorbadoc]

I cannot support this either. Do you have any idea what the Who Panel would look like if this were implemented? It would take virtual hours to load, which means that no one would use it, thus defeating the purpose you claim as the reasoning behind your proposed change. No thanks.

Would it? Your statement seems exaggerated for two reasons.

First, if the system is well-designed, it will presumably involve the necessary software and hardware to support the demands of the social panel. Information could be removed, processes streamlined, hardware improved.

Second, assume every player would have ten characters visible at a time. This is a gross exaggeration; players would need only one character visible when they were in a quest, and most players don't have ten characters they actively play anyhow. Still, even with ten characters per player, that at most multiplies the amount of information in the social panel by ten. When I search for characters qualified to join my party, the list takes several seconds to come up. Several seconds times ten is not hours.

There is some merit to your bizarre intuition; the long and short is that, yes, I want the social panel to handle more information. That's the point; I find the current quantity of information to be inadequate. The solution is for Turbine to step up to the challenge and figure out a way to process this additional information without swamping players with lag.

Ok I agree that most of that is too stressful for the game conection to run. But how about this for an alternat idea. Have the ability to filter classes when searching WHO IS ON but have it show up everyone that has a character of searched class weather that character of that player is loged on or not. EG: I am playing my Wizared. Someone searches for a Cleric and I get listed as online but I have a character that is a L6 Cleric/L2 Fighter. That player could then send me a tell asking if I could come and help with my Cleric.

So instead of listing all that information (especialy with Multiclassing characters) you could just get a list of players that have that class type.

I thought about that: one entry per player, and just have that entry include information on additional characters. The developers might reject this implementation outright. DDO is set up so that other players can't tell who my other characters are unless I tell them; having a player entry with a list of characters would be contrary to this.

Of course, even if we were looking at one player entry with multiple characters' information, that's still more information for the social panel to handle; I just don't think it's nearly as much information as some people seem to think.

[Calebro]

Would it? Your statement seems exaggerated for two reasons.

First, if the system is well-designed, it will presumably involve the necessary software and hardware to support the demands of the social panel. Information could be removed, processes streamlined, hardware improved.

Second, assume every player would have ten characters visible at a time. This is a gross exaggeration; players would need only one character visible when they were in a quest, and most players don't have ten characters they actively play anyhow. Still, even with ten characters per player, that at most multiplies the amount of information in the social panel by ten. When I search for characters qualified to join my party, the list takes several seconds to come up. Several seconds times ten is not hours.

There is some merit to your bizarre intuition; the long and short is that, yes, I want the social panel to handle more information. That's the point; I find the current quantity of information to be inadequate. The solution is for Turbine to step up to the challenge and figure out a way to process this additional information without swamping players with lag.

Ummm.... There's a reason that the social panel doesn't automatically search everyone online when you first log in anymore like it used to. It's because it took too long to load and caused other issues. Multiply the information that it needs to process by a factor of TEN and see what happens.
No.

[Angelus_dead]

First, if I log on and want to make myself available to anyone who needs any of my characters, I'm out of luck. There are workarounds. I can look through the LFMs and send a tell saying, "Yes, I have a level 15 wizard; let me switch".

Yes, the LFG system in DDO is a design failure because it's based on helping a character look for groups, when really it is players who go looking for something to do.

It has been suggested many times that Turbine fix the system by allowing a player to mark multiple of his characters LFG at once.

[Angelus_dead]

Ummm.... There's a reason that the social panel doesn't automatically search everyone online when you first log in anymore like it used to. It's because it took too long to load and caused other issues. Multiply the information that it needs to process by a factor of TEN and see what happens.
No.

That's a senseless objection:
1. It would only apply to players who have specifically marked themselves as LFG, which would be a tiny tiny fraction of everyone online.
2. The information would only need to be loaded when someone wants to read the LFG list, which would only be done infrequently and by a minority of players.

[jwdaniels]

So I log in with my fighter to do some leveling and because I have a cleric my fighter now gets subjected to blind invites and tell spam from people looking for a healer?

No thank you.

[Calebro]

That's a senseless objection:
1. It would only apply to players who have specifically marked themselves as LFG, which would be a tiny tiny fraction of everyone online.
2. The information would only need to be loaded when someone wants to read the LFG list, which would only be done infrequently and by a minority of players.

Are we also going to introduce /tell forwarding so your invite comes through?
I think you guys are adding layers to the social panel that will stress the already stressed Who Panel for little to no gain.
Flagging yourself as LFG is useless. Show the groups you are not eligible for and look over them. When I don't feel like starting my own group I check for my other toons. If I see something I'm intersetd in I send a /tel. Log off, log in alt. Join.
I assume that you know what characters you have....

[Angelus_dead]

Are we also going to introduce /tell forwarding so your invite comes through?

Yes, forwarding tells would be one of the needed features for a fixed LFG system.

Flagging yourself as LFG is useless.

That's a result of the broken LFG system design. If the design were better (such as taking into account that players have more than one character) then it could be useful.

Show the groups you are not eligible for and look over them. When I don't feel like starting my own group I check for my other toons. If I see something I'm intersetd in I send a /tel. Log off, log in alt. Join.
I assume that you know what characters you have....

Yes, that's the workaround for the currently-broken LFG system design. As often observed: the existence of a workaround doesn't mean the problem isn't real.

You may happen to think that LFG is a pointless system, but evidently someone thought it had enough potential to actually create LFG in DDO.

[Angelus_dead]

So I log in with my fighter to do some leveling and because I have a cleric my fighter now gets subjected to blind invites and tell spam from people looking for a healer?
No thank you.

That would happen only if you were stupid enough to mark your Cleric as LFG when you didn't want your Cleric to be LFG.

[Calebro]

That would happen only if you were stupid enough to mark your Cleric as LFG when you didn't want your Cleric to be LFG.

Yeah, because no one EVER gets blind invites and /tells sent to them unless they're flagged as LFG.
This is the exact reason that many, if not most, if not all, good healers are anonymous. And I was being sarcastic with the /tell forwarding remark. This system would ENSURE that all healers go anon, thus ruining the effectiveness of this system's ability to build groups by searching alts, thus defeating the purpose of adding all the extra stress to the Who Panel.

Still /not signed.

[Baahb3]

I would not object to a web app that lets us view our characters inventory/bank slots. A snapshot taken from the last time you logged out with that character similar to the way MyDDO does worn items.

Now I would not want it viewable to anyone like your worn items are but something tied into your character's MyDDO entry that you have to log into with your game credentials would be nice to see.

If they got really ambitious they could put a collective page together for all characters tied to the same account so you could view all of them on one page.

[Gorbadoc]

Yeah, because no one EVER gets blind invites and /tells sent to them unless they're flagged as LFG.
This is the exact reason that many, if not most, if not all, good healers are anonymous. And I was being sarcastic with the /tell forwarding remark. This system would ENSURE that all healers go anon, thus ruining the effectiveness of this system's ability to build groups by searching alts, thus defeating the purpose of adding all the extra stress to the Who Panel.

Still /not signed.

The goal is to give players the option to advertise multiple characters at once. If you earnestly believe that no one would ever advertise a healer with such a system, then I can't help but think you're not taking this discussion seriously.

As a personal aside, what server do you typically play on? I have three healers on Ghalanda, and I'm usually okay staying visible and allowing party invites. Occasionally someone will be rude (blind invite or sending a tell when I'm already in a party); I chastise them and get on with my day. Of course, the option to go anonymous is a must-have feature; I just don't find myself using it very often. I'm trying to figure out where you're getting this idea that no one would ever list a healer in his or her LFG. The idea is simply incorrect.

[Pwesiela]

I would not object to a web app that lets us view our characters inventory/bank slots. A snapshot taken from the last time you logged out with that character similar to the way MyDDO does worn items.

Now I would not want it viewable to anyone like your worn items are but something tied into your character's MyDDO entry that you have to log into with your game credentials would be nice to see.

If they got really ambitious they could put a collective page together for all characters tied to the same account so you could view all of them on one page.

This is better.

The OP? Not so much.

[Angelus_dead]

Yeah, because no one EVER gets blind invites and /tells sent to them unless they're flagged as LFG.
This is the exact reason that many, if not most, if not all, good healers are anonymous. And I was being sarcastic with the /tell forwarding remark. This system would ENSURE that all healers go anon, thus ruining the effectiveness of this system's ability to build groups by searching alts, thus defeating the purpose of adding all the extra stress to the Who Panel.

Why in the world would someone design the system to cause those effects?

As already explained, a player's alternate characters would only be added to a list when he marks them as LFG. A person who was in a group or doing any other activity aside from looking for a group would not do that, so it would be impossible for messages or invitations to be sent.

[Arel]

In all honesty, I've only trolled the /who panel for players a small handful of times, mostly for Necro 1-3 and a few of the other mid-level packs. Add in groups I've been in where the leader has said he is doing this, and you get about a dozen, perhaps a dozen and a half times. Perhaps I'm a minority and everyone else does this all the time, but personally I feel that if you have to go beyond your guild and/or friends list, there's probably not enough interest in the quest at that time.

The existing system, though perhaps clunky, is effective. There are rarely enough groups of a certain level range displayed (at least on Orien) to make scanning them much of a chore, and you can always send tells to hold a spot if you need to switch characters. There are a few isolated cases where I could see a system like the one proposed could be useful, but not enough to warrant the extensive time designing such a system would take, not to mention the physical resources that would be needed.

Now, Baahb3's variation on the second idea on the other hand, would be rather useful. That I could see a lot more people taking use of.

[Alexandryte]

It sounds like you would like a modification similar to how CoH/CoV and CO handle their player to player interactions. They tie everything in based on a global name for chat or checking online status. A natural extension of that to allow the display of X amount of alts and class divisions could be feasible, but with what Ive seen from a blackbox perspective of the infrastructure of DDO, not something that could be easily implemented with their current setup.

While the idea sounds simple and profound, the system was not set up to manage accounts in such a manner. This would fall under one of the "quality of life improvements on the back-burner" simply due to the nature and number of things that would have to be changed, and unfortunately that means its very low priority. >_<

As to the idea of the bank, in most cases you want to keep things as compartmentalized as possible when coding or working with abstract concepts. The more unnecessary cross chatter between processes the more vexing bugs can appear. As it stands, there is currently a bug with purchasing the additional character-only bank slots and then TRing. From the sounds of it, the game does not know how to properly handle the transfer of items from these tabs that were added much later to the TR cache. Anyway....the point i was getting at was that the system has a variety of issues currently and with the lack of incentive to toy with a precarious system, I don't see it happening soon, at least not within the gameworld proper. (Using an online medium to view items in the bank, however, might be doable, security issues aside.)



TL;DR I agree that some changes for quality of life sake would be nice, but I doubt the ones listed will be forthcoming any time soon.