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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Character switch feature

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Misha'la
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2014-11-25 17:20:49 UTC
CCP, can we get a character switching feature already?
With the implementation of two simultaneous skill queues for characters on the same account it's become more common to actually switch characters.
It's quite counter-intuitive to have to completely quit the game back to the desktop and relaunch just to switch to another character to set up a skill queue or something like that.
This has to be the only MMO I know of without the capability of simply logging off one character
Dominique Vasilkovsky
#2 - 2014-11-25 17:21:56 UTC
Misha'la wrote:
CCP, can we get a character switching feature already?
With the implementation of two simultaneous skill queues for characters on the same account it's become more common to actually switch characters.
It's quite counter-intuitive to have to completely quit the game back to the desktop and relaunch just to switch to another character to set up a skill queue or something like that.
This has to be the only MMO I know of without the capability of simply logging off one character

CCP would do this if they could without doing a major code rewrite.
Trey Kutoi
SergalJerk
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#3 - 2014-11-25 17:45:54 UTC
you can exit to the old, (pre launcher) login screen, in game if you use exefile.exe to launch, but then you can't use the NES. its rather annoying how so many convenient features are lost by using the launcher
Marsha Mallow
#4 - 2014-11-25 18:14:57 UTC
Pretty sure this was raised in the CSM summit meetings a while back (sorry I don't have it to hand, maybe Summer 13?) and the Devs explained it'd be 6 months of work for a relatively small feature. It is an irritant, but really not worth that amount of work imo.

Btw, you don't have to completely quit and restart the launcher. Just keep the launcher running in the background, exit game, then hit play again. The password from the last account logged in is still there. With unlimited skill queues there's less need to keep flipping characters to update skillqueues for alts using MCT anyway.

Ripard Teg > For the morons in the room:

Sweets > U can dd my face any day
Eldwinn
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#5 - 2014-11-25 18:43:12 UTC
-> Features and Ideas
Agondray
Avenger Mercenaries
VOID Intergalactic Forces
#6 - 2014-11-25 19:00:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Agondray
Ccp already complained that it would take a team of devs 6 months of work for a 15 second advantage so they said no to it

"Sarcasm is the Recourse of a weak mind." -Dr. Smith
DaReaper
Net 7
Cannon.Fodder
#7 - 2014-11-25 19:04:50 UTC
Though with the idea of all the games being tied into one account and one login... you might see this come as they will ave to do a rewrite to get that to function correctly

OMG Comet Mining idea!!! Comet Mining!

Eve For life.
Jvpiter
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#8 - 2014-11-25 19:08:33 UTC


This would be even more useful if the pilot selection screen consolidated all your accounts on the same email address with an indicator for which ones are currently logged in.




Call me Joe.
DaReaper
Net 7
Cannon.Fodder
#9 - 2014-11-25 19:21:50 UTC
Jvpiter wrote:


This would be even more useful if the pilot selection screen consolidated all your accounts on the same email address with an indicator for which ones are currently logged in.







omg yes please

OMG Comet Mining idea!!! Comet Mining!

Eve For life.
Ssabat Thraxx
DUST Expeditionary Team
Good Sax
#10 - 2014-11-25 19:49:06 UTC
Jvpiter wrote:


This would be even more useful if the pilot selection screen consolidated all your accounts on the same email address with an indicator for which ones are currently logged in.





That would be really, really nice.

\m/ O.o \m/

"You're a freak ..." - Solecist Project
ISD Ezwal
ISD Community Communications Liaisons
ISD Alliance
#11 - 2014-11-25 20:44:41 UTC
This thread has been moved to Features & Ideas Discussion.

ISD Ezwal Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs)
Cyrnel
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2015-01-04 20:40:21 UTC
Agondray wrote:
Ccp already complained that it would take a team of devs 6 months of work for a 15 second advantage so they said no to it
It might take a team of developers 6 months of work in order to make a 15 second advantage possible, but think it what else it'd make possible: there are probably tons of features that can't currently be added to EVE because its coding is an ancient, tangled mess that's horrendously inefficient and outdated.

EVE is 10 years old. CCP needs to update the programming sometime, or we'll be playing the same game with all the same limitations for the next 20 years, even though our computers will become 100x more powerful. How does that make sense?

The 6 months of work is an investment, not just the cost of adding a 15 second advantage. It'll pay off in the long run.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#13 - 2015-01-04 21:23:54 UTC
Cyrnel wrote:
Agondray wrote:
Ccp already complained that it would take a team of devs 6 months of work for a 15 second advantage so they said no to it
It might take a team of developers 6 months of work in order to make a 15 second advantage possible, but think it what else it'd make possible: there are probably tons of features that can't currently be added to EVE because its coding is an ancient, tangled mess that's horrendously inefficient and outdated.

EVE is 10 years old. CCP needs to update the programming sometime, or we'll be playing the same game with all the same limitations for the next 20 years, even though our computers will become 100x more powerful. How does that make sense?

The 6 months of work is an investment, not just the cost of adding a 15 second advantage. It'll pay off in the long run.



CCP is already spending most of its time atm re-writing old code in other areas when CCP said it ould take a team 6 months for that 15 second adv they meant just that those 6 moths would be spent in the same area of code with little to show for it. not that it would take 6 months to re-wright eve

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#14 - 2015-01-04 21:24:27 UTC
Cyrnel wrote:
Agondray wrote:
Ccp already complained that it would take a team of devs 6 months of work for a 15 second advantage so they said no to it
It might take a team of developers 6 months of work in order to make a 15 second advantage possible, but think it what else it'd make possible: there are probably tons of features that can't currently be added to EVE because its coding is an ancient, tangled mess that's horrendously inefficient and outdated.

EVE is 10 years old. CCP needs to update the programming sometime, or we'll be playing the same game with all the same limitations for the next 20 years, even though our computers will become 100x more powerful. How does that make sense?

The 6 months of work is an investment, not just the cost of adding a 15 second advantage. It'll pay off in the long run.


Except that that particular bit of core rework is definitely superseded by the other really important code reworks. Namely POS code and corp management code, while working with the sov rework guys to get that rework set up.

It's a minor annoyance with no change in my actual gameplay. They can start working on it once they finish fixing everything else that majorly needs fixing first that effects my gameplay. That might be after the sun burns cold, but as of now it is not a priority.
Cyrnel
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2015-01-04 21:31:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Cyrnel
Anhenka wrote:
Cyrnel wrote:
Agondray wrote:
Ccp already complained that it would take a team of devs 6 months of work for a 15 second advantage so they said no to it
It might take a team of developers 6 months of work in order to make a 15 second advantage possible, but think it what else it'd make possible: there are probably tons of features that can't currently be added to EVE because its coding is an ancient, tangled mess that's horrendously inefficient and outdated.

EVE is 10 years old. CCP needs to update the programming sometime, or we'll be playing the same game with all the same limitations for the next 20 years, even though our computers will become 100x more powerful. How does that make sense?

The 6 months of work is an investment, not just the cost of adding a 15 second advantage. It'll pay off in the long run.


Except that that particular bit of core rework is definitely superseded by the other really important code reworks. Namely POS code and corp management code, while working with the sov rework guys to get that rework set up.

It's a minor annoyance with no change in my actual gameplay. They can start working on it once they finish fixing everything else that majorly needs fixing first that effects my gameplay. That might be after the sun burns cold, but as of now it is not a priority.
It has to be done eventually. EVE can't keep going on code that's 10 years old for another 10 years, especially with CCP now adamant on adding new content every few months.

I'm not a programmer and I won't pretend to be one, but it seems like a logical assumption that rewriting most of the code now will be a lot easier than waiting another 5-10 years to do it because that just adds another 5-10 more years of code to go through.

The main "excuse" I see is that CCP needs to make money, so they're not going to waste time reprogramming areas of the game that don't earn them money -- the problem with that is they'll eventually run out of content to add because EVE will have become a hellish nightmare to run efficiently or even debug in order to fix.

I'd give up a year or two of new content if it meant CCP could go back and fix a lot of the existing content through reprogramming most of the game. That just means new content can be added quicker after the fact because CCP would have a lot less limitations to deal with. Hell, just compare what you could do programmatically 10 years ago to what you can do today. It should be obvious what CCP needs to do.
Anhenka
The New Federation
Sigma Grindset
#16 - 2015-01-04 22:01:08 UTC
Cyrnel wrote:


I'd give up a year or two of new content if it meant CCP could go back and fix a lot of the existing content through reprogramming most of the game. That just means new content can be added quicker after the fact because CCP would have a lot less limitations to deal with. Hell, just compare what you could do programmatically 10 years ago to what you can do today. It should be obvious what CCP needs to do.


In the world of online gaming, companies that don't update for two years go out of business. It's that simple. It doesn't matter if you in particular would be willing to wait or not. Updates increase customer retention, and bring in new blood. If you look at the PCU (peak concurrent users) charts, you see a peak after each update, then a continuous slide until the next update. Lots of games have released major patches fixing issues that killed them after they lost most of their playerbase, but it rarely pays off.

A full rework would mean that CCP needs to continue to pay everyone needed to maintain the servers and act as GM's, legal aids, infrastructure, etc. While at the same time hiring enough people to fully start from scratch and recode everything from the ground up.

All of this while they are steadily losing players and income, and requiring more and more upkeep to sustain the current game while developing EVE 2.0. By the time EVE 2.0 comes out (only slightly less appealing from a features standpoint), they would have lost enough playerbase inertia that getting restarted and attracting people and digging out of the red financially would be very difficult.

TLDR: Piecemeal replacement is not ideal from our point of view, but it's the only realistic option for them.
Gremlin283 Kusoni
Perkone
Caldari State
#17 - 2015-02-02 18:48:22 UTC
The question I have regarding this is this, I understand it will take a period of time to recode the game client to allow for this lets say currently 6 months estimate. However here's the issue, if this keeps getting put on the "back burner" the other changes made to the game have the chance of causing that 6 month estimate to increase.

My point is this, if it isn't done now while it only takes a less than a year time frame to change how long will it take after all the other changes are made? As well would it need to be the same set of programmers working on other more important code that would need to do this, or would they be able to use another set of programmers to allow for covering twice the work at the same time?
Erika Mizune
Lucifer's Hammer
A Band Apart.
#18 - 2015-02-02 19:24:55 UTC
Gremlin283 Kusoni wrote:
The question I have regarding this is this, I understand it will take a period of time to recode the game client to allow for this lets say currently 6 months estimate. However here's the issue, if this keeps getting put on the "back burner" the other changes made to the game have the chance of causing that 6 month estimate to increase.

My point is this, if it isn't done now while it only takes a less than a year time frame to change how long will it take after all the other changes are made? As well would it need to be the same set of programmers working on other more important code that would need to do this, or would they be able to use another set of programmers to allow for covering twice the work at the same time?


It seems a number of things do get put on the back burner. This is one of them, while I know you can do this via just pressing start again, but it would still be much more convenient to have a simple "character" switch button on the options screen. You click that and it brings you back to your character selection screen.

I would love to see this, and I know I have mentioned it during my shows on Eve Radio a number of times as a feature that I would love to see.

There's also the social stations areas that I have heard promised such a long time ago, where you can basically walk around stations with other people. But I think that's for another post, heh.

Former DJ & Manager of Eve Radio | Blog | Sounds of New Eden | Twitch | Twitter
Alundil
Rolled Out
#19 - 2015-02-02 19:34:22 UTC
Cyrnel wrote:
It has to be done eventually. EVE can't keep going on code that's 10 years old for another 10 years, especially with CCP now adamant on adding new content every few months.

I'm not a programmer and I won't pretend to be one, but it seems like a logical assumption that rewriting most of the code now will be a lot easier than waiting another 5-10 years to do it because that just adds another 5-10 more years of code to go through.

The main "excuse" I see is that CCP needs to make money, so they're not going to waste time reprogramming areas of the game that don't earn them money -- the problem with that is they'll eventually run out of content to add because EVE will have become a hellish nightmare to run efficiently or even debug in order to fix.

It is arguable that we have already gone through an extended period of code fix/rework/refactoring and that the 6 week long Dev cycles are part of the benefit of some of that work. That said, I don't think Eve could sustain/weather another 1 to 2 year long period of no 'forward progress' to instead spend that time on refactoring code. Would there be benefits? Probably. Would those make up for the risk of more players leaving and what that does to overall retention? Likely no. As you say, Eve is a ten year old game (more now obviously).

As to the 'old code' argument: old code isn't inherently bad or ripe for replacement. If it still accomplishes what is needed then it's still good. Very much the principle of 'ain't broke don't fix' at play.

The other facet must also take into account the amount of programming time, effort and cost to deliver 'x' benefit. In this case, the amount of benefit to the player is wholly time saved but amounts to very little actual impact given the relative rarity of switching pilots on the active account during any single play session.

I'm right behind you
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#20 - 2015-02-03 00:17:31 UTC
How is this thread still alive? This topic has definitely come up before and CCP has already firmly stated more than once that they're not going to implement any such thing.