Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Jezbelle]

I'm sure this was brought up, but I cannot seem to find the answer.

When you make a character on a LIF:YO 64-player server, is that character going to be permanently stuck on that server? OR will you be able to hop from server to server with the same character?

If it's not already the case, the latter might be very appealing for players; waiting times for popular servers would not be backed up, and if a low-pop 64-player server becomes abandoned, you wouldn't lose all of your progress that you had made, which would discourage players. You could pick up your items and hop to the next server, retaining your stats as well.

[Hoshiqua]

That could be exploited, you could just make a server for yourself, spawn best armor / weapons, go on a public server and PK everyone. Also, people would just log out when they get caught will farming and stuff, and change server, and, since the game can be terraformed, it would lead to wierd issues like you log off on a server on a flat terrain, you log on a server which has a castle wall there you're stuck in the wall.

[Jezbelle]

That could be exploited, you could just make a server for yourself, spawn best armor / weapons, go on a public server and PK everyone. Also, people would just log out when they get caught will farming and stuff, and change server, and, since the game can be terraformed, it would lead to wierd issues like you log off on a server on a flat terrain, you log on a server which has a castle wall there you're stuck in the wall.

Server hopping could be limited to servers with identical rule sets, or to public servers only. Also, as for the differences in terrain, when you spawn on a new server, it could be in the starting area that everyone who makes a new character starts at.

As for doing something "bad" and transferring, like stealing guild mates materials or supplies...
yes, that could potentially be an issue, but if you are only carrying what you have in your bags from server to server, it would not be that appealing. The way the game is designed is so that you can only really have fun if you stay in one place for a prolonged time. A solution to this though could be giving players a limited number of transfers, or putting a time requirement (ie. 7 days) between transfers, OR putting a transfer up for a vote or veto to the rest of the server's population.

EDIT: A better solution to this last problem would be only allowing players to transfer servers with their stats intact, leaving their personal belongings behind. If that is too harsh, then maybe they can bring their armor as well (good armor is never just left laying around to steal).

[Deantwo]

This would either require that characters are saved client-side or on a central server.

Having them saved client-side would just mean that everyone have access to their character's files and can edit them. (CoD:MW1 all over again)

Having characters saved on a central server (like DayZ does) would cost money, which is the reason we are getting LiF:YO first to begin with.

As far as I know, we will be allowed to mod LiF:YO in the future.
So if people wanna mod it so you can use the same character on multiple servers they specify. Then sure.
Only thing that should maybe be per server in that case would be location data.

But leaving characters server-side (ala Minecraft) is the simplest way to start with.

[Jezbelle]

Having characters saved on a central server (like DayZ does) would cost money, which is the reason we are getting LiF:YO first to begin with.

Wrong... just wrong.

DayZ is popular in the first place BECAUSE of features like THIS. This is an attractive feature, and a crucial one to DayZ's success. We must emulate it.

One MUST "spend money to make money."

[Ractre]

not sure there is even an issue here, servers are stsandalone, no?

[Deantwo]

Having characters saved on a central server (like DayZ does) would cost money, which is the reason we are getting LiF:YO first to begin with.

Wrong... just wrong.

DayZ is popular in the first place BECAUSE of features like THIS. This is an attractive feature, and a crucial one to DayZ's success. We must emulate it.

One MUST "spend money to make money."

How is it "wrong"?
It will cost money to have a central character server.

I said nothing about it not being a good idea (for some) in the part you quoted. So I am not seeing the "wrongness" in what I said.

not sure there is even an issue here, servers are stsandalone, no?

Yeah we'll be able to host our own servers in LiF:YO.

[Reese]

Personally I would like to see a linking system between the servers. Let two server owners to agree to allow transfers. Have a waypoint you travel to and it passes you on to the other server kinda like what wurm does. Would be fun to have a large cluster of friendly server to trade/war with.

[Deantwo]

Personally I would like to see a linking system between the servers. Let two server owners to agree to allow transfers. Have a waypoint you travel to and it passes you on to the other server kinda like what wurm does. Would be fun to have a large cluster of friendly server to trade/war with.

Sounds interesting.

I guess we'll see this happening as a server mod or something.
If a server were to have more than one world running, you could travel from world to world.

But even if there was going to be official support for this, I don't see it happening right away.

Another problem with this could be that the MMO would be less interesting. I mean if we had a huge inter connected cluster of servers, why play an MMO?

[Jezbelle]

How is it "wrong"?

Technically, you're not wrong. But your attitude, your approach is wrong. Let's not stifle healthy ideas based on arbitrary assumptions. Do you have LIF's budget plan laying in front of you?

I apologize though if I was chiding, I should have just said the above to begin with.

Personally I would like to see a linking system between the servers. Let two server owners to agree to allow transfers.

Linked servers would be a GREAT precursor to the MMO, and help attract a lot of players to LIF:YO, but it sounds a little ambitious for the developers right now, no? All I'm asking for initially is the opportunity to hop servers with my stats intact, if that's not the plan already. I think even this will help draw a lot of purchases and long-time players.

[trashman]

Interesting conversation and all, but I know for a fact that there are no "linked" servers or server hopping. Think of them as minecraft servers in the aspect that they are all standalone and can have different settings applied.

[Bobik]

Interesting conversation and all, but I know for a fact that there are no "linked" servers or server hopping. Think of them as minecraft servers in the aspect that they are all standalone and can have different settings applied.

this. Characters will be created and stored only on a server that you had currently joined. So no servers hopping will be possible, at least not with you stuff and skills


P.S. One of the game modes will be "sandbox permadeath mode" in which you character will die once and for all.

[Jezbelle]

So no servers hopping will be possible, at least not with you stuff and skills

It would be silly to disregard the idea completely, wouldn't it? I can imagine the popular 64 player servers becoming overcrowded, and players not being able to enter their server to play. Likewise, I can imagine private servers quickly becoming abandoned. In both these scenarios, players are losing access to their character that they've put a lot of time into. DayZ has these problems, and therefore allows players to hop, which eradicates the issue. DayZ is even a much faster game, and therefore needs this feature much less than LIF needs it!

In LIF:YO, wouldn't being able to hop to similar servers with only your character's skills intact be an amazing compromise? Not ideal for the player, but a lifesaver nonetheless? Repeatedly starting over in LIF could become monotonous, and turn off players.

Or am I missing something?

[Telakh]

Or am I missing something?

Yeah. Common sence

Any character-tranfer operations must be administrated by the official server in order to prevent character cloning. This kills the idea of steam-independent lan servers.
Also it brings us to a place where all server specifications must be stored on on each characterr and prevents any changes in server rules otherwise such character will become illegal for transfer - noone can predict what rules were used for his training and changed before transfer.
LiF Yo is just a small pocked-type shard universe (like UO private servers) comparing to LiF MMO and it will unlikely be overpopulated.

[Bobik]

So no servers hopping will be possible, at least not with you stuff and skills

It would be silly to disregard the idea completely, wouldn't it? I can imagine the popular 64 player servers becoming overcrowded, and players not being able to enter their server to play. Likewise, I can imagine private servers quickly becoming abandoned. In both these scenarios, players are losing access to their character that they've put a lot of time into. DayZ has these problems, and therefore allows players to hop, which eradicates the issue. DayZ is even a much faster game, and therefore needs this feature much less than LIF needs it!

In LIF:YO, wouldn't being able to hop to similar servers with only your character's skills intact be an amazing compromise? Not ideal for the player, but a lifesaver nonetheless? Repeatedly starting over in LIF could become monotonous, and turn off players.

Or am I missing something?

And I've heard multiple other opinions that server hopping is very bad because of 1000000 ways it can be exploited. Battle logging with your stuff, jumping sweetspots on different servers just to collect loot. Spawning on sniper positions instantly on different servers and so on.

Also, we have a server setting called "skillcap". So some server owners can promote teamplay by lowering skillcap or promote solo play by increasing it.
There also will be skills progression multiplier setting. On some servers you will reach lvl 100 skill in 5 mins, while on other in a 1 year.

Now can you imagine what should happen when you have joined some server with such slow progression with your character that had 10000 skillcap with all skills capped in a day or two?

We are trying to bring a full scale customization to server rules and to LiF gameplay, and idea with transferable characters will only limit that customization freedom.

[Jezbelle]

Thanks for your responses Bobik, and I hate to keep pushing the subject, but I must because I feel it is a lost opportunity for you guys to rake in the $.

And I've heard multiple other opinions that server hopping is very bad because of 1000000 ways it can be exploited. Battle logging with your stuff

Stealing loot would be a non-issue if players only transferred servers with their stats/skills intact, dropping all gear/items when transferring. This would eliminate any incentive to steal loot.

jumping sweetspots on different servers just to collect loot. Spawning on sniper positions instantly on different servers and so on.

This would be a non-issue because server-hopping players could easily spawn in the exact same area that all new players spawned in (YO's version of server 25)

We are trying to bring a full scale customization to server rules and to LiF gameplay, and idea with transferable characters will only limit that customization freedom.

Again, a non-issue, if it is designed so that one can only transfer to a server with an identical rule-set. You might argue that there are too many variables to have any identical servers, BUT i think that if players are given the opportunity to transfer between identical servers, they will begin to intentionally create servers with similar rules in order to create a network of transferable servers. Even in this scenario, there will still be niche servers with unique rules (don't worry)!


Maybe there are other exploits that we are overlooking. However, the way I see it, this seems like an amazing way for you guys to give LIF:YO the MMO-FEEL, without actually having to do much at all! You have most of your work already cut out for you! Take advantage of it.

[Bobik]

But do we really need make LiF:YO so mmorpgish? We have a full scale sandbox MMORPG, why should we make LiF:YO version look like MMO?

Characters transfers are good indeed, but it will be unavoidable to that players will be able to change server settings between restarts, so they powerlevel their characters in no time and then change settings and transfer on some official server a fully leveled character. That is a HUGE hole for exploits of different kind, I don't really want to open it, at least for now.

[Deantwo]

Jezbelle your pushing this way to hard.
A buil- in "server hopping" system that you are dreaming of could work, we all know that. But there is no need to make support for it in LiF:YO right away.

Bobik we will be able to make mods (at somepoint) right?
If so then server admins can do all this on their own if they want to.

If a way to travel from server to server were to be made. It should be opt-in and not DayZ style.

Also let me quote my self:

Another problem with this could be that the MMO would be less interesting. I mean if we had a huge inter connected cluster of servers, why play an MMO?

[Bobik]

Bobik we will be able to make mod (at somepoint) right?
If so then server admins and do all this on their own if they want to.

Yup, at some point we will add more options and tools for modding I hope. But right now it will be too much of a job we can not afford ATM.

[Wolfhelm]

i got an idea, perhaps a default linking gamemode, which everything is set to one ruleset, but your skills link....

[Virdill]

Each server has its own settings, so i doubt it, and hope that for every server you will need to create a different character

[trashman]

Not only will servers have different settings, but why would they want to make YO seem like a massive game when they intend on players buying access to the full MMO This is intended to excite players for the full game and to allow for continued funding. Try to keep that in mind.

[Jezbelle]

It would not seem like a massive game. Please read all of the posts? People would only hop to a new server under dire circumstances (if a server became abandoned, or overpopulated and impossible to enter), as switching servers would eliminate all of your gear/items.

It would be used simply as a safeguard to keep server populations at ideal levels.

[Seeker]

Fark server hoping., ruins the immersion for me. One character one server. wanna have another character join anther server. HARdCORE! permadeth sounds awesomely scary)