In other MMOs, I would make notes on people I met, if I had added them to my friends list. Some people I had really bad experiences with, I added them to my friends list with a note so I would know if if I might bump into them again, six months down the road, to avoid them. The problem, was I was reminded of the bad experience everytime they logged in.
Why did I track them? Atleast one time, I had a bad experience with a player who I didn't add to my friends list, and being a forgiving person, I forgot about them, until I got in a bad sitation in a group with them months later. Only when I experienced the displeasure of their company a second time, did I once again remember the first incident.
What do you think about Pantheon supplying in game note functions manual or automatic, tagged to other players?
My manual note for Awesome_Cleric might state "Friend of Randy, wife's name is Bertha", and the automatic note might say "First Encounter 7/8/14 18:12 CST, Grouped 3 times".
My manual note for Dirty_Training_Monk might state "Biggest A** in guild Choo_Choo", and the automatic note might say "First Encountered 2/29/15 3:39 CST, Grouped 0 times".
Some further thoughts on this, the automatic note might say:
"First Encounter 7/8/14 18:12 CST in zone The_Fun_Place,
Last Encounter 10/24/18 16:23 CST in zone Auction_Hall,
Grouped 3 times., total duration 9 hours 12 minutes"
The last encounter note would need to be some amount of time more than 4 hours distant from your current play session with them I believe. Long enough you can't pin point it exactly, but not so recent as it is the same current play session.
Think of all the extra back end work and server load an automatic tracker of this nature this will cause. Something simple like a journal could be kept locally and have zero impact on performance. Tracking every single player you've encountered and grouped with is way overboard. This would be an absolutely massive amount of data and additional requests for a minor return.
hushed said:Some further thoughts on this, the automatic note might say:
"First Encounter 7/8/14 18:12 CST in zone The_Fun_Place,
Last Encounter 10/24/18 16:23 CST in zone Auction_Hall,
Grouped 3 times., total duration 9 hours 12 minutes"
This is a great idea. I wonder how difficult it would be to implement it?
Keno Monster said:Think of all the extra back end work and server load an automatic tracker of this nature this will cause. Something simple like a journal could be kept locally and have zero impact on performance. Tracking every single player you've encountered and grouped with is way overboard. This would be an absolutely massive amount of data and additional requests for a minor return.
I am certainly concerned about performance, but I can't imagine it would be that intensive. It could likely only be loaded when on demand, say if you CTRL hover over a player.
As far as tracking in a journal myself, that would greatly affect my performance. It would be take a few minutes every day, to load that tab assuming the web browser crashed, possibly logging in all over again, alt tabbing back and forth because it was a funky spelled name, etc. If a computer can do it automatically with very little negative, then let's allow it to be automated. Heck, this could probably be run locally and wouldn't even need to be run on the server.
edit reason: typo
We are looking into the ability to add "notes" to some things but I am not sure if we will be able to automate it with history checks and queries everytime you meet other players.
Great post though, I really like this idea and had something similar for a guild management system that included the ability to post notes on guild members and other things like loot, guild needs like mats, money, rent etc. so keep the idea's coming, I will pass on what I can and we will look into see what, if any of it, we can implement. :)
hushed said:Keno Monster said:Think of all the extra back end work and server load an automatic tracker of this nature this will cause. Something simple like a journal could be kept locally and have zero impact on performance. Tracking every single player you've encountered and grouped with is way overboard. This would be an absolutely massive amount of data and additional requests for a minor return.
I am certainly concerned about performance, but I can't imagine it would be that intensive. It could likely only be loaded when on demand, say if you CTRL hover over a player.
As far as tracking in a journal myself, that would greatly affect my performance. It would be take a few minutes every day, to load that tab assuming the web browser crashed, possibly logging in all over again, alt tabbing back and forth because it was a funky spelled name, etc. If a computer can do it automatically with very little negative, then let's allow it to be automated. Heck, this could probably be run locally and wouldn't even need to be run on the server.
edit reason: typo
You're going to have a table/document with of millions of records/objects. Ever query a table with a million rows? Even if the DB is properly denormalized, you don't want to have to go to a database for something that has otherwise nothing to do with the actual game. These requests are going to be massive, and numerous. We don't yet know how many people will be on a server, but think about having 5000 people and tracking every one of these encounters, and then multiply that by months and years, and then multiply that by every server they have. This would be CRAZY noisy and CRAZY expensive. This is an MMO where latency and response times are at an absolute premium. You aren't loading your profile on some website and it's okay that a request takes 600ms. These types of request are of the most expensive variety because they have to go to the database. The server handles client interactions for things like combat on its own, and of course every so often saves states.
Going all the way to a database for something so minor is just a plain bad idea when there is already so much to handle. There's a reason why games have limits on the number of people on your friends list, for example. That request has to go to the DB. Now multply that by not just your friends, but by every person playing wanting to know this info about every person they've ever grouped with.
Think of all the times a login server has gone down or been unresponsive. Those are only modearately expensive requests. You send your credentials, the server makes a database connection, the DB in turn queries for your creds, the server application then compares them and authorizes, or not. Simple right? But imagine if that type of request is happening not on the login server, but on the game server itself thousands of times an hour and with payloads much larger than a username and password and with responses by the server requiring a more expensive database query and a larger response object.
If they track this sort of info, and move it somewhere else once a day or something like that, and then make it available via a web or mobile app that doesn't impact game servers and game DBs, then that could be a thing, otherwise no, just no.
You are trivializing something you don't seem to know anything about. Just because you "don't see it being intensive" doesn't mean anything. Think of all the millions, literally, of things the client and server have to do in an MMO. Assuring accurate combat performance is #1. They already have to be extremely intelligent and calculated with the way they bundle damage requests and responses to and from the server and those are TINY little bits of data. I don't mean to be rude, but this is just a really bad idea for a type of game that lives and dies with performance. And for what, some info that IMO is hardly valuable at all.
@Keno Monster
You are certainly correct. I don't know anything about it. Your suggestion of it going to a website is certainly fair. Based on your understanding, how taxing would it be for each of our individual systems be to handle? How would a feature like the automatic notes I suggested compare to /played?
hushed said:@Keno Monster
You are certainly correct. I don't know anything about it. Your suggestion of it going to a website is certainly fair. Based on your understanding, how taxing would it be for each of our individual systems be to handle? How would a feature like the automatic notes I suggested compare to /played?
Played tracks one thing. It's sent to the server, and then DB, twice: when you log in, and when you log out. You're suggesting tracking the time played, among other things, with every single player you've ever grouped with. How often does a player join or leave a group compared to how often they log in or out? How many people are in a group? Every one of those players are now tracking every single other player. For what? So you can see some marginally, at best, meaningful info? What real value does this have? How does it make the gameplay experience better to know how many hours you've grouped with a certain person or when the last time your grouped with them was? It's meta data that doesn't matter, imo. Ths is some big data analytics thing that you'd expect from facebook or google for selling ads to people, not from an MMO.
You do not go to the DB for something as trivial as this. These games scrimp and save and optimize as best as possible for all the very important core things. This is a very low meaning thing that would be relatively expensive.
There is some debate on if 'friends' lists will need to be 'mutual' like on Facebook, or act more like 'following' somebody on Twitter. I suggest that there should be both options.
When adding somebody to a 'friends' list it gives that other person the option to 'approve' or 'unapprove'. If they approve then both players are added to each other's friends lists. If they do this, this allows for the game extra's like notifying you when that person logs in or logs out, and other things that only apply to 'friends'. Players could also add/edit their own note line (like on Facebook) and anyone on their friends list will see it. So if you put on your self note line something like: "Fighting in Amberfaet tonight". Players who are friends would then see that line next to your name in their friends list.
There should then be the option to 'like' a player. This doesn't require approval but rather just adds an entry for that player in a special list called 'Liked players'. As well there could be a 'Disliked players' list. These lists would only be for your own personal note keeping and wouldn't automatically show you if that player is online or offline, or give other options that are for the mutual friends system.
You could then add notes and even #tags to players on any of these lists that you can use to search the list.
So if you add somebody to your 'liked' list and then add tags like #blacksmith #greathealer #lovesdogs.
On your 'dislike' list you could of course add tags like #trainedme #foulmouth #likescats.
There could then be a dropdown menu for each tag you create that lets you quickly show players you've used that tag for on any list.
Obviously there would also be an 'Ignored' or 'Blocked' list that will hinder players ability to contact you.
It would also be useful if you could have a key (like Alt) that you use and hover your mouse over a players floating name/health bar to get a popup tooltip window that shows basic /who info like Name, Class, Guildtag, Level, etc... This could also include a spot for 'on your friend list' or 'on your like list' or 'on your dislike list' that would show you any Notes and #tags you've put for that player.
Maybe even have the option to pick a special colour label for these lists. The floating name of Players could then show up that custom colour depending on what list you put them on. So for example if normal players names are White... Friends are Green... Liked are Blue... Disliked are Pink... Blocked are Grey.
Then if you are running through town and notice a player with a Blue name you can tell they are on your 'liked' list even before you get close enough to see who it actually is and you might choose to /wave at them as you pass by. Or if you are in a dungeon and another group is fighting near by and you see a Pink name you can be alert to potential bad behaviour because you know that person is on your 'dislike' list even before they get close enough for you to read the name clearly.
This colour and #tags could also show up on the list of players when you do a /who command, so you can notice your friends, liked, or disliked players rapidly in that list including the #tags you have for those players.
Most MMO's have a Notes feature that we can manually add a little extra to. I find it quite handy and use it all the time. One thing I would caution is how would bots misuse conveniences we ask for to spam the hell out of us. I know -- It seems unrelated, but they always find a way to ruin all the nice bits. My point being, I hope they keep those pesky bots in mind as they start adding cool features to limit spam as much as possible.