When should server hopping be addressed?

[autoloon 285]

The hive system for the mod ended up being very broken because of server hopping. Players could camp barracks or large clearings for heli spawns and with virtually no effort amass an arsenal of the rarest weapons as well as infinite supplies. 

 

I am personally not opposed to the hive system and server hopping being possible in the standalone throughout the alpha, but it is my hope a redesign comes to fruition by the time the game enters beta. 

 

I have two ideas that could pretty handily curb the problem. One is very simple and the other sounds simple but is probably a lot more complicated. 

 

1. Simply divide the total number of servers by an arbitrary number, sort by region and implement 'micro-hives.' If there are only 5-10 servers on which you can use the same character, the challenge of server hopping increases. The added benefit of this option is that players could maintain a number of characters across various hives. 

 

2. A complicated timer system that kills any character that logs into X different servers in Y amount of minutes. There isn't really a legitimate reason for this pattern to occur, so even a very broad stroke would eliminate a significant chunk of the abuse. 

 

What's everyone's opinion on hopping? 

[weparo 613]

Just "glue" charakters to a server and if they want to change from the server have them wait 10 minutes.

[Korsbaek 1778]

Just "glue" charakters to a server and if they want to change from the server have them wait 10 minutes.

 

I think an hour would be better. No one would want to wait that long :P

[ryan__mc__@hotmail.co.uk 131]

It should be addressed when and only when all the major bugs / glitches are sorted and when the loot spawn system is fixed. Atm loot only respawns when servers restart so if someone joins a server to find that there's no loot he should be able to freely change server till he finds a server with loot ...yes people who abuse it are annoying but this is alpha and  we need as much people testing loot as possible and they cant do that if they cant find any.

 

And all these talks about adding delays is just stupid ...especially atm when people do what i said above and also go onto a server to find its dark when they want to play daytime and vise versa and have to change servers till they find what they want to play.

 

So yes this isn't a priority and dean shouldn't waste any time on this till the big bugs are fixed.

[tonytaru 0]

I agree with every post in this thread so far. The only change i have is how to fix it. I think THE best way i have seen to negate server hopping is adding a timer like people have already suggested, however this timer does not kill you for changing servers too frequently or lock you out of servers for a timelimit. Instead if you log out of a server and back in within a 30 minute (or w/e a good amount of time is) you will be randomly respawned somewhere in the world. This way people can't just camp one spot on multiple servers. But you arent penalized for swapping to a friends server or looking for a daytime server.

[Sickerthansars 53]

they already have anti-combat logging/server hopping mechanics avaliable. They just aren't active while they make sure the SA servers can handle the loads,there will be more wipes etc of characters, bugs issues should be fixed before they start even thinking about dealing with combat logging/server hoping its really asinine to be complaining about either at this point honestly

Edited December 19, 2013 by Sickerthansars