How to stop server hopping.

[gibonez 3633]

Here is a possible solution to stop server hopping.

 

When you log off if you rejoin the same server you spawn exactly where you logged off at.

 

If you join a new server you spawn anywhere randomly in a 1000m circle of where you logged off.

 

While this does not completely stop the hopping it would slow it down and introduce more risk.

[pureslayerz 21]

No .. Not WarZ please .

 

Nothing will stop server hoppers anyways , its like loot farmers ..

Edited August 15, 2014 by PureSlayerz

[Metalsiren00 3]

Here is a possible solution to stop server hopping.

 

When you log off if you rejoin the same server you spawn exactly where you logged off at.

 

If you join a new server you spawn anywhere randomly in a 1000m circle of where you logged off.

 

While this does not completely stop the hopping it would slow it down and introduce more risk.

 

I done like this idea because it exposes you to random danger when you logged out in a safe area. You could log out in a tree line and spawn in the middle of a city. Sometimes your character loads in world before you even see anything and you can be killed. You can still get loot even when people server hop.

[gibonez 3633]

I done like this idea because it exposes you to random danger when you logged out in a safe area. You could log out in a tree line and spawn in the middle of a city. Sometimes your character loads in world before you even see anything and you can be killed. You can still get loot even when people server hop.

 

As it should if you log into a new server.

 

Stay on the same server and you will be fine.

[trev186 389]

As it should if you log into a new server.

 

Stay on the same server and you will be fine.

 

not always practical...

 

 

sometimes admins restart servers and dont bring them back up for a long time

 

or changing servers to play with a friend

 

Or your server is now full

 

etc etc etc 

 

no sense punishing those who are not abusing the central hive just to stop server hoppers

[Metalsiren00 3]

As it should if you log into a new server.

 

Stay on the same server and you will be fine.

 

Just try and get to the loot before everyone else, it can be done. They are many servers which sit empty for a long time or barely have 1-2 people in it. I don't like server hoppers at all but my fear of them is less about loot and more about the ambushes that happen when looting high value areas. My group has had a clan log in not too far from where we were and ambush from a previously cleared area.

[gibonez 3633]

not always practical...

 

 

sometimes admins restart servers and dont bring them back up for a long time

 

or changing servers to play with a friend

 

Or your server is now full

 

etc etc etc 

 

no sense punishing those who are not abusing the central hive just to stop server hoppers

 

The instances where non server hoppers would be punished is negligible and a perfectly fine.

 

This is only going to hurt server hoppers in reality and it should server hopping and ghosting is garbage and it should not be a major factor in gameplay.

 

 

 

No .. Not WarZ please .

 

Nothing will stop server hoppers anyways , its like loot farmers ..

 

I am sorry but what ?

Edited August 15, 2014 by gibonez

[Jfiles 439]

Here is a possible solution to stop server hopping.

 

When you log off if you rejoin the same server you spawn exactly where you logged off at.

 

If you join a new server you spawn anywhere randomly in a 1000m circle of where you logged off.

 

While this does not completely stop the hopping it would slow it down and introduce more risk.

See as that is a solution. We need a timer so if somebody just leaves for a pee. And they go to a new server they don't need to be 1000m away because they left for a pee. 

[pilgrim* 3514]

Why does anyone want to stop server-hopping ??

 

The players who move from one server to another are... players..

- do you think hoppers go from server to server and collect hundreds of gunns and leet loot ? They get a gun and they go play with it.

 

Because you "generally" hang around on the same server "usually" what makes this YOUR loot ?

The server resets, you log in and run to gear up, but someone got there first. That makes you "good" and them "bad".

*

Rocket has spoken about a possibility of 'rare' loot that might only spawn on a few servers, not common enough to spawn on all..

.. if that happens you will not move, just sit on your tiny bit of the public hive and wait for YOUR loot to appear ?

 

duping is the problem, not 'server hoppers'..

 

Be honest, you hop every day dude. Me I wander around from one server to another to see whats happening

and to see what the admins and players are like

I still got my M4, (and still got my server, hmm?) I have not been near anyone's barracks or airfield for more than a month

 

must say, in the rest of the map I don't generally see a lot of players.. heh

Edited August 15, 2014 by pilgrim

[General Zod 1118]

As it should if you log into a new server.

 

Stay on the same server and you will be fine.

Right, and what if the server resets ? What if I want to join my friends ? What if there is too many people on to find anything and I don't have any gear ? What if if there is too few people and I can't kill or interact with others ? 

Another stupid solution, that will punish normal players. 

[Evil Minion 943]

Why does anyone want to stop server-hopping ??

Because it reduces the risk of looting, causes less travel on on-map routes and causes people to appear out of thin air at high value loot areas much more often.

Without server hopping you would have more travel on map roads, incrasing the probability of encounters and thus the risk involved when looting. Thats more challenging and more interesting than walking for hours without meeting anyone only to have some people suddenly appearing inside that house you are about to search after securing the area.

Its simply a low risk/high reward feature that reduces the overall fun and challenge of the game. Getting good military loot is reduced to hopping until you get lucky which I expect to feel stale compared to the rush of entering a military area without knowing what awaits you, searching spawns while also watching your back and then getting out. Oter people don't get the chance to meet you while moving from one loot spawn to the other - now DayZ lives from encounters and server hoping does reduce them by shifting travel from "across the map" towards "from one server to the next".

Its like giving wildebeest the ability to teleport across Mara River - unfun and frustrating for the crocodiles and not at all exciting or challenging for the wildebeest.

[gibonez 3633]

Right, and what if the server resets ? What if I want to join my friends ? What if there is too many people on to find anything and I don't have any gear ? What if if there is too few people and I can't kill or interact with others ? 

Another stupid solution, that will punish normal players. 

 

Then you take the risk and spawn in at a different location from where you logged off.

 

Play on the same server, wait for it to come back online after a restart this is usually minutes or log in to a new server knowing full well you will spawn in a random location .

 

There is no punishing normal players and if there was its worth it to stop server hopping.

 

also anyone explain the warz comment ?

[trev186 389]

"trev186, on 15 Aug 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

not always practical...

 

 

sometimes admins restart servers and dont bring them back up for a long time

 

or changing servers to play with a friend

 

Or your server is now full

 

etc etc etc 

 

no sense punishing those who are not abusing the central hive just to stop server hoppers

 

The instances where non server hoppers would be punished is negligible and a perfectly fine.

 

This is only going to hurt server hoppers in reality and it should server hopping and ghosting is garbage and it should not be a major factor in gameplay."

 

 

Well what if I log off and switch to a server for a valid reason and I log back in to find the game randomly though me in the middle of NWAF....how is that fair? I dont want to have logged off safely to find the game put me in the middle of a danger zone.

Edited August 15, 2014 by trev186

[pilgrim* 3514]

..//..

Its like giving wildebeest the ability to teleport across Mara River - unfun and frustrating for the crocodiles and not at all exciting or challenging for the wildebeest.

 

That's a very good argument. It sounds like sense to me.

Still - the player hops to get his gun and his stuff, then what does he do.. he plays I guess ?

He doesn't throw it away.

 

Problem about limiting movement between servers is that it is already difficult to find servers to play: you will be kicked, dropped by unexpected restarts, or the servers are whitelisted or effectively locked, or they just won't let you in. In my whole server list I have about 20 in total that I can usually move about on, without getting kicked (except sometimes) where the admin does not restart over and again to loot farm (except sometimes). And I'm a nice cool adult boring quiet player who makes no trouble at all, and I don't much wander around airfields even. I just go to play and look around. (as you suggest, in fact for "probability of encounters", not loot or berezino deathmatch)

 

There are very many players who need a place to play. They are not in a clan, they do not pay a gaming club membership, they do not run their own server with 3 or 4 friends.. they are individuals who want to play, is all.; I think they have difficulty, so they wander about or they crowd together on a few 40/40 servers that are always open to all. There are NOT hundreds of these inside any given ping-range.

 

Probably 2 out of 3 servers are pretty much closed to players, and it's great to talk about private and mine/ours/not yours but it's not a good situation, unless you're happy for everyone else to go hang themselves because you're OK .. but that shall be the death of the game.

 

Still, what you say is true.

But you can't punish many-many-many players because they don't stay on the same server.

 

edit: this morning 3 of my 'playable' shortlist now say:

 

: [Ragnarok]  we pay-->we play  join-->kick

: [ZNZ] JOIN=Kick JOIN=Kick JOIN=Kick JOIN=Kick

: do not enter

 

so what do we expect the dozens of hundreds of standard players to do ? Pay to play ?

xx

Edited August 16, 2014 by pilgrim

[Element47 2480]

your suggestion would probably be as annoying to the gameplay as the issue it attempts to solve.

[Evil Minion 943]

The challenge for the developers is to avoid/punish excessive server switching (server hopping) without making regular server switching (to meet friends etc.) a pain in the a.... Restarts, getting kicked und such things should probably go by a "no penalty here" policy. Losing connection on restart already seems to work this way.

 

Now a "normal player" will visit only a few servers per day (one in the best case) while a "server hopper" will visit plenty of them. So it might be reasonable to increase the penalty in dependence of the number of switches rather than adding a fixed penalty for every switch. However a fixed penalty would also help as it prevents needless switches ("lets just switch once and loot that base again before going on") and hits server hoppers more by adding up.

 

So the most simple solution is making the first switch timer just a little bit too long (so people only like to switch if they got a good reason) and then increasing the timer for each subsequent switch (making it "not worth it" to hop between multiple servers).

[gibonez 3633]

your suggestion would probably be as annoying to the gameplay as the issue it attempts to solve.

 

How so.

 

99 percent of players would not be affected by it.

 

Simply join the same server and the problem or the annoyance is gone.

 

This would only serve to annoy one type of player and that is the server hopper who jumps from server to server trying to gear up quick so they can pvp.

[gibonez 3633]

The challenge for the developers is to avoid/punish excessive server switching (server hopping) without making regular server switching (to meet friends etc.) a pain in the a.... Restarts, getting kicked und such things should probably go by a "no penalty here" policy. Losing connection on restart already seems to work this way.

 

Now a "normal player" will visit only a few servers per day (one in the best case) while a "server hopper" will visit plenty of them. So it might be reasonable to increase the penalty in dependence of the number of switches rather than adding a fixed penalty for every switch. However a fixed penalty would also help as it prevents needless switches ("lets just switch once and loot that base again before going on") and hits server hoppers more by adding up.

 

So the most simple solution is making the first switch timer just a little bit too long (so people only like to switch if they got a good reason) and then increasing the timer for each subsequent switch (making it "not worth it" to hop between multiple servers).

 

Absolutely I am not saying the game has to move your position 1000m every single time you change servers. I am merely stating that it do so when it detects the player is abusing the system to gear up.

 

It can do this in multiple ways such as a cool down for instance. When you switch servers the first time there is no cool down so your character spawns in exactly where you logged off.

 

However if you try to join a 3rd server within the spawn of say 1 hour you keep getting moved around in random directions stopping you from gearing up that way.

[BeefBacon 1185]

Another poorly thought-out "how to stop server hopping" thread. Joy. As has already been pointed out, this has the potential to punish everyone, not just server hoppers. I'm always kicked from servers, whether it be because of a dickhead admin or a server restart. If I can't rejoin that server then I get to spawn a kilometer away. If I have particularly bad luck and I get kicked again, then there's the possibility that I'll spawn two kilometers away from my original position.

 

As far as I can see, server hopping is baked into the way the game works. The only real way to prevent it is through private hives, or shards, or whatever they're called. Players who are bothered by server hoppers can stick to private servers, while those who aren't (or who actually server hop themselves) can stick to public servers.

[gibonez 3633]

Another poorly thought-out "how to stop server hopping" thread. Joy. As has already been pointed out, this has the potential to punish everyone, not just server hoppers. I'm always kicked from servers, whether it be because of a dickhead admin or a server restart. If I can't rejoin that server then I get to spawn a kilometer away. If I have particularly bad luck and I get kicked again, then there's the possibility that I'll spawn two kilometers away from my original position.

 

As far as I can see, server hopping is baked into the way the game works. The only real way to prevent it is through private hives, or shards, or whatever they're called. Players who are bothered by server hoppers can stick to private servers, while those who aren't (or who actually server hop themselves) can stick to public servers.

 

Sure do you have any more ridiculous hypotheticals to use ?

 

Every time someone brings forth a way to stop server hoppers the server hoppers come forth in force on how the solution would hurt regular players.

 

How regular players shouldn't suffer for others exploiting the games mechanics for quick in game wealth.

 

It is a dumb argument and it should no longer be used. Server hopping is a cancer in this game and it is one that leads to the negative player behavior seen in game.

[IronCross 78]

Why does anyone want to stop server-hopping ??

 

The players who move from one server to another are... players..

- do you think hoppers go from server to server and collect hundreds of gunns and leet loot ? They get a gun and they go play with it.

 

Because you "generally" hang around on the same server "usually" what makes this YOUR loot ?

The server resets, you log in and run to gear up, but someone got there first. That makes you "good" and them "bad".

*

Rocket has spoken about a possibility of 'rare' loot that might only spawn on a few servers, not common enough to spawn on all..

.. if that happens you will not move, just sit on your tiny bit of the public hive and wait for YOUR loot to appear ?

 

duping is the problem, not 'server hoppers'..

 

Be honest, you hop every day dude. Me I wander around from one server to another to see whats happening

and to see what the admins and players are like

I still got my M4, (and still got my server, hmm?) I have not been near anyone's barracks or airfield for more than a month

 

must say, in the rest of the map I don't generally see a lot of players.. heh

 

OP is simply another proponent of the "punish the many to benefit the few" according to what he believes is right.

 

Good post.

[ChainReactor 922]

From all possible solutions being discussed here, i only kinda like Evil Minion's idea of an increasing login timer. While I agree that server switching is something most of us do regularily for whatever reasons, server hoppers mostly do excessive server switching. An increasing login timer per server switch within a given ammount of time would at least raise the effort / time it takes to server hop.

[BeefBacon 1185]

Sure do you have any more ridiculous hypotheticals to use ?

 

Every time someone brings forth a way to stop server hoppers the server hoppers come forth in force on how the solution would hurt regular players.

 

How regular players shouldn't suffer for others exploiting the games mechanics for quick in game wealth.

 

It is a dumb argument and it should no longer be used. Server hopping is a cancer in this game and it is one that leads to the negative player behavior seen in game.

 

It's hardly even hypothetical. I plainly expressed that I am often disconnected from servers for a variety of reasons. If a system was in place that meant that my character would be displaced in the event that I joined a new server, then it would cause problems for me. I am not the only one who has voiced this concern. I'll admit that I have server hopped. I don't do it very often, but it's something I have to resort to, occasionally, if all I'm finding is rotten fruit and empty jeans. I daresay that there are very few players who could deny that they have ever server hopped and do so honestly.

 

However, claiming that "everyone who disagrees with me is a no good, dirty server hopper" is very stupid and childish. But even if everyone who does disagree with you spends all their time hopping between servers at NWAF, that doesn't invalidate their argument. A system akin to the one you propose would affect regular players. Considering that, it seems unwise to implement such a system so an alternative is required. I think that a decent loot respawn system would decrease the frequency at which players server hop. If they're anything like me, the vast majority of server hoppers only do so when there is absolutely nothing to find, and every town is stripped clean. If they have access to the bare minimum of food and basic items that are required to play (which would be provided by an effective loot respawn system) then the necessity of server hopping will decrease.

 

But as I already said, ultimately I don't believe that server hopping is something that can be 'stopped' without detriment to other players. The best way, in my opinion, to avoid server hopping is to implement private servers, preventing players from hopping across dozens of servers with the same character. Instead they'll be restricted to only a handful of servers, or even just one per character - depending on how the restricted loot system works.

[gibonez 3633]

From all possible solutions being discussed here, i only kinda like Evil Minion's idea of an increasing login timer. While I agree that server switching is something most of us do regularily for whatever reasons, server hoppers mostly do excessive server switching. An increasing login timer per server switch within a given ammount of time would at least raise the effort / time it takes to server hop.

 

Log in timer has been tried in before and unlike my method actually would end up affecting non hoppers more than it would hoppers.

 

With my idea anyone disconnected from a server would rejoin the server safely in the same location they logged off in.

 

Anyone who is playing and wishes to join their friend would join and keep the same location so long as they only join 2 servers within an hour.

 

It is only when you log in to more than 2 servers within an hours time that you get moved 1000m in a random direction.

[barnabus 1708]

not always practical...

 

 

sometimes admins restart servers and dont bring them back up for a long time

 

or changing servers to play with a friend

 

Or your server is now full

 

etc etc etc 

 

no sense punishing those who are not abusing the central hive just to stop server hoppers

I wouldn't call that server hopping.  That's a bounce, which I only do after I get the 5 min warning, I'll log out of one and bouce to my secondary until I get the five min warning there, then it's back to the primary, etc, etc.  Lately though I have been on secondary only since my primary is stuck in a reboot loop.  With loot spawn the way it is now it'll be way easier to camp out and kill the hoppers anyway.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Barnabus