Server hopping? Is there a solution? If not, what else....

[St. Jimmy 1631]

I think there's no harsh solution until the one big public hive is divided in to smaller partitions so you can't just jump in to any server low population server.

If they want to keep just one big public hive then solutions are very pretty 'hardcore' like no connections to other public servers in x hours which is very wide thing.

[PhillyT 554]

I think the only solution is private hives.  It is painless and actually sort of fun since you get multiple characters.  It also fosters community since you end up operating within that given community, getting to know people, and eventually carving out a niche.

 

Playing with friends is easy enough since they can simply join the server and go with it.

[gearjammer 97]

I think the problem with private hives (just now) is that there isn't anything to do in the game. Survival is easy, and there is no base building so private hives just now become a little too fluffy.

 

 

I die just about every day. Sometimes more than once! :D

[Deathlove 2283]

I die just about every day. Sometimes more than once! :D

if they push the spawn timer to public your going to have to train yourself not to.

[Beizs 186]

Private hives counter server hopping.

 

What I would suggest, however, would be to make it so that you can only change servers once every however long. If a server restarts. it doesn't count as a hop if you join a new one. If you're kicked, it doesn't count as a hop when you join a new one. Outside of that, however, you should be limited to maybe two different servers a day or something along those lines. If the restart/kick detection works properly (and it shouldn't be much of an issue) there shouldn't be an issue with this.

 

Would also be nice to see some kind of desync & ping tracker with this system though so that, should you be unlucky and join servers that quickly get real bad, you aren't locked to them for the day.

 

The main reason I'd suggest this over just using private hives to avoid hoppers is that there's a constant worry that the server might disappear one day. It's happened to me a couple times in the last month, after all. Seeing as how the private hives are, currently, hosted alongside the public one, it'd be nice to see some kind of safety net for this. Like, if your server gets shut down, the next private hive you join where you don't have a character already gets your character from the dead server assigned to it. Should go for persistent items on public servers too, as well as servers where they switch persistence off or change from third person to first person only (or vice versa). Could be achieved through regular backups of your characters (but only keeps the latest version) and checks on whether the server is still alive or not. Would be useful to have some kind of UI to see all of your characters on different servers.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Beizs

[gearjammer 97]

if they push the spawn timer to public your going to have to train yourself not to.

 

I would never play under such a ruleset. Whoever thought of that spawn timer idea needs to back off the bath salts.

[Deathlove 2283]

I would never play under such a ruleset. Whoever thought of that spawn timer idea needs to back off the bath salts.

Well not to mention you magically break both your legs walking up some steps than die now your out of the game 12 hours. lol

[Beizs 186]

Well not to mention you magically break both your legs walking up some steps than die now your out of the game 12 hours. lol

 

This.

 

I can see where they're coming from, but in the current state of the game, it's not a good idea at all.

[scriptfactory 620]

Private shards definitely fix server hopping and (if shard admins are active) ghosting.

How to fix server hopping on the public hive: Increase server loyalty. Get rid of 1PP vs 3PP characters. Add public hive sharding. Allow public server admins to choose from a set of fixed public shards. Set a maximum amount of servers per public shard (e.g. 10).

 

---

Alternate fix: Add defensible safehouse building. Breaking into a safehouse should either require rare resources (e.g. explosives), a lot of time (amateur lockpicker) or a lot of skill (experienced lockpicker) so players actually have a chance of maintaining a safehouse. Players will naturally stay closer to their homes and be less willing to hop since it will leave their safehouses undefended.

[CJFlint 357]

I think the only solution is private hives.  It is painless and actually sort of fun since you get multiple characters.  It also fosters community since you end up operating within that given community, getting to know people, and eventually carving out a niche.

 

Playing with friends is easy enough since they can simply join the server and go with it.

I agree it is cool and a bit experience playing private shard. Also like you said you can have multiple avatars. So if you die, your other avatar on different sever types are still alive and well. Also its appears much of the same people play all the time.

[B4GEL 175]

Did i ever say that??? oO I actually enjoy gearing up, most in this game.

 

Yes you could have a fresh spawn on every single private server, aka 100.000 different chars.

To me, this is not ideal, when i want to play with my buddies from across the atlantic, once a week, on different servers, with one single char.

I didn't mean to imply that you specifically don't enjoy gearing up, it was a rhetorical question. 

 

No one regularly plays on 100 thousand servers, it's probably more like 10-20. most just go for the first one with a good ping and their preferred population. 

If the servers were all private people would think more carefully about what servers they want to play on but you would only need a couple of characters per server location in the world.

 

 

• Having only one character allows for better progress and adds more value to the characters life making the game both more immersive and character death more impactful..

 

That is a good point. It's a shame 'hardcore mode' is going to be limited to private hives, it wont have much of an effect when you can change to another server with a geared character on.

 

If it's possible to differentiate between a player being kicked from a server or the server going down and voluntarily leaving a server they really should increase the server switching timer.

 

[gibonez 3633]

Only solution I can think of is making every server a private hive.

[BrainlessZombie 190]

Only solution I can think of is making every server a private hive.

 

That's how i've been thinking that's gonna be like, all servers private hive and persistence on. Once everything is working, finished and released.

[Exiled_Soul 25]

they should make the servers kinda how h1z1 has them where every server is a new character that way people arent just jumping to loot. if this is what you mean by private then i agree.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

I have an idea that might fix everything. 15 minutes after joining a server, on which you did not create your character or on which your base is not present, loot does not appear for you and is in a "phased" state of nonexistence. Numbers can be tweaked, exact mechanics can change, but phased loot is the only way to make it not interfere hard with everyone who is not abusing the system.

[Killawife 599]

One character on ever server works great. Theres no reason to even think about any other solution to this. The only problem with it is that it becomes quite hard to keep track of them all after a while. But it wouldn't be so hard to make a system where you could see what chracter you have on a server, where he is located and even the option to have a different name for the character on every server.

 A 12 hour punishment for death is a bit harsh. 1 hour would be fine, as long as you can play on other servers with other characters in the meantime.

[Exiled_Soul 25]

dont play 50 servers i mean you can still respawn etc liek normal but maybe play 5-6 servers so you always have some ind of action. if you get low on chars just take the time to loot them up as best you can.

[emuthreat 2837]

Maybe a kind of hybrid between a private shard, and the whole entire public hive would work.  I'm going to use a beehive as an example, where the entire hive is, the hive.  Of course the private shards would be represented by individual cells within the honeycomb, and those would still be possible.  The fix i'm thinking of is to have different "combs" consisting of a fixed number of servers between which each toon can travel freely.  The comb would be kinda like whitelisting, but entirely on the client side, where you commit your public character to a set grouping of public hive servers.

 

The idea here is to find a nice comfortable number of servers that a given player and their "public character" can subscribe to, that will always allow a group of eight or so people to get on the same server at the same time, but limit the amount of servers that a person can hop through for loot.  Somewhere around 12 to 20 seems appropriate.  The endgame would then be to control your set of servers like a warlord.

 

The only downfall to this system that I can forsee, would be a coordinated group of people hoarding up all the loot between their set of servers, and then spwankilling everyone.  In that case, the rest of the players comitted to that set of servers may be free to kill their character and choose a new "comb" of servers.  Or, they could take the opportunity to practice the search-and-destroy play style, and go find where all the loot has been stashed.  Admittedly, this may take a coordinated effort by many people on the multiple servers in that "comb", and could take weeks; but what the hell kind of game do people think they are getting into here.

 

Given the lack of storyline and missions in-game, I figure it might be nice if a combination of server groupings combined with player actions on those servers, might actually make some goal-oriented playstyles come out.  I would be glad to see this game structured in a way that people are forced to band together and grid search the map, looking for the "enemy" base. People would have to be smart, and locate the stash by following the dominant group on the server, then bring in a timed assualt to  take over the stash, or just destroy and disperse the gear. I can already see the backlash:  "What!?! Now I have to talk to people and cooperate to get geared up the way I want?"

[Exiled_Soul 25]

they could still server hop to the other servers tho and loot up if no one is on. atleast if they make it so each server you get a new character then you cant  loot up on a low pop server. i just think that makes the most sense i mean you make a char and that all you get for that server you cant just take him when he dies to loot up and come back. it would also eliminate ghosting. i think having to loot up your character on the one server he was created on would be more fun and challenging  IMO.

[skypig 139]

One character on ever server works great. Theres no reason to even think about any other solution to this. The only problem with it is that it becomes quite hard to keep track of them all after a while. But it wouldn't be so hard to make a system where you could see what chracter you have on a server, where he is located and even the option to have a different name for the character on every server.

A 12 hour punishment for death is a bit harsh. 1 hour would be fine, as long as you can play on other servers with other characters in the meantime.

That, to me, seems like the most simple way to put an end to the problem. one character per sever.

it's not like it'll make life difficult to take out a pen and paper (tablet/laptop/phone/whatever) and make a note on which character is on any given server... a lot less hassle than dealing with hoppers.

[Exiled_Soul 25]

i agree. you could even make a note in notepad right on your computer. 

[TheScruffyBandit 382]

So long as there's a  public hive, server hopping will be a thing. Use the hoppers as easy ways to gear up, find a basic weapon and camp a high value spot on a low pop server, murder them and take the loot.

[Exiled_Soul 25]

not if you make it so each server you get a new char.

[gibonez 3633]

So long as there's a  public hive, server hopping will be a thing. Use the hoppers as easy ways to gear up, find a basic weapon and camp a high value spot on a low pop server, murder them and take the loot.

 

Public hive must die.

 

The only reasonable hive system should be the central loot economy being tied to private hives and communities being able to link up a limited number of servers to use their own hive.

 

So instead of the horrible massive hive we have no we would have daisy chained server communities of 2-3 servers sharing characters and the vast majority of servers all using their own characters.

 

All servers still connected to the central economy hopefully keeping control and tabs on items generated in game and eliminating duping .

[Damnyourdeadman 1045]

Until today,i still think that the old mod system was fine.

 

That is the "one unique charachter per server" instead of the current global character database.

 

I know Rocket's intentions was to introduce it as a refreshing new feature and planed to make it an exciting gameplay component,but the sheer number of server hoppers is ridiculous.

Truth be told.there's no possible meassure to enforce an effective policy.

If they can,people will always take advantage of the system,either it's the Gamma brightness,FOV settings or even the animation bugs.