Switch Character Without Logging Out?

menedhyn · October 2023

Other (please comment)

Not against it, but not that interested either. The 10-15 seconds it takes to change characters doesn’t cause me any issues or frustrations.

Danikat · October 2023

Just want to see the poll results

Tandor wrote: »

LiteEmUp wrote: »

i can't believe people are voting no to this... this is a HUGE QOL for those with multiple characters and has to do all of them with daily writs....

i really don't see any downsides to this, except maybe this is not a priority for the devs...

and don't tell me this is not technically possible, as others have already said, other games are already doing the ability to switch characters without "logging out or changing to a character selection screen"

Not necessarily, as the likelihood is that it will take just as long waiting for one character to log out and another one to log in, you only save the switchover, not the logging process.

Also, as someone with multiple characters I don't see any real benefit for me personally from this. Others may see a benefit but what is "QoL" for some doesn't mean it's "QoL" for everyone. People may vote no because it's not something they're interested in and as a result they don't want to see the developers spending considerable time altering the game code to allow something they don't need, when there are so many other things they would prefer to be prioritised,

That's all quite apart from the risk of corruption to character data through the introduction and use of such a facility in a game that wasn't built to do it from the outset.

That's a good point.

In another game I play some people loved the QoL update that added a button to condense your (grid view) inventory so everything moved up into the first free space. Other people thought the best QoL update was a few weeks later when they added an option to disable that button, because they would accidentally push it and ruin their whole organisation system.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · October 2023

No

Honnestly it doesnt bother me at all to switch character. I mean its only about 10 sec total, at least for me (ps5na)

Mesite · October 2023

Yes

On my old laptop I could go and make a cup of tea while waiting to change to a different character. It was quite slow.

Mesite · October 2023

Yes

I know it's possible. I frequently transform from a Khajiit Templar into a werewolf. It can't be that much different to transform from a Khajiit Templar into an Orc Arcanist

SugaComa · October 2023

Other (please comment)

Personally I don't mind it, most game require it, what I would like to see though is the armoury get an update where the load out is account wide so you can load up the gear and transfer between characters and when you're not using the gear it's stored in the armoury.

This would only apply to gear not skills or champion points

zaria · October 2023

Yes

Tandor wrote: »

LiteEmUp wrote: »

i can't believe people are voting no to this... this is a HUGE QOL for those with multiple characters and has to do all of them with daily writs....

i really don't see any downsides to this, except maybe this is not a priority for the devs...

and don't tell me this is not technically possible, as others have already said, other games are already doing the ability to switch characters without "logging out or changing to a character selection screen"

Not necessarily, as the likelihood is that it will take just as long waiting for one character to log out and another one to log in, you only save the switchover, not the logging process.

Also, as someone with multiple characters I don't see any real benefit for me personally from this. Others may see a benefit but what is "QoL" for some doesn't mean it's "QoL" for everyone. People may vote no because it's not something they're interested in and as a result they don't want to see the developers spending considerable time altering the game code to allow something they don't need, when there are so many other things they would prefer to be prioritised,

That's all quite apart from the risk of corruption to character data through the introduction and use of such a facility in a game that wasn't built to do it from the outset.

I see one benefit if characters are in the same zone, or more likely in the same city like Vivec or Rawl who is pretty common I think, in this case you will not need to reload the instance just the new character.
Only change here is that you are not reloading instance until after character is selected and its in another zone.
You would save the reload zone thing who I believe is most of the relogg time.

katanagirl1 · October 2023

Other (please comment)

Mesite wrote: »

I know it's possible. I frequently transform from a Khajiit Templar into a werewolf. It can't be that much different to transform from a Khajiit Templar into an Orc Arcanist

Each character has different quest choices so it’s not just inventory and skill differences. Each character has a different version of the whole of Tamriel.

disintegr8 · October 2023

Yes

I've only recently moved to PS5, so the load screens are tolerable - but on PS4 you could go to the bathroom or get a drink while the load screens were running.

Amottica · October 2023

Other (please comment)

Vynera wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

What other games let's you do this?

Lost Ark for example lets you switch a character without going back to the character selection.
You could logout to char selection, but it also as a option to click on "switch character" in the game/esc menu. That loads the selected character.
Pretty sure there are many more games that offer such a feature.

Lost ark was likely developed with that from the start. To make such a change is likely a major overhaul including at the db level. Nevermind. That is wrong. It would be a major overhaul and one that brings limited benefit which makes it very unlikely to happen.

While I have not played Lost Ark I expect it is a much smaller game than ESO on both the server side and client side. There is likely more they can do without impacting performance since the game is more limited.

Mesite · October 2023

Yes

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Mesite wrote: »

I know it's possible. I frequently transform from a Khajiit Templar into a werewolf. It can't be that much different to transform from a Khajiit Templar into an Orc Arcanist

Each character has different quest choices so it’s not just inventory and skill differences. Each character has a different version of the whole of Tamriel.

This is possibly the next step on the AWA roadmap (account wide achievements). There is only one story, with many faces.

(Edited to say I was joking and to apologise to those people who haven't recovered from the AWA amendments)

h9dlb · October 2023

Yes

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

What other games let's you do this?

Guild Wars 2 for one - perhaps other MMO's too

twev · October 2023

Any time I pick up an item - the server knows it's in my inventory.
Any time I swap outfits - the server knows it's what I'm wearing, and what changed in my inventory.
Those things happen in the moment.
If I get booted from the server, or my connection drops - the server knows where I was, what I was wearing, what was in my inv/bank, what group I was in, and what my quests were.
I see little reason why logging out of a toon to char select takes as long as it does.

Since any recently played accounts aren't in cold storage - There is little reason for the server to do a deep dive into the archives to find minuscule bits of data, so that ought not take 'a while', though I agree that it wouldn't be any more instantaneous than the currently awful lag we see when stuff loads in as we run through the world.

I agree that the server has to coordinate worlds, and look at the populations of currently spun up servers to find the optimum server to drop us into, but thats little different than porting to a friend or group member on a different server.

I suspect that a lot of the loading time to log out/in of 'toons is to discourage players from swapping 'toons "too frequently", in a similar fashion to how/why they are restricting the servers from constantly updating in-game email, and allowing guild sales data to be updated less frequently than they used to.

This is just an example of high points involved, of course there are many other individual coordination issues involved in server traffic as well.

This is just my opinion as I make no claims to having any particular knowledge regarding the secret and mysterious inside workings of the arcane magic factory inside ESO.

Vynera · October 2023

Yes

Amottica wrote: »

Vynera wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

What other games let's you do this?

Lost Ark for example lets you switch a character without going back to the character selection.
You could logout to char selection, but it also as a option to click on "switch character" in the game/esc menu. That loads the selected character.
Pretty sure there are many more games that offer such a feature.

Lost ark was likely developed with that from the start. To make such a change is likely a major overhaul including at the db level. Nevermind. That is wrong. It would be a major overhaul and one that brings limited benefit which makes it very unlikely to happen.

While I have not played Lost Ark I expect it is a much smaller game than ESO on both the server side and client side. There is likely more they can do without impacting performance since the game is more limited.

No, that feature wasn't part from the start, came like a year later if I remember correctly.

But I dont see how that would require a major overhaul on eso or the database. You would have a table/list of characters like you have in the character selection and when you click on a character name/load it just logs you out from your current character, and instead of going to the character selection its going straight to the loading screen for your new character.
This shouldn't cause any performance impact or have anything to do with altering the database or much on the client.