Idea to streamline play and reduce server workload: Instant character switching.

ImmortalCX · November 2018

One of the biggest frustrations, when switching between alts, is the lag of logging out and having to log back in.

It seems silly that when all the characters are in Vvardenfel to do dailies, that the character has to "log out" and then go through a delayed "log in" procedure, where Vvardenfel is reloaded.

The memory and bandwith requirements of a character are tiny compared to other game resources. They could all be loaded to memory and be ready to switch if they are in the same area. All the world resources have already been loaded, there is no reason to have to go through an extensive "log out" / "log in" sequence.

I put these in quotes, because I don't believe that's actually what's happening. Player has logged in prior to getting to the character select screen.

A HUGE improvement to the game would load all the character resources to the client and allow virtually instant switching between them if in the same area. (Obviously not in instanced content.)

Would you support this improvement, and do you think it is possible?

IMO, I believe the logout lag (wait ten seconds) is completely arbitrary to slow down pacing, and that the login is likewise punitive; if it was coded efficiently, resources are already cached; logging into a new character in the same zone shouldn't take 30-60 seconds. Ridiculous if you just want to train your riding and log out.

Saucy_Jack · November 2018

ImmortalCX wrote: »

The memory and bandwith requirements of a character are tiny compared to other game resources. They could all be loaded to memory and be ready to switch if they are in the same area.

This is why you can't do that. Alts are all over the place. Of course, people who just log in to do writs usually have them all in the same spot, but people who do this are a mere subset of the playerbase, and can't be used to generalize alt zone placement.

yodased · November 2018

This is kinda funny.

The login server which holds the gateway to access the mega server is not the same server as the game.

That "artifical time" more than likely hold sanity checks like confirmin i.p. adress against known blocks you have logged into, running tests to ensure no duplicate actions are being taken, as well as saving the database state so you can log on again later.

Instant anything related to character placement is impossible as that would require the server to simply accept instructions from the client without checks.

There is literally 1 rule that is universal in coding for connective platforms and that is

Never trust the client.

idk · November 2018

The suggestion not only would not reduce server load, it could actually increase it. It also would not speed up changing characters.

The first character would still need to load out then the second character load back in. Not to mention that time would still be required to pull up the character menu and select a character. No time savings.

Second, as has already been brought up the character select occurs on a different server. There are multiple servers doing specific tasks outside of the servers that actually run the content. Character select is one of them. So the server load related to changing characters does not affect actual game play.

Last, and what OP may be trying to explain, the graphics loading in would still be required as the game must load every character in fresh as though it was in a different zone as most of us have characters in different areas.

So in the end, with OP's suggestion there is no real savings of time or server load for Zos or us as players.

ImmortalCX · November 2018

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

The memory and bandwith requirements of a character are tiny compared to other game resources. They could all be loaded to memory and be ready to switch if they are in the same area.

This is why you can't do that. Alts are all over the place. Of course, people who just log in to do writs usually have them all in the same spot, but people who do this are a mere subset of the playerbase, and can't be used to generalize alt zone placement.

When you are at the "login" screen (actually the character select screen), the client obviously has information on all your characters; at a minimum their appearance, equipped armor/costumes, dies, pets, horse, etc.

Relative to the memory requirements for the 3d world, the other player's PCs, NPCs, quests, location, etc, the data structure to hold all your personal character information and their inventory is relatively small. It may even be the case that this information is in memory at the character select screen, which I suspect it is. IOW, when you get to the "login" screen (character select), you are already logged into the server, all of your character's information is in memory, the only thing that hasn't happened is that the world art resources have not loaded, because the game doesn't know which character you want to use.

When you select a character, dynamic information for that zone is loaded from the server, and your character is inserted into that data, for display by other players.

The point I'm making is that:

A) It appears that all of your character's data is available from the character select screen. Its really just a tiny bit of memory to store 8+ characters as opposed to just one. And even if all the characters are not stored in the currently running client, they could be.

If an alternate character is in the same location (say within 50 yards), it would not be difficult to swap characters. You wouldn't have to go through rebuilding the current view, the world would already be populated. Changing characters wouldn't be much different than changing your characters clothes (but in this case, the appearance, inventory, buffs, etc change too.)

From an engineering standpoint, its something that is doable and would have a tangible benefit.

There is probably some "business" reason that they don't do it, likely to do with immersion (they decided that they don't want characters flipping like chamelions in front of the other player's eyes.) Or even more likely, when they designed the original character select function (could be legacy code from the late 90s) it didn't have that functionality, and it would require a rewrite.

I dont doubt there would be tech issues like different plugin loadouts per toon (would have to be addressed).

What I (sadly) kinda suspected is that despite something that would improve the playing experience, the idea was shot down by forum "experts". Rather than explore/imagine the ways it might be possible, everyone was quick to point out how it's "impossible".

yodased · November 2018

Thats not how this works, thats not how any of this works.