Jump to content

The big log on / log off question


Recommended Posts

Here is a potential problem that came in my mind today. I hope I can explain it clearly.

 

Imagine the following situation. You fly with your ship onto a planet. The planet seems unpopulated and safe. You land on it and leave your ship to investigate by foot. Then you log off and go to bed. You re-enter the game the next day.

 

Here is the question: Will you still be on that planet or will you spawn somewhere else?

 

Possible answers:

 

NO - you will spawn at the ark ship or at the nearest check point

This would be very sobering right? If you fly through space for hours finding a cool place, a secret or recources and you log in and spawn at the ark ship! No good because you have to do the same way again. Even if you would spawn at a near station / check point / wormhole or whatever. Maybe you will find this place never again or you have to travel a distance to find it.

 

YES - you will spawn at the same spot you left the game

This is in fact the real problem! You log in the next day and another player built his secured station exacly on that point. What will happen to your avatar? Will you spawn in the ohter players station? (Maybe trapped forever because of the security shield?) You could be trapped in a player built building / cavern / structure. Will you spawn in this construction or on this construction or next to this construction?

The same could happen to your ship. How is this gonna be solved?

 

Just a thought.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The "No" option is better than the "Yes", but both are terrible. Both could ruin the explorer game as the only way to really explore would be to carry a RN or a territorial unit which typically, most explorers would not be carrying. Requiring large colony ships.

 

The only other solutions that come to mind are logging off in safe areas or having your ship disappear. And if you are in a newly claimed territory you would be moved next to it, with your ship. But that all sounds terribly complicated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First option will not be implemented because it doesn't make sense at all.

 

Maybe he built a station there. But you won't be trapped, just flagged. Your ship will probably be stolen, destroyed or hidden somewhere else. I don't see a problem?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about your game crashes?

 

During a light speed travel? will you relog alone in the space at same position where you loged off?

 

 

In the case you precisly described, there is no question to it but yes you might respawn at same exact location that you logged off, and with a smarter algorithm you will spawn at the limit of the land that has been just claimed,  and your ship will be there in the wild.

 

Probably nothing can stop anyone from building around your ship, walls and ceiling, to troll you, but nothing can stop you from destroying this at relog

 

What about our ships? (if it is in the wild and you didnt had time to find and and in a secure zone)

Will it despawn at same time you log off?

Will anyone be able to ride it and take off with it?

Will anyone be able to destroy it? Recycle it, gathering matter from it?

 

Maybe there could be a time (1month, 1 year, indefnitly) before any contructions enters an abandonned state?

Maybe there could be a claiming disability range around your ship when you logged off?

 

Alpha will be full of issues and rebounds for sure

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some really good questions there.

 

In the case of the OP's Yes/No - Yes could be handled by just moving the respawn point x meters in a given direction. But yes - there will also be immersion breaking to a degree - most of Jeronimo's points can't be addressed without some degree of immersion breaking I think...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see why this is a question. Obviously the answer should be yes. I like the argument OP gives under "No." I definitely should not lose my ship and supplies just because my game crashed while I was out exploring. A simple way to deal with constructs occupying the same space as the logged off character is to just move the character until there's no issue. Using something like bounding spheres, the player could be safely placed outside the construct, instead of being trapped inside. There won't be an issue with your constructs since they don't disappear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As much as it pains me to equate these to, but it could work kinda like Rust (shudders).

 

You log off, your character goes to sleep (or into stasis or something). You can be killed (perhaps), and you occupy the space where you logged off. If killed, you will respawn at a respawn point. If not, you will come-to where you logged out. Same if your game crashes.

 

Log out in your ship, wake back up in your ship (if it is still there). If you logged out in your ship and your ship gets blown up, you die (or are exposed and can be killed).

 

You log out somewhere, and perhapse someone has to kill you to build there or claim the area or something.

 

Alternatively the game could have a safe logout feature for you specifically if you have a ship, to log out in a planet's orbit, taking you and your ship out of the game till you log back in. They could also make a sort of pocket-space for you to warp to and safely log out with your ship.

 

They will eventually need to figure this one out though, its a lovely puzzle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As much as it pains me to equate these to, but it could work kinda like Rust (shudders).

 

You log off, your character goes to sleep (or into stasis or something). You can be killed (perhaps), and you occupy the space where you logged off. If killed, you will respawn at a respawn point. If not, you will come-to where you logged out. Same if your game crashes.

 

Log out in your ship, wake back up in your ship (if it is still there). If you logged out in your ship and your ship gets blown up, you die (or are exposed and can be killed).

 

You log out somewhere, and perhapse someone has to kill you to build there or claim the area or something.

 

Alternatively the game could have a safe logout feature for you specifically if you have a ship, to log out in a planet's orbit, taking you and your ship out of the game till you log back in. They could also make a sort of pocket-space for you to warp to and safely log out with your ship.

 

They will eventually need to figure this one out though, its a lovely puzzle.

Avatar loggs out = disappears, confirmed by jc. Not that ship ofc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then your pilot is offline.....Or gunner... ?

I think the question was: Will you spawn in the ship when you relog, or will you spawn in space where the ship was when you logged off? Obviously, it has to be ship-fixed. Maybe a cryo-chamber of sorts that authorised people will be bound to automatically

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then your pilot is offline.....Or gunner.

 

I think the question was: Will you spawn in the ship when you relog, or will you spawn in space where the ship was when you logged off? Obviously, it has to be ship-fixed. Maybe a cryo-chamber of sorts that authorised people will be bound to automatically

 

I was thinking offline players would continue to be an in-game entity. Perhaps they become a killable/destroyable element when they log off. The ship owner could just leave them in there, or drop them off at their destination (or kill them i guess). An offline player may even have some layer of protection that an online player does not have to resist being killed/destroyed (to account for the fact that they cannot defend themselves) perhaps a 12 hour invincibility that re-sets after 24 hours or something. Perhaps TU owners can have jurisdiction to prevent players from killing offline players, who knows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I was thinking offline players would continue to be an in-game entity. Perhaps they become a killable/destroyable element when they log off. The ship owner could just leave them in there, or drop them off at their destination (or kill them i guess). An offline player may even have some layer of protection that an online player does not have to resist being killed/destroyed (to account for the fact that they cannot defend themselves) perhaps a 12 hour invincibility that re-sets after 24 hours or something. Perhaps TU owners can have jurisdiction to prevent players from killing offline players, who knows.

That would make for a great hotel/taxi system, where you either pay to be protected while offline (you might not always be able to return to your home when you need to log off) or even be transported while offline, even with combinations of the two... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only problem I see with avatars remaining physical when the player is offline is something Lethys said:

 

Then your pilot is offline.....Or gunner... ?

If your pilot/gunner logs off or their game crashes, they are stuck in that position. The pilot is taking up the pilot seat, so you are not only without a pilot, but NOBODY CAN TAKE OVER FOR HIM, short of killing him to vacate the chair.

 

Same with a gunner, you will be down a gun until he is killed.

 

That would make it pretty tough to run any type of large ship that requires a large amount of crew, since I guarantee not all of them will be able to stay online the entire time you may need their positions filled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only problem I see with avatars remaining physical when the player is offline is something Lethys said:

 

 

If your pilot/gunner logs off or their game crashes, they are stuck in that position. The pilot is taking up the pilot seat, so you are not only without a pilot, but NOBODY CAN TAKE OVER FOR HIM, short of killing him to vacate the chair.

 

Same with a gunner, you will be down a gun until he is killed.

 

That would make it pretty tough to run any type of large ship that requires a large amount of crew, since I guarantee not all of them will be able to stay online the entire time you may need their positions filled.

Uhm, no.

 

Because logged off avatars just vanish. So everyone can take control. If he relogs, it's most likely that he just appears in the same spot (pilot seat on the ship) or, if controlled by another player, right beside it (on the ship) - those are only educated guesses, but possible

Link to comment
Share on other sites

just don't log off in the middle of nowhere or places that are not secure, problem solved?

 

Seriously though yeah in this game likely much more thought will have to go into when and where we can log off. Shit happens and IRL should always take precedent but again logging off safely might require some preparation before hand. Whether is some kind of personal shields or public safe zones. If doing multiplayer stuff then obviously there needs to be recourse for your team mates to continue playing and not get stuck or w/e because you went L/D.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has me wondering just how common the public safe zones are actually going to be.

 

In Eve this wasn't really a problem since you just docked up at one of the many, many stations spread throughout the cluster and then you were safe. In fact, inside a station is the only place where you are absolutely safe in Eve, but you can't really do much from inside a station beyond market stuff.

 

I think having somewhere that is absolutely safe and somewhat easily accessible is important, but there should be a trade-off to being inside that safe zone. Namely, being stuck in a space where you can't really do a whole lot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only problem I see with avatars remaining physical when the player is offline is something Lethys said:

 

 

If your pilot/gunner logs off or their game crashes, they are stuck in that position. The pilot is taking up the pilot seat, so you are not only without a pilot, but NOBODY CAN TAKE OVER FOR HIM, short of killing him to vacate the chair.

 

Same with a gunner, you will be down a gun until he is killed.

 

That would make it pretty tough to run any type of large ship that requires a large amount of crew, since I guarantee not all of them will be able to stay online the entire time you may need their positions filled.

 

Option 1: Ensure your ship has multiple guns. This is probably going a little too far from the ideals of making the game hard and easily approaches frustration territory.

 

Option 2: Players disappear at log out. What happens if your single player ship (that you've programmed a clever autopilot AI that can travel to a planet without needing input) gets hijacked by pirates? Do you just pop up in the middle of the ship that they've had locked up in their warehouse for ten hours now? If you want to do that stuff, stow yourself in some hidden area on the ship before logging off.

 

Option 3: Push the gunner out of the seat. Just allow an option so that if a player has logged out and they're sitting in something (surely chairs will be either an element or a part of a gun or something), people from the same organisation (or who have the permission through the RDMS) can push you out and take your place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

just don't log off in the middle of nowhere or places that are not secure, problem solved?

 

 

Thats the problem. THERE IS NO SAFE ZONE exept your starting zone. Do you want to travel some lightyears just to log off safely?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thats the problem. THERE IS NO SAFE ZONE exept your starting zone. Do you want to travel some lightyears just to log off safely?

 

"Lightyears" won't be an issue for a while. However travelling cross country to get back to the Ark for log out - that's another question entirely...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...