Service to share characters between shards

[Soteric]

Imagine if there is a Service that allows to transfer character skills and stats from shard to shard. Could it be popular?

For example player has character Hercules on shard Haven and character Homer on shard Hell. Haven and Hell owners are agree that all stats and skill gained on one shard are valid on another. They sign such agreement on Service and share characters information with Service (nothing private, just character name and skill/stat values). Then player comes to Service and says that he wants to treat character Hercules and character Homer as one shared character. Next time he logins Haven, shard sends request to Service which checks agreements, characters and returns the sum of the skills. Actually not the sum but if you gained from level 1 to level 10 on Hell you'll enter as 10th level character to Haven. And then if you gain from 10 to 20 on Haven next time you login to Hell you'll be 20th level.

I had a brief discussion with some players on Hybrid IRC channel and they said it was a bad idea Because gaining skills is part of the game and when you join new shard it's great to train your character in new environment.

I also thought about different problems with implementation. For example it's easier to train some skills on Haven so no point to train them on Hell. It can be solved by setting rates between shards like only half or 1/3 or 1/4 of the skills will be transfered.

Another problem is breaking agreements. For example Haven and Hell owners don't want to have common characters anymore. This problem can be solved by storing all gain transactions. If you don't want another gains affect you then you disable them and they won't be included in skill calculations. It could be configured in quite flexible way like "don't want to add skills gained on Haven from 5am to 6am on 13th of Feb last year" and so on.

What do you think? Is it nice to have a world wide character database and easily travel from shard to shard?

 

[HellRazor]

I think it could be pretty popular. I was thinking it could even be automated to some degree.

For instance, let's say the custom script maintains a central repository of all shards who are signed up for shard transfers.

On shard 1, a red moongate appears, the player enters it and is prompted to select a server from a list that he wants to move to. Player makes selection, server stores all of the character's stats and items on the web, sends a text message to the player to log into Server 2, and disconnects the player.

Server 1 sends notification to server 2, Server 2 imports the character and items from the web. Then player logs into server 2.

Of course, there would need to be a way to link the player's accounts on Shard 1 and Shard 2. Either via the use of shared accounts on all enrolled servers, or the player could enter his account name and password when going through the moongate and Server 2 could verify the info before doing the import.

 

[milva]

Just my opinion - creating this will put a player into the world much faster. Which mean's
it could give them the time to become "bored" with the server, once they have done it all.
Then another thought is: quite a few player's now a days, do not want to work skills-
it is to "time consuming for them".
Guess this idea would work for the servers who auto give all skills to gm with starting

 

[HellRazor]

The script could have various pre-defined rulesets that could be specified by a participating shard. For example, maybe a shard has a "No Items" requirement - so when the player transfers into the shard, none of his items go with him.

There are pros and cons to a system like this. One advantage I can see is that it could potentially expand the user bases of small shards. Also it would allow more choices for players. It could even be used to chain facets to create massive interconnected worlds run on different servers.

 

[Vorspire]

In a perfect world, where shards don't compete for every player they can get and shard owners can be trusted, this would be nice indeed.

The main issues I can see with a service like this is that the shards that are signed up to the service would have to have pretty much the exact same set of scripts, mainly for Items and Mobiles (PlayerMobile) - If a player transfers to another shard and they take items with them, one or more of their items may not exist on the other shard.
If one shard supports a level system, but another shard doesn't and you transfer to it, how would the player's level be delegated? What if both level systems were different, one has a level cap of 100, the other 50, etc.

Because of the nature of the customization of RunUO, it pretty much makes a service like this impossible, given the sheer amount of compensation that would have to be done between shards. There would have to be a strict compliance/standards policy that was enforced by the service so that all shards would adhere to it, but then comes the issue of trusting shard owners - just look at how many shards edit their files to fake their online count!

When it boils down to reality, my opinion at the end of the day is that no one would use the serviced based on the paranoia of losing their player-base and large shards that already exist would not benefit from signing up with this service if it were to exist.

Don't get me wrong, it's an entirely great idea, I just don't think it will work in the current climate of UO/RunUO.

 

[HellRazor]

Yeah I agree the more custom a shard is, the harder it would be to be supported. Shards would either need to share similar code or the types of things that could go with a player would be pretty basic stuff (stock UO items). I am thinking it wouldn't be a true duplicate, more like the script would publish your viking sword to the temp repository, and then shard 2 would read the repository and translate it by creating a new viking sword.

It would be a kludge anyway you look at it, but its kind of an interesting concept to talk about. In the real world not sure how much real application there would be. It would have greater uses and potential though for shards sharing a codebase and/or player base. But then again, we have facets to use for that.

 

[Soteric]

Thank you for your replies.

I didn't think about transferring items because this task looks quite complex. Skills and stats mostly mean the same and more or less effectively can be regulated by rates. In some situation, for example mentioned by Vorspire where one shard has levels and other one doesn't, we can make some customization and convert levels to stats and vice versa. Items are more unique, there is a lot of them, they can have different additional properties depending on shard, can receive different bonuses when crafted and so on. And it seems to be difficult to track changes of player inventory. Though it would be great if this problem could be resolved in some not overcomplicated way.

It would be also great to minimize changes administrator has to apply on RunUO itself. Ideally it's plug-n-play like Nerun's Distro (or at least what it was few years ago when I checked it last time). Just drop few files, run command on your shard and you have fully populated world. That's really amazing! It would be very nice if this system could work the same way.

My Ultima playing experience is about one month on local shard with about 10 players online and that was long time ago So my words probably look ridiculous and completely wrong but I'll try to explain why I like the idea of such service. I see that applications which allow to automate some actions are quite popular in Ultima world. It's UOPilot, EasyUO, Inject, Stealth client and so on. Personally I realized that the easiest way to gain my Dex would be playing some music instrument. I wrote an UOPilot script and my character played music for few nights wandering around the town to cheat anti-macros system. People create similar scripts to collect resources, to train skills and stats, and for me it means that the process of gaining is boring itself and people try to skip this part. Hunting bosses, solving quests, making wars with other clans, participating in tournaments and mass events like raiding or defending the towns are real fun. With this service I can see that shard A has tournament on Monday, shard B has mass event on Wednesday and a whole bunch of new quests appeared on shard C, and I can take part in all of them. And none of the shards will actually lose their players, they even get new ones. Because events can attract people from all the shards. It means that if we have 10 shards with 100 players each, then every shard will gather 1000 players on event. Yes, the world isn't ideal as Vorspire mentioned. I totally agree with him. But allow character transfers at least for the time of events seems very nice to me.

What do you think? Am I completely wrong? Are there any valid points in my words? I don't want to flame here and don't want to look like I defend my position to the death but just want some discussion and different point of views. Please don't get me wrong.

 

[CrazyIdeas]

What?? I'd take your characters if a player said so, vice-versa. Technically it'd only effect the player. Although I may have to review your items they have.

How about this: Let's create an armory, like wowarmory.com where you register an IP address, create a character, than it'd require a coalition between the admins to determine if this IP address is active on any one shard, any item or whatever acquired or changed will save to the armory, than we just look on it and make a replica on our shard ..the only downside is everything is organized as dates and numbers, some automation would be required imo

 

[Vorspire]

I was mulling over the idea a bit more and have a new theory to bring to the table...

Suppose all shards using the service had a "rating" system, that would basically calculate the character's rating - a total measurement of the characters' worth.

When you begin transfer of your character, your character rating is calculated, this rating is then attached to your character on the service, when your character has successfully transferred across, the rating is used to award your character with the ability to spend the rating on upgrades for that server.

Each server would be responsible for their own economy based on ratings, incoming and outgoing transfers would then be subject to more thought on the players behalf, because sometimes it might not be "worth" transferring, thus creating a competitive market and global economy where shards would need to offer the best rating "exchange rate", or as the saying goes; "more bang for your buck". (Whether this side-effect is a good thing, I'm not sure)

At least with this sort of ratings feature, you would never need to track stats, skills, items, etc - you would just track the character rating and award the character with an amount of custom currency based on said rating, when a successful transfer is complete. The custom currency would allow for players to buy skills, stats and specific items from special vendors.

I'm sure there's a lot I haven't covered, a couple flaws here and there that I've missed but that's all I can think of right now.


[EDIT]
WoWArmory is great, it's like what MyRunUO should have been - MyRunUO is based on pretty old code now and I can safely say that I have definitive plans to write a brand new WoWArmory-style adaptation of MyRunUO - but it will be targeted at shards, not a central hub for shards to join - unfortunately it will only be available with VNc as a module and not a stand-alone system, due to the dependency on the MySQL service and outgoing packet overrides utility.

 

[pooka01]

Sending the account creation to other shards can be a great idea, you create an account, it is created on all these servers, if you want to move to another, you pass a said "portal" or whatever, and you need to connect to the shard that you choosed, you then appear on the other naked, with your stats and skills, name, hairs, etc.

That is all a job of thrust, if a server gm decide to set the skills of a player to 100 and give him lot of stuffs and all, that would be unfair to everyone... So multiple shard owners would be more complicated to work with...

Also, What happens if you, you play on x shard, and your brother is playing y shard, then they both change shards? A big conflict would override, no?

I came with an idea;
Blessed, cursed, newbied, regular, etc... The loottype could be used to transfer specific items to other shards, you have a haven white sword that is blessed? it is saved and you have it in hell, just with nothing else. Also Different banks? (I already hear the coming: "yea dude, i got a bank in hell with a million gold in it!")

 

[Vorspire]

If I have a copy of RunUO running and it uses the service, I'd create my character, give it capped stats and skills then put it up for transfer to any other shard I fancied starting to play and presto, I have a fully trained character to start with on a new shard.

Because of this flaw and there being absolutely no way to prevent an average user from running a shard to do the same thing, is the grounds on which I would call this service a total impossibility.

I thought the rating system would be good enough, it does solve the items, stats and skills transfer balance issue, but I overlooked the simple fact that anyone can use RunUO, not just shard owners or server admins.

The only hint of hope left for a service like this to be feasible is that everything from shard registration to individual character transfers be subject to pending approval by a real person, IE an employee of the service.

 

[pooka01]

All the info of what is done is sent to the web and one host checks/approve all what is be done to be transferable? If one person or a small group of person can regulate the links between servers that would be easier. Maybe a kind of ratio? average of skills/stats earned per day, comparing to the person, then scale it like; 48% lower than average = no problem, stuffs transfered, if it would be at 94564% over the average = problem.

But by linking servers every member servers shall be agreeing of who can enter and who can't, or it would be a total anarchy... And such linking, would that let an open door for bad things/persons to enter in?

 

[Kraz]

I think this is a great idea; Vorsp. probably you missed the part saying that transfer will only occur if both servers have an "agreement".
Also, I can see that working on a portal such as ConnectUO, that "agreement" as a public/private server rule.
People would be able to try other servers and stay where they really want.

 

[Vhaldir]

Just a quick thought.. to avoid the complications of cross-shard scripting, incorporate a 'Customs' system.. wherein players may not migrate their items, etc. and only the character itself is 'copied'. You could even go so far as to only pull in the characters' primary stats/skills and appearance and check against the 'new' shard's caps..

 

[merlyn2000]

i thought of this years ago ...

the consortium of servers would have to be trusted. say i know tom and i have the same scripts, we both can share characters. then we, the consortium, would then have to vet for and then vote for new servers, and this would be contingent upon his/her scripts being approved. a server op would have to give access in some way so his scripts caan be examined periodically.

it would be a great thing, and could be very popular. think of neverwinter nights. they could go from server to server.

then the benefits also include the ability to have many many multiples of new maps to explore. you are changing the dynamc here, when you do this. when a player gets bored, then he explores a server with custom maps, but scripts would have to be essentially the same as its peer servers. so no more grinding forever every time a server falls off the list, but much more to explore.

actually, i am working on a way to share character data now, more precisely, i just completed my proof of concept with my family here in NC. they arent as excited as i am, but then again, they dont see the benefits.

its so much more than you guys are thinking it is. its changing the whole dynamic of runuo and even uo.


it even negates the need for proggies like connectuo.

 

[pooka01]

Exploring? Mainly, the players just log off after passing the starting area and never come back.
Except if there's more than a hundred player online, then, it's different stuff...

 

[merlyn2000]

there will always be that player when he has no investment of his own, and no incentive to play. but if all the runuo/uo community were like that, there would be no runuo or uo left today. how many players have you seen come back after years of being away? how many people have you seen return to runuo after years of being away?

look beyond what you have seen, see what could become.

 

[DaveGiant]

Its a cool idea that cannot really work. I don't think technically there are too many problems. However realistically there are a whole host of problems.

Whether it is shard reliability (losing characters on offline shards), responsible owners (don't want to transfer GM creations), differences in items and skill gain rates on different shards can cause a bunch of problems.

The main use for this would be to make moving between shards less time costly. Many shard owners will be against this as it is all about player numbers and they won't want to give them away without guarantee the players will be free to return. Even with a guarantee the player would lose the one thing keeping them loyal (time invested) to the shard if they and their friends can hop to another.

A better option would be for shard owners to give out starter packs to say the first 100 new players. Or create a shrine which lets young players assign say the first 500-700 skill points on one character. This would make starting new accounts less tedious and encourage more movement between servers.

 

[merlyn2000]

i dont look at this as something that all shards would want to implement ...

but as a system that would allow several servers to act as extensions of each other ... allowing more geography to explore [maps], or even having seperate scripts [under certain circumstances] on two or ore servers, allowing features that cant be realized currently.

say for example myself and three close friends want to operate servers with different maps, one of course could be original maps. we could do it here, and share the character base; characters could travel freely between servers. would i want to share characters between shards with people i dont like or trust? definitely no. would i agree to shara characters among tightly controlled servers, each one agreeing to share scripts/caps etc? yes.

 

[pooka01]

i dont look at this as something that all shards would want to implement ...

but as a system that would allow several servers to act as extensions of each other ... allowing more geography to explore [maps], or even having seperate scripts [under certain circumstances] on two or ore servers, allowing features that cant be realized currently.

say for example myself and three close friends want to operate servers with different maps, one of course could be original maps. we could do it here, and share the character base; characters could travel freely between servers. would i want to share characters between shards with people i dont like or trust? definitely no. would i agree to shara characters among tightly controlled servers, each one agreeing to share scripts/caps etc? yes.

That makes sense.
Event server, roleplay server, war server, regular server, things like that, with a scale of 800 players would be a good thing considering the number of maps. If the launch of these servers fails, and have below 100 players, that will continuously go down. But the idea is nice.
Instead of the "[stats" command, or login message, the player number could be the shared number of players? 100+101+140 = 341 players online while there is 100 on this server. etc.