Character Select Screen Information Improvement

[zenijos10]

I now have too many characters to count across multiple accounts.  I would love to have more information on the character select screen regarding each character, possibly via an expansion or + button or even in the margins next to my character image.

In order of what I would like to see for each character at character select:

1. Influence 
2. Veteran Level
3. Items Sold Count / Items Bought Count
4. Item Selling Count / Items Buying Count
5. Powers Chosen
6. Slots/ Per Power and Enhancements slotted
7. Items Sold Details/ Items Bought Details
8. Items Selling Details / Items Buying Details
9. Accolades Completed
10. Current Missions

 

Do you  agree with this list?  What else would you like to be available from the character select screen?

What's your list of improvements to the character select screen ordered by importance?

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by zenijos10

[Rudra]

Uhm... why? The character select screen is supposed to be a quick list of available characters, their type, and their level. Why do you want an encyclopedic entry for your characters?

[zenijos10]

I have 100+ characters and I'm not only one.  I can't remember every detail.

I'm not saying flood the screen with info, instead I'm saying let me get relevant info from the character select screen instead of having to log in to each character, maybe click a + or something on the character select screen to reveal the data.  So mostly, visually the screen changes very little.  For a lot of us we have all kinds of projects and auctions going across multiple characters simultaneously. I hope to make it easier for us to comb through a huge log of characters and to put our limited attention where it is best used.  I'd like to not need to log in to several characters every day and focus less on the meta aspect of having multiple characters.  

@Rudra

Do you actually not want this, or are you playing Devil's advocate, or something else?

Edited March 22, 2022 by zenijos10

[Rudra]

Was asking. As another player afflicted with alt-itis, I can never remember what character has what going on either. I just wanted to know why so much information is needed or desired on the character select screen.

 

For instance:

I don't get the desire for an items already sold or bought count on the character select screen. I especially don't understand why anyone would want details on items already bought and sold, since, you know, just knowing there are bought items waiting for the character to claim or gained inf' from items already sold is enough to let me know I need to load that character. And the information will then immediately be available as I accept my new inf' or items.

 

I get the desire for more info, but you're asking for a lot of information.

 

Influence currently available

Incarnate level shifts

Flag indicating items have been sold/bought since last logon

Secondary power set added to the primary power set entry

Current missions list title summary or a flag showing the character has uncompleted missions in their queue

 

I can see the need, or at least the desire, for these entries or flags. The rest just seems... excessive. I'm just trying to understand, is all. I'm not going to say "no" to the suggestion, just ask "why?" as I try to understand what you are trying to accomplish.

 

You want all that? Who knows, maybe the devs will grant it.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to remove "e" from "can", so it stops reading as "cane".

[zenijos10]

44 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Was asking. As another player afflicted with alt-itis, I can never remember what character has what going on either. I just wanted to know why so much information is needed or desired on the character select screen.

 

For instance:

I don't get the desire for an items already sold or bought count on the character select screen. I especially don't understand why anyone would want details on items already bought and sold, since, you know, just knowing there are bought items waiting for the character to claim or gained inf' from items already sold is enough to let me know I need to load that character. And the information will then immediately be available as I accept my new inf' or items.

 

I get the desire for more info, but you're asking for a lot of information.

 

Influence currently available

Incarnate level shifts

Flag indicating items have been sold/bought since last logon

Secondary power set added to the primary power set entry

Current missions list title summary or a flag showing the character has uncompleted missions in their queue

 

I can see the need, or at least the desire, for these entries or flags. The rest just seems... excessive. I'm just trying to understand, is all. I'm not going to say "no" to the suggestion, just ask "why?" as I try to understand what you are trying to accomplish.

 

You want all that? Who knows, maybe the devs will grant it.

I’m not asking for all that information, I’m ranking the information I want to see and wondering what other people want to see, expecting that people disagree and expecting not all of it would ever be available(though would be nice)  It seems that you would like flags indicating change, but not much more, which makes sense to me.  Thanks for trying to understand.

Edited March 22, 2022 by zenijos10

[biostem]

The question is what info does the character select screen actually load-in.  Perhaps a more practical option would be to allow us to add some notes to each character or perhaps have some sort of screenshot automatically taken upon last logout, for reference...

[Greycat]

11 hours ago, zenijos10 said:

Do you  agree with this list?  What else would you like to be available from the character select screen?

What's your list of improvements to the character select screen ordered by importance?

 

 

Honestly, as another 100+ altaholic, I wouldn't care about any of that list.  That's all stuff that should (to me) show up in something like CIT (https://cit.cohtitan.com if not familiar.) When I'm choosing characters, I don't generally care about their VL or how much INF they have - not on that loading screen, at least.

 

If I were revamping the character select screen, I'd be more interested in doing two things - adding search options and adding sorting options. Currently, we have a freeform text box to search, which defaults to name, but we can pick AT or power (and sort with text there.) We can see name, level, side, AT, primary power set and days offline. (We can search by, but not see, secondary power set, which... ok...)

 

  I'd:

- Have CIT linking, because yes, sometimes you do want extra info. Should have the option to be shareable or private (with overrides for each character.)

 

- Provide categories - just color codes, perhaps, that you can flag each character with and/or rename, and then sort by. For instance, my "complete T4'd 50s" I flag with red, my "TF leaders" are flagged with yellow, "Hami raiders" with green" (or whatever.)  You can select and have it sort by category first, or just show a specific category (including "uncategorized.")

 

- Sort by level.  I don't *think* sorting by vet level is possible, since that depends on powers slotted/running and they're probably not "running" when you're not on that character, or that might be more database activity than desired. I don't know. If VL isn't a big deal, yeah, that should be shown as well.

 

- Create/rename "pages" of characters, visible (similar to a spreadsheet) as "tabs" on the bottom. By default, there's one for "all characters."

 

- Sort by alignment.

 

- Sort by days offline.

 

- Search/sort by SG.

 

- SHOW the secondary powerset.

 

I know I've had other things in other suggestions for this that arent' coming to mind right now.

[Rudra]

I like this idea. However, I would still like to add inf' back to that list. Why? Because when my lowbies are in dire need of enhancements, to the point I struggle with basic missions, I spend forever opening, checking, grumbling, then closing characters looking for one with money to send.

[zenijos10]

On 3/22/2022 at 8:24 AM, Greycat said:

 

Honestly, as another 100+ altaholic, I wouldn't care about any of that list.  That's all stuff that should (to me) show up in something like CIT (https://cit.cohtitan.com if not familiar.) When I'm choosing characters, I don't generally care about their VL or how much INF they have - not on that loading screen, at least.

 

If I were revamping the character select screen, I'd be more interested in doing two things - adding search options and adding sorting options. Currently, we have a freeform text box to search, which defaults to name, but we can pick AT or power (and sort with text there.) We can see name, level, side, AT, primary power set and days offline. (We can search by, but not see, secondary power set, which... ok...)

 

  I'd:

- Have CIT linking, because yes, sometimes you do want extra info. Should have the option to be shareable or private (with overrides for each character.)

 

- Provide categories - just color codes, perhaps, that you can flag each character with and/or rename, and then sort by. For instance, my "complete T4'd 50s" I flag with red, my "TF leaders" are flagged with yellow, "Hami raiders" with green" (or whatever.)  You can select and have it sort by category first, or just show a specific category (including "uncategorized.")

 

- Sort by level.  I don't *think* sorting by vet level is possible, since that depends on powers slotted/running and they're probably not "running" when you're not on that character, or that might be more database activity than desired. I don't know. If VL isn't a big deal, yeah, that should be shown as well.

 

- Create/rename "pages" of characters, visible (similar to a spreadsheet) as "tabs" on the bottom. By default, there's one for "all characters."

 

- Sort by alignment.

 

- Sort by days offline.

 

- Search/sort by SG.

 

- SHOW the secondary powerset.

 

I know I've had other things in other suggestions for this that arent' coming to mind right now.

I completely agree that addition sort/search functions would be nice as would showing the secondary (and possibly epic) power sets.

 

I didn't know that CIT existed, and it is cool.  However, it's a 3rd party app that requires me to let it run in the background and monitor and report back to a 3rd party website.   I guess it partially solves for what I am saying, but I am asking for something built into City of Heroes not a separate app.  Beyond security concerns  you also need to have another account and make sure the software is running.  Just more steps to what could be a very simple process.   This is as if CIT let you sort and search or arrange characters together as you described (it might I haven't actually checked), finding the right character would be easier then currently, but still it not as good as having it baked directly in.

[AlienMafia]

I'd take and be happy with these, otherwise I'd just log into the character and check the rest. Relevant to this why is there still a timer countdown to logging off outside of PvP? (Relavent in terms of doing quick checking of this information without waiting 20secs or moving to somewhere that is 0secs)

 

• Influence 
• Veteran Level
• Items Sold Count / Items Bought Count
• Secondary powerset

[arcane]

Simplify it to secondary powerset, influence, and veteran level for a start and incrementally look at more features later on if the first couple of things are successfully implemented well along with sorting mechanisms. 
 

Some of the highly detailed items proposed seem like way too much.

Edited March 23, 2022 by arcane

[RogerWilco]

On 3/22/2022 at 6:08 PM, Rudra said:

I like this idea. However, I would still like to add inf' back to that list. Why? Because when my lowbies are in dire need of enhancements, to the point I struggle with basic missions, I spend forever opening, checking, grumbling, then closing characters looking for one with money to send.

I always have a few messages with inf in the mail for my characters to take if they run out of money.

 

I only have about 50 alts, but I just remember who they are based on their name and costume. I also order them a bit. I spend a lot of time creating my characters, and have an easy time remembering them as a result.

 

I would worry that such an addition might slow down the loading times of the characters because of the additional database requests that need to be made. It is one of the things I dislike about some other MMOs, how long it takes to switch characters because of such issues.

Edited March 25, 2022 by RogerWilco

[AlienMafia]

Personally if I could code it and it was do-able, I'd make an ! Icon and when you click on it brings up information. Id include to my previous comment is number of merits of all types.

Edited March 28, 2022 by AlienMafia