A New Use Case for Supergroup Prestige

[Andreah]

Right up front, I am NOT proposing Prestige be used to buy base items or anything like that, nor am I proposing it be earned in the old "Live" way where you went into supergroup mode to earn it from defeating enemy mobs.

 

I was looking through the supergroup registry the other day, and clicked on the "Top 100" supergroups button. Some groups I knew about came up, but it didn't seem to be more than a happenstance collection of groups, since they all had zero prestige.

 

Then I thought, what if there was a way to use the prestige system to guesstimate supergroup "activity" so that at least a viewer could see the most recently active groups?

 

What I would do for this is: once a minute, for any player logged onto the game, check how many other characters in their supergroup were logged in, and grant them one point for each. I would total these point earned on each day for the character behind the scenes, and keep the last thirty days of them in an array, and each day, push the oldest one off the back end and add current days' earned points on the front end. The total of these last thirty days of points would be the character's current prestige, and I would record it in their individual supergroup entry as they earned it. The total of all the prestige by the individual characters in the supergroup would be the total prestige of the group. 

 

Supergroups would get prestige only when more than one of their members were online at the same time. The idea is it would favor groups whose members were online and at least potentially could be playing together at the same time. Solo supergroups where a single player keeps all their alts wouldn't get this prestige, but then again, they're solo. Supergroups where a single player multi-boxed multiple accounts would gain some, but likely not a lot compared to a large multiplayer supergroup.

 

So if you were online and one other member of your group was online for a simultaneous minute, you would each gain one point of prestige. If six players were online for an hour, they would each gain 60 mins x 5 other players = 120 points -- the group as a whole would gain 120 points each x 6 players = 720 points. Large groups that tend to play together would stand out in rankings, and only if they sustained activity for at least 30 days. 

 

If we wanted to emphasize activity of groups that had events and many more people on at the same time, we could count the square of the number of other players on.

 

I'll grant this isn't a big or very important change to the game -- mechanically nothing changes except that those searching the roster for supergroups to join, to look up descriptions of, or to interact with for whatever other reasons would be able to get a sense of which groups were active.

 

It could be paired with other modest changes to supergroups, such as adding roster tags such as "RP", "PVP", "Event", "Social", "Solo", etc., and then allowing search by tags and sorting by prestige/activity. One might even allow searching for supergroups elsewhere than the group registrar, such as at the community kiosks, or via a slash command.

 

[Rudra]

I was going to say "hell no" based on the thread title. However, while I don't see the reason for the proposal, I'm fine with it. Though personally, I think simply adding your suggested flags to SGs would achieve the same thing. If a player has a solo SG for his/her alts? Flag the SG as solo and let would be applicants filter the SG out. If a player has a SG just for alts and friends? Flag the SG as Friends or Private and let would be applicants filter the SG out. Open to recruitment? Flag it as Public or Open so it shows up on the filter. Then use the other designators as supplemental flags. (RP, PVP, Events, General, Helper/Trainer, and so on.) Otherwise, SGs that have a low player count that are trying to grow get buried by larger SGs just like they were back on Live.

[Greycat]

It still tells us nothing about the supergroup. As mentioned, all it would take is someone with two (or, remember, you can have up to three accounts on at once) PLing their alts, trading, etc. to start getting that prestige. It doesn't tell us it's an SG you'd want to join, or that has interests you do. There could be a great SG that only meets once a week, since the members tend to just have (say) Saturday off together - the during-the-week activity wouldn't show up, since it'd just be a person on for an hour here, another running a TF the next day with non-SG-mates, someone at another time writing up an AE arc, etc. - who'd also get "buried" under "OK, Jim's running a farm, we've got 7 SG mates who want to join."

 

There's a lot that should be done with the SG system. Doing away with the (now defunct) prestige listing is one of them. Using the tags you give? That would be useful. Prestige has always been a ridiculous thing to show for the "top 100 SGs" or rank them by.

 

Revise the SG search / listing system, dump the Prestige number all together, put in the tags and other useful info.

 

[Andreah]

I've found several interesting supergroups by their descriptions (which do show in the in-game SG listings) but they're often completely inactive or even defunct. And the number of members rarely tells a story by itself.  Further, tags alone won't show that a supergroup is active. Even the old prestige system didn't do that, but I think changing it as I suggested would show that and be useful in that regard. 

 

I am in favor of tags -- currently you have to search for supergroups by keywords in their names or descriptions (I think it returns groups that hit the search terms by either by default) having actual tags would be an improvement.

 

Maybe just adding how long it's been since any member of a SG (or perhaps any of them with invite permissions) has been online would minimally improve things. If I found a cool sounding SG in the listings, but none of them have been on in 800 days, that would be a hint.

[Rudra]

Maybe instead have a self-updating flag for when was the last time any member was logged on? The game already tracks that info, so making it public in the SG search shouldn't be much trouble. (Edit: Then you could sequence the list by last SG log on so the inactive and barely active groups wind up at the bottom of the list.)

Edited January 7, 2023 by Rudra

[Greycat]

Which still has the issue of "is it one person doing their own thing or an active SG?"

 

Personally I'd revise the SG search system (and related items on the SG side) so someone searching for a SG would see:

SG name

Tags (RP, PVP, public, private etc. - which may include "recruiting")

Email (set on/off by SG, as well as who gets it, an icon.)

Message (set on/off by sg, as well as who gets it, an icon)

Base code (visible, members only, off)

Description (text field, can be blank)

Leader (text field, can be blank) (or maybe "contact")

 

It's sort of like looking for a restaraunt or store. I want to know where they are, what their hours are, what their menu's like, I don't care if they made ten thousand or eleventy billion dollars (like the old prestige,) I want to know where they are and what they have to eat.

 

BUT. All this in any case requires UI changes with everything, which is apparently a bit of a problem.

[Andreah]

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

Which still has the issue of "is it one person doing their own thing or an active SG?"

 

This was why I suggested repurposing "Prestige" for a calculated activity level from the last 30-days.  I think the system I outlined for doing this would work pretty well.

 

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

BUT. All this in any case requires UI changes with everything, which is apparently a bit of a problem.

 

True. And in a minimal sense, calculating activity by integrating the square (or cube) of the player count above one over the minutes in the last month and inserting it into the existing prestige field would serve this purpose without requiring any UI changes. One would not even need to rename "Prestige" -- just indicate in patch notes it now represents a measure of activity over the last 30 days.

[Andreah]

11 hours ago, Andreah said:

Maybe just adding how long it's been since any member of a SG (or perhaps any of them with invite permissions) has been online would minimally improve things. If I found a cool sounding SG in the listings, but none of them have been on in 800 days, that would be a hint.

 

9 hours ago, Rudra said:

Maybe instead have a self-updating flag for when was the last time any member was logged on? The game already tracks that info, so making it public in the SG search shouldn't be much trouble. (Edit: Then you could sequence the list by last SG log on so the inactive and barely active groups wind up at the bottom of the list.)

 

This was what I had in mind. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

What would the intended purpose of this tool be?  Active SGs advertising for new members/new members shopping for active SGs?  Bragging purposes?  Other?

 

I'd love to bring back prestige purely as a way to burn influence, but I suspect I'm in the minority there.

[Glacier Peak]

Prestige should buy items of power from a Base P2W-type vendor. 

[Rudra]

As long as purely decorative versions of those are also available at no prestige cost so players retain the option for base design, I'm fine with that.

[Rudra]

8 hours ago, Greycat said:

Which still has the issue of "is it one person doing their own thing or an active SG?"

 

Personally I'd revise the SG search system (and related items on the SG side) so someone searching for a SG would see:

SG name

Tags (RP, PVP, public, private etc. - which may include "recruiting")

Email (set on/off by SG, as well as who gets it, an icon.)

Message (set on/off by sg, as well as who gets it, an icon)

Base code (visible, members only, off)

Description (text field, can be blank)

Leader (text field, can be blank) (or maybe "contact")

 

It's sort of like looking for a restaraunt or store. I want to know where they are, what their hours are, what their menu's like, I don't care if they made ten thousand or eleventy billion dollars (like the old prestige,) I want to know where they are and what they have to eat.

 

BUT. All this in any case requires UI changes with everything, which is apparently a bit of a problem.

I must be missing something. Your proposal still doesn't tell me how many players are in that SG. And that was your repeated comment in the thread so far. Also, I would separate the "tags" entry into two different entries. Okay, three based on your added tag.

 

Access Type: Solo, Private, and Public (Edit: Maybe just Private and Public since a solo SG would still be "private".)

Group Type: RP, PVP, Event, Social, Trainer (to specifically help newbies learn), General

Recruitment: Recruiting or Non-Recruiting

 

And still retain the Last Log On counter.

 

This won't tell anyone how many players are in that SG, but it does give more useful data.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Rudra

[Glacier Peak]

24 minutes ago, Rudra said:

As long as purely decorative versions of those are also available at no prestige cost so players retain the option for base design, I'm fine with that.

I think they are currently.

[Rudra]

They are. I use the 4 orbs as borders in an open sky room. I thought you were talking about adding new ones. My mistake. Apologies.

[Greycat]

45 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I must be missing something. Your proposal still doesn't tell me how many players are in that SG. And that was your repeated comment in the thread so far. A

<snip>

 

This won't tell anyone how many players are in that SG, but it does give more useful data.

 

Not sure where you think I'm particularly *caring* how many people are in an SG. The only reason it's even tangentially touched on by me is that getting the suggested prestige "by activity" isn't telling anything. And no number that could be devised could tell "how many people" are in an SG anyway- you see one with 12. Is that twelve people,  or four people with three accounts?

 

Which goes right back to "original prestige" and, to a point, this version - it's not anything like an accurate indicator of SG activity (much less if someone should want to join it.)

[Rudra]

That would be what I was missing. Thanks.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

I must be missing something. Your proposal still doesn't tell me how many players are in that SG

The number of members in the SG is already in the registrar's listing, but this is the number of characters, not accounts, and certainly not players.

 

But, my system only accumulates prestige if more than one character are on at the same time. Yes, multiboxing can count, but legal multiboxing in the same SG can't compete numerically with an active roster of real players playing together. A solo player being on line, even for long periods on multiple characters in series, does not score any points in my system. It only accumulates points when multiple characters in the same SG are on at the same time. And it scores each additional character much higher than the last. One character online for a minute -- 0 points to the SG. Two characters online in the same minute -- 2 points to the SG. Three characters for the same minute -- 6 points. Four -- 12 points, a full SG team of eight -- 56 points. My old RP SG (before it went inactive) would get 20 characters online for multi-hour events. 20 characters -- 380 points per minute. It ads up fast.

 

With the "squared" option I mentioned, it would be even more dramatic; one player on three accounts multiboxing characters in their single solo SG would gain 12 points per minute, or about a half million for a month playing 24/7. A sg that could get twenty characters on for a two-hour event once a week would get about 3.7 million per month.

 

And, if there are tags for filtering the lists, a person could just de-select the "Solo" tagged SG's, and only see the sorted list of the non-solo SG's by their computer last 30 day activity levels. Then the solo-multibox SG's would not even show on that list.

 

The important features (to me) are that the points drop off the 30-day window so that inactive groups who used to be very active don't stay on the ranking, and that the points do nothing mechanical so there is no positive incentive to deliberately try to game it.

[Andreah]

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The only reason it's even tangentially touched on by me is that getting the suggested prestige "by activity" isn't telling anything. And no number that could be devised could tell "how many people" are in an SG anyway- you see one with 12. Is that twelve people,  or four people with three accounts?

I think you're highlighting edge cases. Look at my examples in my last post. Those four people would have to coordinate their legal multi-boxing to be done simultaneously. There's no incentive for doing that, other than to game this one system for which there would be no mechanical benefit. However, an SG which is actively being multiplayer, playing content or activities or RP or whatever, together, will naturally do that at the same times and gain these higher point totals. Even a larger SG whose actual players tended not to play at the same times would not score so well as a smaller SG who actually did play at the same times.

 

I'll grant that multi-boxing could be staged in a way to appear to this scoring system to be an active supergroup. That it's not perfect doesn't mean it wouldn't be good enough, or at least better that what we have now -- nothing.

[Andreah]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

What would the intended purpose of this tool be?  Active SGs advertising for new members/new members shopping for active SGs?  Bragging purposes?  Other?

 

It would be for passive advertising; for an SG to join, to interact with in some way, or etc. 

 

To me this is a low hanging fruit opportunity. Prestige is there in the UI and is used for absolutely nothing. Some server-side coding would be needed to do the checks for online concurrency, accumulate and store the data, and then to load it into the SG-member and SG-total prestige data fields.  There could easily be data visibility or persistence deal breakers in the existing design, but I don't let my lack of detailed knowledge stop me from proposing things. 

 

Adding tags would almost surely require a lot more work overall and especially more client-side, but would add a lot more utility, too.

[UltraAlt]

On 1/7/2023 at 3:00 PM, Andreah said:

It would be for passive advertising; for an SG to join, to interact with in some way, or etc. 

 

Perhaps making a https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/3-city-of-heroes-homecoming/ sub forum labled Supergroups would be a place to start to see how much interest there is for this sort of thing versus just for vanity purposes of a possibly small group of players.

 

I'm not making a judgement on how many would participate, but if it only for a few, then the proposed change would simply be for the vanity of a small group of players by default.

 

As far as I can tell, it seems to be all about "look at me, you can see my supergroup is the best!" (or in the top 10 or whatever).

 

It's kind of like costumes.

Could you potentially hold a "supergroup" contest like a "costume" contest and show off how many of your supergroup can show up for the contest?

This would show how much interest there is in this kind of thing.

[kito]

Only issue I see is it just brings people to the same big few SG first. Remembering on everlasting when I think it was called chaos united has like 3 full sgs. I think close to 1k total players?  And as far as I know did no active Rp in world or even at all. Telling players to only go to one of 4 tops sgs because they have the most players does not inform much outher then the 4 big SG with the most players will now have the most people asking to join. I also only see SG as an extra tag or part of a rp and pulled away from them over the last 2 years. Any of the bigger ones seem to slowly turn into a discord only rp with less players logging into the game as they have there "table" available to them in discord. 

This might be a kiss of death to pull more players out of the game and into discord RP 

[Andreah]

Is Chaos United a roleplay SG? They have a few roleplayers in them, but I've never considered this to be their theme. To my understanding, they mainly sponsor PvE events, like the MSR.

 

And my suggestion in this thread isn't limited to roleplayers -- but to anyone who would want to find a supergroup via an in-game search. Right now, it is true, no one does this now. I believe this is because it doesn't work, not because people don't look. 

 

I don't think a forums or discord function would work well either. A great many players, possible even a majority, never come back to the forums after they make their account. Similarly to various discords -- if a player is not already using discord and prone to ask for links to join them, they're fairly out of luck. 

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, Andreah said:

And my suggestion in this thread isn't limited to roleplayers -- but to anyone who would want to find a supergroup via an in-game search. Right now, it is true, no one does this now. I believe this is because it doesn't work, not because people don't look.

 

Okay. So having a list of all super groups and not just the top 100 wouldn't help in-game either. 

City of Heroes doesn't have a function to "apply for" membership like Planetside 2 does.

Supergroups don't (by default) list the @globalname of the SG leader.

I'm not even sure any supergroups list the days and time of days that SG members are online on that public message that you see if you talk to the Supergroup Registry Contact (that new players don't even know is there).

You can't really argue "people don't look" too much as they don't even have the option "to look". People don't post in the shard forums that often, but they are still there as an option and return players do sometimes post in those forums.

 

If SG's want to use in-game functions to recruit, then they need to use in-game channels to send messages periodically when they are online during a time of day that they usually run teams.

What is the use of a Supergroup if you aren't going to team with them?

 

I see no reason to try to get people to join your supergroup (other than some kind of vanity reason) if you aren't going to game with them. 

I feel that the best time to send such supergroup recruitment message would be when you first log-on and then every 30 minutes until about 30-60 minutes before you would usually log for the night. It would probably be good to list what kind of supergroup you are (Hero, villain, only +50, etc.).

I don't think there is any reason not to list in /lfg that you are insertsupergroupnamehere sponsoring/recruiting a team or some such.

 

Public bases are readily available to anyone that wants to use them as a transport hub and @Dacy has some great videos for people that want to build their own bases for storage purposes. If someone is looking for base storage, then joining a large supergroup is definitely not the way to go.

 

 

8 hours ago, Andreah said:

I don't think a forums or discord function would work well either. A great many players, possible even a majority, never come back to the forums after they make their account.

 

I can agree with you on this, except for ... if they can't get an answer in /help they will come to the forums to look for it.

 

I've historically believed that 90% of any player base only comes to the forms to get questions answered.

Not like the general discussion kinds, but "I can't get the game to download.", "Why can't I get X to work?", "I'm stuck", etc.

 

I think that there is probably a higher percentage of the CoH player base that engages with the forums than normal, but that still means less than 25% hit the forums before, during, or after their game play sessions.

 

I do think having a Supergroup sub-forum would work better than having the Supergroups in Clubs (which is where they are listed now in the forums). The Clubs function is pretty much a "hidden" feature as far as I'm concerned.

 

Some people have been posting about supergroups in the Shard subforums but I think that they are "hidden" there as well.

 

Another option could be to list supergroups by shard the way that bases are listed.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup_Base (see bottom of page)

(example) https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Everlasting_Base_List

and have this added to https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup

You could contact @Michiyo about that possibility. The bases listing has a good size field at the end for listing specifics which could include the days of the week and time of day that the supergroup is normally active.

 

Vanity reasons

 

I'm not trying to cause problems by saying this, but, often times, I have seen the sole reason for having a large supergroup is for a sense of importance, drama, and/or control by the Supergroup leader or leader(s). 

I have run into many of these types of supergroups even when they were not large ones. Some of these SG leaders were major control freaks.

These kinds of supergroup experiences in City of Heroes (and other MMOs) left me shunning involvement in Clans/groups/supergroups/Outfits/etc. in general.

 

The one supergroup - that I ran into - that wasn't like that before the Sunset was the multi-shard, multi-supergroup Repeat Offenders.

The Repeat Offenders supergroup itself was really just a global channel.

The Supergroups were the set power-type/archetype supergroups that played at X time on Y day every week. Each supergroup was themed and your characters had to fit that theme to be a part of that Supergroup. It was usually powers/archetype related. It could be all kin/forcefield defenders or any character with one dark and one Ice power set, Sonic powers, etc.

They listed in the Supergroup forums on the City of Heroes forums and were good at recruiting through those posts.

 

Currently, you can find them "hidden" in Clubs

But, the Pinball never really was able to get rolling it seems, because the SG was "hidden" in Clubs. [ @Alty - I wish you well, and I hope the RO has worked out and is just hidden out there.)

 

The problem with Clubs is obvious. 

You have to go into Browse to see that Clubs are even part of the forums.

It seems that you can't post there unless you are the Club owner ... and I think that is what killed it for RO (in addition to not listing the RO global channel name - if they have one at this point)

Edited January 10, 2023 by UltraAlt

[Greycat]

On 1/7/2023 at 2:00 PM, Andreah said:

It would be for passive advertising; for an SG to join, to interact with in some way, or etc. 

 

To me this is a low hanging fruit opportunity. Prestige is there in the UI and is used for absolutely nothing. Some server-side coding would be needed to do the checks for online concurrency, accumulate and store the data, and then to load it into the SG-member and SG-total prestige data fields.  There could easily be data visibility or persistence deal breakers in the existing design, but I don't let my lack of detailed knowledge stop me from proposing things. 

 

Adding tags would almost surely require a lot more work overall and especially more client-side, but would add a lot more utility, too.

 

Tags would be more effective advertising. Circling around, again, to essentially "Big prestige number does NOT mean good or compatible SG."  I very well remember SGs on live that were "You MUST have prestige on!" - not because they wanted to base build, but because "Bigger number gud." Some were rather draconian about it, some were mostly "churn" (and some were rumored to kick people out at 35 when the "free" prestige ran out, or if you ever dared not earn X amount.) Meanwhile, smaller SGs that might be *great* get buried in position 50000 down the list and nobody knows they exist - at least looking at the list.

 

Tags > Prestige. Tags would help *search* for the SGs with similar interests. Proper tags would show if they're recruiting and whatnot. Prestige? That can go die in a fire.

[Michiyo]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Another option could be to list supergroups by shard the way that bases are listed.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup_Base (see bottom of page)

(example) https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Everlasting_Base_List

and have this added to https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup

You could contact @Michiyo about that possibility. The bases listing has a good size field at the end for listing specifics which could include the days of the week and time of day that the supergroup is normally active.

I'm only going to reply to the section I was tagged in.  This: https://fbsa.homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Group Also exists, though the entire site is under utilized as I think folks think it's only for RP players.  Anyone can make an account, make a group, and add the category to get it listed on the site.

Not sure about adding the direct links to the base passcode lists on the SG page, but I'll think about it.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Michiyo