Add Sort Options to Character Selection Screen?

[Sailboat]

So we have 1000 slots, and it's searchable.  That's great.  I feel like some sort options could still be useful.  Imagine if you could re-sort your characters by:

 

* Alphabetical

* Level

* Creation Date

* Time Played (hours)

* Archetype

* Hero or Villain (currently)

* Influence/Infamy (currently held)

* Most Recently Played

 

The sort direction could go either way, so you could put Most Recently Played characters at the top of the list ("Who have I been focusing on?") or the leaset recently played ("Who needs to come out and play?")  or quickly find out "Where all my Blasters at?" or respond to a call for "DFB forming!" by quickly finding your low level folks.

 

 

[justicebeliever]

So we have 1000 slots, and it's searchable.  That's great.  I feel like some sort options could still be useful.  Imagine if you could re-sort your characters by:

 

* Alphabetical

* Level

* Creation Date

* Time Played (hours)

* Archetype

* Hero or Villain (currently)

* Influence/Infamy (currently held)

* Most Recently Played

 

The sort direction could go either way, so you could put Most Recently Played characters at the top of the list ("Who have I been focusing on?") or the leaset recently played ("Who needs to come out and play?")  or quickly find out "Where all my Blasters at?" or respond to a call for "DFB forming!" by quickly finding your low level folks.

 

This suggestion has come up a few times. I’m not a dev and I don’t speak for them, but if you could only get one or two ways to sort, which would you pick?

 

For me, I would want to get “Last Played” to avoid running afoul of the Naming Policy, and maybe by Level.  I’m hoping if we narrow the solution for the Dev’s the solution request goes from really big (and unlikely), to pretty narrow (and more doable).

[Sailboat]

Well to be honest, if you only have one or two ways to sort, it's a lot less useful.  The ability to group by different criteria is in itself useful.

[justicebeliever]

Well to be honest, if you only have one or two ways to sort, it's a lot less useful.  The ability to group by different criteria is in itself useful.

 

I would challenge that...Having lots of ways to sort might be MORE useful, but having a few ways (compared to no ways) to sort is still Useful.

 

And often developers don't touch proposed changes because they seem too big...Making them smaller is a great way to get them implemented, and then, if they are used you can always add more later.  And when players don't compromise on the solution, then the developers give up in frustration.

 

For this particular change, having 2 quick sort options might be a relatively easy fix, especially if they key off information already visible on the character select screen.  Having to build a whole UI for managing sort and filter options is a much bigger issue and might require adding data to the character select that's not already there, which makes the project bigger and could have the effect of making character screen loading slower.

 

So again, I'm not a dev on HC, and I don't speak for them.  I do find value in all the ways you listed, but I was wonder how would your prioritize them?

 

It's fine if you aren't interested in doing so, and it doesn't invalidate your suggestion...honestly, I like the idea and I am just trying to help frame it in a way that the dev's want to take it on...

[Zep]

Reorganizing the page or at least giving an option to an alternate view that is grid based would help.

 

Instead of having just a list going down the page make 1/2 the page into columns with say a 4x10 sort able view leaving space for the selected char to show.

[Jon]

+1 for more character sorting options. There have already been multiple times where I've actively wished I had something to sort my characters by level, by AT, or by name.

[Sailboat]

Well if I had to choose, level, AT, and alphanumeric would be my favorites and offer significant flexibility.  While last played would be useful, level might serve as a proxy,  since your level 1s probably have not seen a lot of action and your 50s won't lose their names.

[retiarius]

'Sort by last played' would be my pick -- and the greater the number of low-level characters you have, the more useful it becomes.

[OEM61]

If I was picking two?

 

Level and last played.

Those two seem to be the most all-around useful.

 

 

Creation date and time played seem mostly useless to me.  I mean, it tells you who is oldest or youngest or wherever in-between in those terms, but for what reason would someone be seeking out the character with the least time logged on to play?  Isn't any level 2 the same as any other in that regard, even if one of them might have a few more minutes in-game?

Who cares if this level 50 was created on May 3rd and that one on May 6th?  What affect does that have on which one you would like to play?

[Chuckers]

Yes, I am necro-ing this thread because I almost started a new one. 

 

I would love to see a choice of two sorts as well.. level and last played.

[Patti]

DOD anyone make that third-party mod to do this yet?

[Blackfeather]

Hmm...at least when it comes to the easier sort options, I imagine it'd probably be done externally using the playerslot.txt file. Like for example, have the forums give a tool that lets you export a fresh file that contains all your characters on your game account, and choose the order with which you want to display your characters.

 

Of course, for things like most recently played, that's probably a bit impractical, but plenty of other options could work just fine with it, so long as you're not creating a new character every week or something like that - even then it'd just be a matter of redownloading a fresh playerslot.txt file that included the new character.

[Chuckers]

3 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Hmm...at least when it comes to the easier sort options, I imagine it'd probably be done externally using the playerslot.txt file. Like for example, have the forums give a tool that lets you export a fresh file that contains all your characters on your game account, and choose the order with which you want to display your characters.

 

Of course, for things like most recently played, that's probably a bit impractical, but plenty of other options could work just fine with it, so long as you're not creating a new character every week or something like that - even then it'd just be a matter of redownloading a fresh playerslot.txt file that included the new character.

Looking at the playerslot.txt file, the only sort that could be done off it would be alphabetical order by server. The file contains:

Account, server, character name, slot number. 

[Blackfeather]

11 hours ago, Chuckers said:

Looking at the playerslot.txt file, the only sort that could be done off it would be alphabetical order by server. The file contains:

Account, server, character name, slot number. 

Exactly - that's why it'd be a tool on the forums: a tool with access to character data, allowing for generating playerslot.txt files with specific orders.

[Chuckers]

40 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Exactly - that's why it'd be a tool on the forums: a tool with access to character data, allowing for generating playerslot.txt files with specific orders.

I totally mis-read your statement as somebody on the forums needs to make a tool that exports your playerslot.txt, allows you to sort it, and then replaces your playerslot.txt file. 

[Blackfeather]

4 hours ago, Chuckers said:

I totally mis-read your statement as somebody on the forums needs to make a tool that exports your playerslot.txt, allows you to sort it, and then replaces your playerslot.txt file. 

Hahah! No worries - that definitely wouldn't work; the file only contains character names. Hence forum tool.

[SnasonJoe]

I was going to ask to add a sort option for Days Offline or Last On (from the supergroup window) - glad this suggestion has already been posted. I would think "Last On" would be the default setting when displaying characters. I'm surprised it wasn't created with that functionality.

 

My official proposal: Add a sort by Last On button to the character selection screen that when clicked toggles date descending/ascending (descending first). Include a second button to Clear Sort so that folks can go back to the current drag-n-drop method.

[Shenanigunner]

This all ties into the bigger project of making the character select window more info-rich: reporting things like Inf, leveling status (number of pips as well as current level), both power sets, date last played, etc. in a coherent panel. Doing that would give an easy hook for a sorting process.

 

I'd vote this as a worthwhile major update.

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Shenanigunner