An Altoholic's Plea: Quit to Character Select

[RikOz]

As currently implemented, logging out a character by clicking the "Quit to Character Select" button will return the player to Page 1 of their character list, where the first character on that page will be the one selected by default. This system was fine back on Live, when players were limited to, what, 12 characters on a server, and there would never be more than two pages of characters.

 

On Homecoming, where we are allowed 1,000 characters per server, this system is ... less fine.

 

As an altoholic with, currently, 137 alts (and I know there are at least a few people who have more), I now have 15 little page dots between the arrows on the Character Select screen: 14 pages containing characters plus the last blank page. Already, it's a bit of a challenge to pick out the page I want by counting dots. Assuming that the space between the two arrow buttons continues to increase as more pages are added, I foresee that my 24" widescreen isn't wide enough to accommodate 100 dots with the current spacing between dots, which suggests that at some point, those dots are going to have to get even closer together, making it even more difficult to precisely identify and click to the page I want. Now, I don't anticipate actually reaching 1,000 alts, but since it is possible, this challenge needs to be accounted for.

 

With this in mind, I offer some "simple" suggestions (while understanding that "simple in concept" does not mean "simple to implement"). All of these together would be ideal, but even one of them alone would be an improvement.

 

1) Log out to the page containing the last-played character, with that character selected.

 

This is, basically, what every other game does. Granted, most other games don't have multiple pages of character slots, but they at least have the "last-played character" selected. My reasoning behind this suggestion is that I suspect it is not unusual for an altoholic like myself to perform "maintenance" such as logging in a character simply to check auctions, and then logging that character back out and moving on to the next character on the list. Having to start at Page 1 and then click the appropriate dot and scroll to the desired page every single time can get tedious.

 

Following on #1:

 

2) Eliminate the sideways page scrolling.

 

The scrolling looks cool, and was fine when we were just flipping between Page 1 and Page 2. But now, by the time we're up to page 15+, the scrolling just makes what should be a simple task take longer than necessary. Instead of scrolling, just make it jump directly to the desired page when the player clicks the appropriate dot.

 

3) Highlight the dots at intervals.

 

At some point, there will be enough dots that it's going to become increasingly difficult to count them to find the desired page. This can be mitigated by highlighting--with a different size, shape, and/or color--every tenth dot.

 

[Greycat]

The dots won't get smaller. There's a limit to how many it will show.

 

On one test, I made *many more* than 160 (16 "pages" x 10 characters per page.) It maxes out at 20 "dots." But what you will see is that past that it starts to skip - "Character page 1" to "Character page 3," etc. as you go dot to dot. That said, it *does* scroll to the selected "dot" already. Small area for the dot, but it does do that already. (Note, yes, this was on a test, so nobody start complaining about names at seeing that... unless you were *really* wanting aldka1234.)

 

Personally, I wouldn't want to log out to the "last played" character - aside from the impression I get that it wouldn't really know, it's a little odd apparently as to what's shown (or showable) on the character select screen vs in game. Might be wrong about that, though.

 

Honestly, though, the entire character screen needs revamping. The search by name/powerset/AT is helpful (and where I'll usually just find the character if I'm looking for one - I've got quite a few alts myself,) but an overhaul to allow things like filtering by level, or SG, or being able to pull in extra info to show on an "info" tab (some people want to see things like iNF that I think would just clutter things up, personally) are common requests.

[kelika2]

you dont organize your character select?

or remember at least three letters of their names?

[RikOz]

29 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

you dont organize your character select?

or remember at least three letters of their names?

I do.

 

Page 1 contains the ten characters I'm actively leveling to 50, so if that's what I decide to work on today, they're all right there, front-and-center.

 

Pages 2 & 3 each contain the members of two themed SGs I created for myself. I keep each SG's characters together because I'm keeping all the members of each group leveled together.

 

Pages 4-6 contain my previously-leveled 50s.

 

Pages 7+ contain all the rest of my alts, organized by level in descending order. While yes, I can remember their names, I haven't memorized the exact order all 77 currently-inactive characters. And I often just want to go right down the list on a particular page. Doing so by searching from Page 1 would take even longer than clicking the appropriate page's dot. I want to be looking at the whole page to make sure I didn't miss anybody.

[Greycat]

47 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

you dont organize your character select?

 

 

You're aware that any "organizing" you do is only saved locally, right... switch systems (say from a desktop to a laptop, or getting a new system) and it's lost. So, hope you kept the file synced between systems that kept that order.

[kelika2]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

You're aware that any "organizing" you do is only saved locally, right... switch systems (say from a desktop to a laptop, or getting a new system) and it's lost. So, hope you kept the file synced between systems that kept that order.

that explains why I didnt know what you were talking about at first.  to backup i just copy the whole CoH folder so i can hit the ground running on a new pc.

same with swgemu, p99, all bethesda games

 

4 hours ago, RikOz said:

I do.

that sounds confusing, i sort by AT with a page gap and whatevers currently being played it at the end of the list for that AT

 

[Wavicle]

I certainly wish the character screen had Sort functions and better search functions.

[UltraAlt]

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

This is, basically, what every other game does.

 

What I see in other games is a list of characters with the most recent character logged in at the top and, sometimes - but not always, the next most recent character followed by the next most recent character logged in, etc. .... with no indication of how long the character has been offline.

 

That sort of system would not be helpful to me in CoH.

 

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

My reasoning behind this suggestion is that I suspect it is not unusual for an altoholic like myself to perform "maintenance" such as logging in a character simply to check auctions, and then logging that character back out and moving on to the next character on the list. Having to start at Page 1 and then click the appropriate dot and scroll to the desired page every single time can get tedious.

 

It hasn't bothered me at all and I have over 150 characters at this point.

I will admit that they are spread out across all the servers.

 

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

the scrolling just makes what should be a simple task take longer than necessary. Instead of scrolling, just make it jump directly to the desired page when the player clicks the appropriate dot.

 

On the server I play most on, I just keep my most played characters on the last page ... because usually they are the most recent ones that I created.

So I just go to the end and then back up one page.

 

I don't have which page a character is on memorized so being able goto page x wouldn't be helpful to me at all.

 

Sure, I have a spreadsheet, but I don't go to my spreadsheet every time I get ready to pick a character to log into.

 

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

3) Highlight the dots at intervals.

 

At some point, there will be enough dots that it's going to become increasingly difficult to count them to find the desired page. This can be mitigated by highlighting--with a different size, shape, and/or color--every tenth dot.

 

 

[Player2]

19 hours ago, Greycat said:

Honestly, though, the entire character screen needs revamping. The search by name/powerset/AT is helpful (and where I'll usually just find the character if I'm looking for one - I've got quite a few alts myself,) but an overhaul to allow things like filtering by level, or SG, or being able to pull in extra info to show on an "info" tab (some people want to see things like iNF that I think would just clutter things up, personally) are common requests.

I couldn't agree more.  I would add that I would also like to be able to filter by zone currently parked in, which is info that is displayed on the character select screen, so it might be feasible.  But other info I wish we could see at character select includes influence and also supergroup.

[twospirited]

how about drop down menus, that have a reset button you click to reset to None in each field, but those fields stay there till you change it? something similar to the tailor window for costumes, but limited to: 1) alignment, 2) archetype 3) level range 4) primary and secondary power sets. as examples anyway

 

Overall, keep in mind, Spaghetti coding can make any of this or previous suggestions hard, if not impossible to do.