Wishlist item #7: Task-force membership visibility

[Whistleberry]

The game provides per-character "day job" perks that accumulate while logged out.  Those perks reset to zero, though, if you briefly bring the character in to check on its inventory or task force involvement.  It would be much appreciated if it were possible to discern which of an account's characters (on a specific server, obviously) are currently involved in task forces, without needing to log them in and break whatever day job hours they've accumulated.

 

It would be even more marvelous, if there were a way that the user of a character that IS involved in a task force could access a list of all the other members of that TF.  Our guild always coordinates its gaming activities via a shared voicechat session.  It would be wonderful if the group's leader-du-jour could pick a TF-participating members of his stable, log it in, and then verbally advise his guild buddies which of their toons to log in, without anyone needing to risk getting fired from their day jobs.

Edited November 27 by Whistleberry
Avoid impliction that players only participate in ONE task force

[Rudra]

29 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

It would be even more marvelous, if there were a way that the user of a character that IS involved in a task force could access a list of all the other members of that TF.  Our guild always coordinates its gaming activities via a shared voicechat session.  It would be wonderful if the group's leader-du-jour could pick a TF-participating members of his stable, log it in, and then verbally advise his guild buddies which of their toons to log in, without anyone needing to risk getting fired from their day jobs.

I am very much against this part. I don't want some random person I happen to be on a TF/SF with to just be able to go through my character checking whatever they want. They get plenty of data about my character from the personal information window without also getting access to what I am currently working on. If your SG wants to coordinate that? Make a SG web site to track that information or discuss it on Discord. Or generate your own spreadsheet of your characters to update for what day jobs you are working on, when was last time logged on, and whether or not you logged off while on a TF.

 

Players have no cause to go invading the privacy of other players without their consent.

 

Edit: For that matter, what TF/SF are you on that your team has to log off and then worry about day jobs before even completing the TF/SF?

 

Edited November 27 by Rudra

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Whistleberry said:

Those perks reset to zero, though, if you briefly bring the character in to check on its inventory or task force involvement.

 

No. They don't reset to zero if you log in to check your inventory.

Some of the day jobs you get a number of uses. These usually max out at 30.

 

Some of the day jobs give you a set amount of "use time" before they need to be recharged. If you don't use all of the "use time" then when you log out in an area to recharge it, it recharges on top of the remaining "use time".

 

I think you referring to day jobs that give you a perk for a set amount of game time. This maxes out at 2 hours. But once again, if you don't use all of the "use time" then when you log out in an area to recharge it, it recharges on top of the remaining "use time".

 

I have no idea about "task force involvement" affecting day job recharging as think I have only logged out while in a taskforce once since being back on Homecoming if it wasn't just to have people log out briefly so that the leader could regain the star (due to them dc'ing). But that should only affect recharging of day jobs .. if it even does that.

 

4 hours ago, Whistleberry said:

It would be even more marvelous, if there were a way that the user of a character that IS involved in a task force could access a list of all the other members of that TF.

 

If they are online, obviously you could see them in teams window. 

Otherwise, you're out of luck on that one.

 

4 hours ago, Whistleberry said:

It would be wonderful if the group's leader-du-jour could pick a TF-participating members of his stable, log it in, and then verbally advise his guild buddies which of their toons to log in, without anyone needing to risk getting fired from their day jobs.

 

Sounds like something your task force leader should be responsible for. They could take a screenshot with their team menu open during the Taskforce and they would have the last of participating characters.

I don't think this is something the DEVs should take time dealing with when it can be done by players.

 

4 hours ago, Whistleberry said:

without anyone needing to risk getting fired from their day jobs.

 

yeah, you obviously don't know how the Day Job system works.

 

 

Edited November 27 by UltraAlt

[Whistleberry]

I'm not suggesting that any detail other than the names of the TF co-members be visible.    How do you see that as being an invasion of privacy? 

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, Whistleberry said:

I'm not suggesting that any detail other than the names of the TF co-members be visible.    How do you see that as being an invasion of privacy? 

That is already visible. Look at your team window, and every co-member of your TF/SF is already there. So if that is all you are asking for, then it already exists and has since the day the game launched.

[Rudra]

46 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

dited 39 minutes ago by Whistleberry
Avoid impliction that players only participate in ONE task force

There are no implications that players only participate in one task force. Players can only participate in one task force or strike force at a time. If they try to do more than one at a time? That requires them to be multi-boxing characters in the TFs/SFs they are participating in and all the TFs/SFs they may be participating in at once will suffer for their lack of attention. And if their team leader finds out they are in more TFs/SFs than the one the team leader is running, I guarantee that player will be booted from the team for wasting everyone's time.

 

If they and their team are unable to finish a TF/SF before having to quit for the night? Then they should be coordinating when to be on again together to finish and not just jumping on to another TF/SF.

[tidge]

There is more than one player who just logs out without completing a TF/SF?

 

[Whistleberry]

Wow; thanks for all the responses.  I guess my SG and I are wierder than we thought..

• We're all set-in-our-ways curmudgeons and only play teams formed exclusively from our SG ranks.
• Due to the lack of a "share mission" feature, and to enjoy its automatic level-matching, we've adopted the practice of doing nearly all of our missions via the Oroboros mechanisms.  Yes, the team could all  just tag along on any member's mission, but not if they all would like to earn the Merit rewards from an arc.
• Owing to real-life time pressures, not everyone whose toon begins an Oroboros TF is always able to make it online for each gaming session.  When such conflicts arise, we leave the toons that began the impacted TFs logged out, form up a different set of alts into another team, and begin a TF with them.
• We very seldom finish task forces in just one gaming session.
• At any given time, we usually have three or four different task forces underway, pending the availability of the guild members that made them up.
• As others have pointed out, the "who's on what TF" information can be kept on paper records or spreadsheets (and we've tried), but we're just not that disciplined.  So when we convene on our voicechat for a gaming session, there's usually a lot of fumbling around, as each of us logs in one alt after another, looking for a combination that suits the particular group of logged-in players.

The wish list feature  I've tried to describe would be very much welcomed by my group of player-friends, but I gather from the responses so far that we're too much of an edge case.  Thanks, anyway.

 

[UltraAlt]

27 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

Due to the lack of a "share mission" feature, and to enjoy its automatic level-matching, we've adopted the practice of doing nearly all of our missions via the Oroboros mechanisms.  Yes, the team could all  just tag along on any member's mission, but not if they all would like to earn the Merit rewards from an arc.

 

What lack of "share mission" feature?

If you do leveling content you can get the same contacts and complete missions collaboratively.

You can even start all characters as the same origin and run through the game with the contacts from that origin and collaboratively complete them.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/The_Players'_Guide_to_the_Cities/User_Interface/Options_Window#Team_Options

Options>General>Team Options>Collaborative Missions

 

There are arcs where the missions aren't given in the same order to all characters, so sometimes you will need to switch back and forth doing missions. The teams that I roll collaboratively with, we run all get the next mission from the contact and run the one that the most of us have. Then the ones that could complete the mission get the next mission, then we run the mission that one of the people had that didn't match up before (which tends to match up with what the other players just gained from their contacts).

 

27 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

Owing to real-life time pressures, not everyone whose toon begins an Oroboros TF is always able to make it online for each gaming session.  When such conflicts arise, we leave the toons that began the impacted TFs logged out, form up a different set of alts into another team, and begin a TF with them.

 

Seems like your group might only run level 50's.

The main group I play with works around the same issues by playing alts like you are doing, but we don't confine ourselves to task forces or Oroboros - actually, we almost never run Ouroboros. I would say we run more AE story arcs than Oroboros.

 

It seems like you are playing for merits. I don't so I can't really address the need to struggle for merits.

 

27 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

As others have pointed out, the "who's on what TF" information can be kept on paper records or spreadsheets (and we've tried), but we're just not that disciplined.  So when we convene on our voicechat for a gaming session, there's usually a lot of fumbling around, as each of us logs in one alt after another, looking for a combination that suits the particular group of logged-in players.

 

screenshots.

Just take a screenshot when you start the task force.

Delete it when the task force is over.

Keep them in a task force folder.

 

I'm assuming you have less than 10 running at any individual time.

Name them by the name of your character and the name of the arc.

Then you can pull up the with your character name and see the names of the other characters in the screen shots.

 

If you need to start cross referencing globals with character names, then that is going to get more complicated.

 

This is definitely something that your group is going to have to manage versus the game handle it for you.

 

As you have indicated:

 

27 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

I guess my SG and I are wierder than we thought..

• We're all set-in-our-ways curmudgeons and only play teams formed exclusively from our SG ranks.

 

The issue seems to be exclusive to your SG that doesn't interact with the rest of the community in-game.

 

In no way is that to say that you and your friends shouldn't enjoy playing the way that you enjoy playing.

What I am saying is this burden that your sg heaped upon itself is your sg's burden to bear.

 

 

Edited November 27 by UltraAlt

[Rudra]

29 minutes ago, Whistleberry said:

Due to the lack of a "share mission" feature, and to enjoy its automatic level-matching, we've adopted the practice of doing nearly all of our missions via the Oroboros mechanisms.  Yes, the team could all  just tag along on any member's mission, but not if they all would like to earn the Merit rewards from an arc.

Like @UltraAlt said, the game has the ability to share missions. Depending on the size of your team and the contact you want to do missions from, anyone not having the same mission as the team leader can simply abandon their current mission and ask for another mission until everyone has the same mission. Once you start a story arc from a contact, with very few exceptions, the missions are given in the same order. So if you want, you can just cycle through to the story arc and run from there.

[lemming]

Based on the OP, I would suggest a google spreadsheet to share with your SG for scheduling purposes