Character and organization info on the community site

[Cz]

This was a topic (well, the character part at least) that we started on the 'old' forum about a week ago, and we'd like to get some more feedback from you on it.

First of all, the people working on this web feature are not game programmers, so this will not affect the progress on the game itself. Just wanted to make the clear.

We have a small list of what we'd like to implement as a first step in making this information available, to start off the discussion. So tell us what you think, and feel free to bring up new suggestions.

Character info
The only way to get info about a character is to know his or her name. The info given will be...
- Full name
- Photo (character face)
- Affiliation
- Gender
- Breed
- Profession
- Level
- Dimension

We would also like to show what organization the character is a member of, if any, and link to the organization info (below).

Organization info
Getting info about an organization works the same way, but you can also follow a link from a character within the guild. Info listed will be...
- Name of the organization
- Affiliation
- Organization description (from in-game)
- Number of members

Additional options
Later we would like to give players more detailed info about their own characters, and full member lists for organization leaders. This will have to wait a little while though.

So, what are your thoughts on all this?

Oh, and the old thread can be found here: http://archive.aoforums.funcom.com/s...threadid=64096 (old forum login)

[______________Telorn]

Sounds like a great idea

Maybe you should give players the option to toggle some of the information that is given?

As in:
Allow a person to opt out on giving their affiliation, profession and level.

Also for the organizations, many people might not want their members actual membership known. Maybe you can make an opt out for that, as well. Another way to do it is to randomly have the actual number fluctuate up and down from the actual number. As if our 'intelligence dept' is ruffly saying that guild has about 100 members, when they could be completely wrong and they could have 150, or just 80. Maybe you could have those 3 options? Actual Members, Fluctual Members, and Opt Out for the guild leader to decide.

Slightly off topic here, and I'll start a new thread on it as well, but why do you have AO give a profession of someone of the opposite side? For example, any clanner can 'T' me and get all my information. Most of that information doesn't really bother me, but I think, to the 'enemy' that a characters level and definitely a characters profession should not be viewable. Allowing the enemy to see my profession is unrealistic and a burden to me and my group. For instance, I am a doctor, and in the future, when team PvP begins, if you don't remove the profession from 'T', the doctor will always go down first because all the other team has to do is 'T' me to see who I am. This goes for any profession, as well. I'm just speaking in terms of my doc, since that is what I play. Where is the role-playing aspect in this?

What the enemy should have to do is 'guess' that I am the doc by my actions. This would allow characters to get creative. FOr example, I could put on some omni-pol armor or something along those lines, and a low lvl mausser. Try to disguise myself as a soldier. The only way the other team would know otherwise is by watching my actions. Seeing that I am constantly casting, and that when I do, the healing spells go off. This would make the team PvP aspect so much more interesting. It would actually require a strategy on the parts of the teams, rather than just, "Target the doc first!" Now they are like, "Who the hell is the doc?!"

What do you all think? Below is a link to the thread I started.

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...&threadid=1137

Telorn
101 Doc RK-1

[____________Arterous]

I think this sounds like a really good idea. If I see someone ingame and want to know more about them i can come here and find out.. (of course it will take a little input from that character)

[___________Shadowolf]

What you guys propose sounds really cool, but it is basically the same that already exists in the game. How about also including charachter background and description, provided by players themselves, of course. This would make this feature more useful as players will actually be able to find out more information about different charachters in the game. I also agree that players should have an option to hide some info about them.


As for orgs, 2 things here. First of all I agree with that some info should be hidable. Second of all, please remember that not all guilds exist in-game. SOme exist out of game and are cross-allingment and/or cross-server guilds, which are simply impossible to create in-game. SO what about those organizations, are you gonna include thopse as well or only in-game ones?

[_________JerseyBoy20]

One more thing to consider would be people with multiple characters, and how that'd be supported. A lot of people have 3 or 4 at least I've noticed. Just another coding issue, but I thought I'd bring it up, otherwise sounds great!

JB

[Virre]

But I agree, the option to add a 'history' to the character would be a 'must'. Of course not all would want to take advantage of this, since it reflects a little more on the roleplaying part of the game, but it is an optioin that should be included as optional.

This would give the players that wish to roleplay in-game a chance to tell their 'story' to others and make the better prepared and perhaps understand the actions and behaviors in-game better.

My two cents

[___________NanoFixer]

I like the proposed web additions.

Cordially,
NanoFixer

[Reducks]

Originally posted by Sinett
But I agree, the option to add a 'history' to the character would be a 'must'. Of course not all would want to take advantage of this, since it reflects a little more on the roleplaying part of the game, but it is an optioin that should be included as optional.

This would give the players that wish to roleplay in-game a chance to tell their 'story' to others and make the better prepared and perhaps understand the actions and behaviors in-game better.

My two cents

Yup, I gotta agree with this. Being able to put just a dinky little description would be *very* cool. Though, I'm sure it will be mis-used by a lame few ("I R L337MASTA"), you'll get a few losers with every feature like that. I'm willing to deal with it

Also, I saw "Dimension" was in there as an addition... I guess I'm missing something here. Are the two dimensions going to be merged or something? Or will be we able to move from one to the other?

[________foolishchild]

Great idea! Especially the development of a charactor history :P

*Curious as to how many sons/daughters/mothers/ sisters/pets were slaughtered by the evil OT/ Clans, leading to lives dedicated to sadness and revenge*

How about access to character info while not logged in - Equipment and stats - so we can make our own little databases and spreadsheets while at work

[_______________Andai]

How about a screenie of the characters appartment? It would add another incentive to furnishing your appartment (or litter it if you're so inclined).

Ok, the above is the jist of what i was trying to say... now here a spinoff to it with no correlation to the current game:
Maybe you could even furnish your appartment via your webbrowser instead of in-game. The current system isn't that great since, from what i can tell, you can't put items on top of eachother (a clock radio on top of a drawer for example). You buy stuff, drop it in your appartment and then place it where you want it to go via the webpage. Alternatively you place the object in-game and you can refurnish is via the webpage.

Ok, enough rambling


Andai / Romulus

[megeant]

I like the idea but with limitations on what people can see and what people cant see... I would rather not have people seeing info about how many Players are in my guild... The players we do have like to keep Hush hush about How many our numbers are and without being able to disable it.. That would just Not help us in anyway the way we run Our guild

[________________Crin]

Love the idea. I have two requests:

[list=1][*]Add a display and save to file feature of all character data. Stats, nanos, inventory, implants… This would greatly help people trying to sell items, plan IP allocations etc[*]Allow characters to show relationships (husband, wife, siblings, mother, father...)[/list=1]

[______________dobsta]

Ok, I posted this to the old forum, but here goes again:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I dont know if this has been mentioned before, but here goes my suggestion.

I'm a long time player of Planetarion, not that Planteration is anything like AO, but they have a really nice feature called database dump.

Each hour a gzipped textfile is put available to a download location, this could be done for each dimmension and could contain as follows.

one line for each character:

id, char_name, faction, class, level, current_xp, next_level_xp,playfield,last_online

id = unique number for this character
char_name = Character name (Dobie)
faction = Omni/Clan/Neutral (Omni)
class = Doctor,Soldier etc. etc. (Martial Artist)
level = Current Level (88)
current_xp = Current XP - dont know if this is wise
next_level_xp = How much xp char need in total for next level. ( this is probaly predefined, so if we get this info you can lower filesize)
playfield = Current playfield when database was dumped
last_online = Timestamp when character was last online. I dont know if you store this information, if not, ignore =)

Now, faction and class should be numbered id's to lower filesize.

Using these dumps we can create our own character search, using our own database (ms sql,mysql,oracle), display information on guildpages, search for possible teammates, we could show who leveled up the last 24 hours in our guild.. The possibilities are endless.

Approx filesize if you use this format is about 160kb gzipped with 60.000 players.

Well.. there goes my 2 cent =)
------------------------------------

-dobie (RK1/Omni/95MA)

[____________Varviton]

WAY TO GO FUNCOM !

really cool to look people up ! very neat indeed !

I can't wait til i can get my own Bio up there !

/applause !

Keep these things coming !

[Gogliostro]

Oh my god! This is great! Now everyone can see the perfect being that is Gogliostro.

I especially liked the organization member lists.

And the profiles were great.

[Blade / Silke X]

but its not correct....my guild info is old...and so is my bio

[Godkill]

How about being able to put in some short text. Character story, or something. Or stuff you need or sell. or your own screenshot...

[_____________Kodiene]

I think it is great. My question is, "How often will the Bio's get updated?" Lvls can come fast.

[____________Slivicon]

I really like this character info and guild info function. I am looking forward to more features within the function. Things I would like to see:

-Government Types
-Ranks
-Organizational Chart (Hierarchy Tree) -based on rank
-Many different sorting options for the information as well as information in tables...?
-Tools for the leading officials in any given guild, such as export to various formats (html, comma delimited, etc.)
-When the guild was created (how old it is), How long the different members have been with the guild
-Level range (lowest existing lvl to highest existing lvl e.g. 18-124)
-Number of different classes (e.g. Currently 14 docs, 34 MP's, 45 soldiers, etc.)
-Clearly show who is the guild leader on the main page
-I agree with allowing the guild leader to decide whether guild info is published or not. Something VERY simple to avoid bugs etc., like /org public or /org private.
-Number of different races (e.g. 32 Atrox, 47 opifex, etc.)
-In the character info: pvp title, if exists, along with number of kills

That's all I can think of right now. I can really see this becoming a very useful tool. One of the problems we've been having in my guild is keeping track of people. We have a web site with a roster, but not everyone bothers to register...Also, sometimes people are invited without it being reported to all the necessary leaders in the guild. With some more features, this new function could make running a guild a whole lot easier for those of us who take guilds very seriously.

Thanks!
Slivicon
Atrox Soldier
RK1

P.S. Thanks for stating that the team on this is not made up of the game programmers (keep those programmers on the game code only pls!)

[____________Founding]

I love the new feature and wouldn't want to see anything changed apart from adding a few new details like the ability to include a brief history / bio and perhalps a 'Was Last on' field.

One thing I noticed was the presences of characters of accounts that have cancelled etc.

My guild recently reformed this month to clear out the debris so our new details are up to dat however I checked back in our old organisation (Currently known as the Friendleet Foundation) and saw all the old characters, some of players who quit 3-4 months ago.

Probably would be nice to not include people whose accounts arn't current. It would also give us an idea of what guilds still exist as I know from looking through that list that many of them are defunct.

I would also like to see more guild detail (and not less) maybe the ability to add a website link.

BTW for those that haven't noticed the character lists for each guild are in order of creation date. Oldest Characters are listed first down to the newest created characters.