Export Older_than_dirt

[Older_Than_Dirt]

Hey,
I know this isn't quite a rollback, but I'd like to move my character from FN to RKS servers so I can resume where I left off. Could I get my Character emailed to me (EDIT: email removed)?

 

[Older_Than_Dirt]

Forgot some stuff...

STEAM_0:1:1184501
Slots: 1,3

 

[Thothie]

Eh, no... I've no desire to help RKS's efforts to split the community.

FN's been around for over half a decade now, while RKS has been around less than a month. Characters created server side or LAN contain a flag that prevents them from loading on Central Network enabled servers, and that's a security measure Dogg put in that I've no intention of undoing. They can either get with the program or go the way that all non-FN servers have gone in a brief time.

Also can't get guild crests off FN, for fear that someone will keep guessing at passwords without any risk to their character.

It'd be nice if there were more newbie servers, but arranging it the way RKS has, ensures that any characters created there can not only never join FN, but will die with the servers when they pass on.

 

[PY004]

Misconceptions regarding our intentions

Very hostile response there Thothie. I fail to see how I have offended you so greatly. I did respond courageously and even apologized when a statement made by one of my managers seemed offensive.

Regardless, to clear up a couple things, I have no desire to split your community. We originally tried to set up FN servers. Unfortunately, your forums were down at that time. We started up our own server to play on since we couldn't adequate FN servers. Most of them were hosted on home connections or had horrible restart times. Furthermore, there weren't enough servers for us to allow members with different levels to have a fun time.

When we finally got the contact information for Thothie, the forums were back up. Regardless, we tried to join FN on the condition that our characters get imported. At the time the request was sent, most of us weren't even high level. I don't see how your comment

Up to you, but the longer you delay in getting setup on FN, the worse that divide is going to be. Many of the characters on FN are over five years old, and those players do not want to find themselves contaminated by players created outside the anti-cheat monitoring umbrella.

can really make sense. The highest level we had at that time wasn't even level 15 on a single skill. Orochi even said it is likely that most of us could redo that in about a day. Regardless you refused to let our characters be imported. Even though the progress we made in our own servers were little, killing rats over and over is not exactly fun and is not a experience that we wanted to repeat anytime soon. As such, we had no choice but to remain with our servers.

We then tried to obtain your central server software which you rejected stating that it would create a divide in the MSC community, one that you yourself created by refusing us entry into FN.

Features available on the FN server will always be superior to the ones that we can ever run. It's developer backed and that is something that we can never experience. However we don't really have a choice here. If you had imported our characters, your community would not only have had a influx of new players, but also 6, possibly 10 additional FN connected servers that are run off datacenters with dedicated internet connections.

I really fail to see your position in this Thothie. From some statements, you take us as a significant threat. But then again in other statement, your confident that we're not a threat. Which is it? Also from a developer's position, this would be beneficial to you. More people interested in the mod, larger player base. That's always good regardless of who and which server they play in. But then you don't really seem to care about the mod's popularity, but rather the players you have on your own central server. If you really think that we should shut down our servers, I guess that wouldn't be too hard for you to enable in the next patch for MSC.

I hope you didn't take this too offensively Thothie. That would be the last of my intentions. But I had to clear up the misconception you had that we were up to no good trying to split your community. We're simply trying to play the excellent game that you and the team that you're affiliated with created, and you're making it very hard for us to do so.

Anyways thanks for reading. If you still think badly of us, I guess there's nothing I can do about that. But at least I tried to get you to see our position in this. I'll apologize in advanced if I made anything I jsut said sound offensive.

Sincerely,
PY004

PS I don't know how the rest of FN players think about us, but surely, we can't possibly be a threat to you guys.

EDIT: Fixed Typo in one of the paragraphs.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Interesting thread.

 

[Thothie]

As I already stated, even if we gave your own central server software, you'd still have to start from scratch. Characters created server side will not load on central enabled servers, period.

And the statement makes perfect sense, as the longer it takes to join the FN network, the more your players are going to lose when your servers come to their senses, or go away.

 

[Older_Than_Dirt]

Thothie,
Wouldn't it be possible to create a patch to allow only the dev team (or rather, you) could import a character, then afterward, re-enabling the flag system? Yes, it would take time to code, but wouldn't it be beneficial to everyone in the long run?

Just trying to find a solution for everyone.

 

[The Man In Black]

It would take more time to do that and to verify that no characters have been cheated in any way than it would to create new characters and work them to level 15.

 

[PY004]

As I already stated, even if we gave your own central server software, you'd still have to start from scratch. Characters created server side will not load on central enabled servers, period.

And the statement makes perfect sense, as the longer it takes to join the FN network, the more your players are going to lose when your servers come to their senses, or go away.

As of the point I emailed you, we no longer wanted the central server software. The moment you indicated that it's difficult to import, we decided that we didn't want it as it's worthless to us. We have devised our own method of synchronizing the saves.

Your solution of us joining FN and restarting is simply not satisfactory to us, period. There is just no way we're redoing our characters. The benefits that FN provides for us at this point simple does not outweigh the disadvantage in that we're losing so much progress we have made so far. As time passes, the more reasons why we shouldn't join FN. Just because we're not on FN does not mean we're out of "senses". We're still having fun with the mod, and that's what playing this game is about.

What I don't get is why you would go as far as saying that we are trying to split your community. Our servers current setup resulted from the fact that we couldn't import our characters into FN, not from some plan we made up years ago on how to destroy FN. As I stated before, we just want to play with our characters.

 

[The Man In Black]

Whether or not you INTEND to split the community is rather irrelevant. I'm more worried about people who are new to the game getting confused as to why their character works on one server, but not another. It sort of reminds me of the Super-Hero plugin for CS. It's a lot of fun, but people tend to stick to one server because that's where their character is. If anything happens to the server, there's no other way for them to play (without starting over), and it pretty much disheartens them and makes them want to quit playing.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Thread summary:

(it's sarcasm, fyi)

My take on this situation:
Just let those RKS play the game, god damn :|

 

[PY004]

We've been directing all the people who join our servers to FN and telling them about FN and what the differences are. So far we havn't had anyone who's new to the mod joining yet. If you want, i can put up in the server name for new players not to join.

Yes I agree that from a dev's point, it really shouldnt matter as long as there are supporters for the mod. Thothie instead seems more concerned about FN rather than the popularity of the mod in general.

@J-M
With the boards down, we had no way of getting on FN. We inistially started out playing on FN servers. However, it wasn't exactly a ideal environment. There were usually others on the servers and we just couldnt get to maps we needed to go to level up. That is what prompted us to create our own server and when more of our players started playing, we needed more servers so that lower level players could play also. And so, here we are today. Thanks for understanding.

 

[Thothie]

Meh, the only way I could conceive of transferring RKS characters to FN would be to create a character on FN, copy it to my local client's developer server, then recreate the RKS character to be duplicated, item by item, via cheats. That means typing each item in, and setting every stat, one at a time, following the original RKS character.

That'd take me about 20 minutes per character - assuming I use script shortcuts to catalog the RKS character's items.

So, unless your database only consists of 5 characters or so, I don't think it'd be worth the effort.

I just don't see the point of splitting the community like this... I mean, if you just hate veteran characters, and don't want to mix with them, that's what the ms_hp_limit flag is for. If it's that you don't want to start your characters over, you know full well that eventually everyone on your server is going to have to start over, one way or the other.

It won't affect you personally, as you won't stop hosting until you are sick of playing, but it will affect everyone who plays on your servers, so try to think of your clientele, and the long term effects.

Meanwhile, you have a bunch of characters of say, 15-20. I can get to level 20 in maybe eight hours of play, but how much more is it going to pain for those that reach 30, or even 40, which you'll have eventually, as the server hangs around longer?

So the RKS players can lose a little now, or a whole lot later.

 

[Orochi]

I like how it's the RKS players that have to lose out here, lawl. Heaven forbid someone on the other side expend effort to reach a compromise.

Thothie, they have stated they're not trying to split the community. The only one attributing that to them is you. They merely wish to play their characters on their own server because they don't want to lose the work they put in. The effect of drawing players away from [FN] servers is a passive effect, and not intentional on their part. Perhaps if you actually made some effort to compromise instead of making an ultimatum, things would be resolved a lot faster.

 

[PY004]

Running SELECT COUNT(*) on our savefile incremental backup system's player database results in 52 entries. Limiting this to discrete STEAMID results in 43. Running RKS members only results in 16. Of the 16, 5 can be discarded as they are low level. As of this point, it's too much to import into FN.

It's not the veterans that are the problems, it were the lack of servers for us to play on at the time. Most of the servers were hosted off home connections, and had people in it playing on high level maps. Given that we couldn't find a way of contacting you due to the forums being down, we created our own server.

It has now come to the point where joining FN is no longer a viable solution. We will continue to direct all player we see who have a low level to FN servers in case they are new to the mod and explain to them about FN and how we highly recommend they play there. However, as it stands, we simply cannot start over. Perhaps you can get to level 20 in eight hours of play. A lot of us can't. Not all of us has the time to play 8 hours straight. We have traditionally run our servers until there's no demand not only from RKS side, but also from the public side (unless there are alternatives, such as in TF2, CSS, GMOD DarkRP, etc where there are hundreds of alternatives). Shutting down a server is a big event especially one where there are persistent stats. We will definitely consult the public players before making such a big decision. However, in the end, it comes down to whether or not it would be worth it. I believe that the answer is yes. Even if we do shut down eventually, I am sure that the fun we will have playing this will outweigh any loss that may accompany. We will make every effort to preserve character files.

Thothie, I am terribly sorry that we simply cannot start over in FN. Our choice is rather limited at the moment. Either we continue to play in our own server, or we stop playing the mod all together. Joining FN is simply not a alternative.

 

[Wrath]

Perhaps a compromise can be reached where you can split the RKS servers into FN and non-FN servers. Take 2 of the east coast servers and 2 of the central servers and make those FN. Then you can if you choose play those when you wish? It also adds more servers to MSC that way we get more players you get the chance to if you want play on FN versions of your servers and brings more players into the game. This way just about everyone wins?

 

[Keldorn]

If the stats of the RKS member characters are copied to FN, I would be willing to personally get them their items on my main if it will cut down on time.

 

[Thothie]

Running SELECT COUNT(*) on our savefile incremental backup system's player database results in 52 entries. Limiting this to discrete STEAMID results in 43. Running RKS members only results in 16. Of the 16, 5 can be discarded as they are low level. As of this point, it's too much to import into FN.

Send me the 11 characters in question, and I'll see if I can script up a way to automate the process.

I've had to rebuild one or two characters that were corrupted beyond salvation, so I already have the process partly automated, but as it is, it still takes me about 20 minutes per character. If I could automate the item creation sequence as well as the item cataloging, maybe I can make it faster, and it'd be handy to have. Since it's only 11 characters, I'll also be able to go over any potential anomalies in them so the community can rest assured that they are "clean", insomuch as possible.

 

[PY004]

Thanks so much Thothie. You are really a Saint.

We are running a vote internally as well as asking those who joined our servers such as Keldorn, Older, etc. So far the vote is positive. It seems that of the 11, only 7 will end up really need transferring. We have sent you our character files and inlcuded the history of each acount as well in case it helps you verify that we didn't cheat.

We would like to place 8 servers into FN at the moment. We will keep 2 servers set to Not FN but password protected for the time being for purposes of offering legacy services to those who would like to continue playing there. PM Sent regarding this also. Entry into FN will be upon verifying that our characters are imported into FN.

US East Virginia
64.34.182.112:27015
64.34.182.112:27016
64.34.182.112:27017
64.34.182.112:27018
64.34.182.112:27019

US Central, Texas
76.74.166.248:27015
76.74.166.248:27016
76.74.166.248:27017

Again thank you very much. Thanks to all our supporters as well, there were quite a lot of you and I don't know how to repay it. Also to those who joined our servers hoping to start your characters over, we'll keep two servers password locked pending thothie's approval.

Note: We will provide character files on demand to those who ask in case you want to play with it in your local listen server or something.

 

[fenix3533]

Glad to see a compromise has been reached