Cyrillic nick name change & Jericho/Citadel consolidation

[MattScott]

Hi all,

 

During the coming weeks, we will be disabling special characters (Cyrillic, Latin, etc) in names and flagging all names that contain special characters for a forced change. 

 

We explored a number of ways to fix this without changing names, but in the end we are somewhat limited to the characters enabled across all our players’ keyboards. We need to do this to fix the /report & mail issues and to prep the upcoming Jericho and Citadel consolidation. The goal is to finally open all characters across all regions.

 

EDIT: This isn’t like a traditional server merge. World servers will be merged, but we are spreading out the Action Districts so that North American players can play with other regions and so that our Asia-Pacific, South America, and Russian players can have better latency.

 

We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join.

 

This is how the Action Districts are hosted alongside the World Servers now, which limits where we can host them.

 

 

This is how we can expand the locations of Action Districts after the merge (although we will have multiple district types and threat levels in each location).

 

 

(@SKay thanks for the images, and Happy Birthday!)

EDIT: The locations shown on the map were picked randomly for demonstration purposes, beyond that they don't have any particular meaning. More details will be coming later on.

 

EDIT: This move is a prerequisite for Phasing, which eliminate the need to spam click in an effort to join a district with 79 players. Instead we will match across all online players in the same district type and move those players to the best server for them.

 

EDIT: We are also going to do something special with character names to avoid collisions this time. Anyone who hasn’t logged in their character within the last year will have their name released so that new and existing characters can use it both during and after the merge.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[vsb]

3 minutes ago, MattScott said:

This is to fix the /report and mail issues and to prep the upcoming Jericho and Citadel merge. The goal is to finally open all characters across all regions.

 

As part of this effort we will also be exploring new servers in new locations so that North American players can play with other regions and so that our Asia-Pacific, South America, and Russian players can have better latency.

#consolidation

 

this eu/na merge makes use of localized servers i hope, we’re not just sticking one server with high latency?

[MattScott]

Yes. World servers will be mirrored in multiple regions.

 

We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join.

[ok]

NA players in EU OMEGALUL

[vsb]

4 hours ago, MattScott said:

Yes. World servers will be mirrored in multiple regions.

 

We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join.

new york would be sick, i miss my 20ms to joker

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Solamente
typo

[Nitronik]

Hopefully this will be the best of both worlds type solution

Although I can't help but take this merger as a sign the times are dire

[Mistweaver]

Wait, if players have name with any Cyrillic letters, their name will be changed by LO.

or they have to change their name by themselves.

[Nitronik]

Just now, Machine659 said:

Wait, if players have name with any Cyrillic letters, their name will be changed by LO.

or they have to change their name by themselves.

IIRC they will replace your nickname with something compatible, after which you will get a free namechange to decide your new nickname

[Aserii]

12 minutes ago, Nitronik said:

IIRC they will replace your nickname with something compatible, after which you will get a free namechange to decide your new nickname

it makes your nickname whatever you had before and puts a bunch of random numbers that exceed the character limit, because your name isn't valid at that point, you get a namechange. At least that's my understanding of it but I'm pretty dumb so

[Nickolai]

After all these years I will have to say goodbye to my US lag shield.

 

RIP Lag shield 2011 - 2019

 

EU 20 ms Ping here I come

 

[Genobee]

Finally!

 

Zero complaints about any of this. 

 

Especially happy that there's gonna be a proper choice of servers again. Let alone the fact that there'll be an opportunity to play with people in other regions at once. It's something I've wanted to see in APB for ages. Closest thing we've had up until now was Joker - until that was nuked from orbit (was in a nice location for both EU and NA players to play together)

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Genobee

[Ketog]

Finally i will see NA people !

 

Cooky, Kewlin, Sadira, Skitty ...... oh boi, that's gonna be a lot of people i know around now.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Ketog

[NotZombieBiscuit]

I don't know how I feel about this.

 

Also Sydney, Aus > Singapore. This was obvious during the HAN server getting moved around years ago.

Edited August 24, 2019 by NotZombieBiscuit

[Benguin]

NY sounds good perhaps I'll be able to get less than 100 ms connecting to freedom country

[CommandantSteele]

One thing I would like to see is perhaps a ping-based filter for choosing an action district that's enabled by default? And preferably takes a small amount of work to disable so it's not easy to just bump it?

 

That way we don't have everyone just trying to join the most full district at the time and keep pings relatively equal.

[TheMessiah]

if people from north/south america and east asia start playn on our european server prepare for lag fest..

[Weeb TheEpicGuyV2]

Welp, all of us who said a merge would never happen in a million years look like dumbasses now

[Sophiie]

37 minutes ago, TheMessiah said:

if people from north/south america and east asia start playn on our european server prepare for lag fest..

 

That's not how server-based latency works at all...

 

It's not a peer-to-peer game. Servers will pretty much run at the same tick. The only ones having latency issues on EU servers would be NA players, and even then, it's not that bad - the major barrier for this was always the database logistics and who gets to keep what name. It's purely a political issue.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Sophiie

[koIaman]

Why not wait until you guys implement the phasing system? Or is this part of the phasing plan? Wouldn't this be a little irrelevant once phasing comes around since the plan is to place you in a match based on your ping and location? A little confused.

[Sophiie]

2 minutes ago, koIaman said:

Why not wait until you guys implement the phasing system? Or is this part of the phasing plan? Wouldn't this be a little irrelevant once phasing comes around since the plan is to place you in a match based on your ping and location? A little confused.

This is likely preparation for phasing. It's easier to phase similar-ping players into a district with similar ping than it is to match them on a world, which is currently impossible if you're an NA player playing on an EU server, for example.

 

By having everyone on the same server, it would be very easy to figure out where people should go.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Sophiie

[Acornie]

20 minutes ago, Weeb TheEpicGuyV2 said:

Welp, all of us who said a merge would never happen in a million years look like dumbasses now

Anyone who's been keeping up knows a 'hub' server with different action district regions was planned, I just thought it was very much further in the roadmap. So yes I'm still right; a traditional merge wouldn't happen 

[Sophiie]

Just now, Acornie said:

Anyone who's been keeping up knows a 'hub' server with different action district regions was planned, I just thought it was very much further in the roadmap. So yes I'm still right; a traditional merge wouldn't happen 

This is a traditional merge, though. Names will still be conflicted, all characters effectively reside on the same server, etc.

 

The underlying tech hasn't changed drastically, yet. Just the physical locations of the servers.

Also, can we name the new server "Union"? It's a huge running gag with APB.

 

#bringbacktheonion

[Acornie]

5 minutes ago, Sophiie said:

This is a traditional merge, though. Names will still be conflicted, all characters effectively reside on the same server, etc.

But.... it isn't. Of course there will be name conflication and all data being on the same server, that doesn't matter, what makes this something that could possibly pan out and is actually a good thing is thatt here will be district instances in different regions; that's the reason they're doing it, if everyone from all corners of the earth had to play in regions located in say, London, in a traditional merge where we had the current server setup (where all the instances are locked to London) it would be bad.

[ninjarrrr]

u know ur games dead when ur merging all the servers and u still get less players than u did 3 years ago lmfao

[KNickz]

i have KNickz on both NA and EU server how the hell am i going to keep it

 

 

i did it before and ill do it again lads we have to get together to name this server JOKER

Edited August 24, 2019 by KNickz