[Suggestion] Allow us to see the last login of LS members

I'd like to be able to see the last login time of LS members, just like we can for FC members. This is an extremely helpful feature that is available in the FC menu. It seems like such an oversight that it's missing from the LS menu as well. It seems even more pertinent to linkshells than FCs due to the smaller size of linkshells. It would be an important tool to help LS leaders to keep our linkshells healthy and full of only active members, by allowing us to easily shed dead weight.

I support this. Also, an increment in linkshell members would be nice. My linkshell is so overwhelmed by members we had to split in 2 mirror linkshells....and of course making a FC in this case is no-no

I support this. 10/char.

bump. I don't want to see a good suggestion get lost in a sea of lame ones.

Agreed. Knowing you only ever see 60 people out of 128 online, but not being certain which if any are safe to remove is a bit frustrating. Especially when other people show interest in joining and you have to say no.

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Originally Posted by Rivienne

Agreed. Knowing you only ever see 60 people out of 128 online, but not being certain which if any are safe to remove is a bit frustrating. Especially when other people show interest in joining and you have to say no.

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We've been forced to become an invite only LS, but I really don't like doing that. I'd like to be able to take in interested players who are active, good, and friendly but may not know somebody already in the shell.

SE needs to either increase the number of players a linkshell can hold dramatically, or make it easier for us to manage our rosters. Sure, 2.0 has made it so that we can kick players who are not online, but they need to make it easy for us to see who we can (or need to) kick.

I'm looking at my FC's Members list right now. Those logged off are in order of the last time they logged in, the player who logged off 2 hours ago is above the online and the longest offline character is at the bottom. Isn't your log set up this way too?

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Originally Posted by JagerForrester

I'm looking at my FC's Members list right now. Those logged off are in order of the last time they logged in, the player who logged off 2 hours ago is above the online and the longest offline character is at the bottom. Isn't your log set up this way too?

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This isn't about the FC list but the LS list. The FC list is fine.

I agree that this would be a nice addition. Also, linkshell messages would be appreciated, since I know several LS' that have members from multiple FC's that run events together (BC, Titan runs, etc). I'm aware FC's have a message to all members available when you log on, so having one for LS' would be nice.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I'd like to be able to see the last login time of LS members, just like we can for FC members. This is an extremely helpful feature that is available in the FC menu. It seems like such an oversight that it's missing from the LS menu as well. It seems even more pertinent to linkshells than FCs due to the smaller size of linkshells. It would be an important tool to help LS leaders to keep our linkshells healthy and full of only active members, by allowing us to easily shed dead weight.

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I completely agree, and I upvote it.
Though I would ask that it not only show online but activity as well; or something of that nature. I mean we can have 8-10 LSs; and if you log on, you would register as online for all of them. I can be completely inactive in all but one of them; then only pipe-up in one of the others when I want stuff. :mad: *shakes fist*

no ty ls is just a simple chat, why would you need such things for chats? fc's can hold 5 times as many people worry about inactives and actives there.

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

no ty ls is just a simple chat, why would you need such things for chats? fc's can hold 5 times as many people worry about inactives and actives there.

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This post is obviously written by a person who does not have a leadership role in a LS or FC, and has to help maintain a roster.

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

no ty ls is just a simple chat, why would you need such things for chats? fc's can hold 5 times as many people worry about inactives and actives there.

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Not everyone runs their LS/FC that way. My LS is basically the FC and friends, so we use the LS for organizing events rather than the FC. So I need the ability to easily shed dead weight.

Hey all,

We posed your request to the UI team who gave us the following insight on the operation of Linkshells. Linkshell lists, in contrast to Free Company lists are designed quite differently. While Free Companies have specific databases where historical information is kept, Linkshells are designed to function as a chat channel, and use the least amount of information possible in order to reduce the strain on servers. Login history, specifically in this case, is not recorded internally.

Therefore, unfortunately we cannot add a last logged in display for Linkshell members.

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

Hey all,

We posed your request to the UI team who gave us the following insight on the operation of Linkshells. Linkshell lists, in contrast to Free Company lists are designed quite differently. While Free Companies have specific databases where historical information is kept, Linkshells are designed to function as a chat channel, and use the least amount of information possible in order to reduce the strain on servers. Login history, specifically in this case, is not recorded internally.

Therefore, unfortunately we cannot add a last logged in display for Linkshell members.

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Server stores that data for every character in some database. If you can't display this information continuously, let people send a targeted query for this to the server. Like, by viewing character's profile (that screen with jobs etc)

The less db queries the better. The net-coding choice made by SE is bad enough as is. Deciding to prioritize security over gameplay experience was a major mistake. It pretty much makes any additional server load propagate to all clients. Lets not add more server strain with nice to have feature requests. Thank you SE.

inb4 "fix the netcode" by 100 ignorant posters. It can't be fixed, it never will be fixed, because it is not broken. It was simply a poor decision made early on in development which at this stage cannot be changed without a massive infrastructure overhaul. The decision to have the server dictate live-state instead of the client (which pretty much all other MMOs do) has resulted in the "lag" everyone is sees when they get out of a red circle and still get hit. The issue is compounded by centralized data centers in only 2 locations worldwide. Anyways, the more load on the server the worse it is for EVERYONE.

I don't believe it's necessary to have a separate log table recording the logoff date/time stamp for every Linkshell & Member combination. When the Linkshell list is opened, you could have the character ID joined to whatever main character table stores login information, and return that to the end user client's screen whether it's the LS list, FC window, search window, etc. No need to store the same date/time over and over again for every new list. Granted this may put a little strain on the server since it's needing to do a join rather than a straight pull, but there's ways to make that very efficient as well (though not as efficient as not showing it at all).

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Originally Posted by Zirael_Foxfire

Server stores that data for every character in some database. If you can't display this information continuously, let people send a targeted query for this to the server. Like, by viewing character's profile (that screen with jobs etc)

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What's so hard to understand in "Login history, specifically in this case, is not recorded internally."?
And avoid replying with "because I know they do" because no, you don't.

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Originally Posted by Eli_Jin

I don't believe it's necessary to have a separate log table recording the logoff date/time stamp for every Linkshell & Member combination. When the Linkshell list is opened, you could have the character ID joined to whatever main character table stores login information, and return that to the end user client's screen whether it's the LS list, FC window, search window, etc. No need to store the same date/time over and over again for every new list. Granted this may put a little strain on the server since it's needing to do a join rather than a straight pull, but there's ways to make that very efficient as well (though not as efficient as not showing it at all).

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^^ this.

While it might be inefficient to store that info with the LS data, all that would be needed is an inner join to the table that stores the character log in info, which would only need to be used when the LS ui is opened. Therefore no extra resources would be used for LS chat. Being that we're dealing with 128 records max at a time the resource cost would be pretty low.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

The less db queries the better. The net-coding choice made by SE is bad enough as is. Deciding to prioritize security over gameplay experience was a major mistake. It pretty much makes any additional server load propagate to all clients. Lets not add more server strain with nice to have feature requests. Thank you SE.

inb4 "fix the netcode" by 100 ignorant posters. It can't be fixed, it never will be fixed, because it is not broken. It was simply a poor decision made early on in development which at this stage cannot be changed without a massive infrastructure overhaul. The decision to have the server dictate live-state instead of the client (which pretty much all other MMOs do) has resulted in the "lag" everyone is sees when they get out of a red circle and still get hit. The issue is compounded by centralized data centers in only 2 locations worldwide. Anyways, the more load on the server the worse it is for EVERYONE.

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You don't need an additional query, only a modification to the one that's already there.

It would have been nice, but when an official rep tells you that it's a no go - why do argue with that? Do you have some sort secret insight as to how their DB queries work or if there's a security risk associated with your ideas?

That's pretty arrogant.

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Originally Posted by FinagleABagel

It would have been nice, but when an official rep tells you that it's a no go - why do argue with that? Do you have some sort secret insight as to how their DB queries work or if there's a security risk associated with your ideas?

That's pretty arrogant.

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No, but database queries aren't some big industry secret.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

No, but database queries aren't some big industry secret.

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Please read. Obviously DB queries aren't secret, but I wasn't aware that you knew what SE's DB architecture was. Or how they query the database. Or how much bandwidth they have available. Or...well anything that would allow you to argue intelligently with a community rep.

Like I said, it would have been nice but ultimately its a fairly unnecessary luxury. If I had to choose between this and the laundry list of already planned additions, I'd pick all of those additions over this one.

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Originally Posted by FinagleABagel

Please read. Obviously DB queries aren't secret, but I wasn't aware that you knew what SE's DB architecture was. Or how they query the database. Or how much bandwidth they have available. Or...well anything that would allow you to argue intelligently with a community rep.

Like I said, it would have been nice but ultimately its a fairly unnecessary luxury. If I had to choose between this and the laundry list of already planned additions, I'd pick all of those additions over this one.

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I do have experience working with databases that contain numbers of accounts about 10 orders of magnitude larger than the numbers on each world server. We can query that database joining about 20 to 30 tables and receive results in a matter of seconds. It's obvious from the reps response that the LS ui query uses a single table. Something doesn't sound right to me.

Its a petty thing to be this upset over. They gave their answer. Maybe pose it again later on down the road when they have fewer issues on their plate that are more important. and its not just 128, times that by 8 because you can have up to 8 LS's. Organize through a website, be creative. Gamers have been resourceful in this regard for ages, you cant tell me you are incapable of managing a simple LS without that tool. Would it be convenient? Yes. Is it the end of the game if its not there ASAP? No. Take their answer graciously and keep it in your back pocket for a later date.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I do have experience working with databases that contain numbers of accounts about 10 orders of magnitude larger than the numbers on each world server. We can query that database joining about 20 to 30 tables and receive results in a matter of seconds. It's obvious from the reps response that the LS ui query uses a single table. Something doesn't sound right to me.

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Something doesn't sound right or maybe you just don't have all the information they do. This is what Irks me the most about some posters, they pretend to know exactly how SE is doing things and how "simple" it would be to fix/implement.

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Its a petty thing to be this upset over. They gave their answer. Maybe pose it again later on down the road when they have fewer issues on their plate that are more important. and its not just 128, times that by 8 because you can have up to 8 LS's. Organize through a website, be creative. Gamers have been resourceful in this regard for ages, you cant tell me you are incapable of managing a simple LS without that tool. Would it be convenient? Yes. Is it the end of the game if its not there ASAP? No. Take their answer graciously and keep it in your back pocket for a later date.



Something doesn't sound right or maybe you just don't have all the information they do. This is what Irks me the most about some posters, they pretend to know exactly how SE is doing things and how "simple" it would be to fix/implement.

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I'm not upset. It just seems crazy to me that the infrastructure can't support it.

Also, implying that I am not managing my LS via a website seems pretty ignorant. Of course I'm doing that. But it may come as a surprise to you that not everyone wants to sign up for an additional website outside of the game. Not everyone uses facebook, or the official forums either. As a matter of fact, a website is less efficient for managing membership than an in-game solution. What I'll probably end up doing is just using the 1.0 solution of creating a second LS and moving all of my active members to that one, then eventually breaking the old one thus shedding the dead weight that way. It's a pain in the ass but the only in-game solution that's viable without SE implementing my suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I do have experience working with databases that contain numbers of accounts about 10 orders of magnitude larger than the numbers on each world server. We can query that database joining about 20 to 30 tables and receive results in a matter of seconds. It's obvious from the reps response that the LS ui query uses a single table. Something doesn't sound right to me.

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I agree with most of this (I have exp in large databases myself), but one thought occurs to me: what if they don't consistently store it in another accessible table either? It sounds like they are using a single table design for LS, and for FC.

I.E. they are storing the date in the FC table. Which means the only way to get this would be to join to the FC table, which not everyone has.

It could be literally as simple as, they can't do it reliably because the data is only stored in the FC table. So LS -> left join Players -> left join FC, it still might not show if the person isn't currently in a FC.

I know this should be easy, I agree. But it does sound like a potential schema change would be required and nobody wants to sign off on a schema change in a live environment. No matter how trivial. Not in my experience anyway.

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Originally Posted by Rivienne

I agree with most of this (I have exp in large databases myself), but one thought occurs to me: what if they don't consistently store it in another accessible table either? It sounds like they are using a single table design for LS, and for FC.

I.E. they are storing the date in the FC table. Which means the only way to get this would be to join to the FC table, which not everyone has.

It could be literally as simple as, they can't do it reliably because the data is only stored in the FC table. So LS -> left join Players -> left join FC, it still might not show if the person isn't currently in a FC.

I know this should be easy, I agree. But it does sound like a potential schema change would be required and nobody wants to sign off on a schema change in a live environment. No matter how trivial. Not in my experience anyway.

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Or even add a new field for last login date to the table that character data is stored in.

Only SE would find something as a "last logged in" time difficult........ They need to rehire :/

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Originally Posted by Clavaat

I agree that this would be a nice addition. Also, linkshell messages would be appreciated, since I know several LS' that have members from multiple FC's that run events together (BC, Titan runs, etc). I'm aware FC's have a message to all members available when you log on, so having one for LS' would be nice.

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In FF11 it was /lsmes. Oh but wait, that's 1. too easy & 2. referenced to 11 which is a huge no no. Pity really as 11 is apparent throughout 14, but just ignored.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I'm not upset. It just seems crazy to me that the infrastructure can't support it.

Also, implying that I am not managing my LS via a website seems pretty ignorant. Of course I'm doing that. But it may come as a surprise to you that not everyone wants to sign up for an additional website outside of the game. Not everyone uses facebook, or the official forums either. As a matter of fact, a website is less efficient for managing membership than an in-game solution.

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Agreed. I have 2 locations on the internet as is, & contemplating a 3rd. Why? Bc not everyone uses or wants to use the others. My LS is basically the hub chat for everything. We don't want lower members separated from FC activities. Our LS & FC are our Guild. Why not have ingame postings or msg boards? I'm positive they would be used way more than most any other method.

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

Hey all,

We posed your request to the UI team who gave us the following insight on the operation of Linkshells. Linkshell lists, in contrast to Free Company lists are designed quite differently. While Free Companies have specific databases where historical information is kept, Linkshells are designed to function as a chat channel, and use the least amount of information possible in order to reduce the strain on servers. Login history, specifically in this case, is not recorded internally.

Therefore, unfortunately we cannot add a last logged in display for Linkshell members.

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THANK YOU!

I disagreed totally with the OP, it's ridiculous and feel like a FFXIV version of the "patriot act".
What business does it serve anyone to see when a member logs in/out.(leave the record-making to the GMs)


LSs are social and not corporate: There shouldn't be a reason to know everything about members in a link shell so thank you.
Respect my privacy. I do wish they allow linkshell- announcements like in FFxi.

Its sad that the options/choices are declining in these MMORPG Genre, which is very bad thing. I can't believe its not possible to add login in linkshell, I don't think its not hard thing to do. Might as well expand its linkshell population as many as FC then.

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Originally Posted by Azaroth

Might as well expand its linkshell population as many as FC then.

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^^ this.

My LS is in the middle of the nuclear option, adding all the folks that log in over a certain number of days and adding them to a new LS, then breaking the old one. It's great that we can kick people who aren't active, but it would be nice to have an easy way to see just who is inactive. I mean I could guess who's inactive, but I could very well make the mistake of kicking somebody who just has a conflicting schedule to mine. I see this option as essential to keeping a shell healthy and active.

You see SE, this is why we can't have nice things.