So, it has finally happened, from the depths of CCPs list of promises which includes shield slaves and other failed or abandoned projects, Shared bookmarks managed to crawl out and somehow see a release date. The release date for these is set for November 26, alongside chapter two of the Triglavian Invasion. This is one of the biggest changes in recent times to affect the game as it is a feature fans of the game have been asking for since bookmarks were implemented, previously known as Alliance Bookmarks.
Shared bookmarks: Access list mechanics and usage
There’s one significant difference between shared bookmarks and the previous idea called alliance bookmarks that has been suggested for years. This one is based on the Upwell Structure Access List System or ACL. This means that instead of everyone in the alliance having access to the shared bookmark folders, you’re able to design folders that are available only to Fleet Commanders to avoid spies abusing them, Bookmarks available to the entire alliance which is desperately needed for alliances living in wormholes with more than one corporation or people who use separate corporations for their alts. You can even share bookmarks between members of your coalition or members of different alliances that work together on your shared operation or war.
All bookmarks can now be generated from a separate corporation to avoid war declarations and shared between members of the access list. Just like Access lists for structures, you can also choose which members of the access list has rights to perform different actions.
There’s four different options for the access levels:
- View: Gives the ability to view bookmarks in the shared folder and warp to them
- Use: Gives the ability to add locations, edit and delete the locations they add and copy locations from one folder to another
- Manage: Gives the ability to edit and remove bookmarks and subfolders in the shared folder
- Admin: Gives the ability to delete and rename the shared folder and change who has access to the shared folder
You’re also able as an individual to change which shared folders are online and offline. This determines which folders are visible in space and which bookmarks clutter your right click menu. If a shared folder is offline, you’re also unable to add locations to it, there’s also a limit on online bookmarks, which means you’ll have to offline a lot of bookmarks if you’re one of the few players with over 15.000 bookmarks.
You’re able to set bookmarks to expire after a specific time chosen from pre-set timers and this expiry setting will be remembered for the future in that folder. This means that you can set wormholes and other signatures to expire after a set amount of time, avoiding cluttering your signature folders with old signatures that are long gone.
Shared bookmarks: Bookmark changes and Limitations
Sadly, due to the enormous amount of pressure this Access list system puts on the server, CCP has had to make several changes and add limitations to how bookmarks work, some changes for the better and some, not so much.
First things first, there is a limit to how many folders you can have online at a time and how many bookmarks you can have in each folder. The limitations are as follows:
- Locations in a shared folder = 500
- Locations in a personal folder = 3,000
- Maximum online shared location folders = 3
- Maximum online personal location folders = 5
- Maximum location folders created and existing = 30
- Maximum location folders connected = 30
Additionally, for players with more than 15.000 bookmarks or more than 3000 in a folder, there’s a hard cap on the number of bookmarks displayed in every group at 3000 bookmarks, group being subfolder or folder. This is accompanied by a hard limit on the total amount of bookmarks visible at 20.000.
There has also been changes made to the delay on the ability to warp to a newly made bookmark and changes to the delay time in changes to access list levels. While the visibility of newly made bookmarks is supposedly instantaneous, the ability to warp to them has been given a hard limit of two minutes instead of the previous five-minute cache time. Due to the amount of pressure these new changes add onto the server, there’s now a delay up to five-minutes upon changing the access list levels.
Shared bookmarks: Migration from the old system
CCP has released a very specific plan for migrating the old bookmark system to the new ACL based system, including corporation bookmarks. The new system will take all your personal location folders and convert them into subfolders, keeping your organisation exactly like it was before the change.
CCP has attempted to turn every corporation location folder into a shared folder, but as CCP stated in their dev blog, every corporation has different bookmarking systems. This means that every corporation director with the ability to change bookmarks is encouraged to go through their folders after the change goes through to make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be as it’ll likely require changes. This shared folder will have the same ACL as the previous corporation bookmarks had, so every corporation member will have the roles “View” and “Use”, meaning they’ll be able to add locations, remove their own locations and warp to them.
Directors in the corporation will have the “manage” and “Admin” roles, meaning they’ll be able to change the ACL and remove subfolders and bookmarks. Important to note is that a director that’s been removed from the corporation will not lose roles in the shared folder, this must be done manually by someone with admin privileges.
Bookmark vouchers used to share bookmarks between members of an alliance or corporation previously will now become part of a new folder known as “imported vouchers” that is either available in the corporations shared folder or in your personal folder and any bookmarks present in contracts during the release of shared bookmarks will not be transferred to the new system.
