issue 27 Focused Feedback: Name Release Policy - Phase 1: Warning Mode

[The Curator]

Name Release - Phase 1: Warning Mode

• The name release policy as described some time ago has been implemented and will begin to phase in starting with Page 4.
  • Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 30 days.
  • Level 6-49 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 365 days.
  • Level 50 characters will never be flagged as inactive.

 

 

• You can remove the inactive flag on a character at any time simply by logging them in.
• As it has been some time since the policy was first announced, in order to ensure that players have sufficient time to act on protecting names they actively intend to use, the system will go live in Page 4 in Warning Mode Only.
• This inactivity flag will be displayed in the character list to identify which characters have names that would be at risk, but while the system is in warning mode, no characters will be renamed, and no names can be lost.
• The character list displays a yellow "pre-warning" icon to give advance notice before the inactivity period expires. Level 1-5 characters start warning 7 days prior, while level 6-49 characters start warning 30 days prior.

 

• At a later date to be announced, the system will be fully activated. After that point, players will be able to create new characters using any of the inactive names, which results in the inactive character being renamed.

[Greycat]

Should be by account, not character.  The game encourages alts and RP. Not all RP alts get leveled - they're there for a reason, and that's not "rush to 50 and get incarnated out."  Some do sit there waiting for specific times and aren't brought out to play frequently.

 

If the account's inactive, go nuts. For an active account, not fond of the idea of having to go through looking for "warnings." (And no, I don't care that "all you have to do is log them in." I've got roughly 200 characters. It's not a small time investment. I'd rather play a character than go through 20 pages looking for little triangles.)

[El D]

I definitely like the idea - though I think as is, without some kind of 'flagged account' aspect to activate them, the proposed 'time offline' flags should be extended before full implementation.

 

Off the top of my head, doubling to 60 days for levels 1-5 and 180 days for levels 6-20, while levels 21-49 stay as is at 365 seems more reasonable. Provides a larger grace period, yes, but Homecoming also purposefully allows a thousand slots per server as a distinct 'make as many characters as you like' selling point. Setting the tag rates too low turns that into a detriment to active players instead of keeping the focus as a consequence for abandoned accounts that camped a ton of names X years ago. As a certain point yes, even active players will invite a ton of 'maintenance time' on themselves if they make a truly excessive number of characters - but with servers set up as they are, they invite making a ton of alts by-default so the system shouldn't feel like utilizing what's provided becomes a punishment.

 

Perhaps there could be some kind of 'check in' option to satisfy the tag from the Character Select screen? It'd still require active attention/curating from players (moreso than just going past the initial log-in screen) and would still free up names that have been completely neglected - just without forcing active players to cycle through pages upon pages of alts in a continual race against the countdown timer.

Edited July 12, 2022 by El D

[AlishaShatogi]

2 minutes ago, El D said:

I definitely like the idea - though I think as is, without some kind of 'flagged account' aspect to activate them, the proposed 'time offline' flags should be extended before full implementation.

 

Off the top of my head, doubling to 60 days for levels 1-5 and 180 days for levels 6-20, while levels 21-49 stay as is at 365 seems more reasonable. Provides a larger grace period, yes, but given that Homecoming purposefully allows a thousand slots per server as a distinct 'make as many characters as you like' selling point. Setting the tag rates too low turns that into a detriment to active players instead of keeping the focus as a consequence for abandoned accounts that camped a ton of names X years ago. As a certain point yes, even active players will invite a ton of 'maintenance time' on themselves if they make a truly excessive number of characters - but with servers set up as they are, they invite making a ton of alts by-default so the system shouldn't feel like utilizing what's provided becomes a punishment.

 

Perhaps there could be some kind of 'check in' option to satisfy the tag from the Character Select screen? It'd still require active attention/curating from players (moreso than just going past the initial log-in screen) and would still free up names that have been completely neglected - just without forcing active players to cycle through pages upon pages of alts in a continual race against the countdown timer.

 

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I suspect a name I had pre-Homecoming is being squatted by an inactive account; and yet some of my own alts remain unplayed for weeks or months at a time. And right now, I have only (yes, only,) 36 alts! It's a difficult balance to strike, especially for us altoholic RPers.

 

Would it be possible for the warning system to also trigger some kind of out of game notification, eg an automated forum message? Or make warning state a character list search parameter? (or level range, but that's slightly off-topic for this.)

 

tldr excellent idea, please give me that name back, but,
- account-based flagging should probably be considered

- maybe increase grace periods

- make it less punishing on active altoholics to be aware of warning state because 1000 slots is a lot. 

[AlwaysAPrice]

I appreciate the intent behind this feature, having some method to free up camped names is necessary with the effectively unlimited character creation we have by necessity of being unable to base one's roster size on subscription/slot purchase so that name collecting has an actual expense as it did on Live pre-F2P, but it really ought to just be account login based. If you're playing anything regularly you get to keep your stuff, nice and simple. Activity levels have dropped drastically from when this started, just hitting inactive accounts will probably free up a ton of names. Otherwise people with limited playtime get stuck spending some potentially significant portion of that limited playtime cycling through a roster of they already don't have time to play up to high levels, sitting through loading screen after loading screen just to be sure in case their next playtime doesn't come around for a while.

[TheZag]

I feel this is warranted.  1000 slots encouraged a fair amount of name camping.  Use it or lose it.

 

Of course you arent losing anything if nobody else wants it,  it just loses its reserved status until you log it in.  And level 50 names arent ever lost.

 

[Mezmera]

Fair

[Doc_Scorpion]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

Should be by account, not character.  The game encourages alts and RP. Not all RP alts get leveled - they're there for a reason, and that's not "rush to 50 and get incarnated out."  Some do sit there waiting for specific times and aren't brought out to play frequently.

So much this.  So. Much. This.  Target inactive accounts not inactive characters.

Also agreeing with the idea of increasing grace periods.  Anything less than 60-90 days for any character level is punitive.

=========

I do like the way the UI has been implemented...  But it needs a tweak.  A cautionary icon ("You could lose the name w/in x days") and an alert icon ("You could lose this name at any moment, take action nao!")

Updated: Per Number Six, such a system already exists.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Doc_Scorpion
Correcting suggestion

[BurtHutt]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

Should be by account, not character.  The game encourages alts and RP. Not all RP alts get leveled - they're there for a reason, and that's not "rush to 50 and get incarnated out."  Some do sit there waiting for specific times and aren't brought out to play frequently.

 

If the account's inactive, go nuts. For an active account, not fond of the idea of having to go through looking for "warnings." (And no, I don't care that "all you have to do is log them in." I've got roughly 200 characters. It's not a small time investment. I'd rather play a character than go through 20 pages looking for little triangles.)

I have to agree with this. Make it per account. I do have a number of alts and I have also played a lot less lately. I don't get around to playing all toons and it's a pain to log in on all toons.

[ScarySai]

I kinda want this to be a thing already, name hoarders are pretty much the worst.

 

At least let us ask a GM if a name we want is flagged by the system, or something. Though, that's more hassle to our GM crew.

[Number Six]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I do like the way the UI has been implemented...  But it needs a tweak.  A cautionary icon ("You could lose the name w/in x days") and an alert icon ("You could lose this name at any moment, take action nao!")

 

I'm a little confused because this is already the case. The yellow triangle warning indicates a name that will be up for grabs "soon", with the length of the warning being proportional to the tier that it's in. 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day warning periods for the 3 tiers.

 

The orange triangle indicates a name that would be at risk, but isn't actually because the system isn't in enforcement mode yet.

 

At some point in the future, when enforcement is turned on, the orange icons will become the red icons with the white exclamation mark you see in the screenshot above. That's the "do something now!" indicator. Or ignore it if it's not a name you really care about.

[Number Six]

Also, account activity is not something that's possible for the system to access due to the game's distributed architecture.

 

Account data lives on a separate system from the individual shards. It would take a much more substantial rewrite of the character list code to for it to be able to query that efficiently.

[Doc_Scorpion]

37 minutes ago, Number Six said:

 

I'm a little confused because this is already the case. The yellow triangle warning indicates a name that will be up for grabs "soon", with the length of the warning being proportional to the tier that it's in. 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day warning periods for the 3 tiers.

 

The orange triangle indicates a name that would be at risk, but isn't actually because the system isn't in enforcement mode yet.

There's no yellow warning mentioned in the patch notes, and all of my characters on Brainstorm were either clear (no warning) or orange.  So I had no way of knowing that the yellow warning existed...  hence my suggestion.

Instead, I'll substitute the suggestion that the patch notes be updated to fully describe the system.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Doc_Scorpion
Clarifying meaning

[Fate]

10 minutes ago, Number Six said:

Also, account activity is not something that's possible for the system to access due to the game's distributed architecture.

 

Account data lives on a separate system from the individual shards. It would take a much more substantial rewrite of the character list code to for it to be able to query that efficiently.

While I am happy to see the name release system being implemented, I don't think doing it by character is a good way to go about doing it. If doing it by account activity isn't feasible, would it be possible to get a button on the character select UI that would set all of your characters to active? Having to manually log in each character is a lot of extra time spent not playing for anyone with a lot of alts, and managing it when you have hundreds of characters is going to get tricky as it could be easy to over look the symbol when scrolling through many pages of characters. If the server allows 1,000 characters it should be reasonable to have 1,000 characters, especially since this is a super hero game, so having a specific name can be a big part of a character's identity.

[El D]

30 minutes ago, Number Six said:

Also, account activity is not something that's possible for the system to access due to the game's distributed architecture.

 

Account data lives on a separate system from the individual shards. It would take a much more substantial rewrite of the character list code to for it to be able to query that efficiently.

 

That's unfortunate, but makes sense. 😕

 

Would a 'check in' option on the Character Select screen be doable instead? That'd still require folks to check in individually for each character, without the rigamarole of logging in and back out ad nauseum - possibly over multiple servers.

Edited July 13, 2022 by El D

[SnoBahr]

Heh. So, I saw the mention on the Discord, and clicked the link to read the thread... decided, yeah, time to go through my alts. First one I see, Tinker Binker on Excelsior - hadn't been logged in in 1171 days. Oof. Yeah, she's getting deleted, after I strip anything off of her.

[UltraAlt]

So if I understand this correctly, if you power-level to level 50 and park it, then you don't have to have your name taken away ... ever.

 

But if you play a character for for 100 hours and you park it long enough, the name can be taken away?

 

Is the intent to promote people to power-leveling characters to 50?

It seems that plenty of people are doing that already.

[Ironblade]

2 hours ago, Number Six said:

Also, account activity is not something that's possible for the system to access due to the game's distributed architecture.

Fair enough.  I was going to voice my support for the 'by account' option but I am VERY mindful that you are an all-volunteer team and I agree that anything adding significant time or effort is basically a non-starter.

 

Having said that, we move to the option of tweaking the 'Days Offline' ranges.  Since even a single run of Death From Below can get even the most gimped character in existence out of the first bracket, I don't see it being a big deal one way or the other.  Maybe go to 120 or 150 days on the 6-20 bracket?  I've seen 180 days suggested, but that seems a bit much.

[Mythical Creature]

Currently changing a characters name, even editing it and not actually making an edit, will reset the time logged out timer. Will this also reset this flag? It would make it a lot easier to go through all your alts if this clears the flag. 

[GM Kal]

12 minutes ago, 723wolf said:

Currently changing a characters name, even editing it and not actually making an edit, will reset the time logged out timer. Will this also reset this flag? It would make it a lot easier to go through all your alts if this clears the flag. 

I am not currently seeing the name flag change happen after testing this on Homecoming Brainstorm.
(Not counting actually going though with changing the name)

[Mythical Creature]

38 minutes ago, GM Kal said:

I am not currently seeing the name flag change happen after testing this on Homecoming Brainstorm.
(Not counting actually going though with changing the name)

 

Thanks for checking. I guess adding/removing a "." at the end would do the trick. 

[UltraAlt]

Perhaps when the actual effect goes live, it would be good if you could get the warning say 5, 15, and 30 days before the character's name would lapse?

[Gadzookery]

This is something thats been sorely sorely needed for a long time. There have been some names that have just been sat on since month 1 and 2 of HC by accounts that just have not logged in since then, because they had no intent of playing beyond the curiosity of "Theres a CoH private server" and they're some really good names too. And thats not even counting the name campers. I'm sure we've all had periods where we've /getglobalname'd and just seen one global take every variation of the name and its like eugh.. WHY.

 

I do understand some people's arguments here about RP alts and not playing every alt all the time but still playing them from time to time and still being an active player who isn't name camping. So maybe an increased time period would help? Something like:

• Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 60 days.
• Level 6-20 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 120 days.
• Level 21-49 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 365 days.
• Level 50 characters will never be flagged as inactive.

 

My other suggestion (unless this is actually whats gonna happen) to combat this would be to have the warning mode constantly active, but not the name purge system active all the time, a bit like how it is now on the test server. Then have it active for a month twice a year (maybe anniversary month and December), so essentially we'd be having bi-yearly name purges. This gives active players plenty of time to actually log in and use their alts, while still purging names of people who clearly don't play anymore, or just don't play that character.

 

I don't think both of these should be implemented however or else there'd hardly be any names released.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Gadzookery

[Faultline]

8 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Perhaps when the actual effect goes live, it would be good if you could get the warning say 5, 15, and 30 days before the character's name would lapse?

 

That's already a thing, I believe they're set to 7, 14, 30.

 

Also, not directly aimed at you, the name is not automatically taken away at the end of the timer, it's only made available for new characters to use. You could have a character logged off for ten years, and if nobody tries to use their name at character creation, it'll still be there. Some of the feedback in various channels sounds like people expect to come back after a month and find all their character names wiped out.

[ForeverLaxx]

Wasn't this done on Live, with Cryptic/Paragon at the helm, with no appreciable effect? I get the idea that people want names freed because of "campers," but when the game had 1000x the population, running the name recovery script freed up so few "desirable" names that it wasn't ran a second time.

 

Sure, we have 1000 slots per server compared to the original... I want to say 20. I honestly forget. But how many people are actually sitting on 4k character names each and how does that compare to 300,000 OG Game Players all sitting on 20 names?