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

[GM Vayek]

7 minutes ago, Marbing said:

Not that I am against this change, but to be fair, depending on where the character is logged off, it can take up to 20-30 seconds per character. I have tested. It is faster if you happen to log out in a rest zone, like Pocket D. And, I realize you could have been just making a point of it being quick, I just wanted to point this out. The solution to the length of time it takes to log into each character is to either A) level those characters to 50 or B) move those characters to a rest zone (this will significantly cut down on the log in/log out time.) 

 

Oh yes, I'm aware 🙂

 

It can also largely depend on your individual network speed, and computer performance.

As you say, I was more making the point that its just a quick process. And my meaning for the 1 second was that you only needed to be actually logged into the character for that brief of a time. Not the actual log in time. But the time spent logged into the actual after after the loading.

It's just to make the character recognized as having been signed in more recently than whatever number of days offline.

[Marbing]

Just now, GM Vayek said:

 

Oh yes, I'm aware 🙂

 

It can also largely depend on your individual network speed, and computer performance.

As you say, I was more making the point that its just a quick process. And my meaning for the 1 second was that you only needed to be actually logged into the character for that brief of a time. Not the actual log in time. But the time spent logged into the actual after after the loading.

It's just to make the character recognized as having been signed in more recently than whatever number of days offline.

Gotcha, apologies for the misunderstanding. 

[Troo]

7 minutes 32 second to reset 6 pages of characters on live currently.

 

This will take much longer once the changes hit live.

 

current method:

(Rename to an existing name like "Joe". This throws a please try again error AND resets the timer)

[Greycat]

55 minutes ago, GM Vayek said:

However, with it being per character, once you load into your character select screen, you'll see little notifications beside characters at risk. And a person could avoid this by simply logging into each alt just once a month for about a half second.

 

This is wonderful... if you have, oh, maybe ten alts on one server.

 

I believe I mentioned before, it takes me *days* to go through both accounts, with alts on all servers, logging on and off (which takes more than about half a second) to tag them all with the anniversary badges.

[ForeverLaxx]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

7 minutes 32 second to reset 6 pages of characters on live currently

This was what I was about to point out. "A short login/logoff" becomes larger when you have to do it 50, 100, 500 times. Maybe the devs think players with that many characters can't be actively using them all (I'm not one of those; I only have about 30 characters I think), but it's pretty presumptuous of them to think this is just a drop in your playtime bucket. If you only play once a month, you're looking at a good 10 minutes or more of doing nothing but logging in and out just to keep a name, and that's me being conservative.

 

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised that when this policy goes into full swing, all those "free names" will remain mostly free for years to come. It's not like you get a list of suddenly freed-up names so you know to go try them again, and most players who get a "name taken" message just exercise another brain wrinkle to make a better name if they really wanted that character.

[Parabola]

4 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

most players who get a "name taken" message just exercise another brain wrinkle to make a better name if they really wanted that character.

I fear there is reasonable chance of players going on a 'creating work for a gm' type rampage when they find a name has been taken. They will know someone is out there with 'their name' and we all know how reasonable humans are when they feel something has been taken from them.

[Herotu]

I have characters all over the place and several with very desirable names. I'm embarrassed that I hardly play them, so forcing the names off my characters is good for my indecisiveness/inaction/laziness in resolving the situation myself.

 

[lemming]

Note, it's 30 days for characters that are level 1-5 and jumps to 90 days for 6-20, then a full year for thru 49.

 

I'm currently at 106 characters which I'm tracking.  Only eight that aren't 50 and only two below 20.  I tend to login all my  chars anyway for anniversary and winter stuff, so I do go thru the roster anyway.   (I usually do it over a week while seeing who is on, etc... and just add it to my dayjob maintenance duties.)

I have a few names reserved for later use, but I tend to delete around a month or two if I decided I'm not going to use them afterall.

 

I think the most effect this will have on me is I'll check a couple of my char names to see if they can be renamed to my preferred spelling occasionally.

 

 

[ShardWarrior]

19 hours ago, GM Vayek said:

The trouble with this is that there are plenty of active accounts with 50+ lvl 1 name holders that are inactive for like 2 years. So, an account wide thing doesn't help curb that particular issue.

However, with it being per character, once you load into your character select screen, you'll see little notifications beside characters at risk. And a person could avoid this by simply logging into each alt just once a month for about a half second.

 

Appreciate the intent, however you all seem to be ignoring the very legitimate reasons many people have provided here as to why players may have this many low level alts.  I understand that any feedback on this is futile at this point since there is no changing this, however it is important to be said.  You all are not really thinking this through from a user perspective.  People who have a great many sub 50 alts they want to keep are now going to be forced spend an inordinate amount of time just logging in and out of the game to preserve names.  That is annoying and not user friendly at all.  It may not seem like a lot, but have any of you logged in and out a few hundred times or more yet in one sitting to test this?  Even doing this once a month is too much and I cannot imagine that is not stressing the account server.  I honestly do not buy that there is no way to flag every character on every shard as active upon logging in to the game, distributed architecture or not.  There has to be some link between account and characters on a shard.

 

Adding to this, how much research was put into how many names are going to be freed up that someone else is actually looking for?  When this was done on live with a much, much, much larger population, it accomplished very little, if anything at all.  It is a shame to see history repeating itself. 

 

Regardless of how many sub 50 alts people have, so long as the account is active players are able to be contacted by other players to negotiate the release of a name.  That is the proper way to go about this.  For accounts (not characters)  that have not been logged into in 2+ years, go to town and unlock all of the names.  Chances are very good those are abandoned accounts that will not be coming back. 

[Marbing]

On 7/12/2022 at 10:58 AM, The Curator said:

• Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 30 days.
• Level 6-20 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 90 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.

I think these time frames are what make this fair. If you are actually playing the character, even once in a while, you are not going to run into issues. If you have an alt parked at level 1 for more than 30 days, then you are just holding a name and not using a toon. It takes very little effort to get that toon to lvl 6 and be safe for 3 months, or lvl 21 and be safe for A YEAR. My opinion on the matter for what it is worth.

I do, however, understand the sentiment for people (like me) who have a million alts. The initial push for this is going to be brutal as I will have A LOT of characters to parse through and log into, and most of them aren't in rest areas. So at around 30 seconds per toon, its going to end up taking me most of the night just to get their timers reset once this goes live. So, yeah, not fun.... But overall, I think this is a positive change for the long run. 

THIS BEING SAID HOWEVER, there are cases that have been mentioned where someone will go on a long leave (be it medical, military, etc) and wont have access to their accounts. Is there a process in place to help those people? I believe I suggested before that coordinate before hand (if possible) that a friend log in for them, never heard a response on that. But, in the event they can't, is there any thought process into possibly setting up a system where someone can request a waiver from this in the event something like this happens to them?

[Excraft]

14 hours ago, Parabola said:

I fear there is reasonable chance of players going on a 'creating work for a gm' type rampage when they find a name has been taken. They will know someone is out there with 'their name' and we all know how reasonable humans are when they feel something has been taken from them.

 

That's a very good point. 

 

I can totally see how people who have a lot of alts are going to be in for a real chore with this.  Excluding accounts that haven't been logged in for a couple of years, active players should be allowed to keep whatever names they want without being forced into this poorly implemented, annoying login routine to try and coerce them into playing less characters than they want.  If you're an active account, you can be contacted and work with another player who might want a name you have.  Releasing a name should be up to the player, not annoying code.

[Troo]

Non-completionist Altitus may be affected more than Completionist Altitus. While those afflicted with these conditions suffer differently, treatments are available.

 

Suggestion: Maybe a Sort or a Search that could zero in on "# days offline"?

[ShardWarrior]

34 minutes ago, Troo said:

Suggestion: Maybe a Sort or a Search that could zero in on "# days offline"?

 

That would be nice, but does not solve the annoying problem of repeatedly having to log in and out.  I simply refuse to accept there is no relation between account and characters on a shard where the characters cannot be flagged as active when a player logs in.  I just do not buy it.

[Coyotedancer]

Being able to sort the character list by "days offline" might just be a godsend for people with huge numbers of alts... Tricky to put in, I suspect, because it would involve changing the interface as well as the sorting code, but still. It might be worth the pain. 

[Troo]

19 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I simply refuse to accept there is no relation between account and characters on a shard where the characters cannot be flagged as active when a player logs in.  I just do not buy it.

 

I may have missed your solution for name squatting.

 

While you and I may not be offenders, there are some out there who took advantage, and this is how it is being addressed.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

Being able to sort the character list by "days offline" might just be a godsend for people with huge numbers of alts... Tricky to put in, I suspect, because it would involve changing the interface as well as the sorting code, but still. It might be worth the pain. 

 

Nah.

It's all right there and they have already tapped into that section of the code for the visual indicators. A search might be easier than a sort, though less polished.

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Troo

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

Nah.

It's all right there and they have already tapped into that section of the code for the visual indicators.

 

 

True.

 

I just remember a few of those "OMG NO! I am SO not touching the interface code! Nope. Not gonna. EVER."-type comments from the old devs back in the Live days. Apparently that gang feared it like no other. 😝 What we have now may have been improved over their apparent tangle of nightmare fuel.

[EmperorSteele]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

True.

 

I just remember a few of those "OMG NO! I am SO not touching the interface code! Nope. Not gonna. EVER."-type comments from the old devs back in the Live days. Apparently that gang feared it like no other. 😝 What we have now may have been improved over their apparent tangle of nightmare fuel.

 

So, you know how one of the AE changes is all "you can make custom-custom critters, but you have to use notepad", instead of, like, putting options in the AE interface itself (which is already janky as heck)?

 

Yeah, something tells me interface editing is a no-no with the HC devs, too!

[Parabola]

Spent a fairly annoying hour or so this afternoon parking all my sub 50 characters in pocket d for the fast log offs. Going to echo the calls for better sorting tools on the character frontscreen to make keeping track of everything easier.

 

Quick question - if I have a character who has dinged 50 but hasn't yet trained up are they counted as a 50 for the purposes of name retention?

[Ironblade]

7 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

I honestly do not buy that there is no way to flag every character on every shard as active upon logging in to the game, distributed architecture or not.  There has to be some link between account and characters on a shard.

Whether you 'buy' it or not is irrelevant.  As a database programmer, it is ABSOLUTELY possible that there is no way to do it other than querying the entire character database for that shard to see which link back to a particular account ID.  Do I know that it's set up like that?  No.  Is that a REASONABLE way for it to be configured?  Absolutely it is.  And, since we were TOLD that it isn't practical, I'm guessing that's exactly how it's set up.  Unless you've set up relational databases, you don't have enough knowledge to comment.

[agentx5]

This is a long-overdue wish-list change I've been looking forward to ever since it was first announced. I know I'm not the only one either, for example:

And then there's voluntary name release threads like these:

So yeah this has been a thing that's been asked for the past couple years, but because it would have to been done manually (according to @Jimmy back 2020) it wasn't really possible.  Looks like they've gotten something to automate that process now, and I thank all the HC Dev team for doing so, it probably wasn't easy to code.

Thank you!

PS:  might want to make the time-spans on low-levels a bit shorter, just so it frees thing up just a bit quicker

[agentx5]

 

On 7/12/2022 at 3:27 PM, 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 thought about this thinking it a good idea at first, but after awhile I realized it's maybe not such a good idea.
My reasoning being that I can think of a number of player characters where the player has died, in real life.
Out of respect and honoring them, unless they wished the name to be passed on, I'd kind of like to see it retired and not expired as long as it's a level 50 character they loved

But looks like there's a technical reason this can't happen easily, so I guess my point is a moot one regardless
 

On 7/12/2022 at 7:30 PM, 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.

 

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, agentx5 said:

might want to make the time-spans on low-levels a bit shorter, just so it frees thing up just a bit quicker

No, thank you.  It's onerous enough as it is for active players to have spend time proving their continued worthiness to a character.

[ShardWarrior]

21 hours ago, Troo said:

I may have missed your solution for name squatting.

 

Unlock names that are on accounts that have not been logged into for 2 years or more.  Chances are highly likely these are abandoned accounts.

 

21 hours ago, Troo said:

While you and I may not be offenders, there are some out there who took advantage, and this is how it is being addressed.

 

Once again, if the account is active, the player can be contacted by another player to negotiate the release of a name.  If a player does not want to release a name, they should not be forced into doing so.  The decision to release a name or not should be left in the players hands, not arbitrary nuisance code.   There are name release threads here on the forums for players to utilize.  Help direct others there to poke around and see if they find something they like. 

 

I will say the same thing others love to say when it comes to cosplaying/homage characters - be original.  Come up with a different name because someone else already has the one you wanted.  You cannot have this both ways. 

 

16 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Whether you 'buy' it or not is irrelevant.  As a database programmer, it is ABSOLUTELY possible that there is no way to do it other than querying the entire character database for that shard to see which link back to a particular account ID.  Do I know that it's set up like that?  No.  Is that a REASONABLE way for it to be configured?  Absolutely it is.  And, since we were TOLD that it isn't practical, I'm guessing that's exactly how it's set up.  Unless you've set up relational databases, you don't have enough knowledge to comment.

 

Emphasis added.  If you read my post, which it appears you have not, and had any inkling about relational database programming, you would understand you agreed with my point.   There has to be some link between account and characters on a shard.  If you can query the character database, regardless of size, for an account ID then there is a link between characters on a shard and account.  If you can do that, you can update all characters on all shards as active upon login.  I am very skeptical that a query is overly difficult to write that would do this.  Were I to make a wild guess, this sounds to me like the character database and/or tables are not at all optimized properly.  That is something that should be addressed.

 

They can say it is difficult all they like and if you want to take them at their word, feel free.  I choose to be skeptical.  That is not meant as an insult to anyone nor am I saying anyone is lying so no need to get bent out of shape.  Given what I have personally seen of the code for this game, it certainly is not an easy thing to work with.   With that said, doing things the easy way is not necessarily the best way in my opinion. 

[aethereal]

Guys, maybe consider that it's not supposed to be super easy for you to continue to squat on 200 names of characters that you rarely play and have never frequently played.

Edited July 18, 2022 by aethereal

[Andreah]

That doesn't solve name squatting, it just solves account abandonment.

 

I could be in favor of more aggressive name release schedules, criteria, and features; such as:

 

• Level 50 names not being entirely safe, e.g., a faster schedule and only a one year grace for level 50's.
• Only level 50 character on the first page never becoming tagged for release
• Requiring the character to be played for a full cumulative hour to untag the release warning
• Only allow to untag by login a single name per day
• An automatically generated forums post each day by server of names which have been newly tagged for release

 

Let's keep in mind how reasonable this is. The folks who're most upset by the new system have been sitting on vastly larger shares of the namespace than typical players, don't actually care enough about their character names enough to spend a single minute, or less than a minute per month on them, or frankly, don't hardly play the game anyway.

 

Again, I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy for the level of entitlement I perceive.