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

[EmperorSteele]

@Andreah; well, let's assume worse case scenario: 700 accounts with 1,000 names each. Sounds unrealistic to me. Okay, 1,400 accounts with 500 characters each? Hmm... If someone played this game a couple years ago, only leveled up to level 4 or 5 and got bored and never came back, what are the odds that they have more than a dozen characters?

 

No matter how you splice it, it's a LOT. Granted, maybe they all have names like xXN00bmaster69Xx or asdfghjkl or Popcorn Princess (shit, that one's actually good), but I still put good odds on SOME desirable names being in that batch. 😃

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, Andreah said:

One thing I would like to see is a "Yellow Alert" level that would show up a few days before a character was going to get the red triangle of vulnerability.

 

I asked about that earlier in the thread. They said that was already in the system.

[Troo]

Some grabbed a name for every alt they ever had and just never got around to using them before rage quitting over the Energy Melee changes.

Some grabbed names for old SG mates and friends to save for them.

Some grabbed every name they could think of like it was a new dot com land grab.

Some grabbed names just to block peeps they didn't like..

There's lots of reasons, and this is a very accommodating step toward a long promised feature.

Once it is closer to implementation, it'll be reviewed. After implementation, it'll be reviewed and adjusted if necessary.

 

 

Edited July 19, 2022 by Troo

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Stoked said:

Yes, the names will eventually be freed up but how will we know that or when?

 

You won't.

That's the point.

Neither will anyone else.

 

9 hours ago, Stoked said:

That's why this policy makes no sense.

 

Why? 

Because it doesn't let you know before other people so you can jump to get a name as soon as it is available?

 

9 hours ago, Stoked said:

The only ones able to benefit from the name releases are those that see the data.

 

Not true.

The only one that benefits is the one person that gets the a name once it is unlocked.

 

9 hours ago, Stoked said:

Without a solution to offer the newly available name to the next person that tried it, in order of time/date typed into the UI, this is no solution at all.

 

That's how it works.

Once it is available, the next person that tries that name gets it.

 

9 hours ago, Stoked said:

Because equality of opportunity is what the whole point of this is right? If so, then the 2nd person to want to the name should get it.

 

How is it that "the first person that tries to get the name once it is freed up gets it" is not fair?

And that is the first person that tries it once it is freed up, and not the 2nd one.

 

Do you really think that the system should be designed to track every name a player enters into the system and fails to get?

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, agentx5 said:

Holy Carp!  That's a lot of names that could be freed up!  Good grief!

 

All depends on what the names are and if they are desirable to someone else or not.  They could release 700,000,000,000 names and if they are all meaningless strings of letters and numbers that make no sense and that no one else would want to use, it becomes pointless. 

[Oubliette_Red]

3 hours ago, Telephone said:

There are approximately 700,000 characters in the level 1-5 bracket alone who have not logged in in the last 30 days (across all shards). Of those characters, approximately 600,000 haven't logged in in the last year. There's a significantly smaller number in the 6-49 bracket who haven't logged in in the last year but I don't have those statistics at the moment.

 

<.<

 

>.>

 

 

[UltraAlt]

40 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

ase scenario: 700 accounts with 1,000 names each.

 

level 1s

average login/logout time 20 seconds

3 per minute

180 per hour

playing 12 hours per day = 2160 characters logged per day

64,800 level 1's logged in within the 30 days if the player does nothing but log in characters for 12 hours everyday of the month.

32,400 if only 6 hours every day

5400 if they only spend 1 hour every day logging in level 1s to keep those 5400 names

 

It is more likely that some people will start spending 2 minutes everyday checking to see if 6 names have been freed up? 5 minutes to check 15 names?

I mean, that is what they want, right?

They want to start checking names every day to see if they can get names that other people are losing.

[csr]

If possible it would be nice if a "Warning" tag was added 3-7 days prior to name release.  Maybe just a yellow version of the current exclamation point graphic and "This character will soon be subject to..."

[Doc_Scorpion]

22 minutes ago, csr said:

If possible it would be nice if a "Warning" tag was added 3-7 days prior to name release.  Maybe just a yellow version of the current exclamation point graphic and "This character will soon be subject to..."

Though it's not mentioned in the patch notes, this is already in place.
 

 

[EmperorSteele]

Hey @UltraAlt, I think we may be misunderstanding each other?

 

I was trying to answer @Andreah's supposed concern that it's only a small number of inactive accounts with all those names, or that there won't be any "good" names coming out. I wasn't proposing how easy or hard it would be to claim or re-hoard all those names... which seems to be your take, but, I'm not sure? It's early 😴

[Andreah]

I mainly want to temper expectations. People see numbers like 700,000 and imagine their own favorite names they couldn't get will suddenly be available on their shard, and while that may occur for a few people, it may not for many others.

 

And the 700,000 number might shrink very quickly as more players become alerted to their character's status and log them in to keep them safe. Will it shrink to 50,000? Or merely down to 650,000? I have no idea.

[Number Six]

Updated the patch notes to include the pre-warning state:

 

Quote

• 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.

 

[Marshal_General]

I think level 6 is a bit low. Use a 100% xp booster and 1 or 2 DFBs and you have a name locked in for a year.

[Mythical Creature]

I like this change to the policy so that anyone 6-49 has a year to login to keep their names. There is a lot of great content at lower levels, I like to park alts at places like frostfire mission that I might not get around to play for months. Now I won't be stressing these things as I will definitely play them within a year. Thanks for the change.  

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

I think level 6 is a bit low. Use a 100% xp booster and 1 or 2 DFBs and you have a name locked in for a year.

That assumes you want to rush the characters past all the low level content.  Not everyone skips low level content, not everyone rushes to 50.  Not everyone wants to concentrate on a new alt to ensure they reach a "safe" level.  There does have to be a certain minimal level of investment for the system to work at all, but the level of that investment must be balanced against a wide variety of playstyles.

This is a good change as it dramatically reduces the burden on active players while penalizing inactive accounts.  (Sure, sure, more campers will be able to slip through the net - but "better a thousand guilty go free than a single innocent be unjustly punished.")  You can't put such a system in place with inconveniencing someone, but somewhere in the single digit levels is probably going to be the best place to set the bar to minimize that.  Level 6, which can be rushed with the investment of half an hour, or easily obtained with a few evenings of regular play, seems to be about right.

[BurtHutt]

3 hours ago, Number Six said:

Updated the patch notes to include the pre-warning state:

 

 

Devs, thanks for hearing us. I would also encourage you to not give away 1000 character slots on new accounts - please make this change. It's absolutely ridiculous and allows for tons of issues. Maybe start with 50 and leave an option to claim additional slots (maybe allowed to get more every few months - so, 10 more after every 3 months? Something along those lines). 

[Excraft]

The revisions to this are much better.  It gives the legit roleplayers out there a lot of breathing room to work with. 

[AlwaysAPrice]

18 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

Devs, thanks for hearing us. I would also encourage you to not give away 1000 character slots on new accounts - please make this change. It's absolutely ridiculous and allows for tons of issues. Maybe start with 50 and leave an option to claim additional slots (maybe allowed to get more every few months - so, 10 more after every 3 months? Something along those lines). 

 

This really would be a meaningful follow-up to the name release system, if it's possible to do for future accounts only (or with some means of grandfathering in existing accounts). Nothing is as likely to prompt future name camping by the new players HC looks like it wants to attract as the sight that they have 1000 slots to work with, so every passing half-formed idea they might have can be claimed now and fleshed out later (which isn't something I think is actually a bad thing in need of discouraging but it is how a lot of names get taken out of circulation, "I can totally do something with that after I finish the thirty characters I'm already working on")

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, 723wolf said:

There is a lot of great content at lower levels

 

It is in fact the game.

The level 50 stuff is end-game.

[Troo]

 

Confirmed. Thought at first glance there was something wonky between Jac and Juicer, but Jac is a level 7 and that buys him one year (which seems overly generous).

[The Caretaker]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

 

It is in fact the game.

The level 50 stuff is end-game.

 

Everything I do for the game is a love letter to the lore. Play some of it, for better or worse! 

[ShardWarrior]

This is much better.  It provides people who have a stable of lower level alts a lot more time to keep them active if they want to. 

[Bartacus]

If I'm honest I'm irritated that the latest change went through. 60 days for a pre-level 20 character does not seem ridiculous to me. I know the primary focus of these changes is to target inactive accounts (not characters) but personally I would love if inactive characters were also targeted. Irritating to me that there people who have dozens of characters they'll never play squatting on a name. 

whatever. the loudest people aren't always the majority... and it seems the loudest people won the day here.

[Excraft]

4 minutes ago, Bartacus said:

Irritating to me that there people who have dozens of characters they'll never play squatting on a name. 

 

How do you know for certain they are squatting on them and not playing them?  You've no way of know what the majority of the people are doing here.  Seems to me some people are seeing big numbers like 2,000,000 and 700,000 and are getting their hopes up that the name they wanted is going to get released once this goes live.  I'd be prepared to be disappointed.

[arcane]

Just want to assure you all you probably don’t want any of my names 🙂