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

[Marbing]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

There is and has been solid reasoning provided in this thread why it is redundant and completely unnecessary for active accounts

Haven’t seen any yet. Minus leave of absence stuff, but that’s an edge case.

[BurtHutt]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

There is and has been solid reasoning provided in this thread why it is redundant and completely unnecessary for active accounts, you just do not like it, which is fine.  I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, I find the sense of entitlement some have appalling quite frankly.  Getting this upset over someone else getting a name you wanted before you and causing you so much grief is just baffling.  Just use something else.  It just is not that hard.   It is also truly amazing the arrogance several people have in wanting to dictate to others what an acceptable amount of play is. 

I pretty much agree with this. I also feel the names that will be released will provide a lot of good, new options for most players. The number of people playing has dwindled and it doesn't look like many are coming back anytime soon. 

 

I absolutely place huge importance on names but if it's gone then I usually find a decent alternative. 

 

HC Devs are doing a great job. There is no win here for them - someone will be....butthurt....see what I did there....regardless of the final policy. I just think if a name gets released then chances are good that player isn't around anymore. I think a ton of people found HC, got their names, played a bit then quit. I still don't play much as it's very much the same old but I do throw in a bit of playtime here and there these days 🙂 

[Trike]

On 7/20/2022 at 1:01 AM, Number Six said:

It's not intended as a way to snipe that one name you really want

…and now I have to create yet another alt called Name Sniper.

[UltraAlt]

4 minutes ago, Trike said:

…and now I have to create yet another alt called Name Sniper.

 

Good. That leaves "Sniper of Names" for me.

[Trike]

On 7/18/2022 at 10:12 PM, 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.

Just want to point out that barely 250,000 of those are mine.

[Trike]

Feels relevant somehow:

 

https://ibb.co/0jPT2PP

[ShardWarrior]

8 hours ago, Marbing said:

Haven’t seen any yet. Minus leave of absence stuff, but that’s an edge case.

 

Then that is on you.  You have not read the entire thread, are being obtuse, contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, willfully ignorant or some combination thereof.  Active players can be contacted by other players to negotiate the release of a name.  If they do not want to release it, they should not be forced to do so.  Inactive accounts that have not logged in for more than 2 years should get freed up. 

[Marbing]

 

5 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Active players can be contacted by other players to negotiate the release of a name. 

This new policy doesn’t change that.

 

5 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

If they do not want to release it, they should not be forced to do so. 

Why? Did they pay for it? This is just a “neener neener I got it first” mentality. 
 

7 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Inactive accounts that have not logged in for more than 2 years should get freed up. 

This will happen under the new policy.

 

7 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Then that is on you.  You have not read the entire thread, are being obtuse, contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, willfully ignorant or some combination thereof. 

Nope. I just don’t think the reasons are any good.

 

Seems like the ones against this policy are the ones getting the most upset…. Noticing a pattern.

 

Bottom line, there currently exists a loop hole that would allow players to camp a theoretically infinite number of names just to be a troll. The devs are trying to limit that in some way. Whether or not it’s actually happening is irrelevant and if you think it isn’t to some extent then you are the willfully ignorant one. This is a no brainer, fair, policy. There exists numerous ways for people to keep the names they intend to one day use.

 

But again, you didn’t pay for these names, this game is FREE. If there were a subscription fee and limited character slots you would have a better argument. Without that, the arguments against it are just hollow.

[ShardWarrior]

51 minutes ago, Marbing said:

This new policy doesn’t change that.

 

In a way, it does.  It is trying to actively bully people into playing alts for reasons that are specious at best.  It also assumes that anyone who has low level alts that are not leveled up to 50 are just name hording.

 

15 minutes ago, Marbing said:

Why? Did they pay for it? This is just a “neener neener I got it first” mentality. 

 

You did not pay for a name either.  This is just the mentality of the entitled whiner who feels they have more right to something than the next person because they want it.

 

16 minutes ago, Marbing said:

This will happen under the new policy.

 

Yes as it should.  This is where the policy should be used - on accounts (not characters) that have not been logged into for 2 years or more.  I understand that it would be more work to program this to go by account instead of character.  It is more work, but a better solution overall.  The ideal solution is to fix the code so that names global handles can be combined with character name, then this becomes a non-issue.

 

17 minutes ago, Marbing said:

Bottom line, there currently exists a loop hole that would allow players to camp a theoretically infinite number of names just to be a troll. The devs are trying to limit that in some way. Whether or not it’s actually happening is irrelevant and if you think it isn’t to some extent then you are the willfully ignorant one.

 

There is no problem to fix from what I can see.  I am very skeptical of the need for this.  If any real data can be presented that anything less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of active accounts are using up all character slots on all shard across multiple accounts, by all means please share it.  I will believe it when I see it.  Trying to claim that anyone is going to use up every word combination of every available language by creating multiple accounts is also just plain stupid.  Do you have any idea how many words there are in the English language alone and how many combinations they can be made into?  How many accounts will need to be made before that happens? 

 

From what we can see here in the numerous threads available on these forums, there are people releasing names and sharing ideas for open names they have found.  There has been an example of one player in particular being labelled a "name hoarder" who has already said that when contacted, they would release a name.  I have not seen any data or evidence at all of these mythical hordes of accounts with all character slots on all shards used up just to troll people.  All we have been told is there are over two million characters, many of which have not been logged into for a year or more.  That tells us very little regarding names and how many of those are from inactive/abandoned accounts.  For all anyone knows, the majority of the names being held up there are gibberish words or numbers that no one would even be looking for.

 

If this policy is intended to help prevent name squatting, it does not work as the next person to get a freed up name can potentially sit on it just as the first person did.  The net result is the same. 

 

22 minutes ago, Marbing said:

But again, you didn’t pay for these names, this game is FREE. If there were a subscription fee and limited character slots you would have a better argument. Without that, the arguments against it are just hollow.

 

Yes, the game is free.  You did not pay for any names either, therefore you are no more entitled to them than the person who already has them.  Nor does this game have the number of active players to even make this remotely an issue that needs addressing.  If you can provide real data about how many active accounts have all character slots on all shards used up and what percent of those active accounts are of the total number of active accounts, by all means share it.  Without real data, your arguments are just hollow. 

[Marbing]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

In a way, it does.  It is trying to actively bully people into playing alts for reasons that are specious at best.  It also assumes that anyone who has low level alts that are not leveled up to 50 are just name hording.

 

 

You did not pay for a name either.  This is just the mentality of the entitled whiner who feels they have more right to something than the next person because they want it.

 

 

Yes as it should.  This is where the policy should be used - on accounts (not characters) that have not been logged into for 2 years or more.  I understand that it would be more work to program this to go by account instead of character.  It is more work, but a better solution overall.  The ideal solution is to fix the code so that names global handles can be combined with character name, then this becomes a non-issue.

 

 

There is no problem to fix from what I can see.  I am very skeptical of the need for this.  If any real data can be presented that anything less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of active accounts are using up all character slots on all shard across multiple accounts, by all means please share it.  I will believe it when I see it.  Trying to claim that anyone is going to use up every word combination of every available language by creating multiple accounts is also just plain stupid.  Do you have any idea how many words there are in the English language alone and how many combinations they can be made into?  How many accounts will need to be made before that happens? 

 

From what we can see here in the numerous threads available on these forums, there are people releasing names and sharing ideas for open names they have found.  There has been an example of one player in particular being labelled a "name hoarder" who has already said that when contacted, they would release a name.  I have not seen any data or evidence at all of these mythical hordes of accounts with all character slots on all shards used up just to troll people.  All we have been told is there are over two million characters, many of which have not been logged into for a year or more.  That tells us very little regarding names and how many of those are from inactive/abandoned accounts.  For all anyone knows, the majority of the names being held up there are gibberish words or numbers that no one would even be looking for.

 

If this policy is intended to help prevent name squatting, it does not work as the next person to get a freed up name can potentially sit on it just as the first person did.  The net result is the same. 

 

 

Yes, the game is free.  You did not pay for any names either, therefore you are no more entitled to them than the person who already has them.  Nor does this game have the number of active players to even make this remotely an issue that needs addressing.  If you can provide real data about how many active accounts have all character slots on all shards used up and what percent of those active accounts are of the total number of active accounts, by all means share it.  Without real data, your arguments are just hollow. 

Okay bud, you disagree with me. I disagree with you. It is what it is, life goes on.

[ShardWarrior]

12 minutes ago, Marbing said:

Okay bud, you disagree with me. I disagree with you. It is what it is, life goes on.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with disagreement.  It is a normal, healthy thing to see all sides of an issue.

[Booper]

Let's knock off the arguing, it's not constructive. The replies are intended for focused feedback.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/36502-focused-feedback-guidelines-read-this-first/

[BurtHutt]

On 7/31/2022 at 7:14 PM, Number Six said:

 

Not to mention an effectively unlimited number of free accounts.

Hence why I suggested having all counts from here on out start with 50 slots per server. But for some reason this didn't seem like a good idea because people will just go make alt accounts. Some may go do this but others may not bother. I can't see someone making 20 alt accounts so they can get their 1000 character slots per server/shard.

 

If you do go to 50 per then those accounts, if active, will have a mechanism where they can apply for more character slots. 

[ForeverLaxx]

@Marbing Welcome to dealing with UltraAlt. You either agree with him or he calls you a troll and blocks you.

 

In any case, I feel this name release system should probably just be turned on once, then shut down again. If the goal is to free up names on inactive accounts primarily, then a "quick flag" of character names should be all that's required. Once those names are flagged, does the system have to remain active for them to be available? I'm still not convinced that anything more than a handful of "good" names will be freed by this regardless considering Live's history with the system, but someone somewhere must want a name on an account that's been sitting for 3 years.

 

If the name can remained flagged after the system is turned off, I think that's the best option. I don't like enforced upkeep, even if it's an entire year of grace period. I don't think any of my names are at risk of being swiped out from under me since I put a bit more effort into them than it seems others do, but that doesn't mean I actually want to spend the first 30 minutes of my play session loading whatever zone each of them logged out in.

 

Just as the "it's not hard to log them in" argument is considered simple, so is spending 5 extra minutes picking out a suitable alternate name. If you can't manage that, your character must not be that important -- certainly not more important than the character who already has the name, anyway.

[Number Six]

26 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

In any case, I feel this name release system should probably just be turned on once, then shut down again. If the goal is to free up names on inactive accounts primarily, then a "quick flag" of character names should be all that's required. Once those names are flagged, does the system have to remain active for them to be available?

 

It doesn't work like that. You may be thinking of the thing Paragon did (once) when F2P went live, but that wasn't a name release. That was a mass "offlining" of characters which completely removes them from the database and relocates the character data to text files on the shard's dbserver (not the central database). If somebody tried to play that character it has to go through a complex "onlining" process to get moved back into the database. They likely did that to reduce the database size because they had 9+ years worth of abandoned characters in it. Freeing up the name was just a side effect.

 

We didn't want to use that for a variety of reasons, likely related to why Paragon never did it again - that system is kind of flaky and might have caused more headaches than it's worth. I'm not confident it still even works because we've made some character database changes and updating that dormant system was not a priority.

 

The new name release system doesn't have any kind of persistent flag. The name determinations are made in real time when serving up the character list (for the warning labels) and at the last second when attempting to create a character. It only works when turned on. That also means if we change the policy tiers at some point, it would take effect immediately.

[ForeverLaxx]

@Number Six I'm not sure that's specifically what I'm referencing. I know Cryptic/Paragon ran an "inactive character" program at least twice. The first time was a much more loose run than the second time, as in, the parameters were more open and it allowed more names to be freed. However, in both cases, nearly all of the names released were either "garbage" names (think keyboard mashing) or so specific that no one picked them up on another account. Very few names actually got claimed by other players in that wipe and honestly, I feel like that's going to be the same here.

 

That said, I appreciate knowing that there's no way our system today could flag characters without being a persistent system that requires player upkeep. Guess it's just something I'll have to deal with even if I'm sure 95+% of my names won't be stolen from me if I lapse for a year. I still don't like it, though, and I fully expect this to be active player maintenance with no real positive effect for anyone outside of a small handful of lucky name-grabbers who really wanted some ultra-generic name.

Edited August 3, 2022 by ForeverLaxx

[lemming]

Personally, a little enforced maintenance might be good for players to do occasionally. The devs have way more maintenance work on their plates to have them have to run manual maintenance jobs.

 

And I still vote that even 50s should have an eventual timeout.

[Marbing]

6 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Welcome to dealing with UltraAlt. You either agree with him or he calls you a troll and blocks you.

It’s all good, people’s opinions or misunderstandings don’t offend me like some. That’s their problem not mine.

 

On 8/2/2022 at 5:06 PM, BurtHutt said:

If you do go to 50 per then those accounts, if active, will have a mechanism where they can apply for more character slots. 

I actually wouldn’t mind this, but I have over 100 toons so I’d need a couple of those extra slots… 😂

[ivanhedgehog]

8 hours ago, Number Six said:

 

It doesn't work like that. You may be thinking of the thing Paragon did (once) when F2P went live, but that wasn't a name release. That was a mass "offlining" of characters which completely removes them from the database and relocates the character data to text files on the shard's dbserver (not the central database). If somebody tried to play that character it has to go through a complex "onlining" process to get moved back into the database. They likely did that to reduce the database size because they had 9+ years worth of abandoned characters in it. Freeing up the name was just a side effect.

 

We didn't want to use that for a variety of reasons, likely related to why Paragon never did it again - that system is kind of flaky and might have caused more headaches than it's worth. I'm not confident it still even works because we've made some character database changes and updating that dormant system was not a priority.

 

The new name release system doesn't have any kind of persistent flag. The name determinations are made in real time when serving up the character list (for the warning labels) and at the last second when attempting to create a character. It only works when turned on. That also means if we change the policy tiers at some point, it would take effect immediately.

Thank you , that explains a lot.

[Logansan]

On 8/2/2022 at 9:37 AM, Astralock said:

 

 

Agreed.  There should be a two year policy on level 50 characters.  If you haven't logged on in two years, odds are that you are not coming back.

I just started playing again after 2 1/2 years (was out locked out of country due to COVID).

 

Just saying.

[Zepp]

53 minutes ago, Logansan said:

I just started playing again after 2 1/2 years (was out locked out of country due to COVID).

 

Just saying.

But how often do we have global pandemics while many countries have xenophobic regimes that lock people out of the nation they live in? Once every hundred years? [monkeypox peers around the corner...] nm...

[BurtHutt]

On 8/3/2022 at 2:51 PM, Marbing said:

It’s all good, people’s opinions or misunderstandings don’t offend me like some. That’s their problem not mine.

 

I actually wouldn’t mind this, but I have over 100 toons so I’d need a couple of those extra slots… 😂

I would suggest from here on out for 50 per server. Not backdating it. So, anyone making an account from whatever date and beyond will start with 50.

[hexadecimalwtf]

I support this idea. Agree that account status might be a better solution but this is better than nothing.

 

As an altaholic this encouraged me to go back through my character list and delete old concepts that I no longer cared for and freed up some names. 

[Doc_Scorpion]

Not as complete a test as I would have liked because I'm juggling too many balls at the moment....

- Created a Lvl 1 character the day the '30-day' patch went live.

- Mis-entered the dates on my calendar, and didn't check him at the 20 day mark, but on day 29 he was displaying the orange yellow warning flag.
- On day 30, was still displaying the orange yellow flag.
- Got busy over the weekend and couldn't check, but on day 33 was displaying the red orange flag.

Seeing them side-by-side, it's kinda hard to distinguish one color from another.  The yellow needs to be more clearly yellow/brighter, and the orange more orange to make it easier to distinguish between them.
 

[Yuro]

On 8/16/2022 at 10:43 AM, Doc_Scorpion said:

Seeing them side-by-side, it's kinda hard to distinguish one color from another.  The yellow needs to be more clearly yellow/brighter, and the orange more orange to make it easier to distinguish between them.

Very good point, especially for people with color-blindness.  Might be good to have different shapes, not just different colors.