Any news on phase 2 of naming policy?

[Number Six]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'm asking because going from there to "the shards would need to know" doesn't logically make sense to me at that point for what's being talked about. In my thinking it should be possible without doing a heck of a lot to look at that account server and say "OK, User3897 logged in today. User 3898 hasn't logged in since October 6, 2022. User 3899 hasn't logged in since 2021."  Or "Account server, give me a list of all accounts who have not logged in (or accepted the EULA, or whatever) in 366 days or more," and then work with that as the basis, versus a shotgun "character based, active account or not" approach. And wondering why it would involve any shard having to know anything else other than what they already do.

 

The shards themselves have no idea when the last time you logged into your account was. Excelsior only know when the last time User3897 logged into Excelsior was. If User3897 logged in to some other shard, the Excel dbserver would have no idea and would think the account is still inactive.

 

The authentication server of course knows, and the second part of your question seems to be, well why can't the shards just ask the auth server "when did User3897 log in last?". The answer is that sure, we could build something to do that, but no channel of communication currently exists to do that so it's a net new system that would require programmer time to design, build, and test. Programmer time that is currently being spent on other projects.

 

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'm reasonably sure the live devs ran their script manually (and seem to recall a comment along the lines of "and it took a while," yeah.) I'm just confused about the whole "and the shards would have to know..." bit, versus "We get this info from the authentication when someone logs in, these accounts haven't been logged into in over a year at all," taking that and just feeding it (and the globals) to the shards at maintenance and saying "Free these up."

 

If we were doing it as an offline script, the shards wouldn't need to know that information. The one time Paragon did something like that, they did an offline script that just shoveled a bunch of old characters out of the database to offline storage, so they couldn't even be logged in without a process to rehydrate the record (this also makes backups a lot more complicated).

 

If we wanted to be really obnoxious and do that, or rename everybody's old characters to GenericHero12345, that would be a way to go, but we decided early on that we wanted a lighter touch that would be less intrusive. So the game servers instead will leave everything alone and only rename inactive characters "just in time", or at the moment somebody tries to create a new character with the same name.

 

Doing that requires that each shard know at all times which names are eligible to be reclaimed. Since it's based on character activity that's easy - it implicitly knows the last login timestamp for the character anyway. If it were based on account activity, then it would mean they'd need to know the activity status of the account tied to any arbitrary name that's being checked.

 

Since the design goals for the name release system included dealing with active accounts that have 10 active and 900 inactive names that haven't been touched in years, there wasn't any sense building an extra system to look at account activity that doesn't meet those requirements.

[Bionic_Flea]

But Six, why can't you do things the way I want you to do them?  Don't be so selfish!

[MHertz]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'm asking because going from there to "the shards would need to know" doesn't logically make sense to me at that point for what's being talked about.

The shards need to know that a given name (found on Account 789) should be made available to Account 223 upon character creation. Somehow that flag must be set.

 

As I understand it, either

a) A script has to be built that grabs a list of inactive accounts from the login server, then access each shard and set the flags on all applicable characters on those accounts. This would have to be run periodically (probably no more than 1/day, but could stretch to 1/month); or

b) The shard server has to add a real-time check every time a name is requested, such that it tracks a name back to the account that owns it, calls the login server, and verifies whether the account is active; or

c) Some code must be written such that when people log in, the “last active” date is appended to the account; this would have to a workaround in case that account hasn’t been logged in since the code was added.

[Number Six]

19 minutes ago, MHertz said:

The shards need to know that a given name (found on Account 789) should be made available to Account 223 upon character creation. Somehow that flag must be set.

 

And in the current implementation it's not even a separate flag that can be set. There's a function that calculates the status based on character level and last active timestamp by checking them against the server's configured name policy.

 

That function is called every time the server tries to create a character whose name already exists, and also when you retrieve the character list to send to the client along with the other information. It's not possible to "flag" a character for name release or not since it's all calculated on demand based on the policy.

[UltraAlt]

13 hours ago, Mjolnerd said:

If level 50s are immune, WHY should no names be released at all?

 

I stated why in the first post you responded to.

 

 

To repeat the relevant parts

"...But I will make my point again, why is a level 50 that hasn't been played for a year immune to being renamed?!

 

It seems to be that it is only legacy reasons from the original game.

My guess is - that at this point in Homecoming - most level 50's were power-leveled to 50. Level 50 isn't being earned by playing the game and leveling up. Level 50 status is being given to characters because they were inside of the door of a farming mission while the player is most likely afk or multiboxing while playing a 50 on another account to level up the "doorsitter"....

There is no reason that a character power-leveled to 50 and left sitting for a year should be protected from renaming when a sub-50 character that put in more game time actually playing the game should be renamed after being left sitting for a year."

 

"...I do not believe that someone that has a power-leveled 50 that hasn't played that character for a year feels that that character's name is important. In fact, by not logging that character in for that long, it is proving that they don't feel that the character is important enough to them to log them in simply to keep the name...."

 

"...Additionally, making level 50's immune to renaming not only condones but promotes level 50 as the way to play CoH and, thus, promotes power-leveling to 50 to avoid "the hassle" of the actual game (eg non-end-game content)...."

 

It was all in there if you read it.

 

If it is activated, I would hope that level 50's would have to log in at least once every 365 days. If that is not the case, then I am against it being activated at all.

[UltraAlt]

12 hours ago, MHertz said:

How the character reached 50 is not the issue and just muddies the water here.

 

I think not.

I think it makes it more clear why level 50's should not be immune to the renaming process.

 

It used to be a badge of achievement to get to level 50, that is not longer the case. That is long gone. You can doorsit a character in the AE, go AFK in a couple of hours, and the character is level 50.

If a character that has played 100s of hours and isn't level 50 is going to be open for renaming when the set days away have been reached, AFK power-leveling behavior should not reward a character by making them immune to renaming.

 

If the system goes live, all characters should have to log in order to stop the renaming process.

No characters should be immune simply because they are level 50.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by UltraAlt
rewording, reworking

[lemming]

I think making an assumption that most 50s were PL'd isn't helping your argument.   And I agree that 50s should be subject to a timer.

[Excraft]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

It used to be a badge of achievement to get to level 50, that is not longer the case. That is long gone. You can doorsit a character in the AE, go AFK in a couple of hours, and the character is level 50.

 

You could PL a character to 50 long before AE even existed.  It's a very bad idea to try and impose one way and one way only as the "right/correct/approved" way to play and enjoy the game. 

 

9 hours ago, Number Six said:

The authentication server of course knows, and the second part of your question seems to be, well why can't the shards just ask the auth server "when did User3897 log in last?". The answer is that sure, we could build something to do that, but no channel of communication currently exists to do that so it's a net new system that would require programmer time to design, build, and test. Programmer time that is currently being spent on other projects.

 

Lots of things are new here that required programmer time to design, build and test.  Not trying to be disparaging as I think it safe to say everyone appreciates all your efforts, but it sounds like you all took the easy route on this one instead of putting together something that's a better solution more in line with modern games.  You can take whatever route you want of course, it's your server, however what you've implemented here is obviously very annoying and a nuisance to RPers and IMHO sends the wrong message to any potential new player.  You're basically telling them "play or lose your character". 

 

People play different things and take breaks from time to time.  I know if I were a new player, I'd be super annoyed that my characters were lost because I hadn't played in a while, especially when other games don't rename or delete anything.  It sends the wrong message.  A group of us recently got back into LoTRO after about 3 or 4 years.  Our characters, gear, kinship, everything was all there just as we left it.  This game doesn't have anywhere near the server population that a game like that has. 

 

Seems very funny that the people here who promote and encourage (and enforce) creativity and "originality" are the same people who can't be bothered to be creative when using a thesaurus to come up with a different character name if the one they want was taken. 

[ForeverLaxx]

8 hours ago, lemming said:

I think making an assumption that most 50s were PL'd isn't helping your argument

I wish I knew why UA always seems to twist any change he isn't in favor of to one that's caused by PLing so he can rail against PLing again. It's weird to me.

 

13 hours ago, Number Six said:

Since the design goals for the name release system included dealing with active accounts that have 10 active and 900 inactive names that haven't been touched in years, there wasn't any sense building an extra system to look at account activity that doesn't meet those requirements

Sounds like one of my suspicions was correct, then.

[Excraft]

13 hours ago, Number Six said:

Since the design goals for the name release system included dealing with active accounts that have 10 active and 900 inactive names that haven't been touched in years, there wasn't any sense building an extra system to look at account activity that doesn't meet those requirements.

 

Out of curiosity why was this even a requirement?  If the account is still active, the player can be contacted and negotiated with to release a name.  Is the assumption that most people won't release a name?  We've got threads in most all the server forums here of people releasing names, so seems to me that most people would be willing to let a name go if they aren't using it.  If they don't want to, they shouldn't be forced or annoyed into releasing it.   Something seems fishy with this requirement.

[Captain Fabulous]

13 hours ago, Number Six said:

Since the design goals for the name release system included dealing with active accounts that have 10 active and 900 inactive names that haven't been touched in years, there wasn't any sense building an extra system to look at account activity that doesn't meet those requirements.

 

[Ghost]

3 hours ago, Excraft said:

 

Seems very funny that the people here who promote and encourage (and enforce) creativity and "originality" are the same people who can't be bothered to be creative when using a thesaurus to come up with a different character name if the one they want was taken. 

 

Also seems funny that people will defend non players, over actual players

I mean, they cant defend themselves because they NO LONGER PLAY

[Excraft]

20 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Also seems funny that people will defend non players, over actual players

I mean, they cant defend themselves because they NO LONGER PLAY

 

Nice try, but I haven't defended non-players who don't play anymore.  I've said the opposite.  I've said it a few times throughout the topics on this over the years.  Here's a few examples from this thread since you obviously missed them.

 

On 2/21/2023 at 9:41 AM, Excraft said:

If the account is inactive for years, go for it and release all the names on the account.

 

21 hours ago, Excraft said:

I'll repeat, if an account hasn't been logged in for a couple of years, go ahead and release all of the character names. 

 

I understand that the norm here is to attack anyone who doesn't agree with and fall lock step in line with every single decision the folks here make, but putting words in people's mouths and misrepresenting what they've been saying isn't accomplishing anything for you. 

[ZemX]

17 minutes ago, Excraft said:

If they don't want to, they shouldn't be forced or annoyed into releasing it.   Something seems fishy with this requirement.

 

There is nothing fishy here.  It might seem that way to you if you think your view of character name ownership is somehow objectively correct.  It is not.  There is no equivalence to personal property here.  Nothing is being taken from you, because you don't own it.    That should be apparent to anyone who saw all "their" stuff go poof when the Live servers came down.  And it will happen again when HC shuts down for good.   That day WILL come, btw.

 

The idea of your character lives in your head and in there, it's yours.  The digital representation of that on some MMO server is not yours.  Never has been.  You're leasing it.  These are the (now updated) terms and conditions of the lease.  And those of us arguing FOR it will be just as subject to those terms as anybody else.  I care about my character names too.  That's why I play them.

 

Use it or, eventually, lose it.   It is a reasonable proposition and hardly unique to Homecoming.   And one year is a very reasonable timeline.  50s being permanent is more than reasonable, in my opinion.  You may not think so, but really, stop pretending this is some universal truth.  It's just your opinion.  It is not shared by the people in charge.  Tough break.  It could easily have been the other way round.  Neither position is "correct".

[ZemX]

2 minutes ago, Excraft said:

I understand that the norm here is to attack anyone who doesn't agree with and fall lock step in line with every single decision the folks here make, but putting words in people's mouths and misrepresenting what they've been saying isn't accomplishing anything for you. 

 

You've done little else here but build strawman after strawman of your opponents' arguments.  Now everyone disagreeing with you is just doing so to agree with the devs?  Nobody but you has thoughts of their own with any merit?  How convenient for your own argument when you get to say what everyone else is thinking, eh?

[Excraft]

16 minutes ago, ZemX said:

There is nothing fishy here.  It might seem that way to you if you think your view of character name ownership is somehow objectively correct.  It is not.  There is no equivalence to personal property here.  Nothing is being taken from you, because you don't own it.    That should be apparent to anyone who saw all "their" stuff go poof when the Live servers came down.  And it will happen again when HC shuts down for good.   That day WILL come, btw.

 

The idea of your character lives in your head and in there, it's yours.  The digital representation of that on some MMO server is not yours.  Never has been.  You're leasing it.  These are the (now updated) terms and conditions of the lease.  And those of us arguing FOR it will be just as subject to those terms as anybody else.  I care about my character names too.  That's why I play them.

 

Use it or, eventually, lose it.   It is a reasonable proposition and hardly unique to Homecoming.   And one year is a very reasonable timeline.  50s being permanent is more than reasonable, in my opinion.  You may not think so, but really, stop pretending this is some universal truth.  It's just your opinion.  It is not shared by the people in charge.  Tough break.  It could easily have been the other way round.  Neither position is "correct".

 

This is nice.  It's got nothing to do with what I was saying and its way off base, but it makes for an interesting and entertaining read regardless.  I think it's fishy because it seems like the assumption is if an active player is messaged about releasing a name they won't do it, so let's just make them do it by adding a new (albeit trivial) requirement.  That doesn't seem to fit with what I've seen here on these forums with people releasing names publicly to those who would like them. 

 

14 minutes ago, ZemX said:

You've done little else here but build strawman after strawman of your opponents' arguments.  Now everyone disagreeing with you is just doing so to agree with the devs?  Nobody but you has thoughts of their own with any merit?  How convenient for your own argument when you get to say what everyone else is thinking, eh?

 

Sorry, but if people are going to misrepresent or twist what I've said, I'll respond to correct it.  Thanks. 😉

[Greycat]

14 hours ago, Number Six said:

<much snippage for the sake of space, not content>

 

Since the design goals for the name release system included dealing with active accounts that have 10 active and 900 inactive names that haven't been touched in years, there wasn't any sense building an extra system to look at account activity that doesn't meet those requirements.

 

 

OK. So the reason what seems logical to me wouldn't work and couldn't be looked at that way is because the system wasn't designed to do things in a way that would make sense that way. Yay Spaghetti! 😉   But thanks for the answer.

 

Yeah, to me it would seem like you'd want - say "Account" (handling the initial login) able to know "this person logged in today, this person hasn't logged in for two years" (and that would likely also have been set with active/inactive flags or whatnot talking to a billing server on live that would be NC's domain, but that could also be manually set by customer service types to ban an account *now* if needed,) which could then talk to the individual shards and say "Hey, if you have '@ this guy' on your list, run this script," instead of the back and forth and other checks it sounds like we have. But it's something that'd have to be designed in from the start (or early on.)

 

I still say it'd be better to do it by account first, but that's more a "In theory ... if that were actually feasable, which it sadly doesn't sound like" preference at this point rather than a request.

[ZemX]

12 minutes ago, Excraft said:

I think it's fishy because it seems like the assumption is if an active player is messaged about releasing a name they won't do it, so let's just make them do it by adding a new (albeit trivial) requirement.  That doesn't seem to fit with what I've seen here on these forums with people releasing names publicly to those who would like them. 

 

First off, this is exactly what it means.  If someone won't voluntarily give up a character but also refuses to play them for more than a year (and they are not 50) then their name becomes unreserved and if someone tries to use that name, they'll get it.  That there are some people willing to voluntarily release names doesn't mean literally everyone is gong to or that nobody should have to.   It also doesn't do anything about inactive accounts.  This plan handles both at the same time and with an amount of effort the devs are willing to expend on it.  It's not the way you'd like it done.  We get that.   But it's the way it IS being done.

 

15 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Sorry, but if people are going to misrepresent or twist what I've said, I'll respond to correct it.  Thanks.

 

Saying it doesn't make it so.  You absolutely just accused everyone disagreeing with you of doing so simply out of a desire to attack you and to be "in locks step" with the devs.   That's a strawman AND an ad hominem.  If you don't understand why then it's probably not worth continuing to argue with you.  I can present logical arguments, but you seem to have trouble doing the same.

[Excraft]

20 minutes ago, ZemX said:

First off, this is exactly what it means.  If someone won't voluntarily give up a character but also refuses to play them for more than a year (and they are not 50) then their name becomes unreserved and if someone tries to use that name, they'll get it.  That there are some people willing to voluntarily release names doesn't mean literally everyone is gong to or that nobody should have to.   It also doesn't do anything about inactive accounts.  This plan handles both at the same time and with an amount of effort the devs are willing to expend on it.  It's not the way you'd like it done.  We get that.   But it's the way it IS being done.

 

I understand perfectly how the system works and that it is being done this way whether I like it or not.  I just disagree with the implementation which I believe we're allowed to do here.  Assuming it's ok with you of course.  I'll also reiterate yet again that inactive accounts (accounts that haven't been logged into for more than a year or two) should have all names regardless of level opened up. 

 

22 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Saying it doesn't make it so.  You absolutely just accused everyone disagreeing with you of doing so simply out of a desire to attack you and to be "in locks step" with the devs.   That's a strawman AND an ad hominem.  If you don't understand why then it's probably not worth continuing to argue with you.  I can present logical arguments, but you seem to have trouble doing the same.

 

I see, so its ok for others to misrepresent what I wrote, but its not ok for me to respond in kind.  Got it.  Thanks for making my point for me.  Good day to you 🙂

[ZemX]

4 minutes ago, Excraft said:

I just disagree with the implementation which I believe we're allowed to do here.  Assuming it's ok with you of course.

 

I've said as much, which you would know if you had actually read any of my posts carefully.  Though I do find it interesting how many times people reach for this "I'm allowed to" bullshit response whenever they get pushback.  You are being disagreed with.  Nobody has said you can't have the opinion.  Yet, of course, you construct that strawman again because you've got nothing better, it seems.

 

6 minutes ago, Excraft said:

I see, so its ok for others to misrepresent what I wrote, but its not ok for me to respond in kind.  Got it. 

 

I'm sure you don't appreciate the irony but you are misrepresenting what I wrote just there WHILE complaining about it.   It's not okay to misrepresent someone else's arguments whether it's being done to you... or by you.  

 

You are either simply trolling at this point... or you just don't have the capacity for a reasoned argument. So I'll just collect one more childish down-vote from you, if you don't mind, and then I'm done wasting my time on you.

[lemming]

Quick question on Name Release on character Transfers for @Number Six

 

If I transfer a character from one server to another, currently if the name is taken, yours get a number added on.

 

What happens if the character in question has "timed out" their reserve?  And do we cascade down the line checking each time? 

 

2nd question is more from a QA point of view.   If Wolverclone goes from Excelsior to Everlasting, and Wolverclone, Wolverclone1, Wolverclone2, Wolverclone4 have logged in recently, but Wolverclone3 hasn't, what name does the transferred Wolverclone get?

[Number Six]

9 minutes ago, lemming said:

Quick question on Name Release on character Transfers for @Number Six

 

If I transfer a character from one server to another, currently if the name is taken, yours get a number added on.

 

What happens if the character in question has "timed out" their reserve?  And do we cascade down the line checking each time? 

 

Same behavior as before. The auto-renaming of inactive characters only applies when new characters are being interactively created through the character creator. Renames and transfers will not trigger it, by design.

 

Yes, someone could work around that by creating a new character to push a name out of the way, deleting it, then renaming or transferring a different character. While that behavior isn't encouraged, if somebody really wants it badly enough to go through all that, we're not going to stop them.

 

9 minutes ago, lemming said:

2nd question is more from a QA point of view.   If Wolverclone goes from Excelsior to Everlasting, and Wolverclone, Wolverclone1, Wolverclone2, Wolverclone4 have logged in recently, but Wolverclone3 hasn't, what name does the transferred Wolverclone get?

 

Wolverclone5

[Excraft]

42 minutes ago, ZemX said:

so I'll just collect one more childish down-vote from you, if you don't mind, and then I'm done wasting my time on you.

 

Have to admit, it's really telling that your ire about strawmans is directed solely at me while appearing to be perfectly fine with others doing the same to me.  You're welcome for your new downvote. 😉

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, Number Six said:

If it were based on account activity, then it would mean they'd need to know the activity status of the account tied to any arbitrary name that's being checked.

On a per-shard basis, that's a date field added to the character record, and when you log in to a shard and the server retrieves your character list, that field gets updated with the current timestamp for each of your characters. Or make it happen whenever you go back to the character selection screen, so there isn't anything special-casing initial sign-ons. Updating across all shards when an account logs in would be complicated, and frankly if you're not logging into a particular shard for more than a year, then I don't see that you have much investment in the characters on that shard.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Number Six said:

 

Same behavior as before. The auto-renaming of inactive characters only applies when new characters are being interactively created through the character creator. Renames and transfers will not trigger it, by design.

 

Yes, someone could work around that by creating a new character to push a name out of the way, deleting it, then renaming or transferring a different character. While that behavior isn't encouraged, if somebody really wants it badly enough to go through all that, we're not going to stop them.

As predicted.   I think that behaviour will definitely be done.