I am kind of in a rut. Once or twice a year for the last decade, I'll roll up a character, play him to the 30-40 level range, get busy with life, and by the time I am in a place where I can play normally again, I try to login and I end up with this.


By what name do you wish to be mourned? MyNoob
You are denied access.

And the character is gone. Poof. The auto-delete code took another 50-100 hours of my life away.

I am ok with losing limited equipment for being AFK. I'm fine with getting kicked out of cabals or losing leadership positions. Why in this age of a thinning playerbase can't we keep the characters?

Sometimes I get an itch to come back and play. Knowing I need to start ALL THE WAY OVER again makes me just go play another game instead. Can we possibly lower the bar a little so guys/gals in their 40s with careers and kids and all that can come back after a few months and just be able to play without all the lowbie morale-killing grind?

I know nobody will remember me when I come back, and I won't be in a cabal, but that's fine. I can start all over on roleplaying without all the exploring or skill spamming, and just dive back into the game for the fun parts that I already invested my time in. Does anybody else feel the same way?

message me on the side and I'll put it together on gitlab, but I'd need to know what kind of operating system it'd need to run on. I'm guessing windows, but linux is more my bread and butter.

I’ve got no interest in seeing this extended. The expectation to keep a character from autodeleting is so minor that, right now, there are characters over 3 years old that manage to keep around. If someone does play that minimal amount, I’d actually think that the lower levels are substantially more active and require a lesser time investment than the upper ones. But that’s separate from the fact that I don’t see the extension as necessary, and I see the login requirement to be so minor that any character who can’t meet it really has no justification in staying alive anyway.


Comparing having to log in for one minute a month to “failing out of college to play until 5am every morning” just shows, to me, that you’re not seriously considering it. It’s not that much of a demand. You don’t have to login hours every day, or quit college. Just one minute a month. Use your cellphone, download a mobile telnet program, connect to your character and just go afk – and you’ve successfully prolonged your character. Otherwise, the issue of arguing to retain the playerbase implies retaining players. Players typically play a game, which sustains it. Less than a minute a month isn’t exactly a ‘player’ in the playerbase to me, I’d have a hard time remembering or interacting with that character.

I'm all for playing however much, or little, you want to play, but I'm not really up for extending the already minimal timer.

-Ish

"Less than a minute a month isn’t exactly a ‘player’ in the playerbase to me" translates to "I don't care about you and your needs, because it doesn't meet my standard for giving ####s."

That's fine that it doesn't buzz your give-a-####s button - but if you act like a callous douche when I or someone else expresses a complaint, don't be surprised when the "Get ####ed" comes back your way and nobody wants to deal with you.

I've had some pretty hit or miss experiences with various Imms over the years, but this type of response from you is one of the types that makes me not want to interact with the Imm staff, or play CF to any serious degree.

*hug*

I'd hate to see how you take it if they said something actually rude, instead of, you know, just having a different opinion.

And it was way too early to be posting. Sorry Ishuli - but I'll break down my frustration with the post a bit more civilly:

1. It's not about the time investment, it's about the thought in the back of my head that I have to worry about in real life to make sure a game character doesn't delete. The one minute is trivial, you're right - but the stress/effort of trying to remember that I have to do that, on top of all the RL stuff I already worry about that takes me away from my precious, makes it hard to accept that one minute as another thing I have to add to my stress. Removing that small roadblock isn't about the time - it's about the real life stress being removed from not having to log in to maintain the investment of my time that I've put in.

2. The phrasing used "Less than a minute a month isn’t exactly a ‘player’ in the playerbase to me" may have been taken out of context by me, but this seems more callous to me than it may have been intended. It implies, to me, that you can't empathize with the situation - which is great for you - I'm glad you don't have that kind of problem with the small added stress of trying to remember to log in to stop an auto - but others do, and it's a real stress. There is some fascinating research on click-fatigue and the number of problems a person can focus on and still maintain a healthy level of stress - and the problem, in my opinion, is that CF has a lot of click-fatigue like hoops (desc, role, 1 minute or auto, etc) before you can play without the fear of consequence that it makes it not worth it to folks like me who work with high stress deadlines already. We as a playerbase attempt to reduce this by copying descriptions, copying roles, etc - but we're legitimately penalized for reducing the effort we have to put in so that we can play a game.

Potential solutions:
Remove auto-delete altogether - this was something that mattered back when you had to run this on a commodor desktop server in the 80's-90's - I read some of the comments on the original DIKU architecture and why they implemented some of the things to save space/improve efficiency, but it's been used as a "don't let non-serious characters stick around" schtick.

Add default descriptions for different races that are pseudo-randomized. I'll write the code for this separately and gift it to you guys if you'd be willing to use it to reduce things for those of us who this bothers, but I'm guessing that that's not going to be an option.

>Add default descriptions for different races that are
>pseudo-randomized. I'll write the code for this separately
>and gift it to you guys if you'd be willing to use it to
>reduce things for those of us who this bothers, but I'm
>guessing that that's not going to be an option.

I know people who don't roll because they will need to write a description. I myself abandoned characters because I didn't feel like writing their descs.

That first sentence you wrote is kind of wild. Using that logic, any time games don’t cater to the explicit demands of any players they’re saying your quote. Meaning either the quote is a bit wrong since it’s kinda universal, or its true in a way that diminishes its potency. I also wouldn’t want to cater to someone who demands they get all their gear choices on demand, but I don’t personally translate that into “I don’t care about you and your needs, because it doesn’t meet my standard”.

I didn’t think I was acting like a callous douche. I reread what a wrote a few times now, trying to see if I was, but I don’t think I was. If I came across that way, I promise it wasn’t the intent. I tend to try to go out of my way to make sure the dialogue remains productive, and not insulting.

I’m sorry as to your feelings in your last sentence. I’ve tried really, really hard through my time as an imm to make things fun and to pay attention to a plethora of character types – from the heavy dedicated ones, to the ones I happen to bump into who are non-committal but fun. I’m really not sure what else to say here since even what I thought was a benign response of mine is apparently douche and makes you hate the game.

Sorry again you feel that way.

-Ish

I'm not completely sure they can be mean spirited! That said, I have personally run afoul of the auto-delete previously because of military deployments where you literally can't login for 3-5 months at a time. Granted, at that point in a game like this you could really be considered MIA in the game too so I can see both sides of this. I sometimes do wish you could ask for an extension in this circumstances though, especially when you have a character you love. something like a 90 day or more standby but where all your limited gear is immediately stripped when the character gets put into this mode. Just a thought I had in the past but never really worried about it because in the grand scheme of things there are much more important things that could be coded up or dealt with over the auto-delete timer.

I can understand it happening, and the fact that it happens at all speaks to it not being impossible. But for me, even as a player, I just think "Well, I can literally use my cellphone and login for 1 minute, or login and idle, and then it won't happen". So the fix to me seems to be pretty easy. If you forget, it happens. I've gotten chars before too :P, but if I forget them, I'm typically not too upset about them poofing.

As an aside, I was surprised to find a little telnet app on google's play store thingy. I've actually used it a few minor times (when my electricity was out or otherwise) to get some minimal imm work done.

-Ish

We didn't have cellphone access when deployed to certain locations. At best we might have a satellite phone for official use only and government computers for official use only with everything locked down. We got to make a 15 minute phone call home once a week at best for outside comms. Granted, that was a while ago and I think a lot of places might have morale Internet now days. Didn't back in my day though because it was all too new living in tents and #### and I am sure forward operating bases still don't have much of anything other than a sat phone and maybe a mission terminal. Haven't deployed since 2002 or been active since 2007 so plenty could have changed since then.

I messed around with Telnet on phone as far back as pre-android messing around. It's a horrible experience though if you wanted to actually try to do much. Probably great for administrating the game though when you need to in a pinch!

A one minute logon (at hero) every 30 days doesn't seem like that much of a burden IMHO.

True. It shouldn't. But many of us have been playing the game since the early 90s.

Why at this point in the game's life, do we need to keep treating it like it is the game we've all been failing out of college to play until 5am every morning, and punish us by making us start completely over because we dared to step away for a few weeks?

I have played probably 1000 characters since the game first went online. I'm fine with all the guys from the 1990's and 2000s being gone forever. That was a different game back then. I would like to pick up with the character I started a few months ago though, before my kids got sick or I needed to work 80 hours a week for a product launch or other extremely busy period of my life.

The last few years when there's 10 people logged in at once, is it really going to matter if some level 40 ranger logs in for an hour that nobody recognizes instead of a level 1 future washout character that roams around the academy for a few minutes and quits?

I just feel like we should be doing everything we can to retain the player base and lower the bar to re-entry for people who've played this game a lot over the years. Not having to start completely over all the time would be a good step in that direction.

So I was agreeing with you until I read this post.

The auto delete is currently a blocker for me.

However, allowing us to have a bank of characters would be exploited by those who like to play in a sweet pk range, or have the perfect build for a situation on hand.

Anyone interested in having a bank of characters to maximize their dominance has absolutely 0 problem keeping them from auto-deleting and even losing their limited stuff. I had 5 or 6 hero characters at one time when I was testing out forms. No problem scheduling logins. They auto'd when I lost interest for a month+.

The challenge here is with people who go months without playing their single char, but want to jump back into it. I have nothing against accommodating that somehow as long as it doesn't have unintended consequences.

it also does lean towards even *moreso* having that random character that's a 43 year old felar who's existed for five years game-time and shows up an hour a month.

There's almost *ALWAYS* about 2-3 characters who're minimally active and have existed for 2+ years. While it's certainly allowed and within the rules, I don't think those characters *generally* add much to the game with such few hours, but...if the player enjoys that character, great. I'm not against it, but I also don't see a GREAT benefit to making that change, either. If we're looking at drawing a player back...is it helping numbers in any way by keeping that player who isn't managing to play 5 min a month?


I believe at one point there *HAS* been some discussion about the idea, and IIRC, some of the discussion amounted to *IF* autodelete were removed, it would necessitate some other form of auto-deletion, which the primary idea would be characters aging while offline as well. I've played MUDs where that happened, and it was nice that the random low-hours arial wasn't outliving the 20 hr a day elf, but it does create some of its own consequences. Also, it would require coding to do, and given that I don't think anyone thinks the 30day autodelete is DIRELY broken, I would expect the status quo to remain over the ROI for coding a different method of aging that some players would prefer and others dislike.

Making characters also age offline would certainly be the straw that broke my camel's back and make me not to bother playing.

Like the original poster, I don't like to start over and lose the hours I've put into a character, nor am I prone to delete, so any character I manage to make and play is in it for the long haul, however long that might be in real time.

Personally I haven't found the 30 day limit to be insurmountable, but equally I don't see it causing any REAL problems were it extended to say 45 days, or even 60. Any fairweather player with alts can already abuse the system if they wish (and imms can take action if they notice such). But it would certainly be worthwhile if it allowed a few people like the OP to keep playing.

It's not broken. A very small subset of players have this issue and while I want everyone to play even for 20 min a month, the side effects to such a change (like the one you mentioned) makes it not worth the limited time to address.

I know how little effort it would be to remove this, or extend it - so where's the problem with allowing folks an extended timer if it means they might stick around? If I didn't have to go through some extended Imm process, I'd do it for you, but I'm not interested in the time investment that's required to Imm. If I'm allowed to contribute without that time investment, then I'd be happy to work on it and do the work so that part of your playerbase can enjoy it a bit more.

I've been playing for 23 years give or take. I think that there are lots of things that should have been or can be done to adjust to the changing lifestyles of the PB and make it more enjoyable for people to populate Thera. Personally, the auto-delete feature, for me, wasn't one. I find it hard to get back into a char after a long absence. Hope you can resolve this somehow so we see you on.