Is it possible, or could it be possible, to implement a flag you could request via email to have your character not auto-delete after a month?

I'm cool with losing gear, but I tend to get busy in a number of things and the char gets auto'd because I don't log back in within the month time period. I could dig it dropping you from cabals, but I was wondering if there's a way to just preserve the character without having to do 'cheap' things (like login and immediately back out again). Maybe 2 months or more.

Write a pos-it and put it on your computer.

LOG ON BOBBY THE PALADIN BY THIS DATE OR THEY WILL AUTO-DELETE!!!

Take responsibility for your character and their survival. It's all within your control and need not be placed on the staff.

Emailing the imms will get a polite response: 'Sorry, we don't do that.'

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Alright, then being that I can get sucked into a project at any time, guess I'll just stop rolling characters. Sorry to catch you in a bad mood.

Added -

By the by, I played Erivoran. I know you handed me a virtue to entice me to play more, but I figured I'd bring up that its not a matter of wanting or not wanting, its merely an issue of time/work/family.

Actually, I am not in a bad mood. I just took the question a bit poorly. My apologies.

Still, exceptions are not made. Sorry.

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I figure as the playerbase gets older this will become more common. I don't have the stats, but are auto-deletions on the rise? Maybe a tweak to the timer on this wouldn't hurt. Additionally, I'd imagine the server load these days is relatively less stressed than it was when the code went in.

Long story short, just putting it out there.

I have no idea why the autos are set the way they are, that is outside of my scope. Mostly I see lowbies auto, ones who are below level 5 and apparently the player(s) got bored or forgot the character...I have no idea. Again, my apologies for coming off harsh earlier.

Eshval's email
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Eshval's slightly off-center (unofficial) blog.
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Two quick stats:

Out of the last 30 deletions to show up on the battlefield, 18 were auto's.

84 (I think I counted right, or one or two off if I misread), characters on the battlefield auto-deleted in the month of August.

A guy like Valg or Seb might have a better idea into whether or not extending the timer might help skim some of that off. I'm not sure that it would, but, just saying when I miss my login date its usually by a few days because I intend on playing say, the fourth weekend, only to get called out of town or something.

Edited some minor spelling errors.

nt

Why you wouldn't just log in and log out instantly? It takes 30 seconds.

I honestly have no idea. There are 30 days in which to log in, so I have no concept why someone would wait until the last weekend/day to log in. It baffles me.


*Edited for spelling errors.

Eshval's email
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Eshval's slightly off-center (unofficial) blog.
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I'm not going to go into my life's details but suffice to say :

A) I'm not retired.
B) I am not a college student.
C) I'm not a work-from-home guy.
D) I don't play from work.
E) I can't login from an airplane or train.
F) I can't login from a hotel room on a work machine.
G) I really don't need to give you a 50 paragraph explanation over such a simple issue.
H) Why is this even an issue? Do it or don't, just don't respond to me like I'm an idiot. A simple 'we don't want to invest the time in that' or 'we don't view it as an issue in general' suffices fine.

My comment to the peanut gallery is, if this isn't an issue for you because you can dump 20 hours a week fine. Feel free to ignore this thread and move on to another. Not like I asked you guys anyway.

I responded because it sounded to me like you weren't considering the possibility of a quick login/logout; that you were saying the fact that you don't have an hour or two any time in the month (which I'm not debating) means you can't prevent an autodelete. What I am saying is that all you need is 30 seconds from a telnet-capable computer to login/logout on cf.

There are many ways you can get online while travelling. Bring a personal wireless-capable pda with you, go pay an internet cafe $5 to use their machine for one minute, go to the library and connect for free. When you're getting coffee and someone gets up from their laptop to buy a muffin, run over and log in to cf before they can stop you.

It seems nearly impossible your life can really be structured such that there's absolutely no way for you to get 30 seconds of free computer time over the course of a month.

But if all of these options really are impossible, then just get a scheduling macro program to do an automatic login/logout for you.

I don't think this is an issue in general.

If you toss us an e-mail or whatever that your time is limited that month, no one will freak about a 2 second logon. If you don't have time enough for that... I can't say that I don't sympathize, but my list of things that should/could be done to improve CF is long and probably this is not near the top.

That said, Zulg knows a lot more about the current state of the autodeleting code than I do, could almost certainly knock something out a lot faster than I could, and I wouldn't object if he (or whoever) did.

Yeah, see, I'm cool with that. Thanks for a no-BS reply.

I can think of some scenarios where you're not physically able to log in for a couple months, be it because of geography or some other circumstance. I bet they'd hook you up.

Though, I have a hard time imagining in any such scenario why one would be thinking about keeping their CF char alive over whatever it is they're doing for those two months .

I mean, yeah I could probably log in and make a half assed show of things and log out, but I didn't think this was too incendary of a topic to bring up.

Two second logins once in a fortnight to ensure that your character survives shouldn't be a big deal if you have convenient internet access available.

However, this is not the case with all autodeletions(some travel and when the trip is long, the character autoes meanwhile), and I suggest a command to extend the autodeletion period to two months. The command could be available in 30-ranks for Battlefield-eligible characters, thus preventing the lowbies that auto despite of it using it. Also, the usage would be narrowed down to the people who actually think that one month of inactivity is too short for their character to auto(and would generally return to the character when this is the case).