Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist
Suggestions, Feedback & Bug Reports (OOC) => Module Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Dark Locust on December 09, 2012, 04:58:17 AM
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Give players an option to self delete their character so their vault doesn't get cluttered with all the characters they don't play anymore or whose story has ended. It could either be by using a console command or somewhere in the fugue. Also saves server storage space as well because it doesn't have to store unused characters.
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I've always wondered why this option was never instigated does not the NWN engine allow it or something?
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The NWN engine does not allow it from base, it's been brought up a few times. it should be possible now with NWNX, but it needs to be programmed. its not something high on the dev's to dolist i belive.
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I think one of the concerns expressed is that there wouldn't be a way of retrieving lost PCs, even, for example, in circumstances where an account has been hijacked.
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Makes sense then, would be nice though as I'm bit of an organised bunny and like to have my character vault always as organised as possible. So would be nice if I could delete that one character that is in there right now that I never play. Haven't played it since day one in fact so I think its safe to say I never will at this stage so yeah be nice if I could delete that particular character.
I see the point about account hijacking though, that would be a real bummer.
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I've always wondered why this option was never instigated does not the NWN engine allow it or something?
It is definitely allowed, I have been on mulitiple servers which allow self character deletions. If not self character deletion than perhaps have a forum which players can request characters to be removed from their vault. I know the other server I play on has that option as well
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Well there was one major reason. Back when it was on the university the LETO program that would have to be enabled would have opened a massive security hole into the university network. Currently its supposed to be on the list of things to do/consider/evaluate
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my yoda senses tell me that if this got used it wil get abused and ppl who have not or forgot to use a password on their chars find themselves with a lost char with lost gear and a whole lot of sudden anger issues. (wich would be justefied)
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How they do it on Arelith, the deleted characters are archived. Just in case. After a time they can be deleted foreverz.
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How they do it on Arelith, the deleted characters are archived. Just in case. After a time they can be deleted foreverz.
I like that idea, could PoTM do the same thing?
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How are they archived though? Is the character vault just backed up everyday? Not that I'm nitpicking just curious on how it would work. ;)
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My first RP server used character deletion. You could also archive characters which could be revived with a request to the DM's if needed.
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I think they just sent the character to the delete bin and after a set time, it'd just delete.
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It will never happend.
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Never say never again... Hmmm, you know that's not a bad name for a movie :P
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It would be a welcome introduction since these Play a New Character Weekends happen every time a public holiday ends in 'mas, 'ween or 'day.
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It seems to me the staff has stated clearly enough they have no interest in a Delete Character option.
I can just imagine the player whines: "But I decided I actually want my character back!" Not to mention the potential for abuse.
This is not the concern of the staff to cater to this. If you don't want to see a character in the login screen, I may recommend a new login.
I work at a software development company so this is pretty cut and dry to me. Who wants it? Not everyone. What does it do? Something we don't need.
At the cost of volunteer effort, instead of new content?
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True, giving users the capability of deleting dead or unused data is usually a "nice to have" rather than a strict need. On the other hand, keeping the volume of a database as low as possible and uncluttered with unused, dead data is also a good principle, and if ever Soren decided he needed to start pruning the database of such, it's a superior approach to let users prune data themselves than, say, to delete the 10% most inactive PCs.
Now I concede I have no idea how much space the character vault actually requires -- kilobytes? Megabyes? Gigabytes? Beats me. Likely it's easier to simply pass around the Paypall hat and buy a server upgrade than to implement a delete character feature. Though it's still a tidy principle :P
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It seems to me the staff has stated clearly enough they have no interest in a Delete Character option.
I can just imagine the player whines : "But I decided I actually want my character back!" Not to mention the potential for abuse.
This is not the concern of the staff to cater to this. If you don't want to see a character in the login screen, I may recommend a new login.
I work at a software development company so this is pretty cut and dry to me. Who wants it? Not everyone. What does it do? Something we don't need.
At the cost of volunteer effort, instead of new content?
Er Whut? That sounds right if the community was made up of 11 year old girls, and 8 year old boys. Who the hell would seriously delete a character, decide they actually didn't want to do that, and then actually bother the staff with a request to retrieve a deleted file.
Lol oh my god this old argument again, their is potential for abuse! Well there is potential for abuse by using the Aurora engine, so we better not use it.
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Er Whut? That sounds right if the community was made up of 11 year old girls, and 8 year old boys.
I don't think this is appropriate to imply, we have mature players but end users in general seem to like asking for things/features they don't need (I'll repeat that I work for a software development company and this is as common place as it is frustrating) - it's not childish but a symptom of the optionality in modern consumer culture, anyway, you're asking for a superfluous feature to come about from Volunteer effort.
I don't speak for the staff, but I'd like to help out and steer everyone toward accepting their previously declared intentions regarding any character deletion features.
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Lol oh my god this old argument again, their is potential for abuse! Well there is potential for abuse by using the Aurora engine, so we better not use it.
you must be kidding right? if someone would login your acount (hacked) and then deleted your chars you'd complain and say yup lets make it saver.
also what about the rage quitters? you cannot deny those and if that option was there they might even go ^#^&^~#&^$! this DELETE then they slept a night and come to a diffrant conclusion but then the dmg is done.
we ain all zen
whats wrong with making it harder to abuse acounts?
now thats that been said, as other said the staff has no intrest in this.
solution?
there is one and always has been one, just send a PM to soren state char name login name and such and the char will be deleted, extra work for lil ol soren yes but thats how it goes atm.
ps/ odd can anyone explain to me how my own text is a quote while i havnt had the endline at the end of my txts?
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Actually I have sent a PM to the server god to have that one PC in my character vault deleted that I never use. The answer I got back was, "we don't do that round here."
Honestly though, if someone is going to rage quit and delete all their chars then they are playing the wrong game and frankly thats their problem. I have no sympathy for someone who is that stupid to be honest. If they are that emotionally unstable then they better rethink about playing computer games, period! Besides I don't think anyone here is that loopy... Or is there?
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Er Whut? That sounds right if the community was made up of 11 year old girls, and 8 year old boys.
I don't think this is appropriate to imply, we have mature players but end users in general seem to like asking for things/features they don't need (I'll repeat that I work for a software development company and this is as common place as it is frustrating) - it's not childish but a symptom of the optionality in modern consumer culture, anyway, you're asking for a superfluous feature to come about from Volunteer effort.
I don't speak for the staff, but I'd like to help out and steer everyone toward accepting their previously declared intentions regarding any character deletion features.
I think that we do have a mature player base, one mature enough not to go through the motions of deleting characters in their own vaults, then change there minds the next day, and then bother the staff to retrieve deleted characters. You might think its a superfluous feature, I don't, but then again even if I did I would still ask for it, because im playing a superfluous computer game, engaging in superfluous activity's. I could be down at the dojo, or running, or practicing Japanese, but no I'm a level 3 Wizard about too kill some minks for imaginery gold. My free time is spent doing superfluous things. Soo yeah I'm cool with superfluous requests. Besides their is an argument for removing unused data and saving on disk space which has already been pointed out.
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you must be kidding right? if someone would login your acount (hacked) and then deleted your chars you'd complain and say yup lets make it saver.
also what about the rage quitters? you cannot deny those and if that option was there they might even go ^#^&^~#&^$! this DELETE then they slept a night and come to a diffrant conclusion but then the dmg is done.
we ain all zen
whats wrong with making it harder to abuse acounts?
now thats that been said, as other said the staff has no intrest in this.
solution?
there is one and always has been one, just send a PM to soren state char name login name and such and the char will be deleted, extra work for lil ol soren yes but thats how it goes atm.
Soren does not personally retrieve files from the vault and delete them at the request of the owner, which is why I'm in favor of a tool to do it in game. I think the password feature on character login is enough of a security measure to prevent fraudulent deletes, but in all honesty I don't spend every day here, I only log in a few times a week, or sometimes if I'm busy with work and other things, once a month. If I had my longest running character deleted by hacker, I'd say shit happens but I wouldn't request any staff attempts to retrieve a deleted file. As long as the community understands how the deletion process works then I dont really think any of our exsisting base would ask for something that wasn't possible.
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More over I do not think that community we have is so irresponsible to abuse such a feature anyway. Most of us if not all of us have shown a rather mature outlook and attitude as far as I can see. I wouldn't be still playing this server if this was not the case and that's the honest truth. As such having a character deletion option is a nice perk that we could have. As has been noted with the character pass word system that is already in place which is there to stop account hacking anyway as far as I know so nothing really needs to be done on that front anyway.
Heck you could have a @delete function set up that when activated while you have a character logged in will ask you for the character pass word. If that pass word is typed in correctly that character is ear marked for deletion. You then just log out to the character creation screen and delete the character normally. Well anyway that's how I would suggest it be done since the pass word feature is already there, might as well make use of it right?
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Soren does not personally retrieve files from the vault and delete them at the request of the owner, which is why I'm in favor of a tool to do it in game. I think the password feature on character login is enough of a security measure to prevent fraudulent deletes ...
Do keep in mind that (I think) that system only asks for your password -after- you enter the world, whereas the delete function is located in the character selection screen.
But Honoun's suggestion actually sounds like something that wouldn't be abused or lead to grief, but would be very appreciated by the community. Not sure how hard it is to accomplish though.
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I just checked my character vault that is in my NWN directory, there is only six characters in there, (I delete all the ones that come with the game when you install it). Anyway with those six that are currently in there the folder size is 361KB... Now I have no idea how many characters may be in the server vault in total but I'm assuming the data size is nothing to sneeze at. Now with each NCW or new player who logs on the server that size is going to increase. It may take years and one way to alleviate excessive data size is to get bigger data storage true. However, to save money on having to buy bigger data storage just for all our characters it seems to me the cheaper and easier option is just let us delete the characters we are not using to allow space for ones that are getting played with.
True, data storage devices these days is cheap, but letting us delete characters is free ;)
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Er Whut? That sounds right if the community was made up of 11 year old girls, and 8 year old boys.
I don't think this is appropriate to imply, we have mature players but end users in general seem to like asking for things/features they don't need (I'll repeat that I work for a software development company and this is as common place as it is frustrating) - it's not childish but a symptom of the optionality in modern consumer culture, anyway, you're asking for a superfluous feature to come about from Volunteer effort.
I don't speak for the staff, but I'd like to help out and steer everyone toward accepting their previously declared intentions regarding any character deletion features.
I think that we do have a mature player base, one mature enough not to go through the motions of deleting characters in their own vaults, then change there minds the next day, and then bother the staff to retrieve deleted characters. You might think its a superfluous feature, I don't, but then again even if I did I would still ask for it, because im playing a superfluous computer game, engaging in superfluous activity's. I could be down at the dojo, or running, or practicing Japanese, but no I'm a level 3 Wizard about too kill some minks for imaginery gold. My free time is spent doing superfluous things. Soo yeah I'm cool with superfluous requests. Besides their is an argument for removing unused data and saving on disk space which has already been pointed out.
It's important to remember that not everyone who logs into PotM is a "member of the community." Allowing a delete function can give people a way around IC or OOC consequences, not just the annoyance of deleting a character and then whining that they want it back. It's not that the requests are superfluous, it's that the feature is unneeded and has more potential for bad than for good.
EDIT: Totally didn't mean conflicts, meant consequences. Changed it now. ugh, iz urleh.
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Er Whut? That sounds right if the community was made up of 11 year old girls, and 8 year old boys.
I don't think this is appropriate to imply, we have mature players but end users in general seem to like asking for things/features they don't need (I'll repeat that I work for a software development company and this is as common place as it is frustrating) - it's not childish but a symptom of the optionality in modern consumer culture, anyway, you're asking for a superfluous feature to come about from Volunteer effort.
I don't speak for the staff, but I'd like to help out and steer everyone toward accepting their previously declared intentions regarding any character deletion features.
I think that we do have a mature player base, one mature enough not to go through the motions of deleting characters in their own vaults, then change there minds the next day, and then bother the staff to retrieve deleted characters. You might think its a superfluous feature, I don't, but then again even if I did I would still ask for it, because im playing a superfluous computer game, engaging in superfluous activity's. I could be down at the dojo, or running, or practicing Japanese, but no I'm a level 3 Wizard about too kill some minks for imaginery gold. My free time is spent doing superfluous things. Soo yeah I'm cool with superfluous requests. Besides their is an argument for removing unused data and saving on disk space which has already been pointed out.
It's important to remember that not everyone who logs into PotM is a "member of the community." Allowing a delete function can give people a way around IC or OOC consequences, not just the annoyance of deleting a character and then whining that they want it back. It's not that the requests are superfluous, it's that the feature is unneeded and has more potential for bad than for good.
EDIT: Totally didn't mean conflicts, meant consequences. Changed it now. ugh, iz urleh.
What is this potential?
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What is this potential?
Off the top of my head; people deleting other people's characters? I know I've managed to get access to at least one character that isn't my own, through some sort of weird direct connect sorcery.
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What is this potential?
Off the top of my head; people deleting other people's characters? I know I've managed to get access to at least one character that isn't my own, through some sort of weird direct connect sorcery.
-Or perhaps deleting a character and remaking them after they've been killed by another player as IC consequence then, when someone approaches the new character they respond "No, that was my old John Doe, this is a new character!"
-Also, you could delete and remake a character that you'd leveled and then complain to DMs about losing your levels, them perhaps being none-the-wiser of the fact that you'd deleted the old incarnation.
-You could delete a character after succeeding at something due to a high ability score and then remake them with new stats so that they can succeed at something else and continue on through this process indefinitely till you are caught...
-Etc, etc.
I am by no means saying that this implementation is completely a bad idea, I'm simply supporting what Ovidiu has stated; the potential for abuse is perhaps not worth the implementation of a mostly luxury feature.
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If it truly saves that much space on the server, I don't think it's a luxury feature. There must be gigabytes (or more?) of stored characters build up over those ten years?
And if we're taking such extreme abuse into account, we might as well not bother keeping the server open at all. Or hire proffesional 24/7 security to prevent hackers.
If there's barrels with 50 charges of spawnable carnivorous apes to exploit and screw people over with... seriously, who's going to bother with a dull spiteful delete?
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What is this potential?
Off the top of my head; people deleting other people's characters? I know I've managed to get access to at least one character that isn't my own, through some sort of weird direct connect sorcery.
-Or perhaps deleting a character and remaking them after they've been killed by another player as IC consequence then, when someone approaches the new character they respond "No, that was my old John Doe, this is a new character!"
-Also, you could delete and remake a character that you'd leveled and then complain to DMs about losing your levels, them perhaps being none-the-wiser of the fact that you'd deleted the old incarnation.
-You could delete a character after succeeding at something due to a high ability score and then remake them with new stats so that they can succeed at something else and continue on through this process indefinitely till you are caught...
-Etc, etc.
I am by no means saying that this implementation is completely a bad idea, I'm simply supporting what Ovidiu has stated; the potential for abuse is perhaps not worth the implementation of a mostly luxury feature.
Yeah but anyone can just go ahead and create a new character anyway, or create a new log in and start with a clean vault to get around consequences. There are logs that record everything you do, so anyone trying to abuse this sort of feature is accountable and is just going to get a hefty suspension or an outright ban, its not a case of once its deleted all trails go cold. Records of character deletes can be logged on a separate file and kept for records. Numerous deletes in quick succession can also be highlighted for quick reference sake. Deleted files can be sent to a new location, or copied and kept for a pre determined amount of time. Say one week? So if there are any requests they can be investigated, but it would be more than likely that the best policy would be only in extreme cases of obvious grieving that a character will be restored. Safe guards can be put in game, and we already have a password system to prevent fraudulent log ins and deletes. Frankly you have other servers running this feature, and other MMOS use it. It just sounds like knee jerk hysteria when people say how much potential for abuse their is, frankly there are way more other things you can abuse in game and I wasn't aware we had that sort of a problem.
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Storing the records of characters deleted for only a week might be a tad short, I'd make it several weeks to be safe. Søren might not always be available quickly.
But other than that, I completely agree with your statement above. The system can be made in such a way without risking abuse later, quite easily.
I think the pros easily outweigh the virtually non-existant cons, the only question here is whether Søren or whoever has the desire and the time to create put such a feature in place.
(Tbh, that Ravenloft Downloader side-project seems a lot more of a priority at the moment. Although it would be good to see this feature somewhere along the line, definitely.)
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I certainly would like the ability to delete a character that's lingering in my vault for this server. It's got a similar name to another character, and the same image, and it's annoying to me.
It was a re-roll to fix a mistake, and now it sits there reminding me of the mistake, and threatening or taunting me to accidentally log in with it, instead of the 'proper' character.
I wish that I could simply send a DM request for it, or something. :-/
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We unfortunately do not delete character upon request and have no plan to implement a character deletion feature either at the moment, the easiest solution would be to use an other player account.
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What is this potential?
Off the top of my head; people deleting other people's characters? I know I've managed to get access to at least one character that isn't my own, through some sort of weird direct connect sorcery.
-Or perhaps deleting a character and remaking them after they've been killed by another player as IC consequence then, when someone approaches the new character they respond "No, that was my old John Doe, this is a new character!"
-Also, you could delete and remake a character that you'd leveled and then complain to DMs about losing your levels, them perhaps being none-the-wiser of the fact that you'd deleted the old incarnation.
-You could delete a character after succeeding at something due to a high ability score and then remake them with new stats so that they can succeed at something else and continue on through this process indefinitely till you are caught...
-Etc, etc.
I am by no means saying that this implementation is completely a bad idea, I'm simply supporting what Ovidiu has stated; the potential for abuse is perhaps not worth the implementation of a mostly luxury feature.
Yeah but anyone can just go ahead and create a new character anyway, or create a new log in and start with a clean vault to get around consequences. There are logs that record everything you do, so anyone trying to abuse this sort of feature is accountable and is just going to get a hefty suspension or an outright ban, its not a case of once its deleted all trails go cold. Records of character deletes can be logged on a separate file and kept for records. Numerous deletes in quick succession can also be highlighted for quick reference sake. Deleted files can be sent to a new location, or copied and kept for a pre determined amount of time. Say one week? So if there are any requests they can be investigated, but it would be more than likely that the best policy would be only in extreme cases of obvious grieving that a character will be restored. Safe guards can be put in game, and we already have a password system to prevent fraudulent log ins and deletes. Frankly you have other servers running this feature, and other MMOS use it. It just sounds like knee jerk hysteria when people say how much potential for abuse their is, frankly there are way more other things you can abuse in game and I wasn't aware we had that sort of a problem.
Sorry to bring a topic back from the dead but I'm a returning player with quite a few reroll characters trying to figure out how the new classes worked (Favored soul's Weapon Focus I'm looking at you) and being able to delete characters would certainly make everyone's vaults a lot more manageable. I'm sure I'm one of the smaller cases who only has 20-30 in there but it's still a pain.
Maybe a system that lets you log into the character, use the ingame command, and an @delete command could work? (Similar to how @setpass works)
You'd have to log into your NWN multiplayer account, select your character, load into the server, then use your ingame pass you set for that specific character in order to delete it. Of course you'd want some sort of 24hr or 48hr confirmation window to give people time to reconsider or to prevent someone somehow accidentally doing this without really meaning to, but the QOL improvement sounds impactful for many players so if security is the main concern this strikes me as the most secure way to do it. Is something like this possible?
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I'd be happy if I could delete the zzzRemake alone...
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Our stance on this matter hasn't and will not change.
- The amount of people with access to the character vault is extremely limited for security reasons.
- Those with access to it do not have the time to manage character deletion requests.
- Tools so that players may delete their own characters have proven problematic in the past, both due to security concerns as well as server performance issues.
- The system however has no restiction on the amount of vaults one player may have.
- The amount of player vaults and their respective size have no impact on server ressources or performances.
The current system allows a player to have any number of vaults, and any number of characters they want, without risk of seeing any of them deleted by mistake (or maliciously by third parties). This is the safest approach and least risk prone option.
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Our stance on this matter hasn't and will not change.
- The amount of people with access to the character vault is extremely limited for security reasons.
- Those with access to it do not have the time to manage character deletion requests.
- Tools so that players may delete their own characters have proven problematic in the past, both due to security concerns as well as server performance issues.
- The system however has no restiction on the amount of vaults one player may have.
- The amount of player vaults and their respective size have no impact on server ressources or performances.
The current system allows a player to have any number of vaults, and any number of characters they want, without risk of seeing any of them deleted by mistake (or maliciously by third parties). This is the safest approach and least risk prone option.
Not that this is a matter truly worth the time of the CC (I feel dumb stating the obvious).
But IF we did a copy (via @remake) of the PC from one vault into other vault? Like that we'd be able to move the good pcs from one vault to another, leave the bad PC's in the old and clumped vault and have a clean vault.
I am not THAT interested in that (not that many PC's) but since people is still asking for that, that would circumvent all the problem and security issues.
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Deleting someone's character would be mad easy. Leave it as it is.
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Give players an option to self delete their character so their vault doesn't get cluttered with all the characters they don't play anymore or whose story has ended. It could either be by using a console command or somewhere in the fugue. Also saves server storage space as well because it doesn't have to store unused characters.
Very easy to create new account name and play that once your old one gets cluttered.
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It would be cool to have the ability to hide characters from your vault list.
The character still exists in the data, of course. It just wouldn't be shown in the default list when you log into the server. That way, players who want to keep their player name don't have to scroll through pages of characters & remakes to select their main each time they log in.