Save Times and Unused accounts

[Orion GM B^D]

Well, I have been away for I suppose 3 months or so, I had my patio collapse with 10k of each reg + thousands of weps, i for one have very little gold in my accts. Never seen any reason to have 400000000 gp in my posession. I however do agree with pretty much anything that Derrick desides on. He has never put the server integrity at risk. And I for one totally support Derrick.

TC

Are you playing currently? If so, I'd be glad to offer some help
to get you back running again. Co-own you to a small or regs/weps/armor/mounts etc.

[Border Patrol]

Game Masters and citizens!,

I agree with increasing the time in between world saves and it seems like an excellent idea! The idea of deleting old undeveloped accounts is also a great idea! I never would have guess there was that many accounts that have been created here. It is simply amazing.

Adjusting the parameters for account deletion sounds awesome. I will kind heartedly suggest maybe bumping the skill cap deletion for inactive accounts. Maybe something like "if this account's highest skill pool character is below 550 and has been inactive for over a year delete it." I say forget the gold parameter all together.

Also, I think another good suggestion would be "if the accounts' highest skilled char is a thief who only has GM thieving skill with no other GMed skills, and has been inactive for over a year delete."


Good I deas all around.

Also, for the played CUB event i say one silver shilling per 1-2k items. All of these are just kind hearted suggestions.

[Cattie B]

I agree with alot of the ideas so far, save times, account clean ups, and the "decativated account" idea if thats feasible on your end. I also agree that we shouldnt have another CUB event, it only makes people save EVERYTHING hoping that there will be another one again later..

Just throw stuff out people! smelt it, sell it, give it to a newb.. capet bomb yer neighbor.. ( ok that last one doesnt help .. ) Ive seen some of your houses... you know who you are

As far as houses go, I think besides the "log in at least once every 6 months so your house wont fall" rule, there should be some play time also mandated. Theres alot of houses that the owner only logs in to refresh and doesnt play. Its a waste of space, and items.

[Sir Trammelite]

I agree with alot of the ideas so far, save times, account clean ups, and the "decativated account" idea if thats feasible on your end. I also agree that we shouldnt have another CUB event, it only makes people save EVERYTHING hoping that there will be another one again later..

Just throw stuff out people! smelt it, sell it, give it to a newb.. capet bomb yer neighbor.. ( ok that last one doesnt help .. ) Ive seen some of your houses... you know who you are

As far as houses go, I think besides the "log in at least once every 6 months so your house wont fall" rule, there should be some play time also mandated. Theres alot of houses that the owner only logs in to refresh and doesnt play. Its a waste of space, and items.

It's important to take into consideration the individuals who have to live life, and may want to make a return in a later period.

[Light Shade]

If it is possible to "delete" accounts and have them "restored" at a later date if the player returns, i'd say go for it. "Backup" the Deserters in case they return. Put a post on the main page linking to a How-To for getting your Deserter Account set back up again and call it good. If you could code up a web interface for "reactivating" your account, that would be great, too.

A system would have to be coded up to deal with backing up accounts as they fall into the "old" category so that its done automatically (keeps it fair, makes it the same standard for all).

[Blaise]

Theres alot of houses that the owner only logs in to refresh and doesnt play. Its a waste of space, and items.

Seriously!!!!!!
I understand if you want to come back some day, or you may take a few, or even 6 months off, but if ALL you have done in a year or more is click your doors....please, go away. Bank the things that you can't obtain again on your return, scrap the rest and do all of us who PLAY UOSA a favor.
Obviously the players who would be affected by this would have characters developed and accounts old enough to not hit the suggested criteria for deletion, but ffs, drop that lag-castle and move on already!

I'd say there's at least half a dozen homes that I won't even step on the porch of if I want to take more than one step a second afterward. A few I know from word of mouth that the players don't play and haven't in a long time.

[Grimnir]

Well I have less than 50k on one of my accounts, but I use it all the time hehe.

So please don't delete it!

[Pringles]

Are you gonna look at account activity or looking at activity per character? I hope active accounts with undeveloped characters are not deleted! I so now and then make a new character in the hope to finish it later, when I got the time. The only thing done on thoose characters are their stats. And also a lot of my characters have less than 50k in bank.

[Calador]

As the new kid [back] on the block all I can really add is that the level of housing is very high here. I can't remember if the era allowed 1 house per character, I am fairly certain it was 1 per account but I may be wrong.

My point is that 15 houses per person playing [or not as the case may be] rather than 3 is going to put huge stress on the saves because of the amount of items in the world. I am not saying it is wrong to allow that many houses but it seems excessive to maintain that level when people may not be playing any longer.

I would happily accept any decision you make as I am just happy to have found a place to call home again. My only concern from a selfish point of view is whether I am going to be able to place or buy a couple of small houses close to each other for myself and my Guildmates when we have enough money.

If I can help in any way I will gladly, please just ask.

Cal.

[jekkis]

Perhaps you could make the parameters for what is considered being an inactive account even tighter, but combine them with email notifications two weeks prior, so that those who still want to retain their accounts, regardless of playing activity, can do so.

If this is to be combined with time spent logged in, it's not a very difficult task to keep yourself logged in if you really, really want to keep your account after being inactive for x number of months.

This notification policy, is of course fair only for the registered accounts.

[Mikel123]

I'd bump the play time cutoff up to 10 hours; I think 40 or 100 is much too high though.

And, 500k items isn't a pittance! Sounds like it's about 6% of the 8M total items. Not a game changer, but it's a step in the right direction.

Hourly saves seems like a good idea as well, given how infrequently crashes occur. But, would this mean each save time would be longer than the save times every 30 min?

[Derrick]

Thanks for all the great feedback, although we've understandably wandered off topic a bit.

No, less frequent saves will not increase the save time, as it's not incremental, everything gets saved each time.

The idea of a partial save is something I've thought about as well, but it's not realistic to implement such a large change for many reasons, as it's a huge departure from compatibility with RunUO, creates an additional layer of dependency, and makes the save files less portable especially in terms of size; which could significantly slow down a recovery operation in case of a server hardware failure.

As of now, slated for next patch is the change to save frequency, and what may be about a 20% savings in CPU time on saves, but I won't really be sure until it's loaded.

[Venom]

why dont you go for a whole "shard refresh" and no i dont mean make people start again...

Any char with less then 400 points (without th eother filters) deleted... account etc etc. I mean you can only hold on for the hope of old players coming back for so long it needs to be improved for players that play now.

Well thats how i see it.

[Loathed]

add item decay to house floors, ya do that for a week or so and we'll see how long the ppl hoarding items for another cub keep it. ha! well i just wish item decay in houses was era accurate (

[Robbbb]

I think the following would be a good start:

- Delete characters, not accounts
- Skills are easy to obtain, no cap
- 9 months without logging in(the account not that char)
- 150k gold or less in bank(including house deeds)
- No "blessed" items on person or in bank
- No house
- Less than 200 hours of playtime(we all know u macro for 4-5 days all day long to get skills up)

This should eliminate enough items and not piss anyone off who has a good player with good items as that particular player will still be available.