Discussion for Blight Character Slot Change

[Kadiya]

I agree 100% with Luthen. I think it's a bit unfair to expect us to downsize our characters in this short of a time frame. While some may not have trouble doing so, I will. As a recent permanent player of Blight, I still have the originals of all my characters on their original shards. The thought of losing them has me a bit upset. While I'll never return to a live shard, I hate the idea of deleting those characters.

I'm not disgruntled about downsizing (even though I'm not pleased with it either), just the time frame of which was given.

[Deth]

Ummmmmm you do not have to down size. You just can not create more. They said "We hope this makes sense to Istarians. We'll turn on the additional check July 17th. Please note no characters will be locked out. If you're over the total character limit, you will not be able to create additional characters or transfer characters to an account over the limit. We're asking for the cooperation of players in reducing character counts and do not have plans to lock out characters. Please help us reduce the load on the customer support team by taking care of your characters."

So you see if your happy with what you have thats fine. If you want to make a new char then you will have to delete some old ones.

[Zexoin]

Well, that means no more testing feedback from me. *shrugs*

[Kadiya]

I understand that. But I like to make new characters when my dragons reach a certain level. Replaying the game from the beginning is what has kept me playing. For me to be able to continue playing how I want to play, I'm going to have to delete. And none of my players are old to me.

[Luthen]

You must down size if you ever wish to be able to create a new character again, or copy over a character from another shard.

My point is I think it is first of all unfair to release this news to the player base with no time for them to prepare, and expect people to scramble to make sense of their accounts and their characters. While I can understand the costs of storage and maintenance and the consumption of server resources, Blight is still a testing server, and how many people honestly play exclusively on Blight? I rarely if ever see more than 20 people on with the exception of Live maintenance days. While I am paying to play this game, I do not appreciate paying to have characters on a test server counting against the total amount allotted to my account.

I understand Virtrium is a smaller company, but why is there such a crippling limit as to how many characters one is allowed? 7 characters total on a gifted subscription? Why not 7 characters per server? But 7 characters total, that's it? And then, to accommodate those who would prefer to be able to play more characters, expect people to pay $5 for 5 more character slots? That is outrageous, at $1 per character. I'd say a new character slot should be much less than a dollar; 50 cents or less.

Why even have discussion threads on these matters when the points people make are moot? Why invoke player base response when what we say has no meaning?

While I understand the need to conserve resources, I can honestly say that all I see this being is a gimmick to squeeze more money out of people.

[Tcei]

EverQuest2 has a similar limit on character slots, only get something like 6 for the whole game, to get extra you either have to pay an extra $15 a mo for 2 extra slots (and a the ability to play all other sony games..but..) or pay something like $2/mo for just 1 extra slot. $5/mo for 5 extra characters, thats not bad at all IMHO.
Better yet, Vit isnt deleting you characters or locking you out of extra characters you already have, unlike most games who'll do either or both.

Im an Alt-aholic too, of my alts there's maybe 1 or 2 that I've played more than once after the initial creation, all the others have done nothing but sit, "gathering dust". unless I decide I want another alt, then I log em on to see what they have, stuff the items in a lair somewhere and delete. Honestly the limit has helped clear out the clutter from my log-in screen, and if it helps Blight run better then GREAT!

[Steelclaw]

You must down size if you ever wish to be able to create a new character again, or copy over a character from another shard.

My point is I think it is first of all unfair to release this news to the player base with no time for them to prepare, and expect people to scramble to make sense of their accounts and their characters.

I think you're missing the part that says that no characters will be locked out or deleted (by VI). That means you can take as long as you want to reconcile your character slots vs character count. You can even log in and play whatever character you want.

The only restriction is that you can't create more characters (which includes copying existing ones to Blight). That, however, is not something you have to do immediately and can be put off until you figure out how to handle the overage.

[velveeta]

i have too much to say about peeps who need more alts then they can ever play, so i will just say that i, for one, see no downside to this action.
those who pay to play on the live shards are limited to just 7 alts, why not blight?
you can only play one alt at a time, especially these days, anyway......

freeing up server space can only be a good thing.....

[Sigi]

Listen to your Queen!

[Guaran]

...
While I understand the need to conserve resources, I can honestly say that all I see this being is a gimmick to squeeze more money out of people.

I think this is solely being done to incentivize players who have 5, 6, 7 + copies of the same character on blight to clean it up a bit. It's just an unecessary load on the testing shard.

This way, the player decides which toon to keep or delete, instead of a simple summary decision on Vitriums part to delete all but one copy of a character on blight. That would incur alot more wrath.

[Amarie Ancalimon]

I thought it might be helpful to ask for some details on why this change is coming up now. Why not wait 6 months or why didn't it happen 6 months ago. Here's what was said:

"This has been building for some time now. We've noticed that overall Blight performance has dropped and DB queries have been taking longer than normal. The hardware on Blight is less than a regular shard, and it also runs super duty by also containing the development shard DB, delta testing DB, backup of order/chaos for testing DB, etc. Overall, those extra DB don't cause a lot of load because there's minimal activity, so it's usually not an issue. What really marked the tipping point was a whole day spent last week trying to get the development shard back online. At startup, the development shard kept timing out and I couldn't figure out what was happening. Turns out, the DB was just returning startup results slower than normal and we reached a point where it was causing problems. We've made some adjustments, but we're really running a lot more on that database server than it was designed to handle. We don't need to make any drastic changes - but we do need to set a path to more reasonable amounts of data being stored and managed on that server. The character counts on that shard are quite high for some accounts and it's hard to believe that someone is playing 20 or 30 characters on Blight alone. By making Blight slots part of the total character count, this sets things in a direction to slim down Blight - and make sure there's enough computing resources so the development shard runs smoothly."

I hope this provides a bit more technical information for those who know about computers and software. I know the reason wasn't about trying to get more money from players and if I was wondering, other people must be wondering too.

Amarië

[aine]

Thank you, Amarie. I was curious, too.

Interestingly, the typical count (of visible players) on blight on any given day was under 12 prior to the Vista patch being placed there. After the patch, our numbers increased dramatically. There are fewer now, but I had predicted that they would diminish farther than they have once the patch went live...not sure why some stayed on blight. Must be our sparkling personalities!

[CottenCandy]

I totally understand why your doing this, But i think it would of be a better to Ask us first to downsize our characters instead of putting the restriction up right away. And then if we Still were not downsizing i would of sent them a personal email (for the ones that are just stubborn lol). then Third Strike if it's still not cleaned up then i would of put the restrictions into place. I know i have to many characters Most of them are just mules cuz i'm a pack rat lol. and Even though i'm never going back to live to play i still can't bring myself to delete my orginials. (what if some day we had to do a server Wipe on Blight, and i went and deleted all my characters i wouldn't be able to have CC anymore). *just an example*..... Like i said i'm a pack rat and i'm addicted to Hatchies cuz there just so darn cute :P Also i was going to clean up my characters on live and just leave my main 2 but i can't log in to boot them out of the guild so i can delete them (stuck on looking up character)......

Ok Getting Way off tract sorry about that lol But i do think you guys could of done the 3 strikes your out rule.. At least to give us a fair chance

CC

[Sigi]

I don't get the 3 strikes out bit.
You don't have to delete any characters. If you're over the limit you can't make new ones. That's all.

[awdz]

I thinks she means the progressive approach of asking first, then sending email request, then warning it will change, then changing it rather than just implementing the change.

[Sigi]

I thinks she means the progressive approach of asking first, then sending email request, then warning it will change, then changing it rather than just implementing the change.

Asking something like
"please, if you have more chars than the 7 per account (or sub or whatever the correct word is) don't make more cause the DB can't take it"
then the same per email
Then ok, now it's going to be definite, you won't be able to make more.
It's definite now.

Something like that?
I don't know, I'm probably insensitive but I really don't see the problem (which I would see if there would be deleting the extra chars, what to do with the stuff they have, being a pack rat myself).
What would you wanted with a warning? Quickly make some extra chars? (which would totally go against the purpose of this measurement)

[Kadiya]

I think that some are misunderstanding what we, those who do have an issue with this, are saying.

From reading the other posts, we do not have an issue with the downsizing, in general. What we do have an issue with is the time frame of which was given for this action. Why you may ask yourself? For me, if I want to make a new character I am limited to one of three choices: don't make it; pay for more character slots; or deleted a current character.

I really can't afford paying more money each month, so more slots are out (I already have two subs - $30/month is plenty in my mind). Don't make it - now this goes against how I like to play this game. Being as this is my entertainment, I should be able to play it however I see fit. And if I want a new hatchie every time I get bored with the current one, so be it. The only choice I have is to delete some characters, and this makes me a bit sad. Who would you delete: your very first character that made you fall in love with this game? Or your first dragon that you use for everything and is your main? The new adult that you have spend hours getting ready RoP? The level 80 dragon that you are really excited to see become an ancient? The new hatchie who is just waiting on Skalkaar for the chance to explore? I have sentimental value invested in each of these characters, but if I really want to play how I want to play, one of them will have to be deleted.

I currently have 14 characters that I play - and yes, I play them all on a weekly basis. Every one of my alts means something to me. I try different ways of doing things, I learn more about something. I apply the knowledge that I have gained over the years to these new characters. It is how I enjoy this game.

I would really love to be able to only play the characters I have now. But as someone who only plays dragons, I am unable to experience this game from beginning again if I do not make a new character. Those who only play bipeds might never understand how that changes how one plays.

I have already downsized to do my part, and I'm sad that I had to choose who had to say and who had to go. I just wanted to share my perspective in more detail so that others would understand and not think that I’m being difficult.

[Luthen]

One would think if there was a dissent the company would attempt to address it instead of quash all opposing opinion. Despite the fact that the decision to make this change was made long before this 'discussion' thread ever was, there is still absolutely no reason for there to be such a penalty on players who love to create new characters and who love alts and who simply don't have the cash to afford so many subscriptions or the outrageously-priced character expansion slots.

I am in agreement with Kadiya that this is not about downsizing or being locked out of existing characters. It is about being locked out of doing what we as paying players of this game enjoy doing in our own way. I do not appreciate the idea of being locked out of creating new characters when I am playing on what is a testing shard, where the community is so small to begin with, the hardware is old and bugs are many. Why should I have to pay more money each month to be able to create more characters on a test server?

I play dragons. I do not play bipeds and multiclassing has never been an interest of mine. There is only so much money I can afford to spend on this game each month, and it is getting more and more restrictive and more and more expensive for me to do what I want to do here.

[Silverblaze]

First, I'd like to point out that the shard is for testing.

In my opinion and as far as I know only my opinion, take it with a grain, a bag, or a truck of salt...or ignore it...but its still my thoughts and feelings. I'm going to express them.

First Blight being a test server is for testing. One who does not test, should not be there. Those who are there and do not test must still suffer the consequences of playing on said test server. Including but not limited to restarts, bugs, roll backs, and so on.

Once upon a time someone explianed that the Blightie's are brave souls. That they can have their characters reverted to level 1, lost, or worse for the purposes of testing and have little to no recourse, such being hte periul of playing on a test server.

That may not be the same or the fact of the matter anymore, but once upon a time, it is my understanding that it was similar to what I described.

"having unlimited characters must be awful nice for storage" (I used to think) etc.

I'm rather pleased that they count towards the permanent total. Multiple copies of one toon on the same shard seems redundant and can't be good for much.

I must also assert, in my opinion mind you, just mine: that complaining about reasonable limits will gain nothing, might be good to vent though I suppose.

To those who only play dragons or bipeds....you are missing out on a lot of the game. Your opinions shall be skewed when thinking of game balance and fairness if you never understand the true strengths and weaknessess of the other half...that's for another post, but something good to think about.

Long story short, it truly isn't a big deal for most...for those it effects quite drastically (I really don't think it does, but that's not my call to make)...one must remember a business must balance keeping as many people happy as possible, but maintain certain profit margins and limits/rules for players.

Business 101: I guess, pretty self explanatory. I don't think I needed to explain it, but some people don't realize simple things due to being blinded by dissapoinment and so on. I agree to the right to express ones opinions and he right to complain and so on. I just don't feel that it helps in most cases.

As always I maintain my right to express myself, but I realize i may upset some people. That said, don't hold my opinions against my guild, friends, or anyone else. I also apologize for undue stress or irritation caused by my post.

The disclaimer I keep using is due to people complaining about my caustic posts. I apologize for walls of text due to my disclaimers. Sorry to all I offend as always.

[Steelclaw]

I think the subtext of the message is that you can get unlimited Blight characters back if you purchase new hardware to run Blight on.