should SE delete characters that were never used

[Voltyblast]

Should SE delete characters that were never used? No, unless they're bots (which there are many and untouched). Someone might return and give it a try again, only to find out that their character is long gone. Maybe under a certain level, but why that when I can still log into my old mmorpgs like Rift and Aion and still play my old character there? And no they're not capped, they're fairly low level and they're still there, waiting for me when I want to give it a try again. Infact I still have my cleric from when Aion became f2p!

But name deletion would be ok or else it'll end up like WoW where almost any name is taken, even the most weird ones.

[Kosmos992k]

To clarify, my main reason for wanting this is to prune data usage and increase server look up time, reducing server load and freeing up resources.

LOLOLOL! The impact of pruning names from the character list would be minor at very most. Seriously, that's a really big stretch to justify deleting characters to recycle names for you.

[Imoen]

Sorry Titor, you have no way of knowing if that actually would impact anything at all, and like Kosmos I believe it would be minimal at best. Besides the game needing to see if a character name is taken or if a character name is online/offline on a flist/fclist/linkshelllist, I can't think of any other reason it would need to ping a character that is currently inactive, since that is the argument, that they are inactive. I suspect the performance impact would be negligible.

Houses are a completely different problem, since, on many servers there are not enough plots available to serve the population. I wouldn't lump that in with this, since it really doesn't correlate.

I have yet to see a valid reason to delete characters, the only single, somewhat valid complaint I see here is names being taken, and there are better ways of handling that. If, that is truly an issue. (Which I really don't think it is, although I will admit that is more of a personal opinion.)

[Titor]

It is not about the name taking up space. That character has an inventory, no? That character has a race, character appearance data, achievement data, level data, armory data, likely a lot of other data that would get added into databases as it is created, whether or not it is subsequently used. As I said earlier (Which I really do not feel like anyone is reading or even trying to understand my point of view anyway), unless SE has a place where unused characters are archived onto another database and pulled to be active as needed (I do not think they do this, I think WoW does though), it is using up server space in resources.

I am not going to go into detail how most databases work (inb4 someone does the snarky reply of 'well do you work for SE?', no, I do not, but I understand how data storage works. I am quite sure that SE is using a database that works but currently known techniques. If they have a new, revolutionary data storage system that does not take longer to look something up the more data that is being added they really gotta get out of videogames and start marketing that because it would be an insane moneymaker), but logically it takes less time to find the data of a specific character from a pool of 50 characters than it does for a pool of 2000 characters (feel free to look up query response benchmarks for database size, my given examples are exceedingly low, they are dealing with much much bigger data). If a large percentage of characters are not being used, that is an unnecessarily large database increase and overhead for information lookup that could be quite easily pruned out without much repercussion.

If even just 5% of characters (under level 10 and inactive for months) got deleted, from very large databases that could actually speed up query times by quite a bit...

For me, I got the name I want for my main, I really do not care. For everyone screaming for other people to come up with something more original... why could the person who 'lost' their name for being inactive and not playing a less than level 10 character in months not just come up with a new name? I am just sure they could be original too.

(It is against the ToS in general to have a character name that is copyright so these people could probably be reported and have their names changed anyway)

3.5 Naming Right. You may not use any name or other intellectual property belonging to Square Enix or any other third party in your use of the Game (for example, naming a character after a celebrity, company, product, or superhero).

So I really do not think this argument is just about people trying to name their characters copyright things.

[Imoen]

snip

Sooo the average player would notice ... what exactly? I don't know about you but everything is VERY snappy for me even when I was on Hyperion.

Like I said previously, if Square decides they need to prune, let them decide. I however personally, can not sit here and listen to players requesting a feature, dramatic as auto-deleting characters, based on partial knowledge or because they didn't get their name, without speaking up. My point being, if it doesn't need to be done, it shouldn't be done. It should be Square telling us they need to prune if they need to, not players rallying to implement it, not knowing if it needs to be done or not.

As far as the "Naming Right" thing is concerned. People that are generally running into this issue are violating that... maybe not all, but most.

Also--- below in bold, the Original Post.

someone created a character with the name i want. it was created long ago but never played. i can never use that name until that person deletes that character. do you think SE should remove characters like that?

[Kosmos992k]

It is not about the name taking up space. That character has an inventory, no? That character has a race, character appearance data, achievement data, level data, armory data, likely a lot of other data that would get added into databases as it is created, whether or not it is subsequently used.

I'm an Oracle developer and DBA. There are really not very many ways that this can work. In the most likely scenario (and based on dev/peoducer comments), the database space used by character records is a very small amount of the total database storage requirement. Only characters that are logged in are loaded to an active game server and only characters logged in are continually backed up - which is the only real limitation affected by more characters. But, only if they are logged in.

Oh, and by the way, this database (like any MKORPG) is a transactional monster. Characters not logged in have almost zero impact on the tranactions in the database, and pruning a few thousand characters from a table of perhaps 100,000 character records (remember everything is per world) will literally have no impact on the database performance.

Inactive characters are still held within the character database, but since they are not logged in, they have almost no impact on server capacity or performance. This is such a spurious argument, I really wish you'd find another angle.

[LalafellDown]

I do agree with the post SE should put a limit on all characters. If you haven't logged in in 45 days your character will be deleted permanently. Think of all the money you could be making SE.

[Niwashi]

Going by the way it was described in the OP, if we really are talking about characters that were created but never played, that might eventually be ok, if they stay in that never-played status for something like a year or more. But once somebody has played through the level 1 tutorial quest and entered the shared game world, that character (and their name) should be permanently safe from automatic deletion. I don't agree with having any further level requirements on that.


I, myself, have alts in both situations, one that I've never played, and a couple that have started the game, joined an FC, and occasionally log in and play around with outfits or do a little casual role-playing, but have never progressed past level 1. I'd be upset to lose the later two that I do at least occasionally play just because I hadn't done so for a while. On the other hand, if they took the name Tataki Taki away from the other alt whom I've never logged in with (not even that initial starting quest), I wouldn't care too much.

[WinterLuna]

I have a level 1 character with a name that I am holding.

There are legitimate reasons someone will have a name on a low level character and have not logged in with that character.

Then simply log in with it. It's not hard if you really want the name. Also, it's kind of hypocritical to be against deleting characters for names for the very reason that you're holding a name..

I had the same character name for a long time but had to change it when I moved servers. The name is taken by a level 14 archer (I just checked again right now, the character hasn't budged levels in around 7 months).

I think it would be completely fair that SE delete characters under a certain level or playtime if they haven't logged in for a year. The chance of them returning is low and even if they did, I doubt they're going to miss a level 14 character with barely any gear. It would also help clear out some of the over populated servers.

[worldofneil]

I do agree with the post SE should put a limit on all characters. If you haven't logged in in 45 days your character will be deleted permanently. Think of all the money you could be making SE.

I think it's more likely to be the other way around. I have many friends who only play occasionally (like have breaks up to 6 months at a time). Right now SE gets occasional subscriptions from them. If they were to delete the characters there's no reason for them to ever come back. People would resent a game that forced them to pay until the end of time just to stop losing their character and everything they achieved and that sort of resentment just pushed people away and they'd never return (because if even a year later they fancied playing again, there's no incentive if everything you worked for has gone).

Especially since there's no technical reason to delete them. SE hopes people will come back, that's never going to happen if who they were is gone, no matter what level they were.