Give players an option to disable retirement function

Silvarien

Well, as most of us on Achaea are adults, sometimes some of us play the game while heavily intoxicated or drugged up. From my understanding, retirement is not reversible, especially if you create a novice and pump him or her full of arties. For those of us who wake up in the morning with a formerly full bottle of Jack Daniel's lying empty near the computer, well, that's quite the hangover to wake up to. It might sound stupid or inappropriate, but most stupid and inappropriate behavior in the game can be undone, and with something like retirement I think it would be nice if it could be disabled.

I know retirement was greeted very positively, but there are those of us that never want to retire our characters. I am definitely one of those people. The option remaining there, for us, is disconcerting. If there was an option to disable it, I think there would be people who would welcome that.

Thank you for reading my idea.

Valkyn

There's a 24 hour period before you have to confirm it. 

Aegoth

This is why it takes 24-48 hours for retirement to be approved

Silvarien

Valkyn said:

There's a 24 hour period before you have to confirm it. 

@Valkyn : well, now I feel dumb. Sorry for clogging up the forum.

Szanthax

and somtimes it gets denies!

Aerek

Out of curiosity, what is the criteria to be denied a character retirement?

"Apologies, we in the Garden find your character too awesome to allow to retire, and cannot take the risk that you would run off to Aetolia and waste that potential."

"Apologies, but you've played this game since like 1998, and there's no way I'm going to crawl back through 20 years of credit receipts. Just switch cities or something."

"Apologies, your org Patron has reported you've fucked the place up too bad to allow you an easy way out; time to lie in the bed that you've made, sucker."

Kayeil

This just brought up the question... what if we get hacked and said hacker tries to retire your character, and does so succesfully? Do the admins keep a history of everything you had if you can prove you were hacked and want everything back?

Ahmet

Kayeil said:

This just brought up the question... what if we get hacked and said hacker tries to retire your character, and does so succesfully? Do the admins keep a history of everything you had if you can prove you were hacked and want everything back?

I'd assume the character still exists, is just inaccessible, just in case, but that's just an assumption.

Antonius

Kayeil said:

This just brought up the question... what if we get hacked and said hacker tries to retire your character, and does so succesfully? Do the admins keep a history of everything you had if you can prove you were hacked and want everything back?

They'd need access to both your Achaean character and the e-mail address that the character is registered under, from my understanding of the process. If you're using the same password for both you really shouldn't be (to help protect you against precisely this kind of thing). That said, as far as I know they know what IP you're logged in from on any given session, and they might have records of IP addresses you've connected from in the past. A request to retire a character from an IP address you've never logged in on before might be viewed as suspicious (if they have/check that data).

On the actual topic of the thread: How about just not playing while intoxicated or at least accepting the consequences of whatever damage you choose to do to your character(s) while doing so? If you're getting drunk then you are presumably an adult (or considered one in whatever country you live in) so you should be capable of making good choices, or at least accepting that you only have yourself to blame for bad ones.

Kayeil

Antonius said:

Kayeil said:

This just brought up the question... what if we get hacked and said hacker tries to retire your character, and does so succesfully? Do the admins keep a history of everything you had if you can prove you were hacked and want everything back?

They'd need access to both your Achaean character and the e-mail address that the character is registered under, from my understanding of the process. If you're using the same password for both you really shouldn't be (to help protect you against precisely this kind of thing). That said, as far as I know they know what IP you're logged in from on any given session, and they might have records of IP addresses you've connected from in the past. A request to retire a character from an IP address you've never logged in on before might be viewed as suspicious (if they have/check that data).

On the actual topic of the thread: How about just not playing while intoxicated or at least accepting the consequences of whatever damage you choose to do to your character(s) while doing so? If you're getting drunk then you are presumably an adult (or considered one in whatever country you live in) so you should be capable of making good choices, or at least accepting that you only have yourself to blame for bad ones.

Oh? Does Achaea have you confirm you changed e-mails if you change it in the registration thing? That's good though. Hasn't happened to me, but I've heard in the past about hackers, and have played other games that had them before. Would royally suck to see that happen to someone here.

And yeah, I think on the topic it was explained that you have to confirm it 24 hours later. Of course if you're on drugs or totally wasted that long... you probably have bigger problems on your hands than an unintentional retirement. lol

Antonius

It's been a while since I changed the registration e-mail, but I think you have to click a confirmation link from an e-mail, so a hacker couldn't just change the registered e-mail address to kick off a retirement (though even if they could that would also hopefully be viewed as a red flag).

Achaea doesn't really have the playerbase or out of game markets to make hacking accounts worthwhile (outside of just causing issues for the sake of it). Games like World of Warcraft have problems with accounts being hacked because there's a (huge) market for in-game currency being sold for RL cash and because the number of accounts/players numbers in the millions, not thousands.

Synbios

I imagine that these can still be considered as special cases.

Ahmet

Antonius said:

It's been a while since I changed the registration e-mail, but I think you have to click a confirmation link from an e-mail, so a hacker couldn't just change the registered e-mail address to kick off a retirement (though even if they could that would also hopefully be viewed as a red flag).

Achaea doesn't really have the playerbase or out of game markets to make hacking accounts worthwhile (outside of just causing issues for the sake of it). Games like World of Warcraft have problems with accounts being hacked because there's a (huge) market for in-game currency being sold for RL cash and because the number of accounts/players numbers in the millions, not thousands.

Plus I'm quite sure it's easier for Tecton and Crew to track down goods stolen by hackers/recover accounts than it is for the Blizzard team.

Dortheron

I've always wondered since it came out if someone who applied and got approved for Celani could retire their character to another IRE game? I think it would depend on how Celani and logging in works, and might get denied in any case.

Szanthax

Dortheron said:

I've always wondered since it came out if someone who applied and got approved for Celani could retire their character to another IRE game? I think it would depend on how Celani and logging in works, and might get denied in any case.

I like this idea because then you really get the commitment out of they prospective person

Dortheron

Szanthax said:

Dortheron said:

I've always wondered since it came out if someone who applied and got approved for Celani could retire their character to another IRE game? I think it would depend on how Celani and logging in works, and might get denied in any case.

I like this idea because then you really get the commitment out of they prospective person

Well I remember hearing that someone who became Celani could back as a player if it didn't work out, as long as they didn't see anything too important (like Rapture source code). So while you could become a player again if it didn't work out, you couldn't play your retired character again obviously

Szanthax

Exactly. And if you retired you better work hard because other wise you'd have to go play... One of those other games..

Antonius

There's nothing stopping Achaean Gods and coders from having characters on the other IRE games. Makarios is active on, I think, Imperian? Or was in the past. I see no reason to prevent them from cashing in their investment on a character they can no longer use because they accepted a God role or coder position and using it on another IRE game if they want to.

Szanthax

I imagine it's been done. Glad retirement is a newer thing...

Kayeil

Oh that's a good idea! After a certain period if it's working out and they want to stay on as Celani they should be allowed to retire and have the option to use those credits on another IRE game.

Silvarien

Deleted

Szanthax

I'll counter the argument and say you'd have to make that drunken mistake twice. And log in on your email, twice. I've. Retired a char. I've bought...a lot of drunken credits.I can't imagine retirement drunk. It's a lot of work. Quit classes, sure, bought thousands of dollars worth of fake currency, yeah.. but retirement takes a lot..

Szanthax

And @Tecton @Sarapis can vouch for this.. maybe not the drunkenness but everything else

Silvarien

I just want the option for a player to disable it in the style of a six-foot-burial. Would probably take three keystrokes for a coder of Tecton's ability, and I think it would bring a lot of people relief.

Lucianus

Process of retiring my characters took me a whole week. Unless you plan on being drunk for several days straight. There's no way you can accidentally retire your character. You even have to go on your email to confirm the retirement of your character twice. Don't worry. It's already drunk-proof as is. Alcoholism proof or drug-induced haze proof... that's a life problem games can't ever solve.

Aereidhna

Silvarien said:

I just want the option for a player to disable it in the style of a six-foot-burial. Would probably take three keystrokes for a coder of Tecton's ability, and I think it would bring a lot of people relief.

In what way would it bring relief? I've only seen one person do it in a way that struck me as incredibly impulsive (mostly because they flip-flopped on it several times), and as has been stated, it's not something that happens quickly enough to be done just because your decision-making is impaired.

To me, removing the option -entirely- seems like something people'd be more likely to regret later.

Szanthax

Yeah... Maybe in another 10 years and 30k credits I'll decide I want to quit

Jeslyn

I retired my character and felt that the process could not be done by "mistake" or impulse. Unless you're drunk like 24-7, there is a long time period where you can change your mind. The only thing I'd like to see done is the availability to lengthen the time when a new character is able to get credits. I found a month was too short to be able to determine whether you like a character/game. I don't see that changing anytime soon, but it would be nice.

Dortheron

Aereidhna said:

Silvarien said:

I just want the option for a player to disable it in the style of a six-foot-burial. Would probably take three keystrokes for a coder of Tecton's ability, and I think it would bring a lot of people relief.

In what way would it bring relief? I've only seen one person do it in a way that struck me as incredibly impulsive (mostly because they flip-flopped on it several times), and as has been stated, it's not something that happens quickly enough to be done just because your decision-making is impaired.

To me, removing the option -entirely- seems like something people'd be more likely to regret later.

Agreed. I remember one of the Divine saying that they purposely made it a drawn-out process not only to prevent the drunken ragequit, but also because people are indecisive and what they think they want at first they change their minds about.

Qwyn

Dortheron said:

I've always wondered since it came out if someone who applied and got approved for Celani could retire their character to another IRE game? I think it would depend on how Celani and logging in works, and might get denied in any case.

You can. I know someone who has done it.

Dortheron

Qwyn said:

Dortheron said:

I've always wondered since it came out if someone who applied and got approved for Celani could retire their character to another IRE game? I think it would depend on how Celani and logging in works, and might get denied in any case.

You can. I know someone who has done it.

Sweet. So when I ascend and become a Celani (like I'd ever apply), I can go learn how to suck at combat and be a total scrub all over again at a different IRE mud