Active/Inactive Character Slots

[Traderjill]

It seems as if all char slots were made inactive and players have to individually activate toons to take up 1 of their available 8 slots.

Couple questions:

1. Why didn't you guys just make them all Active by default?
2. If people go through the trouble of activating all slots on all toons (paid and/or froob) are they then going to have to do it again when the server migration takes place?
3. Is there any penalty/negative effect if you simply don't bother to activate a toon at this point? In other words, is not activating a toon/char slot going to somehow put me at a disadvantage for the server migration. (For example, someone in TS today suggested that maybe active toons might get name priority over inactive toons.. that type of thing)

Didn't see this covered off anyplace though its possible I missed it.

[aramsunat]

I was about to make the same thread. Reply plz!

[Ilaliya]

It seems as if all char slots were made inactive and players have to individually activate toons to take up 1 of their available 8 slots.

Yes, this patch had a lot of "server migration staging stuff." Most noticeably for you guys, it changed the backend code so we can offer more character slots in the future. Previously it was hardcoded to 8. Now it's technically infinite, but obviously we'll still cap it. But your account will have to be able to accommodate several dims worth of characters. But you'll only be able to have so many active at a time.

Couple questions:

1. Why didn't you guys just make them all Active by default?

It's the same for you guys. You just log them in as normal. But it's the way the system has to work, because this is setup for the migration. When the migration comes, you might have 16 characters and then they'll all need to be flagged as inactive by default.

Also, you can get an idea of how it's going to work... except you'll have a combined number of inactive characters from all dimensions being merged. And yes, some people still have characters from dimensions which have been gone for along time (such as German players) and we'll put those on the list too.

2. If people go through the trouble of activating all slots on all toons (paid and/or froob) are they then going to have to do it again when the server migration takes place?

I don't see how it's trouble. When you login an inactive character, it automatically becomes marked as active (assuming you have a free active slot). If you don't log in a given character between now in the merge, it's not going to matter.

3. Is there any penalty/negative effect if you simply don't bother to activate a toon at this point? In other words, is not activating a toon/char slot going to somehow put me at a disadvantage for the server migration. (For example, someone in TS today suggested that maybe active toons might get name priority over inactive toons.. that type of thing)

No, there will be no penalty or boon. Since nobody should be running around today with more than 8 active characters per dimension

[orochi3]

So why is it not possible to have more then 8 active characters at the same time?
Is it a technical/coding issue? Or maybe a want-more-pay-more issue? Or a server cant handle the load issue?

[Traderjill]

I don't see how it's trouble. When you login an inactive character, it automatically becomes marked as active (assuming you have a free active slot). If you don't log in a given character between now in the merge, it's not going to matter.



No, there will be no penalty or boon. Since nobody should be running around today with more than 8 active characters per dimension

Well it is trouble if you have to log them in because there's a penalty Not knowing how this whole thing worked is what prompted my post.

Thank you for the clarification. Sounds like basically I don't have to worry about going through the trouble of logging in toons I don't currently need to log in to just for the point of flagging them as active.. that was my main concern.

[Ilaliya]

So why is it not possible to have more then 8 active characters at the same time?

You will be able to after the server migration. But if we did it now, would kind of defeat the purpose because we always have to account for the case of a player having max characters on every dim (which is the reason we had to do this in the first place).

[Ilaliya]

Thank you for the clarification. Sounds like basically I don't have to worry about going through the trouble of logging in toons I don't currently need to log in to just for the point of flagging them as active.. that was my main concern.

Yep! It was a good question.

[Ocene]

Concerning server merger, I'm more worried about cities..what's the decision there?

[orochi3]

thanks for clearing that up, but i do have one more question.

Does this mean everyone will eventually have acces to 16 character slots? or only the people who already have full double dim accounts?

[Awikun]

/runs away to the other dimension to roll full account of alts

[Macrosun]

/runs away to the other dimension to roll full account of alts

Please don't. It will only slow down the transfers and won't help you one bit.

[Ilaliya]

thanks for clearing that up, but i do have one more question.

Does this mean everyone will eventually have acces to 16 character slots? or only the people who already have full double dim accounts?

This is why we have active/inactive.

There is no benefit to have more characters than someone else going into the server migration. It just means you will have more inactive characters.

[Gorathon]

Have neither logged nor read the patch notes, so I might be talking out of my ear, but it sounds like Ao is moving away from "accounts" and toward "number of active toons." It sounds like I can have several toons active (even ones from formerly-different accounts and dims); when those active slots are full I have to pay more each month to have more active slots. If I'm right, I think that's a pretty clever way to do it.

[Hopeasaukko]

Is there a possibility to make activated slot into inactive? For example if you activated one slot by accident but wanted to activate another slot instead. My guess is that only way to do it would be either deleting character or paying for new slot..

One possible reason why someone might want to make active slot into inactive is getting creds & other valuable things out of that character but without wanting to delete character itself (and thus deleting NoDrops during process).

Before last patch we actually didn't even have to worry about having active or inactive characters.. and to tell the truth, it took few hours after patch before I decided to log few of my characters in and activate them. And only because I wasn't sure would there be some kind of penalty for activating them (or letting them stay inactive).

[Lazy]

/runs away to the other dimension to roll full account of alts

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Dagget]

I suspect the Devs are getting a bit of !@#$% from whomever monitors the player dB today, due to many people's compulsion to log all chars on all accounts to 'activate' every char, notwithstanding reassurances that all is ok if they are left inactive for now.

[Tralauri]

I suspect the Devs are getting a bit of !@#$% from whomever monitors the player dB today, due to many people's compulsion to log all chars on all accounts to 'activate' every char, notwithstanding reassurances that all is ok if they are left inactive for now.

The problem is that there's no real explanation of what inactive means when you log in. If I didnt come to this thread and read Jill's questions I would have had no idea that it's perfectly ok to not log every toon.

[Liwa]

How do I make an "Active" toon back to "Inactive"?

Will we be able to Activate my buffing toons and/or my toons held at a specific level to help out guildmates like my Foreman's, TotW, S7, etc. toons ONLY when I need them and De-Activate them the rest of the time? Then I just need to keep one or two character slots open for cycling these "occasional use" toons Active and then back to In-active. This would free up more slots for leveling/playing toons.

Will there be a limit to how many In-active toons we keep post server migration?

Will we be able to place a toon we are bored with or "finished" with into Inactive status to make space for rolling a new toon rather than having to delete a toon to make space?

Or, is it intended that once we Activate a toon after migration to the new server it is permanent?

Kinnik

[Gatester]

So why is it not possible to have more then 8 active characters at the same time?
Is it a technical/coding issue? Or maybe a want-more-pay-more issue? Or a server cant handle the load issue?

I was thinking this at first, and then I thought how many people would end up maxing out their account slots and then end up with 28 characters with a 14 character limit, and of course complain vigorously that it was somehow FC's fault. (the number of slots simply being for example and not the actual number)

Best to hold off or people would just fill them up before they can fill them with their "alts".


I have not tested it myself, however, if a character is left inactive on an account which has 8 characters already, could you not create new characters while leaving the inactive ones as they are?

[Punchbuggy]

Being a multiple-account user I noticed a while back that I had the option for merging all of my accounts together under one FC ID to rule them all. Are there plans on merging our accounts along with the servers?

I'm curious as I don't see the reason for Active/inactive being shown if it doesn't have any real effect on the merge. I can see its use as a metric to help determine how accounts are played, but I don't see why it's user-visible. I expect a lot of the names that exist on both dims are probably reused by the same individual; if this is true wouldn't a notification in-game and survey under FC ID help determine which toons are considered "main" by their players? As for those names used by different people, what sort of tie-breaker are you guys planning to use? Birth, played, activity?

Last question(s), looking forward what effect will active/inactive toons have in post-merge play? Does this mean we will be able to use the same login to play multiple toons? What will be the "active" period, is it 30 days or user's choice? I can't see it being user's choice as it would be easy to circumvent. If there are any plans to merge accounts, will billing be done per active slots, and of course effect on Froobs?

I'm probably reading too much into this, but merging logins does seem to be a logical next step from "active" slots.