Shattered Kingdoms

Thank you for your comments, ardith and suzie 9 fingers, however illogical and straw-man burning your comments were. I note that several people have agreed with portions or all of my alternative suggestion but that you may have been too busy building your straw man for burning that you didn't notice my alternative suggestion.

I offered a compromise solution (in which several people have shown interest), so this "posting to be contrary and on a high horse" business is neither honest nor supported by the facts in this thread. I personally don't like my compromise solution but I like it a lot better than what Dulrik has suggested. Isn't that what compromise is about? Taking some offer you do not like and turning it into something less disagreeable so both parties get something out of the bargain?

What I've seen in this thread:

People like the idea of protecting against rage deletion.
Amat5 is far too low a setting for insta-delete; App5 or Jman5 is far more appropriate.
Several months waiting for a retired char to self-delete is too long; a much briefer time-span is preferred.
Those who go into retirement get stripped of unique gear, money, political affiliations, leadership positions.

I have offered a 48-hour cool-down to the rage-deleter, where he or she can choose against deleting after the cool-down expires, but at the cost of unique items and spell-ups and political affiliations and leadership and the like (note: all religious chars would remain religiously attached but not have F3). In that offer, I have given a 3-day window after the cool-down to decide. A rage-deleted char will exist for a total of 5 days (120 hours) after rage-deletion in order to allow the rage-deleter the opportunity for a change of mind.

If we're looking at fixing rage deletion, I believe I have given a very generous counter-offer tied specifically to that ends, especially when noting my position on the matter.

P40, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish and all, but Apelila was one of the best rage deletes of all time.

Uh, I would not support having it enabled up until you are able to turn to veteran. The last level I could see delete working at is apprentice 5.

Also, I am not sure where I built a straw man argument against you. I called you a whiny douchebag, because you have a habit of rolling 100 characters you claim you are dissatisfied with. I am quite unclear how this prevents you from doing what you currently do though.

There's no need to shorten the window of deletion time to 5 days or whatever. After the character has been stripped of all of their stuff that is limited, it really doesn't matter how long they stew around in "retirement". I see no problem with letting characters sit in inactivity for several months. No idea why such a quick cut off time is necessary. Nobody would be forcing you to play a retired character. It'd just be there if you wanted to come back to it, and I think sometimes people need a great deal of cool down time to re-organize themselves, especially those that get too involved in in-game politics.

I would say they would retire their character, everything stripped and forced out of all associations, then after 48hrs if they log on with the char then they can use delete if they wish, otherwise have it be automatically deleted by the system as normal.

strip all items, rest of the ideas are there. People retiring characters can outfit themselves quick enough.

Cool.

Cool.

I would go as far as Novice(5) but no higher than that. I intend to continue to push the theme that low level characters are playable and can be important. I still believe that Amature(5) is the appropriate cut-off though. Why? Because you have been always been required to have a description and personality for your character by Novice. And once you do so, it is not appropriate to delete and re-create a character using the same name.

I will reiterate what other people have said: "What's the point of deletion?" My solution already takes care of any concerns I have about the character sticking around in the database. If you never log them in again, I am fine. If you never log them in again, why do you care whether there is a data remnant on the server? If you do log them in again, I guess you should actually be thankful at that point.

Make the cut off higher, I will roll a character just to test out some skills and spells and then abandon it as many people do, do you really want 100 characters sitting on the shelf because they were just test characters?

Yeah, it isn't really until you hit j-man to vet before you truly get a handle on whether or not you will like your race/align/class combo.

It's become pretty clear to me over the time I've been playing here that as a matter of game design Dulrik cares about balance and mechanics but that as the dungeon master of SK he cares most about encouraging long-lived, meaningful characters and RP. I don't know why some people expect him to reverse course and cater to people who want changes that assist them more with the out of character choices you make as a player building a char rather than the in-character immersion.

I love the idea of removing deletion as an option above level 5. I think it's a considerate nod to people's needs as players to add retirement as defined in the OP. In the rare cases that a delete/delete is warranted (Ganeda comes to mind, spidermonkey's construct char that got owned by an exorcism ritual) I'd hope that the imm staff would oblige thoughtful requests.