Lock items and characters onto your account

Linksys

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Apr 2006

I'm not sure if this idea has been posted yet or not. But I really hate hearing or reading about someone who's account was accessed and all his/her items stolen or deleted. Let's say someone has FoW armor and a large amount of ectos, which took who knows how many hours and gameplay to get. Sure it may feel like work and it's a game, but that's the gamer's choice. And let's say someone somehow access this person's acount and deletes all of that just to be mean. That is not a simple prank. It's malicious and meant to cause frustration and take away the rewards of someone's hours of gameplay. That can cause a lot of emotional effect on the gamer. If a gamer takes his gameplay to such levels where deleting all his characters and items feels like deleting his entire college transcript, sure that may be taking it too far. But to do that to someone in this situation is still absolutely wrong. Even if it's someone in the household who think he/she is "curing" the gamer of his/her addiction, this is not the way to help someone at all.

Anyways my idea helps regular gamers as well. The idea is to permanently lock items and characters to your account.

Let's say you have a character you invested a lot of time and effort into. You've accomplished so much with it. And you get paranoid thinking what if someone accesses your account and deletes that character just to be rude. Well I think it's about time we're able to permanently lock the character, meaning it cannot ever be deleted. Ever. And activating this requires the account password and perhaps a few more text boxes where you click "Yes" for "Are you sure?" and such. If that locked character were to take up space and another character is needed, the gamer can just buy another characer slot. This way, someone else can't go in and delete the character. And there's no way to unlock the character, not even with the password. Otherwise someone other than the owner of the account can just unlock and delete it.

We can call it "securing" a character.

I had the same idea for items, such as armor and weapons. I guess doing so means they will ALWAYS take up space in your inventory, character itself(wearing and holding them), or storage. But again, let it be the gamer's choice. By using the account password to permanently lock/secure some choice items, it means that anyone else who somehow accesses your account cannot in any way trade away, salvage, or delete such items. The items cannot be dropped on the ground in an explorable area.

You can put such items on another character, like one used for more storage. But if that character is deleted, it goes back to your original character's inventory. If it's full, storage. If that's full, it can show a claim box next time you log on, like you see after missions/quests for drops assigned to you that you didn't pick up.

It may seem like a drastic measure, but again, let it be the gamer's choice.

Skuld

Skuld

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Sep 2005

Thousend Tigers Apund Ur Head [Ttgr]

A/

Put stuff in a bag, choose hide bag from merchant.

Dougal Kronik

Dougal Kronik

Forge Runner

Join Date: Aug 2005

Ontario, Canada

Glengarry Fencibles

R/

This again?

Who was it this time that had their account accessed because they didn't put the necessary precautions in?

/not signed

Keep your user ID and password secret and not something simple for your password like your name or anything.

Erudition

Erudition

Academy Page

Join Date: Oct 2006

Q&A section

Unique Warriors [UnWr]

/not signed

As was said above, keep your passwords safe, don't use auto login and be wary of what you download in case of keyloggers. It really isn't that hard.

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

/Not signed

I like the idea but.... if they can get in your account, they can most likely get by any safety system in place. Also if you do a no going back lock, that issue will come up and far more people would be to remove it then to keep it.

If you did a lock and it gives you an "on-screen" password to physically right down, you get in to a ton of game support issues / complications.

Rera

Rera

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2006

I'm all for an optional character lock that can't ever be removed. At some point, when you've spent ### or even #### hours on a single character, there's just no way you're ever going to delete them. There doesn't need to be any support around it. Once a character is locked, it's locked, period.

MegaMouse

MegaMouse

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jan 2006

south mississippi

Warriors Of Melos WOM

E/N

Decent idea but a little extreme. As havingmy account hacked (noone knew my password, and I only surf safe to sites that I know, also my secuity may seem extree to most) A-Net does need to do something on their end. Maybe having a password that you have to input whenever you trade, or something similiar. Not sure though I just keep changing my password every few days now just to be sure. Also I make sure that it is somethig that only i know of.

Mega Mouse

Linksys

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Apr 2006

I understand the attitude of saying just be secure on the internet. But there is the view that there's no such thing as a perfectly safe usage of the internet. And some people may not be good at it. So what. I'd still like this option to be offered.

ducktape

ducktape

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2005

W/R

Agreed, some options need to be available to keep your characters from being deleted if someone gets into your account. I personally feel that if you spend many hours gaining titles and armors and so forth on a character that I would never, ever want to delete them, so I wouldn't mind the fact that after "securing" a character from deletion I could not ever delete them no matter what. Because I wouldn't ever want to delete them, that's the whole idea.

There is no 100% method of protecting your computer or account from intrusions. If there is a 100% method of preventing our treasured character(s) from being deleted, at least we can have peace of mind in that.

freekedoutfish

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2006

E/

I dont meant to sound like im having a go at the idea, but

/so not signed

Peoples accounts get hacked when they download and install 3rd party software which contains hackers code.

So very simply, DONT download and install 3rd party software.

Keep your password and username secure.

Dont give it to anyone.

We dont need this idea of setting an option to make a character non-deletable. If someone hacked your account they could quite easily turn that off.

On the other hand, if characters were perminantly saved to the GWs database and never actually removed incase people want to retrieve them, then the game would suffer some serious problems and they would need to charge us to pay for the ever increasing storage space.

I understand your fear at being hacked, and loosing gear, but at the end of the day..... it wont happen unless your stupid and give away your details or install some messed up software to hack the game.

Series

Banned

Join Date: Aug 2006

Quote:
Originally Posted by ducktape
Agreed, some options need to be available to keep your characters from being deleted if someone gets into your account. I personally feel that if you spend many hours gaining titles and armors and so forth on a character that I would never, ever want to delete them, so I wouldn't mind the fact that after "securing" a character from deletion I could not ever delete them no matter what. Because I wouldn't ever want to delete them, that's the whole idea.

There is no 100% method of protecting your computer or account from intrusions. If there is a 100% method of preventing our treasured character(s) from being deleted, at least we can have peace of mind in that.
Why not just make character locking mean that in order to delete, you must receive an email confirming the deletion? So like... I lock my Necromancer. I decide to delete him one day. I press delete, type in his name, then it says "Please accept the confirmation e-mail". You check your email and accept it and there ya go. Of course it's optional.