A new idea for locking a character, so that if a malicious person gains access to your account, they can't delete your characters (and their Titles, Hall of Monuments etc):
You have the option to make a character "Locked" (permanently undeletable)
...but in order to do this, you have to buy a new character slot.
In doing this (this method is an attempt to resolve problems with previous, similar ideas):
1. You can protect your main characters and their achievements from ever being deleted.
2. You can't run out of unlocked slots - every time you lock one, you get a new unlocked slot.
3. Nobody can lock a character, and later need an unlock (because you can never run out of unlocked slots)
4. A jerk accessing your account cannot fill it up with locked characters.
5. A jerk accessing your account would have to pay real money to lock an existing character, and this would achieve nothing.
6. If you don't think character locks are necessary (your password is invincible!), then you don't have to use the feature, and you don't have to pay anything.
7. A-net makes some money.
Everybody wins, nobody gets hurt. Except that we pay for character locks. I sense the objections already... "you have to pay to lock your character? But I want it free!".
But please, come on - if you REALLY want permanent protection for your main character, isn't it worth a few dollars? Wouldn't you rather have that, than the "free" option we have right now (ie. NO protection)? Me, I'd cough up the money in a nanosecond.
So, would this work? Fire away.
UPDATES
For those who truly cannot buy online, or refuse to:
A possible solution is to:
Give every account one character lock for free
This would be sufficient for most people who only have one main "title-hunter" character. If you wanted more than one, you'd still have a problem. But at least you got something, unlike the Bonus Mission Pack release.
To minimise impact of someone gaining access to your account and using your free lock, and to prevent newbies from locking a character before they really understand the implications,
Locks could be only usable on lvl20 chars who have a number of maxed titles (eg. 1 to 5)...
...or even,
How about: only the character with the most maxed titles can be locked?
Remaining characters could subsequently be locked, but only if a) they have the most maxed titles of the characters left, and b) they have more than x maxed titles (eg. 1 to 5)
This way, even if someone accessed your account, and used your free lock before you did... chances are high that the only character they can lock, is the one you'd have done yourself anyway.
Doing all this would still retain all the original advantages listed above.
R
