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Tango

Remove dragons names from dead scrolls

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A while back any scroll that was left for a certain amount of time, with no activity. would have the names of each dragon removed, this way people couldn't take names forever without commitment to the game. It got removed, presumably to be replaced with something else but we haven't heard anything for a long time.

 

Currently there is no way to get names that have been taken, even if the owner of the scroll has quit dragoncave. This seems pretty unfair as good names are being wasted on dead scrolls, and new players have a hard time getting good names now.

 

The two options:

 

Remove dragons names after a period of inactivity:

 

This was how it was, all dragons names are lost after a certain amount of time. The amount of time would likely be high as people often has real life issues get in the way, but then come back.

 

Name stealing:

 

This was something TJ was working on implementing but we never got any updates on it. After a certain amount of activity you can steal a name from a dragon. This means if nobody wants the name of your dragon, it will still be there even after the inactivity period. So if you come back after the inactivity period, chances are some of your dragons will still have their names. Most if your names are very unique.

 

Issues:

 

- if implemented, should there be a grace period (a warning) or should names be removed straight away for inactive scrolls?

- how long should the inactivity last before your dragons have their names removed?

- Would this mess up too many lineages?

Edited by Tango

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Hmmm.... I'd support if it took 2.5 months of inactivity at minimum, given how much Real Life can interfere with playing.

 

I'd also like to know whether, if this is implemented, people want to give a grace period or remove names right away for older inactive scrolls.

Edited by Dusky_Flareon

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Tbh, would rather have a name wipe of old scrolls who haven't logged in for 1 to 2+ years. These would happen every, 3 years maybe?

My 2 cents

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I mean...in some cases I guess this would be ok. But everyone's case is different.

 

For example, I kind of stopped being on here for like 8 months and I'm just now coming back. And coming back to seeing all my dragon's names removed (hypothetically)? Definitely renaming everything on my scroll would be a major pain so I'd probably not even bother naming them after that.

 

Plus now that I'm back (again) I can get ready to breed my holiday pairs, and I named my dragons certain things so that I wouldn't have to click through each of their profiles to find out who's who. So if I was gone and this thing happened I'd have to sift through my dragons.

 

Edit: As American said, 3 years would be reasonable.

Edited by BlightWyvern

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People often go on hiatus for a variety of reasons. It is very discouraging to come back and find all your dragon names wiped out. I would say it should take at least a year of inactivity before names are automatically wiped. I know some people who came back, found their names gone and just gave up on the game entirely and never played again.

 

If we are talking about the ability to "steal" names from an inactive user, I might support a shorter time, if the names were only removed when someone else wanted to use them. Even then I think a minimum of 3 months of inactivity should be required.

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The problem with this, as I see it, is what happens to the offspring of those dragons whose progeny is on other people's scrolls. You'd break lineages.

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The problem with this, as I see it, is what happens to the offspring of those dragons whose progeny is on other people's scrolls. You'd break lineages.

The lineage isn't really broken, but it is somewhat spoiled by suddenly having nicely named parents become mere codes.

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On the fence right now.

 

Real life got in my way between 2012 and 2015. 3 years. I had a baby at a young age, was taking time off from online and time consuming games, et cetera. I think I only came on 8 months out of the whole 3 years. The last Holiday dragon I obtained was Shadow Walkers in 2011 before 2015 rolled around.

 

I also took a 3 month hiatus from December 2015 to Febuary 2016 because of other issues.

 

Right now I have little to no real life issues that would make me go on hiatus for a long period of time, but real life does and will happen.

 

One good example is ladiefare and Midas Dorkface. Dorkface and his mate lost their names at one point because of inactivity. (Luckily they were recovered, even though ladiefare didn't take them back sotospeak).

 

If something were to be implemented, the only way I'd support it is if the period of time was a very long time. 5+ years would be okay to me. Also, stealing names is better than the whole scroll being wiped of names.

 

I'm just... on the fence about this. I am very, very understanding of real life situations, but then again I also understand that some people quit Dragon Cave forever and they could have some good names on their scroll...

 

IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Dragons that have died with a name also cannot have their names removed, and they are permanent so those names are taken forever too. This seems pretty unfair as good names are being wasted on dead scrolls, and new players have a hard time getting good names now. It's also annoying for any user who forgets to take a name off a dragon and then kills it.

 

Please take this discussion to the appropriate thread.

Allow dead dragons to be renamed: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=155393

Have dead dragon's names eventually be erased: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=164960

 

~

 

As for bringing back erasing names for inactivity, please no. We had a lot of suggestions to get around this/make it better before TJ finally announced name stealing. I'd really just rather get an update about name stealing. And if it isn't possible, we can go back to one of those suggestions we had to at least make erasing names a little better (such as lengthening the time or sending out an email notification for people to check in if they didn't want to lose their names).

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Hm yeah name stealing sounds better. Or email notifications, but the notifications csn go to a forgotten address or people do not want emails from DC (unless they contain prize dragons).

Edited by Dusky_Flareon

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As for bringing back erasing names for inactivity, please no. We had a lot of suggestions to get around this/make it better before TJ finally announced name stealing. I'd really just rather get an update about name stealing. And if it isn't possible, we can go back to one of those suggestions we had to at least make erasing names a little better (such as lengthening the time or sending out an email notification for people to check in if they didn't want to lose their names).

That's pretty much what I wanted to say, but Sock beat me to it. (Well, minus the thing about finding alternatives because I didn't think of it, tbh.)

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I don't necessarily agree with this there are ways around names being taken, like as much as some of the player base seems to dislike it... Longer Names... okay yeah some of us like one word names to make our lineages tidy but part of dragon cave is having a creative mind to come up with the names take away that part of the playing dynamic its boring in my opinion

Edited by beautifuldragon5000

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No no no. I know Sock had a friend who was rendered homeless and couldn't play for absolutely ages; I have a friend who can hardly ever get to her scroll for physical reasons (which I am not naming as there are people here who might know who it is and she hasn't chosen to go public !) And there are all sorts of other possibilities.

 

The name stealing option is way better as it is hugely unlikely one person would lose many names by it, if they came back.

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I am absolutely against removing names due to inactivity. Maybe you need ONE name that is taken, for that reason there is no need to create a compulsion for people to login if they are unable to or take everything away from them. Name stealing should more than suffice if there is ever a reason to implement taking names from other scrolls. But I have my fair share of apprehension on that as well, see in next para. I know if I had to be inactive for some reason and came back to find all my Dragon names gone I would definitely not feel like coming back again. It took way too much effort to name each one of them and most of them have a story behind them.

 

I suppose I would be in favor of name stealing after a REASONABLE level of inactivity (2-3 months is too less) but with that I see problems like names of original cb dragons of lineages like dorkface etc. Or cb prizes, cb HMs etc. being stolen and that impacts a a lot of people. Say if I traded for a spriter alt offspring and its name got stolen in future, that would make me really unhappy about the price I paid for it, even if the parent dragon is still the same because name is also part of the package.

 

Given the number of drawbacks, I am fine with the things as they are because the more I thought about it the less I realized there is to gain from it. I understand that most of the times it is a pain to find the names we want but I would not want to steal the name from anyone unless they have been inactive for say.. at least 1-2 years because by then it seems certain they are not on temporary break.

 

I am however in support of ability to remove names of dead dragons.

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Please take this discussion to the appropriate thread.

Allow dead dragons to be renamed: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=155393

Have dead dragon's names eventually be erased: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=164960

 

~

 

As for bringing back erasing names for inactivity, please no. We had a lot of suggestions to get around this/make it better before TJ finally announced name stealing. I'd really just rather get an update about name stealing. And if it isn't possible, we can go back to one of those suggestions we had to at least make erasing names a little better (such as lengthening the time or sending out an email notification for people to check in if they didn't want to lose their names).

Opps, sorry sock! I did search for removal of names but those didn't come up.

 

Got a lot of different feedback and opinions so I'm going to split the main post into the two options: Removal after inactivity and name stealing since some people support one but not the other.

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I don't think it would be too hard for TJ to just code that all CB prizes (and spriters' alts?) do not have steal-able names, no matter how long the user was inactive. As to other dragons that have an arbitrary importance because the user base has latched on to them like the Dorkface, we -might- be able to convince him to code in a "safe list" to protect those, but that would require that he either add dragons to that list himself or allow the moderators access.

 

But I think a few months inactivity is too short for name stealing. Someone who happens to have some names that are likely to be stolen shouldn't have to constantly log in in fear of losing them, even if they have life circumstances that prevents them from actually playing. I think one year inactivity should be the minimum to consider someone inactive, as that means they aren't even getting on for the holiday events.

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Pokemonfan makes a good point. I think her way sounds pretty good. The safe list may not work out, but everything else sounds like a keeper.

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Let's just do *something*, please? TJ mentioned name-stealing and then nothing was ever done about it. I definitely support something actually being *done* here, and I support name stealing most of all. A year of inactivity should be good.

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I'm in favor of name stealing. Too many things can get in the way of logging on and it would be discouraging to return to possibly hundreds or even thousands of unnamed dragons.

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I thought name stealing was already implemented...? unsure.gif

 

Personally I'm against going back to completely wiping scrolls of names. I went inactive for well over a year due to my family moving irl, but eventually returned when everything had settled down and I was looking for sites to waste my time on. My scroll had been wiped of names, meaning I had to go back and rename all of them, but luckily(?) I only had 30 or so dragons to deal with. Now that I have over a thousand, it would take me forever to rename them all if they got wiped again.

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I thought name stealing was already implemented...? unsure.gif

It was very briefly implemented for a random 1% of users (as is done to test new features), but was pretty quickly reverted with no explanation: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=161108 A lot of people are after a few specific names, and there was a little bit of upset that those users got the first chance to claim those names while others couldn't even try, so perhaps that's why it was reverted? That's just a complete guess, though. After the testing was reverted, we never got another update about it.

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I definitely like the idea of name stealing (way more than total scroll wiping), but I think a long period before names are stealable, like at least 6 months, would be more fair, so people don't have their favorite names taken if they're away from the site for several months to focus on school or something like that.

Also, having special protection for the names of CB Prizes/spriter's alts/etc is a good idea, since those dragons' names are very likely to be important even if the owner stops playing.

Edited by lolahighwind

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Oh yes, I forgot to comment on that - I think "saving names in special cases" is just over-complicating things. CB prizes are already special for two things: being cb prizes and a unique, requested code (if chosen). Spriter alts are already special for their coloring. I do not see a reason to make a special case for their names, particularly if it's going to mean extra work on TJ every time new alts(/prizes?) are released.

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I personally don't think it would be hard in the case of prizes. A little bit of code that checks if it's a CB of one of the two breeds of prize dragons before allowing the name to be stolen seems like it would do the trick. I agree that alts might be more difficult. It mostly depends on if he has them designated something special that a piece of code could check or if the only way to handle it would be to manually add them to a list of protected names.

 

But I do agree that CB prizes and spriters' alts are special enough on their own merit. It's just that if protecting their names wouldn't be too much trouble, it would be a nice extra feature.

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Literally the only dragon that I personally think has a "valuable" name is Midas Dorkface. Someone could potentially steal that name onto another CB Gold and trick people with it. People already try this with the Thuweds by naming some random pair of CB dragons in Saurian.

With prizes, the dragon itself has the value, not its name. It's very unlikely someone can get another CB prize just to steal the name of another one, plus so many prizes have codes that practically are their name.

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