Purge inactive users with low playtime

[V01d]

For me, I would say NOT delete them, but change their name. I haven’t been able to play for 1 year now due to my headset’s (quest 1) age. In all honesty I would play right now if I could, but my headset’s battery drains while being played (even on charger). My headset is, and I’m not joking, as good as a paper weight. So I literally can not play until I buy the quest 2, which really sucks since I’m living paycheck to paycheck. Sorry for this being long, but i had to clarify why I cant play.

Edit: I just noticed you said “2 hours of play”. so I’m not sure if what I said applies to me anymore as I have no idea how to check my playtime. So if this doesn’t apply to me, my apologies.

[Trumpchange]

can we raid their player chests too, i have dibs on overworld drops

[ashton_p]

That’s a dumb idea. Just because you stopped playing the game or haven’t played it much doesn’t mean that you wont get back into it, no matter how ‘safe to assume’ it is the chance is never 0%. You payed for the game, you payed for the name. So until there are literally no more names left there is no point complaining. Which might I add, when using a 6 letter name consisting of only the English alphabet (no symbols e.g. Ĕ) there are 308,915,776 possible name combinations. And if you want to take it a step further using a 12 letter name (so a 6 letter first name and a 6 letter last name) taking advantage of all the symbolised letters (Assuming there are 35 possible letters in game as I do not know the exact number I just know there are at least 35). That comes out to 3,379,220,508,056,641,000 possible names, I would bet money that you can’t pronounce that number without googling it.

[Ewok]

oh wow i never realised soo manny optons were availaible!
I cauld use 6 word name:
ZRrvtx
Ptbqqs
rtvxic
cmqnui
ljlklt

… on a more serious note, I think the thread has come more to an agreement of leaving the character but letting there name be re used after fair warning. I can’t imagine people with less than 2 hours playtime that have been inactive for over 6 months will be attached to the name in a game they don’t play. If they are then they can reply to the message the devs would send them.

[NotScott]

It doesn’t seem that anyone disagrees with the fact that someone who hasn’t played for more then 2 hours is not really invested.

But the disagreement seems to be in the worth of the money and what it represents.

I am not aware of anyone having a good reason to assume their name is part of the claim from buying the game. I personally see buying the game as a claim to be allowed to play it. Whatever happens internally in the game is the devs choice. But you can have any stance on this and will not be wrong xD

Secondly, going into the extreme here, but it is not too far fetched: 20 dollar can be a year saving for a very poor person. Buying the game would be worth the world to them. And in the other extreme, there are people who blink and are 20 dollar more rich. Do they work harder? Probably not. They are just in the right situation and surrounding to let it happen. The opinions diverge partly because of everyone having their own situation and worth of money.

Then lastly, there the peoples past experiences, genes etc. that also makes them think money is worth more or less. One person can get the same money a month as the other person, but perceives money as more worth or less. Because of what they get and want with it in the past.

[Moiraine]

This is true. But for those who try a game worth $20 and that is a lot of money to them, they would refund it if they weren’t going to play. You don’t keep something and not use it when you’re that impovrished. You refund it and use the money on something you will use.

[ashton_p]

Even if 98% of those names are seemingly gibberish that 2% is still more players than orbus will likely ever see.

As well as the fact that those names and many more may seem meaningless to you but they could be things like initials or acronyms meaning something else. I am sure if you put your mind to it you can find a name that, may not be ideal but, you can learn to appreciate and doesn’t require terminating someone else’s account.

That’s all I’m saying.

[Drahgalus]

So, I went to the oculus store, and I bought a game. Not a name. I think purging players who have been inactive for awhile like over a year, and have less then 2 hours of playtime is a great idea, and it’s not like they would have a random name, they’d be able to pick a new one.

[Infiniterune]

One important important thing to remember is that a lot of those old accounts with low playtime don’t actually have any financial investment into the game.

I would be surprised if the game took the time to retroactively wipe and recirculate usernames and characters from players who have refunded the game.

Much more importantly Orbus also has a free demo that let’s you play the full game for as long as you like but caps your level at 20. All of those demo accounts take up unique names too and as far as I know those accounts stick around forever.

I think at minimum it would be preaty unanimously supported to apply the rule to all demo accounts.

That being said I sorta doubt the devs will do something like this for a few reasons.

1. Development cost. Going through the time to write an algorithm to search through all of the relavant databases to identify all of the dead accounts in the game and remove them from the taken names would both take time to create and could take a bit of computing power to run. Generally something is only going to get added to the game if it provides some major benefit that offsets that development cost. Purging inactive names is a very minor quality of life benefit that your average player isn’t even going to know was done.

2. Risk. There is always some chance that something goes wrong and iterating through all of the accounts in the game and automatically and permanently modifying them has the potential to mess up really really badly. Any oversight or minor bug could lead to many unintended players losing their usernames or having their accounts corrupted.

3. Optics. While many of us support this its still sort of a messy, complicated issue. By doing this orbus would be picking a side and would thus be reasonably expected to defend that decision from a logical, facts and statistics based perspective. If having a popular forum post was enough to justify changes warrior would already have 3 swords and would be a tank/healer/dps hybrid soloing class. Even under the justification of community support the devs would probably feel the need to spend time pulling opinions from a much greater amount of people than a single forum post.

4. Headache. While the number may be low there will be some small percentage of players that dust off their headset after a year and decide to give orbus another shot only to find that their username is no longer theirs. Having to field unhappy forum post about how players are unhappy that their usernames got stolen is probably a preaty infrequent ordeal but its one more can of worms than the devs really need to crack open.

[Glynnus]

As an inactive player, I would not be down for this. I’m holding out for what I consider better content(one can dream for a new melee class), and until then, I just lurk. Take my name and I’ll definitely never play again.

[Drahgalus]

You have more playtime than 2 hours, this doesn’t apply to you. You’d be left untouched.