Enabling Alts

It has been a couple of weeks since customers have been able to allow their other characters ("alts") to be visible in the public feed.  Making this an "opt-in" was the right balance from what I have been able to tell.  However, this has limited the number of people who have actually enabled it.

You can look this up for yourself by using the c:has Query Command to check for the presence of account.link_id:

census.daybreakgames.com/jml/get/eq2/character/?c:has=account.link_id&c:show=displayname,account&c:limit=10&c:count=1

There are only 2,499 characters who have been enabled.

I do not plan to change this from an opt-in - that will surely bring out the pitchforks and torches.  The only way this number is going to grow is by enabling functionality that customers will feel compelled to flip the switch.

Get thinkin'!

-dan

 

I think there are two points through which we could get that number to raise without getting the mob at our doors:

1) Make it better known.  I suspect a vast majority of players don't even know they can opt-in to have their alts visible to outside applications, and if they did, they probably would.

2) Incentive, as Dan said.  The next RosterMaster version will at least be able to display them when viewing a character's detailed info, and I am looking at ways to better integrate that information (i.e. easily linking characters together when they belong to the same player).  I haven't come up with any Cunning Plan (tm) yet on how to better exploit this feature, but I'm still thinking about it.

Another issue there is that a lot of EQ2 players use a custom UI.  I don't think many of these have been updated yet to add these options.  That cuts off a pretty hefty chunk of potential alt-publishers IMHO.  If any devs here know custom UI developers (I bet Feldon knows one or two of them ), make sure they know about this change to the persona window, and have them support it as well.

 

I've probably said this before, but I honestly think it comes down to this.  I want to be able to see other people's alts but I don't really want them to be able to see mine.  Double standard, I know and agree.  If I have someone trying to join my guild, I'd like to be able to see their alts so I can see if I recognize them as someone I don't think will fit in well.  But on the other hand, when I'm playing my coercer, I don't really want to get tells from someone letting me know that I missed an adornment in my calculator.  

I don't really see a good way to fix it either.  Can't flip it to opt-out at this point.  Maybe one of us will come up with some wizbang idea.

Has anyone asked the game team about adding a checkbox that is account wide that says something like "Show All Alts on This Account" so people can set it in one place if they choose to do so?

 

Account level options are not something we really support.  There are various reasons for this.  It is doable but it is also a huge hassle.

 

Instead of an Account Level Option, how about a button that, when clicked, propogates the Opt In or Opt Out to all of the characters on an account? Or can this setting not be "touched" unless the character is spawned?

 

Our game doesn't work that way.  This is a binary data blob in a DB I would have to load each character fully change the bit and then save it back out.

 

So that's a no?

 

How about the old method, where someone could manage their privacy through EQ2Players?  Tho I have a feeling the new EQ2Players only talks with the REST API and doesn't get anywhere close to the real databases anymore.

 

The privacy flag is contained in the game server data that is exported so you cannot control it from outside the game.