Admin Notice: Changes to character restoration policy

[sindroms]

Good day.

In the past it was very nice to know an admin. I am saying this from my own personal experiences as a player, back when I accidentally forgot to bump characters and found out that they had fallen off the cliff a few months by that point with all of the goodies on them. Even back then the policy regarding character restoration was simple - we just do not do it.

Due to our HDD space issues earlier this year, we had to cut back on our character database backups significantly. This already posed an issue and it was agreed upon to, during the rewrite of this thread to once and for all remind people that we are not bringing back deleted characters due to the fact that we cannot ensure everyone the same treatment.

Despite this, there are a few of us from both the current team and old who do not feel like it being too much of a hassle to dig deep and restore a player's beloved character, especially if it was something special. Or if the player is a returning vet with no investment wanting to at least get a trading ship back. Sometimes this is enough to tug at our heartstrings.



Starting from today, sadly, this policy must be enforced fully due to rather specific mechanics of Freelancer and how character information is stored. Without boring you with specifics, any balance changes to player ships must be not only applied to the ship ''packages'' as in the ships you buy from vendors, but also all existing ships need to be manually edited for these changes to take place.

The issue is simple. Characters restored from earlier backups before these changes will have the original stats and there is currently no reliable way to filter them out from existing ships due to how the information is stored internally.

This is a knowledge that will eventually get lost as time goes on and admins change. We had these moments before during our history of Disco. This announcement is to tell you what the current situation is and that we are not suddenly enforcing this policy because of laziness or a lack of empathy. It is due to the huge issues this can cause in long-term.

We are currently living in a Discovery where balance updates are frequent once more as devs are actively trying to make the game better for the users to enjoy. There are way too many changes for us to keep track of realistically speaking, especially when most of our admin-duty-time comes after work when everyone is tired. Mistakes can happen. This thread is also here to ask users to consider this problem and not request admins to restore their ships via skype or other more personal lines of contact. Hopefully you understand.

~Administration Team

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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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[Inferno]

So, from my greenVision, if I lose a Cupholder before it was turned into a Medium, then request it be restored, it will be a light?

if im wrong I'll fly myself into the sun to go get apology coffee.

[Petitioner]

My understanding, Inferno, is that it just won't be restored at all.

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Recruitment | Task Force Prometheus | ICN FIRESTORM

[Jack_Henderson]

Understandable.
Thank you for taking your time to explain it.

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+ IMG| DISCORD: https://discord.gg/TWrGWjp
+ IMG| IS RECRUITING: Click to find out more!

[Ihtyander]

Full support for that. We already have restart templates, emlton base. It is not hard to stand on your feet as it was in the beggining of discovery.

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No wind is favourable for those ships who dont know their final destination

[Syrus]

So, I ask yet again, is logging a ship and buying-then-selling something enough to reset the inactivity timer?

I never got a clear answer ever on what is enough to make sure a ship doesn't vanish.

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[eigos]

So, I ask yet again, is logging a ship and buying-then-selling something enough to reset the inactivity timer?

I never got a clear answer ever on what is enough to make sure a ship doesn't vanish.

Its enough to log in and out. Nothing else.

Also, I support this decision. Why? Because I fully understand the specifics of how character data is stored. With patch updates rolling out more and more often, it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with old databases and also - it is not necessary.

Each player must take the responsibility to "refresh" their chars, if they dont want to lose them to an inactivity wipe. Special or not, it is THEIR responsibility to do that. Not the admin team, not anyone else. Being a vet is never an excuse. Besides... its always good to start fresh, if you have been away for such a long time.

[Syrus]

So, I ask yet again, is logging a ship and buying-then-selling something enough to reset the inactivity timer?

I never got a clear answer ever on what is enough to make sure a ship doesn't vanish.

Its enough to log in and out. Nothing else.

I can definitely say that, no, it is not enough to just log in and out. I lost several ships that way a few months back.
On the other hand, the buy/sell method seems to have worked for the few "never used"-kind of ships I still got around.
But I would prefer to have clarification on this, because taking care of not having ships deleted requires knowledge of how to do that properly.

I do agree that equal treatment for everyone is a good thing though, even if the loss of valuable ships is very unfortunate.

[St.Denis]

To be safe, login, undock and re-dock is sufficient.

The buying/selling of items also seems to work.

Logging in and out, again, appears to be not enough.

As long as the Server has a way of knowing your Ship is in Game.

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'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are'
Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person

[nOmnomnOm]

Gotta refresh my starflea..................

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