Quote:
Originally Posted by unixmad
The idea was to allow someone to enter into the game without choosing an account name, it is connected to the activex/plugins system.
We came to this idea become lot of new players never came into the game because of the long process:
- Choose an account name (it was harder and harder)
- Confirm email
- Download graal
- Put account name/password (copy password from email)
- Enter into the game.
The system can probably be improved by pushing players to choose quickly a community name.
It require a little bit more work and organisation for scripters but it is really worst it for getting new players.
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While until recently I thought that community names didn't act like account names, it's partially receiving criticism due to the lack of updates in areas which still handle accounts.
There are some bugs and features with the new community names that need addressing, in order for them to fully be integrated in replacement of account names:
- RC hasn't been updated and display Graal* accounts on the accounts list instead of the chosen community name.
- The account files which are storing the account data are stocked with Graal* accounts, instead of the community names. I'm not sure how this issue could be tackled, especially how they'd need to be renamed on every server when a community name is chosen, but for the purposes of organization it causes problems. If someone needs to find an account in the accounts file, they're going to need to know the Graal* account, and it's very hard to distinguish between them. In the future, if there is an increase in accounts being created the Graal* accounts are going to fill one folder, while everyone previously was spread out.
- A lot of server staff are not aware that the 'findplayerbycommunityname' function even exists and that they need to update the old. To solve this issue, and save a lot of servers having to rescript (which could take a while to do for some) the 'findplayer' function could be changed to act like 'findplayerbycommunityname' which works in the same way as 'findplayer' did, just with the addition to working with community names. In changing the old function, there would be no need for the new one, and it would save a lot of time and work for the servers to integrate community names.
- When players who have chosen community names are on other servers other than the one you are playing, on the playerlist their accounts are displayed as Graal* accounts, rather than their chosen community name. The profile of the players also displays the Graal* account, but when they log onto the server you're playing on their community replaces both.
- Warpto on the client needs to be updated, but if 'findplayer' was changed to act like 'findplayerbycommunityname' as mentioned previously, this would probably be fixed.
If these suggestions were implemented, I believe the complaints about the feature would probably cease, as the community names would then be acting as the former account names did. I'm not convinced though that this solves any issue that may have been around, nearly every game (I'd possibly stretch to anything that requires an account name, actually) uses the generic account name register-then-play system. I also think with this new option, an income of money (albeit a small one) will probably be lost. Players register with stupid account names, and when they're more established on the game they usually find the asterisk in front of their nicknames appealing. I have no idea why the asterisk is appealing, but just take a look around Graal. Players then register new accounts, for the simple reason that they initially picked an idiotic name. With the option of picking an account name later, this reason for creating new accounts could be under threat, thus a smaller amount of accounts being created from existing customers making another reason to upgrade being lost. Just a thought.
10-07-2007, 01:09 PM
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