I don't like community names

[fowlplay4]

The days of being identified just by your account name are slowly fading as more and more Graal######'s take over

[Bell]

Its my understanding they were made to simplify the accounts process. As a new account was made, the automated style of it just added a digit. One could then play on Graal for awhile until they decided on a community name. Community names themselves could be changed although it does have to be done manually by Stefan. In the past account names couldn't be changed without a much more extensive process.

I personally hate the Graal names with a passion. They are not anywhere near as easily identifiable as the old account names and I personally find it far more difficult to keep track of people through reputation of abuse with it. I have the tools to research the accounts but its a long process with continual pc id changes. Its also easy to make errors with the numbers. If you made a typo before you usually spotted it right away. Then there's the whole, "oh! I remember Graal 739089" If any of you can remember someone by that after they disappear for 6 months I'll give you a cookie.

I didn't bother going into the annoyances of rc and client playerlists or scripting issues because its all been said but I completely agree. Outside of the simplicity of a new trial account being made they are completely the worst idea ever thought up for Graal.

[Cloven]

If people are too lazy to come up with an account name (as in the past, and as in every other online site known to man) they should just shut the computer off in the first place.

The community names are a piss-poor endeavor, period. I can't imagine why in the world a business would want to obfuscate development by doing this, either.

[Robin]

Originally Posted by Skyld

Well if that were to work, then the player would have to be online already to find the account name out.

Not if you stored it in SQL or so :P

[DustyPorViva]

Just about every other game/site/database EVER makes the person create an account name -- because it works.

[SwimChao]

During the testing yesterday I actually came across a guy whose community name was Graal#### but his actual account was a different Graal####.

@_@

[salesman]

How would they go about changing the account system back to how it was without screwing over all of the players who have purchased an account with the Graal###### system? Allow them to pick a real account or just give them their community name?

[Crow]

Originally Posted by salesman

How would they go about changing the account system back to how it was without screwing over all of the players who have purchased an account with the Graal###### system? Allow them to pick a real account or just give them their community name?

First convert the registration system to the old one again. Then give the ones who still have no community name to choose one, in a certain time frame. Graal###### accounts without gold will then be able to choose an account name, the guys with a community name will then get their community name as an account (pretty sure that's easily done with a script or even a MySQL query).
At least that's how I would do it ;P While converting the community name guys and making sure the ones without one will be prompted with something which makes them choose an account afterwards, there would probably have to be a short downtime. Not a big deal though.

[Novice]

Originally Posted by salesman

just give them their community name

whitespacewhitespaceomg

[salesman]

Just giving them their community name might cause some problems because what used to be their "account" was once entirely different from their communityname. If Graal234252 is in the serveroptions as a staff member and is then given his communityname "lolnoob", he is no longer staff. Same goes with scripts that may be account-locked to him: if (player.account == "Graal234252")

Now think about if you allowed players without communitynames to choose a new account name. Graal777336 chooses Graal234252 (who was assigned his communityname, "lolnoob") as his account name and becomes staff.

I guess you could forbid all Graal###### accounts from being chosen, and server staff could just deal with all the other problems that come with the transition.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by Robin

I don't understand Chris,

Why not just use community name? As long as you've got that you don't need the account name? Right?

Originally Posted by Skyld

Generally speaking the community name is changeable.

This. Players aren't going to want their bank account to reset, their items to disappear, and any other things stored in a database to be gone. It would cause even more problems if the player had some flag set that caused the system to think they had an entry in some database, potentially leading to some kind of disaster.

Originally Posted by Crow

First convert the registration system to the old one again. Then give the ones who still have no community name to choose one, in a certain time frame. Graal###### accounts without gold will then be able to choose an account name, the guys with a community name will then get their community name as an account (pretty sure that's easily done with a script or even a MySQL query).
At least that's how I would do it ;P While converting the community name guys and making sure the ones without one will be prompted with something which makes them choose an account afterwards, there would probably have to be a short downtime. Not a big deal though.

I think the best thing to do would be just let everyone choose their account who has a community name.

There should be some kind of function called in GlobalShopControl or something, like this:

PHP Code:

function onAccountNameChanges(old, new) {
  DB_Bank.balance.(new) = DB_Bank.balance.(old);
  DB_Bank.balance.(old) = null;
  
  movefile("players/" @ old.txt, "players/" @ new.txt);
  
  if (old in serveroptions.staff.tokenize(",")) {
    echo("The account" SPC old SPC "is in server options as staff, and must be changed to" SPC new SPC "(account name change)!");
  }
  
  savelog2("accountchanges.txt", old SPC "is now" SPC new);
} 


There should also be a log that is saved to on every server by default, and a custom one on servers perhaps to indicate that it did successfully move their stuff. The default one could be checked with the server-added one if someone says their items were not transferred.

A global script should also move their accounts/whatever file to the correct place and move all their attributes, rights, comments etc.

It'd be difficult, but worth it.

[Matt]

Erm, was there supposed to be a point when Community Names were introduced, or just something to make it look like Graal is being improved? That's not sarcasm by the way.

[DustyPorViva]

I think there were a few:
1) Got rid of people just trying Graal, but creating accounts that they never returned to, thus creating a pile of inactive accounts. I think I'd rather just have them flush out inactive accounts, however.
2) Made back-door handling of account names easier. If someone requests an 'account name' change, they simply change the community name, and all other data stays intact. I don't think it was very easy to do this sort of thing before the community names.

Either way, I would love to have the old method back. I'm sure Stefan could figure out a way to convert the community accounts over to the old system.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

I think there were a few:
1) Got rid of people just trying Graal, but creating accounts that they never returned to, thus creating a pile of inactive accounts. I think I'd rather just have them flush out inactive accounts, however.
2) Made back-door handling of account names easier. If someone requests an 'account name' change, they simply change the community name, and all other data stays intact. I don't think it was very easy to do this sort of thing before the community names.

Either way, I would love to have the old method back. I'm sure Stefan could figure out a way to convert the community accounts over to the old system.

With that same effort I'm sure he could fix the problems with community names and we'd probably be better off.

[Inverness]

Originally Posted by fowlplay4

With that same effort I'm sure he could fix the problems with community names and we'd probably be better off.

The community names themselves are the problem, so they need to be removed.