Character Deletion Player Safeguards

[DavionFuxa]

First and foremost, yes, I did accidentally delete one of my character, embarrassing a mistake to admit as it is. I don't consider it Turbines fault that I screwed up, fault lies entirely on me. Luckily however, the character was not my main character and I didn't lose anything important by deleting him. However, I figure if no one makes noise then no one will look into adding safeguards or a character recovery system for the next person who accidentally deletes a character they don't want too.

To be descriptive though in what happened, In my case, I accidentally deleted my character simply because I was tired, not thinking, in a hurry because of dinner being ready, and having character deletion on the brain. I realized I deleted the character I didn't want too pretty well instantly but I may have not even noticed for an hour. Obviously, the writing your character name wasn't enough to prevent me from accidentally deleting the character. I also doubt it would have mattered if you had a third, a forth, or even a fifth confirmation against deleting your character before I would have realized I was deleting the wrong one either (it might help but honestly, I doubt it would).

My suggestion is to add some safeguards against accidentally deletions - either by Game Masters being able to recover said characters and/or (and preferably) with a system that can allow a player to recover from deleting his characters. The idea of Game Masters being able to recover characters has been around long enough that some semblance of what to do should be apparent so I'll just suggest what can be done from the player side of things so that a player can prevent his character from being deleting in the first place:

Add a Deletion Period. Probably one of the most surefire way to prevent players from accidentally deleting their characters is to to make players have to wait long enough that if they have second thoughts or if the character they are deleting is not one they actually want to delete, they can cancel the deletion. Basically, after you have confirmed your character deletion, it sits there until times runs out for it (and then it becomes permanently deleted). This could be a minute, 5 minutes, a 3 hours, a day, a few days - whatever is felt to be an adequate amount of time to be given to the player that if they do have second thoughts they can prevent their character from being deleted or to recognize they are deleting the wrong character.

Of course, even while I don't think it would help, Adding More Confirmations to Deleting Characters would help in giving additional chances for a character to recognize that he's about to delete his character. Though really, if you have deleting enough characters then the process just begins to get tedious; IE, a player will click delete and then may just mindlessly follow the instructions until his character is deleted without a second thought.

Luckily, regardless of whether this suggestion is considered or even read, I will continue playing since I didn't delete my main or some other important character. But without a doubt had that been my main character, not only would I have probably systematically deleted all my other characters and ragequit DDO, I wouldn't be dropping this suggestion here for you to read.

I don't doubt I would have ragequit because that's how I came to play on DDO, ragequitting the last MMORPG because I accidentally deleted my main character. I'll note though that in that MMORPG's case, they didn't have any sort of confirmation when deleting your character; you hit the button and your character was gone, accidentally or on purpose. But really, I don't think confirmations help all that much once your deleted a full legion of characters.

[Osharan_Tregarth]

My suggestion is to add some safeguards against accidentally deletions - either by Game Masters being able to recover said characters and/or (and preferably) with a system that can allow a player to recover from deleting his characters. The idea of Game Masters being able to recover characters has been around long enough that some semblance of what to do should be apparent so I'll just suggest what can be done from the player side of things so that a player can prevent his character from being deleting in the first place:

Done.


Turbine will be happy to undelete your character, for the low low price of $19.95, €17.49, £14.95 !!!

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=278213

[BitkaCK2]

SOLUTION: After you enter the character name and click the "Delete" button you get a pop up box that asks, "Are you sure?". After you click "Yes" you then get a pop up box that asks, "Are you REALLY sure?". When you click "Yes" on this pop up box you get another that asks, "Are you REALLY REALLY sure?". Clicking "Yes" on this box brings up one that asks, "Are you REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY sure?". Clicking "Yes" on this box brings up a final box that says, "I don't believe you." and cancels the delete.

Anything short of that cannot stop a human being's ability to make a mistake. As Osharan_Tregarth mentioned, at least there is a method for character recovery. I'm sorry you deleted the wrong character but for myself, I don't want to wait around for an "Are you sure?" amount of time before I can free up the character slot.

just my 2c,
bitkaCK2

[DavionFuxa]

SOLUTION: After you enter the character name and click the "Delete" button you get a pop up box that asks, "Are you sure?". After you click "Yes" you then get a pop up box that asks, "Are you REALLY sure?". When you click "Yes" on this pop up box you get another that asks, "Are you REALLY REALLY sure?". Clicking "Yes" on this box brings up one that asks, "Are you REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY sure?". Clicking "Yes" on this box brings up a final box that says, "I don't believe you." and cancels the delete.

Anything short of that cannot stop a human being's ability to make a mistake. As Osharan_Tregarth mentioned, at least there is a method for character recovery. I'm sorry you deleted the wrong character but for myself, I don't want to wait around for an "Are you sure?" amount of time before I can free up the character slot.

just my 2c,
bitkaCK2

I don't like that sort of thing either but I'm not against having to wait an hour or two before my characters deletion is finalized. I only suggest it though because it does give an extra moment to prevent the deletion of a character. I don't know about you but it takes me about 5 seconds to delete a character at most, 3 seconds if you want to be realistic.

I didn't know you could recover your character searching around for character deletions, all I could see was posts that said they could not so I assumed they couldn't be retrieved.

[Flavilandile]

Seriously, between the pop up window, that appears when you click delete, where you have to enter the character name you want to delete and the recovery option, there's no need for more things.

Human being is by nature prone to failures, so even with 10 annoying confirmations people will still delete the wrong characters. There's no point in adding more. Actually adding more would probably annoy a lot of people, there's just a very limited number of Are you Sure ? pop ups people are willing to click on. I think it has been proved with the UAC debacle that came with Vista.

Once upon a time when you clicked on that delete button, it didn't ask anything and you couldn't recover your deleted characters... now at least it's foolproof.