Taejo
09-17-2013, 03:44 PM
There is a major issue in the game concerning the accidental liquidation of items. Many players love to carry around vanity-like collector's gear to wear and show off while in town. An unfortunate side effect of having these items in our inventory is that they often and mistakenly get liquidated. We then notice the problem later after its too late and we end up contacting customer support begging for our items back. Items such as Heraldic gear, Founder's gear, Illusion gear, and even L32+ Epic gear is constantly prone to human error - overlooking their names and liquidating them based on their rarity (color). There is currently only one "forgiveness" system in place: buy back, and zero deterrent systems in place.
Buy Back System:
The buy back feature is set up so that if you liquidate an item and quickly realize you made a mistake, you can purchase it back for the same price. However, there's a few stipulations that are rather unfavorable to the players:
Let's say you're standing in the guild hall and decide to liquidate 10 items from your inventory. Buy back will display the last 5 liquidated items, even though you liquidated a total of 10. Additionally, buying one item back does not "bump up" the other 5 items you deleted to show up on the list. The most devastating aspect of this is system is once you leave the guild hall, the buy back cache is cleared and your liquidated items are now gone for good. I understand that this may be a deterrent for players to exploit the buy back system as "5 free inventory spaces" or help keep the servers from being bogged down with data. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone would have the mental capacity to remember these items on a daily basis for several weeks of playing, just to save some platinum for 5 inventory spaces. It does not seem to be a very efficient or explicit exploit.
Proposed solutions:
First and foremost, please increase the buy back list from 5 to at least 15 or 20. In it's current state, even if I did quickly realize that I liquidated my Heraldic gear, if it wasn't one of the last 5 items to be liquidated, it's still gone for good
Change the autonomous cache clearing mechanism to instead clear it after a certain amount of time passes (say, 2 hours) or a player decides to log out of their account. Having the list clear after a disconnect or changing zones (maps) is not very forgiving!
Implement a strong deterrent system (see below)
A Deterrent System:
Energizeric stated the best idea to date, and doesn't seem to be a huge resource drainer for the Devs to consider implementing.
How often do we hear the complaint that someone deleted/liquidated an item by accident?
There have been suggestions made in this forum before that there should be a way to lock certain inventory items from being liquidated by accident, but nobody has ever made a suggestion that would be easy for STS to implement without a very large programming addition to the way your inventory functions. Until now that is.....
So here is the solution:
We have 4 loadouts in our inventory. Items like a heraldic armor that we keep to wear as vanity would be included in one of our loadouts. Upon attempting to delete/liquidate any item from inventory, the system will check to see if that item is included in any of your loadouts. If it is included in one of your loadouts, then it will not permit you to liquidate that item and you will instead receive a popup message "This item is included in one of your loadouts and cannot be liquidated."
This "lock" would NOT apply to trading an item or listing it for sale in the auction house.
Taken from: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?116293-Lock-Item-in-Inventory
Please don't take this thread as being a personal outlet for me to vent my frustration. As a recent victim of this dilemma we face, I feel it is my duty to try and help prevent future instances of this happening. At the end of the day, it's not about the monetary value of the item lost - it's the principle of the matter that human error should not only be forgiven at times but also prevented.
Feel free to show your support by providing constructive feedback/suggestions - and while you do, please do not post any disrespect towards the STG Customer Support team. Thank you.
Buy Back System:
The buy back feature is set up so that if you liquidate an item and quickly realize you made a mistake, you can purchase it back for the same price. However, there's a few stipulations that are rather unfavorable to the players:
Let's say you're standing in the guild hall and decide to liquidate 10 items from your inventory. Buy back will display the last 5 liquidated items, even though you liquidated a total of 10. Additionally, buying one item back does not "bump up" the other 5 items you deleted to show up on the list. The most devastating aspect of this is system is once you leave the guild hall, the buy back cache is cleared and your liquidated items are now gone for good. I understand that this may be a deterrent for players to exploit the buy back system as "5 free inventory spaces" or help keep the servers from being bogged down with data. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone would have the mental capacity to remember these items on a daily basis for several weeks of playing, just to save some platinum for 5 inventory spaces. It does not seem to be a very efficient or explicit exploit.
Proposed solutions:
First and foremost, please increase the buy back list from 5 to at least 15 or 20. In it's current state, even if I did quickly realize that I liquidated my Heraldic gear, if it wasn't one of the last 5 items to be liquidated, it's still gone for good
Change the autonomous cache clearing mechanism to instead clear it after a certain amount of time passes (say, 2 hours) or a player decides to log out of their account. Having the list clear after a disconnect or changing zones (maps) is not very forgiving!
Implement a strong deterrent system (see below)
A Deterrent System:
Energizeric stated the best idea to date, and doesn't seem to be a huge resource drainer for the Devs to consider implementing.
How often do we hear the complaint that someone deleted/liquidated an item by accident?
There have been suggestions made in this forum before that there should be a way to lock certain inventory items from being liquidated by accident, but nobody has ever made a suggestion that would be easy for STS to implement without a very large programming addition to the way your inventory functions. Until now that is.....
So here is the solution:
We have 4 loadouts in our inventory. Items like a heraldic armor that we keep to wear as vanity would be included in one of our loadouts. Upon attempting to delete/liquidate any item from inventory, the system will check to see if that item is included in any of your loadouts. If it is included in one of your loadouts, then it will not permit you to liquidate that item and you will instead receive a popup message "This item is included in one of your loadouts and cannot be liquidated."
This "lock" would NOT apply to trading an item or listing it for sale in the auction house.
Taken from: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?116293-Lock-Item-in-Inventory
Please don't take this thread as being a personal outlet for me to vent my frustration. As a recent victim of this dilemma we face, I feel it is my duty to try and help prevent future instances of this happening. At the end of the day, it's not about the monetary value of the item lost - it's the principle of the matter that human error should not only be forgiven at times but also prevented.
Feel free to show your support by providing constructive feedback/suggestions - and while you do, please do not post any disrespect towards the STG Customer Support team. Thank you.