Partial Connection

[John Adams]

This is on New Telon tonight. Earlier, I commented out the block of code about "filtering" and the server did accept many connections today without incident, so I believe you are on the right trail. I will report more in the morning after more connections are made.

[John Adams]

Lokked/Volt, just had a thought.

I was just disconnected after sitting idle in IoD (meaning, my toon did not move, but I was online actively chatting with a number of players). It was exactly 1 hour to the minute that my client simply closed while I was posting on the forum. Started at 19:17 and at 20:17, my client just closed for no apparent reason.

Naturally, I tried to reconnect right away and got the *absolutely nothing works* issue, and that got me to thinking.

When I am at Char Select, and I query World for my list of characters... could we not boot ANY character of the same ID I am polling for if they are in the world, thus allowing a clean connection?

Option 2: Prohibit reconnection until that character is not in the world I am polling (this was the original request, "You already have a character in the world. Try again later")

But I'll take the mass boot of chars associated with MY account if they are in the world when I am at Select asking for the list.

[Lokked]

Hack fixed. Committing tomorrow.

[Volt]

[quote="John Adams"]When I am at Char Select, and I query World for my list of characters... could we not boot ANY character of the same ID I am polling for if they are in the world, thus allowing a clean connection?[/quote]
As a temporary work around for something worse, sure. But having this as standard behavior will be overused/misused by players to get out of complicated situations (aka exploits).

[Lokked]

My hack (John's terminology - doesn't mean it's garbage, just that it wasn't committed) allows the character to log back in and still have access to their chat channels and commands. With this, the character remains in game the entire time if the player DCs and then reconnects right away.

[John Adams]

[quote="Lokked"]My hack (John's terminology[/quote]
Okay, we can stop over-using this now

We tested a possible fix, and it seems to work. I will want accounts locked out when they already have a player in the world. I think that's how it should be.

[Volt]

[quote="Lokked"]With this, the character remains in game the entire time if the player DCs and then reconnects right away.[/quote]
Sounds promising!

[Lokked]

[quote="John Adams"]We tested a possible fix, and it seems to work. I will want accounts locked out when they already have a player in the world. I think that's how it should be.[/quote]

Forgive me for countering, but doesn't that seem barbaric? Wouldn't you, as a player, just want to reassume control of your character after a disconnect? Rather than be confronted with "You are currently logged in. Please try again in a moment..."?

[shargash]

[quote="John Adams"]I will want accounts locked out when they already have a player in the world. I think that's how it should be.[/quote]

EQ had this for a while, and I hated it with a passion. VG just kicked out whatever character was logged in and let you into character select. It was way better.

Also, the way VG did it provided some protection in the case your account had been hacked. In EQ, if someone was on your account without your permission, there was pretty much nothing you could do. If you changed your password, the hacker would still stay logged in as long as he wanted.

[John Adams]

[quote="shargash"]VG just kicked out whatever character was logged in and let you into character select. It was way better.[/quote]
This was my first suggestion and was informed it was not a good one.

[quote="Volt"][quote="John Adams"]When I am at Char Select, and I query World for my list of characters... could we not boot ANY character of the same ID I am polling for if they are in the world, thus allowing a clean connection?[/quote]
As a temporary work around for something worse, sure. But having this as standard behavior will be overused/misused by players to get out of complicated situations (aka exploits).[/quote]
I have come up with a number of solutions to this problem, yet the only one is to allow players back in no matter who they are.