Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Basic/Epic Characters Suggestion

If somebody purchases an epic membership, they get 10 extra character slots. Once their epic membership is over its *poof*, cant edit them anymore. I can understand that. But, recently I have stumbled upon something I didn't quite like. I deleted one of my Basic User Character Slots Characters, and yet when I tried to make another character, I thought the slot I deleted my basic user character would remain there. But no, It unlocked one of my epic characters slots. I didn't need to edit my epic character slot. I wanted to make another character using my basics.


Skipping to Conclusions of my idea: Make it so people who have purchased, or received Epic Membership as a gift can still delete and add characters using their basic character slots.(the 10 slots they got when they joined RPR ) (Of course not being able to edit their epics until another epic membership is purchased..)

I don't think the system actually differentiates between "basic" and "epic" characters - just the order the characters were created in and how many total character slots a person is supposed to have. Incorporating you suggestion seems like it'd be complicated, it wouldn't work out for those who only want to unlock their existing uneditable characters, and it seems to me like it'd work out as a sort of way around purchasing epic memberships or extra slots.

Of course, it's definitely Kim's decision. I just personally think it's better as is.

I deleted one of my Basic characters (yes, characters are separated from epic to basic) thinking I'd get to keep my basic slot seeing I got that slot with my account, it was one of the slots I received when I joined RPR. True it unlocked one of my Epic character slots, but I don't need to edit any of my epics.. I just wanted to use a slot that belonged to one of my very first characters to make a different character, and cant. And I cant even bring back that original characters slot cause its gone.

What Novalynn said is correct. The account doesn't have 'basic slots' and 'epic slots'. If you go over the 10 characters with your epic, then lose the epic, the characters you created most recently will be locked. Deleting an old character will just decrease the list by 1.

It's all explained in the FAQ:

http://www.rprepository.com/help/epic-membership-faq#21

You also don't free up an epic slot if you epicness expires and you delete a character. You still only have 10 editable slots, and it's only your 10 oldest characters you can edit. So the only thing you get when you delete one of the original 10 character is that one of your epic characters fall down into one of the first 10 slots and becomes editable.

I agree with Nova that I don't think what you're asking will ever become available. It will ruin the way epicness works and be very complicated for other users to work with.

What I recommend is that you try to purchase extra character slots or bring the total number of characters in your list down to 10 or less. The extra slots will NEVER expire if you buy them separately, so you will never have to worry about not being able to edit characters. They also stack with epicness.

@Novalyyn: Not necessarily, unless the system itself is rather complicated to begin with. A simple ( relatively simple, at least ) tag on the slots differentiating it as being "basic" or "epic" shouldn't be hard. Then it's just a matter of setting it up so the system checks which slot is being used.

I may be oversimplifying the system, but that's the basic idea I see. And for add-on slots bought outside of an Epic membership, just add them to the basic slots count for that member, because that's what they are pretty much

As for the worry of "circumventing" Epic membership... not really, at least not from what I can see You're only using the basic slots, and you still can't add more than the ones you already have, and you still can't edit the Epic membership ones. It shouldn't be hard to catch someone trying to abuse it either by making "fake" profiles they never end up using before they erase them.

Besides, to really abuse it you would still have to pay to get Epic membership, then make those characters to your liking and then go back and "rewrite" the basic-level ones (the way I understand it, you don't start using Epic-added profile slots until you go for #11). And that just becomes more work than someone who's trying to make twenty characters while "cheating the system" would be willing to go through, I think

It's really hard to make judgement on a written-from-scratch code like this. I'm always careful to declare things complex or easy on RPR just because, save for a few small things like BBCode, everything here has been setup by Kim from scratch and things that sound easy often turn out to be more complex than I thought. Often due to elements I hadn't considered. Usually this goes back to the UI: the layout and site functionality would have to be edited significantly to reflect the changes and it makes things unnecessarily complex.

The real problem is not so much whether the code is complex or not though. If I could keep my epic slots AND free up my basic slots, it would devalue the benefit of having an epic membership immensely. It's basically like having partial additional character slots. I can't edit them, but I have permanent extra slots and get to delete and add new characters without having to go back to 10.

I'm probably not phrasing this as coherently as I want it to be, but people would get an additional perk without paying for it, in short. And that's just not a smart idea from a business perspective. The site runs on the money it makes from epic sales of any kind, and this would really work against the incentive to continue buying upgrades and hurt the site in the long run.

Phrased it more coherently than I was managing. ^^

There's no such thing as "slots" -- You have a total number of allowed characters. When it goes to check if you can edit a character, it checks your allowed total, and then it checks whether the character you are trying to edit is, in order of character creation time, under that number. Incorporating this suggestion would require rewriting the system entirely. But the difficulty of writing it is not actually why I will not consider it.

To the larger point:
Epic member slots and permanent slots are based on the premise that users who use more than the average number of resources from the server should pay for that privilege -- hosting your characters here can be free for you, but the RPR pays for all of the storage space and bandwidth that you use on a monthly basis. We provide that as a free service to the vast majority of members because I'm super nice.

If you are using more than five slots, you are over the average number of characters that most users have, and therefore costing the site more money per month than the average person.

If you are over 10, you are WAY over the average.

(As of this writing, the average user has 2.41 characters on their account.)

There is from a resource use perspective, no difference between characters that are made with your basic account and characters made with your epic account, I'm paying for both.

Since the site is not free to run and would have to close its doors tomorrow if it couldn't pay for itself, I ask that people who are getting the most use out of the site also help to keep it open by purchasing upgrades for their accounts.

I have no incentive to make it easier for people to use more than average server resources for free. In fact, you have no incentive, either. You might think it sounds good to have basic slots and epic slots and be able to swap out as many basic characters as you want even if you have 20 characters and only 10 slots accredited to your account, but it sounds a lot less awesome when you realize that the option is actually I make it hard for people to use more than average the resources for free or I close the site and nobody gets anything.

So in conclusion, I think the current system is extremely fair and actually very generous in that by not deleting surplus characters when you no longer have the slots to support them, we're letting you use way more than the average users' allotment of resources for free for an indefinite or infinite amount of time if you choose not to re-up.