Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Give character profiles to others

Partially related to Furcadia. Alt trading should become supported in the near future, allowing folks to sell their alts to each other. An already existing practice, albeit unsupported and at current very unsafe.

Wouldn't it be awesome to be ready when this happens? Most alts with designs come with sites or profiles. Some people simply delight in creating character(s profiles) for the fun of it but then end up not doing anything with it. If we could transfer/give a character profile to someone, Furcadians might opt to use RPR more often as it would correspond and integrate with character designs on awesome levels!

The structure should be that you can offer the character profile to another player, including all images, text, widgets and so on, and the other player gets the choice to accept it. With plenty of warnings and reminders and doublechecks it should be safe and sound.

Any thoughts or ideas? Reasons why it wouldn't work or why it's a terrible idea? I welcome it all.

I think it's a good idea, although then again, it'd then depend on the individual attitude of the seller.
Some people are more than happy to sell an alt complete with all art, backstories, desc's and sites etc.
Some just sell the alt name itself.
And some are like me, who'll sell the alt name and port, but keep the actual design itself and backstory.
It just depends on how personal the idea is to someone, I think. I might have sold say.. a fox/human recently, but I don't want someone else running around with the backstory that I took the time to write down and create when they should, in my opinion, use their own imagination to do so.

<,< $0.02: Good idea, will depend on people's attitude.

I suppose the intent matters more than anything, true. Perhaps nobody will be doing this?

Hum. That could bring in all sorts of problems, that is assuming RPR has a stance regarding selling alts or approves of alt trading, or if RPR would rather remain neutral.
When people start selling RPR pages, whether or not it is possible or easy to code that in, you're bound to have cheats and scams. That means people contacted RPR, Kim or mods, requesting them to do something.. give the page back.. ban the person from the forums. That puts a bit too much on RPR which is in the business of supplying people with a option of creating character sites, not selling them.
It is an interesting idea in theory, but in practice I can see it bringing in unwanted and unnecessary attention.
As for alt trading becoming supported in the future of Furcadia? It might, but with a fee.

I did not insinuate for the profiles to be sold for money at all. That does bring too many problems. I specifically suggested they be given to another player if the player decides to no longer desire the character or, if the alt that is being sold has an RPR profile the new owner wants, that it is easily transferred over. I can see the potential abuse in it, definitely, but please don't misunderstand my intentions.

Alt trading is 100% definitely going to be supported in the future, and most definitely with a fee. It's a matter of 'when' rather than 'if'.

The thing is, if someone were to trade a character within Furcadia. All the person would need to do is come to RPR. Create an account. Copy and paste the old information of the character into the new page they created. If perhaps someone claimed copyright infringement, then we could investigate the manner by having the original or new owner do a screen shot with something we ask them to say in it.

The thing with RPR, is that there can be multiple characters with the same name. Unlike Furcadia where if you wanted the name Paul, you'll have to add in a last name of some sort. (i.e. Paul Johnson or Paul Smith).

I'm just rambling here at work so if something doesn't make sense or something looks incorrect I'm sure Dylan, Sanne, Kim, darth, or Seraphic would be able to correct it for me.

I understand you didn't, I'm looking at this from all angles , but typically with alt trading in the price itself can be included the characters design and website.. thus the RPR profile for the character would be sold, if not for money, for GD or for other alts or for digos. There would be no way for RPR to know the profile wasn't sold for money or traded (or given away for free). If there was an issue or scam, RPR would be called upon to maybe get the profile back. That's what I am trying to imply.

The idea of transferring profiles is an interesting idea, where as selling a design where someone is using a freewebs account all you have to do is give them the password for it.

Character trading has always seemed a grey area that can get messy thanks to how easy it is to get scammed. Sherlock's solution does seem like the best way to suggest people trade characters for now.

Ohoho. In general, I've always been for it, but this issue is far more complicated than you think!

I can think of a dozen legitimate reasons why someone might want to transfer a character, unrelated to buying and selling concepts, and unrelated to any specific platform (such as Furcadia, where whatever plans they have for the future, the practice is currently a bannable offense).

For example, a player has a character that gives birth. They then play both mother and child while the baby is too small to ever be apart from the mother anyway. But when that child gets old enough to have adventures of its own, they think it would be more fun to have someone else play the kid, and ask a friend if they want to take on that character.

So far so good. All quite innocent so far.

Here's the catch: We're a social site. Transferring a character transfers all of the connections it has, all of its group memberships, all of the private messages addressed to that character. If you are a group owner, perhaps you approved an application for that character to join based on the RP style of the original owner, and the new player is not someone you would have approved. Perhaps you don't like - or just don't know - the new player, and are uncomfortable with them getting notifications about all the stuff you're doing.

The most potentially creepy thing to me is that because characters can be listed as anonymous, you could carry on an entire conversation with someone, get to know and trust them, and continue talking as if that was the person you liked and trusted without knowing it was a whole new person behind that character.

We can set it up so that a transferred character loses all of its friends and group memberships, but it still leaves some hanging questions about the other social implications. Currently, I haven't found a good way to get around these issues.

It does also create problems of people feeling they were scammed or deciding they don't like the way the new owner is playing their character and using support to try and get their character returned, which is a whole other issue entirely and one that would need to be looked at separately.

I don't think it would be a good idea for the RPR to get caught up in the alt trading business in any way, shape or form. There's just too many opportunities for abuse, and as Sherlock pointed out, you may as well just copy and paste all of the information over to a new character template on the new owner's account if you really, really want to. It's not that difficult, and to be truthful, most of the characters that get passed around aren't very fleshed out or have that much to them, so it wouldn't be much to transfer to a new page.

Additionally, beyond the smaller portion of the userbase that engages in alt-trading, this feature wouldn't have much use at all, and would really just contribute to confusion and ownership issues, which is something that's already kind of hard to sort out with intellectual property like characters. (I'd know, I've had character thefts occur before.)

DEP is a small company, and if they are going to allow alt-trading, they will probably deal with spats between alt-traders if they come up--but so far as I know, the RPR does not support alt-trading, and shouldn't have to deal with the nonsense that comes about from it. There's also the fact that DEP is paid to do any of these kinds of jobs, whereas Kim and her moderators are only a few people who are doing this for fun! Any disputes over something so silly would just be an extra and unpleasant duty, you know?


EDIT: Kim AND ALSO DARTH totally beat me to it!

To be clear, I am completely 100% against alt trading and I want no part of the Furcadian alt trade.

But situations do exist where transferring a character is done for reasons unrelated to money or other valuables and actually facilitate RP going forward, and it would be for those situations that I would consider this idea.

BTW, you can only directly copy and paste information from a text widget, and even then you won't get any special bbcode formatting the original author used. All the rest require a lot more clicking and typing than a simple copy and paste would allow for.

Both sides have amazing arguments, thank you! I fully understand the concept of keeping RPR far away from alt trading. Currently a lot of scamming happens with that business. It seems to me that the reason for it lies with the lacking system from Furcadia's side. You do not have a safe way to do it, no record to prove that you paid something in exchange for that alt. Often new owners are lazy and don't change email or password and have the alt taken away. It's my belief the moment a proper system is implemented, trading will be more pleasant and safe as most issues which get people into trouble are by default taken care of. This is why I thought it a good idea to - eventually - offer to transfer a profile in full more easily. I understand perfectly that this isn't likely a feasible idea, so I'll drop that.

Kim raises some very good points and motivations for giving a profile to someone else. Magica was an alt gifted to me in Furcadia by a friend. She didn't have a profile to go with her, but the thought occurred to me that if she had a direct transfer would have been pleasant. Perhaps it can be realized in the future. Copying a profile can be tedious, considering the fancy widgets such as Vital Stats lists after all!