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Why is restoring a deleted swtor character so awkward?


Ambaire

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So you're telling me I need to file a ticket and wait literal days for customer support to help with this.

 

Meanwhile, Wow, for all its faults, has a character restoration menu clickable from the character select screen which allows restoring any deleted character instantly provided it hasn't been too long since the deletion.

 

My point is: Why, in 2021, do I need to contact a real live person to deal with the consequences of a moment of rage deletion?

Edited by Ambaire
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So you're telling me I need to file a ticket and wait literal days for customer support to help with this.

 

Meanwhile, Wow, for all its faults, has a character restoration menu clickable from the character select screen which allows restoring any deleted character instantly provided it hasn't been too long since the deletion.

 

My point is: Why, in 2021, do I need to contact a real live person to deal with the consequences of a moment of rage deletion?

The last time I did it, when poor Aurata had a fatal encounter with a round from the Delete Button cannon that was meant for Binthelius Gsrim, it took under a day to be handled. That would have been in 2019, I think.

 

And you admit you deleted the character without really thinking about it (just as I did with Aurata), which is a poor justification for the proposed solution.

 

That said, it's a good idea, mostly because it will reduce (by some unknown but surely non-zero amount) the load on CS that comes from these tickets. (As hinted above, I feel that the direct benefit for people who change their minds about deletions is of no importance in this discussion.)

 

Re: the last part: the current date is of exactly no importance in this debate.

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Presumably the reason is due to the ways in which players could exploit the system.

 

F2P and preferred players have character limits. (Subs too but to a far lesser extent). This means that if those players want to complete the legendary status achievements and get the flairs etc, they either have to delete characters or subscribe. If players could just restore deleted characters whenever, you could create temporary throwaway characters, then delete them after getting the chievs and restore your original characters all without having to sub - which isn't what the devs want.

 

Another thing you could do off the top of my head is exploit the system for free character renames.

Step 1: delete og character you want to change the name with.

Step 2: create a new character with the exact same name.

Step 3: restore the og character but oh no, someone already has the name so you are forced to rename the first character (if it does in fact work like this).

 

Anyway that's my guess at least. The customer support team wants to know that what you did was an accident and not an attempt to manipulate the game systems in a way that means you spend less money on the game. After all, if you're deleting a character to free up a character slot, you're not spending 600cc on buying a fresh new slot!

 

There is a potential solution whereby a limit is placed on the amount that players can delete and/or restore characters (say 1 restore per 6 months) - but that would also take a fair amount of dev time to implement and they probably have higher priority things to work on such as the new UI and other systems.

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F2P and preferred players have character limits. (Subs too but to a far lesser extent). This means that if those players want to complete the legendary status achievements and get the flairs etc, they either have to delete characters or subscribe. If players could just restore deleted characters whenever, you could create temporary throwaway characters, then delete them after getting the chievs and restore your original characters all without having to sub - which isn't what the devs want.

Runes of Magic's self-service undelete system contains a solution for that. If you delete a character, you can undelete it using the character-select screen mechanism during the next 24 hours of elapsed real-world time. After that, you'd need a CS ticket.

 

As for the "free rename" thing, yeah, that might be a contributing factor to them not implementing it. The solution there would be to bar self-service undeletes if the name is in use, requiring a CS ticket. (Note: not "if the player has another character of that name", but "if any player has a character of that name". That way, you can't evade it by getting a friend (or your own second account) to create a character to block the name.)

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Think of it as your punishment for being (momentarily) stupid.

Ideally it would make you pay a little more attention in the future so you don't just delete characters all willy-nilly.

Yeah, I learned that lesson a few years ago, but I've accepted my punishment ;)

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The last time I accidently deleted a character and file a ticket, it took maybe 2 hours to have it restored. So it didn't take days and even then I didn't expect them to do it as it was my fault and I even told them that in the ticket and they were nice about it and restored my character.
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So you're telling me I need to file a ticket and wait literal days for customer support to help with this.

 

Yes, you must file a ticket then wait till they decide to help you, if at all.

 

Meanwhile, Wow, for all its faults, has a character restoration menu clickable from the character select screen which allows restoring any deleted character instantly provided it hasn't been too long since the deletion.

 

In case you have not noticed.... This is NOT WoW. It's Star Wars the Old Republic. They do things differently here. It's alot like comparing Apples to Oranges. Though they are both Fruit they are NOTHING alike. It's the same with SWToR and WoW, though they are both MMORPG's they are NOTHING alike nor are Blizzard and BW alike.

 

My point is: Why, in 2021, do I need to contact a real live person to deal with the consequences of a moment of rage deletion?

 

Because Character Restoration is offered as a Courtesy, not a Service. They are in no way under any obligation to restore your character. The GM's will do it as a courtesy and only if you are polite and do not abuse that courtesy.

Edited by denavin
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Because Character Restoration is offered as a Courtesy, not a Service. They are in no way under any obligation to restore your character. The GM's will do it as a courtesy and only if you are polite and do not abuse that courtesy.

Pretty much this, and they've even mentioned one specific way which counts as abusing the courtesy. I don't feel like digging into the forums for the citation, but I remember after the various insta60/insta65/insta70 tokens were first introduced, some fuss about the exact conditions for not getting the token refunded if you deleted the character.

 

So they said that if you locked out the refund and deleted the character anyway, and asked CS to give you the token back, they would restore the character instead. If you deleted the character again and asked for the token back again, they would refuse to restore either the token or the character.

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