Discussion: Configuring Your In-Game Web Options
By
After_Shock,
Posted on: 2007-11-20 11:30 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Since we know the feature will be going through regardless of feedback, can we get an addition of "hide character from web page" to hide a character entirely? That will make life a lot easier for those of us who don't want to participate.
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Enabling the "Hide Statistics from Web Page" will do exactly that. The character will not have any information displayed.
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It's not just character stats that some don't want displayed. What I'd like is a way to not have anything at all about my characters displayed, no names, pics, nothing. Hopefully that is what you mean by 'not have any information displayed.' I don't want to start getting tells from people bugging me about dropping lower level/less played characters because they want the name for themselves.
Just thought I'd mention this here - and if someone has already, then I appologize.
While we are being told that the option for displaying our friends list is set to 'enabled', or hidden, it is actually set to 'disabled'.
I went through all my toons tonight (just to see how long it took me to go through the marathon sessions starting next week) and took the time to reset that to 'enabled' on all of them.
And if you're wondering, it took me just over two hours to go through all of them - although I was fixing dinner for part of that time while I was doing this.
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
<QR>
I'm really looking forward to this. An XML-based API would be great, but parsing HTML is old hat (Badge-Hunter Dev Tracker/Badge-Hunter Dev Search), so either way, I can deal.
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Just thought I'd mention this here - and if someone has already, then I appologize.
While we are being told that the option for displaying our friends list is set to 'enabled', or hidden, it is actually set to 'disabled'.
I went through all my toons tonight (just to see how long it took me to go through the marathon sessions starting next week) and took the time to reset that to 'enabled' on all of them.
And if you're wondering, it took me just over two hours to go through all of them - although I was fixing dinner for part of that time while I was doing this.
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Confirmed.
I PMd Lighthouse about this.
We also need an answer on the question of whether Hiding All Info removes us from OTHER peoples Unhidden Friends lists. That question was also in my PM.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
I don't really get the general freak-out at all.
Personally, only the friends list thing is questionable to me, and mainly because the local friends list is pretty much useless in my humble opinion.
Now that the Global list is actually there [and I remember the dark days before it was], I only use local friends to 'mark' someone in a more temporary way.
Real friends that I either actually know in RL, or game with regularly, are already on my Global or Super Group & Coalition lists, the Local list is for folks I only barely know but play with "on that toon in that level range" [and I prune those lists regularly], and folks I really like I invite into my global list so I can meet up with them in-game even easier.
Really, I don't even consider someone a "Friend" at all until I've exchanged Globals with them.
And I don't want my Global Friends list published, not for myself, I could care less if more folks send me a few tells, but for those friends. I don't want my real Global friends being bothered because of me.
I've been wanting this since I noticed those options in game!
I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it. And for future alts, its been stated in the MOTD that web stats will only be available for characters over level 10 so you'll have 9 whole levels worth of time to click "Options / Enable Hide".
@Poison Idea
Guilty of being tight.
I'm glad to see that these options are finally seeing the light of day. May I suggest that the character history be also made available online?
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -F. Nietzsche
Virtueverse
Guide to Dark/Dark Defenders
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I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it.
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And how do you disable them on an inactive account, mmmh? 
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I've been wanting this since I noticed those options in game!
I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it. And for future alts, its been stated in the MOTD that web stats will only be available for characters over level 10 so you'll have 9 whole levels worth of time to click "Options / Enable Hide".
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I don't want my characters listed on some website at all. Just blocking a few stats isn't good enough, all I ask for is a way to not be forced into something I want no part of. There's too much of that in the game already.
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I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it.
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And how do you disable them on an inactive account, mmmh?
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From the OP:
"All of these settings are configured per character. Characters who have not logged in for over 90 days, regardless of whether they are tied to an active or inactive account, will not be viewable."
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I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it.
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And how do you disable them on an inactive account, mmmh?
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From the OP:
"All of these settings are configured per character. Characters who have not logged in for over 90 days, regardless of whether they are tied to an active or inactive account, will not be viewable."
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To be fair, that doesn't really address the issue.
If your account went inactive within the last 90 days before they implement the service your characters might be on the site until that 90 days had elapsed.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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I don't really get the general freak-out at all.
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Yeah, gotta agree. I'm REALLY not getting this. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm being serious. Can someone please explain what the worry is? Because I'm really not understanding this.
First of all characters on an online game will be displayed online. So what????
Your name, Social Security Number, home address, and credit score are NOT going to be displayed online. Likewise wierdos are not going to come knocking on your door because they've managed to find your home address and slap you around because you ganked them in Siren's Call last week. Psychos and rapists are not going to sneak into your home and violate you because of the information they found on this website.
So what exactly is the problem again?
Boo hoo, someone might see my characters online...
And Lecxe:
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And how do you disable them on an inactive account, mmmh?
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If someone really doesn't want their characters to show up then they'll have to pay to have access to them again to change those options. If said person doesn't want to pay the $15 then they obviously don't care what happens to those characters.
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The problem with putting the names out there by default means the damage is already done. Once your name is out there the spammers can get you. I would still rather not have to do this for some 100+ alts that I have.
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They already can get you. You can be hidden and still get on their lists. They have characters monitoring the various chokepoints to collect names of characters.
I just don't see this making it any easier than it already is.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
Just another vote for leaving everything visible by default.
I'm not seeing the problem with this, as others have noted Sony does it with both EQ and EQ2. It isn't the end of the world as some people seem to think. I personally have found it kind of handy to have that sort of info available.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
So the first question that pops in my mind here is..."Why?" Why do this? This is already available by checking each other out in-game (which I liken to dogs sniffing each other's butts, by the way). How is this going to improve my enjoyment of the game?
I have to agree with Clobbertime here. I don't mind the idea of the ability to display things, per se, it's the idea of being forced to turn them off for each and every character (and some of us have filled every slot on every server).
Simply put; it's not going to improve my enjoyment of the game, really. Yes, give us the ability to do this; it'd be an easy way to check badges, if nothing else. But give *us* the choice to turn it ON to begin with.
Personally, I'd rather have most character slots than anything else. Just my two inf.
It's already been said by others that if the options are turned off by default it's likely the majority of players will never realize the options are even there, making the system largely pointless. I believe the default must have everything ON in order for the system to be effective.
If there was no way to turn the options off I could see the arguments. It may be an inconvenience to have to turn the option off on every character but you do it once and it's done. It just doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
Looking forward to it. I hope the character bios will be online too. For some of us the story is more important than the stats (sez the guy with over 100 toons, all having bios written". Gotta take a few hours now and again log into them all to keep them current on the web page then though.
Seriously though. Who really thinks they have a super secret special build that nobody can ever know? If all you care about is a good PvP build there are fantastic build guilds online. I cannot imagine anyone who is actually believes they have them all beat.
Professionally certified pessimism expert
Statesman is someone who shouldn't rap ever, even if he's trying to help people out. -IolitePhoenix
Check out my Infinity toons at the Vis Viva family web page.
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I wanted to follow up on this announcement to say that I'm sorry it is a tease of what is to come. At this time I don't have more clarification of how these settings will be used.
Also, we understand that the "Enabled/Disabled" option settings are not as intuitive as they could be. For these, and other, settings "Yes/No" options would likely work better.
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In my extremely humble opinion, it would make a lot more sense if you were to replace the four instances of the word "Hide" with the word "Show", and then use the "enabled/disabled" selections that you currently have (with the sense reversed, obviously).
That would make it the most intuitive, at least it would for me.
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Best would be to reword ALL of them, so that the two options can be "HIDE" and "SHOW", exclusively. You don't GET more intuitive than that!
Oh, and, to beat the drum again: global opt-out option per account, please!
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If there was no way to turn the options off I could see the arguments. It may be an inconvenience to have to turn the option off on every character but you do it once and it's done. It just doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
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And I don't see why NC can't offer a web-interfaced option to batch-adjust all of your characters, with a single mouse click, to "hide me completely". Then, I can go back in and specifically elect what to reveal, and about who. Most of my characters will have the majority of information displayed ... but not all of them. And I don't want to go through turning off everything for NOW, before reaching the point of deciding "what will I hide and what will I display" after seeing what the web output is like.
I don't know if this will be part of the system or not, but I'd actually be more interested in seeing overall statistics, rather than individuals' information. What percentage of players have actually gotten a character to 50? How many people give up early on because they get stuck in the Hollows? How many people mis-slot their powers because they don't know about ED? What percentage of supergroup members are 1st level "blanks" who are just there to generate extra prestige? To me, that'd be a lot more interesting than finding out that "@MachoMan316" has an alt named "Sugar-Plum.Fairy"...
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If there was no way to turn the options off I could see the arguments. It may be an inconvenience to have to turn the option off on every character but you do it once and it's done. It just doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
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And I don't see why NC can't offer a web-interfaced option to batch-adjust all of your characters, with a single mouse click, to "hide me completely". Then, I can go back in and specifically elect what to reveal, and about who. Most of my characters will have the majority of information displayed ... but not all of them. And I don't want to go through turning off everything for NOW, before reaching the point of deciding "what will I hide and what will I display" after seeing what the web output is like.
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I'd support that, obviously, but the system could go live without it and I wouldn't mind, either.
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Can I humbly suggest to the Devs that while you're contemplating these settings to get in touch with the existing, and extensive, tracking sites already out there like Titan Network (City Info Terminal, City Game Tracker, etc)?
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Exactly. The Titan Network isn't the only example, but they're a really good example. Those guys have committed their time and money for about 2 years now doing exactly what it sounds like this is talking about. They don't make money doing it; they do it to support the community. If somehow they and those like them are nuked out of the equation, the remaining userbase from those sites will be very picky as to how this is implemented and maintained.
That being said, I do apprectiate the "new team" progressing things forward. The only gaping hole in this system is what has been said over and over. It needs to be Hidden by default, not the other way around.
insted of having the info off for defalt, how about we have a week or so to set the options before it takes efect.
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I've been wanting this since I noticed those options in game!
I don't see why anyone's complaining. You can disable them right now in game so you never have to worry about it. And for future alts, its been stated in the MOTD that web stats will only be available for characters over level 10 so you'll have 9 whole levels worth of time to click "Options / Enable Hide".
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I don't want my characters listed on some website at all. Just blocking a few stats isn't good enough, all I ask for is a way to not be forced into something I want no part of. There's too much of that in the game already.
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That's not an unreasonable request at all, Clobbertime; in fact, I'm in full agreement.
I think NCSoft would be wise in making EVERY facet of this OPTIONAL so that if I want to play with anonymity, I can do that (at least as much as I can in-game 
)
Please don't force me to NOT be able to hide the fact that I'm playing from the non-playing crowd.
Satan trembles when he sees...
the weakest saint on his knees.
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Possibly this has been covered, but I don't want my characters' names listed on a web page for RMT spammers because a friend has changed their settings to display their friends' list.
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I agree. I don't really understand why the Friends info is there at all, but given that it is, there should be a way to keep Yourself off of Others lists.
Lighthouse? Do you see this is important?
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.