Forum logouts: Why?
By
Codewalker,
Posted on: 2012-02-04 24:02 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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Originally Posted by seebs
I can't find Arcanaville's lovely post on the "delete cookies" messages, but I've noticed a thing.
As we're all aware, the forums randomly instruct browsers to delete all cookies, such that if you are active on the forums for a few hours, you will likely be logged out several times. Well, I've been less active, and I've noticed a thing: 1. All of my cookies have an expected duration of "until next year" or at least a few months out. 2. With perfect reliability so far, if I haven't used the forums for a day or two, and I come back, I'm logged out. Hypothesis: Rather than telling vB to generate shorter login cookies, someone cleverly did something to attempt to implement session timeouts by flagging start times and deleting "old" sessions. It has a finite cache. If your session gets flushed from the cache, that also makes you get a delete-cookies request, because you're presumed to be "old". In any event, I think the completely consistent logouts given longer time intervals probably mean something. |
From word of Zwill, the forums are set with something like an 8-hour session time. After that, you have to log in again.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Because if you stay logged into the forum of a 3rd-tier MMO (1st-tier superhero MMO) for longer than 8 hours you'll be the victim of identity theft.
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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DCU reference or srsly?
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Originally Posted by DarkGob
Because if you stay logged into the forum of a 3rd-tier MMO (1st-tier superhero MMO) for longer than 8 hours you'll be the victim of identity theft.
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It 'remembers you' but only for 8 hours because of this stupid change.
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Also, does the "Remember Me" check box actually do anything?
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Supposedly it's considered risky to remain logged into the forum because your forum account is linked with your game account.
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Originally Posted by WanderingAries
DCU reference or srsly?
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"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
Is it really that stressful to log back into the forum every eight hours? What do you guys do when you have to log into the game?
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Nobody is saying that's stressful (neat strawman though), it's just annoying. Also, the game is not the same as the forum.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
Is it really that stressful to log back into the forum every eight hours? What do you guys do when you have to log into the game?
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Thank you for your time.
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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Well, sorta.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
Is it really that stressful to log back into the forum every eight hours?
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See. I have friends who play this game. Sometimes they link me to posts.
If I have to log in to follow a link, that's a disruption. It's the interruption of what I was trying to do that really gets to me.
Also, it's not "every 8 hours". It's "after some number of hours, or every so often at random regardless".
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| What do you guys do when you have to log into the game? |
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It would really be more like having to log back into the game every time you enter a mission.
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Originally Posted by seebs
That's not a sporadic interruption of an activity already initiated.
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"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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Or every time you enter a mission after you've not been in a mission for a while. So you're hanging around, and you can do stuff, but if someone invites you to a TF you get bounced to the login screen.
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Originally Posted by DarkGob
It would really be more like having to log back into the game every time you enter a mission.
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*rolls eyes* Strawman might be one of the internet's most overused catchphrases. Right up there with 'egregious'. It's obviously bothering you enough for you to get on a forum and talk about it, one would imply that it's causing you a certain amount of stress. Is it making you happy then? No? It's not my fault if you can't adequately convey your emotions. |
Originally Posted by DarkGob
Nobody is saying that's stressful (neat strawman though), it's just annoying. Also, the game is not the same as the forum.
Thank you for your time. |
Unless you log into the game in some way that doesn't involve entering a name and a password then, yeah, the game and the forum are exactly the same in the aspect in which we are both talking about. Or at least I think we are, it's hard to tell with you.
I simply fail to see how entering a name and a password is especially difficult. If it's logging you out every ten seconds to the point where the forum is unusable I might agree with your... whatever emotion your feeling. Maybe. Even every couple of hours hardly seems like a big deal to me.
At least it's not as bad as a certain other big MMO's forums. I've had cases there where I've logged in and typed up a longish post (and this can take me a while, since I like to make sure my language is clear to avoid misunderstandings), and then when I hit "Submit" I discover my session "timed out" while I was typing. Which means my entire post vanishes into thin air when the forum auto-refreshes my login. I had to learn to "select all and copy" my post before clicking the "Submit" button, so that if that happened I could simply paste my post back in instead of having to start all over.
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No one said it was difficult.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
I simply fail to see how entering a name and a password is especially difficult.
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It's annoying.
Interruptions in a planned activity are annoying far out of proportion to how difficult they'd be otherwise. Okay, thought experiement time!
You are sitting doing nothing. The phone rings. You pick it up and answer it. No problem. Everything's fine.
Now, try this instead. You're reconciling bank statements trying to figure out a small discrepancy. You've got three pages of bank statements and your bookkeeping software open and you're doing a line-by-line trying to track something down. The phone rings. You pick it up and answer it. You are, assuming you're a reasonably normal human, irritated.
Why? Because the phone was an interruption.
On ordinary forums, which are run sanely by people who have a basic background in how security works, you log into the forum, you get your cookie, and you are now able to use the forum without interruption. If a friend gives me a link to a thread on a vB forum, I click on the link and end up in the thread.
Here, I get a login page instead. I have a clear task in mind, and that task is not logging in. The login is an interruption, and that makes it annoying.
It's not a question of easy/hard. It's a question of pleasant/unpleasant. Every time I come to these forums, my experience starts as an intrusive reminder that ncsoft has sworn blood vengeance on all forms of sanity and competence. I have to deal with that, and placate their cargo cult misunderstandings of security, before I can begin chatting with fun people about a fun game.
So if I just wanna kick around for a bit, read funny posts, post comments... I go to some other (usually non-MMO) forums, rather than the CoH forums. Back when the login stuff was less annoying, I liked to hang out here because I mostly like the community and the sense of humor.
Net result: I log in less, and it is less obvious to me why I'm paying for a sub. My impression of all-things-CoH is tainted by being (temporarily) thwarted every time someone sends me a link to an interesting post in the beta forums.
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The term "strawman" is only overused because strawmen are overused, especially on the internet where any awesome jerk can say any stupid uninformed thing they want because who cares. It's not my fault you can't make a cogent argument. And no, this argument is not causing me any stress. I forgot about anything having to do with my post shortly after making it, and was only reminded when I saw a thread that I had replied to at one point had new replies (and only then once I saw your post).|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
*rolls eyes* Strawman might be one of the internet's most overused catchphrases. Right up there with 'egregious'. It's obviously bothering you enough for you to get on a forum and talk about it, one would imply that it's causing you a certain amount of stress. Is it making you happy then? No? It's not my fault if you can't adequately convey your emotions.
Unless you log into the game in some way that doesn't involve entering a name and a password then, yeah, the game and the forum are exactly the same in the aspect in which we are both talking about. Or at least I think we are, it's hard to tell with you. I simply fail to see how entering a name and a password is especially difficult. If it's logging you out every ten seconds to the point where the forum is unusable I might agree with your... whatever emotion your feeling. Maybe. Even every couple of hours hardly seems like a big deal to me. |
And your new post is filled with more strawmen, so honestly I'm just not going to even bother and let other people convince you of your own ridiculousness (let's call it outsourcing).
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
To encourage people to use their browser's "Remember Password" feature to store their game password insecurely, in order to make it easier for hackers to steal their account info.
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We can only hope. Perhaps you two will knock it off and the thread can get back on track.
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Originally Posted by DarkGob
And your new post is filled with more strawmen, so honestly I'm just not going to even bother
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
I can't find Arcanaville's lovely post on the "delete cookies" messages, but I've noticed a thing.
As we're all aware, the forums randomly instruct browsers to delete all cookies, such that if you are active on the forums for a few hours, you will likely be logged out several times.
Well, I've been less active, and I've noticed a thing:
1. All of my cookies have an expected duration of "until next year" or at least a few months out.
2. With perfect reliability so far, if I haven't used the forums for a day or two, and I come back, I'm logged out.
Hypothesis: Rather than telling vB to generate shorter login cookies, someone cleverly did something to attempt to implement session timeouts by flagging start times and deleting "old" sessions. It has a finite cache. If your session gets flushed from the cache, that also makes you get a delete-cookies request, because you're presumed to be "old".
In any event, I think the completely consistent logouts given longer time intervals probably mean something.