So, we're doing a lot of "server-side clean-up" for the last month or so. It's very delicate and involved for us, and makes for absolutely zero apparent progress from the outside.. but suffice to say it's pretty important that we do this.

I know keys and their excessive number, and their lack-of-sorting was historically a problem; which we alleviated a bit with sorting the relevant ones to the top, some time back.

Are there any objections to keys simply disappearing automatically, if they've gone unused for, say, 90 days?

By "unused" I would mean not attached to access for some kind of game content, like a station or capship, etc.

That should clean up some of the chaotic key-mess for some players, and also makes our ever-growing key-table in the database a little more sane.

The only ramification I can think of, off the top of my head, is if someone had gone to a lot of work to get a particular key to a specific group of people, and then didn't use it for awhile, and then lost it and had to re-distribute a new key. I appreciate that that might be annoying.

But, then again, there's probably some reasonable time tradeoff (maybe 90d?) where that's not very likely.

Would this include deleting the Cap Ship keys of some who have not played in a while and may one day come back? If so, would they have to start off with a new key when they do log back into game?

Other than that I can see no problems.

Basically, the idea would be to only remove keys that weren't attached to any content. Whether the content had been used-recently, or the player had been online recently, or anything else.. would not be a factor (at least, as I'm currently envisioning it).

I'm just talking about purging "orphaned" keys that don't actually have any associated content, and are just sitting around "being keys".

So, if one gave out a bunch of capship keys, and then didn't play for six months, and then came back, your keys would be intact, because they were associated with your capship.

Most old keys are dispensable, for sure, but there are some that are important and remain relevant despite not being currently attached. Those keys are too important to be included in an auto-cleanse of all unattached keys.

Is there really no middle ground? Adding the ability to save user/owner lists? Adding the ability to mark a particular key as exempt from auto-expiration? Making easier to delete keys??

+1 to greenwall's idea of flagging keys as exempt.

Uhm, why would such a key be important? If its not tied to anything for so long... i'm probably missing something here, so example please?

but there are some that are important and remain relevant despite not being currently attached.

Well, that's why I posted this to ask.

No, there is no middle ground. I'm well aware of the myriad of possible new-features that could be implemented. I have no time to implement new features right now, especially for relatively irrelevant areas like the Key system.

I was just asking how important these "disconnected" keys were to you guys, to see if there was a simple path to cleaning some of this up.

especially for relatively irrelevant areas like the Key system"

the key system is irrelevant? k

the key system is irrelevant? k

Jesus, I said relatively. And if you honestly disagree with that, in the face of everything else the game needs, you're egregiously out of touch, and lack a meaningful sense of priority.

Also, how is your nit-picking, argumentative response supposed to help productively move this discussion forward?

[Unnecessarily inflammatory sentence removed - thread access revoked. -W] I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the key system is quite relevant. It's disappointing that you don't see it that way. That's all. You'll probably just get mild blowblack. Do it and find out.

Clean up the keys. If they are that important, use them more frequently. I understand the desire to keep a multi-guild key and understand that there may be several such keys, each maintained by different guilds, but this is push-back on a good technical solution because of bad key management by user activities and those user activities should adapt to the better technical implementation.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the key system is quite relevant. It's disappointing that you don't see it that way. That's all.

Man. You really just can't cut it on Suggestions, can you? I actually wrote:

"I have no time to implement new features right now, especially for relatively irrelevant areas like the Key system."

I said I had no development time for new "middle-ground" key-management features you were proposing.

Because I think stuff like, you know, NEW GAMEPLAY, is actually more important then "fun with key-management"?

I actually didn't say the key system is itself irrelevant. I said developing new management-features for it would be relatively so, compared to other goals. If you can't concieve of the difference between those two concepts, you really don't belong on here.

But, you had to intentionally crop out half of my sentence, in your original quote, to make it sound like my position was something different, which implies an actual intent to mislead. And then, after you were called out for being unhelpful, with a chance to respond, re-think or apologize.. you chose to double-down and be more of a dick. That's some quality Suggestions content, man.

Anyway..

I never intended to just arbitrarily start removing keys, I posted this to very-ernestly ask if "old" keys were something people cared about. This thread is a core example of my genuinely caring about player feedback. There was nothing to argue over, no reason to try and manipulate the conversation to some other direction.

We won't do anything with "orphaned" keys for the moment, I never planned to unless people really didn't care. As I said on Weds, that's why I posted this to ask.

Some keys are pretty nuts and have thousands of attached users, but we're doing our best to optimize the database to keep that from breaking things down the road.

I have a private plugin that uses an "abandoned key" so people could share state and status. It could use ANY key, except that I couldn't spawn one/self sign one myself.

If the key still contains members, has been accessed/updated, but isn't attached to a station or ship, will it still be a candidate for deletion?

If you could open a ticket to tell us more about your plugin, that would be helpful.

Sure. I'll even send you the current pre-release.

No objections here, as most players who play the game, who dont use the forums I have collectively asked players who think about keys, and they are plagued with uniused keys and some keys are written in such a way where it is very time consuming to delete each key or have dozens of unused keys in their invetory. I am the same way. No objections and in my opinion go on right ahead. Love the feedback area you give us to give reccomendations and commentary on various updates-situations :)

some keys are written in such a way where it is very time consuming to delete each key

/me points out that a few keys use the gem/euro symbol, which mobile pilots can't even type, so they can't delete those keys even if they wanted to.

For busy key titles that you want to delete, just _rename_ them to something like "abc" and _then_ delete them.

...would even work for euro/crystals. ;)

just rename them to blank