Can autosave be disabled?

Posted by Skar on 11/21

I was wondering if it would be possible to disable the autosave feature. I find it more annoying now than comforting. If the mud has a 'polite' crash, then I'm saved whatever I'm carrying, so the autosave is no help there. If the crash is not polite and I've failed an autosave, then I lose everything.

What's really scary is that if I'm suffering from severe lag, fail an autosave and then the mud goes down hard, then I don't have any chance to recover. As others have said, it's hard to never be overrent.

Autosave isn't a safety net for me anymore -- it's more like a landmine. I never know when it's going to go off. Wouldn't we be better off without it?

From: Hamble Thursday, November 11, 06:18PM

As someone who is under-rent 90% of the time (in this char, 99%, due to the ability to create zombies), I -like- autosave. What I hate most about hard crashes is the loss of xp I've earned, particularly if I'm in the middle of a good run. I manually save when I acquire eq I want to retain, but I don't manually save after every mob in a run. With autosave and a hard crash, I don't lose all of that xp.

While we are on the subject of crashes, is there any way to save charmies (still charmed) after a polite crash. One of the crashes this week occurred just as I was giving my newly created zombie it's very first order - its most annoying to log back in, be down on mana, and have nothing to show for it.

Hamble

From: Papercut Friday, November 12, 03:05AM

maybe add it to a config, so ppl can disable if they wish, or even set how often they want it to go. like, have the mud autosave every 6-8 mudhours, and players decide if they want it that often or just once per mudday, etc. hrm, would prolly lag the mud alot so maybe just an option on/off

From: LadyAce Friday, November 12, 11:19AM

I'd rather see us keep autosave -- it happens at one of two points, either every half hour, or whenever you cross over a 'save point' -- which resets your homeroom (i.e. where you return if you die, recall, etc.). The saving of homerooms is pretty vital to the mud, and every half hour is not -such- a huge risk. It seems pretty reasonable, in fact, if you consider that you're not -supposed- to be going over rent to begin with. I don't think we need yet another way for players to get around the rent restrictions.

Not that I'm the only person who decides such things -- just my opinion :)

-LadyAce

From: Skar Friday, November 12, 12:17PM

I'm not disputing homeroom saves, just the timed ones. As far as autosaves enforcing rent restrictions, that's a non-issue since we can simply drop the offending item and resave.

A configurable option would be fine with me. I'd just switch it off.

On the other hand, could you recode the autosave function to not overwrite the pfile if the save failed? In the case of a bad crash, you'd revert to the last successful save you had.

I frequently go over my rent limit when I tform gear or when I'm trans- porting something that I've collected for someone. I understand the need to enforce the rent limits, but I think the mud does a good job of doing that by refusing to let you equip an item when you're over your limit. You may carry things over your limit, but you can't use them, unles they have some use apart from being worn, like potions.

I simply think that the mud's saving system needs to be more forgiving in some way, given that going over rent is a thing that we all have to do at times. The possible penalty seems to be a bit harsh.

From: Rufus Friday, November 12, 01:22PM

actually, autosave hasn't worked properly for a long time. With as many people getting rented in and out as does happen, the character list is constantly in flux, meaning that only the most recent person logged in really only gets the autosave.

-Ruf

From: Oxalis Friday, November 12, 08:17PM

If thats the case, why not take it out? I don't really see the issue of enforcing rent limits, as Skar says, you can only go significantly over in order to carry things temporarily, not to actually use them.

From: TheThing Saturday, November 13, 06:31AM

I must agree with what is being said regarding the use of eq.

I think the restriction to not being able to use EQ which puts you over rent is more than enough to discourage people from walking around with, say, two weapons that they can not rent. However with the addition of hou housing, raising cash is much more cumbersome than it ever was!

In order to generate the kind of cash it takes to maintain a decent house, one is forced to carry large amounts of "extra" eq around in order to a)sell to a merchant or b)deliver to an auction bidder.

This often means running around like the preverbial chicken so that you do not get autosaved during one of the ever-increasing crashes. Lord only knows if all the spam running to merchants is creating part of the cr crash problem. I gues I don't have the solution this time, but my own ISP has a hard enough time re-connecting from a simple LD situation that I have been scared of losing all of my EQ many a time.

Heck, just the other night while runing SL I picked up all, trying to retrieve my throwables for the greater good, and managed to grab TWO (2) black hound claws by mistake, putting me over-rent. Now instead of endagering the lives of others, or delaying the run, I kept going, knowing I was over-rent and also knowing that at the end of the run I could remedy the situation easily. The problem came when I went LD on my way to Agrabah after the run. MY Computer took a nose dive, as PCs will, and for over 45 min I could not re-connect. I finally gave up and went to bed. I tossed and turned allnight, writing in my head letters and board posts asking for assistance in re-making my equipment list. As luck turns out, I must have thrown just enough knives to beunder rent, and did not lo lose all of my eq, but hey, i could have! Why should I have to fret about things like this when I am trying to have fun and play a game?

I hope that more Immortals will read this and come up with some great ideas to modify the current system to better protect the people that play htis game every day. There have been so many great new ideas areas and changes implememnted by our IMM staff as of late, why not add to that great track record again?

thanks for reading

TheThing

From: Vandervecken Sunday, November 21, 04:01PM

My question is somewhat related to this thread. Why are you auto-saved whenever you get an object from furniture, yet not when picking up something from 'the floor' in player-housing? That's annoying as heck (pardon the salty language) in my humble opinion.

Captain van der Vecken