Cry you a river

[lach]

Greetings, I'm posting here to ask for advice, or help regarding a very pesky issue that I have already attempted to contact the devs about, but the timing was off, and it would appear they're too swamped for me to have gotten a reply. So maybe that wasn't the proper outlet for my help request, and maybe here is a better place to voice my issue.

Basically, what happened was that my very first character had been logged out in Providence for quite a while now, it so happens he was logged out slightly west and slightly still north of the town itself, for the purpose of trading with a friend at a hollow log, for lack of early days barrels for trading (they were all being hogged by alts and barrel thieves).

Now, that particular alt had in its inventory a gift very dear to me, the clothing articles of an alchemist's pack, and I was waiting to raise my proficiencies high enough to be able to slot them and use them for the future, perhaps even slot them for alchemy specifically when that became a specialization of its own.

The issue with what i've told you so far is that, it seems God almighty hath sent a deluge upon us in recent days, and I had not at all realized the extent of that deluge, or better yet, hadn't realized where that particular character's log out location was when compared to the flooded areas. Well after a good 10 seconds of "Loading..", and trying to flail around via the arrow keys against the torrent's titan grasp, and veiled by the darkness of the god of loading, my poor character KO'd, and not only that, but the precious gift he carried went to ruin in the river's depths, drained into the ocean and was never again found.

No my request for anyone listening, and more specifically for our new overlords, is what can I do to recover my lost items, considering he was a pure soul, innocent and inexperienced, and did nothing to ever incur the wrath of the gods, and yet the flood took him, and he's now a hollow husk of his former shelf. I plead for recompensation, and anxiously await a answer to my prayers.

Tl;dr Was logged out where you added deep water, loading screen made me drown and lose alchemist's clothing set, wah wah, give it back plox.

[Thor]

Why in hell would you start moving your character, if you can't even see ****?

[troubleis]

You can hope for a better reply from the devs, but I'm pretty sure you won't get reimbursed in any way because of...

alchemist.jpg (111.57 KiB) Viewed 1845 times

[bologna_man00]

You can hope for a better reply from the devs, but I'm pretty sure you won't get reimbursed in any way because of...

I'm assuming that he spawned directly into the deep water that the devs placed there, so it would be their fault that he got KO'd in the first place.

[lach]

Why in hell would you start moving your character, if you can't even see ****?

Because the second I logged on, I saw my red square on the minimap smack in the middle of deep water equally distant from either side of shallow water and/or land. Now I'm not sure how the default client works, or whichever client you use on your own computer, but sadly on mine it takes a bit to load the actual terrain and what have you, while displaying a lovely "Loading" message in the center of the screen. Now when my phlegm started to go down and I realized where I was, I started moving in the hope that I'd get to safety before the poor 5 bile character drowned. Perhaps that was a poor call on my part, but I didn't exactly have a lot of time on my hands and I'm not in the habit of logging off in deep water to be familiarized with that situation's equivalent of "stop, drop and roll" as to perform it to a T.

As for the game being permadeath and open loot, this is more a matter of me logging off in town in good faith and ending up losing stuff not due to other players, but due to the addition of an island with very little purpose save for aesthetic. The problem is that it wasn't other players that did this, nobody looted the stuff, nobody attacked me, it was just an issue created by a change made to the game.

Besides, I'm not trying to actually tell them what to do, just to let it be clear. I'd just like an actual response as to what their stance is on this, so I know never to park my character in the "safety" of Providence, for fear of a new bit of architecture sitting on me and making me lose god knows what other items.

[alprice]

This happened to my friend too. He logged out and that land is now deep water. There is nothing either of them could have done. It's auto drown. I hope you get your stuff back.

[DarkNacht]

You can hope for a better reply from the devs, but I'm pretty sure you won't get reimbursed in any way because of...

Actually the reason you might not get it back is because alt vaulting is considered an exploit and the devs have always hated it.

[lach]

And if that's the case DarkNacht, I'll gladly take that as an answer from the devs themselves. But the situation is that I had one character holding on to a handful of items that I cared about, whereas the rest of the players are hoarding any and all valuables on tens of alts. I'm not going to discuss my opinion on the viability of defending your goods given the less than perfect balance in game mechanics up until this point, but I'm sure that the devs will counter alt vaulting when they feel it's the time to do so, and when they enforce that and tell us to stop, I'll look foward to everyone having to follow the rule, but seeing as nobody's having their WSS's and high purity metal and whatever else they alt vault deleted, or tampered with in any way, I don't really see why I should pay a price with that as an excuse when the problem arose from no fault of my own. The issue is I could've logged off my main in that same spot the day prior to them adding the water, and I'd have expected my lost goods returned to me if I somehow managed to drown with those biles

[DarkNacht]

And if that's the case DarkNacht, I'll gladly take that as an answer from the devs themselves. But the situation is that I had one character holding on to a handful of items that I cared about, whereas the rest of the players are hoarding any and all valuables on tens of alts. I'm not going to discuss my opinion on the viability of defending your goods given the less than perfect balance in game mechanics up until this point, but I'm sure that the devs will counter alt vaulting when they feel it's the time to do so, and when they enforce that and tell us to stop, I'll look foward to everyone having to follow the rule, but seeing as nobody's having their WSS's and high purity metal and whatever else they alt vault deleted, or tampered with in any way, I don't really see why I should pay a price with that as an excuse when the problem arose from no fault of my own. The issue is I could've logged off my main in that same spot the day prior to them adding the water, and I'd have expected my lost goods returned to me if I somehow managed to drown with those biles

I agree, they should restore your items, or at the very least give you an answer.

[JohnCarver]

First I apologize for the delay in responding to your initial inquiry with a PM that was more formal than the one you got. As you know, your complaint was lodged within hours of the In-Game event and I at first disregarded it thinking you were complaining about getting dunked into the dunk tank that was set up @ the event for hooligans. Not realizing that your drowning was actually referring to logging out near the lake added west of town.

That being said, we have concluded that there will be no refund of items to this account for the following reasons:

#1: Your account has not actually made any store purchases, thus any store items lost and/or refunds we find invalid to said account.

#2: The item itself has always stated that it could be lost in-game from the point in which it was acquired and purchased.

#3: You failed to investigate your last login point before logging in the character. What in this case you claim to be deep water could have been a stone, log, or any other item placed in the position of your log out thus forcing you to log back to your homestead without your inventory.

#4: You failed to log the character off at your homestead/claim to ensure his safety upon logging back in.

#5: You failed to keep the item persistent in the world. This is where I expect the tears to come from. So let me make this clear.
*THERE IS NO BANK SAFETY DEPOSIT SYSTEM IN SALEM FOR A REASON
There is no 'mechanic' to keep items permanently safe and no mechanic intended or in the works to do so. We understand that players have circumvented this through what we consider bug abuse of logging characters out with active inventories. We understand that other players have gone through great efforts to make hundreds of characters to keep safe thousands of items that should otherwise be persistent and a part of Salem. I don't believe we have been shy about our disdain for such actions but let me state again that we retain the right to despawn, poof, and otherwise destroy any and all items in any and all inventories. Due to our extreme desire to see Salem successful and maintained with a standard of professionalism we will most likely give warning and more details as to the when, how, and why your inventories on your alts will no longer be safe. However, if I were you I would simply stop doing it. There will ALWAYS be the risk of losing something in your inventory when you log off, and that risk will only increase as time goes on.


In conclusion, I want to believe you and I am generally sad and sorry if you lost something you cared about due to our beautification efforts around town. We are not currently tracking stats about drown victims so even if I wanted to confirm that authenticity of your story for restores, I could not. If you had purchased an item on a postmaster, and we moved/deleted/ or otherwise messed up that postmaster, we would happily refund or respawn any lost items that were outside of your control to lose. As stated though, screening the area of last login with another character, or failing to keep it 'alt-vaulted' in the first place are what I consider the true catalysts to this event.

I hope this shall serve as a guide for any and all players to take note and warning about alt-vaulting. Braziers are OP, Defenses have never been stronger, towns have never been safer (with trial members etc). The lack of balance in the raiding department is only an argument that alt-vaulting is less necessary than it was when raiding was easier and more viable. Bring on the hate and tears alt-vaulters... I'm a tad thirsty tonight.