Why are defenses cleared when you disconnect for short periods of time (I'm talking under 30 seconds) and why hasn't something been coded to fix this? It's silly.

I've been DCed and have come back with all my defenses. Then again, sometimes I've come back and I don't. Somebody explain?

I wish that defenses remained for at least 20 minutes after logging out, so you don't have to re-def when returning so soon.

That would be an amazing idea. Then I could logout to go to the bathroom or make myself some ramen or something wihtout violating AFK rules.

Yeah, I have no idea what are the conditions for returning with defs and without defs. I've disconnected for a couple of seconds and lost all defs before. Strangely, my fae were still there, despite having no defs.

It seems like the game checks the connection between you and the server every so often to see if you have an active connection. If the test fails, it disconnects you (you obviously aren't playing without an active connection), and when disconnected you lose your defs.

I'm just not sure what exactly causes this test to happen, or what form exactly the test takes (whether it be a ping or something else).

The thing is, if people disconnect (accident, not closing client), ie. if internet drops out, the server still has you logged in, and doesn't log you out. It's like when you're talking to someone, but then you see their login message, yet they never logged out!

For me at least, if I quit, then reconnect straight away, my defenses are always gone no matter what.

No, the server does time you out in those cases depending on the factor I mentioned. It's not every time, but it does happen quite regularly. About 50/50 for me.

However, if you actually quit, you lose your defenses 100% of the time (because the game knows that you've just logged off and runs the logoff script on you, just like it does for people who've timed out, which dumps your defenses).

They're two different scenarios.

I wish it wouldn't drop everything when you die, actually. Well...it drops everything but populus. I'm sure some things should drop, but it's kind of a pain to have to redo everything in cosmic, rituals, highmagic, celestialism, sacraments, the various enchantments, etc. I'd imagine it's similar for other classes.

Oh, it's so annoying. Especially when you have defs that you can't get again easily. Like a herofete. What're you supposed to do, make the person do another herofete just for you?

It's annoying enough being disconnected without having to waste enchantment charges and power too. Not to mention how annoying it is to have to think, "I'd really like to go make a snack now, but if I log off, I'm going to have to spend another 20 power and all those charges and how many charges do those rings have left anyway?" when you're only needing to be gone for like 10 minutes to fix something to eat or use the bathroom real quick or let your dog out or something.

I think a 20 minute window where your defenses are 'stored' after you log out would be great and would cut back on folks who idle somewhat. Sure, it'd be possible (though incredibly unlikely) for someone to log in every 20 minutes all day long and keep their defenses, but that person would have to sleep sometime so they couldn't do it forever!

When you die, you get a new body. You shouldn't have all those manual defenses back up, different body. Plus, haven't we learned enough by dropping every single other consequence of dying? I'm not keen on the idea of vitae becoming an actual honest-to-goodness freebie death.

Yeah, defense dropping on death is fine. No need to change that at all, it makes sense.

Personally, I just go news if I have to do something RL. I don't see what's wrong with doing that? However, I think being able to acess the news from anywhere, versus the news room, would be a great option that would allow you to quickly pop out if the phone rings, etc, and not risk being "naughty" for being afk.

No, on so many levels.

No on going to news instead of qqing when you want to grab a smoke? Or no on going to news from anywhere? Other IREs already do that, FYI...

Not to change the subject, but I don't think it should be against the rules to go afk for a couple minutes for random irl things. People knock on the door, the phone rings, etc. It really isn't a big deal.

Using journals to get out to safety from anywhere to afk, back before we needed desks, got someone shrubbed. That you can't use news to do that from anywhere is a very intentional decision.

That said, I've been in favor of some means of carrying over defenses through short logouts for a long time now and I don't see any problem with that. Logging out already has lots of things, both mechanical and policy, to forbid its use to escape combat.

Would people actually news to avoid combat? In Aetolia, you don't need to use a newsroom; both players and admin would smack down anyone who abused news like that. Plus, taking any damage stops both news and qq process, so...

Defences wise, I believe you stay connected until your timeout kicks in. Tried adjusting the time for that?

As Gwylifar said, it's been done. There's an announce post where the journal was taken away from someone who was doing so. News from anywhere wouldn't even be able to be taken away like that.

Seems rather silly to have to put in policies and hard-code which inconveniences the many, rather than just bitchslapping the few idiots.