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'No available character slot' error message
wimpazoid
Posts: 456 Arc User
First off, I hadn't played in a month. I came back to check out the anniversary event.
Then I decided I wanted to play a bit for the weekend, so I deleted a level 21 character on a freeform slot and tried making a new one.
The slot was freed up. I tried creating a new character up till the part where I clicked 'Skip Tutorial' before it returns a 'No available character slot' error message and logs me out.
I tried it several times with the same result.
Frustrated that resolving this will likely burn my free weekend to play, I charged some ZEN on my credit card and simply bought another freeform slot.
Guess what?
Now I have 2 available freeform slots that I can't create characters on.
Both returns the same 'No available character slot' error message when I try to make new characters.
Do something.
Ticket ID: 120907-000424
Then I decided I wanted to play a bit for the weekend, so I deleted a level 21 character on a freeform slot and tried making a new one.
The slot was freed up. I tried creating a new character up till the part where I clicked 'Skip Tutorial' before it returns a 'No available character slot' error message and logs me out.
I tried it several times with the same result.
Frustrated that resolving this will likely burn my free weekend to play, I charged some ZEN on my credit card and simply bought another freeform slot.
Guess what?
Now I have 2 available freeform slots that I can't create characters on.
Both returns the same 'No available character slot' error message when I try to make new characters.
Do something.
Ticket ID: 120907-000424
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Freeform slot is a 'special' slot that counts as a standalone towards any character slot limit, at least that was the case previously.
Having been silver/gold and spent real money on the game amounting to more than a lifetime sub since I started playing this game, I find this bug unacceptable.
I've already partially left this game, but when I decide to log in on the odd occasion and spend real money on my return, I cannot accept that Cryptic willingly takes my money for stuff that doesn't work.
By definition, a purchase is a transaction. Making me pay for nothing in return is simply intolerable.
It's not exactly enticing for folks to make purchases when all the incentives can't actually be made use of.
Y'know I haven't been around the past month to grind any Questionite, so I figured I'll just buy another slot at the discounted price for cheap. Seemed like a good decision at the time to keep a spare for maybe winter break to play. Well, at least that gives Cryptic months to fix this issue as far as I'm concerned.
My plan to play this weekend is pretty much ruined. Guess I will stay away from CO this time round too.
It would be more ethical of Cryptic to temporarily cease selling an item when it becomes broken though, I would have taken my money to MacDonald's or something.
I have over 10+ legit slots bought before I turned Gold which unlocked double that when I subbed and then some when they hit 40. I'm fine with deleting placeholders but I have quite a number of toons mid 20s-30s, and I'll hate to end up deleting and discover I need to lose those too.
I can wait out a solution since I'm only back once in a while. I simply hope the official response from Cryptic won't disappoint its customers.
But here's a bit of history I thought I should share about my experience with freeform slots:
So something server side has indeed changed during the time I was away such that the slots didn't work for me anymore.
My interest in this game continues to drop, given the lack of support and dedication to this game on the part of PW.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
His response would also have me believe a resolution is being looked into.
Hopefully, it's a swift affair.
It is intended that each Freeform slot that is purchased, can be used to create a character regardless of your current account type and/or the amount of unused normal character slots on the account.
We have looked into this issue and are currently working and testing on a fix for what we believe is the cause of this issue. Keep an eye out for patch notes in future updates for this fix.
In the situation that your character creation issue is not resolved after this fix has been patched, please update in this thread and we can investigate into other possible issues that may be causing this.
Cryptic Studios
To be fair, it's only quite recently where the customer base as a whole is prone to this issue as opposed to individual cases.
I think it's already great that it's finally:
1. Acknowledged.
2. Being looked into.
Now I'm simply waiting for 3. where the issue is resolved.
Considering I spent $75 dollars worth of zen on 3 FF slots, you'd think it would be courtesy for the service provider to provide some compensation for a problem that occurred from their negligence, not to mention having to resort to a establishing a workaround through my own discovery--You know, as an apology for this shortcoming in the service provided and to show that my business as a customer was appreciated.
Keep that in mind all you City of Heroes refugees, that's the kind of service you can expect should a problem arise with your service.
From our findings, the item is only broken for a percentage of users that have their accounts in a specific state, due to juggling character slots from subscriptions and characters on the account that are currently locked out. For most prior and new silver accounts, this freeform character slot is still working, and these accounts should not see any issues.
Cryptic Studios
It has always been the case that locked away Gold characters count towards the total available slot limit on a Silver account. If your total characters (Silver + Gold) exceeds your legitimate Silver slots, then you can't create new characters.
I would like to see CO change progressively as well.
Locked away characters while good in the sense that they can be continued at the player's convenience to pick up a subscription again, add no value to a Silver account. Having to pump money to cover unplayable character slots that is tied to a Gold subscription in order to progress a Silver account is like punishing a player who has turned Gold previously. That account would have been better off economically if it had just remained Silver.
It would make better sense to cap character limits on a Silver account to only playable Silver characters. That includes ones converted from unlocked slots while Gold, so the player would only have to cover those extra playable slots before his slot limit can increase, rather than having to cover all of his locked away Gold characters.
Actually from what you stated that isn't the case..I don't know where you have heard that...If you are silver and you have bought character slots,you can still use those slots to create new characters..I've done this before as a Silver,so there is no penalty....If you have Gold characters on your account you can't play them,it doesn't mean that you can't create silver characters..Also it hasn't been just freeform,it's been with other archetypes as well considering I'm having this problem where I didn't have before...I have actually been playing Champions Online for awhile now. For almost 3 years now actually,I've been playing Star Trek Online even longer,and I've never had that problem when switching between gold and silver memberships...I'm not trying to sound snarky please by all means don't take it that way...
I hosted a whole thread on explaining the limitations, and you really should read it. In fact I had to delete several unused gold characters in order to get my latest FF slots to work even though FF slots are supposed to be self-contained.
Unfortunately, though, I still get the "no character slot" message when trying to make my freeform character. I've been gold before, I'm currently silver, I purchased the freeform slot during the half off promotion, and I've yet to be able to use the slot.
Was the patch today supposed to fix it? If so, I'm here to log that it didn't for me. Do I need to submit a ticket now or what? I hate that I basically wasted $25 right now; it makes me question if I should ever support this game monetarily again.
The builds that we're using today are a hodgepodge of old code and new code, since the initial patch failed. It's possible that this invalidated the fix... I've pinged the developers, I'll let you know what I hear back. I want this fixed as much as anyone.
Thanks for the reply. I've had some seriously bad experiences with support on a new, different game lately which forced me away from it. Luckily, the freeform slot was on sale so I was really looking forward to it. I can be patient knowing it's being looked at.
Thank you so much for a kind and timely response. It actually means more to me right now than actually getting the slot fixed. I take community and support personnel very seriously. This response makes me happy I did spend the $25 for the slot because you've really reassured me it will be fixed (and you did it nicely). Thank you!
The patch this morning was supposed to resolve this issue as well as a few others, but there was an unforeseen complication and this issue was not fixed as we expected. We have since got our hands into the servers, and got the fix to work. Please attempt to log into the LIVE shard again, and create your freeform character(s). If you are still unable to create these characters, please post in this thread as soon as you can and we will get our work gloves back on.
Cryptic Studios