Archive Mail

Archive Mail

in Suggestions

Posted by: EnemyCrusher.7324

EnemyCrusher.7324

I’ve seen many players have the same problem since launch, and players are still encountering this every day. They post on the forums asking for help, and have been answered countless times by other players and Arenanet employees. So let’s fix this problem.

“I didn’t receive my gem store purchase”

“My friend sent me something but I never got it”

The answer is always that the player has reached the 10 letter maximum in their mailbox and just needs to delete something. Here’s a typical case from yesterday:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Not-receiving-purchases-from-the-Gem-Store/first

Arenanet limits us to 10 letters (either from players or the gem store) so we don’t hog their server space. That’s fine, but players want to be able to store more letters. So let’s solve all of these problems at once. Without a ton of development effort.

Let’s add an option to archive mail. This option would simply be a button at the bottom of the mailbox window. Archived mail would be stored locally on the user’s computer and would not count towards the 10 letter maximum. Letters holding items cannot be archived, and archived letters can neither be reported nor unarchived. These limitations are because players would be able to modify archived letters, as they are stored locally on the player’s computer.

This gives players the ability to store as much mail as they want, and it saves Arenanet server space. But this alone won’t solve the first problem I described. If players don’t know their mail limitations, they still won’t get new mail when their mailbox fills up.

That’s why this change should be accompanied by a new setting in the options menu, defaulted to “on”, that automatically archives mail with no attached items 24 hours after it is read. This will prevent most players from ever running out of room for new mail.

This change would require very minimal UI changes (one standard button on the mail screen, one checkbox option in the options menu, and a small new icon to show that a piece of mail is archived), a new hint to describe archiving mail, and a simple local storage system that can be implemented similarly to templates in GW1.

Players get “unlimited” mailbox space, Arenanet doesn’t have to store as much user data, forum users don’t have to keep telling people to delete old mail to make room for new mail, and the developers don’t even have to break a sweat.

Light of Honor [Lite] – Founder / Warmaster
Sorrow’s Furnace Commander
“You’re the mount, karka’s ride you instead, and thus they die happy!”-Colin Johanson

(edited by EnemyCrusher.7324)