LittleDavid

Oh, so that's why people were jumping to conclusions when Z posted in Yogurt's thread ... I didn't know they were really considering something like this!

What was The Vault, though?

Yeah, that's how I've been seeing it. I get good mileage with this view. (It runs on diesel, so that helps!)

There's other MMOs out there older (or as old) as City of Heroes which got along just fine without ever purging the names of idle characters. It is not a bad omen for them to decide that it's no longer necessary to run the name purge script--if that is their reason.

Frankly, if regular name purges were part of the game's policy, I wouldn't have ever touched City of Heroes. This "glorious" name purge gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Like I said earlier, one of the big defining features of an MMO is its persistent world, including characters. The knowledge that I could lose my character names to someone else just for not being able to play for three months or more would be a major turn-off.

This subject is inherently a selfish one, so yes, it is about him. It is about everyone who has a character in this game. Ironik is no more or less selfish here than Yogurt.

The reason being, there's people here who want the name purge run again--or even regularly--just because they want to take names used by other characters. Many of the arguments supporting a name purge have the subtext of "other people don't matter, I do!"

Ironik is just taking the same tone from an opposing view.

Well, I haven't, either. Just to be clear on that. I've run afoul of taken names in the process of creating characters, but I've never failed at coming up with a good, unique name for them that wasn't taken.

My advocating a solution to this problem does not mean that I'm one of the people complaining that all the good names have been taken.

Rather, it's like this for me: If we're going to have to do something about taken names to appease those who want certain names but can't get them, I would rather it be in what information is considered "unique" and how that is presented, rather than putting the names of existing characters up for grabs after a certain period of time.

I, like Ironik, really do not like the idea of name wipes just to free up the "good names."

I agree, there's better ways to handle that than making everyone's character name look like an e-mail address.

Nevertheless I support the idea of making something other than character names unique, be it an account iD or somesuch, because I've seen it done in ways that were non-invasive and yet still effective in telling people apart.

Bwahahaha!

The basic issue here is that people want names which other people have already taken for their characters.

That can be solved without revoking the names from anyone who already has them, which is why I keep bringing up the idea of using a unique ID or global name system over unique character names.

And honestly, the age of the game is not the problem with implementing a system like this. Reworking any existing game code, no matter how old, to introduce a feature that wasn't planned at first can be a challenge. Yet knowing this, I still would find it much more preferable to possibly losing character names just for being away for an arbitrary amount of time.

And yes, I'm going to keep saying "arbitrary," because there's a spectrum of opinions among the purge supporters as to who should get purged and how long they should be gone.

And yet people want the name purge to nail anyone who hasn't played in three months. That's why it's arbitrary.

Gee, maybe it's because there are people who don't like the idea that they could lose their character names just for being away for an arbitrary amount of time?

The game I played that used unique IDs solved that by having the ID number displayed on friend cards. You could also see the player's alts through that system, aside from having them displayed just by pressing a button.

In other words, the IDs were made intrinsic to the friend system, but not invasive like the "e-mail" name@globalname system someone brought up.

Well, then. I guess those "junk names" the devs mentioned must have been pretty huge for it to be the bulk of purged names.

That's up to the devs, but personally, I hardly think this is glorious. Not when a different solution to this problem would let people make characters with the names they want, while the players who have characters by those names won't get punished for not being active enough.

(And like I keep pointing out, we're not talking about a idle timer of years, here. Those name purges nailed anyone who was gone for three months or more.)

Unconverted trials, maybe. But when I think "detrius" I think spambot characters and junk accounts used for that purpose. Getting rid of those would be okay by me, but freeing up names of actual customers, whether or not they've got an active subscription, not so much.

Besides, if the script was run again and got similar results to the last two times, it's not going to satisfy the people who want to use the popular, taken names. They'll just call for a wider net cast. Higher level requirements, shorter idle times, and whatnot.

It's why I still stand by my opinion that the only real way to solve the "taken names" issue is to just change what's considered unique. Global names, or some kind of player ID, something along those lines.

And you'll note my post now reads:

I'm seeing even fewer reasons to run the name purge script again, then, at least in the context of "freeing taken names."

And that's why I asked for a link to a post by a redname about it, you'll notice.

Which leads me to question why people want the name purge script run again if the bulk of names it got rid of in the past were like those.

Besides, "SGFiller1234," "qwertyjkl," "**Wul*ver*ine***" is a mite different than what I was talking about; I'm talking about seeing things like, oh, ".Flame Man." or "Flame-Man."

Nah, I do. Which is why your remark came off as incredibly smug.

I'd say that's how it's always worked for the games industry in general--and beyond that, too, with other industries. Something is massively successful, everyone else wants a piece of that pie.

Me, I like to play MMOs that buck the trend in game mechanics or features, City of Heroes being one of them.

Duuuuuude. That is the best Veteran's Reward ever.

And now I will forever imagine Cyclops as the Punchy the Hawaiian Punch mascot.

Have you been reading the posts by people favoring the name sweep? It's not hyperbole. As Memphis Bill pointed out, the criterion for the sweeps last time was 3-6 months.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I've stopped playing games which "idle out" characters before. Which leads me to what Forbin says about this ...

That's very presumptuous of you. Look at the bit from Ironik I posted. People get attached to the characters they had, and as True Gentlemen's been saying, there are often circumstances beyond a person's control which keep them out of the game up to three months or longer.

Players don't have to be playing every day of every month of every year to like playing the character and want to continue playing it. Coming back after a hiatus, even one as short as three months, only to find the character was renamed due to this script, would be a massive killjoy.

Smug much?

Given your previous statements, I can't take your word for this. I'd like to see a post where they said that, if it still exists, because I know that on Guardian I've seen characters running around higher than the trial level cap that use punctuation or typos in their names.

That's another big assumption with little evidence to back it up.

How many City of Heroes players actually read the forums, or frequent them? How many of its players are aware of this name sweep? I wasn't until I saw this thread. The last name sweep, apparently, came some time before I started playing.

Had I not been reading the forums these past few days to catch this thread, would that mean I too am happy with having unique names and have no reason to complain about this possible name sweep?

Because I'm not.

Actually, yes, I did ask Forbin this. My response to him was at the top of this page, but for reference:

Thank you for taking the time to answer the question I posed to him, though.

Even knowing that's how NCSoft did it in the past, however, I still think there's a better way of solving the problem. Put me in the camp with Draugadan and company, basically, the guys who want to see uniqueness tied to something other than character names, so these kind of things wouldn't have to be done in the first place.

i mean, if you're going to be fighting over "popular" or "taken" names in the first place, and people want those names up for grabs so they can take them for their own characters, that kind of makes the whole argument about uniqueness moot, doesn't it? There already were people with those names before they got renamed, so it's not like the name was excusive in the first place ... to say nothing of the people who make variations on a name.

If I had actually said somewhere that the vast majority of paying players in this game only paid for one month per year, then yes, it would be wild speculation. However, I never said such a thing.

Again, there are people advocating having people's names up for grabs in idle periods as short as three months. That is not the same as a person who pays to play one month out of an entire year.

I'm not sure why you guys thought that I said the vast majority of profits come from players who only pay once a month per year or more. What I actually said was "that's a calculus only the devs would know the answer to, because we've no way of knowing the breakdown of how much of the playerbase pays to play with any given frequency."

Which could be anywhere from month lapses, to several month lapses, half-year lapses, or more. Not merely once-in-a-year-or-more subscriptions. My own average "downtime" between subscriptions is 2.5 months, though my actual paid time is hardly that even.

Not really.

There are people advocating having people's names up for grabs in idle periods as short as three months. That's quite a bit shorter amount of time than what you make it out to be.

I think your criterion for what is "in hand" and what is "in the bush" is a lot different than mine.

"In the hand" would be, to me, anyone who pays to play the game with any frequency, not just the ones who pay every month.

Frankly, the attitude that the players who pay every month deserve to have their opinions listened to over other players smacks of snobbery. I'm a paying customer too, you know.

Was there an actual point you were trying to make there? Because that had no bearing at all on anything I said.

I was under the impression this was an active sweep that genericized people's names.

I will admit that is a little better, but I still think there's other ways this issue could be handled without having to resort to things like this.

In other words, you're saying "the player who is actively paying month after month is always worth more than the ones who don't, and therefore their opinions have more weight than everyone else's." Pretty much what Forbin was saying.

However, that's not always true and it's a little fallacious to assume that it is. What if there's a larger majority of players that pay to play with less frequency than the ones who pay every month? What if that majority, even though they play less often, brings in more money than the dedicated players?

In that case, it would be financially risky to do something to tick off that many players just to please the ones who pay every month to play.

That's a calculus only the devs would know the answer to, because we've no way of knowing the breakdown of how much of the playerbase pays to play with any given frequency. However, it is something to think about.

That's exactly the point I was making a page or two ago. Even in City of Heroes' lore, the signature heroes have a number of people who shared the same identity in the past (Luminary and Sirocco come to mind).

In the case of that "no unique names" system I've seen, I rarely encountered two people with the same name. I never found myself teaming up with a team of people with all the same name, and even when I did run into people with identical names they were very easy to tell apart, as I could display their player IDs with the press of a button. I never once confused one for the other.

Heh. I guess the air would be thin there, too.

Like I said last page, I don't like this name wipe idea, and I think there are much better solutions to this.

Since I first started playing in 2008, I've only gotten 15 months of veterancy; as much as I love City of Heroes, I don't have the time or inclination to pay subscription fees when I have little time to play. I want to get the most out of my time.

And considering how I play, only one of my characters is above level 30.

How many other people who play City of Heroes are like me, I wonder? How many people would get burned by the various level and idle time criterion everyone's suggesting?

I can say for sure that I would find it a major turnoff to come back after a break only to find my names were wiped because I wasn't active enough for, essentially, the tastes of more dedicated players. I recognize that taken names are an annoyance--after all, I got hit by that roadblock myself--but that's why I think there are much better ways of handling this issue.

People might be less likely to become paying customers again if they find that their character names are wiped just for not being all that active. This "name wipe" system doesn't sound like it distinguishes between "popular" or "wanted" names, and names which are highly unlikely to be contested. Attempting to do so would be near impossible, I imagine.

Where's your evidence for those numbers? To me, it looks like you're just pulling them out of thin air.

I doubt that vast majority exists, not when there are people who try to circumvent not getting the name they wanted by using periods or dashes or underscores. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, there could very well be people who've "taken" the name you wanted which are still playing or have recently played.

So, show me where this vast majority of yours vehemently objects to this idea.

Is this actual NCSoft policy? The way you worded this sounds as if it is, but this thread is the first time I've heard about anything involving character name wipes.