TrueGentleman

Yes.

Almost certainly.


Or did you mean participating in this thread?


Because if so, a bigger dataset would be necessary for a meaningful survey.

I'd prefer to see some truly counter-intuitive correlations - and the numbers and methodology to back them up.

Incidentally, Valve has been harvesting far more sophisticated data on their FPSs to factor into their design for a while now (and they're experimenting with even more esoteric metrics).

The Rocketeer at #7, so, yes?

We'd all agree that anyone playing pen-and-paper RPGs as a kid as already been making games, as far as an imaginative pastime. You've graduated to publishing them. Congrats!

The binary paying vs. non-paying is merely a variation on entitled vs. unentitled, or just plain old us vs. them. From a limited perspective - "the customer is always right" - that might work (if one is the customer, of course), but it's actually a terrible way to keep a business going. I've elaborated on all the factors likely involved in the decision-making process going into a name purge (again) if only because of my congenital aversion to oversimplification and hyperbole.

Until a red name posts here, I'm not making the assumption that they're even reading this thread to get feedback on something that's apparently not even in the works...

If I wanted to give helpful feedback to the devs, I'd be posting bug reports.

It's good coding practice to have created a flexible script, but from my own experience with database lists, I know that standard operating proceedure requires a lot more care than simply plugging in new numbers into the variables and pressing "run". And handwaving away the costs of making changes to a crucial resource - particularly when we don't know how Paragon's database is structure or its budget is allocated - is just absurd.

... And back to the binary argument again. A business has to run on a bigger picture.

Indeed, although I try to take into account the lack of hard numbers and elaborate why businesses are reluctant to make decisions on taking action in such cases.

Offering a link is the only practical help in such situations that I can offer, I'm sorry to say, as opposed to advocating for a change to the database that the devs evidently don't see as a pressing need.

Not exactly - this thread is filled with suggestions of new time limits, level limits, account-type limits, etc. to factor into a new script. Even the most conservative position of re-running the old script has to be justified and then tested beforehand, all of which, I reiterate, comes out of someone's budget (words that no manager wants to hear).

Or, to put it colloquially, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

For "all" read "vocal, and inflexible, minority". Hence the second part about allocating resources - this project would be coming out of someone's budget. Unless you can demonstrate convincingly that running a name-purging script will retain enough subscriptions to both offset the attendant business costs and potential loss of returning players, then it's a non-starter.

Once again, I recommend brainstorming with a superhero name generator as a more efficient use of one's time and energies than trying to argue for this nebulous position.

Oh, it's far from uncommon among veteran game designers. As one of them put it in a collection of maxims, 10 more things I wish I had known before building an MMO: "Working on an MMO destroys your desire to play that MMO. It greatly reduces the desire to play other MMOs as well." That perspective goes some way to explain why there's very little sense of genuine playfulness (as the OP observed) in big studios' MMOs these days.

Actually, neither one of us has solid numbers, nor have I ever claimed this. Moreover, it's because there are no solid numbers - and I'd bet that NCSoft doesn't have any results from focus groups on the reasons CoH players have quit and/or returned - that the sensible course of action is the conservative one, which is how businesses run, especially if they want to stay in business in a poor economy like this one.

You're missing the point about the bigger picture for running a business. Running a script requires coders to come up with one that won't screw up the database (always a possibility, even if a previous version of the script has been used before), factor in your new requirements, test it to make sure it works, and then, with fingers tightly crossed run it, with their manager monitoring the project and reporting to their boss about it. After which, customer service will then have to deal with the complaints from players whose characters were accidentally renamed ("Why did Murphy's Lawman* suddenly become genericblaster45378?") or whose attempts to "snag a good name" failed or whose returning subscription must be cancelled because their favorite character was renamed while they were on a tour of duty (and they're telling their friends about their terrible experience with CoH in the meantime). Or perhaps it would simply be better business to keep those worms canned and get back to launching that space station?

Were I a Paragon manager, I myself would be willing to wipe names on long-dormant trial accounts, probably over the marketing department's objections (if I couldn't assign a coder to develope a built-in name generator, which is now a standard feature of MMORPGs). The practical realities of this project wouldn't change an iota, though.


* Come to think of it, that's a fun name. I bet it's also occurred to someone else, but maybe I'll get lucky on one server or another.

How many "freed" "good names" are worth the potential loss of good will? When only intangibles are at stake, the conservative course of action is the better business practice.

We've been circling around this issue for so long, I wouldn't blame you if you became dizzy, but it's not a binary issue.

In the first place, "non-customers" comprise both former ones and potential new ones. The former are low-hanging fruit, and the latter are comparatively far more difficult to find and then attract. Unless there's a very good reason, alienating former customers is phenomenally bad business, firing-offense bad business.

In the second place, trying to do everything to make current players happy is similarly bad business, in the unproductive sense. It's not an efficient use of resources to try to accomodate every vocal player with an aggregieved sense of entitlement about their particular favorite issue. The devs have to look at the big picture, and only if a problem is not only sufficiently widespread but also effectively addressable will they attend to it. (As PVPers and Base-builders will confirm, the devs choose their projects ruthlessly.)

So until someone can show the devs convincing evidence that CoH is running out of player names and customers are leaving because of this, "freeing the good names" is going to be a low priority at best. For the present, it's so far on the back burner that even Mr. Fantastic couldn't reach it, even if that alias were available.

That's a model that's been proven to work - and there are cognitive studies of why its features are so habit-forming - so naturally competing devs have decided to run it into the ground. Some veteran designers are heartily sick of it, but it will take something on a massive scale to shake up the current MMO landscape enough to allow innovation room again.

It just requires a broader set of values for life experiences. You might not (yet) have encountered such circumstances personally, but they're out there...

How little sympathy that shows for players who lapse because of circumstances beyond their control - and how little appreciation that implies for retaining good will. The server sub-forums are filled with players' announcements of departures*, for numerous reasons. Instead of generating responses like "dibs on your character names", they're greeted typically with hopes they'll come back soon. (CoH does, after all, have one of the best MMORPG communities in many respects.) Why would the devs wish to subvert that by enforced character name wipes?

As I said before, an ebil marketer would leverage this attitude by informing would-be departing players of potential name loss prior to their hitting the cancel button on their subscriptions, but I'm grateful that NCSoft, unlike some other MMO publishers, doesn't try to play these games with us.


* More, incidentally, than these irregular calls to "free the good names".

Given your persistent misinterpretation of the scale of valuation for current, returning, and potential new customers, you weren't likely to be open in the first place, but one does try.

Yet that old saw simply doesn't apply here (any more than the assorted analogies that have been thrown around about barstools, hamburgers, apartments, etc.).

The case of former and returning customers is very basic marketing that applies to anything with a subscription model, e.g. magazines or membership associations. Essentially, an old potential returning customer is far more valuable than any number of new cold leads. Since former customers have at one point demonstrably made the crucial leap to pay for the game, the psychological barrier to enticing them into doing so again is far lower than that of convincing a new potential candidate to try, and pay for, something that's unknown to them. The idea that former customers are worthless, implicit in many of the pro-wipe posts in these threads, is bad business. Why do you think you persistently receive renewal offers in the mail to Gamer Monthly despite not having subscribed for years?

To fit the avian-shrubbery saying to this case, the birds in the hand, i.e. the current CoH subscribers, aren't going anywhere because of Paragon's naming policy, not in numbers that would distinguish them from ordinary attrition. Unless the boards are immolated in flame wars on the topic, with multiple threads simultaneously up in arms, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, etc., the devs can safely put this on the backburner. Instead, they can attend to more reliable and conspicuous ways of keeping current subscribers, viz. the Incarnate endgame, additional zones, new story arcs and task/strike forces, and booster packs, which they're evidently dedicated to providing us. (And how small is the minority who'd prefer that Paragon instead dedicate any of their resources to fine-tuning the name-wiping script for the increasingly complicated formulas that are being offered here and that are nowhere near as simple as their advocates claim.) Incidentally, these new offerings are also likely to attract returning players, so why would the devs want to sabotage this by sending out e-mails threatening to generic names for inactivity?

Until Zwillinger or another red name pops by one of these threads, it's safe to take the devs' silence on this topic as their tacit acceptance of the status quo - that for all the names locked up in game, there are more possibilities out there that need only a little imagination and persistence to dream up. Besides, look at how creative they are with their cognomen. There isn't a Captain Generica (or Fail O'Suckyname) in the bunch.

Are you suggesting that if the recurrent vocal minority demanding wholesale genericization of character names used by players who aren't forking over cash to NCSoft this very second would instead apply their energeries to brainstorming more creative names that all parties would be happier?

Why, everyone knows that complaining on the boards is a far more entertaining metagame and an easy way to increase post-count scores. (Speaking of which...)

Good lord, this makes no editorial sense at all, e.g.
One gets the distinct impression that they're keeping their options open for a re-reboot to the status quo in a year's time.

Lemur Lad has this response covered, but it's worth reiterating that Paragon is currently making big investments in CoH's endgame, which would naturally appeal to returning customers with established characters. Now is not the right moment for Paragon to generic people's level 50s because they've been absent for a period of time.
And we've had returning players post on these boards saying they'd be disappointed if their characters had been renamed in their absence. Anecdotes, to repeat, are not data.
The game has an option to check if a name is in use even before you begin creating a character, so it would seem the devs are prepared for quite the opposite. For my own part, I use this feature most of the time since it spares me aggravation.

Also, hundreds? Not exaggerating? Just for the sake of verification, could you post this list of hundreds of names you've tried?
For the record, I find Glamburgler hilarious and would prefer to team with a player by that name over "Fire Girl" or something similarly dull yet "iconic". Tastes vary.
I see now, you strongly do believe in finite limits to creativity in this game, that there's only a sharply constrained combination of words that "work" for superhero names (and this in a language with one of the largest vocabularies). I can only sympathize with your position and suggest you search for an online superhero name generator to help brainstorm. Whenever I find a name I've come up with is in use - and unless I'm being extraordinarily eccentric or obscure, I've come to expect this because, honestly, I'm not that creative - I hit the books (dictionaries, thesauruses, etc.).

The returning customer is only a better potential customer than a cold lead. But unless losing existing customers are a problem, there's no reason to do anything that would create a barrier for a previous customer to return. Outside of entreprenneurial ventures, business stay in business by practicing conservative decision-making, especially in an economy like this.

Or, colloquially, unless you can convince Paragon that their naming policy is broke, they ain't gonna fix it.