rsclark

And those are great names for a hero who is an animate carrot. Or has carrot powers. Or maybe, with a good backstory, is orange. But for the vast majority of characters, any combination of "carrot" is inappropriate.

Take, for instance, my midget, mutant green, Mexican lucha libre tanker turned villianous brute when they gave me the option. His name is his fighting name - el Chupacabra. Without the name, the character does not exist. It loses the whole point for it's existence.

The same applies to plenty of character names. Any anagram name doesn't have the easy option of just coming up with something else. Names that are puns or references can't be changed - "Mortal Coil" doesn't have the same impact as "Daily Grind" even if the core meaning in usage is the same. My teen goth in mesh shirt and utili-kilt character "Hot Topic" would not have been able to run with his reluctant partners Abercrombie and The Fitch if I hadn't snagged the names.

I'm just astounded by how much support you can get for a (very valid) complaint that not having colorable hair on a hat costume piece so severely limits how useful it is for making characters, but not get the same outrage at the name limitations - as if the name is somehow a less important part of the character than hair color or how they stand when they are angry.

No, it's obviously not the only fair rule. The "get whatever name you want" rule is equally fair - additionally, it is equally fair to both new and old players.

And some people cannot admit that their "original" names are little more than a random assortment of letters that fails to communicate anything meaningful about the character or simply screams out "I used to be dark elf #6".

It sure is dark, sticky, and smelly where you pulled that little piece of information from.

Yet, your forum name falls in that category.

And how does any of that happen in a game. If you see a newspaper article in the game, it is one that has been tailored to the character you are playing.

No matter what you would like to believe, I have never seen your "identity" in the game and I never will. Any effect you see in the game from your character's actions are exclusive to you and are affected in no way by what name any other player chooses to use for their character.

In a very real way, your "identity" in the game is "character_db.char_id_sid = 239482398472" and everything else is just a pretty flashing light to make you feel special.

Which they would never be able to do in the game, so it's a meaningless observation.

Which, again, cannot happen in the game - as the character's money would be tied to that character ID string and not to the display name that pops up on other people's screens.

If you want to use an analogy, pick one that has at least a vague parallel with what we are talking about.

And, before you start some tangent about your reputation inside the game, it seems that if someone judges you based on nothing but character name in a game where character names are not unique, then you've been lucky to avoid that person given that they are, in fact, a moron.

And names like Squirrel Girl and Fish Police are not attempts to get people buying. They are stupid and in all likelihood failed attempts to do so, but the intent is the same. If anything, you are demonstrating the fact that a half dozen well named characters like "Green Lantern" tends to be more popular than one unique "Squirrel Girl".

Wow, you spectacularly failed to understand anything he said. How does the fact that the game is doing poorly in any way invalidate his statement that you can have a number of people far in excess of any of the CoH servers without having any of the duplicate name problems that people preemptively complain about.

Again, a sparkling irrelevancy that has nothing to do with his point.

In the real world, there are 18 pages of people with my exact same name that shop at Microcenter. Don't be melodramatic.

Well, if the character's theme involves having one eye, it's probably a pretty good name.

It would be nice, but it's a little late in the game for that. I would really prefer they look into it if there ever is a CoH2.

Brawl.

While that is true, in normal content, there usually aren't 30-40 mobs running around looking for someone to aggro on. Sure, formerly sturdy characters need to learn "I can't jump into that group alone", but squishies need to learn "I can't stand here in this empty area and do nothing and hope to live".

I think circus monkey.

Since it has never, ever been possible at any point in this game's history, I guess you could call it "wrong"; although, a better word would be "impossible".

Your comment only makes sense if an otherwise bad game cannot have good elements and an otherwise good game cannot have bad elements. The world is not that binary.

You mean I'm supposed to have options other than "pencil"? I don't believe you.

It includes a news run animation that causes a rock or small explosion to appear every time your feet would need to touch the ground.

That plus the switchable left and right foot costume pieces for those times it really just doesn't matter.

Strapless, backless, classical.

No, my emp has to apply one buff every 16 seconds. If you want to compare QoL, I would gladly trade that for running down the list once every 2 minutes, since on an 8 man team, I'm keeping it up on the same 7 people as the other buffers are, but with much more hassle and redraw.

Compared to what? Would their beatings be less severe if they were making those shoes you are wearing and fell behind quota?

Only if the player's voice only has two volumes - shouting and totally silent.

I had 2 MMs to 50 before I knew that.