Release Names or Tie to Global

Would it be possible for NCSoft to release some no longer used character names? Say characters under level 25 on accounts that have been expired for a year or more? Or, better yet, find a way to tie character names to the global name, so everyone can be Captain Bob?

I became inspired to create a new Radiation Blast / Energy Manipulation Blaster tonight. It took me about 45 minutes or so to get the costume right, mostly black with a splash of bright red. When it came time to choose a name, I tried "Celestial Striker," figuring it would be taken. It was. Darn. Okay. How about.... "Atomic Striker?" Taken. Hrm. Okay, let's try... "Celestial Fusion." Taken. Grr. "Atomic Fusion." Taken. "Scarlet Fusion." Taken. Tried a few others. All taken.

So, that character I spent 45 minutes putting together a costume for was never created, as I spent a good hour trying to come up with a good available name, only to come up empty handed.

Really, it's gotten pretty difficult to come up with a character name that doesn't use leetspeak like C3lesti@l, or throw random letters and / or numbers in like Celestial A 3, or use a foreign language like Latin. Perhaps I'm uncreative.

There may be a good chance of this happening again at some point. The question came up during Hero Con in the 'Wouldn't It Be Great If..." panel discussion and the question was posed to the audience with a thundering "YES, we would like to see this happen". They also asked us how we felt about tying names to Globals, so that anyone could have any name (multiple toons with the same character name running around on the same server) and that idea received a resounding NO by just about everyone. So, hopefully, they got the message that we would like to see names freed up but at the same time keep names unique on a server.

I agree. Most of the good names are taken at this point. You have to think really hard to come up with something that's not already taken and fits your character's concept. When I want to create a character now, I get the name first and then create/design the character.

I sort of agree, and disagree. I know it's annoying to try and come up with a name that's not taken. I tried to get the name Black Jackal once. I had to go through every synonym for "black" I could find. Black, Dark, Ebon, Night, Shadow, Midnight, Twilight, Cloudy, Gloom, Inky, Murky, Gray. Yeah.

On the other hand, when that happens I tell myself that I'm just not being creative enough. True a lot of our classic heroes have some pretty boring names. Spiderman... Batman... Superman...! But if I have to name myself Bl4ck Jackal, that means there's already a Black Jackal out there. And I should really be thinking more outside the box.

Most of my characters have real names. Dispari Scuro, Riley Tiranis, Sudona Forte, Roxy Phydeaux, Itsumi Charr, Victoria Noir. I never go wrong with names like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I would love to see character names connected to global chat names. I think it works well in that other game. Lord knows there are certainly a lot of heroes in comics named "Captain Marvel". I can tell you this, of all the names I'd like to have, I have never seen another player in-game with any of them.

Being an old-timer, I got to reserve a lot of names before the game was released (during the head start). I think I have some great names, but I wouldn't mind a bit if those names stopped being unique. People who know me in-game call me by my global handle anyway.

Snowstrike, Magmaflow, Realityburn, Waking Life, Amplified, Panzer Steel, Cult of Personality, Magnetic North.

ALL available within the last month. There are good names left, you just have to stop thinking so hard about it. I come up with names better when I'm not trying to at all. The majority of those I came up with while mopping a floor at work.

If you want to be Inferno Man, yeah, you're probably gonna be out of luck there, because it's not very original to begin with, and was probably the name of one of the first fire blasters created in the game.

I don't want to end up being Snowstrike@Claws and Effect because someone decided they have as much right as I do to a name I thought of first. If a name I think of is taken, I'm obviously not being original enough.

Disagree : new names are not hard to come by.

The only name I've ever run into that was already taken was NekoStar.

The other salient points have pretty much already been covered. From looking at the various release names nao threads going on, they mostly seem to be generated by Freedom / Virtue players with no imagination, or no concept of originality. Try being, I dunno, original with a name than using the first thing that comes to mind.

One thing I find helps a lot is to add a title or adjective to the name you want. For example; Stormwraith, Blackstorm, Contamination, and Fulgarite were taken; Lethal Contamination, Mistress Blackstorm, Lady Stormwraith and Fiendish Fulgarite were not.

My favorite name of late? Ophidius Rex

I have to agree that it is frustrating to not get the first name you think of... but it is fun try and come up with a new name, AND know that no one else has, or will have, that name.

I actually impose a constraint with my naming which both helps and at the same time pushes my creativity. All but a handful of my heroes/villains have two Fs in their names. Some of mine:

Freedom Fury
Fury Flechette
Fallen Faith
Fell Fiend
Field Factor
Fell Fender
Faberge Fae
Fiona Firedrake
Fortuna Famosa
Flame Fencer
Fumi Fuse

Obviously, some of the names above wouldn't be desired by a lot of players, but at the same time, I enjoy their uniqueness. I play mostly on Virtue and so I have a lot of competition for names. I still manage to get mostly what I want and find that my naming pattern helps out a lot.

I only mention this because this was the way I solved the naming issue. It may or may not be of help to you.

It can be difficult to come up with an original name that you like that's not taken. On the other hand, I am often stunned at what I find available. And thirdly, the joy of getting a good name that I know is unique (on that server) is quite real -- I get distinct pleasure out of a securing good name...pleasure that would be gone if it was easy and everyone else could copy it. It's sort of a mini-game within the game itself, in a way.

Sometimes I get a good name on a server that I don't normally play on, and it makes me want to spread out and play on the new server, which I think is probably healthy for the game.

Here are some names I have been able to get after the game was years old and thousands of threads saying "no good names are available" had already been posted:

Constitution
Kursk
Damned Yankee
Thermocouple
Transuranic
Janissary
Chilipepper
Petroglyph
Skyrocket
Dai-sho
Dreamtime
King of Spades

What these names have in common is they are well-known public concepts, simple, not silly, mostly one-word names. None of them are "color-names" like Red Chilipepper or Golden Janissary. Also, they're not my best ones -- those I'm not even posting.

Here are names I've been able to get in the last two months, on my primary two servers of choice, no less:

Financier
Moonspell
Hexecutioner
Commandment
Ten-Dollar Bill
Warhorse
Bow Derek
Stratovolcano

Sometimes the search for a name results in a gem. I wanted to make a Fire/Fire Dominator on a specific server (limiting my name choices, since I couldn't server-shop). I wanted a name that sounded like a Victorian or gaslight-era urban legend -- a villain that people told stories about, like Jack the Ripper or Spring-Heeled Jack. I decided she would be a woman who had burned to death and was angry at the world.

Penny Dreadful was taken, on every server. (Nice catch, people!) I would have to look further.

But Blackened Kate, Black Meg, Burned Meg, and the like were all available on my server of choice. Although they sounded like villainesses in scary campfire stories, I wasn't satisfied, I was still searching.

After more thought, I got to thinking about the powers the character would have. Why is it three Fire Imps, anyway? What if she had...lost three young children in a fire! And..she'd gone in to save them, burned up, and gotten her powers...and a thirst for revenge on all who had done nothing to help, in those days before effective fire codes?

And thus I made my new character -- a very dark one indeed: The Thrice-Damned Mother, a tragic figure, whose very name is whispered around the campfire by children afraid to look away into the lurking darkness, and too horrified to gaze into the flames themselves, imagining those three children, and the terrible things they would become!

So I can't really get behind the drive to free up names, if things like Constitution or Commandment are still available...I mean, come on! And I'm definitely opposed to "server tags" so more people can have the same name.

Just curious, when did they do the under level 36 name purge?

I think they might do something like this when, or just before, GR launches.

You mentioned trying to get "Atomic Striker" which is kind of funny; I got "Atomstryke" just a couple of weeks ago on Infinity. I didn't try "Atomstrike" to see if it was available (the "y" was intended and fits comic book naming conventions).

As Samuel_Tow said, most of the names players are looking for will not be freed up with a name purge. The assumption that the names are held by inactive accounts is faulty; we don't know who holds the names.

It is more challenging sometimes to come up with a new name than it used to be, but it is doable without spending hours at it. Since my daughter (age nine) started playing, my wife, daughter, and I have created a bunch of new characters. None of us have had to bend ourselves out of shape to come up with character names.

To be fair, I am compiling a cheat sheet of synonyms for terms relating to different powers (not finished yet), as well as a list of prefixes/suffixes (e.g., colors, ranks, titles) to aid in coming up with names, so that helps a bit. This isn't just for CoH/V, it's also for our own little homegrown PnP game.

So I see no need for a name purge. I wouldn't be opposed to some form of "non-unique" naming, but don't really view it as a need. We can already share names: Atomstrike, Lord Atomstrike, The Amazing Atomstrike, Scarlet Atomstrike, Atomstrike Prime, and so forth. All of these names look better than Atomstrike@lionheart_fr and don't tie it to your global identity, which maintains a bit of privacy for the players.

Even Lionheart FR falls into this category (it doesn't stand for French; I'm American ). Lionheart is a character name I've used for almost two decades now and wanted it to be my main here. There was already a Lionheart on the server our main SG is on, so I appended FR as a SG identifier.