Release Names or Tie to Global
We needed a demand thread!
I DMEAND CAKES AND PIE! ASLO I DEMNADS NEMESIS PONIES! |
ASLO is that something on the costume creator?Perhaps lower buttocks would have been more pc.
DEMNADS....dammit Wes beat me to that one....
DMEAND.....?......yea I got nothin....
Thank you for condescendingly and summarily dismissing the every single good point the opponents of this idea have made, not just in this thread but in every single thread regarding this topic that's come up on a regular basis.
Also, thank you for implying that the devs would have to be short-sighted or stupid not to implement this; after all, when has being polite ever gotten anyone anywhere? |
At least I can somewhat understand the confusion with the above but I'm totally at a loss over this supposed dev-mindset claim. My comments presumed the devs will make the *best* financial decision fitting their plans for moving forward with the game, how did that get turned completely around into allegedly calling them stupid?
Anyways, this old-timer would be fine seeing character names tied to globals as long as a competent job was done in hiding the globals until needed for conflict resolution. Other applications have proved capable of handling conflicts well, my workplace literally has eleven John Smiths working here but we muddle through somehow
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Sorry that my opinion rubbed ya so wrong this morn.
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Umber's Hall of Heroes & Villains
my workplace literally has eleven John Smiths working here but we muddle through somehow ![]() |
It amazes me how few people bother with trying out foreign languages for their names.
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Victoria Noir: Noir meaning "Black"
Veloce Morte: Quick Death
Kigi Kidate: Trees / Nature
Santo Drago: Holy Dragon (no longer in use)
Interestingly enough I completely made up "Dispari Scuro," based on the word "despair" and the final badguy "Oscuro" from Rise of the Triad. But it turns out both words mean something in Italian!
I also mix up some normal words to make names sometimes. I have a Riley Tiranis (tyrannosaurus), and a Tomatre (tomato). And a cute trick I borrowed from someone else, I have a werewolf named Roxy Phydeaux. Phydeaux would be pronounced "Fido."
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Names I got on VIRTUE (of all places) in the last year.
Nick Awesome
Hot Steele
Pyroteen
Cryoteen
Bobby Bolt
Adam Amp
Probably some more. It IS a challenge sometime. I do admit, but not impossible.
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. |
Though, since alot of my toons is my main rerolled, I've renamed all the 50 alts to a version of her real name...so as long as people aren't looking for her real name for their toon, should be good.
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BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
Names I got on VIRTUE (of all places) in the last year.
Nick Awesome Hot Steele Pyroteen Cryoteen Bobby Bolt Adam Amp Probably some more. It IS a challenge sometime. I do admit, but not impossible. |
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I think I was justified in being surprised not too long ago to find that Holly Day was available on Virtue. Last Winter Event, that name was taken. But just a couple months ago I managed to grab it without having to hyphenate the name (unlike what I had to do on Justice.)
Twilight Dream and Pyrefox were also pleasant surprises as well.
Most of my characters have 'Real' names. I find myself following the old alliterative patterns of Gold Age characters, even though my characters tend to be Bronze-age or Anime inspired.
Simon Star (later renamed to Star Whisper on a server move)
Mirror Maiden (Samantha Shane)
Iron Rose (Rebecca Rose)
Cynthia Corro
Roulette Roulette
In one case, I wanted to 'hard reroll' a fire corrupter on Guardian as a fire scrapper on Victory. However, her name, Nyo, was taken on Victory. I did a little research and found the global that the character belonged to. The person I contacted told me that he never played on Victory any more due to the server move functionality. He strictly played on Virtue and Freedom. Accordingly, he was quite willing to delete his old character so I could have mine.
Now, all that said, I think that tying character names to account is a great idea. There are many good ways to do this where it does not 'look bad'. However, there's no helping the situation where you end up with two of the same character name on one team, and I can see that turning people off.
One method of implementing non-unique character names would work like so:
Each character's 'Primary Key' is a alphanumeric string of some kind such as a standard GUID or an MD5 hash of the account name and creation date. The character name is a key-value pair and not used to uniquely identify anything. When the player interacts with the UI, he always sees the Character Name, but when the client interacts with the server, they deal solely with the unique ID. Thus there's no internal confusion when character 'Stonewall' trades with another character named 'Stonewall'. Instead, it's a character with a unique id 3A2504E0-4F89-10D3-930C-0305E2837301 trading with a character with a unique id 8E09382D-DD81-7218-6DC1-380165439361. Players would never see those IDs, but they'd behave something like a social security number for your character.
The character's global account name would be stored as another key/value pair simply for ease of personal authentication (A 'Foreign Key' for RDB types). You'd still be able to 'getglobalname' or do an 'Add Note' command to see the global account name of the character you're dealing with.
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:
. . . Fell Fiend |
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Names are pretty easy to get IMO. Then again, I'm on the EU servers, less population and all.
Managed to recently snatch:
-Globestomper
-Propanic
-Offworld Outlaw
-Mill Worker
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. |
The last thing we need in this game is a bunch of the same 5 names running around.
This is a slippery slope to go down. Tying names to globals means they would likely merge servers shortly after, which means to me the game is gasping its final breaths.
This would just be the beginning of the end IMO.
So in the words of the immortal JRanger... NO.
Also, I hate having my global tagged to the end of my Character's name like in CO
I believe the first time the script was run (with the "35 and under, inactive for 90+ days") was around COV's release. The second one, set for under level 6, roughly a year later - with that level set because that's where most of the names taken *were.*
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Don't we still have the whole "below level something/gone for 90 days means your name is up for grabs" system? Or was that also canceled at some point?
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Names I got on VIRTUE (of all places) in the last year.
Nick Awesome Hot Steele Pyroteen Cryoteen Bobby Bolt Adam Amp Probably some more. It IS a challenge sometime. I do admit, but not impossible. |
Silver Scourge
Starscourge
Dr. Star
Dr. Siege
Shadow Driver
Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.
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There are a couple of anti-global posts in the thread that are equally short if not moreso, was the "that is all" posting condescending?
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Hmmm, the "that is all" would have been me quoting Luminara saying...
My experiences lead me to disagree. |
Should I have elaborated with a long rant? No, because I normally do not have problems with getting names. Case in point, I made a plant/stone Dominator. Poof Algae Acres was born (Algae is a plant also a feminine name, Acres, well that's land)
Made a Fire/SR brute and wanted to make him a demon, couldn't think of a decent name, so I made him a Dragon, and POW Longwei (Chinese name meaning "dragon greatness.") came into being. Coming up with names is not hard. Seriously all it takes is some imagination
Hence the:
![](http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z233/G_Vega/NewSpecs/Bobby.png)
"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho
Ok, read the first page of this thread, and flicked though the rest, and I can see both sides, Had come up with a few names in the past that were already gone, but yes, That other games name@global is distracting.
But i think i can see a solution that isn't emersion breaking...
Secret identity/civilian names. At creation you have a box for both the hero we have now, and a box for a civilian name or secret identity. As long as the pairing is unique it is allowed. Player names in game have an extra line like the badge and title lines above the toons head with their secret identity. In team roster, if there are multiple name the UI and add the secret ID underneath in smaller lettering.
The only remaining thing to figure out is how to handle "Green Lantern (Hal Jorden)" and Green Lantern (Guy Gardener)" you handle in local/team/broadcast/SG/etc chat windows. But I'm sure given some thought a solution to that will appear. The best that i can think of right now is having a dual box input for civilian name, "first/solo" and "surname" and having chat labled for our 2 green lanterns as Green Lantern (Hal) and Green Lantern (guy) or something similar.
Oh course, it would need to work for those toons who's hero name is their civilian name too, so a Sonja Blade could have the civilian name Sonja Blade but still obeying the unique paring rule.
OK, so the idea could use a little work, but hey, it's a start to a solution to the problem, isn't it?
Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.
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Release Names or Tie to Global |
Don't make Al Gore come all up in here and free up names.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
Secret identity/civilian names. At creation you have a box for both the hero we have now, and a box for a civilian name or secret identity. As long as the pairing is unique it is allowed. Player names in game have an extra line like the badge and title lines above the toons head with their secret identity. In team roster, if there are multiple name the UI and add the secret ID underneath in smaller lettering.
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I admire the idea, though. It is creative and it tries to use an in-character concept to justify a game system. I'm just not sure I can deal with mandatory secret identities, is all.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Last time names were freed up, below level 6 on 90+ day inactive accounts, I was able to secure quite a few names I had been wanting so I'm not able to identify with those who are stating the names people want would not be freed up. My statement is not an opinion, it is fact based on my own first-hand experience. And for those wondering, I believe the last major name scrub happened in July of 2007 or thereabouts.
Legion of Valor / Fallen Legion (Victory server)
http://legionofvalor.guildportal.com / http://fallenlegion.guildportal.com
Pagan Priest - L50 Dark/Dark Defender
Something I've noticed about names is that most are made up of two words. Single word names are pretty uncommon and so I've actually have had some pretty good luck in getting good names from just using single words. For example, some of my characters:
Teratron
Pyrebolt
Mindhunter
Stormlancer
Deathlancer
Battleskull
Hexelene
Bodhisattva
Yeah most are really just two words joined at the hip, but you get my meaning. It's not so hard to find good names if you try a little hard, but I'm still in favor of releasing old names. There's got to be some great names out there collecting dust.
^ were they really doing 90+ days inactive? I was under the impression it was much longer.
I'm not pointing fingers but some of yall are talking about names you've gotten recently, and I'm sure you're happy with them but several of them sounded weak. Of course many of you came up with some pretty cool names.
I have a request, well suggestion for those of yall using foreign langagues, a perfectly legit way of getting a name in this game, maybe put the definition of your name at the top of your bio space. There is a good chance that I will look at your bio but it is highly unlikely I'll google your name to find out if it's an actual word used by anthor group of people on the planet. Some people use foreign words to create their names, some people make up words to name their toons. Both ways are creative and unique, just wish there was a way to tell them apart.
From personal experince regarding Chumps Online, you can hide the globals, its an option. Not important, I wanna point out how Cryptic lost out on a sale when it comes to me. I started playing this game right after capes came out, so I had already missed out on the great name rush in this game and I didn't wanna miss out on CO's name rush. I was gonna preorder the game and then they let us know that names wouldn't be unique and the desire I had to be apart of that game from launch went away.
In open beta I never teamed with anyone who had the same name as someone on the team, although I saw 2 different people with the name Taurine over the course of a weekend. It was refreshing in the game, walking around and looking at the names people picked and thinking wow what a cool name. I used to feel that way in this game before CoV came out, I'd get on a team and enjoy players names. Nowadays it's highly rare I feel impressed by someones name. If you're name is so long it displays in a smaller font then everyone else on the team I'm probably not even gonna read it.
The limitations we have on names has been a good thing though, there are several names I've come up with, and hundreds of names I've seen others use that blew me away with punage and the wit needed to come up with them. The CO system is great, but it's not going to force people to be a creative as they have to be here. There are names being used around this game that make my jaw drop, they are so good.
I'm not having a problem coming up with names, although there are names that I WANT TO USE SO BAD, the problem is so many names others are using are flat out lame. Bracketing names inside xXXx, or people spelling out theirs names L I K E T H I S.
There are people that once loved this game and got burnt at CoX because the Devs butchered their Regen Scrapper or killed their Tanker. These people aren't coming back, even though they would love this game now with all the changes and improvements, they will not give this game a second chance. The Devs should seriously consider implementing a system where if an account hasn't been used, ie paid a subsrciption fee in the last two years, all those names go up for grabs.
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NO NO NO! Under NO circumstances would I ever want to be known as global name@player name. I've seen this in action, and it's fugly. This is one of the quickest ways to make me disregard names in general and overall stop reading chat. Absolutely, positively NO global-appended names. I don't care about name uniqueness, I just don't want the horrible ugliness that is this approach. It looks THAT BAD.
As for name purges, I'm not against running another one, but it won't give you any new names. They ran a purge of characters under 36 on accounts 90 days inactive, and the purge freed up almost nothing. I always say the same thing when people ask for this - the names you want ARE NOT taken by throwaway characters on the accounts of people who left years ago. They're taken up by the kind of characters who won't be de-named anyway. The first purge proved that to evidence, and so the subsequent purges have been level 6-and below. That's where all the freed names were, anyway. And I've never felt names were sparse. OBVIOUS names are, like Something Man (both literally and as an example), but the solution to that is to have a name that is no some combination of your power source, colour, archetype or gender (honourable mention goes to Miss Blaster). It's never really guaranteed, but it's far from impossible. For instance, a couple of days ago I got a name that a friend of mine described as generic. I snatched "Pandala" on Victory, which was taken on Pinnacle, and doing research on it, I see it's not very creative at all. Lots of people have used it in their fiction, and there's even an area that looks like a large plane in Zambia called that. It was also taken on other servers, so it obviously isn't so unique. But you know what? Any name I can get through character creation is unique just by default. It doesn't matter if it's unique because no-one thought of it, or because EVERYONE thought of it but everyone thought it would be taken so no-one bothered to try. As long as it goes through, it's unique enough. In conclusion, I don't mind the occasional name purge as long as it follows the same parameters in the past, and I don't mind non-unique ways, as long as they're implemented in a way that's not ugly and yet makes it clear who the character belongs to (ain't that a catch 22). At the same time, however, I don't see making new names as problematic. It may require some lateral thinking, but good names are far from running out. They gave you a name check at character selection and they gave you the ability to start with the name and work backwards, exactly so you wouldn't end up with a costume and no name to put to it. So if you worry about your name, then start with it. |
You and me both.
I was able to grab the name Iron Puma with the release of Issue 16, on Freedom, along with Captain Fireside and St. Cloud (no, I'm not egotistical...I just love how very awesome I am).