Release Names or Tie to Global

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).

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.

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.

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

Also, I hate having my global tagged to the end of my Character's name like in CO

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?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

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.

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.