Good character names are running out, huh?

Thank you, THANK YOU, for the admission that, at the end of the day, it comes down to selfishness.

And for the vocal vets who always chime in against this idea, I strongly suspect the same motivation.

It is my firm belief that global naming would make the game more accessible to new players. (In PnP terms, who would join a campaign if the GM only allowed your name choice if you roll a 1 on a d20?)

In a game whose revenues fell 25% this past quarter (now an estimated 75K subscribers), perhaps you should consider that making the game more accessible to newcomers might be in your best interest.

We already have the potential for ambiguity. But how often do you see Fire Man, Fire-Man, F1re Man, Fir3 Man, and/or xXFire ManXx in the game at the same time NOW? You don't, because this is an imaginary problem - a bugaboo thrown out there because you are against global naming in general.

You're welcome. At least I'm upfront about it. I pay to play a game, so I hope I'll be forgiven if I care about what I get out of it first and foremost. Last I checked, this wasn't a charity. The future of the game can be ensured in some other way that doesn't bother me.

And please don't try to hide behind the "It's better for new players!" cop-out. It's not. I was a new player once, I had to deal with the naming issues and I came out just fine. I've joined plenty of games and dealt with plenty of naming issues and that has never stopped me, outside of games that don't let me use spaces or capital letters.

If I'm upfront about having a self-serving stance, then you can either do me the courtesy of admitting the same, or at the very least getting off your high horse.

I don't, do I? Do you, per chance, have access to my optic nerve? Or do you monitor my broadband traffic? Kindly avoid making stupid assumptions like this, because I very much do see these names together from time to time, enough for it to bother me.

And, really, aren't you the one trying to cop-out with selfishness? Aren't your imaginary new player benefits just as mythical as my problem as I see it? Because if you have evidence that this will help new players, I'd like to see it. Otherwise, you're really turning yourself into a hypocrite by latching onto my own self-serving agenda while pedalling your own equally selfish one. YOU don't care about possibly ambiguity, this doesn't happen much to YOU, YOU want more names. Well I don't care about what you want any more than you appear to care about what I want.

This comes down to personal opinion. Stop trying to pass yours off as incontrovertible fact agreed upon by all, please.

In a game whose revenue fell 25% this past quarter, perhaps you should consider that pissing off the existing player base might not be in your best interest. Also, would you kindly provide a source for that subscriber number estimate? That's the first I've heard of it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

First of all, pot meet kettle. But what part of:

...do you take as me passing of my opinion as incontrovertible fact? Did I not qualify it enough?!? Of course this is opinion! Sheesh!


It is an extrapolation similar to and extending from the discussion in TonyV's thread last month based on NCSoft's Q4 2009 earning release from a couple of weeks ago based on a $45/customer (per quarter) average, which has been the eyeball average for a couple of years now. However, UnSub does a more detailed look here. At the end of the day, however, NCSoft no longer provides subscriber numbers, so this is only an estimate, and is probably best considered a subscriber-equivalent anyway since some sales are based on RMT transactions like booster packs.

I'm not the one using what amounts to emotional blackmail to present a case of "if you love the game, you will agree to this, and if you don't, then you're selfish." This is a business, and I am a customer. It is neither my job nor, to be quite honest, my place to try and determine what's best for the business. One would assume Paragon Studios have professionals to make those kinds of estimates. As such, the only thing that really matters is how I value the service delivered to me and how I appraise changes to it as proposed.

This is not a matter of opinion. This is a matter of customer responsibility, and trying to paint it as some kind of virtue by altruism or loyalty is a malicious argument of the highest order.

Just because you tagged it as such does not mean you used it as such. When you open with a pretty underhanded attack and follow up with "opinion" which paints how I'm despicable and you're altruistic, that becomes a misuse of "opinion," shifting it into malicious argument fodder. An opinion only counts as such when it is given as an observation and description of a position you hold. When it is used as ammo to shoot down people of a different opinion, specifically when coupled with malicious arguments, it really robs you of the moral high ground to insist that's just opinion and nothing more. A stool is not a weapon up until you smash it over someone's head, just to give you a rough example. And I've been the target of these arguments enough to know one when I see it.

Why is it that I can look at your position, shrug and say I don't agree because I get nothing out of it, but you can't do the same without assassinating my character with these pointless accusations? I don't mind you feeling however you want to feel. I DO mind you when you start feeling like it's your right to rob me of my game because you think I should suffer for your position to be fulfilled. I am by no means absolute here, but if someone's going to make such a decision, it's the development team. NOT you. As it's not my place to guess what's good for the game, so it is not your place to sacrifice my fun for your own view of what's good for the game.

OK, that thread I remember, and I did take some part in it, but I guess I left before people extrapolated subscriber numbers. As I recall, there was never a clear consensus on exactly what those numbers meant (partly why I left it - I don't enjoy speculation). PlayNC no longer post subscription numbers, and many people have inferred that to mean subscriptions are so low they're afraid to post them, but I have personally never been concerned. And I wouldn't put too much stock this, myself, as from what I remember, those were only ever relative estimates.

Suffice it to say it's not an official subscription numbers printout from the company.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

As I stated very clearly - twice - the subscription number estimate is an estimate.

The 25% revenue drop, however, is cold hard fact.

I encourage you, since you do not agree that global naming will help open doors to subscribers and/or you feel a different way of increasing numbers would be less impactful to your personal playing style, to help spread the word of this great game and/or improve the in-game experience via some other route or other ideas.

No, I was correcting myself in that I had the wrong impression the first time around. You spoke correctly, I just misread. My bad.

I do what I can. I try to engage anyone who will listen, but the friends I have are either not into video games at all, not into MMOs or too much into World of Warcraft for them to budge. That, and everyone seems to have set down roots in their own little enclosed world and will constantly put off trying something new. I'm THE most conservative person you're likely to meet, yet even I've tried most every game I've been offered. I've hated most of them, sure, but not because I "forgot" to get around to installing it.

As far as ideas go, I share what I have, but I try to avoid redundancy. No sense suggesting animated tails for the umpteenth bazillion times when BABs already knows, as evidenced by I17. Long as I have anything decent, I'll pass it along, and help as much as I can during Beta. I don't think anything I had to say about Dual Pistols really mattered in the end, but I know I tried.

And I'm not actually against multi-use names as a concept. I just don't see a good way to implement it that wouldn't bug me, and I don't see enough of a need for it to inconvenience myself over. Put it this way - I DO NOT WANT end game content and rather doubt I'll have any use for it, but I can't really argue against it as it's been made patently clear to me that that's what people want. I can see a need for this, so my opposition isn't going to be TOO vehement. But in general, I'm still not a fan.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

You see, here's a great illustration of how different people want different things. I have no use whatsoever for the tails, yet I have to acknowledge that at least some people are salivating over them.

Conversely, I'd love more end game content (loosely defined), and I'm shocked that almost any long-time player would be indifferent towards it. So go figure. (Specifically, what I want more of is Mender Silos' Task Force - eye-popping use of existing mythos, soloable yet quite challenging - virtually perfect in my book.)

But I submit that the "lack of names" complaint comes up often and from disparate sources (by this I mean to imply that I think it is mainly casual players who do not post often). The opposition primarily seems to be the same set of people over and over, mainly on the theme of "it's not a problem if you are willing to use a thesaurus." To me, this pattern suggests a greater demand for a solution to this problem than you are willing to give credit for. A silent-ish majority, if you will.

But that's my opinion, and it is an issue that is virtually impossible to quantify and thereby prove to anyone's standard, so I'll leave it at that.

A great demand for a thesaurus maybe. ^_^

I almost spit my coffee out after reading that. Good one

And for everyone still in denial, Global Name Association is the future.

I see things rather differently in this regard. The complaint does come up regularly, but far from often, and while the people making it tend to be diverse, the people arguing against it (outside of myself and a couple of others) are equally so. Furthermore, lack of names itself isn't the problem. Names are there, and this is easily provable. It's the lack of that specific name that the complainer specifically wants. I've seen the argument enough to recognise this as a pattern. And while you could extrapolate that many people wanting this or that name points to there not being enough names and people often running into one they can't use, I extrapolate a rather different conclusion - that the problem is the desire for a SPECIFIC name, rather than more names in general.

If the problem isn't the amount of acceptable names left available and is instead that all the GOOD names are taken, then the only solution to this is to release names to multiple users. No amount of names will ever be enough for people, because people don't want quantity, they want specific choices, which are taken by other people wanting the same specific choices. This is a problem that is not solvable in a way that I can agree with, but it's also a problem that I can't really agree NEEDS to be solved. I fully admit that just getting whatever you type in on the first try does have its own appeal, but I also fully believe that NOT getting it having to write around limitations is not actually inherently bad. As such, I refuse to acknowledge this as a factual problem so much as a perception problem. Since the players refuse to yield, then the game must therefore be made to yield to them.

Granted, I can't make an argument as to why choosing the name you want on the first try is BAD - I can sort of run one that it kind of stifles creativity, but that's not really relevant. I CAN however, bring up several positive sides to the situation and paint it as less of a direct problem and more of an inconvenience, which can be circumvented by not too difficult a mental stretch. As such, I don't find it a severe enough problem to merit an "at any cost" solution, especially one that costs ME.

In a roundabout way, I basically repeated what others keep saying. It's not a problem of insufficient names, it's a problem of specific names that is solely solvable via releasing names globally, which I don't feel can be done without irritating me to high heaven.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

I still say clear all the names off of people who don't have a global handle!

There's a few names I've checked on, that belong to people without a global handle. That right there, makes me say, they're not coming back.

However, I admit, that I still find names I'm suprised aren't taken (even if it's not one I want)...like RayGirl. That sounds like a great superhero name imo, I just don't have a concept for it, so instead of sitting on it, I posted it in the Virtue Name Watch Thread.

While it hasn't worked for me. I' ve given up a name before, when someone did a /getglobalname search on one of the names I did have, and they sent me a tell asking if they could have it.

I really never meant to sit on it, but I never got around to actually doing anything with that alt, so I basically was just sitting on it, so I gave it away.

Well, I generally don't like taking names away from customers, but sure, why not? Currently, I don't have a problem with purging names. I just don't think purges will bring about as many names as people believe.

But still, do them. They might help.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

You know, if they had a global name, I'd understand this. But if the user doesn't have a global name after all this time, I can only guess they haven't logged in since global name's where introduced to begin with.

Before I found that "uncheck" option, I did dislike the @ for aesthetic purposes (not as much as I disliked the readability of the font they chose to use, in keeping with the "comic book" theme).

But I really did like the overall solution, and was mildly surprised at how well it worked- particularly with the @ removed. Even at peak load, I didn't encounter any issues with duplicate names used in the same zone or channel unless they were intentional, and even then, it was relatively easy to tell them apart.

Overall, it caused less confusion than working in an office that had 6 "Daves" all within shouting distance of one another and substantially reduced the time I spent cursing at the character creator (which is rather remarkable, since the quirks of their "improved" creator had substantially INCREASED the time spent cursing during the costume-creation phase)

Like I said - pull 'em. This game managed to crush my "But what about other players?" sentiment ever since it introduced veteran rewards and bundles of booster packs. At this point, new players are boned in so many ways I don't really want to sacrifice my comfort to save them of just one.

Maybe some day if they come up with an "Everything Booster" pack and sell it as an expansion, then I could start worrying about other people's experience of the game, but until then, pull the names. See if that helps. Not like they'll miss 'em.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

Yeah, I remember spending most of my time trying to fix mistakes caused by colours applying to the wrong thing, accidentally swapping the wrong item type and trying to tab through unintuitive menus to look for the one piece I was sure was there. Names didn't take me a long time, but I'm the wrong guy to talk to about this, since names rarely take me long even here.

I CAN say one thing, though - getting a name in Champions Online was far less satisfying than it was in City of Heroes. Here, when I get a name that's not in use, I can be sure that it's either so clever no-one thought of it, so obscure no-one knows about it, or so silly no-one would want it. In Champions Online... It's just kind of there, I guess. Getting it just isn't as exciting.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

I can see the vet rewards being a problem for new users...and I'm pretty much against any costume option being a future reward for VETS. As the new players may never get to use them (as it is now...I think it tops out at 15 months to have every costume option).

But any new user can get the booster pack, so I don't see that as a problem at all.

My problem with CO's naming structure, was the other players.

You can have any name you want, and you STILL use the xXx NAME xXx structure? You still use Elite speak names? You still come up with the DUMMEST NAME EVER (like MonkeyPooBoyElite or PHATPHISH) when you can have any decent hero name you can think of?!

I'm annoyed seeing those names here! But to have seen them there at CO, EVEN WORSE!

Here, it's people not even trying or they just being idiotic. There! It's just idiotic.

IMO anyways. :P

Yeah... That's easier said than done. Counting off memory, we have Good vs. Evil, Wedding, Valkyrie, Cyborg, Super Science, Ninja and Magic, for a total of $70 all together. As well, your credit card gets flagged for only a single purchase from the PlayNC store per day as an anti-fraud countermeasure, which means you need to spend a week and SEVENTY DOLLARS to buy them all. A promotional pack that's, say, $30 like a regular expansion pack and has it all in ONE pack would be a much easier way to get new players on track.

That said, I'd rather have costume items locked up in Booster Packs than locked behind TFs. MUCH RATHER!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

Is that flagged credit card a new thing? I don't recall that, when I accidently purchased one of the boosters multiple times, because the store was screwed up.

I don't see having to buy one booster pack a day all that bad myself, and yes it's time they'd have to spend more money, but no different that the long time players.

And who knows, the booster packs may go down in price after a while. I wouldn't be suprised at seeing them drop in price at some future point.

9.99 now...but later becoming 4.99 I can easily see.

I'm sorry but how does wanting to keep a unique name= selfishness, but must have someone else's name≠selfishness?

What would make the game more accessible to new players is a name generator at the ID screen. We were all new players once. I do not consider myself a veteran player. When I create a new character, I'm in the same boat as someone on a trial account as far as naming is concerned.

It took me a month to find these forums, I didn't come on here complaining that the name I wanted was "In use" or "Unavailable." Why? Because there are countless tools out there to help anyone find a unique name. I just so happen to have about five or six sitting on my desk, plus bookmarked websites none of which are name generators.

If people are dead set on having that name and only that one name, then what do they do with the next character they create? You know, because that mythical 'best name' has already been taken.

If me wanting to keep my names to myself is selfish, then so be it. But don't come on here claiming that your POV is any less selfish.

Oh, and another reason I like having unique names? If even one other person has that name on the same server, then it's too common for me, I don't want it.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

Well...let's see...


RaveSpider
Rave Spider
Rave-Spider

The same name, spelled differently, and in acceptable hero/villain name motif (ie...no periods or extra X's or what have you).

Sooo...all three versions are unique, but still not quite unique as it's basically the same name.

Which people should remember to use that hyphen. I have a SG member, who refuses to use the hyphen, saying hyphens seemed wrong in the name, even after I pointed out "Spider-Man" and how the hyphen was better than Eagie Boy (with a captial I, in place of an L, as the name was already taken, when the name Eagle-Boy wasn't taken at all).

I cried when I saw that. :/