Good character names are running out, huh?

Uh-huh... time for you to take up smoking again... quitter

Yeah. I took the name "Sky Wraith" once on Pinnacle using a trial account so I could transfer some recipes for my other toons, then forgot to delete him. Then a month later I see a character named .SkyWraith, and I just felt soooo bad.. But what can I do? Should I re-activate the account just to free up a name? I can't even remember what account it was.

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

Those are both taken. Yes. Should those be surprising or not? I wouldn't know, but I would guess surprising since I have no idea what they would be referencing.

And just as an FYI, Macdeath is taken as well. I am guessing he is a Shakespearian Zombies Mastermind.

Macbeth was also known by Glamis & Cawdor

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

I've suggested something like it since the very first name-purge/non-unique name thread appeared on the forums to my knowledge. Less so as a direct suggestion and more as a thought experiment. For people who want a name that is already taken and are willing to have unique IDs of some other kind, what's the problem with putting in a unique ID in the actual character name field of your character and putting your character's "real name" in the BIO. Its ultimately the same thing, except people don't directly see that you're "SuperDude@123456789" you're just "123456789" and anyone that wants to know your real name has to look at your bio. If its mostly for *you* and not for anyone else, what does it matter?

If, on the other hand, it *does* matter what you look like to other people then this is no longer a simple discussion about everyone getting to have whatever name they want because it doesn't affect anyone else, because it does in fact affect everyone else by virtue of affecting the global namespace.


I wonder if this would satisfy people. Suppose everyone had an "AKA" field in their character ID. Character "Name" would become character ID. IDs would still have to be unique. AKAs would not, and would be optional.

So if I'm the only Suzie Snapshot on my server, I get to be "Suzie Snapshot" and that's all. If someone else wants to be Suzie Snapshot they can't be because that name is already taken. But if they want to be, they can choose to be "Paragon Hero 894374" and immediately below that it would say "aka Suzie Snapshot."

Its no less ugly, but its only ugly for people wanting to take an already taken unique ID and willing to tolerate an ugly ID. People willing to choose a unique name can avoid having the ugly ID. People willing to have ugly IDs can have whatever aka name they want.

I'd be "Suzie Snapshot." They would be "894374:Suzie Snapshot" or whatever. It seems like everyone gets what they ask for.

No, not "Macdeath", "Macheath".

You know, from "Die Dreigroschenoper"? Look out, ol' Mackey is back?

Hmm... You know, this I can actually work with. I still don't like how the system looks, but it has the potential to be wholly unambiguous, and it would be ugly only for people who choose to go that route. I honestly have no complaints on the matter. Sure, it'll be silly to see the odd phone number hero, but as long as I know they made the choice to look like this, then who am I to judge? It's certainly no more weird than xXx 5up3r h3r0 xXx, and we can do this right now.

Something else occurs to me with this discussion, though - a lot of people may, and even right now do, end up with a name that may look good on an ID card, but isn't necessarily as fluent when people call you that when they speak to you. For instance, I'd say being named John Spartan is really cool, but when people address you as "Good night, John Spartan. Be well." it just sounds WEIRD. And... Well, have a look at my screen name and imagine what a character like that is like when being talked to. "Thank you, Samuel Tow, those people would have died without you!" Ugh!

To that effect, I've always wanted to see a different kind of AKA field. Specifically, one where I can type in what people call me when addressing me, as distinct from the name I have typed out if necessary. It's kind of like in the old Civilization games you could specify what people called you in several different contexts because some languages add suffixes in different situations. For instance, I'd just axe the last name in direct address and just go with "Sam" or "Samuel." Given that that's how people tend to address ME in most game-related situations, I'd say it has merit.

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've played a lot of games that did that, too, and without exception I've hated all of them. Granted, not JUST for this reason, but when I log into an MMO and the first thing I see is three people with Dude@Some Random Guy above their heads, that pretty much guarantees I'll be off to a BAD start and subsequently get pissed off at every little thing. It's that ugly a naming system in my eyes.

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.

This is an interesting analysis. Have the people who don't like unique names given you their take on this idea? It seems to me like this should satisfy them if the arguments they've made so far represent their true feelings.

And how is this different from our current system where you can call yourself Fireman678 if Fireman is taken?

When the system offers you an "uglier" out as a legitimate choice and reassures you that this is perfectly normal, people are a lot more willing to take it. When you're basically compromising your own name to game the system, it feels a lit less "right" even if the net result is the same.

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.

In my opinion, its a little less ugly and has a slightly better structure. Instead of *appearing* in-game as Fireman678 you'll actually appear as:

Hero 678
aka Fireman

In other words, you get a "unique name" and a "common name" and both appear as separate "titles" on your character. Its easier to claim you are "Fireman" because you actually are "Fireman" - just colloquially. But the structure of the game is now signaling that this is a legitimate way to name characters, so there's no stigma associated with it, unlike *** Fireman678 ***!!!

What's more, by forcing the first part to be unique *and* displayed, it can be used as a universal character identifier. There will never be a question of who or what "Hero 678" is because its *not* a global handle: its unique to that specific character.


There are lots of reasons why I don't like Character@Global. The biggest objection I lodged when the system was first proposed, and later when the chat system was modified to remove even the illusion of disconnect between character and global, is that its impossible to play a character anonymously, short of having a completely different account.

Maybe for the vast majority of players this is a minor annoyance, but for me its not a small distinction. Cryptic takes this to a whole new level: I haven't investigated whether this is alterable or not (it probably is and I just haven't stumbled across it yet) but your global handle is at least initially your global handle for *both* Cryptic games, which means I'm Character@Global across both Champions Online *and* Star Trek Online. As much as some people like that, I'm not one of them.

Mostly, though, I dislike Character@Global because it perpetuates the perspective that my character is just a thing in my account, no different than a damage enhancement is just a thing in my character. It isn't an entity unto itself.


Tenzhi:
That's a pretty wide brush to paint with. I think its only true if you believe nothing is original, starting from the creation of the universe. Personally, I tend to put a lot of thought into my character names, and since way more than half the time the name I choose is immediately available I assume my names are, if not provably creative, at least relatively original.

Although there are times when I'm genuinely surprised to get a name, because *I* assume its not original but I'm trying anyway. The last time that happened was when I rolled my Elec/Elec and named her (The)Electrocutioness.

My brother, now he had an interesting naming anomaly. He started in head-start, and was not in beta so his first day in head-start was his first day ever seeing any part of the game. And yet he had a weird habit of naming his characters things that eventually ended up in the game. "Patient Zero" for example. The first time I got a mission to track down "Patient Zero" I actually thought for a second that the game was telling me to track down my brother in-game and thought that was an awesome mission-generation feature.

A child builds a pyramid out of blocks - in the grand scheme of things it's not particularly creative or original, though the child put a lot of thought and effort into it. Letters and words are our building blocks. We may no doubt make mighty fine pyramids with them, but they're not the unique snowflakes some would like to believe. I may seem jaded/cynical in this regard, but at the same time I don't thumb my nose at things just because they aren't "original" as too many people seem quick to do these days.

As I said, by this definition *nothing* is original. And any perspective that concludes nothing is original has accomplished nothing but eliminating the usefulness of the word "original."

Even letters aren't original: its not like any of them are constructed from any visual elements that don't pre-exist written language.

Whenever someone uses the absolutist reductionist argument to conclude that nothing is original, I'm reminded of the same line of thought which concludes that nothing is real. Outside of a philosophy class, both lines of thought have no practical outcome. In a practical sense, what matters almost all of the time is real enough, and when judging creative endeavors what matters is original enough.

I don't mind that nothing I've ever created is absolutely original because absolute originality is a semantic construct devoid of any meaning other than a definition which precludes exemplars.

But for people that have a definition of originality that actually allows for the *existence* of originality, I think there are lots of examples of both creative and original naming as well as derivative naming.

It's usefulness is suspect, in any case, as it largely depends upon ignorance of a precedent. Which is to say that people tend to think something is original because they either have not seen its like before themselves, or else don't recognize the resemblances. How much worth can it have as a descriptor, therefore, since it so heavily relies on subjective knowledge? If someone ignorant of cheeseburgers were to stumble upon the idea of placing a fried piece of ground meat and cheese between two handy pieces of bread they might call it "original" whereas "I never thought of that" or "new to me" would be more apt.

What's worse is that being "unoriginal" becomes a stigma when it's not something that can be wholly avoided.

Heh, this takes me back to the first year in college. We thought we knew so much!

*chuckle*

When I was in college, almost all of the Professors in nearly every writing class I took (composition, playwriting, poetry, and more), kept saying "There is no such thing as an original storyline/concept/emotion in writing".

I thought they were full of it.

However, the older I get, the more I see how much so many things are recycled. Truly, it comes down to how clever you can be in your recycling attempts. I rarely use the phrase "that's original" these days... I do say "that's clever" or "amusing" or some other such descriptive.

When it comes to names, I don't feel that I'm all that clever. But I do make the effort to make them interesting at least to me. By using historical references, the thesaurus, Google, or even making a name anagram, I rarely have difficulty getting the names I've chosen. They are certainly not by any means "original", but neither are they so common as to be difficult to obtain in the game.

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson