Another discussion about names

Would work great for a depressed miner character!

And the rest? I thought so, you tell others not to speak for others then do so. Your preferable solution is not preferable to the "others" in this thread.

See, this is how I feel bout it as well.
If someone else is already "Shadow Lord"... I 1) Don't want to infringe on their namesake 2) Want to have my own identity...Both because, who knows, I may end up running in the same circle as Shadow Lord and his colleagues (Or enemies) and what fun is it if we're both using the same name (Well, okay, a little bit of campy fun could com out of that... but, I'd much prefer to not have someone come along with my name as well as I'd prefer to not meet someone who's already had my name... not to mention I don't want everyone else to have to deal with us both having the same names [It's annoying enough with all of the Johns in this world]).


That's why a name purges without level limits would help.


Yes it would!


Why the hell not??
"Not Fair"???
A temporary monthly subscription doesn't equal a permanent ownership of anything in this game. If a certain amount of time has gone by, they should be thankful that the company kept the data of their characters at all. Forget names.
How is it unfair for them to have to find a new name?
How is it fair for them to reserve that name with zero money paid for all of that time?
That's silly!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Huh! Maybe we'll run into each other sometime!

"Sparkdancer" was on my list of second-string names to try, actually. Since she's a Clockwork, "a dance of sparks" seemed more appropriate to her than "one who dances with sparks," in my mind.

And as to me "not speaking for everyone," Johnny...

What part of that was unclear to you? The majority of the people in that room, and the majority of the people in this thread, do not seem to want the system to insist on pushing at us, and find the current system perfectly equitable.

I do agree with Eva that accounts that were never linked to a global should have ALL their names released if possible, as well as trial accounts, and I even think that accounts that have been inactive for 3 years or more should have everything up to say 25 released. But I think the system you're proposing is clunky and annoying, and there have been many perfectly good refutations of it in this thread.

The crowd, like a number of people in this thread, reacted with a knee jerk response with no time to give any thought to the matter and without any information or facts.
That is not something to make a decision based on.

Given information and time to think, they may well have given a different answer. They may have found that the fears they had were unfounded and based on misconceptions.


For that matter, I don't see a "majority" in this thread on either side of the fence. The number of people posting in this thread or at that QA session versus the number of people playing the game, is very tiny.

The reasons people are giving for being against freeing up the names don't really hold up to scrutiny. A number of them are based on wild assumptions and others mostly emotionally fueled from what I see.

Besides, a number of things come to mind that "the majority" on these forums railed against that turned out OK. Merging the markets. Unlimited respecs. Cross-faction ATs. ED. Even free Fitness for crying out loud.

If the devs brought up changing the naming system, chances are it's FOR something they want to do, like in preparation for cross-server teaming. Meaning I'm less about trying to sway the devs here and more about trying to figure out why people would be against this and maybe shoot down some of their fears and show them their concerns are perhaps misplaced.


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Well put.


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Continuing to demonize the other side by implying they aren't thinking, are reacting emotionally, or are for some reason afraid just makes you look like a jerk. In fact, you pretty much have reacted to everyone's opinions who disagree with you in a negative emotional fashion.

Lots of us have been here since i0 and are still here, this topic comes up periodically, it's been discussed to death. We've had plenty of time to think about it.

Their decisions are based on their opinions, which is the same thing yours are based on.

Your opinions just happen to be more optimistic about the results.

Yet you have failed to provide a good reason for it to happen. Cross server teaming can be handled with a simple title under the name signifying the server they could be from. That is an easy issue.

Sever mergers, or heaven forbid single server games, are another issue all together. Yes, at that point they have to add the number or a @hereismyglobal, but then, as is mentioned every time someone drags this dead horse out; what happens when you are merged to a server with fewer slots than you have toons. We all know what happens there.

How about Super Group names. I, for one, would not relish being joined with another super group that shared my groups name.

Yet those are tangents.

Multiple names are very distracting, require loads of work so that when you see two different Johnny Butanes in chat, but can't see either of them, you can tell the globals of each so you report the right one, and break immersion for most people. Now, I will admit that there is a point that someone gone for 3 years or more may not be coming back. But they might as well. I took a year off between a couple of issues a couple of times, due to content being lackluster or the game simply not doing it for me. I know I would be ticked to come back and find my name was gone.

I'm going to start this off with a piece I wrote awhile back in City Life - CoH & CoV Discussions Titled "Good Character Names Are Running Out Huh?" by Samuel_Tow

I think one of the funnest parts of the game is in naming your Toons. As you can see, based on my signature below, I have a few toons with very different names. For example, my level 50 Controller Dark Braven, I originally wanted to call her Dark Raven,..and we all know that name is pretty much taken. So, I had to pull up Dictionary.com, spell certain words by removing the "R" in Raven and see what I could come up with. After further thought, I then said to myself, my toon will be Brave and have a Dark side to her. So, I just combined Brave with Raven and got Dark Braven. For my other toon Zambrosia, I orginally wanted to name her Ambrosia, which is greek for food of the gods. Nope, already taken. So, using my Braven technique, I just dropped the "A" and added a "Z" and got Zambrosia. Ta-Da!

I also use a lot of greek goddess names for reference in naming my toons. The easy part is all my toons are women and I always take careful consideration in wanting to give them the best name and to make it easy for anyone who has to type my name in to send me a tell. Fusion 7 was my first toon and I used a number with the name as the name Fusion was already taken. In my toons description, I said it would take all 7 nuclei to combine to form a powerful explosion for her wondrous Nova. So, I was able to tie the name to the toons personality and attributes.

For another one of my toons, I wanted a "cat" theme with her so I ended up calling her "Cattalina". Originally wanted to spell it as Catalina like the island off of California but it was taken so I just added another "t" to make it Cattalina. You know it sounds like Catalina, it has a "cat" reference to it and is still pronounced the same way. See how that works? My last toon I rolled, Fhenix, I wanted to call Phoenix, the bird that rises from the ashes,..you can see the fun in this I hope. Picking a name to fit your toons personality. Anyways, after several, and I mean about a good hours worth of time, after several attempts I finally came up with Fhenix for my Fire/Kin Controller. Easy to spell, and when you look at it, you know it will sound like "Phoenix". Problem solved. Recently when I was building a new toon for Praetoria, I built a Domintor. I wanted to call her Dominitra but that name was taken. So, I changed the “i” to an “e” and got Domentra. Still sounds the same but I just had to compromise since the original name was already taken.

I think it should be the players right to claim the name for as long as they want it since they were creative enough to come up with it. I also think you can get by without having to add periods or Xx by the name to change it up. Just follow how I did it above and you should have no problem finding good names for your toons.

Good character names are not running out, just peoples imaginations. As you can see from my post, with a little thought you too can make a name for yourself.

At least in this game you would be forced into using a global name that you picked out yourself, whereas the 'other' game you would have been forced to use a global name that your parents picked for you. Which is fine for those of us not called Clarence Hubert Simply-Phutt.

First off, Slime Girl sounds awesome.

But okay, yeah on the rest of the names. Okay, let's go with for you, this is the norm. But when people talk about "names taken" we all know what they mean, they mean names that you'd see in a superhero comic.

You might say be more creative, use names like "Kyle Smith" but even you should realize, that's not what they want. They want the names like "Batman" "Spider-Man" "Dardevil"

You know, the comicbook norm.

And those saying be more creative, aren't really being creative imo. At least, I don't see what's so creative about "John Smith" "Maggy Smith" "Kyle Smith" "Joanna Smith"

This. I'm not saying put in the CO Naming system of [insertnamehere]@GlobalNameHere.

I'm saying the devs need to say screw the inactive accounts.

If I can do a /getglobalname and not get a globalname name for the name search, that name needs to be freed up.

I think names that are on inactive accounts of 1 (maybe 2) years, no matter the level, need to br freed up. Those people aren't playing.

Right now is the perfect time to be doing it. GR just came out, it's been out for awhile, plenty of time for those long inactive accounts to have their names purged (no matter their level), for others to use.

Then they should back up their opinion with well thought-out counter arguments that hold up to scrutiny.

So far most of the counterarguments have been fear-based and irrational. Fear of being mistaken for a griefer and having a GM take action against you. Fear of being blacklisted by all teams forever. Etc. These were easily refuted; the system doesn't work that way, the devs know better and have likey anticipated such things beforehand especially when people have pointed out such issues before.

The fact that it keeps coming up and has persisted should be a red flag that the issue is far from closed and a significant number of people aren't happen with the system as it is now.


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At the same time, if I was reading a Batman comic and he came across a guy fighting crime named Batman@MichaelKeaton who was teamed up with Batman@AdamWest and they were off to find Batman@ChristianBale to help them defeat Catwoman@MichellePfiffer and Catwoman@JulieNewmar, I'd probably set the book down. On a lit stove burner.

Ahhh...here we go. I knew that I couldn't agree with you all day long. This is typical Johnny: when others disagree with you, misinterpret their motivations, and claim victory. Just because YOU don't like that other people have different motivations doesn't make their motivations fear-based or irrational.

The system works now as it is. You are suggesting a change to the system. The onus is on you to provide evidence that the change will be better off than the current system. You have not done that. A chance like you are suggesting could introduce new problems, and piss off a large portion of the playerbase. All because some people aren't all that creative.

Just because the Devs might be able to work out a system that gets rid of the potential for griefing doesn't change the fact that for many people, this would be immersion breaking.


A significant number of people might not like the current system. A far greater number might be unhappy with a changed system. Do you have any evidence that one side is heavier than the other? I'd say that the PAX panel, and the threads I've seen on this, speak to the fact that more people are happy with the current system than would be if it changed.

Using your own example, Fhenix, to you, could be imaginative. To others, it could just as easily be seen as poor spelling.

This would just result in a wave of people re-subbing a week before the scrub just to secure their name before vanishing again at the end of the month.

Even if they don't use the name any more and even if they had never intended to come back before hearing about the purge, they will return just to keep the name.
That's human nature.

You can see how much people fuss over being asked to just to possibly share a name in this thread. Losing a name even though they never use it? Yeah, they'll pony up $15, some just out of spite. Then they'll come to the forum and complain about it.



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It still seems the best way to go about it.

I don't even think we have to go with 1 year. 18 months or 2 years, seems plenty of time for people to have gotten back into the game, checked out all the newness for a month, then taken off again, and save their names.

Actually, I doubt it. But even so, at least they came back, checked everything out, then left.

Some might do it for spite, but I think most would just not bother.

No, but I bet the devs do, and they're the ones who floated the idea at HeroCon, likey for a reason.




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