Another discussion about names

Which are exactly the kind of names that many people wanting multiple use of names will be picking...

Positron already has...

What's in a name? (pt1)

Naming your character in an MMO is a sacred thing. It’s probably the single most personal thing about your character. Especially in an MMO that does not allow for a lot of character avatar customization, where your name is probably the only real differentiation from any one else of your race/class combo. MMO designers should take this seriously, and make sure that you have the player’s interests in mind when you come up with your naming rules.

A lot of games bake the character’s name into the database lookup for that character. I mean, it seems obvious to do it this way, right? This means that every character name needs to be unique, which is a design goal of many games, but also will bite you in the butt should you ever allow players to change their character’s names.

Why have unique names as a design goal? Well, it grows from traditional MUDs and having a social reputation tied to your character’s name. If you are a griefer or troublemaker, players know by reputation to avoid you. If anyone else could have your exact same name? Well, they can masquerade as you and destroy any good reputation you might have established in mere minutes. Of course, the more popular your game is then you might not have that name you want available.

Names then become a commodity. MMOs might offer “early name reserve” for people who pre-order, or at the very least a headstart period that is attractive to players who want to get their ideal name. You might squat your ideal name on every server so you are a unique snowflake in that MMO. No one else will ever have your exact name. For some people, that is a form of enjoyment. Others see that sort of practice as passive griefing. You have a name used on a character that you never play, for the sole intention of preventing anyone else from using it. Personally, I can see both sides. When a new race or powerset is unveiled for an upcoming expansion, you might legitimately squat names that you intend to use in the future on those new characters.

A popular move for MMOs nowadays is to let any character have any name. Obviously this is the way of the future, right? I mean it builds upon the lessons learned from the past of all the headaches unique names have caused players, eliminates the need for name purges to “free up some names”, and makes everyone happy in that they can always get the name they want. Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. For a lot of players the fact that their name is unique is more dear to them than the fact that they could get any name they wanted. In addition, it is so traditional now that your name is unique that most of your players (who didn’t do the research on how names work in your game) assume they are and are seriously confused when they see any other character with their exact same name running around the game world. That might generate a customer service ticket, and that’s the last thing you want your design decision doing.

What's in a name? (pt 2)

In part 1 I discussed the various ways of designing how characters get named in an MMO. In this part I will talk a little bit about how your perfect name might not be perfect for the game and you will be forced to change it.

For fantasy games, it’s pretty easy to come up with a name. Just jumble some syllables around and you have a name. Most fantasy games ask you not to use real-world words in your (or as your name). “Role-Playing” servers can see some pretty strict enforcement on these name rules as well. For a modern, or superhero, game, words are the order of the day. Unfortunately there have been superhero comics for over 50 years, so a lot of names have been trademarked by various companies.

Which brings me to my next point, where do we draw the line in what names are acceptable, copyright and TM wise, and what are not? It’s a very blurry legal area we are treading into, and since I am not a lawyer, you have to take everything here with a grain of salt.

Obviously if a copyright or trademark holder asks that a name not be made available, as it might damage the brand associated with it, then you are not going to be able to name your character that, or anything even remotely like it. Wolverine, and \/\/01\/3r33n are the same thing in this case. A good rule of thumb is to avoid any names of characters that have had movies made about them in the past 20 years. Those are “top tier” characters with high visibility, and a game company will enforce them even if the copyright holder hasn’t said anything yet. If your character shares the name of a lower tier character, but is obviously not a “remake” or “homage” to the original, trademarked, character, than you have a better chance (not 100%!) of seeing it slide. At the end of the day, the game is that of the publisher’s. If they feel that your name is a violation of their naming rules, take a deep breath and move on; come up with something else and enjoy the game.

Now offensive names are another matter entirely. There’s two types of offensive namers, those who want to “life grief” people by reminding them of tragedies, and those who think the name is funny and want to see what they can get away with. The first type really are a type of player that isn’t doing your game much good. Your customer service should track how many times they need to get a player to rename their characters, and if a pattern has developed, then you need to consider your options. Do you really want a brand new user to see names reminding them of the holocaust, Columbine, or 9/11? People play games to escape that sort of stuff, just because a name filter didn’t “catch” something doesn’t mean it should be acceptable to name your character that.

The other type of offender is the one that tries to slip in the phrases, or the misspelled swear words, or stuff that only makes sense if you look it up on Urban Dictionary. These guys do it to be silly and to offend those who have their chat filters still enabled. While both of these types of namers are immature, these seem to be even less so. They are not “getting” anything out of it other than a “ZOMG, look what I got away with hehehehe” mentality. Yes, these guys generate CS tickets too. I really wish they didn’t.

So there you have it. Two posts on character names from the development perspective. I hope future MMOs are getting something out of these posts, I really do enjoy putting this information out there.

I bet someone out there thought I was going to post about ReadID as well. Gotcha!

As for the comment about the HeroCon attendees having a knee-jerk reaction lacking any thought behind the question posed. Those same attendees are the same ones that have been on the forums discussing this same issue, on the occasions that it comes up. They (me included) did not have to think about their answer when responding at the Con, because they had already thought about it.

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

Well, it wouldn't just free up the 'Very Common' names either, it'd also free up the mid and not too common either.

I'm sure there won't be an onslaught of "Commander Pwnage"s on Virtue for instance .

Well said!

Well, it got heavily discussed on the forums mostly due to that other game out there. And while I do acknowledge that the majority of people attending HeroCon are impartial observers relative to the whole Paragon Studios v Cryptic Studios Super Hero Games, there is the Anti-Jack factor to consider.

I can't respond to several different ongoing conversations at once and effectively communicate in all of them.

I'm not sold on name purges.

Chase says it best:

Also, name purges as the devs do them usually do nothing for the person who camps a name with an active account. Even if you purge characters who haven't been played in X number of days, people will still log them for 30 seconds just to beat the system.

And the fact of the matter is, I'm on both sides of that issue:
I'm sitting on a few names too, for when I have the time to devote to launching them/making a build push. I sit on them because I don't want to lose the name, but at the same time, I'd have no qualms about sharing them with someone if I can still use them too.


.

I actually have no problem with this. But the difference is, your account is active.

It's those accounts that have been inactive for such a long time, that I see the loss of right to a name.

18 months to me sounds fair. Go up to two years if need be. But, if they're inactive after so long, it's time to free up what some paying customers have been wanting for awhile.

I have a few names that might be considered sitting on them, if for no other reason than, I got them to 50, renamed the 50, and reused the name, but havent gotten back into the toon, so now they sit.

But if I go inactive, and lose the names I had, and then come back, it'll be "oh well" and move on, finding a new name.

Making that a 1-2 year absence equals a loss of name rights, seems to work for me...that gives them a chance to come back after a year or two of new content being added, playing, and then coming back.

If people want to pay 15 bucks every 1-2 years just to name sit, fine, that's money in CoH's pocket, and maybe they'll find they'll stay. Though if they have no intention of coming back, I'd think the smart person would find something better to do with 15 dollars.

No you didn't. With a unique naming system it's a lot harder for player A to be mistaken for player b because they can't have the same name.

Under our current system

Superdude: Hey Hyperstrike, I think I see that guy who was a jerk to you the other day. Wasn't his name John E. Butane?

Hyperstrike: No, it was Johnny Butane.

Superdude: Ah different guy then. Okay Thanks.

Hyperstrike: NP.

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

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If it were up to me I'd let that name purge program run after every scheduled maintenance. That way it would constantly release names on accounts that went over the 3 month inactive deadline.

As to cross server teaming all that's needed is a title that identifies the home server the character is from.

I agree with Chase's response to this, but I wanted to mention that I'd do the same thing you describe to a comic that featured characters with names like -Sarah and xXK I L L AXx. Yet I have to deal with people like that on every zone event or raid, and to make things worse, the raid leader usually has a name like one of those (note that I'd be nearly as unhappy with "Sarah" and "Killa"). This is why I prefer 8-or-less person instanced missions/TFs, where I get to pick who I team with, so I can avoid ridiculous teammate situations.

I've seen three categories of arguments given against non-unique names. The first is over griefing/mistaken identity concerns, which is a valid complaint that should be researched to determine how much more of a problem it is than what we currently have with punctuation and slight spelling differences ("No, with an A. D-A-N-T.") before considering a non-unique naming system.

The second category is concerns about how it will be handled. This includes the inelegance of @global being appended to names. These are valid concerns, but it's important to remember that there is more than one solution. Attacking the one that has already been heavily mitigated (by allowing it to be hidden unless necessary) is not very effective.

The third category appears to be "I find the idea of multiple people having the same name/someone else getting the name I got, to be offensive". I think this is as valid as wanting to enforce your own personal naming requirements on the population, such as no punctuation, misspellings, or hyphens in other people's names. I don't really find this argument to be compelling. I understand it from an emotional standpoint (I really wish everyone that played would make characters that fit my idea of what a superhero is), but it's not logically persuading.

I agree with you, and this is why I won't argue very aggressively for a change for CoH at this point.

However, for any new superhero MMO, I would aggressively argue that they use a naming system that allows for duplicate names. I think that in the superhero genre, the name is a critical part of character creation, and enforcing unique names is like enforcing unique costumes in my mind.

You think people who havent played for years, will hear about a possible name purge, and care enough to pay NC money to keep it? Really....

Well, the last few times that NCSoft has done a name purge, they sent out a lot of emails to their former customers informing them of this.

So unless they abandoned the email or just don't check it that often, they should become aware of it.

I don't think it's "offensive", I think it goes against the genre and cheapens the experience. Finding examples where multiple people share an identity simultaneously (which then becomes a major plot point because it's so unusual) only serves to reinforce the fact that it's not standard and you don't see it happening in the superhero genre without special circumstances. Not just because fifteen different people all independently and coincidentally wanted to be called Superman.

you say that only because you've got one of the awesomest names I've seen on these boards.

Not if people know that the most common names most likely would be taken. Most intelligent people who play MMO's will probably assume that the spelling of Fhenix is a take on Phoenix. Of course I would have used Phoenix if it was available. I think you missed my point on what I was trying to say in my post. I would go back and re-read again what I said and soak it in better.

What he said. That would be Positron. Lead Systems Designer. Patron Hero. Task Force Extraordinaire. And, like me, a guy who claimed his super hero persona long before City of Heroes was around.

So far, none of my characters make use of immersion-breaking punctuation. If a name (including reasonable variations) is taken, then I get to work creating something more original. This has been a challenge on several occasions, a welcome challenge that I met and satisfied. For anyone who DOESN'T consider this a welcome challenge, there are hundreds of generic fantasy MMOs out there, if not thousands. There was a guild JUST for Raistlin in one MMO I played. Same for Bob. There were over a hundred Bobs in Bob.

This isn't your average generic fantasy MMO. Parts of it are the antithesis of those. Consequently, I feel much respect for other players who are willing to bring their imaginations to work in City of Heroes, and little respect for those who aren't. Like Positron, some of my characters existed in other media long before City of Heroes came around. I've been making comic book stories since I was a kid. So the last thing I want to see is people ripping off my creative work, whether it's costumes, back stories or names. Tied to some of these names, and the stories and deeds behind them (some which are decades old), is a real sense of accomplishment AND OWNERSHIP. In a game that prioritizes subscriber-created content, this sentiment is FAR FROM CHILDISH.

It is important not to have that sense of ownership and accomplishment taken away from us on account of a very vocal minority.

Not difficult at all. They already have a script that checks character level and time inactive. They would just need to change a couple of variables.

um, says who? I don't think you understand how it works. When they run the name purge script, no one actually loses their name. They are just flagged as available. The name isn't removed unless someone else actually tries to use it.

So, if no one WANTS the name "A Guy With Bots", it can stick around forever no matter how many times they purge the names.

Accept that the majority like the system the way it is.


Of COURSE not. Because their "knee jerk response" that they apparently made "without any information or facts" happens to NOT be the position you favor. Hey, I know what we can do! Let's consider the possibility that their response wasn't knee-jerk, or wrong, or stupid in some way. Maybe it was a well-considered opinion and the majority really don't want the same thing you do.

Says the fellow with the name. He occasionally does a check to see if it's available and it continues to come up as claimed. If it had been purged, it would be available when you check on it.

Since whom ever had "Guy with Bots" can't log into the account in question (wouldn't be an old trial caracter if he could) I'm going to guess that he checked it using "Check Name." If the purge freed it up, it should come up as available. If it comes up as unavailable, /getgloble would show if its still attached to the same account or has been snagged by another player.

The problem is that we already don't have visually unique names. Using the standard in-game font, names such as "Delilah" and "DeIiIah" (using upper-case I for the lower-case L) look identical. If you're picking names from a list or responding to tells with backspace, you'll never know that you're talking to a different person. (I use a font that differentiates those two letters to avoid this problem.)

That means it's already possible to impersonate any character who has a lower-case L in their name. Similarly, as mentioned with the name "0mega" only observant players will be able to distinguish the difference between zero and upper-case O. And, of course, unless you have eidetic memory, you won't remember the exact spelling of names that include hyphens for characters with whom you've teamed only briefly. So when you get tells from Badger-man, Badgerman, Badger - Man and -Badger Man- are you really going to be able to keep them all straight?

To determine whether this is really the person you think it is, you'll have to get their global name. Which isn't immediately obvious or easy now.

Both sides of this debate make a lot of specious arguments. As a practical matter, we do not currently have unique names. We have a system that allows players to use the same names that requires us to manually disambiguate identical names with syntactic garbage.

Optimizations could be made that minimize the need for appending the global to the name. The team display could show the global only for duplicates actually teaming. And if a name is truly unique on the system it would never need display the global. That means that players who don't want duplicate names could choose names that no one else has, and will be unlikely to choose. They could still let their creative juices flow and be unique -- until someone else happens upon that same name at a later date.

However, as a practical matter, there are many more things the game needs that have a higher priority. I don't have a problem with the way it works now, but I don't have a problem with allowing duplicate names. Both methods are equally valid. I just don't see the devs finding the time to do it, because it would be a complex change that would wind up having a lot of unforeseen problems. And it would make a lot of players unhappy.

Oh no. I got what you said. I don't just don't think people would see the misspelling of Phoenix any different than they do using a number in the name.

Gremlin, is taken! Sooo...a person goes with Grem1in. People say they hate it. So why would Fhenix be any different?