DOs and SOs - Change the names?

I can't tell you how many times I've had friends who started playing come to me saying they don't understand how enhancements work or what they're supposed to buy, or how to figure out what the enhancements do when they're buying them at the store. This is basically just a QoL suggestion to help new players, but I think getting rid of the flavor names of DOs and SOs and changing them would be very helpful. One example might be changing "Evolution: Neural Paralysis" into "Mutation: Sleep Duration". While the names do add a touch of flavor, I think they're a bit archaic and unnecessary, and the same scheme certainly wasn't followed for normal IOs, and the "flavor" can still be kept in the enhancements' descriptions for those who care to read them.

Just had this problem, not a month ago. A gent who had left another MMO was looking for a dual origin enhancements...and was baffled by the names. It took a friend and I fifteen minutes to twenty minutes to walk him through finding the right things over voice chat. It was tiresome on our end, and frustrating to the extreme on his end. To his question "why would they name it that?" we had to simply shrug.

If the devs wanted to keep the flavor names, they could still do this:
Accuracy: Bioluminescent Filter
Flight speed: Li Tieh Kuai's Gem

*Edit* For the fun of it, without peaking, try to list what the following names enhance:
Li Tieh Kuai's Candle
Thallium Exposure
Cuirass
Hydrazine Exposure
Thermodynamic Bombardment
Nectanebo's Phylactery
Helmet
Neodymium Irradiation
Shoulderpiece
Cord
Portacio Ind Nanovirus
Nectanebo's Ankh


Good luck.

The worst offenders seem to be mutant/magic DO's, natural/Magic DO's, tech/science DO's, and Science SO's.

/HELLYEAH!

Or at least add the basic name in parenthesis at the end.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=228044

While it doesn't change the Enhancement names, it does change the icons.. They look more like TOs. Only issue is Res SO/DO/IOs use the Defense background, so my kludge fix was a composite icon, or to just show the Defense icon on both Res/Def enhancements.

On the one hand, I really like the flavor of all the SO and DO names. And it's not like set Inventions are any better. If I get an "Eradication" drop, I know what it enhances but not how to use it without looking it up. Plus, the enhancements are still ordered in the stores alphabetically by effect and color-coded. It's not too hard to figure out.

On the other hand, I do remember being a new player, and taking a while to learn these things. My first character was a Science origin, and figuring out that I apparently needed to expose him to Boron in some cases, and whatnot, was a little tricky.

Ultimately, I don't want to see the names dropped, but I do like the suggestion of adding what the enhancers do to the front of said flavor names.

/signed

I've wanted this for a long time. I usually have to go by the color - because the names are total nonsense most of the time.

I lost thousands of inf back when thousands of in meant something buying the wrong damn enhc.
LOL

I like the theory of what they were going for, but it's one of those interesting vestiges of a PnP game I s'pect.

renqame them and standardize them until we get around to making the origins meaningful. at that point we can examine changing them back to the nigh incomprehensible jumble they are now.