Renaming Your Supergroup
By
Demetrios Vasilikos,
Posted on: 2012-02-19 16:57 in Suggestions and Ideas
I had a friend who got a few people to petition his SG's name for some pretty far fetched reason and got the GMs to generic it so that he could rename it. You could try that 
Otherwise, yeah it would be a nice option to have.
I once contacted in game support asking if a purchase similar to a name change for an SG could be possible. The answer I got roughly was a SG name change was about 5 times more work then a character name change and would therefore need to cost 5 times more. A name change token isnt exactly cheap, and I could see them not wanting to risk negative feedback by offering services that would be limited to players with much higher amounts of disposable income.
Further I have seen in MMOs where they do give options to change guild names, it allows entire guilds to partake in exploits when they crop up, and then just do a group name change to help avoid any social stigma such actions typically gain.
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That doesn't really apply here. In other game's people/groups of people are defined by their guild tag. In this game people are defined by their global name (which can be changed). If you go around doing such things that would give you a negative reputation it's your global name that will be affected.
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Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
Further I have seen in MMOs where they do give options to change guild names, it allows entire guilds to partake in exploits when they crop up, and then just do a group name change to help avoid any social stigma such actions typically gain.
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that is your view. Mine is much different as I know a number of SG on Virtue alone I put any members I see on ignore rather then risk letting them even on other characters ever into my teams. SGs can and do impact how others react to you even in a game with global handles which isnt new. COXs baby brother has global handles and lets you rename an SG at will clearly because they made sure that was part of the base code. I dont see it as a failing in COX to force you to start a new sg if you want a new group affiliation.|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
That doesn't really apply here. In other game's people/groups of people are defined by their guild tag. In this game people are defined by their global name (which can be changed). If you go around doing such things that would give you a negative reputation it's your global name that will be affected.
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When I founded Crey Global Enterprises so many years ago I knew it was a name I would proudly associate most of my lore based characters with. From Count Alphonse Crey to Invisible Falcon many of my characters since that day came into being first and foremost because of my SG which is more connected with my virtual identity in this game then any singular character.
Its not that I dont get the desire to keep all that prestige and lose what are often silly names. However that is also kind of the long time running joke when it comes to those who sale SGs with huge amounts of prestige pre loaded. Most intentionally make them very silly/generic names as a way to almost punish thier future buyers. Infact it typically seems like if you actually are selling a good or even half way decently named SG with a 6 or more figure prestige bank you can make ALOT more then the typically
" Silly Power Bunny Squad" that is up for sale.
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I don't think it would be that hard. If it isn't that hard for them to generic a supergroup name and then let you rename it after, I don't see what the big deal is to be honest. Unless it is hard for them to generic a name.|
Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
I once contacted in game support asking if a purchase similar to a name change for an SG could be possible. The answer I got roughly was a SG name change was about 5 times more work then a character name change and would therefore need to cost 5 times more. A name change token isnt exactly cheap, and I could see them not wanting to risk negative feedback by offering services that would be limited to players with much higher amounts of disposable income.
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Even if they did put in the token at least the option is there for those that want it and they would still get more business. Plus it is on a bigger scale encompassing a group of people, and if the price were high it would restrict it to those that *really* want it from those that just want to play a practical joke. And there's negative feedback about everything so I don't think that would stop them from doing this, especially since it's been requested so many times.
@Kay Parfait, Twenty-One 50s, Arc ID: 71880
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I dont really disagree. However the idea of a 30$ SG name change token still seems more like to breed discontent with players towards the marketing dept then anything else.|
Originally Posted by Kay_Parfait
I don't think it would be that hard. If it isn't that hard for them to generic a supergroup name and then let you rename it after, I don't see what the big deal is to be honest. Unless it is hard for them to generic a name.
Even if they did put in the token at least the option is there for those that want it and they would still get more business. Plus it is on a bigger scale encompassing a group of people, and if the price were high it would restrict it to those that *really* want it from those that just want to play a practical joke. And there's negative feedback about everything so I don't think that would stop them from doing this, especially since it's been requested so many times. |
Do keep in mind though when they do change an SG name due to violation they do only give a window of 3 days to submit your 3 alternate choices.
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As a Software Engineer with nearly 20 years of professional experience that kind of answer (claiming something like this would take an arbitrary "5x" the amount of effort a character name change takes) sounds like classic customer service hand-waving malarkey to me. Yes, I'm sure it's not absolutely trivial to access the system and type in the command-line commands to do it. But the only thing that actually makes it "hard" to do is their fear that they'll suddenly be swamped with hundreds of requests to get SG name changes applied. |
Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
I once contacted in game support asking if a purchase similar to a name change for an SG could be possible. The answer I got roughly was a SG name change was about 5 times more work then a character name change and would therefore need to cost 5 times more. A name change token isnt exactly cheap, and I could see them not wanting to risk negative feedback by offering services that would be limited to players with much higher amounts of disposable income.
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As long as something like this requires any kind of manual effort on the part of the GMs they will always come up with various excuses in order to disuade people from requesting it.
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Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
Further I have seen in MMOs where they do give options to change guild names, it allows entire guilds to partake in exploits when they crop up, and then just do a group name change to help avoid any social stigma such actions typically gain.
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A solution like this is relatively straightforward but it would take some effort for the Devs to establish this kind of feature. I suspect they've just decided that it would take more effort than it's worth - despite being a very long time player desire.
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As I implied the only reason they would charge $30 for this service is to dissuade people from doing it whimsically and/or every 5 minutes. Despite what they've told you we are only talking about maybe 5 minutes worth of GM effort to accomplish. It's not "hard" they just don't want everyone asking for it all the time. |
Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
I dont really disagree. However the idea of a 30$ SG name change token still seems more like to breed discontent with players towards the marketing dept then anything else.
Do keep in mind though when they do change an SG name due to violation they do only give a window of 3 days to submit your 3 alternate choices. |
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While a cool down period might discourage a group of players from abusing SG name changing, I don't think it would bother the SG thiefs. You know the ones that somehow get promoted to Super Leader and then take the SG for themselves.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
Yes there's always the chance that a SG name change token feature could be exploited by unscrupulous people in order to try to hide their activities. This is why most reasonable SG name change suggestions usually include some kind of cool-down period so that it can't be so easily abused. Making it so that a SG can only change their name once per month would probably be sufficient. Most people who "legitimately" want a name change will usually only want to do it once so the cool-down period will never affect them, whereas those who want to be naughty will be adequately hampered by a month long wait.
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Considering how many players have multiple accounts it wouldn't be hard for someone who gets the SL rank to invite an alt on a second account into an SG, promote it up to SL, kick everyone from the SG including his original character in order to maintain the illusion of innocence, and change the SG name so no one would ever recognise it.
What about the cooldown period? Well if it takes "x" number of days to go into effect the thief simply does not log onto the secondary account until after cooldown expires and the name change goes into effect.
CS has already made it crystal clear that they will not get involved with these "thefts" because as far as their concerned the Super Leader is the defacto owner of an SG and everything in it.
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This wouldn't even have to be something bought from the store unless they put it in as a second option. It would be a nice thing to have once in a blue moon like a global name change. Or something bought with a high amount of prestige. Any kind of option like that would be nice where it wouldn't be abused.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
As I implied the only reason they would charge $30 for this service is to dissuade people from doing it whimsically and/or every 5 minutes. Despite what they've told you we are only talking about maybe 5 minutes worth of GM effort to accomplish. It's not "hard" they just don't want everyone asking for it all the time.
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@Kay Parfait, Twenty-One 50s, Arc ID: 71880
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Yes I would agree that SG name changes might allow a "SG thief" to do one more thing to further complicate his/her nefarious actions.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
While a cool down period might discourage a group of players from abusing SG name changing, I don't think it would bother the SG thiefs. You know the ones that somehow get promoted to Super Leader and then take the SG for themselves.
Considering how many players have multiple accounts it wouldn't be hard for someone who gets the SL rank to invite an alt on a second account into an SG, promote it up to SL, kick everyone from the SG including his original character in order to maintain the illusion of innocence, and change the SG name so no one would ever recognise it. What about the cooldown period? Well if it takes "x" number of days to go into effect the thief simply does not log onto the secondary account until after cooldown expires and the name change goes into effect. CS has already made it crystal clear that they will not get involved with these "thefts" because as far as their concerned the Super Leader is the defacto owner of an SG and everything in it. |
But as you already pointed out the Super Leader rank was established in order to let CS distance themselves from any player shenanigans like this. In fact it almost seemed like the Super Leader rank was actually going to pave the way for SG renames to be possible than the multi-leader scenario we used to have. Ultimately I don't think SG name changes would make SG thievery any more or less problematic than it already is.
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While I agree with you, I mainly mentioned it in an attempt to cover all the pros and cons for consideration. Personally I have 3 SG's I've inherited that I'd love to change the names of whose original founders have been gone at least 3 years.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
Yes I would agree that SG name changes might allow a "SG thief" to do one more thing to further complicate his/her nefarious actions.
But as you already pointed out the Super Leader rank was established in order to let CS distance themselves from any player shenanigans like this. In fact it almost seemed like the Super Leader rank was actually going to pave the way for SG renames to be possible than the multi-leader scenario we used to have. Ultimately I don't think SG name changes would make SG thievery any more or less problematic than it already is. |
Do it. I know this has been suggested many times in years past and it needs to get done. There are many players out there who have maybe inherited a supergroup from somebody who quit playing, and without losing all of that hard earned base design work and prestige they would like to simply rename the supergroup to something of their own taste and liking. Me, personally, I just got tired of the name of my supergroup and would now like to change it, as have many others I'm sure. In order to prevent renaming supergroups multiple times, naturally there should be a cool down for when it could be renamed again, similar to global name changes would be nice. I know some people would even pay for a supergroup rename token of some kind from the store. Currently if the supergroup name violates copyright or the TOS it can be renamed, so now I regret not naming my supergroup something like that in order to get it changed now.
@Kay Parfait, Twenty-One 50s, Arc ID: 71880