Variable Names

We know that players are generally opposed to both the idea of a server merge and non-unique names. From various comments made, we also know that the Paragon/NCsoft thinks that these are fairly feasible changes to make compared to some requests that have been made.

This suggests that the data structure used to keep track of characters is a fairly sane one. Players are likely identified on the game servers by their Global Account-name and a unique ID. The character's name is just a bit of data that's displayed in the client rather than a long number or some complex string of random-looking characters.

To me, this suggests another possibility... Variable character names.

For example, let's consider a certain character from a copyrighted comic as if he were a CoH character:

Clark Kent is the first name given to him. His costume is casual clothes that are maybe a bit hick-ish since his bio lists him as growing up on the Kent Family farm.

Sometimes he changes into a costume that his adoptive parents found inside his space ship. When he uses the costume change screen, he changes his name to 'Superboy'.

As he matures and gains a few levels and discovers a bit more about his past, he alters his costume slightly and attaches a new name to it: 'Kal-el'.

Once he's really hit his peak, and the whole world knows about him, he again alters his costume slightly once again and adopts a name given to him by the general public: 'Superman'.


Now of course we couldn't use those names without getting into trouble with the GMs and making certain lawyers foam at the mouth, but it illustrates a mechanic I think is possible with fairly little work from the developers.

Imagine if your character's displayed name was tied to your costume, and could change every time you changed your costume. If you purchased all the costume slots, you could have up to 10 names if you so chose and could re-designate those names at a tailor or trainer.

How would you feel about this, especially if it meant that your character's name might not be unique any more?

Con: It would more or less require that unique names go away since the number of names available would have to expand by 10-fold. However, this would please the 'All the good names are taken' crowd.

Con: It could also cause some confusion in chat, especially when a character was changing his costume/name often enough. One might consider mitigating this issue somewhat by restricting a feature like this to VIP or Premium players. However, this seems like a small issue to me since the vast majority of the players I know prefer to use global channels where the name displayed is their global.

Pro: It fits in well with comic tradition, which sees many characters changing their name from time to time. Imagine all the different 'Robins' who have both unique 'real names' and then eventually seem to gain their own superhero name. My favorite example is Kitty Pryde from Marvel lore, who's also been known as 'Sprite', 'Ariel', and 'Shadowcat'.

Pro: It allows more customization for characters and allow for greater roleplaying potential. Imagine a 'Jekyl and Hyde' type character whose name, appearance, and behavior shifted dramatically from time to time.

Pro: Most importantly to me, it would allow characters to have an in-game mechanism other than their bio to establish 'Secret Identities'... another long-standing trope in almost all genres of fiction, not just Superhero comics.


Thoughts or concerns? Is this something you'd like to see the devs spend time on, or would it be something you'd prefer they avoid altogether?

I... uh, got an entirely different picture in my head from "variable names."

Do we really know that players are generally opposed to non-unique character names? I did not get that memo.

I could go for this. Sometimes I have two concepts that share the same exact power sets. So one of them ends up not getting made.

I don't really like the idea of multiple names for a single character. You can call that personal preference though. For me the character is the name and the name is the character. I don't RP whatsoever so there would be no reason for a change in names. At best it would mean getting to use more names that I want to use that I wouldn't otherwise use, because I play so few toons.

As for nonunique names, I'm not sure. It would be nice to be able to use some names that are being tied up by people who don't play anymore or are being sat on by level 1 toons, but other than that, there are far more cons than the pros, including dissatisfied people with people using their unique names, potential abuse of the system (to grief or otherwise, even with the globalname check), among other things.

Yeah I'd like to use some names that I would otherwise not be able to use, but I also like that the names my characters have are my own, and I prefer that over being able to use a couple other names that I wouldn't have previously, and looking outside of how it would just affect me, I just see it making alot of upset customers.

I think this is an excellent idea and I'd love to see it go into the game but I would favor it being limited to VIP users (or if also premium, then one of the highest tiers.)
It is true though that there is a vocal part of the forum base that is extremely possessive regarding names they've taken. I don't happen to believe them to be the majority of the player base, but they'd speak up for certain.
There's another possible problem in that character rename tokens are a money item for the company at this point. A service upgrade like this may make those less important. On the other hand, if you still need to use one to change the name stuck to a costume slot, the rename tokens could become more desirable rather than less.

I love the idea. And... I think it is way past time we take the only successful thing to come out of CO and STO and tie names to globals. With the option to hide the @globalname portion it should not be jarring at all. I think the hysteria about "OMG somebody will steal my name" is just that... hysteria.

No. A character's name should be unique. You can copy everything else about a character, costume, powers, build, and so on, but you cannot have the same name. That's how it's always been in CoH, and how it should stay.

However, I would not be opposed to allowing aliases. That awful Name@Global system could be done with a character name and an alias instead. Basically working as a custom title. "Amazingman as Adam Maze". But it'd be purely cosmetic and to send tells and so on, you'd still need to send to Amazingman.

One of the things I like about this game is that my character names are unique. That shouldn't change. If you figure out a way of tying character names to costumes, fine. If you have to make character names non-unique to do it, no thanks. Try being original for a change. It's not that hard.

This sounds silly to me....

Gonna /unsign ...not something I need and/or want.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!