Character Name Conficts

Hello amazing developers,

A very common problem in multiplayer games is the reliance on having universally unique character names. With the high number of characters allowed per account and the fact that this is a F2P game, the number of created characters is going to be supremely high! I've already experienced many cases where the name I desired for my character is already taken. This is terribly annoying and really affects the user's first impression of your game.

So please, rather than insist on globally unique names and force people back into the days of AOL screenname hell, consider some of the possible solutions that have been done in the past by other games.

Champions Online:
Champions solved this problem by prepending your account name to your character name. When your character was referenced in-game by NPCS, only the character name was shown. But in chat or other community features both were shown in the form of SomeAccount.SomeUser.

For example, chat messages would show up as "SomeAccount.SomeUser: ZOMG This game owns!" but in-game references would be something along the lines of "Oh wise and powerful SomeUser, please get us off this effing island".

The downside here of course is that the rest of the community knows your account name and will be able to tell if another character is yours or not based on this. Sometimes this is desired, other times not so much.

Guild Wars 2:
GW2 went one step further to solve the privacy issue that was created from Champions Online. In GW2, a random number was used in place of the account name. This number was generated by the server and was not optional. The number itself is only there to ensure no duplicate names so it can be relatively small (2-3 digits). Again, the big difference between forcing a user to append the number themselves vs the server doing it is that the gameplay references by your character name without the number.

Anyways, back to the grind!

I actually like it the way it is currently. It encourages players to think of more unique names. It also feels good taking a name you really want, especially if it's special to you. The name wouldn't really be special anymore if, for example, I saw a whole bunch of people running around with the same name (regardless of having their account name showing as well, or not).

It's also easier to refer to people by their character name. If it were done your way, we'd all have to change that and start referring to one another by account name or real name to avoid issues.

It's a great feeling to get the name you want, but it's very disheartening to try 3, 4, 10 character names only to be told they are all taken.

The issue is exponentially worse for PoE compared to other games because it's a single server (as in names are unique across the entire community) and it's F2P. F2P games are notorious for having a ton of accounts that are used once and never again. These accounts would end up reserving character names indefinitely.

If that pattern continues and this game turns out to be a big hit, you're going to see people with numbers appended or other tricks to sneak around no matter what. The only difference is that the user's first experience won't be flooded with "Name is already taken".

Plus in practice, it's rare to find someone in chat that has the same base username as you so people tend to refer to each other by their base name anyways.

It's possible there are other ways to solve the problem, but I assure you it will be a problem once the game hits mainstream.

Wholly support this suggestion. The game's been in open beta for like 2 weeks and its already frustrating trying to find a name that isn't taken. You can easily see the effect ingame, as tons of people are already pushed into using identifiers like "IHitzYouWithMahAx" instead of something remotely name-like. Sure some people like to do that anyway, but here it is disproportionately common.

I agree, it's definitely a problem.
I was showing this game to my friend and my parents this weekend, and they all got to a major snag when they could'nt find any name they liked.
We all kind of got stuck at the character creation screen for a long while, and where kind of dissapointed at the name we all had to settle with.

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XIII wrote:

It encourages players to think of more unique names.

It also kinda forces people to create completely insane, unreadable, stupid names because the first 10 or 20 names you try are all taken. Ok, game, you wanna troll me, then I'll call my char TrololololoYyYyYyWatevaXxXxXxXxXxX...

By the sheer amount of unavailable names, you would think this game is played by at least a few million people, which is ofc not the case. In reality there are probably a huge amount of accounts with unused (reserved) names. Maybe some one is, or is hoping to, sell those for real cash..

I think a unique global namespace is a mistake, which I dunno if it can be corrected now.

Oh, yeah, and it forces you to keep a list of chars you dont actually play, just because you want to keep the names reserved for possible future use.

Yep, the hidden account number system of GW2 would fit well here.

For users that really, really want to be known by a single name, two premium options could be available.

The first premium option would simply remove the unique identifier for their name. So for 50 coins, instead of being Salec.571 I could be Salec. But for say 1000 coins I could lock Salec completely to myself.

Obviously these options would only be available as long as no other players created characters of your name or bought the exclusivity. That sort of competition though, in my opinion, makes it even more compelling to buy into it if it's available.

Just playing devil's advocate :)

i agree with OP

this is an issue that is greatly frustrating and i had trouble using any of the char names i've been using for years in many various games. and this happened in closed beta. using a gametag would be great. although someuser.somename chat option would take up too much space

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XIII wrote:

I actually like it the way it is currently. It encourages players to think of more unique names. It also feels good taking a name you really want, especially if it's special to you. The name wouldn't really be special anymore if, for example, I saw a whole bunch of people running around with the same name (regardless of having their account name showing as well, or not).

It's also easier to refer to people by their character name. If it were done your way, we'd all have to change that and start referring to one another by account name or real name to avoid issues.

Agreed