Character Name Conficts
" Let me try explaining with an example. Bob has the account "BobRules". Bob logs into PoE and wants to name his character "Superman", so he types that in. The name is not taken yet, so he gets his desired name. At the character select screen, and when looking at his own character, Bob sees the name "Superman", but in global chat, it appears as "BobRules.Superman" or "123.Superman". Jim has the account "JimIsCool". Jim logs into PoE and also wants to name his character "Superman". He types that in, and instead of being told "That name is already taken" (because Bob has a character named "Superman" already), Jim's character is successfully named "Superman." When Jim looks at his character select screen or character sheet, he sees "Superman", but in global chat he appears as "JimIsCool.Superman" or "456.Superman". Thus, Jim has been able to name his character what he wanted under this system, whereas currently he would not have been able to choose the name "Superman". Jim's list of available character names has increased. The "JimIsCool" or "456" is NOT part of the character name. It is an extra identifier in addition to the character name. Both characters are named "Superman". |
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" But then nobody would be able to use the name Superman, and have only Superman appear in chat, and be uniquely identifiable by the name Superman alone. If someone typed @Superman to whisper them, the game wouldn't know who to talk to, they'd have to lookup the account/etc numbers to whisper them which would be very inconvenient. IGN: Jerk, Princess
http://orbswap.info - the easy way to trade currency |
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" I think you're right that that is a concern. I don't know enough about Champions Online or GW2 to say how they addressed that problem. I do know that in City of Heroes, players had both a character name and a "global name" that was hidden. If you told someone your global name, they could whisper you no matter what character you were playing. EDIT: City of Heroes global names had to be unique, of course, as well as your character name had to be unique to your current server. Last edited by Blue_Phoenix#6242 on Mar 25, 2013, 12:55:23 AM
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The suggestion feels clunky to me for some reason =/ Especially when I tried to work out what had Mark so stumped
So you get to use your super-unique name but the system adds either some random numbers to it or puts your account name after it. Which you can already do at this point. Special characters also being less intrusive. The only upshot being that the system hides the numbers/extras from you so you can feel even more unique. Except you start getting headaches whenever you try to interact with anyone on a singular basis. The system might try to fill in the gaps somewhat (rightclicking names in chat) but trying to enter a name manually becomes impossible. The interaction from forum-to-game suffers specifically from this. On top of that, you start to identify your own character with its non-unique identifier, usually skipping over any extra numbers or whatnot. So when you tell people to whisper/trade you theres a possibility you skip right over the unique identifiers. When multiple gandalfs are in the room, chats can fuck up pretty quickly. Unless you friend someone, you can't instigate a conversation/interaction unless they publicly said something in Global in the last 10-20 minutes. Very clunky. The main advantage of this system seems to be how NPCs interact with you. A moot point in PoE as none of the NPCs care who you are :( oh, and laziness in thinking up a unique name or manually adding unique identifiers to an existing name Edit: a whole page popped up while I was typing this :0 semi-ninja'd? Last edited by AiSard#6781 on Mar 25, 2013, 1:07:06 AM
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"It is part of the character name, for all practical purposes. The character name, pretty much by definition, is what identifies the character, and that prefixed part is required to do that. It's an additional part of the character name which happens not to be displayed under certain circumstances. Just as in informal settings you probably call your friends only by their first names, rather than using their full names - that doesn't mean their middle/last names aren't part of their name, only that their sometimes omitted. And this suggestions is effectively forcing all characters to have specific last-name-equivalents based on account, removing the ability for anyone to appear as just 'superman' in chat. And given that, it seems even more arbitrarily restrictive to limit that 'sometimes-hidden' part of the name to only being numbers, or the account name. Surely it would be much better to say something like: "character names may optionally include one (and only one) colon (:). If present, the part of the name preceding and including the colon is omitted on the character select screen and character screen" Not that I have any idea how viable that is to implement, but if you're actually pushing for these suggestions, wouldn't it at least be better to let people chose the 'family name' of the character if they want one rather than forcing everyone to use a specific one based on account? I'm still not personally convinced I see this as particularly useful, as if it's really only applying to things like the character screen and character select on login, which seems to be the implication, then isn't it simple enough to mentally remove the additional part if you put on on your name under the current system? I recgonise my posts as being from me due to the "Mark" part*, the _GGG is fairly irrelevant. *Okay, the gold text helps a lot with that as well :P EDIT: As a random data point, not really intended to prove anything, I've never had a problem with any of my names that weren't really obviously going to already be taken (such as "Mark"). I just checked, and Jezalathario, the name of my Heroquest wizard, was available. It's not anymore, but only because I took it. Last edited by Mark_GGG#0000 on Mar 25, 2013, 1:35:19 AM
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If you're going to do something to "fix" (because there isn't really a problem, just loads of whining) the name system, what you could simply do is name-lock the low level inactive characters (such as those below level 10 that have only starter items and haven't been used in months), so when they come back they have to choose a different name. This would surely free up names all the time without doing any kind of damage to the owners of the characters with those names.
The pen is mightier than the sword, yet it is more permanent than a pencil.
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" This is more or less gambling. If you try common names you either get a reaction: "Name not taken?!" Or "damnit" In many races I tried to create character names that describe the job of the character like "RandomGemMuler" and the name actually was taken because somebody else thinks the same way. Of course this character gets deleted after the race/muling. But sometimes it's so irritating that you enter gibberish just to be able to create a character or reserve names beforehand. |
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Naming not a problem? We playing the same game?
This is the first game that I get so many "name is already taken" replies :( | |
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If I want to call my character George, why can't I?
Why should I be penalised by not having the name I want to see on my character just because someone else on the other side of the world got there first? I'm the one who sees my name most. I really dislike having unique names and for me, having to think of (and live with) some garbled, unpronounceable fantasy nonsense for a name is a negative experience. |
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" Do you make this same complaint on every game and website? How is this even an issue? Are people just looking for things to complain about at this point? I thought it was fairly accepted that if you aren't early to the party you don't get common names. It's the reason there isn't 500,000 "God"s on twitter. Finished 17th in Rampage - Peaked at 11th
Finished 18th in Torment/Bloodline 1mo Race - peaked at 9th Null's Inclination Build 2.1.0 - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1559063 Summon Skeleton 1.3 - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1219856 |
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