Character Names: The Good ones are taken

You plan a new character, get really into theorycrafting the shit out of everything, come up with the perfect name and boom - "A character with this name already exists"

That happens to me all the time and most of the time a /whois AWESOMECHARACTERNAME ends up revealing that some random level 1 Witch who probably has not been used in moths has the name of your dream.
I can't be the only who is annoyed when that happens. I think about the character, look for awesome telling names or some wordplay or other fun stuff and the dream of the perfect character with the perfect name gets destroyed over and over again...

One solution to this problem would be a way to give level 1 characters that have not been used in like the past 3 months random names when someone else tries to create a character with the name (similar to the method Diablo 2 is currently using but w/o deleting the old character)


I'm sure my suggestion is far from optimal but something like that would be what I'd currently love to see most ;-)



PS: Make us able to designate leaders for the party we're leaving as leader; Fix desync; Make righteous fire a proper pentagram and not a star of david; Stop loading streams like 30 sec after we open race threads, give us a category or note function for the friends list and implement the new curse "Cullnerability" (culling strike + vulnerability = cullnerability); Fix desync


PPS: Calling characters Awesome__Character_____Name is lame!

there was a game I cant remember the name now . you can name your character whatever you what doesnt matter its taken or not. I am not sure how they did it but I think they put 1 more field in character database and doesnt make chr name unique or key. (not sure of that but I think something like that.)

Aww, I would like MeleeGibson to be immortalized even after I become active by not being available to anyone else :-P It does get a few chuckles in groups :)

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Samantha wrote:

We're looking into recycling character names from unused accounts, so that they're available to other players. The details for this are still being discussed, but I can confirm it will be happening in the future.

wasnt keeping all of your character names one of the benefits of joining the closed beta?

Might be just me but I really have no idea what's wrong with using account-wide nick for in-game interactions. That way you have a better chance of remembering who in the seven hells you're talking to AND we could use whatever names we want for our characters.

It's much better then recycling names from unused accounts, that's an asshole move no matter what I think about those that make mule accounts and fill them with names they *might* want to use someday.

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raics wrote:

Might be just me but I really have no idea what's wrong with using account-wide nick for in-game interactions. That way you have a better chance of remembering who in the seven hells you're talking to AND we could use whatever names we want for our characters.

don't know which dev wrote it (not long ago) but they want you to identify yourself with your char ingame and be recognized as such.
i do use account names by default with people i interact ingame. i temporary add them as friends. downside is the missing "note-funktion per friend" in the social tab so i have to maintain a separate list on my second monitor about my activities.

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Samantha wrote:

We're looking into recycling character names from unused accounts

good news that ggg wants to recycle unused names.

though there always was the intention to have an easy way back for everybody by keeping existing accounts and player names but it doesn't really make sense for people not logging in for over a year or not having their email account anymore.

"forum only"-readers who don't login probably get an email before the wipe, do they?

the best time to clean up would have been before release so new players coming from steam aren't getting frustrated with not getting a proper char name but less than a month warning time before char deletion is too short imho.

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geradon wrote:

don't know which dev wrote it (not long ago) but they want you to identify yourself with your char ingame and be recognized as such.

That's at best a poor excuse, how am I supposed to identify with a character I have to name Braindead983 because everything else is taken? Maybe I could if I figure out if '983' is his family name, maiden name or just a playful nick from his inmates or army comrades.

The only thing good that unique naming ever brought was not having 20 guys around you named 'Drizzt' at any given time.

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geradon wrote:

good news that ggg wants to recycle unused names.

No, this is bad news, because it means, that they didn't acknowledged, that this is just bad design, from database build to store characters of thousands players perspective.

There are games I don't play for long time, sometimes year of longer, but would like to return someday and see my characters intact. Recycling names would prohibit it.

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tmaciak wrote:

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geradon wrote:

good news that ggg wants to recycle unused names.

No, this is bad news, because it means, that they didn't acknowledged, that this is just bad design, from database build to store characters of thousands players perspective.

There are games I don't play for long time, sometimes year of longer, but would like to return someday and see my characters intact. Recycling names would prohibit it.

If I've ever read a post that sounded like someone just finished running up a flight of stairs this is it. However, I agree with part of the point made. I may no life relatively hardcore right now but there will eventually come a time where I wont touch PoE for a while. Not because I stopped loving it. It's just sometimes we have to see other people to keep the relationship fresh. Recycling names is a terrible bad idea.

I also dislike the whole "account name" being used for everything. Sure, somethings would be made easier but in general just because I talked to you on one of my characters doesn't mean I want you to be able to see when I'm online on all of my characters. This is already how it currently works and it's annoying as hell. Even placing someone on ignore doesn't remove you from their friends list. They can still see your status messages and breath heavily over them and thats just creepy.