Globally Unique Player and Outfit Names

[dachlatte]

Originally Posted by Spoof

I'm all for it if it means I won't have to suffer a "-W" appended to my characters six years from now

you do know you get a free name change if you have that "-W"?
/rename ftw

[Malorn]

I would wager most people would rather have their identity than a free rename.

We work hard for our reputations, our history, and our accomplishments, both as individuals and outfits. Name changes are a large eraser to those things. It's like having your home foreclosed upon and the bank giving you a coupon for 50% cents off a hamburger.

Now some people don't like their history and want that eraser, but that's a different topic.

[Xyntech]

I would like to see universally unique character names, but I also like the idea of being able to change the display name. As long as players could clearly see what a characters actual unique name was as well, I think it would be fine if there were a bunch of Bob's running around.

They would just have to be smart about which name the game displayed where.

For example:

Seeing the players name floating above them = display name, not actual name

Kill screen info = display name and actual name

VOIP, squad, and muting options = actual name, not display name

[Mackenz]

Originally Posted by Malorn

So you lose your entire identity and possibly an outfit's identity because someone who may not even play anymore made their character a few days/weeks before you on some other random server and SOE decides to merge? That's a terrible solution and it's going to upset a lot of players and restrict SOE in doing the sort of things they need to do because of player backlash.

You have got that anyway, right? Because they are globally unique names, that other person registered their character name and outfit name before you anyway - unless you are suggesting that the names are not to be globally unique, but it is tagged with a (hidden) GUID, which I am not sure why that helps anyway. See below on a Global check suggestion though.

Folks mentioning vet pre-registering is simply a way of get ahead of the pack. I see that as a nice perk, but it is what it is.

Originally Posted by Malorn

If you're worried about different names not being available as mentioned above, the Battle.net system allows multiple display names, but I can see that getting confusing if the PS universe were to be merged into a more eve-like universe.

In fact, look at EVE, there's a huge world with millions of unique character names and yet people still manage to create new identities and unique names, and not a lot of them have silly numbers in them.

I am not worried about names being unavailable, but you are worried about character/outfit name uniqueness. Maybe they could add a Global Name Check button for Character/Outfit creation that would check across servers, that way you could guarantee that no matter what server merges happens, your name will be retained.

I believe EVE goes for a single-universe model - one main and one Chinese. If that is what you are suggesting for PS2 (I wouldn't but hey its not my game to run), then unique names will be enforced on those servers anyway (assuming normal cannot use Chinese ideograms, while the Chinese one does - not sure about that).

[Malorn]

Yes, globally unique means no two players have the same name.

Allowing them the same name on different servers and then making them change it some time later after they have established their identities, reputation, and relationships is far, far worse than having them choose a unique name from the beginning. That is especially true when the merging can happen multiple times as it did in PS1.

Doing it at the start is relatively harmless while doing it later is extremely painful to players. And it WILL happen.