And I have heard nothing yet to indicate that what His Wooliness said [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/19298#comment-19298]way back when[/url] is not still the case:

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Standard @global setup, which is to say the global must be unique, and applies to the account, while the character name only has to be unique within that account.

You can look yourself up on your account page, or put your name or subject into the search box. That's how I found your old thread, typed 'name' into Search and got a list of threads.

I believe the plan is for a single server, rather than multiple servers.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Will we be able to have spaces or other non-alphabet characters in out names?

For example:
John Doe@Beeker

(Apologies if this is covered elsewhere.)

Hyphens?

But, then anybody who did that could be Banned and their account could be confiscated, and they'd be out the purchase-price.

Or we could just do it your way and avoid that issue... Of course, I don't think that the game would parse names that way, so it might be moot.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Speaking of acceptable characters lets hope we can chose a font that avoids the "1lI" problem.

I would definitely prefer some form of font that makes virtually all letters/numbers distinguishable from another. I've literally had someone impersonate me in CoH/V as Cobait Azurean (with a capital 'i' to look like a lower-case L) to start trouble.

Grimfox wrote:

I think you can rest easy CA. Anyone trying to impersonate someone else would have to use the same global handle (or modded to look the same) which seems like a lot of effort to grief someone. But it is the internet and people have a lot of free time and money...so maybe. That said if they do award kickstarter badges it should be pretty apparent who's who, as any griefing account would have to come from the limited number of backers or else wouldn't have your kickstarter badge.

Yeah, those are additional factors that I had considered and are reaffirmed by, but I've also learned (as you also alluded to) to never underestimate someone's willingness to be vengeful and petty.

Mind-Freeze wrote:

I liked that you can have your own name and no one else can it made you use your imagination little more but if you are in a team with 3 people called Fire Storm i personally don't like cause in the comics you don't have 5 spider man or bat man it makes it unique

It actually happens more than one would think!

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Spider-Verse
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman:_Battle_for_the_Cowl
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Avengers

Brand X wrote:

Mind-Freeze wrote:

I liked that you can have your own name and no one else can it made you use your imagination little more but if you are in a team with 3 people called Fire Storm i personally don't like cause in the comics you don't have 5 spider man or bat man it makes it unique

It didn't make people use their imagination. It made people use some crappy names. :p However, don't worry, as CO has shown, even when you can name your character anything, that won't change. :p

Frankly I'd rather see 3 characters named "Wolverine" on one team than to see a "W0ivr3in3", a "!!!$WOOOOOLVERINE$!!!" and a "W-o-l-v-e-r-I-n-e" *shrugs*

Also there's very likely going to be a naming filter anyway so NO ONE in CoT will be able to have any obvious IP violations like Batman, Superman, Fire Storm or Spider-man. Because of this people are already going to have to be somewhat "creative" anyway so ironically the chances of many people running around with 100% identical names is actually going to be pretty low.

notears wrote:

Honestly, it was annoying if anything.... you think of a cool name, and someone you'll likely never meet took it first

There was that problem as well. I'm sure there were plenty of people who started playing CoH back in April 2004, played for a few months, then quit leaving all their characters (and the names) locked in limbo forever. Why should good names be trapped like that?

I honestly doubt there's ever going to be a huge number of 100% identically named characters running around in CoT. First off like I said most of the totally obvious names are likely going to be off-limits from the beginning because comic book titles for the last 80+ years have already "locked" practically thousands of names in their IPs. Then you have to be lucky enough to be playing right at the same time and place to even notice a duplicate standing right next to you. Chances are even if there are a dozen "Captain Wonderfuls" all online at the same time they will all be spread around in different groups/missions all over the game and will likely never bump into each other.

Frankly the argument that global naming systems will lead to "everyone being named the same" and have that actually affect you while you play has always rested on very thin ice.

Wolfgang8565 wrote:

I wonder how it's gonna work if I wanted to quickly lock in a name for my characters. Like in COH, do I have to design the character's look, pick a name and finally launch the game for me to lock in the name I chose?
It would be nice if you could log into the game as soon as it is released and lock in names for your characters before having to design their looks and or launch the game.

This game is going to have a global naming system. That means character names are going to a combination of your global name (let's assume you'll keep Wolfgang8565 as your global name) and a "local" name. Because only the global part of your name will need to be unique to you on the mega-server you can use any "local" names you want. This means you could have a character with a full name of "Captain Cool @ Wolfgang8565" and I could have a character named "Captain Cool @ Lothic". Since our global names are unique our local names can be identical.

Now when you look at your character's name in-game most of the time it'll just look like "Captain Cool". The full global part of a character's name will likely only matter in chat or team invite situations.

Does that all make sense to you? There's not going to be any need to rush to grab names because you'll be able to name your characters anything you want any time you want (assuming your name passes the standard name filters I mentioned before).

Wolfgang8565 wrote:

And I think I read somewhere global names are determined by the forum name? I don't think I want my username here as my global.

I'm sure there will be ways to switch all that once the game gets closer to launch. I know the $25 Kickstarter Perk will allow those people to pre-reserve their in-game global name before launch. Not sure if the forum global is going to have to match your in-game global but it might.

Oh, and global names are set when you create a game account. There's a KS tier that lets you get a head start on this; not sure exactly how we'll arbitrate conflicts, but it'll probably be "first come first served" unless there's a better way.

The way this will probably work (standard disclaimers apply) is that, sometime after the dust has settled after Second Chance is over, game tokens will be awarded to your web accounts per the KS tier you got. You won't be able to burn them to create game accounts, but you will be able to convert to and from registration codes. This gives you time to get the "get a copy for a friend" stuff straightened out.

Then when the global name head start opens up, those with that perk will be able to create game accounts. Finally, sometime after that, we open the game account creation doors to everyone. Note that this won't necessarily be game launch day; it could be Avatar Builder launch day.

All these specifics are up in the air and can change, but you knew that, right?

Brand X wrote:

I only ran into someone who used the same name as me, on CO, once. I did run into some others with the same name, but those tended to be known comic super heroes.

Exactly. I realize people -think- that since a global naming system will allow people to run around with the same names that you're going to run into those identically named people all the time but I think in practice it's actually going to be very rare to see that happen, if ever.

Lothic wrote:

I'm not super familiar with what information Kickstarter provides/maintains but does it not give you a clear timestamp of when person X donated Y amount of money? Seems like that would be important info to have for exactly situations like this. It would seem that if there are any KS tier global name conflicts that you'd just give priority to the person who donated to the Kickstarter (or Second Chance) first.

Sadly, no. Which makes some sense, as nobody’s card gets charged until the end. Second Chance itself is definitely first come first served.

Lothic wrote:

Ultimately I'd be surprised if you get more than a few name conflicts with this phase and it's quite possible you won't get any. *shrugs*

I hope so, too, but there’s always at least a few people who want to use Superman or Wolverine or whatever. That’s another thing we have to deal with.

Grimfox wrote:

I think Lin meant first come first serve in terms of actually applying for the name IE backer a) chooses name @bob during the head start and backer b) chooses @bob during standard registration and gets a "this name is already in use error." Change your time increment down to whatever the smallest time the server can handle, and whoever has the earliest time gets the name.

Right which is why I asked if there was a definitive way to tell which KS supporter might have bought the $25 "Bright Lights Big City" perk first. If there were reliable timestamps from that then any conflicts could be resolved by knowing who spent money on the KS first.

Remember getting that perk implied a "guarantee" of sorts that you'd have "first dibs" at getting the name you wanted "before general release". Obviously that means a KS person should be able to get a name (during headstart) before someone trying to get a name during standard release.

But let's say a given KS person X grabbed @Bob during headstart and then 5 minutes later (also during headstart) KS person Y tried to get @Bob does that mean that KS person Y should automatically NOT get it? They both paid for "first dibs" during headstart - if you suggest KS person X should automatically get it just because he/she choose it first during headstart then effectively you haven't done anything to prevent a "race to grab the name you want" condition again.

My argument is if there's a name conflict like this during headstart the "tie-breaker" should not be when the two players tried to register the name during headstart, the tie-breaker time should be the person who paid for their KS first. In the ideal situation no KS Backer who opted for the $25 perk should have to suffer from the need to "race" to get their name - their priority ought be fixed in stone based on the time they paid for their KS.

Grimfox wrote:

I can reasonably guess that certain forumites would choose a certain name. I wonder about arbitration for users who should happen to choose a name for a sub account that would be the first pick for someone on the forum. If Lin and Lothic were Feuding and Lin were to select @Lothic for a global name, it's a relatively clear case of trolling, does MWM slap Lin on the wrist and take the name away and give it to Lothic? (the names in this example are not made up but the characters behind them clearly are)

Again like I said before I'm suspecting (or at least hoping) the actual number of name conflicts during the "headstart" period will be small or non-existent. For any that do pop up I would assume they could be handled fairly on a case-by-case basis.

Deathwatch101 wrote:

Lothic, everyone would have paid for their kickstarter at the same time. This is because kickstarter pays out at its end not when you "back".

So what? I understand how KS works but what's important here should have been when you PLEDGED your money. That would have been the only critical timestamp that would have mattered to eliminate ANY possible disputes for conflicts like this. Without this information we are now faced with the possibility that KS backers will still have to "race" to be first in registering their names during headstart.

I get that it may be impossible now to know exactly when people pledged their money during the KS. I only hope that if any name conflicts do arise that MWM be able to resolve them well enough without people getting overly upset.

Grimfox wrote:

I think Lin meant first come first serve in terms of actually applying for the name IE backer a) chooses name @bob during the head start and backer b) chooses @bob during standard registration and gets a "this name is already in use error." Change your time increment down to whatever the smallest time the server can handle, and whoever has the earliest time gets the name.

Basically that, except without time quanta (I'd use a mutex-protected queue or something instead), and it's "first come first serve" [i]within[/i], say, the head start period as well.

So that'll lead to people totally gate crashing the server and a lot of hurt feelings because dead connections or something. That's the part I'm not happy with.

I'm tempted to come up with some kind of RNGesus lottery that resolves conflicts at set points in time, say 4 AM Pacific. Those who win get their names locked in. Those who lose get to come up with something else. I'm not interested in a "beg the devs" mechanism; I might just ban the name and everyone has to choose something else. You shouldn't be subject to dev whims. If I were lawful neutral, I'd have everyone submit secret bids and the highest bidder gets the name and pays the second highest bidder's bid amount.

Grimfox wrote:

I can reasonably guess that certain forumites would choose a certain name. I wonder about arbitration for users who should happen to choose a name for a sub account that would be the first pick for someone on the forum. If Lin and Lothic were Feuding and Lin were to select @Lothic for a global name, it's a relatively clear case of trolling, does MWM slap Lin on the wrist and take the name away and give it to Lothic? (the names in this example are not made up but the characters behind them clearly are)

I doubt many cases would be that cut and dried. Which is why I don't want to have to judge, but instead have some other kind of mechanism.

I just want to keep my Forum name as my @Global account name. It's been my Forum name since CoH and I'm fond of it. My CoH @Global name came from the first character I created and he was just an experiment, soon deleted. Not a bad name, but not MY name.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

And the timestamps were not shared with us (probably weren't even stored by Kickstarter), so there's no use crying over spilled milk. Not even getting into the "if someone changed their pledge late, do they lose their place in line" mess that would have come with it. Nope. On to the next plan.

Again had Kickstarter provided you a list of pledges there would have been NO CONFLICTS at all, even if somebody pledged multiple times. The list would have shown multiple entries and could have easily highlighted exactly what they were pledging for when. The timestamps for when EVERYONE pledged that $25 threshold would have been frozen in stone years ago.

Look I get this is proverbial water under the bridge. It simply frustrates me that the perfect set of data that would have saved you, the Devs, any possible heartache or angst over any potential naming conflicts simply doesn't exist. I'm literally considering YOUR best interests in this situation.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

And on the other hand, several Moguls all asked for Burj Khalifas. aaaarrrghhh

This is pretty much the first time I've heard anything even remotely close to a Dev confirmation of this. Frankly as I mentioned before the news of this doesn't surprise me all that much.

What does surprise me a little is if this was in fact the case was there any attempt to contact those specific players directly to let them know that, "Hey BTW there are X number of other people all wanting Burjs. Do you want something different?" If the Devs don't have a problem with having say 5 Burjs in the game then I guess I don't either. I have to assume they are all going to end up looking slightly unique regardless - I originally asked for a modified version so that mine wouldn't look 100% identical to the real life one anyway. *shrugs*

Airhead wrote:

It's a flock of Burj!
Sorry it seemed like it needed to be said but then it didn't

It's a cool building - I first saw it IRL when it was about 90% complete. I could easily understand why the MWM folks got several Mogul requests related to it.

Assuming (based on what's been said) there's going to be maybe 4 or 5 of them in the game I have to guess at the very least they aren't going to lined up in a row somewhere. I'd be interested in knowing if other people asked for "modifications" to the basic building like I did or if we're literally going to get a few that are going to be 100% identical. Either way I might have entertained the idea of changing my Mogul idea had I ever been contacted by the Devs about it. Not sure how much it matters at this point or not.

Oh what a lovely Bundle of Burj it... is...

Pyromantic wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Look I get this is proverbial water under the bridge. It simply frustrates me that the perfect set of data that would have saved you, the Devs, any possible heartache or angst over any potential naming conflicts simply doesn't exist. I'm literally considering YOUR best interests in this situation.
I'd be absolutely shocked if this amounts to a serious issue. Maybe, maybe they'll get a couple of conflicts, but if so those can probably be sorted out on a case by case basis.

As I mentioned I'm almost wondering if there will even be -one- name conflict. With that MWM would be lucky enough to avoid any fallout over this completely. But if it does happen under the existing less-than-certain circumstances any one of these cases could become an angst-filled cauldron of messiness.

Dark Ether wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
If I were lawful neutral...
But CN is much more fun, is it not? ;)

It might be "more fun" but I think Lin was suggesting abusing the privilege of being a Dev by making some extra money on the side from this...

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

If I were lawful neutral, I'd have everyone submit secret bids and the highest bidder gets the name and [b]pays[/b] the second highest bidder's bid amount.

There's this talk about players "bidding" for names but it's not exactly clear who's keeping the money from that. Sounds pretty "Lawful Neutral Mercenary" to me. ;)

Deathwatch101 wrote:

Kickstarter cannot provide a list like that just because of the nature of kickstarter, ive never heard of such a thing even existing. If it did, it would more than likely require kickstarter to have to confirm your "pledge" before the end of it after all you could have upgraded your pledge (could that possibly change your timestamp ?) literally the best way to do it is First Come, First Serve or go through doing custom ones prior to its launch using the forum names as global names for those members here that im sure are worried about someone taking their name.

Kickstarter could easily log all of this information at the relevant time. Just because it doesn't (or at least just because it doesn't [b]choose[/b] to provide that data to third parties) does not mean that it could not or should not.

All Kickstarter would have to do is log that "person X pledged Y money at Z time". We know it must maintain at least the X and Y bits because it uses that to ultimately charge everyone at the end of a Kickstarter run. Being able to record the Z data would be absolutely trivial for them to do (and that's assuming they don't do that anyway for their own internal uses).

If someone pledged multiple times there would simply be multiple entries in such a log record again recording that "person X pledged Y money at Z time". For anyone with multiple pledges it would be a simple matter to discover the earliest point that person pledged the necessary $25 in question. There really cannot be any better version of the "First Come, First Serve" principle than knowing exactly when everyone pledged. *shrugs*

Yet then you could also argue that any variation on the time that someones bank account paid out could be something that you could argue as another valid point though.

When I was referring to the time stamp I was not referencing the KS pledge time, as that data is obviously not available, but to the time period when name selection is available. IE if the "name request server" opens at 4am and backer1 requests @bob at 4:01.003 and backer2 requests @bob at 4:01.004 then backer2 gets the error message. As has been pointed out this is highly unlikely to be an issue in the KS headstart and unlikely to happen during the free-for-all post launch. And it sounds like Lin has some plans to deal with that as well.

Another question, will it be possible to change the @handle after account creation? So if during creation I fat finger @bob as @bpb can I request a change later?

Grimfox wrote:

When I was referring to the time stamp I was not referencing the KS pledge time, as that data is obviously not available, but to the time period when name selection is available. IE if the "name request server" opens at 4am and backer1 requests @bob at 4:01.003 and backer2 requests @bob at 4:01.004 then backer2 gets the error message. As has been pointed out this is highly unlikely to be an issue in the KS headstart and unlikely to happen during the free-for-all post launch. And it sounds like Lin has some plans to deal with that as well.

Yes I know what you meant here and I pointed out (several times) as things now stand there's the potential (no matter how small) for a "race condition" to exist between fellow backers that (hopefully one last time) did not need to exist in the first place. I'm glad Lin may have a plan to deal with this because unfortunately the Devs now NEED a contingency plan to deal with this.

I KNOW the KS pledge time data may not be available to us. But without that data we are now left in what I can only describe as a "less than ideal" situation.

Grimfox wrote:

Another question, will it be possible to change the @handle after account creation? So if during creation I fat finger @bob as @bpb can I request a change later?

I'd have to assume they will have some formal mechanism to be able to change global handles because that will probably be a service that'll be needed as long as the game is running.

Geveo wrote:

For many people what made CoH special was the community. CoT has a community too. These forums have been CoT's community for a long time, and people have established themselves here. Lothic is Lothic. Amerikatt is Amerikatt. Grimfox is Grimfox and so on.

If someone's been going by a particular name in THIS COMMUNITY for an extended period of time, THAT is the "first come, first served" that should matter, not whoever happens to be off work at 12:01 pm the instant the pre-start server goes live and can snag those names.

I would tend to agree but I would have been far more comfortable with an iron-clad means to unquestionably determine who should have "dibs" to a name. Having the pledge timestamp for each KS backer would have been that unquestionable means.

Geveo wrote:

Oh, and every Kickstarter backer is assigned a number, and I believe those numbers are assigned in order of when the pledge was made. You can look up this information by going to the KS website, looking up "Backed Projects" under your account, and clicking "More Info" for CoT's campaign.
I was backer #3606, for what it's worth.

This is something I was honestly unaware of (or maybe forgot about). Considering the relative lack of any other tangible data that might be useable (if the need arises) to resolve any name selection conflicts this may be the next best thing to having a specific "pledge timestamp" I've been talking about. I would leave it up to the Devs to decide if they would want to consider this data point while resolving any conflicts in this area.

I trust that our player based can handle any difficulties like this with grace and maturity. Otherwise, I may be interested in the wrong game.
Bottom line for me...When I play a game and don't get the account name I want I don't stop playing the game. If I did that I would probably stop gaming altogether. Beeker5000 it shall be then...;-)

Lothic wrote:

Look I get this is proverbial water under the bridge. It simply frustrates me that the perfect set of data that would have saved you, the Devs, any possible heartache or angst over any potential naming conflicts simply doesn't exist. I'm literally considering YOUR best interests in this situation.

On the one hand, thanks. On the other hand... "Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something."

Airhead wrote:

Oh what a lovely Bundle of Burj it... is...

Frak, what have I done...

Dark Ether wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
If I were lawful neutral...
But CN is much more fun, is it not? ;)

Dunno; I lean more toward CG.

Lothic wrote:

It might be "more fun" but I think Lin was suggesting abusing the privilege of being a Dev by making some extra money on the side from this...

LOL no, it would actually be MWM making more money on this. I'd just be the one trying to figure out how to make the website code work.

Deathwatch101 wrote:

Kickstarter cannot provide a list like that just because of the nature of kickstarter, ive never heard of such a thing even existing. If it did, it would more than likely require kickstarter to have to confirm your "pledge" before the end of it after all you could have upgraded your pledge (could that possibly change your timestamp ?)

You also have to deal with the records of the "backers" whose charges failed. Remember, most Kickstarter projects aren't big complicated world-building projects like ours.

Deathwatch101 wrote:

literally the best way to do it is First Come, First Serve or go through doing custom ones prior to its launch using the forum names as global names for those members here that im sure are worried about someone taking their name.

I'm a progressive, man. "That's how everyone always did it" doesn't equate to "that's literally the best way to do it" for me. There's always a better idea; you've just got to find it and make it work.

Deathwatch101 wrote:

Geveo wrote:
I would hope that this would be the first and foremost of the tiebreakers.
It'd be sick and wrong if a long-term forum regular got usurped by 5-minutes by someone who just wanted to grief them by stealing their name. Forum names are already unique, right? Seriously, that seems pretty simple as a policy matter.
However, you cannot just say that is a viable method for example if you have people coming over from other games. I wouldn't put it past some people deliberately using the names of others and then using that as an "excuse" oooh i had it first.
Sometimes, Names are linked to peoples communities or business's and thusly having someone steal it and use the "forum" name excuse would be insane.

Good points. I'd have to take "lifetime of web account" into consideration, too; accounts that had been around only a couple days wouldn't get this consideration. As for links to communities or businesses (businesses playing this game, seriously? Are we Second Life?) I guess we'd need some kind of proof of representation.

Deathwatch101 wrote:

Yet then you could also argue that any variation on the time that someones bank account paid out could be something that you could argue as another valid point though.

We don't have that either.

Backer number could be a workable stand-in for priority, if we have that info. (I don't have the data on hand right now.)

Fireheart wrote:

Well, there's the issue that we hope to attract many more players from beyond our cozy community, and they could easily bring in many more conflicts. My hope is that, faced with our mature, friendly, accepting community, newcomers will adopt compatible attitudes.
Be Well!
Fireheart

Good point. I too believe we must show them through our own example.

Lothic wrote:

Hopefully if the Devs have to start using forum names as circumstantial evidence they'll consider names that have been around for years to carry more weight than those that have been around for a few days/weeks.

* points at the [b]Joined:[/b] date in the sidebar.

Gotcha covered.