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Unique names versus Name@global

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DeathSheepFromHell
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Wyvern wrote:
Wyvern wrote:

DeepThought wrote:
Honestly I did sometimes enjoy the challenge of coming up with a character name in spite of the myriads of 'taken' names out there... but at the end of the day, there are entire character concepts I shelved because they only really worked with a certain name.
And this is why I want to be able to see if a name is in use, and to what extent it's in use. (There's a big difference between "name that a thousand other people are using" and "name that one guy stuck on an alt he doesn't play anymore".) That way, knowing the name has been "taken" already can serve to spark creativity... but doesn't prevent you from creating the character you wanted.

This aspect of it is the one part of "unique names" that might be available, since it is both voluntary and purely informational. The real question boils down to whether we can figure out a way to track this data that is both A) fast enough to be usable, and B) low enough in resource cost to be feasible. It seems like there is a good *chance* of there being an answer that satisfies both of those requirements, but right now we can't make any hard promises there. But it is definitely a "nice to have" / "quality of life" thing that I have some hope we can reasonably provide.


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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Wyvern wrote:
DeepThought wrote:
Honestly I did sometimes enjoy the challenge of coming up with a character name in spite of the myriads of 'taken' names out there... but at the end of the day, there are entire character concepts I shelved because they only really worked with a certain name.

And this is why I want to be able to see if a name is in use, and to what extent it's in use. (There's a big difference between "name that a thousand other people are using" and "name that one guy stuck on an alt he doesn't play anymore".) That way, knowing the name has been "taken" already can serve to spark creativity... but doesn't prevent you from creating the character you wanted.

This aspect of it is the one part of "unique names" that might be available, since it is both voluntary and purely informational. The real question boils down to whether we can figure out a way to track this data that is both A) fast enough to be usable, and B) low enough in resource cost to be feasible. It seems like there is a good *chance* of there being an answer that satisfies both of those requirements, but right now we can't make any hard promises there. But it is definitely a "nice to have" / "quality of life" thing that I have some hope we can reasonably provide.

Just please don't make "knowing " a requirement..... I still enjoy pretending I'm a unique little snowflake

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GhostHack wrote:
GhostHack wrote:

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
Wyvern wrote:
DeepThought wrote:
Honestly I did sometimes enjoy the challenge of coming up with a character name in spite of the myriads of 'taken' names out there... but at the end of the day, there are entire character concepts I shelved because they only really worked with a certain name.

And this is why I want to be able to see if a name is in use, and to what extent it's in use. (There's a big difference between "name that a thousand other people are using" and "name that one guy stuck on an alt he doesn't play anymore".) That way, knowing the name has been "taken" already can serve to spark creativity... but doesn't prevent you from creating the character you wanted.

This aspect of it is the one part of "unique names" that might be available, since it is both voluntary and purely informational. The real question boils down to whether we can figure out a way to track this data that is both A) fast enough to be usable, and B) low enough in resource cost to be feasible. It seems like there is a good *chance* of there being an answer that satisfies both of those requirements, but right now we can't make any hard promises there. But it is definitely a "nice to have" / "quality of life" thing that I have some hope we can reasonably provide.

Just please don't make "knowing " a requirement..... I still enjoy pretending I'm a unique little snowflake

The idea being that the information would be there for those who wanted to search for uniqueness. It might or might not even be directly in the character creator, depending on what made the most sense and whether there were issues with things like available space on the screens.

And if I'm feeling really evil and steal a page from my day job, maybe it will look for "sound-alikes", "Leet-names", and "variant spellings", just to tell those foolish enough to activate the search exactly how unique they really are (or aren't).

Okay, probably not. But the day job does mean I can tell you a whole lot about just how *not* unique most people's names really are. :)


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which is why i go with what I

which is why i go with what I want, and hang it all, if someone else likes it too... I let my costumes speak to my awesomely awesome creative side ;P

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I don't have a really strong

I don't have a really strong opinion on this topic, but I'd like to say that redname responses to threads like this inspire so much confidence in me re this project. You guys definitely LISTEN, but you also make it clear when decisions have been made -- and you tell us why. I know you guys are gonna be crazy busy for the next 2 years (and more!), but if you can keep up this kind of communication, it will keep you head and shoulders above most other MMOs.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

That said, if someone has a specific alternative to suggest that would support multiple characters of the same name *and not be annoying to the majority of the population trying to interact with those characters* (this bar raises it somewhat over just 'you being annoyed', unfortunately), there is nothing currently written in stone that requires that the character part of character@global be unique. Though it may well be one of the earlier things that does get locked down, for various reasons, so if you've got a good alternative *now* is the time to bring it up.

I'm not sure why it would need to get locked down. Internally, the game should refer to a given PC by means of an ID number (typically an SQL AUTO INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY field somewhere [the caps isn't shouting; that's just how they write SQL where I work]) so the game doesn't lose track of a logged-in character.

So that leaves cases where the system is expected to identify a PC from just a name and global combo. I honestly can't think of a common need for this; being able to uniquely identify an account only needs the global to be unique. If you need to ban or generic someone, you can do it via the ID or a list of choices. Also, telling programmers they can't pretend the character name is useful as a key into the database is probably a Good Thing which will help steer them towards doing the right thing (in this case, sticking to the ID).

As for how the player chooses which character they play, well, they're picking from a GUI chooser, and not typing in a name, so there should be no ambiguity as far as the client is concerned. If the player wants to make six characters with all the same names and appearances and play Russian Roulette on login, well, I'd say let them.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

As for how the player chooses which character they play, well, they're picking from a GUI chooser, and not typing in a name, so there should be no ambiguity as far as the client is concerned. If the player wants to make six characters with all the same names and appearances and play Russian Roulette on login, well, I'd say let them.

Yeah, I had the same thought, as well. It isn't a feature I would say should be added if it required noticeable extra work, but this almost seems like a case where allowing it would be less work than preventing it. Unless someone comes up with some reason why allowing it would be Bad [in the next year or so :) ], I'd say go for it. I think there is potential for Bad depending on how the game communication systems (mail, XMPP, etc) and the api for importing/exporting character info works, but we don't know what shape that will be taking yet.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
That said, if someone has a specific alternative to suggest that would support multiple characters of the same name *and not be annoying to the majority of the population trying to interact with those characters* (this bar raises it somewhat over just 'you being annoyed', unfortunately), there is nothing currently written in stone that requires that the character part of character@global be unique. Though it may well be one of the earlier things that does get locked down, for various reasons, so if you've got a good alternative *now* is the time to bring it up.
I'm not sure why it would need to get locked down. Internally, the game should refer to a given PC by means of an ID number (typically an SQL AUTO INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY field somewhere [the caps isn't shouting; that's just how they write SQL where I work]) so the game doesn't lose track of a logged-in character.
So that leaves cases where the system is expected to identify a PC from just a name and global combo. I honestly can't think of a common need for this; being able to uniquely identify an account only needs the global to be unique. If you need to ban or generic someone, you can do it via the ID or a list of choices. Also, telling programmers they can't pretend the character name is useful as a key into the database is probably a Good Thing which will help steer them towards doing the right thing (in this case, sticking to the ID).
As for how the player chooses which character they play, well, they're picking from a GUI chooser, and not typing in a name, so there should be no ambiguity as far as the client is concerned. If the player wants to make six characters with all the same names and appearances and play Russian Roulette on login, well, I'd say let them.

Engineering decisions are made based on trade-offs between providing users features they want versus saving time, money and future troubles.

As I mentioned before it certainly may be possible for a game to support a single account having multiple characters with the same name under a @Global system. But the Devs are going to have to weigh the time and effort it would take to make sure there are no problems or hidden gotchas with that versus the expectations of how many people would actually take advantage of that feature. Also the Devs will have to weigh the various "meta consequences" of it which includes how players may be able to grief or abuse the feature.

I imagine this'll get "locked down" (as DeathSheepFromHell put it) one way or the other ASAP because this is the kind of thing the Devs want to have working reliably and consistently. They won't want to leave this open to cause unforeseen problems in the future. And for the record no Dev is going to want to allow a player to play "Russian Roulette" with a GUI no matter how well tested/bulletproofed it is otherwise.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Engineering decisions are made based on trade-offs between providing users features they want versus saving time, money and future troubles.

Of course.

Lothic wrote:

the Devs are going to have to weigh the time and effort it would take to make sure there are no problems or hidden gotchas with that versus the expectations of how many people would actually take advantage of that feature.

There are problems and hidden gotchas on both routes. If you allow duplicate names, there's a chance for ambiguity in anything that needs to access a particular character's info, knowing only the character's name, while not logged in. Internal stuff, including the login screen, should be using the character record ID number and not the name. So you're left with corner cases like "if in-game email is tracked by character and not account, which character should it go to?" (IMHO in-game email should be account-wide so this is probably moot.)

On the flip side, if you require character names to be unique per account, then you have to find everywhere a character's name can be set by something and add checking code. Miss one spot and a user could bork up their account. You could also inadvertently make it so that the name could never be reused on that account, even if the player deletes the character.

Lothic wrote:

Also the Devs will have to weigh the various "meta consequences" of it which includes how players may be able to grief or abuse the feature.

As most griefers will do their evil via the global handle, I doubt character name uniqueness would make much difference.

Lothic wrote:

I imagine this'll get "locked down" (as DeathSheepFromHell put it) one way or the other ASAP because this is the kind of thing the Devs want to have working reliably and consistently.

Definitely. It affects testing requirements, too.

And like I implied before, if you require unique character names, someday a developer will use them as a record key instead of the record ID number they should use. Because they're in a hurry or nobody told them or something.

Lothic wrote:

And for the record no Dev is going to want to allow a player to play "Russian Roulette" with a GUI no matter how well tested/bulletproofed it is otherwise.

You're misconstruing what I meant.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lothic wrote:
the Devs are going to have to weigh the time and effort it would take to make sure there are no problems or hidden gotchas with that versus the expectations of how many people would actually take advantage of that feature.
There are problems and hidden gotchas on both routes. If you allow duplicate names, there's a chance for ambiguity in anything that needs to access a particular character's info, knowing only the character's name, while not logged in. Internal stuff, including the login screen, should be using the character record ID number and not the name. So you're left with corner cases like "if in-game email is tracked by character and not account, which character should it go to?" (IMHO in-game email should be account-wide so this is probably moot.)
On the flip side, if you require character names to be unique per account, then you have to find everywhere a character's name can be set by something and add checking code. Miss one spot and a user could bork up their account. You could also inadvertently make it so that the name could never be reused on that account, even if the player deletes the character.

There are "gotchas" that have to be accounted for no matter what the Devs do. I simply suspect that the problems with telling multiple identically named characters apart would be more problematic than preventing that from being an issue in the first place. It's always easier to avoid extra problems in systems when there are fewer scenarios to worry about.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Also the Devs will have to weigh the various "meta consequences" of it which includes how players may be able to grief or abuse the feature.
As most griefers will do their evil via the global handle, I doubt character name uniqueness would make much difference.

But if it makes ANY difference then once again it's easier to prevent the situation from becoming a problem in the first place.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lothic wrote:
I imagine this'll get "locked down" (as DeathSheepFromHell put it) one way or the other ASAP because this is the kind of thing the Devs want to have working reliably and consistently.
Definitely. It affects testing requirements, too.
And like I implied before, if you require unique character names, someday a developer will use them as a record key instead of the record ID number they should use. Because they're in a hurry or nobody told them or something.

Once again I supect they already have the concept of a database "record IDs" for characters and are going to use it where it makes sense. I simply remain unconvinced it's use as a way to provide "account character aliasing" would be worth its trouble.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lothic wrote:
And for the record no Dev is going to want to allow a player to play "Russian Roulette" with a GUI no matter how well tested/bulletproofed it is otherwise.
You're misconstruing what I meant.

Yes I'll admit I pushed that a bit. But since the implementation of this idea would have to involve figuring out a reasonable way to differentiate identically-named characters in a login GUI the conclusion that it might end up being too much extra effort to accomplish is a real possibility.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

As for how the player chooses which character they play, well, they're picking from a GUI chooser, and not typing in a name, so there should be no ambiguity as far as the client is concerned. If the player wants to make six characters with all the same names and appearances and play Russian Roulette on login, well, I'd say let them.

I'll be honest and say I don't really get why you would want to have multiple characters with the same name, but I'm all for flexibility. Two options (above and beyond Russian Roulette) come to mind. First, if I can determine the order my characters show up on my list, then perhaps I just know that the second Awesome Guy is my tank and the fourth Awesome Guy is my healer. Or, heck, maybe all my Awesome Guy's are healers. Whatevs. Regardless, I'm sure that list of characters will also have other identifiers on it like class, level, current location, etc. that would help you distinguish between them even if you can't manually arrange them. How about the ability to create folders?

Second, I suppose you could assign some kind of icon or color to each toon from the character list screen. Awesome Guy with the elephant head icon is my tank, Awesome Guy with the Red Cross symbol is my healer, etc. Those icons wouldn't need to show up in game at all, just used on the client side to differentiate or categorize.

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I have to say unique names

I have to say unique names lead to silliness like "Haavokk" and "Superman125".... this seriously disrupts the color and flow of the game. I know some folks want to feel "special" but in the end its how you build the look and feel that is distinctive, not the name. Besides, in comics a number of notable characters have the same or similiar names (Marvel comes to mind). Like or not like CO, the naming style it uses works and cuts down on the weird attempts at similar names.

Just remember - CoT is in the spirit of CoH, it is not CoH!

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InOnePiece wrote:
InOnePiece wrote:

I'll be honest and say I don't really get why you would want to have multiple characters with the same name, but I'm all for flexibility.

My general rule is not to let my lack of imagination shut down the imagination of others. It's one thing if what someone is asking makes no sense whatsoever, but this isn't one of those times.

I can't speak for anyone else, but there was one time in CoH that I wanted to be able to have two characters with the same name: one blue side, one red side.

I had a character whose concept was that they were a delivery girl. And the nature of her employer (Ninja Burger) meant that she would be expected to make deliveries anywhere. This was long before Going Rogue.

So I made a dodge by making their names slightly different. I didn't want to, but the unique-name requirement forced it. Felt like a band-aid forever.

Maybe that's not an issue any more with the new alignment system. I don't know, but again, unless there's a real good reason not to do something (and "I'm scared of bugs" doesn't count) then IMHO it should be allowed.

InOnePiece wrote:

First, if I can determine the order my characters show up on my list, then perhaps I just know that the second Awesome Guy is my tank and the fourth Awesome Guy is my healer.

In CoH, not only could you control list order, it showed you level, origin, and archetype for your character. So no chance of confusion there.

InOnePiece wrote:

I'm sure that list of characters will also have other identifiers on it like class, level, current location, etc. that would help you distinguish between them even if you can't manually arrange them.

And don't forget costumes.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
That said, if someone has a specific alternative to suggest that would support multiple characters of the same name *and not be annoying to the majority of the population trying to interact with those characters* (this bar raises it somewhat over just 'you being annoyed', unfortunately), there is nothing currently written in stone that requires that the character part of character@global be unique. Though it may well be one of the earlier things that does get locked down, for various reasons, so if you've got a good alternative *now* is the time to bring it up.
I'm not sure why it would need to get locked down. Internally, the game should refer to a given PC by means of an ID number (typically an SQL AUTO INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY field somewhere [the caps isn't shouting; that's just how they write SQL where I work]) so the game doesn't lose track of a logged-in character.
So that leaves cases where the system is expected to identify a PC from just a name and global combo. I honestly can't think of a common need for this; being able to uniquely identify an account only needs the global to be unique. If you need to ban or generic someone, you can do it via the ID or a list of choices. Also, telling programmers they can't pretend the character name is useful as a key into the database is probably a Good Thing which will help steer them towards doing the right thing (in this case, sticking to the ID).
As for how the player chooses which character they play, well, they're picking from a GUI chooser, and not typing in a name, so there should be no ambiguity as far as the client is concerned. If the player wants to make six characters with all the same names and appearances and play Russian Roulette on login, well, I'd say let them.

CREATE TABLE Characters (
CharacterName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
GlobalName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, -- No, i don't care enough to look up the right syntax to declare the global a foreign key right this second.
PRIMARY KEY (CharacterName, GlobalName)
);

One of the cardinal rules of good programming is that if there is a glaringly obvious identifier, it is generally better to use that than an arbitrary one with no meaning *unless* there are specific reasons otherwise. Character renaming concerns are valid, but also can be solved in several ways which don't necessarily presume an independent ID -- although it is an obvious choice and not without its benefits.

The question does indeed boil down to "gotchas". As I said, there is not (yet) any purely technical reason that it could not be supported. There are several obvious costs, and at least one obvious benefit. In a rational world, the question comes down to balancing those against each other. Suggestions which reduce the costs are, for obvious reasons, going to tip the scales.

The reason for it being likely to be locked down early is simple, though: until it is at least set in mud, there isn't (and fundamentally can't be) any notion of character persistence between maps, much less across sessions. And identifiers have a really nasty tendency to creep throughout a system when they're as important as I would expect this one to be, meaning that simple economics effectively locks it in rapidly once any significant amount of code gets built on top of it.

Edit: made sure the PK columns weren't nullable, before the purists come after me with pitchforks and torches...


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One hitch that i can see

One hitch that i can see (although there is a work around for it), is when you mail something to a *specific* character...

How will the game system be able to tell the difference between the 2 or 3 characters on your account that share the same name?

Unless of course, you make it so that you *cannot* send mail to a specific character and instead make the mail global, and non character specific.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Unless of course, you make it so that you *cannot* send mail to a specific character and instead make the mail global, and non character specific.

Yeah, let's avoid that. The global email on CO annoys me to no end.

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Regarding allowing multiple

Regarding allowing multiple characters for one global to share a name, I'll skip the "cost" side of the scales for the moment, and toss a few coins on the "benefit" side. I would very much like to be able to use the same name several times on one account. I'm hoping to create a robotic hero who keeps one public name, but uses different attachments/modules to radically alter powersets for a particular mission or to fight a certain enemy faction.

In the real world, this scenario is also quite common - applying the same nickname to many nearly-identical machines of the same make and model, while using the typically-hidden serial number to tell them apart only when critical. It even sometimes occurs for humans within the same "@global family" (two siblings named John, or more often the same name repeated over several generations).

The ability to have multiple pets with the same name will probably be desired by a fair number of players, and of course this would require a similar database/memory structure where each pet requires a hidden unique id in the system, as PetName@CharacterName@GlobalName couldn't handle intentional duplicates.

I'm familiar with two other MMO games which display CharacterName@GlobalName, and their internal structure uses a numeric character id as the unique key. For one of these, the main reason given was administrative - to keep name changes simple while allowing deleted characters to be stored/restored even if the same name had been used since the delete.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

CREATE TABLE Characters (
CharacterName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
GlobalName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, -- No, i don't care enough to look up the right syntax to declare the global a foreign key right this second.
PRIMARY KEY (CharacterName, GlobalName)
);

CREATE TABLE Characters (
id INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
CharacterName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
account INT NOT NULL,
INDEX account_ind (account),
FOREIGN KEY (account) REFERENCES Accounts(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
);

Or something like that. I'm a bit rusty and barely remember anything past third normal form.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

One of the cardinal rules of good programming is that if there is a glaringly obvious identifier, it is generally better to use that than an arbitrary one with no meaning *unless* there are specific reasons otherwise.

Specific reasons otherwise are:
1) the renaming case you outlined: renaming is a single-record operation instead of a crawl through every table that references a character ever.
2) The additional overhead of having a combined primary key, which needs to be replicated in every table that needs to reference a character. All these tables will need to ensure proper quoting of fields and that all legal-characters-in-name rules are met at all times.
3) Should you need to redefine the name field (make it bigger or smaller, switch between UTF-8 and UTF-16, whatever), it's much easier if you've been using record IDs because only one table needs to be altered.
4) Integer record IDs are much easier to work with (copy and compare, for starters) than strings in the application code. Only the parts that need to present things to the user need to mess with the names anyway; everything else could use just the integer ID and live in blissful ignorance of the umlaut or whatever.

There are probably other reasons. This bothers me because every DBA I've ever talked to described using a person's name, SSN, or other presumably "unique" identifier as a primary key as a rookie mistake, because some corner case always comes along that breaks your assumptions. Weird characters, odd names, right-to-left writing, whatever. Whereas the integer ID's constraint that there will be less than four billion characters is pretty workable for the near future.

And the only time I've seen a combined primary key justified is when it's the combination of primary keys from two (or more) other tables, usually with join tables for M2M relations.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

The reason for it being likely to be locked down early is simple, though: until it is at least set in mud, there isn't (and fundamentally can't be) any notion of character persistence between maps, much less across sessions. And identifiers have a really nasty tendency to creep throughout a system when they're as important as I would expect this one to be, meaning that simple economics effectively locks it in rapidly once any significant amount of code gets built on top of it.

Exactly.

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P.S. My usual crutch is

P.S. My usual crutch is Django:

class Character(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    account = models.ForeignKey(Account, related_name="characters")

generates close to the same SQL as above.

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Lin Chiao Feng
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

One hitch that i can see (although there is a work around for it), is when you mail something to a *specific* character...
How will the game system be able to tell the difference between the 2 or 3 characters on your account that share the same name?
Unless of course, you make it so that you *cannot* send mail to a specific character and instead make the mail global, and non character specific.

Yeah, I thought I mentioned the in-game email problem. The way I see it:
1) As you noted, if in-game email is tied to accounts and not characters, it's a moot issue. I think this is the most likely resolution to the issue.
2) If not, then whatever character the database picks first gets the email. Since all characters are on the same account, the player can deal with it themselves. This would be listed as "known bug, won't fix, workaround available: if it bothers you then disambiguate your character names."
2a) There's at least one place where you could be sure that you'd be sending to the right character: if you initiated the email from your friends list, and if the friends list tracked characters and not globals. Then the game would be tracking the recipient by record ID the whole way through, only using the name for UI display purposes.
2b) Thus the only time there's ambiguity is when you type the whole char@global address out in the To: field. And again, no matter which character the game grabs, it's going to get to the same player account.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Strictly speaking? There is no reason it *couldn't* permit that... but you would then be expected to specify who you were logging in as by some method other than the character name. Since most people find names they can specify to be much "friendlier" than an arbitrary set of numbers that are only meaningful to the system internals, the usual assumption is that expecting a unique character name for character@global is preferable to the alternatives.
That said, if someone has a specific alternative to suggest that would support multiple characters of the same name *and not be annoying to the majority of the population trying to interact with those characters* (this bar raises it somewhat over just 'you being annoyed', unfortunately), there is nothing currently written in stone that requires that the character part of character@global be unique. Though it may well be one of the earlier things that does get locked down, for various reasons, so if you've got a good alternative *now* is the time to bring it up.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if the in-game mail goes directly to the global name, the @Global, would it really matter what the player types before that? If I have three characters named Dreamer (I won't), they'd type in Dreamer@AmbiDreamer, but the system would ignore everything before the @ part (Simply sending it to @AmbiDreamer). I'd still know which character they were sending it to (any of the three), and it wouldn't matter if they misspell "Dreamer"- as in this case it would be flavor only.

Would it be possible to set it to simply ignore anything that comes before the @ (or let them email me JUST at AmbiDreamer)? If so, this would address the concern of to whom they're e-mailing, right?

If you're referring to logging in, I would figure you're just clicking the hero you want to play ala City of Heroes. It had no option to type in the name of the character you were choosing to play, anyway. The system would keep the secret ID hidden, or display it elsewhere on character select but either way, there's no need to type to choose which character you're choosing to play as. I'm wondering if I'm not misunderstanding what you're asking somehow.
If they’re sending a tell, maybe it could work likewise, simply going to the global name and eliminating the concerns over the character name. Is any of this logic viable?

Longtime City of Heroes player, longtime writer. :) Working in Nebraska.
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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Unless of course, you make it so that you *cannot* send mail to a specific character and instead make the mail global, and non character specific.

Yeah, let's avoid that. The global email on CO annoys me to no end.

Oh? In what way?

(I'm playing STO right now which does the same thing. Seems about as annoying as having to use character@global names for everything, because some players' global names are huge.)

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Mendicant wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
Unless of course, you make it so that you *cannot* send mail to a specific character and instead make the mail global, and non character specific.

Yeah, let's avoid that. The global email on CO annoys me to no end.

Oh? In what way?
(I'm playing STO right now which does the same thing. Seems about as annoying as having to use character@global names for everything, because some players' global names are huge.)

Mainly having to do with the auction house, I admit. Something gets sold, I get an email to the global account, and it doesn't have any information telling me which character the email is for. A global email system could work, I suppose, as long as it was implemented well. The ability to filter the inbox by those email which do have character names attached, for example.

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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Mainly having to do with the auction house, I admit. Something gets sold, I get an email to the global account, and it doesn't have any information telling me which character the email is for. A global email system could work, I suppose, as long as it was implemented well. The ability to filter the inbox by those email which do have character names attached, for example.

Oh, that bug. (Yes, IMHO it's a bug.) I'd solve that by adding "was sold by character_name" to the email body. Again, if someone has duplicate character names, everything still works (doesn't crash anything) and the user can disambiguate whenever they want by changing one or both character names.

STO also seems to have a bug where the "xxx didn't sell and is being returned to you" message appears twice, one with the item attached and one without. The message without the item can't be deleted (and it adds "(Holodeck)" to the From line). Deleting the message with the item deletes both messages, but the "extra" one doesn't vanish from your list until you close and reopen the email window. That must be a fun bug.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Or something like that. I'm a bit rusty and barely remember anything past third normal form.
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
One of the cardinal rules of good programming is that if there is a glaringly obvious identifier, it is generally better to use that than an arbitrary one with no meaning *unless* there are specific reasons otherwise.
Specific reasons otherwise are:
1) the renaming case you outlined: renaming is a single-record operation instead of a crawl through every table that references a character ever.

Though if we're taking the foreign key argument, that list of things is trivial to build.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

2) The additional overhead of having a combined primary key, which needs to be replicated in every table that needs to reference a character. All these tables will need to ensure proper quoting of fields and that all legal-characters-in-name rules are met at all times.
3) Should you need to redefine the name field (make it bigger or smaller, switch between UTF-8 and UTF-16, whatever), it's much easier if you've been using record IDs because only one table needs to be altered.

Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that the assumption that the servers are speaking SQL directly is quite probably a flawed one. The details aren't nailed down yet, no, but trying to address most of these issues in the server code is, frankly, a terrible place to do it.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

4) Integer record IDs are much easier to work with (copy and compare, for starters) than strings in the application code. Only the parts that need to present things to the user need to mess with the names anyway; everything else could use just the integer ID and live in blissful ignorance of the umlaut or whatever.

Here, I'm afraid you're just flat-out making assumptions that are not necessarily true.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

There are probably other reasons. This bothers me because every DBA I've ever talked to described using a person's name, SSN, or other presumably "unique" identifier as a primary key as a rookie mistake, because some corner case always comes along that breaks your assumptions. Weird characters, odd names, right-to-left writing, whatever. Whereas the integer ID's constraint that there will be less than four billion characters is pretty workable for the near future.

Let me put it this way: for my day job I deal with data that sometimes runs back to the 60s, and may have been through no less than half a dozen legacy systems, each of which had their own notion of what should define uniqueness. I won't claim to have seen it all, but I've seen (and had to deal with) a reasonably wide breadth.

*If* you are dealing with a case where a three or four part primary key is the natural definition of uniqueness in a system, then a single numeric ID is pretty much a classic newbie mistake that is made by a large number of folks. And the number of times I've seen numeric IDs cause more problems than they solve is not small, especially with their proliferation due to frameworks that have aversions to actually using relational databases to store relationship data rather than simply being large index engines.

However, *all* of that said: yes, there are benefits to straight-up IDs. But several of your assumptions are not in fact well founded in this particular case, even if they might commonly be, or they might be *indirectly* true, but not directly. Points about what it enables (multiple characters of the same name) or innate concerns (character renaming *is* more difficult, but not necessarily in the way or for the reasons you appear to be assuming) are much sounder things to aim for than anything which assumes specific implementation details.


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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

I'm not sure why it would need to get locked down. Internally, the game should refer to a given PC by means of an ID number (typically an SQL AUTO INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY field somewhere [the caps isn't shouting; that's just how they write SQL where I work]) so the game doesn't lose track of a logged-in character.

Just a couple of thoughts.

The first is - don't assume SQL.

The second is some of this implementation boils down to behavior of XMPP and if we maintain our intention to permit outside clients to connect in and how consistently XEP we use are in play.

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The @global route works fine

The @global route works fine for me. With the option to hide the global name for those who'd like to.

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Shard wrote:
Shard wrote:

The first is - don't assume SQL.
The second is some of this implementation boils down to behavior of XMPP and if we maintain our intention to permit outside clients to connect in and how consistently XEP we use are in play.

XMPP for the chat system, or something else? And yeah, if that dictates unique char@global names, then that pretty much kills the idea of duplicate character names right there. Sure, the player is restricted to only one character active at a time, theoretically duplicate names would be doable, but there's the risk of crossed signals when the player switches characters.

BTW, I looked up XEP and I got linked to something RenderX uses to generate PDFs and the like; is that the XEP you're talking about?

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that the assumption that the servers are speaking SQL directly is quite probably a flawed one. The details aren't nailed down yet, no, but trying to address most of these issues in the server code is, frankly, a terrible place to do it.

... Yeah, now would be a perfect time, actually.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Here, I'm afraid you're just flat-out making assumptions that are not necessarily true.

Guess I've been spending too much time on embedded systems lately.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Let me put it this way: for my day job I deal with data that sometimes runs back to the 60s, and may have been through no less than half a dozen legacy systems, each of which had their own notion of what should define uniqueness. I won't claim to have seen it all, but I've seen (and had to deal with) a reasonably wide breadth.

Yep. The rock solid rule for legacy systems is don't muck with the database schema. Change the app, not the DB.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

However, *all* of that said: yes, there are benefits to straight-up IDs. But several of your assumptions are not in fact well founded in this particular case, even if they might commonly be, or they might be *indirectly* true, but not directly. Points about what it enables (multiple characters of the same name) or innate concerns (character renaming *is* more difficult, but not necessarily in the way or for the reasons you appear to be assuming) are much sounder things to aim for than anything which assumes specific implementation details.

Fair enough. I'm always open to learning something new.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

1) Globals are in. The subject broiled for several months, so unless you've got something *really* novel as an argument, it has already been made and considered. This wasn't a decision made casually or unilaterally, there were plenty of voices on both sides of the debate, and it wasn't a short one.
2) Being able to hide the @global portion on your own screen is a part of UI design. Since we aspire to having good UI design that leaves you as many choices as we can while *also* having sane defaults... well, I would say give us a chance to do it well, first, and then tell us if we screw it up. It is the sort of thing that should show up *long* before we start "locking down" UI stuff to the point that changes would be problematic.
3) The only safe assumption is that it will not be possible to completely "hide" your global, simply for reasons of reporting and abuse -- folks have to have *some* way of identifying at least the account, if not necessarily the specific character, involved in an issue. Also, the system has to be able to keep track of such things internally anyway, so the data will exist somewhere within the client (no matter what else, this part is basically unavoidable for technical reasons).
4) Anyone wanting my personal opinions (or experiences in both situations with 'duplication') is welcome to ask -- privately.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

XMPP for the chat system, or something else? And yeah, if that dictates unique char@global names, then that pretty much kills the idea of duplicate character names right there. Sure, the player is restricted to only one character active at a time, theoretically duplicate names would be doable, but there's the risk of crossed signals when the player switches characters.
BTW, I looked up XEP and I got linked to something RenderX uses to generate PDFs and the like; is that the XEP you're talking about?

XMPP is the chat protocol. XEP's are extensions to the protocol.

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Just as a thought, would it

Just as a thought, would it be possible to list how many of the name you have chosen exist on the server already? That way, people looking for something new could find it, while people attached to a particular (even if popular) name could still have it. I personally enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a new name, but that is hardly going to be true for everyone.

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Just a quickie suggestion

Just a quickie suggestion {short on time, alas} - if a desired goal is to reward creativity by acknowledging players who come up with unique names, while also preventing "name camping", I would suggest attaching "first!" perks to names that have been claimed before anyone else copied them, intentionally or by happenstance - such as a badge, or simply a slightly different-colored name, to distinguish them from those who came after.

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Quinch wrote:
Quinch wrote:

Just a quickie suggestion {short on time, alas} - if a desired goal is to reward creativity by acknowledging players who come up with unique names, while also preventing "name camping", I would suggest attaching "first!" perks to names that have been claimed before anyone else copied them, intentionally or by happenstance - such as a badge, or simply a slightly different-colored name, to distinguish them from those who came after.

I have nothing against encouraging/rewarding "creativity" in coming up with unique character names.

But as an avid badger from CoH I will have to categorically diagree with the idea of rewarding a badge for something like this. I realize your heart was probably in the right place, but nothing caused more angst and whining in the badging commuity than the handful of meta badges that existed in CoH that you'd get for doing things that were essentially "outside" of the game environment.

I'd probably accept some kind of OPTIONAL reward (like a special color for the onscreen name) but I'd stress making that kind of thing optional. I'd hate to be stuck with a special color I didn't like just because I was the first to use a name. Probably the safest reward would be something relatively trivial like granting the newly created character a one-time gift of 10,000 INF as a "thank you" for being creative.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Quinch wrote:
Quinch wrote:

Just a quickie suggestion {short on time, alas} - if a desired goal is to reward creativity by acknowledging players who come up with unique names, while also preventing "name camping", I would suggest attaching "first!" perks to names that have been claimed before anyone else copied them, intentionally or by happenstance - such as a badge, or simply a slightly different-colored name, to distinguish them from those who came after.

There's nothing especially creative about managing to be the first who chose "Chill" for their ice-based character, though, right?

Some people will put more work into their characters over time. They'll play it more, they'll do more visible activities over time. They will be the ones best known for being 'Chill'. The one who reserved it first but didn't do much with it will stay an unsung hero.

In my case, I don't give a rats patootie whether I was first to have a name or not. What bothers me about character@global is that it changes how you get to know the characters. In actual practice, people will play on a team with "character name", but when they care they will probably get to know "global name", instead. The character name is basically cosmetic at that point. If MWM wanted to, they could let you tie a different character name to each costume. To me, *personally*, that is a significant drawback of character@global but I feel like my dislike of it is not as big a deal as the dislike people have of not being able to choose 'Chill' or whatever they had in mind. So, I am okay with character@global. People who actually want to know my characters as characters will still do that, after all.

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Wanders wrote:
Wanders wrote:

... let you tie a different character name to each costume. ...

Is that like having a Secret Identity? ;D

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

Wanders wrote:
... let you tie a different character name to each costume. ...
Is that like having a Secret Identity? ;D

I'm not really sure how much this "nickname for each costume slot" suggestion has to do with whether or not you like the @Global naming system. But for what it's worth people had been suggesting the "costume slot nickname" idea for years on the old CoH forums.

The general idea was that you could have an optional alias for each costume slot so that you could better play out a Secret ID or whatever you wanted. The aliases wouldn't directly replace your actual character name (like as it would appear in the team GUI) but would be handled more like a subtitle under your name or maybe how it would appear in chat text or somesuch.

It's a good idea if they could figure out how to make it work. They didn't do it in CoH but for all we know the @Global system in CoT will make doing something like that easier.

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Hey. Today I met a man named

Hey. Today I met a man named Captian America except he was fat and short and had red ponytails.Tomorrow I'll meet a Captain America with blue hair who is skinny with orange skin

I hate name@global. Stick to the basics like CoH and WoW

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Hey. Today I met a man named Captian America except he was fat and short and had red ponytails.Tomorrow I'll meet a Captain America with blue hair who is skinny with orange skin
I hate name@global. Stick to the basics like CoH and WoW

You have my permission to send me a big, fat "I TOLD YOU SO!" if the hypothetical you mention here actually happens once this game goes live. I played CO very solidly for many months and never ran across ONE instance of a obvious duplicate name there. YMMV of course.

Regardless of my experience on this as far as your specific Captain America example goes since that's a very obvious usage of a copyrighted name (regardless of what the characters trying to use that name look like) the GMs will be very likely obligated to "genericize" ANYONE trying to use it whether it be one character or a thousand. That's of course assuming the character creator of CoT even allows something like "Captain America" to be a valid character name in the first place. *shrugs*

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Moot.

Moot.

I don't care if I run into another person with my character's name. I'm me.. and frankly.. I bought a unique uniform (thanks Kickstarter). The game is going to have so many players with alt-itus..

The best way I've found to distinguish myself is spend time in the game world.

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I played CoH since almost the

I played CoH since almost the beginning. I hated CoH's naming system. I had a couple of names I wanted, and yes, there were people who took names, left them at level 1, and kept an active account.

CoT plans to be F2P with a sub option. That means all accounts are basically active. So we can't even do the clear inactive players names. And if they can (go by unplayed in so many days) they likely won't because they'll say something along the lines of "Oh, they got the name first."

Let's think back (for those who where there) to CoH opening a new server (Exalted) and the name rush that had. Let's remember how some people grabbed other names, not for the intent to use, but just so they knew others wanted that name.

No. CO with it's ability to hide @Global is the better system, as it allows people to get the name that sounds more iconic/superhero/villain (to them). People want to be "original" by picking some foreign language or word that the western audience isn't likely to recognize as anything more than gibberish to make them feel unique (note to those like this: it doesn't make you unique when everyone else is doing it...it makes you just have a terrible name) still have that option with the system that uses @Global.

Also, if CO is any indication, people will still pick the worst names ever like "XxXxSuperBarbieKillerPvPHealorzPWNxXxX" so if it's wanting to see terrible names like that and that's why you like CoH's naming convention, don't worry, you'll still see someone doing it. :p

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Hey. Today I met a man named Captian America except he was fat and short and had red ponytails.Tomorrow I'll meet a Captain America with blue hair who is skinny with orange skin
I hate name@global. Stick to the basics like CoH and WoW

Was that a typo? You could have both a "Captian America" and a "Captain America" even with unique character names. Misspelling, adding weird characters, and taking advantage of the fact that the game font caused some letters and numbers to look the same, are some of the ways that people "got the name they wanted" in CoH when it was already taken.

Anyway, given that they are going with one server, I don't think unique character names would work out well. If you see people using names in a way that annoys you, just be thankful that they have given you such a clear warning that you probably won't want to hang around them. :)

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Novel? Okay let's go with

Novel? Okay let's go with novel. Except that every comic cover has already done this...

Make Name+Logo unique. You could add colour as a variable, but some colours might be close together, so maybe you don't do this. Still, CoH had perhaps 255 logos to choose from. CoT might have twice that. That might be two fonts to build (I'm very old-school, I don't know what limits fonts have today). Or if you want logos in two colours it is four fonts with characters that overprint. Or if your code allows, just embed the player's emblem in the text as a shrunk graphic.

So I'm now æ Airhead (if that doesn't sound cool, imagine if I was Batman, with a bat). Someone else wants to make an Airhead - well, they can, but have to choose a different logo. Okay, so you might say players want to change logo sometimes - just check if the combination is taken when they try. Even have chat moniker / overhead logo and costume logo be separate selections if you truly fear your costume could be limited somehow (with supergroups, who knows). You'll get a bit more creativity (there could perhaps only be 255 Airheads, unless you also include colour as a variable) but everyone will be a special snowflake - one of them could even use the snowflake symbol. You might also consider permitting supergroup logo next to name (after thinking through the consequences for duplicates).

I'd much rather see my cool logo than @ spamalot any time. It's not a trivial solution, but we are superheroes.

And @globals can still be used to ensure uniqueness, and logo duplicates can be permitted if characters are being created offline. Then these in-line cover logos would simply add a bit of flavour and often (but not always) uniqueness when you run into your namesake.

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True, but how do you quickly

True, but how do you quickly type in that "logo", especially from a drop down box of X number of entries....

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You should take time to

You should take time to select your logo.

If you're selecting a player then you could (1) just type the name - in case of a valid duplicate you might even get a tab option to complete, but I don't think that would be essential; (2) have globals visible and use them if you can't cope otherwise; (4) if it's a team member, you probably have a key to select them. (4) if you're okay with a mouse/trackball/etc and you just click on them.

The logo is a visual differentiation. Even if you use other options, setting it up to track your "cover logo" from the start will give you more cool name display options for future. Also you could provide the resulting font (if a font is used) to players, like CoH provided RedCircle font. Only it would have all the CoT logos in it (perhaps in simpler monochrome). Maybe nifty for building TitanVerse or whatever.

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I'm against anything that

I'm against anything that unnecessarily restricts costume options.

Linking a logo to a name in order to prevent duplicates is also an unnecessary complication.

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Well you're safe on costume

Well you're safe on costume options. Cover logo need have nothing to do with costume. Think 'comic cover'.

Global name is also an "unnecessary complication" (visually) for some people. They'd rather not see the global, just see duplicates. This concept can do that too as explained in post #133. It could end up more visually elegant than Roman numerals (a concept I was leaning towards earlier).

I'll do a mock up on the weekend if nobody from Tech Team has a good reason to nix it outright before then.

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I do not like the logo idea.

I do not like the logo idea. From a programming standpoint it already has too many flaws. Not to mention I don't want to be "Kontrol Prime" or some other deviation of Kontrol.

I'm Kontrol. If there's another player with a character named Kontrol they will not look like me. And if the do.. COOL I've been cloned!

My only regret is that my whole roster can't be Kontrols HAHA I kid.

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Airhead wrote:
Airhead wrote:

Well you're safe on costume options. Cover logo need have nothing to do with costume. Think 'comic cover'.
Global name is also an "unnecessary complication" (visually) for some people. They'd rather not see the global, just see duplicates. This concept can do that too as explained in post #133. It could end up more visually elegant than Roman numerals (a concept I was leaning towards earlier).
I'll do a mock up on the weekend if nobody from Tech Team has a good reason to nix it outright before then.

We're not going to see global names unless we turn that part of the UI on.

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Indeed, my helicopter is full

Considering for a moment that no programming of logo ideas has taken place, and that City of Heroes alreeady set the precedent for putting symbols next to names (however "flawed" their "programming standpoint" was), then instead consider that symbols add variety to names without forcing you to stick silly ASCII characters in there. No, they do not have to be part of making them unique.

This image shows a team of turtle-themed players in City of Heroes. The names in the team list have logos next to them (representing archetypes, but logos nonetheless). This team has two members called "Turnturtle" (of course that is Photoshop). The two Turnturtles do have different symbols. I crudely copied the symbols next to the toon names in the chat window and in the main display. You can now tell them apart in chat. This is extra differentiation without ugly global names.

Now if there were player chosen symbols (not just the archetypes) it would make for much greater variability. No, your symbol does not have to be on your costume, and yes, you can use a different symbol on your costume. This is also NOT a uniqueness parameter. Global names can do that just fine. It makes Shadow, Shadow and Shadow seem a bit different, while giving your hero "brand" (symbol) some prominence next to your name, like you see on a comic cover.

It's also entirely optional and could be turned off, if opinions (of the aesthetics, not of the "programming flaws") are mixed. If someone says "it's hideous" then fair enough.

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I hear you, and I still

I hear you, and I still disagree and don't like it.

Symbols means there has to be a coordinate matrix created putting these symbols in an order that can be quickly referenced.

globals are already in the alphabet matrix

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I like the idea of being able

I like the idea of being able to add an emblem to your character that would show in chat for those who haven't turned that off. Like being able to set custom text balloon colors in CoH, it adds a nice bit of extra differentiation without hurting anything. (My main used yellow on dark red, and I don't think I ever saw anyone with the same setting. And since the colors were only for speech bubbles, not the chat window, it didn't matter if someone made something that was hard to read.)

I don't want to see emblems being required, though, nor would I want to use them as part of a unique naming scheme. Would be neat as an optional thing, though, especially for anyone who picked up the Iconic perk.

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InOnePiece wrote:
InOnePiece wrote:

I've commented on this elsewhere but just wanted to add my voice here, too. I strongly prefer a system where character names are unique to the account, not the server. Yes, you could end up on a league where everyone is named Awesome Guy, but I prefer that to a system where you have to figure out how to spell Awesome Guy with numbers and special characters. To me, it's very frustrating when a cool name idea you have was claimed by someone 6 years ago, and they don't even play that toon.

Also, it allows greater freedom for a group of players to create a character called Duplication (or Multipleman,which is a Marvel character, I believe.) All the names are spelled exactly the same, with the same costumes, and same powers. So, the character can be played as Duplicates of himself. I actually saw something creatively similar in CoH. Was pretty awesome.

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Yes, but those duplicates in

Yes, but those duplicates in CoH were done by replacing letters in the name. A lowercase l could be replaced with a capital I, for instance. It could get complicated and made humans unable to know which who they were talking to. I had a character with one simple replacement, which I then had to explain, over and over, to my friends, so they could send me tells and such. I named the character 'The Butier' but uses a capital I, which gave me the appearance of being 'The Butler'. Endless troubles from one letter.

Imagine the possibilities of "Parallel Illusion" - you could have dozens of duplicates and only the computer could tell you apart. Now, slip one 'magical unicorn' into the mix and the one griefer could ruin the reputation of a whole SG of players.

@ Globals are just simpler.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Yes, but those duplicates in CoH were done by replacing letters in the name. A lowercase l could be replaced with a capital I, for instance. It could get complicated and made humans unable to know which who they were talking to. I had a character with one simple replacement, which I then had to explain, over and over, to my friends, so they could send me tells and such. I named the character 'The Butier' but uses a capital I, which gave me the appearance of being 'The Butler'. Endless troubles from one letter.
Imagine the possibilities of "Parallel Illusion" - you could have dozens of duplicates and only the computer could tell you apart. Now, slip one 'magical unicorn' into the mix and the one griefer could ruin the reputation of a whole SG of players.
@ Globals are just simpler.
Be Well!
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And people who did that always got upset when you'd call them by how you spelled it.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Yes, but those duplicates in CoH were done by replacing letters in the name. A lowercase l could be replaced with a capital I, for instance. It could get complicated and made humans unable to know which who they were talking to. I had a character with one simple replacement, which I then had to explain, over and over, to my friends, so they could send me tells and such. I named the character 'The Butier' but uses a capital I, which gave me the appearance of being 'The Butler'. Endless troubles from one letter.
Imagine the possibilities of "Parallel Illusion" - you could have dozens of duplicates and only the computer could tell you apart. Now, slip one 'magical unicorn' into the mix and the one griefer could ruin the reputation of a whole SG of players.
@ Globals are just simpler.
Be Well!
Fireheart

its even more annoying when you have to go trawling through your chat logs to get the *correct* spelling of a global, so that you can petition that account for harrassment.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

@ Globals are just simpler.

That is what I was aiming at implying. I don't have a problem with @globals. I don't really have a problem with there being another (or more) character(s) with the same name as mine. IF you feel like you want to have a Happy Pirate Zathras, then, by all means, create Happy Pirate Zathras. I'm fairly sure that it wouldn't look the same as mine, or have the same back story.

Although, I do reacall making a character in the PnP Champions (first edition) game called The Silver Comet. His back story and costume was very similar to a comic character that I had never seen before. So, I can't say that no one would make a Happy Pirate Zathras like mine.

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Twisted Toon wrote:
Twisted Toon wrote:

Fireheart wrote:
@ Globals are just simpler.

That is what I was aiming at implying. I don't have a problem with @globals. I don't really have a problem with there being another (or more) character(s) with the same name as mine. IF you feel like you want to have a Happy Pirate Zathras, then, by all means, create Happy Pirate Zathras. I'm fairly sure that it wouldn't look the same as mine, or have the same back story.
Although, I do reacall making a character in the PnP Champions (first edition) game called The Silver Comet. His back story and costume was very similar to a comic character that I had never seen before. So, I can't say that no one would make a Happy Pirate Zathras like mine.

Back a long time ago in the 90's, I had a PnP Superhero named Backlash who I loved to write stories about. She was nothing like the Wildstorm Comic Character who came out later but had the same name.

So the same name never bothered me. But if they do a unique naming convention, I hope they get really strict on who's name gets deleted and when, so it free's up names, and not be like CoH who were afraid to delete every name that was not being used by an active account.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Fireheart wrote:
Yes, but those duplicates in CoH were done by replacing letters in the name. A lowercase l could be replaced with a capital I, for instance. It could get complicated and made humans unable to know which who they were talking to. I had a character with one simple replacement, which I then had to explain, over and over, to my friends, so they could send me tells and such. I named the character 'The Butier' but uses a capital I, which gave me the appearance of being 'The Butler'. Endless troubles from one letter.
Imagine the possibilities of "Parallel Illusion" - you could have dozens of duplicates and only the computer could tell you apart. Now, slip one 'magical unicorn' into the mix and the one griefer could ruin the reputation of a whole SG of players.
@ Globals are just simpler.
Be Well!
Fireheart

its even more annoying when you have to go trawling through your chat logs to get the *correct* spelling of a global, so that you can petition that account for harrassment.

And well nigh impossible when their name was iiilllllliiill appearing as a full set of "I"s before you could copy/paste or click to report. I remember one such spamming N and F words in Atlas and it required a GM to actually turn up to ban him. I really hope we use a font where you can tell those apart.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Twisted Toon wrote:
Fireheart wrote:
@ Globals are just simpler.

That is what I was aiming at implying. I don't have a problem with @globals. I don't really have a problem with there being another (or more) character(s) with the same name as mine. IF you feel like you want to have a Happy Pirate Zathras, then, by all means, create Happy Pirate Zathras. I'm fairly sure that it wouldn't look the same as mine, or have the same back story.
Although, I do reacall making a character in the PnP Champions (first edition) game called The Silver Comet. His back story and costume was very similar to a comic character that I had never seen before. So, I can't say that no one would make a Happy Pirate Zathras like mine.

Back a long time ago in the 90's, I had a PnP Superhero named Backlash who I loved to write stories about. She was nothing like the Wildstorm Comic Character who came out later but had the same name.
So the same name never bothered me. But if they do a unique naming convention, I hope they get really strict on who's name gets deleted and when, so it free's up names, and not be like CoH who were afraid to delete every name that was not being used by an active account.

I took a break of a couple of years from the game, and when I came back, I *did* sub (pre freedom).

There would have to be a way for the person to be notified that this was happening though (when they are unsubbed), because sure as hell, if I discovered that my character names had been deleted (or even worse, my global name), and I had to pay to find that out...

The first thing that I would have done is issued a charge back against the company.

Side note: From what I can gather, the subscription is *purely* optional for CoT... so you cannot and *SHOULD NOT* base it on how long it has been since they last subscribed, because a subscription is not required to play the game. And the developers said on the kickstarter, that you *never* lose anything that you had when you were a subscriber.

I would so far as to state that also includes your character names.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Twisted Toon wrote:
Fireheart wrote:
@ Globals are just simpler.

That is what I was aiming at implying. I don't have a problem with @globals. I don't really have a problem with there being another (or more) character(s) with the same name as mine. IF you feel like you want to have a Happy Pirate Zathras, then, by all means, create Happy Pirate Zathras. I'm fairly sure that it wouldn't look the same as mine, or have the same back story.
Although, I do reacall making a character in the PnP Champions (first edition) game called The Silver Comet. His back story and costume was very similar to a comic character that I had never seen before. So, I can't say that no one would make a Happy Pirate Zathras like mine.

Back a long time ago in the 90's, I had a PnP Superhero named Backlash who I loved to write stories about. She was nothing like the Wildstorm Comic Character who came out later but had the same name.
So the same name never bothered me. But if they do a unique naming convention, I hope they get really strict on who's name gets deleted and when, so it free's up names, and not be like CoH who were afraid to delete every name that was not being used by an active account.

I took a break of a couple of years from the game, and when I came back, I *did* sub (pre freedom).
There would have to be a way for the person to be notified that this was happening though (when they are unsubbed), because sure as hell, if I discovered that my character names had been deleted (or even worse, my global name), and I had to pay to find that out...
The first thing that I would have done is issued a charge back against the company.
Side note: From what I can gather, the subscription is *purely* optional for CoT... so you cannot and *SHOULD NOT* base it on how long it has been since they last subscribed, because a subscription is not required to play the game. And the developers said on the kickstarter, that you *never* lose anything that you had when you were a subscriber.
I would so far as to state that also includes your character names.

Another reason not to go with unique names, as that allows me to troll others by using names they know people want and sitting on them.

Which is exactly what happened when CoH brought in a new server.

If they went unique name route, why wouldn't someone just spend the first of the headstart making as many characters as possible and snagging up all the names they could?

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In regards to getting emails

In regards to getting emails sent to my Global account (if this is how it will work) as long as the CharName is included in the 'To' field I can easily tell who that email is for.
If just @Global is used with no CharName then I still get the email but the 'To' field just shows @Global so I know its not a Specific Character email.

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Clearly, that just calls for

Clearly, that just calls for complete names - CharName@ Global.

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So now if i want to send a

So now if i want to send a tell, do i type name@global? annoying.

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Wanders wrote:
Wanders wrote:

Adelante wrote:
Hey. Today I met a man named Captian America except he was fat and short and had red ponytails.Tomorrow I'll meet a Captain America with blue hair who is skinny with orange skin
I hate name@global. Stick to the basics like CoH and WoW

Was that a typo? You could have both a "Captian America" and a "Captain America" even with unique character names. Misspelling, adding weird characters, and taking advantage of the fact that the game font caused some letters and numbers to look the same, are some of the ways that people "got the name they wanted" in CoH when it was already taken.
Anyway, given that they are going with one server, I don't think unique character names would work out well. If you see people using names in a way that annoys you, just be thankful that they have given you such a clear warning that you probably won't want to hang around them. :)

I meant that is what causes many players to become more clever with their names. I couldn't make "Captain America" so i looked up synomyms, other inspirations on internet. Thus "Citizen Prime" was born. That was an example what people would do to create more creative and unique names. name@global just allows people to be lazy and settle with whatever they initially thought of.

They're going with one server? hope it's a large world.

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

So now if i want to send a tell, do i type name@global? annoying.

According to some people, forcing everyone to have a unique character name is more annoying.

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

So now if i want to send a tell, do i type name@global? annoying.

You could just use @global, like before.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

I meant that is what causes many players to become more clever with their names. I couldn't make "Captain America" so i looked up synomyms, other inspirations on internet. Thus "Citizen Prime" was born. That was an example what people would do to create more creative and unique names. name@global just allows people to be lazy and settle with whatever they initially thought of.

Ah, gotcha. For my own part, I was fine with unique character names, and I approached it as you did. The thing is, I still have the option to be creative in a name@global scheme, and people who want to remake a particular PnP hero in the game (or who just didn't find stretching on the name choice as satisfying as we did) can be happy, too.

My sadness connected to it is that it makes the character name cosmetic (since the global is going to always be involved in knowing if it is really that character or not). If they go with making the @global part less obvious by default (like, having you mouse over the character name in team chat or the team list, in order to see the @global, by default), that could help. In any case, I think it is one of those cases where my sadness is more than outweighed by the number of players who will be much happier, so whatevs.

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I believe the current plan is

I believe the current plan is to mask @ Globals except under certain circumstances. Frankly, I always made global friends, rather than 'local' ones.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

AmbiDreamer wrote:
Anyway, why do we need a rule to make the character name unique to the account, as you suggested? IF we go with a global name, why can’t I use the same name for more than one of my characters?
If we absolutely are going to use non unique names @ global, there might be times I want to use the same 'character' as multiple toons. Am I missing a reason against this?

Strictly speaking? There is no reason it *couldn't* permit that... but you would then be expected to specify who you were logging in as by some method other than the character name. Since most people find names they can specify to be much "friendlier" than an arbitrary set of numbers that are only meaningful to the system internals, the usual assumption is that expecting a unique character name for character@global is preferable to the alternatives.
That said, if someone has a specific alternative to suggest that would support multiple characters of the same name *and not be annoying to the majority of the population trying to interact with those characters* (this bar raises it somewhat over just 'you being annoyed', unfortunately), there is nothing currently written in stone that requires that the character part of character@global be unique. Though it may well be one of the earlier things that does get locked down, for various reasons, so if you've got a good alternative *now* is the time to bring it up.

I mentioned earlier taking the route TSW went First name late name nick in the middle the nick would act as a global without the @ make that visible and then make the first and last name visible when you click on them. You would be able to identify them by the name combination when you click on it. Example

Gideon Ghost Cross Now there ca be more than one person that would have the ghost name but they won't have the same first and last name so by the name combination, you would be able to identify them. just a suggestion.

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Twisted Toon wrote:
Twisted Toon wrote:

... played as Duplicates of himself. I actually saw something creatively similar in CoH. ...

I remember doing TF's with MultipleGirl... who had all different AT's but the name Looked the Same. ;) I always knew it was Him! ;) and rushed to join the TF ASAP before it was filled.

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Gideon Cross wrote:
Gideon Cross wrote:

I mentioned earlier taking the route TSW went First name late name nick in the middle the nick would act as a global without the @ make that visible and then make the first and last name visible when you click on them. You would be able to identify them by the name combination when you click on it. Example
Gideon Ghost Cross Now there ca be more than one person that would have the ghost name but they won't have the same first and last name so by the name combination, you would be able to identify them. just a suggestion.

That works for TSW because of TSW's setting. Less so for a superhero setting, in which everyone is known by just their callsign.

May Spider-Girl Parker with her secret identity that just became unsecret.

What about those concepts that are Logan Wolverine ???

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Gideon Cross wrote:
I mentioned earlier taking the route TSW went First name late name nick in the middle the nick would act as a global without the @ make that visible and then make the first and last name visible when you click on them. You would be able to identify them by the name combination when you click on it. Example
Gideon Ghost Cross Now there ca be more than one person that would have the ghost name but they won't have the same first and last name so by the name combination, you would be able to identify them. just a suggestion.

That works for TSW because of TSW's setting. Less so for a superhero setting, in which everyone is known by just their callsign.
May Spider-Girl Parker with her secret identity that just became unsecret.
What about those concepts that are Logan Wolverine ???

If you think about it, it's similar you are playing characters who are still hiding their names and use their nick. No difference whether you are in a secret society or a super hero both require you to hide your identity. It won't break immersion if you don't click on the name only thing visible will be the nick. unless you need to identify someone I say the nick@whatever is more immersion breaking Spiderman@PeterParker.

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Gideon Cross wrote:
Gideon Cross wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Gideon Cross wrote:
I mentioned earlier taking the route TSW went First name late name nick in the middle the nick would act as a global without the @ make that visible and then make the first and last name visible when you click on them. You would be able to identify them by the name combination when you click on it. Example
Gideon Ghost Cross Now there ca be more than one person that would have the ghost name but they won't have the same first and last name so by the name combination, you would be able to identify them. just a suggestion.

That works for TSW because of TSW's setting. Less so for a superhero setting, in which everyone is known by just their callsign.
May Spider-Girl Parker with her secret identity that just became unsecret.
What about those concepts that are Logan Wolverine ???

If you think about it, it's similar you are playing characters who are still hiding their names and use their nick. No difference whether you are in a secret society or a super hero both require you to hide your identity. It won't break immersion if you don't click on the name only thing visible will be the nick. unless you need to identify someone I say the nick@whatever is more immersion breaking Spiderman@PeterParker.

I actually find "May Spider-Girl Parker" to be more immersion breaking that Spider-Girl@MayParker, because I can look at @MayParker and realize that's purely an OOC player account thing.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Gideon Cross wrote:
Brand X wrote:
Gideon Cross wrote:
I mentioned earlier taking the route TSW went First name late name nick in the middle the nick would act as a global without the @ make that visible and then make the first and last name visible when you click on them. You would be able to identify them by the name combination when you click on it. Example
Gideon Ghost Cross Now there ca be more than one person that would have the ghost name but they won't have the same first and last name so by the name combination, you would be able to identify them. just a suggestion.

That works for TSW because of TSW's setting. Less so for a superhero setting, in which everyone is known by just their callsign.
May Spider-Girl Parker with her secret identity that just became unsecret.
What about those concepts that are Logan Wolverine ???

If you think about it, it's similar you are playing characters who are still hiding their names and use their nick. No difference whether you are in a secret society or a super hero both require you to hide your identity. It won't break immersion if you don't click on the name only thing visible will be the nick. unless you need to identify someone I say the nick@whatever is more immersion breaking Spiderman@PeterParker.

I actually find "May Spider-Girl Parker" to be more immersion breaking that Spider-Girl@MayParker, because I can look at @MayParker and realize that's purely an OOC player account thing.

You know what? You do have a point.

"In the end there can be only one" The Highlander

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Frankly, I always made global friends, rather than 'local' ones.

Same here. If they're fun to play with, I don't really care what toon they are playing, I just want to know when they are online. I also global friended people I didn't want to play with under any circumstances. :)

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Why don't they do a vote? Or

Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.

I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.

@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.

Has this been voted on by the way?

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

If it's always hidden, this is a griefers (and stalkers) charter, it needs to be possible to display it. My understanding is that name@global is happening, but these things do sometimes change. On the "having to type name@global in tells" issue, I very rarely typed a name in chat/email in CoH, I usually retrieved it from a chat channel or friends list, I don't imagine this being any different in CoT although I have no particular knowledge on this.

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

As an idea... Blizzards naming scheme goes as thus:

1) ever PC has to have a unique name
2) There are no global chat channels (right now), that are cross server
3) To message someone on another server, you need to know both the character name AND the server that they are on
4) You have your battle.net ID which you can give to your friends so that they can tell when you are online (and also which game they are playing). I know that in WoW, you cannot find out someones battle.net ID just by "right clicking the name".

Basically, you can be trolled by all the people on a single account, and you have to block each of them individually.

Bioware:
Not too sure on how its changed since launch but this is how I remember it:
1) Unique character names per server
2) No global naming scheme.
3) No global chat channels
4) /ignores are on a *per character* basis.

Also note: they each of those have *multiple* servers per game, CoT is going single server route (as of right now, could change by launch)

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2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

This idea just plain sucks, because what if I am making one of my published characters? yes I published a comic, and a name that I had for a long time was taken just because the person wanted to be a douche and doesn't use it? What's your solution for that? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Uh ... with name@global, you

Uh ... with name@global, you wouldn't have to worry about Name Squatters (although you might have to worry about Global Squatters). Seems like a pretty good solution to that problem to me.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Uh ... with name@global, you wouldn't have to worry about Name Squatters (although you might have to worry about Global Squatters). Seems like a pretty good solution to that problem to me.

I know with the name@global I wouldn't have to worry about that. I wanna know what is her solution since she wants the opposite and thinks the opposite is so great.

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From the examples, they want

From the examples, they want to enforce multiple servers.

BTW, the way that CO handles sending /tells to name@global is to auto-suggest as you type. These suggestions come from people who are currently online, people who are in your team, in your guild, and on your friends list. So, if you started to send a /tell to me at Starlight_Saint@Fireheart, by the time you typed 'Star' there'd be a pop-up list of character names that started with 'Star...'

That could be convenient here, too.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

From the examples, they want to enforce multiple servers.
BTW, the way that CO handles sending /tells to name@global is to auto-suggest as you type. These suggestions come from people who are currently online, people who are in your team, in your guild, and on your friends list. So, if you started to send a /tell to me at Starlight_Saint@Fireheart, by the time you typed 'Star' there'd be a pop-up list of character names that started with 'Star...'
That could be convenient here, too.
Be Well!
Fireheart

They have said that they were looking a *single* server setup (think Champions Online)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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Yes, know

Yes, I know.

I posted that in response to the post just above, where Gideon Cross was asking what Adelante wanted.

Looks like we're all getting confused by a few contrarians. We are in agreement, that name@ global is a good method and are only concerned about how to implement it.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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What is this? Some pathetic

What is this? Some pathetic fool wishes to impersonate ME?! And with a silly attempt at my Global? FOOLS! I am @ LordNightmare, not @ LordNlghtmare!

Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...

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My vote is for Name@Global,

My vote is for Name@Global, but only display the Name part above my head in game, and the @global part in chat.

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Gideon Cross wrote:
Gideon Cross wrote:

Adelante wrote:
Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

This idea just plain sucks, because what if I am making one of my published characters? yes I published a comic, and a name that I had for a long time was taken just because the person wanted to be a douche and doesn't use it? What's your solution for that? Inquiring minds want to know.

I'm happy you're proud to show off your characters from your comics. But not everyone wants to be known. Celebrity/Fame is very particular, I'm not one to want it. I'm not saying you're fame hungry but wanting to show off the connection to your comics is your own prerogative.

Minotaur wrote:

Adelante wrote:
Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

If it's always hidden, this is a griefers (and stalkers) charter, it needs to be possible to display it. My understanding is that name@global is happening, but these things do sometimes change. On the "having to type name@global in tells" issue, I very rarely typed a name in chat/email in CoH, I usually retrieved it from a chat channel or friends list, I don't imagine this being any different in CoT although I have no particular knowledge on this.

I've always typed every name i send a tell to. If you're a fast typer (most gamers are, I was a hardcore WoW raider) then It's faster than to search for the name in other resources.

Having @global always visible is an issue with privacy because I don't want everyone to know who I make. And if someone is harassing me or was very rude, I'd make a new character. But if my @global is attached to that new character, they can still follow and do other things. Not neccessarily messaging me but imagine if some moron was kill stealing or using "Repel" from Kinetics in CoH and bounced all enemies away while I'm a lowbie. Exactly my point.

You should have the option to enable it. It shouldn't be automatic/default. Or if someone is so proud to show off their @global, then tell your friends about your @global like you can in CoH so you're eternally connected. Don't connect everyone globally before we even know one another.

About WoW's realID, there are global chat channels, you probably did not join them. Many of them have over 600 players chatting. /LFG was one of them. Again, it had to be a voluntary join and not automatic.

What other successful games shows name@global by default? It's a huge privacy issue we're overlooking.

My #2 issue with name@global is someone liking my name or character so much, they steal the name or idea. I'd feel robbed. It's not that big of an issue until it happens to you. And Developers/GMs won't have issues because their names will be blocked from other players to use.

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I think your forgetting how

I think your forgetting how CoH was. Just because CoH had unique names, one still had a global handle. I as a player could find out everyone's global handle just by seeing them. It was an option available in CoH, to check for one's global handle.

Also, they said CoT would be one giant server. So unique names won't work if the game is as popular as many hope. Even at 5k players, that's a lot of names, especially when one considers alts.

Also, CO gives you the option to hide globals, if you don't use that feature, it's really all on you, on why you're seeing people's globals when you chat.

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Adelante wrote:
Adelante wrote:

Gideon Cross wrote:
Adelante wrote:
Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

This idea just plain sucks, because what if I am making one of my published characters? yes I published a comic, and a name that I had for a long time was taken just because the person wanted to be a douche and doesn't use it? What's your solution for that? Inquiring minds want to know.

I'm happy you're proud to show off your characters from your comics. But not everyone wants to be known. Celebrity/Fame is very particular, I'm not one to want it. I'm not saying you're fame hungry but wanting to show off the connection to your comics is your own prerogative.
Minotaur wrote:
Adelante wrote:
Why don't they do a vote? Or follow how some of the best game publishers handle this example: Blizzard, Bioware. They may be the best developers for some reason. All their games have restrictions to unique characters.
I really think doing the name@global will also ruin the effect of CoH. When I played Champions Online, that was the first thing I noticed and it already just gave a odd feel. I didn't feel special anymore. And flying around seeing names@global also ruined the feel.
@global = no privacy. We shouldn't have the option of hiding it. IT should be hidden always. Privacy should be the #1 reason. #2 is everything else.
Has this been voted on by the way?

If it's always hidden, this is a griefers (and stalkers) charter, it needs to be possible to display it. My understanding is that name@global is happening, but these things do sometimes change. On the "having to type name@global in tells" issue, I very rarely typed a name in chat/email in CoH, I usually retrieved it from a chat channel or friends list, I don't imagine this being any different in CoT although I have no particular knowledge on this.

I've always typed every name i send a tell to. If you're a fast typer (most gamers are, I was a hardcore WoW raider) then It's faster than to search for the name in other resources.
Having @global always visible is an issue with privacy because I don't want everyone to know who I make. And if someone is harassing me or was very rude, I'd make a new character. But if my @global is attached to that new character, they can still follow and do other things. Not neccessarily messaging me but imagine if some moron was kill stealing or using "Repel" from Kinetics in CoH and bounced all enemies away while I'm a lowbie. Exactly my point.
You should have the option to enable it. It shouldn't be automatic/default. Or if someone is so proud to show off their @global, then tell your friends about your @global like you can in CoH so you're eternally connected. Don't connect everyone globally before we even know one another.
About WoW's realID, there are global chat channels, you probably did not join them. Many of them have over 600 players chatting. /LFG was one of them. Again, it had to be a voluntary join and not automatic.
What other successful games shows name@global by default? It's a huge privacy issue we're overlooking.
My #2 issue with name@global is someone liking my name or character so much, they steal the name or idea. I'd feel robbed. It's not that big of an issue until it happens to you. And Developers/GMs won't have issues because their names will be blocked from other players to use.

I believe that Blizzard's RealID allows the players to know and possibly contact pther players that are playing entirely different games. I know that I could tell when someone on my "friends list" was playing WoW when I was on Diablo III. I neer tried to contact them through the RealID system because he was just down the hall from me and it was faster to go talk to him.

I also recall that CoH allowed you to appear offline to just about everyone, at least on the friends lists and such. Kind of hard to hide the avatar running around and punching thugs in the face.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

I think your forgetting how CoH was. Just because CoH had unique names, one still had a global handle. I as a player could find out everyone's global handle just by seeing them. It was an option available in CoH, to check for one's global handle.
Also, they said CoT would be one giant server. So unique names won't work if the game is as popular as many hope. Even at 5k players, that's a lot of names, especially when one considers alts.
Also, CO gives you the option to hide globals, if you don't use that feature, it's really all on you, on why you're seeing people's globals when you chat.

Hey I'm not supporting the lack of global. Right now we're discussing the visual aspect. As in the @global will be visible. Totally aware CoH had a global system, it was nice and useful because it had multiple servers.

The introduction of Real ID and Global handles in WoW and CoH was to allow friends to communicate that were on different realms/servers. Now that we're going with one server....

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