Name Purge

[ShardWarrior]

Just now, Tyrannical said:

If I have to tell you that, then I guess you're the one here who isn't reading.

Well no, you are just upset that someone disagrees with a proposed policy as it is written.  Again, I have no issue releasing names for those accounts that are gone and have no intention of coming back and see no harm in at least reaching out to ask. 

[Ruin Mage]

Let me put it like this:

Names matter to people. If its a generic name akin to Blue Avenger, well that's asking for it. However, there are likely several names not-so generic that are sitting for 6+ months without activity. For some people, names matter because xXSephirothXx was one of the only things available for their controller. A unique naming method is harmful in some way, especially when some people do not want to pull out a dictionary to make a name.

The HC team does not need to give us anything in regards to "oh hey let me email this person because x name they have is up for grabs." - You are unironically asking for the team to do more work just because you don't have any better ideas. This is not a live service game run by professional developers. This is a private server for a game that got shut down in 2012. They do not and should not follow the same ideals as live service MMOs that are actively run by companies.
 

Edited November 7, 2020 by Shadeknight

[CitizenThirteen]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

How hard is it to use a free mass email service?  Querying what accounts are inactive should be no problem at all if they are able to do that to release names.

But identifying all inactive characters across all accounts?  It’s one thing to mass email your entire player base, but it’s another to have automative selection picking out the accounts with inactive characters.

[Ruin Mage]

i really kicked the hornet's nest when i made this thread.

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, CitizenThirteen said:

But identifying all inactive characters across all accounts?  It’s one thing to mass email your entire player base, but it’s another to have automative selection picking out the accounts with inactive characters.

I do not think it would need to pull individual character names, just accounts that have not been logged into at all in more than a year.

Edited November 7, 2020 by ShardWarrior

[Ruin Mage]

at this point this thread is going to make me bald before this year is over.

[Andreah]

If I haven't played a game in a year, I don't want an email reminding me about it. I get enough of those from old games I used to play, and I really ought to set up more/better rules to auto delete them.

 

 

[Alchemystic]

 

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

Well no, you are just upset that someone disagrees with a proposed policy as it is written.  Again, I have no issue releasing names for those accounts that are gone and have no intention of coming back and see no harm in at least reaching out to ask. 

 

Well no, I'm pointing out that the excuses you've given are baseless.

 

But if that's enough for you to take things personally and start making petty remarks, then... I guess I'm happy I'm not that insecure?

[CitizenThirteen]

Just now, ShardWarrior said:

I do not think it would need to pull names, just accounts.

I think the problem is there are folks who are sitting on hundreds of names on characters they don’t actually play.  So yeah, I do think they should target all accounts, not just inactive accounts.

 

It is stupid easy for someone to hang onto a name if they want to.  Being “gone from game with no way to personally log in” for an entire year, or even six months, is a huge stretch given how easy it is to get access to this game.  And this scenario would be such a small margin of the entire inactive player character base, it’s a stretch to use “broken computer” as a defense in the first place.  You can’t tell me that players out there don’t have a friend or loved one who could access the game for them.

 

 

[Ruin Mage]

Now that I took a moment to douse myself in water.

Here's all that I, personally, aim for in asking for a naming policy;

Fairness
It doesn't need to be a full year, but something with months still.

No Exemptions
No one is above anyone else. Not even for getting to 50.

No E-Mails
No. Just absolutely not. We aren't owed that courtesy.

[AerialAssault]

To be honest all of this is a good argument for the creation of a new City Info Tracker.

[Ruin Mage]

yes. please.

[ShardWarrior]

13 minutes ago, CitizenThirteen said:

I think the problem is there are folks who are sitting on hundreds of names on characters they don’t actually play.  So yeah, I do think they should target all accounts, not just inactive accounts.

 

It is stupid easy for someone to hang onto a name if they want to.  Being “gone from game with no way to personally log in” for an entire year, or even six months, is a huge stretch given how easy it is to get access to this game.  And this scenario would be such a small margin of the entire inactive player character base, it’s a stretch to use “broken computer” as a defense in the first place.  You can’t tell me that players out there don’t have a friend or loved one who could access the game for them.

 

 

If they are sitting on character names but playing other characters, the owner is still active and you still have the opportunity to contact them negotiate with them to release it.  Again, I am not sure whether or not people are allowed per the rules to have others log in for them as I think it may fall under the account sharing rule.  A GM would be able to clarify. 

 

Fair enough to say that courtesy emails is extra work, albeit really not all that much.  Personally, I think going with accounts not logged in over a year will free up the bulk of any names.  This game simply does not have the population to have that many names being hoarded.

[ShardWarrior]

25 minutes ago, Andreah said:

If I haven't played a game in a year, I don't want an email reminding me about it. I get enough of those from old games I used to play, and I really ought to set up more/better rules to auto delete them.

I think it safe to say most of us are the same.  However, in this case, any names you may have had here would get released and you were still given the opportunity to come back and chose not to.  Fair for all.

[TheEmpyrean]

I don't know if this idea has already been floated somewhere, but I always thought a name exchange and/or market could be awesome. 

 

...or they could keep globals unique and make names non-unique like some other games have.  I mean, how many Captain Marvels have there been, even just within Marvel Universe?

[Ruin Mage]

Best case scenario is that the devs figure out how to make a Champions Online style system. That's a pipe dream however.

Each server has a name thread, but the entire point of this suggestion is to clear up names that haven't been seen in a while.

[FrauleinMental]

2 hours ago, CitizenThirteen said:

Hey, all you military service members griping about the naming conventions...  I don’t get it.  Where the heck are y’all deploying to these days that’s so hard you can’t get internet?  We had internet in our FOB Iraq in 2006 for crying out loud, and we were a mix battalion of infantry and MPs who actually left the wire and weren’t a bunch of fobbits.  On top of that, just ask your parents/spouses/best friend to log in for ya once every thirty days or whatever.  Holy crap.  Never in my life would I ever have thought military service members would be freaking asking to be exempt from a video game naming policy...  like, if you’re SF or one of those poor infantry units that gets stuck in a BFE Afghanistan posting that doesn’t even get electricity, I get it, but I HIGHLY doubt that y’all are.

There was private internet service available at Camp Victory in 2008, but it wasn't fast enough (or stable enough) for me to log in.  Its speed was more like 'load a web page in 60 seconds' fast. 🙂  On the other hand, I lived in CHU-land with all the T-walls I'd ever want to see.

 

But no, I would never have asked for an exemption for this.  (Maybe I'm the wrong person to comment on this, since I'm not exactly an altoholic.)

[Andreah]

If I were the devs, I would put in the name freeing policy that had been arrived at before in place immediately and without warning. 

 

[GM Tempest]

I just purged around nine posts from this thread - if it keeps going off the rails it will be locked as I think nearly all discussion has finished anyway.

 

Our name release policy has not been put into effect yet but it is something we're aware of people wanting and something on our radar. It hasn't been dropped or forgotten, I can assure you of that.

 

As to dealing with military/other employments where other people have mentioned, it would be an exceedingly difficult thing for us to verify requiring either unreasonable volunteer hours and/or requiring the divulging of private information that wouldn't be something you generally want to just pass out - military IDs and the requisite verification is sensitive information, after all.

 

I do not think we will have exceptions to the policy (though do not take my word as law here, merely an observation on my part rather than policy decisions) so I would not advise planning for that eventuality.

 

In any case, please avoid getting too heated in your discussions. This is a valid topic of conversation, absolutely, but resorting to sniping at each other doesn't serve the purpose in advancing any commentary or conversation.

 

Enjoy your weekend!

[Greycat]

Coming at this as:

• Altoholic
• RPer
• since live,

didn't we already see on live that this wouldn't do much good? There wasn't a flood of people going "ooh, finally got this name!" either time (and the second was focused on lowbies, which was where the majority of names were freed up *and* where any supposed "name squatters" would likely be.)

 

Second, RPer-wise, I do have characters that are still under level 10. They serve - well, *roles,* but they aren't main-combat characters (and I've had some that would have no business being near a fight, much less making it to 50.) I highly doubt their names would be at risk (any more than my eternal-low-level base builders,) but that *is* someone who can stay low level for quite some time where the name is integral. They may not be on monthly or whatever frequency is chosen.

 

(I know, "well, PL them up." Then what has been accomplished other than wasting some of my time?)

 

Third, I have 100-ish characters. I do play them all. Some more frequently (Hami raid!) than others. If we're doing this *by character,* as suggested, rather than account, I want the option to sort by days offline and level.

 

Last but not least, doing this by character? What's to keep someone from taking a character name you've just not been on for a bit and actively name-squatting on it? Isn't that just defeating the purpose, and in fact making the situation worse? "Wow, between the SG's arcs, base building and everything else keeping me busy, I haven't played Favouriteguy for a while. Need to finish getting them to 50... what's this generic1232098745?"

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, CitizenThirteen said:

I think the problem is there are folks who are sitting on hundreds of names on characters they don’t actually play.  So yeah, I do think they should target all accounts, not just inactive accounts.

 

It is stupid easy for someone to hang onto a name if they want to.  Being “gone from game with no way to personally log in” for an entire year, or even six months, is a huge stretch given how easy it is to get access to this game.  And this scenario would be such a small margin of the entire inactive player character base, it’s a stretch to use “broken computer” as a defense in the first place.  You can’t tell me that players out there don’t have a friend or loved one who could access the game for them.

For sure people name sitting is a part of the problem, but again with those you can still get in contact with the owner of the name you are after to negotiate with them for releasing it.   There are several threads already on the forums for name releases.  People are willing to give them up.

 

Personally, I would bet the bulk of names to get released would be from accounts that are no longer active.  @Greycat brings up some good points too.  This did not work as well as intended back in the day.

[CrudeVileTerror]

I'm honestly kind of confused on the "name sitting" thing.

How are people so sure that's such a dramatic problem?  My perspective genuinely doesn't afford me the insight in to seeing that.  As far as I'm aware, any name sitters would need to personally be painting targets on their own backs by declaring "I took this name so no one else can use it."   Is that actually happening somewhere?

[Coyotedancer]

I know a few people who have a couple of pages of names held between them, mostly on level 1 place-holders that have never been played "Because the name was cool and someday I may want to use it", VT.

 

I does happen.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by Coyotedancer
Punctuation is a thing. <_<

[Ruin Mage]

It's not really a dramatic problem, but people don't exactly vocalize they have a specific name.

It's just that some names people do /getglobalname of and...well, it eventually becomes fruitless for one reason or another.
Some names just haven't been seen for half a year to a full year or so.

Some people have bragged about holding onto names, or some variant of the word brag.

[MTeague]

13 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Does this not fall under account sharing which as I recall is against the rules?

Account sharing, IMO, would be if the other person actually played your characters for longer than just to login / logout, or if they had other characters on the same account designated "theirs" vs "yours".  I would not count it account sharing if it was just "hey, I'm going to be gone for a 18 months, just do me a favor, here's my account info, log in my characters for 2 seconds each on the first of each month while I'm gone.".

 

Perhaps the devs would see it differently though.