Time to enforce the name holding expiration rules

[Rathulfr]

2 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

If I offended you I am sorry that.  I find I can piss people off just by saying hello.  Its just who I am.

 

I'm definitely offended that you just said hello.  GRRR!!!  😝😆

 

[Player2]

13 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Then again a (@account)McTough Guy hiding the global is a half ass fix for modern games. seeing Caption Atomic Awesome and two other guys standing next to you feels less unique; unless its friends and you are just joking a triplicate character.  CoH global is a chat channel and friend list.

 

Be unique for who you are, not what you are called.  As I point out whenever these discussions come up, names just are not unique.  The U.S. government doesn't even identify us by our names, they know us as numbers (Social Security) with names attached.  And even the most popular comic book hero names can suffer people copying them.  Captain Marvel has been used by a half dozen people within Marvel Comics, and a few more outside Marvel Comics.  Spider-Man?  I'm pretty sure there were at least 4 different people calling themselves Spider-Man operating in the Marvel 616 continuity at one time.  Superman and the Justice League?  DC created Chinese copies with the same names.  If you want to feel special because you have a unique name, I just cannot identify with or endorse that.  Be unique for the person behind the name.

 

13 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

If I offended you I am sorry that.  I find I can piss people off just by saying hello.  Its just who I am.

 

How dare you, sir?  How dare you?!

 

 

[Player2]

Most of the time "unique" names in comic books come from the fact that character trademarks are owned and infringing on them costs real world companies money in court to defend them (and costs the infringer for using them).  So no, there aren't any DC Captain Americas or Marvel Batmen, but only out of a desire to avoid litigation.  But within the companies own stories, names are often shared or passed along and we get stories where multiple characters of the same name end up teaming up for some adventure (or just fighting with each other).  It happens all the time.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Six Six said:

But then it's no longer a name release for the sake of releasing names. It becomes something I can wholeheartedly support. If an account hasn't been played for a given time, despite warnings of account termination, then the account deserves to be deleted. The release of names in said account is just a by product.

Name release because of Account deletion due to inactivity is not the same as finding a loop hole to release those names because I want them more, and I deserve the names because I (promise to) play more than whoever has it now.
 

Whoa! and do I understand correctly?  Big jump from name released do to inactivity to account termination owing to inactivity.  Granted it's free to make a game account, but WHEN, not if, I get a functional computer I do expect to come back and find my characters even if they've all turned into generic number 600,000 or whatever.  Anything more and I'd be very upset.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Would it be too onerous to have the rule be "If you haven't logged in for 365 days ALL of your character names are up for grabs"?

 

I mean, if you haven't logged in for a year you're obviously not playing the game anymore. If you do come back a year+ later you're better off starting with a new character and re-learning how to play the game anyway.

[Snowdaze]

I too want certain names being held by inactive players. But I do think any name policy truly needs to fit a dynamic to protect anyone who has basically gotten to the point of "owning a name."

Now as much as I want to protect all lvl 50's the amount of powerleveling of characters to 50 in less then 8 hours and have them forgotten by a player is disgusting to me on a personal level.

 

I do however know that the game tracks the number of hours a character has actually been played, go talk to any civilian with a name starting with "M".
Thus I think ANY character that has over X number hours of Patrol time (play) should be protected if at all possible, and I do this mainly because if anyone has been with their character for (as an example) 200 hours regardless of getting to lvl 50 or not, they probably have an emotional attachment to that character. I know of plenty of RPers on Everlasting that for whatever their own reasons just aren't lvl 50 but I see them on their said character ALL the time.

 

Now with that being said if a new system for name reservation was designed I feel a balance could be achieved using metrics of account activity, character level, character activity, and total play time of character, with the ultimate way of making a character yours forever if you actually have the character reach a certain length of Patrol Time. 

Now I recognize that there are loopholes to all things, and a character idling in a base for a week could easily rack up 168 hours of "patrol time." But lets be honest if they are idling in a base at least they are in the game and not inactive from an account standpoint, also if you are idling a character for that length of time just to achieve name protection is must obviously mean something to you.

Now the best thing we can all do is try and come to an accord of what the community deems fair as a name policy else odds are someway there just wont be any names left that don't have a number after them...

Edited December 10, 2020 by Snowdaze

[Greycat]

32 minutes ago, Snowdaze said:

I do however know that the game tracks the number of hours a character has actually been played, go talk to any civilian with a name starting with "M".
Thus I think ANY character that has over X number hours of Patrol time (play) should be protected if at all possible, and I do this mainly because if anyone has been with their character for (as an example) 200 hours regardless of getting to lvl 50 or not, they probably have an emotional attachment to that character. I know of plenty of RPers on Everlasting that for whatever their own reasons just aren't lvl 50 but I see them on their said character ALL the time.

 

That activity tracker is .... not accurate. It can be thrown off.

 

Example I tend to give, from back on live - Three of my friends and I set up a "shield squad." We played together, coordinated the time, etc. Didn't really play if the others weren't there (we did have alts, after all.) Yes, I'd log on and do some buying/selling, etc. but not, say, run task forces, MSRs, etc. without the others.

 

For them, the "patrol time" at 50 was ~80 hours - maybe 5 hours of variation between them.

I had 300-some hours. And definitely was *not* on that character that much more.

[Snowdaze]

1 minute ago, Greycat said:

That activity tracker is .... not accurate. It can be thrown off.

 

Example I tend to give, from back on live - Three of my friends and I set up a "shield squad." We played together, coordinated the time, etc. Didn't really play if the others weren't there (we did have alts, after all.) Yes, I'd log on and do some buying/selling, etc. but not, say, run task forces, MSRs, etc. without the others.

 

For them, the "patrol time" at 50 was ~80 hours - maybe 5 hours of variation between them.

I had 300-some hours. And definitely was *not* on that character that much more.

I don't feel this is a reason to shoot down the idea. But a focus group set to identify bugs in the system to allow for improvement and utilization.

[Greycat]

1 minute ago, Snowdaze said:

I don't feel this is a reason to shoot down the idea. But a focus group set to identify bugs in the system to allow for improvement and utilization.

I'm not shooting down anything. I'm just pointing out that that tracker isn't necessarily accurate.

[Rathulfr]

3 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Whoa! and do I understand correctly?  Big jump from name released do to inactivity to account termination owing to inactivity.  Granted it's free to make a game account, but WHEN, not if, I get a functional computer I do expect to come back and find my characters even if they've all turned into generic number 600,000 or whatever.  Anything more and I'd be very upset.

 

I'm not suggesting that idle accounts be deleted.  I'm suggesting that idle accounts be preserved, but the character names held by that account are no longer reserved for only that account indefinitely (as per the established character name retention policy).

 

In other words, if you have an active account, you're not subject to the character name retention policy; however, if your account goes idle for at least X period of time (at least one year sounds fair -- maybe two years if we're really pushing it), then the character name retention policy applies as defined.  If you can't logon to your account (not character) at least once a year -- even with extenuating circumstances, you should be able to at least open a support ticket to ask for an extension/bypass.

 

But if someone can't be arsed to logon to their account at least once a year, nor to ask for an extension through official channels, then I suspect such accounts are truly idle, and their character names are fair game for other active players.  The characters themselves would be preserved on the account, but their names might be changed to "Generic_0123456".  That seems reasonable enough to me.

 

[Oubliette_Red]

I'm not sure how HC intends on implementing the name release, but on Legacy when the devs ran the script to release names (all of twice), it did not generic any character name that fell withing the given parameters. A released name only genericed when someone else created a character (or renamed an existing character) and chose the released name. So, the released name could sit there unclaimed and the owner could log in a year later and the released name would still be on their character and would once again be claimed.

 

If I recall correctly, one of the Legacy devs mentioned that of all the names released when they ran the script, the amount of names claimed from that pool was a single digit percent.

 

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Rathulfr said:

 

I'm not suggesting that idle accounts be deleted.  I'm suggesting that idle accounts be preserved, but the character names held by that account are no longer reserved for only that account indefinitely (as per the established character name retention policy).

 

In other words, if you have an active account, you're not subject to the character name retention policy; however, if your account goes idle for at least X period of time (at least one year sounds fair -- maybe two years if we're really pushing it), then the character name retention policy applies as defined.  If you can't logon to your account (not character) at least once a year -- even with extenuating circumstances, you should be able to at least open a support ticket to ask for an extension/bypass.

 

But if someone can't be arsed to logon to their account at least once a year, nor to ask for an extension through official channels, then I suspect such accounts are truly idle, and their character names are fair game for other active players.  The characters themselves would be preserved on the account, but their names might be changed to "Generic_0123456".  That seems reasonable enough to me.

 

Okay I've no issue with that, seems very reasonable.  Glad I was misunderstanding.  Thank you for clarifying.

[Doomguide2005]

5 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Would it be too onerous to have the rule be "If you haven't logged in for 365 days ALL of your character names are up for grabs"?

 

I mean, if you haven't logged in for a year you're obviously not playing the game anymore. If you do come back a year+ later you're better off starting with a new character and re-learning how to play the game anyway.

Yes and no.  In general that's probably fairly accurate but I'm personally staring at maybe not being able to get a 'new' computer until maybe refund time.  That could come awfully close to a years span since I last logged in. While there are some things I'd yet to relearn from Live (particularly Incarnates) I am on these forums ... a lot.  Most of what I need to learn is probably completely new stuff, not stuff I've forgotten, again.  Probably the one and only name I'd be truly bummed to lose is not likely to be chosen by anyone else and also hit veteran level 6 prior to my computer going belly up so she should be safe by their stated policy.

[Moka]

On 12/9/2020 at 11:08 AM, Purrfekshawn said:

The easy solution would be this:

Toon Level:

1-20: if not played 30 days or more name will be genericized (TOON_NAME_%randomnumber%)

21-49: if not played 60 days or more name will be genericized (TOON_NAME_%randomnumber%)

50: if not played 90 days or more name will be genericized (TOON_NAME_%randomnumber%)

A 50 should keep their name always imo.

[Alchemystic]

To all yall just saying "just read a thesaurus lol"

 

What if, now this might be hard to comprehend, but people already did that, and THOSE words are taken too.

 

Take your time processing it, I know it might be a bit much.

[Doc_Scorpion]

49 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

If I recall correctly, one of the Legacy devs mentioned that of all the names released when they ran the script, the amount of names claimed from that pool was a single digit percent.

Your recollection matches mine.  There was no gold rush of people claiming newly released names.

I've always thought that the assertion "there's all these kewl names locked up!" to be a bit questionable anyhow.
 

35 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

In general that's probably fairly accurate but I'm personally staring at maybe not being able to get a 'new' computer until maybe refund time.  That could come awfully close to a years span since I last logged in.

You, and other folks who've been unable to login, are why we need a carefully orchestrated notification campaign before the names are released...  and a way to preserve the account via email.  Sure, sure, there will be a few folks who don't actually play who'll login or start a ticket or whatever.  But it's not going to be a significant percentage of the total.

[MTeague]

I was very glad to get Thundercrow for my Storm/Sonic defender.  NO VARIATON of that name would have been acceptable to me, because it's a recreation of a character from live, and that exact spelling of the name mattered to me.  If I could not have had that name, I simply would not have created the character.  I would have chosen different powersets and rolled a completely different character.  

 

That said, I also wouldn't consider it a great tragedy if I couldn't get the exact name.  There were many servers on live, it's very possible other people had the name on live on other servers, and if they got it first, good on them, and too bad for me.  Or if someone on homecoming who never played live got it first?  Good on them, too bad for me.  There were several names I could not get.  Some characters I simply did not create.  Other characters where the entire concept was brand new, and I wasn't emotionally attached to a given precise name, I was willing to flex a LOT more on.

• Bluejay was gone. Agent Bluejay was not. Easy change.
• Fathom was gone.  Deepfathom was not. Easy change for a water-sonic resonance.
• Havok was gone. Red Havok was not. So piled on the Cold War stereotypes and made the brute russian with the hammer-and-sickle on his chest.
• Glacier Girl was gone. And every remote direct reworking of that name I was prepared to accept. But I did get Frozanna.  (Though I can't help but hear Gilda Radner say Frosanne Frosannadanna in the back of my head...)
• Fixer was gone.  So he became Fixeur, and he's from Paris.
• Voltron was long since gone for an Electric.  But I did get Superinductor.  (and now I mentally hear Rush "Superconductor" every time I load him up...)

etc.  You can often find something. But it really does some down to your own personal "How much are you willing to vary it by?".

[Hardship]

I can get behind a name release IF it is based on ACCOUNT inactivity and not character inactivity. I have some characters that only make an appearance once in a great while. However, I would be upset if they lost their name because they were on the inactive reserve roster for too long. 

 

[nightroarer]

20 minutes ago, Hardship said:

I can get behind a name release IF it is based on ACCOUNT inactivity and not character inactivity. I have some characters that only make an appearance once in a great while. However, I would be upset if they lost their name because they were on the inactive reserve roster for too long. 

 

This is an important point and one I hope HC takes seriously.

 

In a game that seriously promotes alt creation, draconian every-so-many-days per character login rules are not practical. As others have noted in this thread, an account login rule might be doable, but I'd say a year would be ideal. Three months is too short; people take breaks, life happens. Active accounts should not lose character names.

 

Also, as noted earlier in this thread, when Paragon implemented this rule--on a much larger playerbase--there was no rush to claim the released names. The assumption that implementing a name release rule will somehow open up a plethora of "good" names is not backed by facts or evidence. It's wishful thinking.

 

Personally, I enjoyed CO's non-unique naming system. With all the characters I created, I never ran into another character with the same name. However, I'm also fine with the unique naming system in CoH.

[Apparition]

14 minutes ago, nightroarer said:

This is an important point and one I hope HC takes seriously.

 

In a game that seriously promotes alt creation, draconian every-so-many-days per character login rules are not practical. As others have noted in this thread, an account login rule might be doable, but I'd say a year would be ideal. Three months is too short; people take breaks, life happens. Active accounts should not lose character names.

 

Also, as noted earlier in this thread, when Paragon implemented this rule--on a much larger playerbase--there was no rush to claim the released names. The assumption that implementing a name release rule will somehow open up a plethora of "good" names is not backed by facts or evidence. It's wishful thinking.

 

Personally, I enjoyed CO's non-unique naming system. With all the characters I created, I never ran into another character with the same name. However, I'm also fine with the unique naming system in CoH.

 

That playerbase also had a cap of about three dozen characters per shard, unlike Homecoming's thousand characters per shard.  It's comparing apples vs. oranges.

[nightroarer]

Just now, Apparition said:

 

That playerbase also had a cap of about three dozen characters per shard, unlike Homecoming's thousand characters per shard.  It's comparing apples vs. oranges.

Not really; maybe different types of apples. It just meant that we ran characters on multiple shards. The names were still taken and still had the opportunity to be released.

 

Regardless, the rest of my comment still stands. In a game that promotes alt creation, active accounts should not lose their character names. Punishing active players just because they focus on different characters at different times is not a good solution.

[Greycat]

9 minutes ago, Apparition said:

That playerbase also had a cap of about three dozen characters per shard, unlike Homecoming's thousand characters per shard.  It's comparing apples vs. oranges.

That playerbase also had *years* of accounts - and far *more* acounts (180,000 active subscribers at peak - or active accounts - with some obviously inactive before and after that.) And I can't find the anniversary post with how many million characters there were. So, no, it's not, really - unless you think everyone is running (or sitting on) several hundred characters.

 

We have a *long* way to go before hitting those numbers. And the effects of the script were - well, as described.

[PeregrineFalcon]

I hope you all realize that a LOT the of people who are arguing against releasing names are doing so because they logged on a few days (or months) before you even knew that Homecoming existed and created a zillion placeholder characters using every cool-sounding name they could find. They don't actually play those characters. They might play them later, or they might sell the name off or whatever.

 

But what they desperately don't want to do is have to log in to all 836 characters for the first time since April 2019 in order to keep the names, and they don't want to lose those names. And they certainly don't want YOU to be able to have those names.

 

Now everyone's going to attack me for one reason or another, or point out how they're the exception or claim some sort of edge-case, or whatever. That's fine. The more you push back against the perfectly reasonable assertion that people who are no longer playing this game shouldn't be able to keep their character names for all of eternity the more convinced I'll become that I'm right.

[Coyotedancer]

5 hours ago, Hardship said:

I can get behind a name release IF it is based on ACCOUNT inactivity and not character inactivity. I have some characters that only make an appearance once in a great while. However, I would be upset if they lost their name because they were on the inactive reserve roster for too long. 

 

 

I actually disagree that it should be account-based... I think if holding the name of a largely (or completely-) inactive character is important to a player, then it' s not too much of an ask for them to log onto the character periodically. It's a time investment to have to go through and ping all of your Inactives, sure... But it's also a way to make holding a substantial number of "Nabbed just in case I ever want to use them"-names (Which absolutely DOES happen) less attractive. That's a good thing, I think. 

[Lockpick]

On 12/10/2020 at 8:04 AM, GM Impervium said:

All the same people who want names freed up, are the same people who are most likely to be negatively impacted if things go wrong. So we HAVE to get it right the first time. It's a huge undertaking, so we just ask for patience while we dot our i's and cross our t's. Thank you 😃

 

Or you could just announce that you will not make any changes to the current system and just shut down the entire issue.  The current system is exactly how it was on Live.  Nothing is being broken by the current system.  It has worked since 2004.  The number of players on HC is drastically reduced when compared to Live, so the number of names taken on HC compared to Live is likely much less.  Why make this an issue at all?  I would suggest just shutting it down by stating you do not plan to make any changes.

 

After all, from a HC team standpoint there is nothing but downside.  You make a mistake people get upset at you.  People lose a name and they get upset at you.