Clearing locked character names

[Ghost]

20 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

I thought there were time limits?

 

That aside, what happens if you get diagnosed with cancer? Fight through that for a year and a half, finally get a clean bill of health and return and your name is gone?

Or have a stroke fight through that then have to learn how to use your left side again and now alittle over 2 years have passed and you come back?

It's a slippery slope folks on what is ultimately right in situations like that.

Btw those examples; ppl in our VG saved the names of our friend who passed from cancer and I saved the names of another friend who has had multiple heart attacks. We have since made toons in honor of them and would gladly give them up if they could come back.

Every decision that a person has to make, has countless What Ifs.  

That doesn't mean something shouldn't change. 

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Ghost

[Luminara]

36 minutes ago, tidge said:

As soon as I am tempted to think that "names should be released": I imagine that the name was released, but somebody else wanted it more than I did and got it before me.

 

[ZemX]

What if there's a nuclear war!  What if aliens!?

 

Good grief people.  This was a simple suggestion.  It is not nefarious.  It is not cruel.  It's been done in THIS game on Live.  It is done routinely in other MMOs.   Nobody is kicking puppies or clubbing baby seals.  Nobody is being "harmed".  If you think this is pure evil that is your own extremely ludicrously exaggerated (in my opinion) opinion, not some "fact".

 

We're talking about names in a game.  Grab some perspective please and take the melodrama down about eleventy notches before this whole thread gets locked.  Unless some of you are trying to do that, I guess.

 

If you don't like the idea that's all you have to say.  You don't have to accuse the people who disagree with you of war crimes.  FFS.  Bunch of drama queens some of you.

[ZacKing]

44 minutes ago, Ghost said:

I understand what you’re saying.

I just don’t agree with a “do no harm/make everyone happy” mentality.

IMO it’s impossible.

 

Release the names - people who haven’t played are not happy.

Lock the names - people who are playing/want to play are not happy.

 

How does a person decide whose happiness is more important to the greater good of the community?

 

Like I said before, it's ok for someone to get upset so long as its the other guy.  that seems to be the prevailing mentality.

 

36 minutes ago, Ghost said:

I want names released to make it easier for newer players , because I want this community to grow.  If one new person tried to log in today, create a toon and is not able to come up with a name because they don't have the creative ability to do so, and then quits out of frustration - that is someone we lost.  For what?  Now we have 2 people not playing.  The one who quit, and the one who hasn't logged in since 2019.

 

What about the people logging back in to come back and finding all their stuff renamed and quit out of frustration?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ZacKing]

5 minutes ago, ZemX said:

What if there's a nuclear war!  What if aliens!?

 

Good grief people.  This was a simple suggestion.  It is not nefarious.  It is not cruel.  It's been done in THIS game on Live.  It is done routinely in other MMOs.   Nobody is kicking puppies or clubbing baby seals.  Nobody is being "harmed".  If you think this is pure evil that is your own extremely ludicrously exaggerated (in my opinion) opinion, not some "fact".

 

We're talking about names in a game.  Grab some perspective please and take the melodrama down about eleventy notches before this whole thread gets locked.  Unless some of you are trying to do that, I guess.

 

If you don't like the idea that's all you have to say.  You don't have to accuse the people who disagree with you of war crimes.  FFS.  Bunch of drama queens some of you.

 

Are you reading some of your posts?  LMAO 

[Dazl]

True if you haven’t logged in for 2 years, odds are you are not coming back so I can see releasing those names. As far as creating a name, it’s really not that hard and there are plenty of great names out there, you just have to be creative. You surely shouldn’t have to substitute numbers for letters in any name. I come up with new names all the time that surprise me because they aren’t already taken. Given that the population is smaller on HC than it was on live, it should be even easier.

[Zhym]

I don't mind looking for new names when I think of one and it's been taken.  Usually, that just means I wasn't as clever and original as I thought I was.  And if I'm really tied to a name, there are always ways to get sort of the same name.  For example, I really wanted to make Canned Heat (a fire blaster robo cop, of course) because I had that name on a Live server, but it was taken (darn you, whoever has Canned Heat!), but I had my choice between CannedHeat, Canned.Heat, and Canned-Heat (and probably .Canned Heat. and other similar variations).  At one point my character Tomcat was on Excelsior at the same time as Tom Cat and Tom-cat (we really should have teamed). 

 

I have also created some concept characters with cool names (I think, anyway) that went nowhere, mostly because the build didn't work—but I didn't delete the characters because I might want to make a new character with that name someday, or maybe I'll end up playing them after all (never fear, Statsman the Kin/Regen Brute, your day may come—but maybe not in your current form, because that powerset combo sucks).   

 

But I also get not wanting to be blocked from a cool name by someone who is just name-squatting and hasn't logged in since 2019. 

 

Here's an idea that's probably been proposed and may have lots of flaws anyway: how about instead of the devs simply freeing names, they set up a way to have "name auctions?"  Here's how it would work: if you want a name that's already taken and <insert criteria here: time since player logged in, time since character has been played, character level, etc.>, you can have it put up for auction.  Make the minimum bid something that is a reasonable consolation prize for losing a name: 100 million inf seems like a decent starting point, but I could see an argument that it should be higher.  Everyone gets to bid on the name, and the owner of the name gets an e-mail notifying them of the auction.  All they have to do to stop the auction is log in or write back and say "I'd like to keep the name please."  If they don't, then after some period of time (a week?), the winning bidder gets to use the name for a character and the original owner of the name gets however much inf the high bid was worth.

 

Like I said, I'm sure there are tons of issues with that plan (not the least of which is that it would probably be way too much trouble to implement), but I thought it might be interesting to think about, at least.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Zhym

[ZacKing]

Having auctions for names gives an unfair advantage to existing players who have the funds.  Newer players who are inf poor would lose out.

[Zhym]

2 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

Having auctions for names gives an unfair advantage to existing players who have the funds.  Newer players who are inf poor would lose out.

The advantage existing players would have is one of many flaws with the idea, yes.  I'm not entirely sure it's unfair—players with lots of funds have lots of advantages—and at least this way, people who lose names get something in return and that something has a chance of having some relationship to the value of the name.  But I may be thinking too much like an economist.

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

 

Like I said before, it's ok for someone to get upset so long as its the other guy.  that seems to be the prevailing mentality.

 

 

What about the people logging back in to come back and finding all their stuff renamed and quit out of frustration?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do you decide who should be upset?  Do you always side with the other person?  Do you feel they are the victim, and need to be defended?

If the prevailing mentality was we should never release the names, would your opinion differ? 

I'm honestly curious, and hope you don't take it as me attacking you.

 

Its just my opinion - but I would rather we believe a new player will stick around, rather than hope someone will return after two plus years. 

 

 

 

Like I brought up in an earlier post.

Most, if not all states have laws governing abandoned vehicles.

They are required to send notification to the owners after a certain time period has lapsed - usually only a few days.

If the vehicle is not moved/picked up within a reasonable amount of time, it is towed away and sold at auction. 

That is actual property.   Bought, paid for, owned.

 

I think after 2 years, it reasonable to do the same thing (minus the auction part)  for something that is not bought, paid for or owned.

 

  

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Ghost

[roleki]

If a name is already taken I get annoyed at myself for thinking such an obvious name would be available, then I roll up something even worse.

 

That's how I end up with a VL30+ dude named Obscured Face Guy.

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, Dazl said:

Given that the population is smaller on HC than it was on live, it should be even easier.

It should be, but isn't necessarily.

 

You see, a ton of people logged into this game, back in April 2019, saw that there were a thousand free character slots and proceeded to create 857 place-holder/name-camper characters. Per server.

 

The last suggestion thread about character names suggested that the player should have to log in with each individual character in order to hold onto the name. Needless to say the flames in response to that suggestion were epic! The name-campers hated the idea of having to log in to all of those characters almost as much as they hate the idea of allowing those names to be released so that you can use them.

[Apparition]

Yeah, comparing live player numbers versus Homecoming player numbers is comparing apples to oranges.  On live, you could have a maximum of 36 characters per server per account.  On Homecoming, you can have a maximum of 1,000 characters per server per account.  Huge difference.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Apparition

[Blackbird71]

On 8/23/2021 at 9:30 AM, Apparition said:

IMO, if a person hasn’t logged in for two years or more (military or otherwise, level 50 or otherwise), then he or she is never coming back.

 

There were a ton of people who made a lot of characters between April 2019 and September 2019, left Homecoming, and are simply never coming back.

 

You would be surprised.  I took breaks near that long on Live and still came back.  CoH was always the MMO I'd come back to.

[GraspingVileTerror]

As ever, there are players willing to help those who are having trouble with finding a name for their new characters.

I linked the N.A.B.bers thread a little while ago, and I'll be even more explicit about it this time:

- The debate over freeing up names currently in use, regardless of how long the player has been offline, is something the Homecoming Team are fully aware of.

- They've made a tentative policy which will go in to effect when they deem it is appropriate to do so.

- I don't know about the rest of you, but I haven't seen a lot of situations that lead me to believe the Homecoming Team will be coerced (or even politely convinced) to deploy the name release policy until they're ready to do so by the metrics of their own (arguably inscrutable) standards.

 

In the meantime, your collective time is probably best served tapping in to the creativity which other members of the community are more than willing to share, free of charge!

The Name Release isn't Dark Souls.  Smashing your foreheads against it perpetually isn't likely to be fruitful.

 

If you can't get the name you want, let us help you compromise on a name that you might just love even more.  

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21400-name-assistance-brigade-the-nabbers/

[Blackbird71]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

Yeah, comparing live player numbers versus Homecoming player numbers is comparing apples to oranges.  On live, you could have a maximum of 36 characters per server per account.  On Homecoming, you can have a maximum of 1,000 characters per server per account.  Huge difference.

 

OK, but now get the numbers for how many people actually use 1000 character slots.  I'm an incurable altaholic, and even I only have around a hundred characters on my primary server.  I'm sure the average count of characters per server per account is much, much lower than 1000.

Just do some back of the napkin calculations based on Live's peak subscription count, estimating total subscriptions over the life of the game, HC accounts (based on server loads, etc.) and average characters per server per account for both Live and HC, and I think you'll find that the number of used names per server is at least comparable, if not, Live is higher.

[ForeverLaxx]

6 hours ago, Ghost said:

I want names released to make it easier for newer players , because I want this community to grow.  If one new person tried to log in today, create a toon and is not able to come up with a name because they don't have the creative ability to do so, and then quits out of frustration - that is someone we lost.  For what?  Now we have 2 people not playing.  The one who quit, and the one who hasn't logged in since 2019.

I'm not a fan of name-campers any more than the next guy, but sorry, I don't go for the emotional argument either. "Think of the newbies" hits the same for me as "think of the children." Emotional arguments are automatically weak arguments because they're not based on any kind of logic.

 

The most "fair" system is the one we have, which is: First Come, First Served. As someone already pointed out, during Live (when we had many, many more players) the Devs ran a program to free up names that they felt would be the least missed by anyone returning to the game. In a relative ocean of players, compared to our tiny little pond, that program freed up so few names that it wasn't even worth doing and they only ran it twice before figuring that out. Live had more reason to care about taken names, and even Live gained almost nothing by trying to reclaim those names.

 

If a population as large as Live was, when compared to ours, found no real use in freeing up names, how can anyone argue that it's so imperative that names be "reclaimed" here? I'm sure the argument is going to be "they chose too restrictive of a sample" but there's no other type of sample to pick from. The only person who really gets to say "they'll never come back" are the owners of the account/characters themselves, and who's to say they won't change their mind later? While I'm glad the game is still here, I log in infrequently and I know I wouldn't want to come back in 6 months to a year and find a character I spent time building a backstory and descriptive name for was now GenericHero1234 simply because some vocal mob decided my name was too good to keep to myself.

 

So no thanks. You can take your emotional appeal, and everyone else who thinks they're more deserving of a name can take their ego, and stuff it. When the Live Devs saw no appreciable return on the reclaim initiative, it makes even less sense here.

[Ghost]

29 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

I'm not a fan of name-campers any more than the next guy, but sorry, I don't go for the emotional argument either. "Think of the newbies" hits the same for me as "think of the children." Emotional arguments are automatically weak arguments because they're not based on any kind of logic.

 

The most "fair" system is the one we have, which is: First Come, First Served. As someone already pointed out, during Live (when we had many, many more players) the Devs ran a program to free up names that they felt would be the least missed by anyone returning to the game. In a relative ocean of players, compared to our tiny little pond, that program freed up so few names that it wasn't even worth doing and they only ran it twice before figuring that out. Live had more reason to care about taken names, and even Live gained almost nothing by trying to reclaim those names.

 

If a population as large as Live was, when compared to ours, found no real use in freeing up names, how can anyone argue that it's so imperative that names be "reclaimed" here? I'm sure the argument is going to be "they chose too restrictive of a sample" but there's no other type of sample to pick from. The only person who really gets to say "they'll never come back" are the owners of the account/characters themselves, and who's to say they won't change their mind later? While I'm glad the game is still here, I log in infrequently and I know I wouldn't want to come back in 6 months to a year and find a character I spent time building a backstory and descriptive name for was now GenericHero1234 simply because some vocal mob decided my name was too good to keep to myself.

 

So no thanks. You can take your emotional appeal, and everyone else who thinks they're more deserving of a name can take their ego, and stuff it. When the Live Devs saw no appreciable return on the reclaim initiative, it makes even less sense here.

Sorry you don’t like it - but that’s your problem.

I explained my reasoning for liking the idea, which I have a right to do.  You don’t have to like it or accept it.  It is what it is. 

 

just like you have the right to seemingly get upset at a suggestion.

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Ghost

[GraspingVileTerror]

I think adding name auctions would promote actual name squatting tactics for the purposes of in-game profit.  Some folks would roll multiple accounts just to come up with as many catchy names as possible.

And as someone pointed out earlier, the purchase of names would greatly favour players who are Inf-rich.

 

A name lottery might be more fair than an auction, but even that probably isn't necessarily a reasonable system either.

[WanderingAries]

3 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I think adding name auctions would promote actual name squatting tactics for the purposes of in-game profit.  Some folks would roll multiple accounts just to come up with as many catchy names as possible.

And as someone pointed out earlier, the purchase of names would greatly favour players who are Inf-rich.

 

A name lottery might be more fair than an auction, but even that probably isn't necessarily a reasonable system either.

 

This has so much accuracy in it that it hurts because you Know that Someone is out there to prove a point or just That bored.

[Snarky]

 

how can you kill that which has no life?

[ZacKing]

15 hours ago, Ghost said:

How do you decide who should be upset?  Do you always side with the other person?  Do you feel they are the victim, and need to be defended?

If the prevailing mentality was we should never release the names, would your opinion differ? 

I'm honestly curious, and hope you don't take it as me attacking you.

 

No worries man I don't take it as an attack.  I'd prefer no one get upset or offended which is why I said its worth the huge undertaking to rework the code to allow for names to work like they do in later Cryptic games.  And for those who will complain, yes I know its a huge, huge, huge job to do that.  But then no one has to lose out on a name they might like.  In this case here where there's a lot of names on dead accounts from when the game was made public in 2019, I don't see the problem releasing them if those accounts were not logged in at all for 2 years or more.

[ZemX]

11 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

If a population as large as Live was, when compared to ours, found no real use in freeing up names, how can anyone argue that it's so imperative that names be "reclaimed" here?

 

There has to be some context missing from this claim.  Was there already an automatic name release for unpaid accounts?  Or just that script?  Because if it was just the script cleaning up abandoned accounts, it should have found TONS of names to release.  The number of active accounts is a small fraction of total accounts in any MMO.  At the point in time when WoW reached 100 million total accounts, it had 7.6 million active accounts.  

 

Just look at Homecoming Stats.  Last posted in 2020.  The Februrary 2020 total accounts was 160K.  Active accounts? 32K.  Granted that is just active for that month and we've been talking about two years inactive, but it hints at how many people who once created an account are probably not playing anymore.  If even a tenth of those accounts hadn't logged in since late August 2019, a name release would hit sixteen thousand accounts times however many characters were in each.  Probably an average of more than one each.

[Greycat]

1 minute ago, ZemX said:

 

There has to be some context missing from this claim.  Was there already an automatic name release for unpaid accounts?  Or just that script?  Because if it was just the script cleaning up abandoned accounts, it should have found TONS of names to release.  The number of active accounts is a small fraction of total accounts in any MMO.  At the point in time when WoW reached 100 million total accounts, it had 7.6 million active accounts.  wever many characters were in each.  Probably an average of more than one each.

 

There was never an automated name release. That information was copied directly from the wiki which talked (accurately) about both times that script was used. They kept the script handy (and could modify it,) but never felt it worthwhile to rerun it after the second time.

 

And yes, the script found "tons" of names to release (note, it didn't set all the characters to "generic," just marked the names as available.)  If the account was inactive (due to suspension, not having an active subscription, whatever - don't forget, this was pre-Freedom) for 90 days, and the character was under level 35, the name was marked as available.

 

The second time it was run, they just changed the level to level 5 and under, as they found the majority of names freed were at that level. The second time, frankly, should have had more impact since it was run in preparation for people being able to transfer servers and rename characters.

 

But here's the thing. Even though all those names were *released,* they weren't necessarily names anyone *wanted.*  As the article itself states:

 

Quote

Long before City of Heroes Freedom launched, the development team decided that running the scripts wasn't freeing up an appreciable number of character names, and has not run the script since the second wave.

 

Honestly, the script chould have had one more "ideal" time to activate - though I don't think it would have made a difference. The second time the script was run was August 29, 2007. They did a one time (that accidentally ran twice) Prestige grant for SGs, per-member, at the beginning of December 2007. So people set up temp accounts and loaded them with characters that never leveled, just to have the members for a SG to be able to build bases. However, I suspect most people who did that did what I did and used "non-names" - essentially serials (like MB-001 through MB-036) and the script would have had the same lack of impact being run (say) mid-to-late-2008 after those expired.

 

 

20 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Just look at Homecoming Stats.  Last posted in 2020.  The Februrary 2020 total accounts was 160K.  Active accounts? 32K.  Granted that is just active for that month and we've been talking about two years inactive, but it hints at how many people who once created an account are probably not playing anymore.  If even a tenth of those accounts hadn't logged in since late August 2019, a name release would hit sixteen thousand accounts times however many characters were in each.  Probably an average of more than one each.

 

But, again... even if all those accounts were inactive, it doesn't mean the name (generic) *you* want that (generic) you're *sure* is being held by some name-squatting inactive account actually is and will be freed up. Plus we don't have the same definite "active/inactive" indicator we had on live. They had inactive accounts (as in either forced-inactive or not paid) for 90 days they could look at. Here? That 90 days is *nothing,* and can be easy to bypass even for people interested in (but not necessarily focused on) the game. Sure, that can be stretched out to a year or something... but then you're also marking fewer and fewer names as available, too.

[ZacKing]

36 minutes ago, ZemX said:

There has to be some context missing from this claim.  Was there already an automatic name release for unpaid accounts?  Or just that script?  Because if it was just the script cleaning up abandoned accounts, it should have found TONS of names to release.  The number of active accounts is a small fraction of total accounts in any MMO.  At the point in time when WoW reached 100 million total accounts, it had 7.6 million active accounts.  

 

Just look at Homecoming Stats.  Last posted in 2020.  The Februrary 2020 total accounts was 160K.  Active accounts? 32K.  Granted that is just active for that month and we've been talking about two years inactive, but it hints at how many people who once created an account are probably not playing anymore.  If even a tenth of those accounts hadn't logged in since late August 2019, a name release would hit sixteen thousand accounts times however many characters were in each.  Probably an average of more than one each.

 

Making a big assumption here that people who joined in 2019 used up every character slot on every server name squatting.