Any news on phase 2 of naming policy?

[Parthenon]

I’ve searched the forums but I haven’t found an answer. Has there been any news on when the next phase of the naming policy might start?

 

I’m eager to see if my main name from live will open up once the policy is fully in effect. Thanks!

[El D]

No news on that yet, and given how open with early warnings the devs were I imagine we'll get plenty of heads up before the 'release' aspect is actually turned on. As attached as players get to their various characters, this isn't something they're going to blindside the player base with (not that that will likely stop at least some folks from complaining about it, no matter how much advanced notice they're given...).

 

But yeah, no sign yet. I'm in the same camp too - curious to see if a few names I've been looking to 'reclaim' will open up.

[Parthenon]

Thanks for the info. I agree - they gotta take as many steps as possible to preempt any arguments that players were “blindsided,” but we’re, what, 6 months into phase 1? It feels to me like anyone who is still regularly playing CoH would have either (1) logged in and seen the warnings or (2) gotten wind of the change. If the goal of phase 1 is purely to put people on notice, I’m just wondering how much more time has to pass for the devs to feel like we’ve satisfied the notice requirement. Also curious if there’s still technical work to be done to ensure a smooth activation of the policy. 

[Michiyo]

There is an issue currently where characters that were just logged in will be flagged with the name release warning.  I doubt this will move to stage 2 until that is figured out and resolved.

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, Michiyo said:

There is an issue currently where characters that were just logged in will be flagged with the name release warning.

 

I play on all the servers.

It has/is only happened/happening to me on Everlasting.

[SeraphimKensai]

Honestly at this point HC has been up just about four years. The likelihood of you getting a particular name if the name release policy is activated is miniscule as a lot of players have a significant number of 50's which their name is protected indefinitely.

 

Your best course of action is to try to contact the global account of the character named what you're looking for and see if they are willing to release that name. I know I've been approached a couple times in that fashion and have been able to work out some type of agreement (as the characters I had were just dormant lvl 50s I hadn't played in 2+ years).

 

If you're unable to get the name that way, then it's basically a waiting game to see if the name does get released and then a lottery to see if you actually get the name.

[Parthenon]

Yeah, I’ve gone the contact-the-player route. Got the global, sent in-game gfriend requests and in-game email. No responses. So I’m left to the lottery, which is fine. Obviously not the end of the world if I don’t get my main name back. 
 

Thanks for the info, Michiyo! I figured there were some other unknowns holding it back at this point. Hope it gets resolved soon!

[lemming]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I play on all the servers.

It has/is only happened/happening to me on Everlasting.

I'be gotten it to come up on Reunion and Excelsior. (though won't now that those servers just have 50s on them)

[ivanhedgehog]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I play on all the servers.

It has/is only happened/happening to me on Everlasting.

that would be one too many. needs to be fixed.

[Mjolnerd]

5 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Honestly at this point HC has been up just about four years. The likelihood of you getting a particular name if the name release policy is activated is miniscule as a lot of players have a significant number of 50's which their name is protected indefinitely.

 

I mean, yes... but also no. Given how many people showed up when the servers were first opened up just to check things out and/or for nostalgia's sake, but aren't regular players now, plus the fact that accounts are free and everyone has an effectively infinite number of slots on every server with which to squat on names, there are probably quite a few names that were grabbed early on, played for a few hours to level 15 or so, and then never touched again.

 

Are you likely to get that name you're pining for if a daily player has it? No, probably not. But if it's being held up by some rubbernecker who was just curious and uninstalled the client three-and-a-half years ago (so they won't see any in-game messages about it one way or the other anyhow)... maybe you will.

[UltraAlt]

18 hours ago, lemming said:

I'be gotten it to come up on Reunion and Excelsior. (though won't now that those servers just have 50s on them)

 

I only have a few of 50's, and I don't plan on making any more.

I haven't seen the flag come up on any of my characters on the server(s) that I have 50(s) on.

[lemming]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I only have a few of 50's, and I don't plan on making any more.

I haven't seen the flag come up on any of my characters on the server(s) that I have 50(s) on.

It never comes up for 50s, just below 50s.  (I don't think it matters if there are 50s on there) In any case, the problem has been documented enough on our side of things.

[UltraAlt]

29 minutes ago, lemming said:

In any case, the problem has been documented enough on our side of things.

 

Yep. I see you started that thread.

 

 

[Captain Fabulous]

The problem is the naming policy isn't doing to do anything to stop people who literally create hundreds of characters for the sole purpose of locking down names; characters that never get played and exist solely to squat. The only thing it'll accomplish is to release names from accounts that have been abandoned. 

I don't know how feasible it is, but it would be great if our @ names could be added internally to character names like Cryptic did with Champions and Star Trek. Then everyone can get whatever character name they want and completely kneecap the squatters.

[Mjolnerd]

34 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The problem is the naming policy isn't doing to do anything to stop people who literally create hundreds of characters for the sole purpose of locking down names; characters that never get played and exist solely to squat. The only thing it'll accomplish is to release names from accounts that have been abandoned. 

 

The Perfect Solution Fallacy:  an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists or that a proposed solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented.

The policy will make it more difficult to name-squat, thus acting as a deterrent and reducing the number of players doing it. You're never going to totally eliminate... well, most problems in the world that stem from people being selfish or hostile or irresponsible or otherwise unpleasant, but you can minimize them and steer people away from the harmful behavior. Retail stores are never going to reduce losses from shoplifting all the way to zero, but the amount is certainly going to be closer to zero if those stores implement countermeasures that make it hard to do than if they just shrug and say, "oh well, I guess there's no preventing it." Deaths due to drunk driving are never going to go away completely, but that doesn't mean we throw laws meant to prevent those tragedies out the window and just let it happen unchecked.

 

And releasing the names from accounts that have been abandoned isn't nothing -- it's likely a pretty significant amount. It's also something that will prevent the problem being compounded in the long term since (after the initial dump of thousands of names when it first goes live) names will be continually made available a few at a time as players naturally leave the game for a variety of reasons, thus making it easier for new players to get into it. If I'm just starting to play today, I create an account, I download the client, I pick out an AT and powersets and design the perfect costume, and then the name I want is taken, so I try another... and another... and another... and another... and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and they're all unavailable, then at best I'm being introduced to the game with a negative, frustrating experience that makes me less likely to enjoy my time with it, and at worst I'm going to decide not to waste my time and give up on it altogether right then and there. Losses in terms of player numbers are inevitable, so MMOs need to continually add new players to replace the ones they're losing or the whole player base suffers. Saying "sorry, someone else got to that name first, it's theirs forever even though they only took it halfway through the tutorial and haven't logged into their account at all in literally several thousand days, guess you're out of luck, n00b" is not the way to entice new people. Or to hold onto some of the existing ones, if we're being honest.

 

As for appending global handles to names, it's been suggested for years, at least since Champions Online was released 14 years ago and probably for a while before that. At this point, I think it it were feasible in CoH's code, someone (HC isn't the only CoH out there, remember) would've done it by now. It's probably time for everybody to let that one die.

[Captain Fabulous]

37 minutes ago, Mjolnerd said:

The Perfect Solution Fallacy:  an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists or that a proposed solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented.

The policy will make it more difficult to name-squat, thus acting as a deterrent and reducing the number of players doing it. You're never going to totally eliminate... well, most problems in the world that stem from people being selfish or hostile or irresponsible or otherwise unpleasant, but you can minimize them and steer people away from the harmful behavior. Retail stores are never going to reduce losses from shoplifting all the way to zero, but the amount is certainly going to be closer to zero if those stores implement countermeasures that make it hard to do than if they just shrug and say, "oh well, I guess there's no preventing it." Deaths due to drunk driving are never going to go away completely, but that doesn't mean we throw laws meant to prevent those tragedies out the window and just let it happen unchecked.

 

And releasing the names from accounts that have been abandoned isn't nothing -- it's likely a pretty significant amount. It's also something that will prevent the problem being compounded in the long term since (after the initial dump of thousands of names when it first goes live) names will be continually made available a few at a time as players naturally leave the game for a variety of reasons, thus making it easier for new players to get into it. If I'm just starting to play today, I create an account, I download the client, I pick out an AT and powersets and design the perfect costume, and then the name I want is taken, so I try another... and another... and another... and another... and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and another  and they're all unavailable, then at best I'm being introduced to the game with a negative, frustrating experience that makes me less likely to enjoy my time with it, and at worst I'm going to decide not to waste my time and give up on it altogether right then and there. Losses in terms of player numbers are inevitable, so MMOs need to continually add new players to replace the ones they're losing or the whole player base suffers. Saying "sorry, someone else got to that name first, it's theirs forever even though they only took it halfway through the tutorial and haven't logged into their account at all in literally several thousand days, guess you're out of luck, n00b" is not the way to entice new people. Or to hold onto some of the existing ones, if we're being honest.

I'd appreciate it if you don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say they shouldn't do it. Honestly it should have been done years ago. I said it's unlikely to be as effective as people anticipate, and that it does nothing to prevent active name squatters, as it's fairly easy to avoid the policy with minimal effort. Name squatters got in on day 1. As more and more people come to the game character names become more and more esoteric because popular ones are already used or squatted. Releasing names on abandoned accounts created months or years after day 1 isn't likely to add a significant amount of desirable names to the pool.

 

49 minutes ago, Mjolnerd said:

As for appending global handles to names, it's been suggested for years, at least since Champions Online was released 14 years ago and probably for a while before that. At this point, I think it it were feasible in CoH's code, someone (HC isn't the only CoH out there, remember) would've done it by now. It's probably time for everybody to let that one die.

Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy: Since no one's done it yet it must not be possible. 👍

[srmalloy]

24 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy: Since no one's done it yet it must not be possible.

Misattribution. Mjolnerd said that he doubted that it was feasible; there's nothing to suggest that it's not possible, or that he believed it to not be possible. What does going into the code to change how names are handled internally -- remember that it's not just changing how they're displayed; you have to change how lookups work, causing a flag day for everyone with a character name that currently has whatever character is picked for the name/account separator, etc. -- do to improve gameplay more than devoting time fixing actual bugs in the game or adding new powers, costume pieces, classes, and the like? From what I've seen of the dialogue over this, the primary motivation for wanting the change is the wangst of players whose enjoyment of the game is critically damaged by discovering that someone else has taken an obvious character name before they could, especially when they had a particular character name back on Live and found Homecoming only after someone else had already taken 'their' name.

[Ruin Mage]

There's one major issue with adopting CO's method:

Our global name system doesn't work that way. Something something about tracking global names (or lackthereof in tracking)

[Captain Fabulous]

16 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Misattribution. Mjolnerd said that he doubted that it was feasible; there's nothing to suggest that it's not possible, or that he believed it to not be possible. What does going into the code to change how names are handled internally -- remember that it's not just changing how they're displayed; you have to change how lookups work, causing a flag day for everyone with a character name that currently has whatever character is picked for the name/account separator, etc. -- do to improve gameplay more than devoting time fixing actual bugs in the game or adding new powers, costume pieces, classes, and the like? From what I've seen of the dialogue over this, the primary motivation for wanting the change is the wangst of players whose enjoyment of the game is critically damaged by discovering that someone else has taken an obvious character name before they could, especially when they had a particular character name back on Live and found Homecoming only after someone else had already taken 'their' name.

I would dare say that to many players the names of their characters are VERY important and that such an improvement would be seen as quite favorable and welcome. Such a feature is more of a database issue, which is something that coders, bug fixers, costume designers, etc. generally don't deal with. Different people for different systems. Sure, it's absolutely a QoL change, but a huge one nonetheless.

[Captain Fabulous]

8 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

There's one major issue with adopting CO's method:

Our global name system doesn't work that way. Something something about tracking global names (or lackthereof in tracking)

Yes, and that's the issue that would need to be overcome. 😉

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Such a feature is more of a database issue, which is something that coders, bug fixers, costume designers, etc. generally don't deal with.

Characters are already associated with accounts in the database; nothing would have to change there. This change is entirely in the code, altering most -- but not all -- places where character names are displayed (for example, your character selection screen does not benefit from showing your characters are "YourCharacterName@YourGlobalHandle", but the zone search window needs it) or looked up. And this doesn't even address the effect on the UI. Look at characters with max-length names and how their name shrinks in the league window. Now double the length of the character name to accommodate adding their global -- and you can't just drop the global in the team or league window because of confusion from having two or more characters with the same name (and there were a number of SGs back on Live that deliberately exploited the similarity of 'I', '1', and 'l' in the game font to create characters whose names were difficult if not impossible to distinguish with several on a team/league, so the 'experience' of name confusion is already known).

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by srmalloy
grammar cleanup

[lemming]

29 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Characters are already associated with accounts in the database; nothing would have to change there.

Apparently not quite that easy.   I think this quote is part of it

 

"Account data lives on a separate system from the individual shards. It would take a much more substantial rewrite of the character list code to for it to be able to query that efficiently." - Number Six

Now that's talking about the account idle time, but there's other stuff addressing the account name -> Char name link

[Mjolnerd]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I'd appreciate it if you don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say they shouldn't do it. Honestly it should have been done years ago. I said it's unlikely to be as effective as people anticipate, and that it does nothing to prevent active name squatters, as it's fairly easy to avoid the policy with minimal effort. Name squatters got in on day 1. As more and more people come to the game character names become more and more esoteric because popular ones are already used or squatted. Releasing names on abandoned accounts created months or years after day 1 isn't likely to add a significant amount of desirable names to the pool.

 

I think there's a subset of posters here who significantly overestimate the number of people who are perched atop a mountain of fantastic names, greedily hoarding them and willing to expend large amounts of time and effort to actively prevent others from taking their precious names away from them. (I suppose it's also possible there's a group significantly underestimating that, too.) I'm sure there are some, but I feel like it's a relatively small number.

 

On an individual level, certainly a given name-hoarder is keeping the more names from the general public than an average player, but overall their impact is probably relatively small. They're a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the player base. And even if I'm wrong, even if most of the really good names are all being held up by a tiny cabal of players who have nothing better to do than hold onto thousands of names just so nobody else can have them, once the policy goes live they won't be able to just check a list of dozens of names at time and click through the creator as fast as possible for the available ones so they can park the "blank" in one of the tutorials, thus blocking everyone else from having that name forever. Maintaining a list of fifty, sixty, a hundred or more inactive names won't be something they can do passively anymore; they'll have to work at it. Keeping others from getting "their" names will become a constant hassle that they'll have to stay on top of actively, taking a significant amount of time, and frankly: good. For a lot of them, especially if they've got a really egregious number of names camped out, it's not going to be worth the time and effort, and they're eventually going to stop maintaining their vault, or at least pare it down to a more manageable size. Maybe not on day one, but over time -- a marathon, not a sprint.

 

Probably a much bigger percentage of unused names comes from absent players, people who are gone and (presumably) never coming back. I know exact numbers are hard to come by, but... does anyone remember an article (can't find it anymore) that came out right after the news broke that the game was back, stating that there were so many people playing on Homecoming that if it were on Steam, it would have been something like the 3rd-most-popular game on the platform at the time? That's tens of thousands of players, give or take. Four years later, we've probably got half that number (if we're being generous) still playing on a regular basis. The other half? Gone. Most likely forever. Among them, the number who have any characters at 50 is likely vanishingly small. But they've probably got at least four or five non-50s that will never see the light of day again. Getting back those names, the ones that were played for a few days and then abandoned somewhere in the 20s and have been sitting unplayed ever since because the person whose account they belong to moved on to a different game years ago, is going to have a noticeable impact on the pool of available names.

 

Will they all be A-plus names? Of course not. But some will. And frankly, we'd benefit from fishing a few B-minus names out of the drain too. Any improvement, however small, is still an improvement.

 

43 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Misattribution. Mjolnerd said that he doubted that it was feasible; there's nothing to suggest that it's not possible, or that he believed it to not be possible.

 

Pretty much. I'm sure it's possible; in situations like this, almost anything is with enough effort and expertise. It's a really a question of whether the amount of effort and expertise required justify the end result, and less subjectively, whether making those changes would break or negatively impact other, existing systems within the game. I don't personally know enough about software development in general or CoH's code in particular speak from a position of expertise, but I am willing to Appeal to Authority on this one and say that if, over the course of a decade-and-a-half that I know of (and probably longer than that), entire teams of people who do know about that kind of thing, from Cryptic to Paragon Studios to Homecoming and Rebirth and Thunderspy and others, who were fully aware of the fact that many people were requesting the feature, chose not to implement said feature, there's probably a good reason they haven't.

 

The horse has been thoroughly beaten. Thoroughly.

[Captain Fabulous]

2 hours ago, Mjolnerd said:

 

I think there's a subset of posters here who significantly overestimate the number of people who are perched atop a mountain of fantastic names, greedily hoarding them and willing to expend large amounts of time and effort to actively prevent others from taking their precious names away from them. (I suppose it's also possible there's a group significantly underestimating that, too.) I'm sure there are some, but I feel like it's a relatively small number.

 

On an individual level, certainly a given name-hoarder is keeping the more names from the general public than an average player, but overall their impact is probably relatively small. They're a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the player base. And even if I'm wrong, even if most of the really good names are all being held up by a tiny cabal of players who have nothing better to do than hold onto thousands of names just so nobody else can have them, once the policy goes live they won't be able to just check a list of dozens of names at time and click through the creator as fast as possible for the available ones so they can park the "blank" in one of the tutorials, thus blocking everyone else from having that name forever. Maintaining a list of fifty, sixty, a hundred or more inactive names won't be something they can do passively anymore; they'll have to work at it. Keeping others from getting "their" names will become a constant hassle that they'll have to stay on top of actively, taking a significant amount of time, and frankly: good. For a lot of them, especially if they've got a really egregious number of names camped out, it's not going to be worth the time and effort, and they're eventually going to stop maintaining their vault, or at least pare it down to a more manageable size. Maybe not on day one, but over time -- a marathon, not a sprint.

 

Probably a much bigger percentage of unused names comes from absent players, people who are gone and (presumably) never coming back. I know exact numbers are hard to come by, but... does anyone remember an article (can't find it anymore) that came out right after the news broke that the game was back, stating that there were so many people playing on Homecoming that if it were on Steam, it would have been something like the 3rd-most-popular game on the platform at the time? That's tens of thousands of players, give or take. Four years later, we've probably got half that number (if we're being generous) still playing on a regular basis. The other half? Gone. Most likely forever. Among them, the number who have any characters at 50 is likely vanishingly small. But they've probably got at least four or five non-50s that will never see the light of day again. Getting back those names, the ones that were played for a few days and then abandoned somewhere in the 20s and have been sitting unplayed ever since because the person whose account they belong to moved on to a different game years ago, is going to have a noticeable impact on the pool of available names.

 

Will they all be A-plus names? Of course not. But some will. And frankly, we'd benefit from fishing a few B-minus names out of the drain too. Any improvement, however small, is still an improvement.

 

And yet there is page after page after page of discussions just here in the forums with dozens of people hating the policy because they have hundreds of characters they can't possibly play frequently enough to avoid getting the name released. And these are just the ones who come to the forums and post. Ultimately the devs know better than we do as to how many active accounts have 100+ characters that are just sitting there versus the number of abandoned accounts that may only have a few characters. Again, I'm not saying the policy is bad, I'm just saying it's unlikely to have the kind of huge impact people expect. People who are purposefully squatting on hundreds of names, or even people who just legit have hundreds of characters they might actually play once in a blue moon, they're gonna find a way to keep those names. It's pretty trivial to create a script that would log in each one of them automatically to ensure the names are never released. And not terribly difficult to use all this lead time to get each one of them to at least level 20, requiring even less effort to hold onto them.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope when they finally implement this policy that 10s of thousands of names are released and people who have characters they actively play can get the names they want. Hell, I have characters that don't have the name I want, so yeah, I'd love for that to happen. But I'm also a realist.
 

 

2 hours ago, Mjolnerd said:

The horse has been thoroughly beaten. Thoroughly.

And yet there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone has ever tried. You make a lot of assumptions. Believe whatever makes you happy I guess. 🤷

[Ghost]

Uh, thought there was a GM on here who alluded to several tens of thousands of accounts that were created and not played in years.

If I’m remembering correctly, that’s a lot more than a “few dozen” or even a “few hundred” names that will be released.

True, they won’t all be good names, but a percentage will be.