Name database - Will this get cleaned up?

[Skyhawke]

I sometimes hit a wall with names, but usually get something I want in the end. As much as I'm sure some are tired of hearing "use your imagination", you really do need to use your imagination...well, coupled with some resources as well. www.thesaurus.com has already been mentioned and I use https://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg  as well. Seventhsanctum lets you input some keywords, like your powersets, and generate names from there. Definitely worth a look.

[Crystal Dragon]

Well just to give my own two cents to this.

• The idea of using the Auction house to trade names would be good easily exploited by people that currently collect unique names. Sorry but bad idea.
• Notifications to current playing accounts for a name request release isn't too bad of an idea but this would fall flat with those that have left the game entirely and abandoned their accounts so the impact of such might not be as big of a change for name releases as one might think.
• Lengthening the name character field MIGHT help significantly but we would run into this same problem later down the line.
• I like the idea about gifting a badge to those that do release a name. I can imagine a number of players having qualified for this but I don't know if the devs would want to put that much work into it. What would be the qualifiers? Especially if the name was released from one player, to another through calm request in private chats?
• That last one, "The" being part of the name, I like that, it would be nice to see that as an option but I'm unsure if such can be done.

To note, I played wow from 2008 until 2014. The naming policy on wow does not have a name release feature nor does it do naming purges of inactive accounts. I still have the names of my old characters on my abandoned unsubscribed account to this day. However there are millions of ways to name a character that doesn't require the English language, and alternate spellings are also a good option to pursue to find a name for a character that's unique and specific for that character. The naming release feature here isn't implemented yet but the name warnings are, to keep down name hoarding from happening. (Which I do think it should be made active once the de-tangled noodle codes have been worked out.) As someone that's played here since 2019 and was a live player as well, I'd just recommend this: Get creative, check out other language translations for the name you wish to use, don't be shy about using alternative words or terms in the thesaurus, you might be surprised with what alternative choices you might find.

[ZemX]

1 minute ago, Skyhawke said:

I sometimes hit a wall with names, but usually get something I want in the end. As much as I'm sure some are tired of hearing "use your imagination", you really do need to use your imagination..

 

I agree.  So why can't someone who comes back to a toon after a year of not even logging them in let alone playing them... do the same?  I have done exactly this both here (with names I had on Live and can't get here) and in other MMOs I've stepped away from, sometimes for even less than a year.  It was not the end of the world.  Maybe someone else who WAS actively playing the game even got to enjoy that name while I was gone.  Maybe they still are.  

 

Can we at least agree that the level 6 line could be activated (assuming all bugs are fixed first of course)?  I don't think it's too much to ask that people squatting pages of character names be arsed to get them each to level 6 at least.  Does that even take more than 1 DFB these days at 2xp?  It's 1 or 2 for sure.  Even without DFB, it's maybe an hour of play (if that) solo with story arcs.  As has been noted in the past by devs, this alone would free up almost three quarters of a million names currently in the database and a much smaller number would be freed by the 6-49 range anyway.

[Glacier Peak]

17 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

I agree.  So why can't someone who comes back to a toon after a year of not even logging them in let alone playing them... do the same?  I have done exactly this both here (with names I had on Live and can't get here) and in other MMOs I've stepped away from, sometimes for even less than a year.  It was not the end of the world.  Maybe someone else who WAS actively playing the game even got to enjoy that name while I was gone.  Maybe they still are.  

 

Can we at least agree that the level 6 line could be activated (assuming all bugs are fixed first of course)?  I don't think it's too much to ask that people squatting pages of character names be arsed to get them each to level 6 at least.  Does that even take more than 1 DFB these days at 2xp?  It's 1 or 2 for sure.  Even without DFB, it's maybe an hour of play (if that) solo with story arcs.  As has been noted in the past by devs, this alone would free up almost three quarters of a million names currently in the database and a much smaller number would be freed by the 6-49 range anyway.

I've done the same with some of my older (2019ish) Level 50s - in fact, I discovered (or really I forgot I had them as I usually 'retire' characters to the subsequent pages of a server) a couple of characters who I renamed, redid the costumes, and respec'd. 

[PatternGhost]

4 hours ago, WuTang said:

Only time I know of any name "releasing" was when they had server merging, and that's it. A friend of mine gave me his account a while back, it's been dormant for 10 years, all his toons were there. So..... Who knows maybe we're both right?

 

Just google their name release policy. It's currently set to having names released on accounts that haven't played in the last two expansions. Before that, it was something different. They've been doing it for a very long time. I've gotten old names back by waiting for release periods, and I've got a whole guild full of friends' and family's characters that have randomized names because they've been released. It's a thing.

[PatternGhost]

15 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Plus, I've never played WoW so I may be wrong, but I very much doubt that WoW gives you a thousand character slots per shard.  And from everything that I've read and heard about WoW over the past two decades, most players there concentrate on one or two "main" characters.

 

Lots of alts in WoW. I had 35 max level in the last expansion, about 8 in the current. They do have a much lower character limit. Currently it's 50 per account. Having 1000 characters does help enable name camping.

[Ironblade]

15 hours ago, Nostromo21 said:

It's spelt Chernobyl 😉 I have a rad/rad stalker called Roentgen, pretty proud of that 🙂.

 

I made two characters for all all-rad team: Agent Pitchblende and Agent Roentgen.

[PatternGhost]

3 hours ago, Crystal Dragon said:

The naming policy on wow does not have a name release feature nor does it do naming purges of inactive accounts.

 

Wrong. It doesn't matter if  you put two more underlines on that statement and make it all caps. WoW releases names after an account has been inactive for two expansions, and has gone through quite a few name release cycles over the years. If  you log the account in, even on a low level on an unsubbed account, you keep your names for the entire account.

[Crystal Dragon]

18 minutes ago, PatternGhost said:

 

Wrong. It doesn't matter if  you put two more underlines on that statement and make it all caps. WoW releases names after an account has been inactive for two expansions, and has gone through quite a few name release cycles over the years. If  you log the account in, even on a low level on an unsubbed account, you keep your names for the entire account.

Must be a new policy enacted that was after I left the game. All of my characters on it still have their names and still hadn't been touched. I hadn't even so much as installed or play wow since 2014.

[eiynp]

39 minutes ago, Crystal Dragon said:

Must be a new policy enacted that was after I left the game. All of my characters on it still have their names and still hadn't been touched. I hadn't even so much as installed or play wow since 2014.

 

fwiw the way it works in WoW is that your character just gets flagged as needing a rename; if one of yours falls into this category you'll be prompted to change it before you can log in (doesn't seem like that's a concern in your case but still)

 

for purpose of the HC servers I feel like at minimum they should release names of level 1 characters who haven't logged in for a year or more; it may be that's too technically challenging for them though

[UltraAlt]

54 minutes ago, eiynp said:

for purpose of the HC servers I feel like at minimum they should release names of level 1 characters who haven't logged in for a year or more; it may be that's too technically challenging for them though

 

I don't appreciate you insulting the DEVs.

This has been discussed.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, PatternGhost said:

Lots of alts in WoW. I had 35 max level in the last expansion, about 8 in the current. They do have a much lower character limit. Currently it's 50 per account. Having 1000 characters does help enable name camping.

 

Did you read the previous discussion about this?

 

 

[UltraAlt]

5 hours ago, Crystal Dragon said:

Lengthening the name character field MIGHT help significantly but we would run into this same problem later down the line.

 

Increasing the number of characters in a character name will likely cause issues on some level at any rate.

 

5 hours ago, Crystal Dragon said:

I like the idea about gifting a badge to those that do release a name. I can imagine a number of players having qualified for this but I don't know if the devs would want to put that much work into it. What would be the qualifiers? Especially if the name was released from one player, to another through calm request in private chats?

 

Badges easily obtained by creating random string of characters for a name, and then changing it to another random string of characters and repeat until all the badges are obtained. This could even be done between the same player multiboxing if it required trading the name.

It wouldn't function as intended.

 

5 hours ago, Crystal Dragon said:

That last one, "The" being part of the name, I like that, it would be nice to see that as an option but I'm unsure if such can be done.

 

Historically, that is something the game can add to the title.

I agree it adds more name options, but, still, even so ... I would be against it for the reason above.

 

5 hours ago, Skyhawke said:

I sometimes hit a wall with names, but usually get something I want in the end. As much as I'm sure some are tired of hearing "use your imagination", you really do need to use your imagination...well, coupled with some resources as well. www.thesaurus.com has already been mentioned and I use https://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg  as well. Seventhsanctum lets you input some keywords, like your powersets, and generate names from there. Definitely worth a look.

 

I had a discussion with Bard (Googles AI) a while back -

And here is what Bard would name their CoH Mastermind,

 

"UltraAlt: If you were playing City of Heroes and you created your Demons/Storm Summoning Mastermind, what would their name be?

 

Bard: If I were playing City of Heroes and I created a Demons/Storm Summoning Mastermind, I would name them Tempest.

I think the name Tempest is a good fit for this character because it evokes the power and fury of both storms and demons. It also suggests that the character is unpredictable and dangerous, which are both qualities that I would want my mastermind character to have.

Another name that I considered was Stormcaller. This name is more literal, but I also like it because it suggests that the character has a deep understanding of and connection to the storm.

Ultimately, the best name for your character is the one that you like the most. There are no right or wrong answers. The most important thing is to choose a name that you think fits your character's personality and playstyle.

I hope this helps!

 

UltraAlt: What would you do if both of those names were already taken?

 

Bard: If both of those names were already taken, I would try to come up with a variation of one of them, or a completely new name that has a similar theme. Here are a few ideas:

• Tempestuous
• Storm Weaver
• Skybringer
• Lightning Lord
• Demon Master
• Stormfiend
• Tempest Bringer
• Stormcaller of the Abyss
• Demoncaller of the Tempest
• Master of the Storm and the Demon
• Tempestuous Stormcaller
• Demonic Storm Weaver
• Tempestuous Skybringer
• Demonic Lightning Lord

I could also try to come up with a name that is more personal and unique to my character. For example, I could think about what kind of demons my character summons, or what kind of storm powers they use. I could also think about my character's backstory and personality.

Ultimately, the best name for your character is the one that you like the most. There are no right or wrong answers. The most important thing is to choose a name that you think fits your character's personality and playstyle.

I hope this helps!"

 

Of course, some of those names are too long, but Bard could help a well, if you give Bard the kind of name you are looking for (the name you would have picked first, the power sets, some character background information or mind-set, etc.) and a character limit on the name.

 

 

[PatternGhost]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Did you read the previous discussion about this?

 

I did. But I fail to see anything in what you quoted that indicates that I should have.

 

Unless you think I'm advocating for name releases. I'm not. I had my main renamed in the first round of name releases on CoH live, and it sucked. I had left for a while, came back for CoV, then found my characters had all lost their names, including some that I had close to cap and had spent a ton of time on. Doesn't feel good.

[UltraAlt]

37 minutes ago, PatternGhost said:

 

I did. But I fail to see anything in what you quoted that indicates that I should have.

 

Unless you think I'm advocating for name releases. I'm not. I had my main renamed in the first round of name releases on CoH live, and it sucked. I had left for a while, came back for CoV, then found my characters had all lost their names, including some that I had close to cap and had spent a ton of time on. Doesn't feel good.

 

I'm with you about losing the names, though I never did.

I always logged all my characters in once a month or so. (looks like I was slacking on a couple lately - yikes!)

 

I have a couple of 50's here (I think 3, so several I guess, or maybe a few?)

I lock the xp at 49. I also have other character that I don't intend to take past one level or another due to character conception.

I also xp lock my origin project characters a lot so that I don't outlevel content.

 

If you read my posts in that thread, you know I'm against turning the thing on as well as long as 50's are immune from renaming.

Having a 50 now simply doesn't mean that it did when the game was live.

There are plenty of players that have characters with more time under their masks/capes at sub-50 levels than a good number level 50's.

It simply takes too short of a time to get to level 50 for than to be any metric for permanently keeping a name if others are going have names taken from them for not playing a character for X amount of time.

 

 

[PatternGhost]

OK, I haven't contributed much to this thread of any practical value so far, b/c I had to keep getting up and doing things. But I do have a few thoughts and maybe some of those thoughts will prove useful.

 

A bit of background: I'm a returning player. City of Heroes was my first MMORPG. I played at launch of live up until some time in 2005, then came back for CoV, got super annoyed at losing all of my character names and stormed off (hey, I was younger then) in a fit. Then I rejoined around 2010, and played up until shut down. So, old player, but not really an "old timer" in the truest sense. I'm really happy that NC Soft has licensed the game to Homecoming, and glad to be here. I'm playing on Excelsior, so as you can imagine, I frequently get a bit stuck coming up with a name that isn't taken. So, here's my approach:

 

First thing: We all like short, pithy, descriptive, punny, or whatever names. I like names that I can have a little head canon about, too. The problem is, at this point those are mostly taken. So, you need to loosen up a bit. But it's still possible to get some decent names.

 

1. Titles + The Name You Want. I made a character after one I played in a Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP) table top RPG, Striker. Obviously, Striker was taken. Guy's a super agent type. So, I try SGT, Sergeant, etc., no dice. Commander Striker, that worked. So, go through military ranks, foreign and domestic, regular honorifics like Mr., Mister, etc, jobs, especially Doc, Doctor, Dr., Professor, etc. 

1a)  Titles + Regular name. Sergeant Brown, Mrs. Jones, etc. (Maybe try less common names than the examples)

2. Foreign words/phrases. Frequently, someone's already had the same idea. I did manage to get Deus Irae for a Brute, which was a decent score.

3. Create a "Family." This is my fallback when all else fails. I use the Dare Family. The Dare family is a secret project in breeding for a specific gene that produces super powers, and it falls along matriarchal lines. Those women who develop powers are recruited as operatives by a --  presumably -- altruistic organization and operate as superheroes. They are all given code names with a gemstone or flower (for support types) with the last name Dare. Such as Jade Dare, Ruby Dare, etc.

4. Mythology. This is another one a lot of other folks use, but you can still get lucky.

5. Shift Concept: I wanted to recreate a character from CO named Greyhound. His concept was that he runs pretty fast and smacks people as he runs by, but he uses a billy club (cosmetic option for single sword) so he doesn't hurt his hands, and wears a homemade uniform with some knee/elbow pads, etc.  The name was taken, so I made another kind of dog: A livestock guard dog. Kuvasz was available, a large, white Hungarian dog. I made my guy bulkier, outfitted him in a white armored-looking costume.

6. Adjective + Regular Name. Burning Bob, Spooky Sid, Hurricane Harry, etc.

7. Decoration, punctuation: Fairly limited here. You can't use alt escape code characters with accents or w/e here, or most punctuation. You can have a period, apostrophe, hyphen, or question mark, but only ONE of any of those. You can do xX Bob's Your Uncle Xx or drop a letter for an apostrophe (Flamin' Bob).

8. Letter substitution, AKA, leet speak. Blast3r Bob, etc. I don't use this one myself.

9. Toss a Number on the End: Roman numerals are cool here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[biostem]

I've also found that, while you cannot use an ampersand, you can use " 'n ", which almost nobody uses, so I've never *not* gotten a name I used that with...

[macskull]

On 1/25/2024 at 6:55 AM, ZemX said:

You are probably citing old information from the Live servers.  For a number of reasons mentioned both in this thread and previously, it is not even close to the same situation.  HC allows 1000 character names per account, which is effectively unlimited when you add the fact anyone can have any number of accounts.   Since opening HC, millions of names have been scooped up and a huge portion of them abandoned without really even playing them.

According to the linked post, there were about two million characters in mid-2022. Let's say there have been an additional one million characters created in the year and a half since, which is probably a gross overestimate but whatever. Also keep in mind those two million characters probably already contain multiple duplicate names since that's all names across all five servers. Now, let's do some back of the napkin math, using some assumptions to make things easier:

• We'll assume there are no duplicate names, and we'll assume every one of those characters is on a single server.
• Based on the limitations of the character name field (20 total characters, no consecutive spaces, no spaces at the beginning or end, alphanumeric characters only plus one of three possible special characters, names are not case-sensitive), you have 2,840,316,982,931,772,359,523,246,788,905,305,801,901,473,792 (which we'll simplify to call 3x10⁴⁵) possible unique names.
• Even if we're being generous and saying there are three million names in use, the three million (3x10⁶) character names currently in existence represent 1x10^-37% of the possible names and that's only on one server.
• Using the later data of "something like 700,000 names in the less than 6 and inactive grouping," that represents 2.33x10^-38% of possible names. That's infinitesimally tiny.

 

On 1/25/2024 at 6:55 AM, ZemX said:

The idea that none of these names are "good" is wishful thinking by people who don't want this policy activated.   It will free up hundreds of thousands of names.  The devs wouldn't be spending their valuable and unpaid time working on this if it wasn't going to do anything at all.

1. I have plenty of low-level characters I am not actively playing with names saved for a point in the future, whether that's "I've finally found a concept that matches this name" or "there's a powerset coming out soon and I have the perfect name for a character that uses it." I would almost certainly let someone else have one of the names if they asked... but in almost five years (and another five years back on live) I have not been asked for a character name one single time.
2. It could free up hundreds of thousands of names. Or it'll free up a handful. Or someone who has been out of the game for a while will come back, find their name taken, and get pissed and leave. A new player getting frustrated that the name they want isn't available is unfortunate, but so is a returning player finding out their favorite character's name was taken while they were gone and they had no say in the matter. It should be clear to any reasonable person which of those two situations is worse.

[Luminara]

Hey, whoa, easy there @macskull.  You almost divided by zero.  DON'T BREAK THE UNIVERSE AGAIN.

[A Cat]

Just going by unique possible alphanumeric combinations is not a realistic calculation of the combinations unless you are a RMT spammer. Real players would want actual names/words + some unknown amounts of completely made up stuff. Realistically this is a much a social science problem that is unsolvable to any precise degree as a math problem. 

[eiynp]

7 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I don't appreciate you insulting the DEVs.

This has been discussed.

 

I mean, it's not insulting to say that some task might be too challenging to be worth the time to figure out; any project faces those issues.

 

if you don't wanna talk about it fine but I don't see how linking threads from a year ago contributes anything

[Nostromo21]

9 hours ago, Ironblade said:

 

I made two characters for all all-rad team: Agent Pitchblende and Agent Roentgen.

 

Roentgen...just Roentgen. ;)

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, eiynp said:

I mean, it's not insulting to say that some task might be too challenging to be worth the time to figure out; any project faces those issues.

 

if you don't wanna talk about it fine but I don't see how linking threads from a year ago contributes anything

 

It's obvious that  you are fine about insulting people. That's why you posted it and are defending it.

 

Of course, you don't see how linking a thread with an extended discussion about the subject that is from the Beta of the system that this thread is talking about is irrelevant.

 

Yeah, I guess isn't worth my time to discuss things with you. Thanks for letting me know.

[UltraAlt]

5 hours ago, PatternGhost said:

First thing: We all like short, pithy, descriptive, punny, or whatever names. I like names that I can have a little head canon about, too. The problem is, at this point those are mostly taken. So, you need to loosen up a bit. But it's still possible to get some decent names.

 

Yes. It is.

Quite easily for me.

I usually end up making a couple of characters every month it seems.

 

It rarely takes me 4-5 times to get a name I want based on my character's conception. Most of the time, I get it the first time.

[Captain Fabulous]

Name hoarder: "Sorry you can't get the name you want, just get creative and pick something else. It's just a name, it doesn't matter that much."

:devs institute name release policy:

Name hoarder: "HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY NAMES AWAY! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HAVE INVESTED IN THE HUNDREDS OF CHARACTERS I MADE IN 2019 AND HAVEN'T PLAYED SINCE????"

Yes, fire up the name release policy and have it also affect level 50s. Or figure out a way to tack an identifier on characters that allows multiple people have the same name.

If people are so upset over losing their name that they leave the game, well too damned bad. Byeeeeee.

Edited January 27 by Captain Fabulous