Name database - Will this get cleaned up?

[golstat2003]

21 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Fine with that too, considering you can get to level 50 in a few hours.  I'm more for the current policy, and opening up level 50 character names at three years.

 

EDIT: NVM just read the GM post and i'm good. lol

Edited February 1 by golstat2003

[nzer]

13 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Some people actually want names that make sense. I'm sorry your standards are so low you're willing to settle for whatever random combination of letters isn't yet taken.

 

This is pretty rude, and also wrong. None of my characters have lazy names, and several have names I'm quite proud of. Do not act like your own struggles to come up with names that aren't taken means people who don't struggle just have lower standards.

 

13 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

No one is entitled to a name

You are literally arguing you should be entitled to other people's names.

[GM Crumpet]

4 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

This is change we can believe in!

I wake in a cold sweat worrying it'll all go horribly wrong and I'll log in and find the implementation went wrong and all my funny and silly names got wiped and I'm left with 80 characters called generic<number> 😛 

 

Which can't happen as we do make backups before any big changes in case we need to do a rollback. The biggest mess up was years ago when somehow the patch went live and all the floors in Atlas had vanished 🙂 

[Crystal Dragon]

21 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

I wake in a cold sweat worrying it'll all go horribly wrong and I'll log in and find the implementation went wrong and all my funny and silly names got wiped and I'm left with 80 characters called generic<number> 😛 

 

Which can't happen as we do make backups before any big changes in case we need to do a rollback. The biggest mess up was years ago when somehow the patch went live and all the floors in Atlas had vanished 🙂 

I am hoping that the release is implemented smoothly. I do have some duplicate characters on a second account I use for rping multicharacter scenes with friends that I hadn't leveled (And I really should just to secure the names for good on that account.) so I get the worry about the alts getting genericed. Not to mention I have a third account coming in with Victory merging. No characters on that account yet, but I have some ideas.

[macskull]

22 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The level of entitlement and hubris and the unwillingness of HC to do anything about it is really grinding my nerves.

All this talk about entitlement and you’re the one over here going “they’re not using it and I want it.”

 

There is zero functional difference between the name of a character that gets played every day and the name of a character that hasn’t been touched in a year.

 

The points I have been making, and will continue to make, are:

1. The name release policy purports to solve a problem that has not been demonstrated to actually exist.
2. The policy does not stop people from “camping” names, which is one of the stated issues.
3. The policy will result in existing players losing names of characters they’re invested in. How long that player has been gone for is irrelevant, as are their reasons for why they weren’t online. I don’t need to ask why they’ve been gone, because that’s none of my business, and asking why just means that suddenly I’m the one who gets to decide whether their absence from the game was for a “good” reason or not.

[Starforge]

18 hours ago, Force Redux said:

Coming up with a name isn't that terrible. I've literally created four characters this month and I'm satisfied with their names. There's literally a thread with people advertising names that have been released for use. Why support laziness and entitlement?

This, I’ve picked up a handful of names for new alts over the past month or two that I’ve found to be available on Everlasting.

[BlakeTheDrake]

This... debate looks a bit spicy, but... well, I'm quietly hoping they'll eventually institute that name-release policy, since I too would love to recreate my old main from Live. I wasn't surprised to see that its name was already gone when I started here - I began playing CoH EARLY, to be able to nab it - but I certainly haven't seen anyone around actually USING it today. I can also say that personally, if I step away from a game for several years, I don't expect to be able to come back to it and pick up exactly where I left off. I'd expect to have been kicked out of my SG for inactivity, missing most of my friend-list since they moved on in the meantime, and yeah, for some or my character's names to have been grabbed by people who'd actually use them. Nothing lasts forever - we all know that. Leave things to gather dust, and they will decay. This is the nature of things.

 

Now, as for creative naming in general... I feel like the current 'lack of good names' is a bit of a double-edged sword. Sure, it can breed creativity and clever names. I've certainly been in a situation where the first three or four names I thought of for a character were already taken, forcing me to come up with something even cleverer! But on the other hand, I've also seen loads of people running around with names that are deliberately misspelled to circumvent the issue, which niggles me - and even a couple who found ways to make this misspelling 'invisible', such as using a capital i in place of an l, which can make it a huge pain to send tells and invites. Basically, the large number of names that are locked down by inactive players can prompt a variety of behaviors, some of them good, others not so much.

Edited February 1 by BlakeTheDrake

[Excraft]

46 minutes ago, macskull said:

All this talk about entitlement and you’re the one over here going “they’re not using it and I want it.”

 

There is zero functional difference between the name of a character that gets played every day and the name of a character that hasn’t been touched in a year.

 

The points I have been making, and will continue to make, are:

1. The name release policy purports to solve a problem that has not been demonstrated to actually exist.
2. The policy does not stop people from “camping” names, which is one of the stated issues.
3. The policy will result in existing players losing names of characters they’re invested in. How long that player has been gone for is irrelevant, as are their reasons for why they weren’t online. I don’t need to ask why they’ve been gone, because that’s none of my business, and asking why just means that suddenly I’m the one who gets to decide whether their absence from the game was for a “good” reason or not.

 

Items 1 and 2 are spot on.  Not sure I can agree 100% with your third bullet point.  If a player hasn't logged on in a couple of years, I'm not sure I'd say they're "invested in a character" they obviously haven't played in literal years.  I do get where you're coming from though. 

 

I'd add a fourth point in that the existing policy is giving a great many people what I see as a false sense of hope in that a name they're after is immediately going to be freed up and they'll be able to get it.  It's setting those people up for a major disappointment when that doesn't happen and I imagine there's going to be a whole lot of complaining from people who's hopes were squashed when the existing solution didn't work as they had hoped. 

 

Honestly, the best solution to hope for is that HC can bring on enough developers who are able to tackle this once and for all so that names aren't unique.  From posts HC folk have made, they understand the issue and what it would take to fix, it's just too big a project for their limited time and small team of people to tackle.  Hopefully they can bring on a good group of developers who can make that name upgrade happen as it solves all the problems once and for all of names being taken due to camping or inactivity.  No one would have to see the "name is already taken" message again. 

[macskull]

15 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

Items 1 and 2 are spot on.  Not sure I can agree 100% with your third bullet point.  If a player hasn't logged on in a couple of years, I'm not sure I'd say they're "invested in a character" they obviously haven't played in literal years.  I do get where you're coming from though. 

 

I'd add a fourth point in that the existing policy is giving a great many people what I see as a false sense of hope in that a name they're after is immediately going to be freed up and they'll be able to get it.  It's setting those people up for a major disappointment when that doesn't happen and I imagine there's going to be a whole lot of complaining from people who's hopes were squashed when the existing solution didn't work as they had hoped. 

 

Honestly, the best solution to hope for is that HC can bring on enough developers who are able to tackle this once and for all so that names aren't unique.  From posts HC folk have made, they understand the issue and what it would take to fix, it's just too big a project for their limited time and small team of people to tackle.  Hopefully they can bring on a good group of developers who can make that name upgrade happen as it solves all the problems once and for all of names being taken due to camping or inactivity.  No one would have to see the "name is already taken" message again. 

To the third point - even if a player is gone for a few years, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care, or that they’ll never come back. Perhaps the “fairest” way to handle it would be for a player to have a big “I am never coming back” button that would flag their account as inactive and if they didn’t come back after some amount of time (let’s say two years) only then would their names be released, and if they ever changed their minds and did come back you could point to the account flag and say “well, you did say you were never coming back.”

 

My point was that any amount of inactivity-based name release is based on an arbitrary timeline because life happens outside the game and just because someone is gone for a while does not mean they’re going to be gone forever.

[nzer]

4 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Not sure I can agree 100% with your third bullet point.  If a player hasn't logged on in a couple of years, I'm not sure I'd say they're "invested in a character" they obviously haven't played in literal years.

 

I think the point here is that it's not up to other players to decide what constitutes them being invested in their characters. If someone has very limited time to play, it's entirely possible they could put a character down to try alts and not come back to it for a year. And if it's buried on the third or fourth page of alts, or they just aren't paying a ton of attention and don't realize what the icon means, they could easily lose the name without realizing it at that point. Is that the kind of player this change is meant to target? I have to imagine it's not.

 

I would be curious to see the stats on how many failed name availability checks actually hit names that would be considered expired according to this policy. To your later point, I would bet it's fewer than many people think.

[Excraft]

15 minutes ago, macskull said:

My point was that any amount of inactivity-based name release is based on an arbitrary timeline because life happens outside the game and just because someone is gone for a while does not mean they’re going to be gone forever.

 

15 minutes ago, nzer said:

I think the point here is that it's not up to other players to decide what constitutes them being invested in their characters.

 

That's fair and I agree as everyone is going to have a different opinion on what constitutes "long enough" or when an account can be considered abandoned. 

 

16 minutes ago, nzer said:

I would be curious to see the stats on how many failed name availability checks actually hit names that would be considered expired according to this policy.

 

I'd be curious to see this too. It seems to me people are seeing numbers like "700,000 + names will get released!" and thinking that the one they want will be in there.  They're gambling on the hope of it being in that list and are going to be frustrated and disappointed when it isn't. 

[Force Redux]

Great points @nzer.

 

The demonstratable truth is that it's actually not hard to come up with a good name. 

 

I've cited several threads in these forums that show that appropriate names and good names are easily available.

 

I also demonstrated about a couple dozen names I was able to come up with in a few minutes that are all viable good names, without any tricks, without any funky spelling.

 

There's a lot of moaning I can't get a name. What people actually mean is I can't get a specific name and I can't be bothered to ask for help or trying to come up with something else.

 

It's laziness, entitlement, and opportunism.

 

There's plenty of proof there's no difficulty in getting a good name.

 

There is every proof that some people don't want the solution.

[Ironblade]

16 hours ago, Force Redux said:

If you are having problems coming up with names, I'm more than happy to help. Just ask, and I'll do my best. 

 

As you can see from my previous posts in this thread, it's not hard or time consuming to find names that are sensical and colorful. I was surprised with what I could come up with!

 

And the are multiple threads and players who both demonstrate that good names are possible, and people are willing to help, much as people get help with costume design. Not everyone had the same talents. I'm always amazed at Player2's costumes, for example. Mine are rather meh.

 

I don't expect him to take you up on this offer.

 

[wei yau]

I've got a bunch of names, some of whom were alternates after finding that their original intended names were not available.  I've also surrendered names when a player reaches out to me and asks if I would, in those instances, I've come up with alternate names for said character.

 

Of course, I'm biased because I've got a ton of characters, which I never really get around to playing.  I spent a lot of time creating characters in Icon during the Hiatus.

[Captain Fabulous]

4 hours ago, nzer said:

You are literally arguing you should be entitled to other people's names.

See, they're not yours or anyone else's names. Thinking they are is why we have this problem. You don't own them, you are simply being permitted to use them. And if you're not actively using them there is no reason, other than narcissism and selfishness, that anyone would feel like they are entitled to them.

[ZemX]

2 hours ago, nzer said:

I would be curious to see the stats on how many failed name availability checks actually hit names that would be considered expired according to this policy. To your later point, I would bet it's fewer than many people think.

 

Why do you think so?  Here is some actual educated guessing...

 

The post where this was mentioned is from July 2022, so obviously more names have been used (but also more names abandoned) since then.  But if we look at that snapshot in time, it's mentioned:

1. There are over two million names in the database.
2. Roughly 700K are in the 1-5 level range and inactive.
3. "Significantly less" are in the 6-49 range and inactive.

These are fuzzy numbers obviously, but even so it's possible to estimate that at that time around 1/3 of names in the database would probably have been freed up by the policy.  That means the rough odds are probably around 1 in 3 that any name you were denied back then is on an inactive character just based on this.  Obviously, that's assuming no special relationship between desirable names and player inactivity.   And it doesn't mean a whole string of names you tried can't all be on active characters either.  This is statistics, not certainty.

 

Fast forward to the present, these numbers might have changed a little, but I doubt by much.   Like I said, people have both come and gone since then.  It's not likely the needle has moved very significantly.  It could be 1 in 3 still or 1 in 4.  It's not going to be 1 in 100.  The inactives are a not-insignificant percentage of the total names in the database.

[Excraft]

3 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Why do you think so?  Here is some actual educated guessing...

 

The post where this was mentioned is from July 2022, so obviously more names have been used (but also more names abandoned) since then.  But if we look at that snapshot in time, it's mentioned:

1. There are over two million names in the database.
2. Roughly 700K are in the 1-5 level range and inactive.
3. "Significantly less" are in the 6-49 range and inactive.

These are fuzzy numbers obviously, but even so it's possible to estimate that at that time around 1/3 of names in the database would probably have been freed up by the policy.  That means the rough odds are probably around 1 in 3 that any name you were denied back then is on an inactive character just based on this.  Obviously, that's assuming no special relationship between desirable names and player inactivity.   And it doesn't mean a whole string of names you tried can't all be on active characters either.  This is statistics, not certainty.

 

Fast forward to the present, these numbers might have changed a little, but I doubt by much.   Like I said, people have both come and gone since then.  It's not likely the needle has moved very significantly.  It could be 1 in 3 still or 1 in 4.  It's not going to be 1 in 100.  The inactives are a not-insignificant percentage of the total names in the database.

 

And this is where the false sense of hope is coming into play.  People see big numbers like this and are getting their hopes up that the name they're after is going to get freed up immediately when the job is enabled.  700,000 names seems like a lot, but how many of those names are just gibberish?  Nobody knows. 

 

9 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

See, they're not yours or anyone else's names. Thinking they are is why we have this problem. You don't own them, you are simply being permitted to use them. And if you're not actively using them there is no reason, other than narcissism and selfishness, that anyone would feel like they are entitled to them.

 

I'm confused.  Aren't you saying you're entitled to a name?

[Captain Fabulous]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

All this talk about entitlement and you’re the one over here going “they’re not using it and I want it.”

 

There is zero functional difference between the name of a character that gets played every day and the name of a character that hasn’t been touched in a year.

 

The points I have been making, and will continue to make, are:

1. The name release policy purports to solve a problem that has not been demonstrated to actually exist.
2. The policy does not stop people from “camping” names, which is one of the stated issues.
3. The policy will result in existing players losing names of characters they’re invested in. How long that player has been gone for is irrelevant, as are their reasons for why they weren’t online. I don’t need to ask why they’ve been gone, because that’s none of my business, and asking why just means that suddenly I’m the one who gets to decide whether their absence from the game was for a “good” reason or not.

Except that's not what I said. Not even once. I'm advocating for ALL players, not just myself. That's the difference between us. You think "me me me mine mine mine!" and I think "hey, wouldn't it be great if everyone had access to names people are hoarding?" Check yourself.

1.) Wrong. The problem has repeatedly been documented to exist. And the devs have told us how many names are estimated to be released. Are you claiming you know better than they do?
2.) It absolutely does, except for the sociopaths who powerlevel all their camped names to 50. And that's easily solved by also including 50s in the policy.
3.) Irrelevant. There is nothing in the TOS that says you get to own names. Pick a new one. I mean, it's easy and simple, right? Just open a thesaurus. Or get Force Redux to help you. Problem solved.

I should be surprised you don't see your own hypocrisy, but honestly I'm not. You can't argue that names are so important that you should be able to hold onto them forever but also so irrelevant that it doesn't matter if you can't get the name you want.
 

[Captain Fabulous]

35 minutes ago, wei yau said:

I've got a bunch of names, some of whom were alternates after finding that their original intended names were not available.  I've also surrendered names when a player reaches out to me and asks if I would, in those instances, I've come up with alternate names for said character.

 

Of course, I'm biased because I've got a ton of characters, which I never really get around to playing.  I spent a lot of time creating characters in Icon during the Hiatus.

Of the roughly a dozen times I've actually reached out to someone about getting a name not a single one has ever responded.

[Force Redux]

33 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

See, they're not yours or anyone else's names. Thinking they are is why we have this problem. You don't own them, you are simply being permitted to use them. And if you're not actively using them there is no reason, other than narcissism and selfishness, that anyone would feel like they are entitled to them.

 

I still want your stuff.

[Luminara]

*wanders back in*

*licks all of the names*

 

All mine now.

 

*wanders out again*

[Force Redux]

3 minutes ago, Luminara said:

*wanders back in*

*licks all of the names*

 

All mine now.

 

*wanders out again*

 

Enjoy ☺️

[Captain Fabulous]

46 minutes ago, Force Redux said:

 

I still want your stuff.

Sure, let me know which name you want.

BWAAHAHAAAA, sorry, I'm hoarding. You can't have them.

[Force Redux]

20 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Sure, let me know which name you want.

BWAAHAHAAAA, sorry, I'm hoarding. You can't have them.

 

Cap, I usually like your posts. I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this topic though. And it feels like you're just trolling. Best of luck.

[nzer]

3 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

See, they're not yours or anyone else's names. Thinking they are is why we have this problem. You don't own them, you are simply being permitted to use them.

 

Permitted by who? The devs? By that logic nothing you have in the game belongs to you. If you're gone for a year I should be able to take your inspirations enhancements, your influence, your supergroup, and all of your characters, because they don't actually belong to you and you're not using them. Right?

 

Obviously that's absurd. Of course the name belongs to you, you thought of it and attached a character to it first. That's how this works. It's not musical chairs.

 

Regardless, whether a person owns the names doesn't matter in the context of what you're arguing. Someone else is using the name, and you think you should be entitled to use it instead because they haven't played in however long. You can't make this argument and decry people as acting entitled at the same time.

 

3 hours ago, ZemX said:

Why do you think so?  Here is some actual educated guessing...

 

I'll point out that I said I'd be curious to see how many name availability checks hit those unused names rather than active names. For all we know a majority of them are junk that no one would want anyway.

 

3 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

You can't argue that names are so important that you should be able to hold onto them forever but also so irrelevant that it doesn't matter if you can't get the name you want.

 

Why not? Taking a name away from a player who may later want to use it is inherently negative. If finding workable names is easy we should prefer the solution that doesn't allow names to be taken away from players who may still be using them.

Edited February 2 by nzer
A word