Name database - Will this get cleaned up?

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Excraft said:

And this is where the false sense of hope is coming into play.  

 

It seems to be coming from your imagination actually, unless you'd like to quote someone actually SAYING these things you claim we believe.  Frankly, a whole lot of the arguments against the name release policy in this and other threads are rebuttals to arguments nobody is seriously making. 

 

It goes like this, somebody tries to make a character, they try to come up with names and get 1, 2, 3 maybe more of them bounced as already taken.  So they come here and maybe gripe a little.  Are they saying it is literally impossible to come up with a name?  No.  Are they saying they didn't get the name of their choice?  Sure.   Is releasing a few hundred thousand names going to 100% fix that?  Of course not.  There are no guarantees.  Well... except one.  Doing nothing isn't going to help either.  

 

Releasing 700k or however many names it ends up being, will do just that.  Release 700k names.  How many are desirable?  Certainly not all of them.   Look around you some day though.  How many names attached to characters running around you are ones you'd consider "desirable".  The proportion of such names in the inactive population is probably quite similar.  To say otherwise is to suggest that the active population of this game is somehow more creative than the people who aren't playing anymore... and that'd just be hubris talking.  Though that wouldn't be anything new in THIS thread, I guess.

 

Anyway, against this, are the people claiming what great harm will be caused by instituting a name policy that allows you an entire year to refresh any name you claim to care about (plus however much more time elapses before someone happens to type that name into the character creator, btw).  And it is these same people who are simultaneously reminding us how easy it is to create new names if we can't get our first choice.   So why can't they do the same in the unlikely event they lose a name on some inactive character they haven't played for over a year?  If it's acceptable to tell someone else they can't have it... why isn't it acceptable to you.  It's acceptable to me, should I let any of MY characters lapse.   Seems quite fair actually. 

 

[Excraft]

40 minutes ago, ZemX said:

It seems to be coming from your imagination actually, unless you'd like to quote someone actually SAYING these things you claim we believe.

 

 

Imagination has nothing to do with it.  Of course some people are getting their hopes up that a name they want is going to get released once the policy is live.  Of course there are some people who are hoping the name they want is in that 700,00+ number being tossed around.  They wouldn't be vehemently arguing for enabling the job right now if they weren't.  To say otherwise is being disingenuous.  As for the rest, I never said anything about anyone expecting a 100% guarantee.  That's you adding in nonsense that I never said.  What I did say was that  some (not all) people are getting their hopes up and they're likely to be disappointed.  That's it.  If you don't feel that's the case, good for you.  I'm sure we'll have this very same discussion after the name release routine is set live and the inevitable myriad of complaint/rant posts start cropping up about the job not working right because a name someone wanted didn't get freed up for them. 

[nzer]

54 minutes ago, ZemX said:

If it's acceptable to tell someone else they can't have it... why isn't it acceptable to you.

 

Because not being able to have something because someone else already has it and not being able to have something because it's being actively taken away from you aren't the same thing. One is worse than the other. Especially in an old school MMO, where unique names are the norm.

 

That's really the crux of the issue. I don't think anyone is saying players should be free to hoard and deprive each other of names. No one worth listening to doesn't think that's a bad thing. But in my opinion the policy as written is not something that should be enacted, for the following reasons:

• It will not actually prevent players from hoarding names
• It will cause the release of names that were intended by their owners to still be in use
• It encourages degenerate behavior, such as logging into every single character on your account in sequence just to refresh their name expiration, or compulsively scrolling through your entire alt list to check whether there are any characters with a name expiration warning. This could realistically cause stress for players with OCD or anxiety.
• Its existence is not communicated to the player until very near the point of name expiration, meaning a player who isn't aware of its existence will not actually have a year to refresh their characters names, they may only have as long as the pre-expiration warning period
• It does not protect characters who have XP turned off
• Character level is the wrong way to gauge investment in a game where some people level solo via questlines with no XP buff and others level by sitting in AE farms

If there does need to be a name release policy, as a player I would expect it to err on the side of leniency and be more along the lines of "on X date each year, any account that hasn't logged in in the last twelve months will release the names of all characters that are below level 10 or have less than ten hours of playtime." This would at least guarantee that any player regularly logging in would not need to care about checking every single alt for inactivity, that every player actually gets a full year after they stop playing the game before their names are released, that the system is not trivially defeated by an hour of farm sitting, and that players who prefer to play at a slower pace are as protected as powerlevelers.

 

That said, I echo @macskull's skepticism as to such a policy being necessary in the first place. Does this really need to happen now, rather than taking a bit more time to implement a better solution, like de-uniquifying names altogether? I'm not saying it doesn't or that the devs don't have evidence that it does, but from my perspective, occasional isolated complaints about name availability are not evidence of anything.

Edited February 2 by nzer

[ZemX]

16 minutes ago, nzer said:

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, your influence

 

I hate to break it to you but not only isn't this logic, it is a logical fallacy known as a "false equivalence".  Names are unique per server in this game.  The inspirations and influence on my characters is not.  In fact, I don't think ANYTHING else about my account actually affects anyone else but me... except for the names I have reserved on my characters.   So, hypothetically yes, the devs could institute a policy that takes unused stuff and gives it to random other active players.  They just don't have any reason to.

 

If, however,  you want to lobby for an inspiration release policy, knock yourself out.  I will be the first to admit that some of the insps in my tray ARE a bit old.  I am a terrible hoarder.  If I eat them, I won't have them!  On the other hand, I bet @Luminara has better stuffs than I do.  Go steal it!

 

33 minutes ago, nzer said:

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.

 

You're not the first to suggest that, but like everybody else who has, you don't offer any reason to believe it's true.   There is reason to believe the opposite actually.  Many of these names were nabbed in the early days of Homecoming back in 2019 and then abandoned.   Why does anyone think this group of inactive names is filled with gibberish when simple one and two word descriptive names were there for the taking on a fresh server?  If anything, the names people are making today are FAR more inventive than the ones people could simply scoop up by the dozens back  in the day.  They have to be.  

[kanga]

We've all had names we want that have been taken, gotta get creative.

[FupDup]

In regards to this issue, I once had the idea that people should be able to create duplicate names, but the first one gets some kind of special designation and the others after that point are branded as #2, #6, whatever. One of the devs told me that would be pretty hard to code in terms of database stuff and it might run into issues with multiple players sharing the same name and you try to do a /tell or whatever with them. So that's out of the question unless we get a COH2 or something that finds a way around these issues. 

 

As somebody who admittedly is camping a bunch of names, I think that some kind of name release policy would be completely fair depending on the exact amount of time we consider a character to be "active" and characters gaining immunity at level 50. I think it's fair that if I'd want to keep some of my camped names that I'd have to put in a tiny bit of effort logging in to them periodically. As the saying goes, if you don't need to shit then get off the pot. 

Edited February 2 by FupDup

[nzer]

2 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I hate to break it to you but not only isn't this logic, it is a logical fallacy known as a "false equivalence".  Names are unique per server in this game.  The inspirations and influence on my characters is not.  In fact, I don't think ANYTHING else about my account actually affects anyone else but me... except for the names I have reserved on my characters.

 

Part of this is on me, I said inspirations when I meant enhancements.

 

Regardless, it absolutely is not a false equivalence. The enhancements on your characters are unique, and the fact that they're equipped by your characters means mine can't use them. If I were able to take a full build off an abandoned character, that would potentially save me from having to craft and sell hundreds of enhancements, or a dozen hours of AE farming, or thousands of merits, etc.

 

Similarly, the work involved in earning the badges on your characters is unique, in the sense that if I wanted to earn those badges on my characters I would have to put in similar work. If I were instead able to take an abandoned character I would get all of those badges for free. Etc.

 

My point here isn't to say that if you're allowed to take my name I should be allowed to take your character. I called that out as an absurd position. My point is that the logic of "technically the devs own it, not you" does not somehow make the thing a communal possession for the entire playerbase. That does not follow, and if we pretend it does it leads to absurdity like the scenario I described.

 

14 minutes ago, ZemX said:

You're not the first to suggest that, but like everybody else who has, you don't offer any reason to believe it's true.   There is reason to believe the opposite actually.

 

I don't think anyone needs to present evidence that the inactive names aren't a problem. You're talking about instituting a policy that will potentially cause irrevocable harm, so evidence needs to be presented that they are a problem. And I personally don't think a couple of people saying "I have trouble finding names sometimes" is evidence of anything on its own.

[Ael]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Sure, let me know which name you want.

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

The epic tantrum you're throwing over this is just sad, dude.

[Ael]

10 minutes ago, kanga said:

We've all had names we want that have been taken, gotta get creative.

Exactly. Hell, this morning, I made another two toons with pretty nifty names, I think. I usually use thesaurus.com if I end up ridiculously stuck, but you know what else is often a good go-to? The names of things like candle scents and paint colors. Some of them would make fantastic character names, and many of them are already taken, I checked! There are plenty of methods and ways to name a character, and if it takes a while to think of something then so be it.

[Captain Fabulous]

13 minutes ago, Ael said:

The epic tantrum you're throwing over this is just sad, dude.

So advocating for the adoption of a policy that stops people from hoarding names is an epic tantrum? You seem nice.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

Doing nothing isn't going to help either.

This once again assumes there is a problem which needs to be solved. There has been zero evidence presented here - or anywhere else - other than anecdotal statements like "it took me an hour to find a name which wasn't taken," and the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data."

 

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

Anyway, against this, are the people claiming what great harm will be caused by instituting a name policy that allows you an entire year to refresh any name you claim to care about (plus however much more time elapses before someone happens to type that name into the character creator, btw).  And it is these same people who are simultaneously reminding us how easy it is to create new names if we can't get our first choice.   So why can't they do the same in the unlikely event they lose a name on some inactive character they haven't played for over a year?  If it's acceptable to tell someone else they can't have it... why isn't it acceptable to you.  It's acceptable to me, should I let any of MY characters lapse.   Seems quite fair actually.

I've said it in this thread, on other threads, on the Homecoming Discord, and ingame - if someone wants a name that I'm holding onto I would be more than happy to give it to them, for free. In the nearly five years I've been playing on Homecoming and the nearly six years I played before shutdown, not a single person has taken me up on that offer. Not one.

 

I'm not opposed to the name release policy because I would be affected. Just like you, I don't actually care if one of the names I'm holding onto gets taken. I'm opposed to the name release policy because there are players that care, because releasing names based on inactivity is arbitrary and indicates to players that we don't care about their characters, and because the time spent designing and tweaking and implementing this system would be better spent on finding a way for it to not matter in the first place.

[Oubliette_Red]

7 hours 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 🙂 

 

That's almost as funny as the Legacy Devs making a slight edit to the base code and all of a sudden people were wondering why their defenses were shooting at everything that moved.  :D

 

[macskull]

9 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

So advocating for the adoption of a policy that stops people from hoarding names is an epic tantrum? You seem nice.

The policy as it is currently proposed does not do what you say it does.

[Snarky]

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

I bet @Luminara has better stuffs than I do.  Go steal it!

 

[Ael]

49 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

So advocating for the adoption of a policy that stops people from hoarding names is an epic tantrum? You seem nice.

And you seem like a troll. Re-read your posts; you come across as an unstable man-child. You're having a fit over not being able to get the exact name you want in a video game. I'm perfectly pleasant, just not towards people who treat others like crap. These are names in a video game. No matter how much you kick, scream, rant, and rage, you're not going to get your way here; they aren't going to free up every single name of every single character not being played. The names of 50's will never be up for grabs, and anything 6 - 49 is safe for a year. It's what the policy is going to be. Get over it and move on. 

[Snarky]

10 minutes ago, Ael said:

And you seem like a troll. Re-read your posts; you come across as an unstable man-child. You're having a fit over not being able to get the exact name you want in a video game. I'm perfectly pleasant, just not towards people who treat others like crap. These are names in a video game. No matter how much you kick, scream, rant, and rage, you're not going to get your way here; they aren't going to free up every single name of every single character not being played. The names of 50's will never be up for grabs, and anything 6 - 49 is safe for a year. It's what the policy is going to be. Get over it and move on. 

I take issue with this.  Capt Fab is shallow end of the pool unstable.  Dive deep into the world of my opinions and theories.  you will be aMazEd at the torturous lengths I go to just to make a point I have forgotten by the end of the paragraph while blithely ignoring previous posts, facts, decorum, grammar, or whether anyone wants me to continue.

 

I GOT IT ALL BABY!!!

[Force Redux]

1 minute ago, Snarky said:

I take issue with this.  Capt Fab is shallow end of the pool unstable.  Dive deep into the world of my opinions and theories.  you will be aMazEd at the torturous lengths I go to just to make a point I have forgotten by the end of the paragraph while blithely ignoring previous posts, facts, decorum, grammar, or whether anyone wants me to continue.

 

I GOT IT ALL BABY!!!

 

I will always love you Snarky. And it has nothing to do with your villainous vampire mesmerizing powers!

Edited February 2 by Force Redux

[kanga]

I personally think names should be protected. many of us have taken breaks, for over a year at times, it would be awful to come back and find that gone. I'm sure if they made it 50 with alpha slotted as the cut off and people would just complain about that too.

[ZemX]

13 hours ago, Excraft said:

Imagination has nothing to do with it.  Of course some people are getting their hopes up that a name they want is going to get released once the policy is live.  Of course there are some people who are hoping the name they want is in that 700,00+ number being tossed around.  They wouldn't be vehemently arguing for enabling the job right now if they weren't.  

 

That you can only imagine people arguing for this for selfish reasons is more revealing than you think.  Recycling desirable names nobody is using is just common sense good policy.  It was the devs who came up with this idea in the first place, remember.   Not some person desperately desiring a lost name from Live.  

 

13 hours ago, Excraft said:

As for the rest, I never said anything about anyone expecting a 100% guarantee.  That's you adding in nonsense that I never said.

 

You said "false hope".  What is false exactly about hoping for something that has a chance of happening?  It would only be a false hope if one believed it was guaranteed to happen.  But then you also JUST said this in the very post where you claim I am making shit up...

 

13 hours ago, Excraft said:

the inevitable myriad of complaint/rant posts start cropping up about the job not working right because a name someone wanted didn't get freed up for them

 

Again, how could your imaginary people believe that it wasn't "working right" unless they believed they were guaranteed to get the name they wanted?  If they knew there was only a chance then they might express disappointment but they'd also recognize they simply weren't lucky and move on.   Face it, you're manufacturing strawmen who will be disappointed by this policy not releasing their one true love of a name simply in order to argue against it... as if that is a better situation.  They STILL don't have the name they want AND they have not even a chance of getting it.  Genius!  You should be in politics.  "I promise you nothing!  That way you will not be disappointed when you don't get it!  Vote for me!"

[ZemX]

13 hours ago, nzer said:

Regardless, it absolutely is not a false equivalence. The enhancements on your characters are unique, and the fact that they're equipped by your characters means mine can't use them.

 

This is complete nonsense.  You're either trolling or you have no idea what the word "unique" means.  Either way not wasting more time on you.

[ZacKing]

12 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

So advocating for the adoption of a policy that stops people from hoarding names is an epic tantrum? You seem nice.

 

The policy as it exists now isn't going to stop anyone who wants to hoard names from hoarding names.  They can still log in every one of their sub-50 characters and keep whatever names they want. 

[ZemX]

13 hours ago, kanga said:

We've all had names we want that have been taken, gotta get creative.

 

We can do both. We can be creative and we can free up maybe an entire third of the name database that isn't being used.  Doing both is better than doing just one or the other.

[ZemX]

3 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

The policy as it exists now isn't going to stop anyone who wants to hoard names from hoarding names.  They can still log in every one of their sub-50 characters and keep whatever names they want. 

 

If you page back through this and previous threads you will find people complaining about HAVING to do this.  So "prevent" is too strong a word, I agree.  But discourage?  Maybe.  But then again, it's also not the main reason.  This was invented way back when the devs could see HUGE portions of the name database just sitting there unused.

[ZacKing]

7 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

That you can only imagine people arguing for this for selfish reasons is more revealing than you think.  Recycling desirable names nobody is using is just common sense good policy.  It was the devs who came up with this idea in the first place, remember.   Not some person desperately desiring a lost name from Live.  

 

 

You said "false hope".  What is false exactly about hoping for something that has a chance of happening?  It would only be a false hope if one believed it was guaranteed to happen.  But then you also JUST said this in the very post where you claim I am making shit up...

 

 

Again, how could your imaginary people believe that it wasn't "working right" unless they believed they were guaranteed to get the name they wanted?  If they knew there was only a chance then they might express disappointment but they'd also recognize they simply weren't lucky and move on.   Face it, you're manufacturing strawmen who will be disappointed by this policy not releasing their one true love of a name simply in order to argue against it... as if that is a better situation.  They STILL don't have the name they want AND they have not even a chance of getting it.  Genius!  You should be in politics.  "I promise you nothing!  That way you will not be disappointed when you don't get it!  Vote for me!"

 

Yeah, this is bollocks.  You're being disingenuous here.  No personal offense meant, but trying to say there's no people here who are chomping at the bit right now to release all those names in the hope that the one they really want will get freed up is just being willfully ignorant.  It's a false hope in that there's already a 1 in 700,000+ chance the name someone wants is going to get freed up.  That means the chances are overwhelming going to be that person hoping for that name is going to be very disappointed and probably come here to the forums to rant about it.  Saying otherwise is ridiculous.

 

As far as what's "selfish" goes, the "selfish" ones here are the folks who simply cannot live without their new costume piece, new powerset, new mission, new badge or whatever new shiny they're wanting in favor of giving the dev team here time to work on something like fixing this name thing once and for all for everyone so everyone can have the exact name they want.  The HC peeps know what the problem is and what it would take to fix.  Yeah, it's a big job.  Yeah, it won't be an easy fix to make, but I have the utmost confidence in them.  They've got the knowledge, talent and skills to do it.