Unique Names...

[Lucky666]

I just want to say I got Lucky. Yes my global is @Lucky and my I'll/dark  is named Lucky. I never got this on live. I was and and am still so happy to get this global. 

[Chance Jackson]

21 hours ago, Nexys said:

I prefer unique names, simply because of the concept of the game.  We are heroes fighting for our city or villains fighting for our reputation and own power.  Gotham City didn't have two guys running around calling themselves The Joker or six different iterations of Poison Ivy.  I just wish we could get rid of the bizarre workarounds to the unique names.  It's frustrating when you get in to the game, create a unique character, and suddenly see it's name pop up in various places.

 

Imagine, you create a character, get thrilled that you got the name you wanted (let's say "Blue Lightning"), and enter Paragon City.  Two days later, you run in to "Blue_Lightning" and "Blue.Lightning" and "B1ue Lightning," etc.  That has always annoyed me.

But there are multiple robins & captain marvels in the same continuity, supermen & spider-men from different continuities have met etc, etc

[biostem]

30 minutes ago, Chance Jackson said:

But there are multiple robins & captain marvels in the same continuity, supermen & spider-men from different continuities have met etc, etc

Yes, and typically those instances are around the time one of said characters is about to die/retire/go off on their own and change their name, (Robin -> Nightwing, one of the new Supermen to Superboy or Steel, etc).  You also have to remember that the name you're choosing is, in-universe, part of an official registration process, so even though your "real name" may be "Cyclone", the rep at the registration office may flatly tell you that the name is already taken for official documentation purposes, but you could be "Cyclone 12345" or perhaps incorporate some aspect of your costume design or power effects to amend that original name...

[ZeeHero]

Unique naming systems suck and are an obsolete relic, however I dont think it can be changed in COH.

 

It's irrelevant if you believe it makes "more sense" for the names to be unique becuase the fact is the result of doing so means the longer the game runs and the more characters are made the less good names remain and the less concepts become doable with half decent names. thus making it objectively bad for the game.

 

Not that it can be changed, but theres a lot of good things about the game. Unique names are definitely not one of them.

Edited August 21, 2019 by ZeeHero

[Oubliette_Red]

I am also in the unique names camp.

 

I find the "All the good names will be gone." argument to ring hollow, "good names" is completely subjective. What one person thinks of as a "good name" others might see as mundane.

Legacy CoH was live for over 8 years and people were still capably of creating "good names" for their characters. Did people have to crack open a thesaurus for names? Likely. Did people have to use words from foreign language for names? Probably.

 

To me, folks that lock themselves into a single word or idea for a name are like drives tailgating some slow-poke in the fast lane when there are three empty lanes available to pass said slow-poke. I am more than willing to use the empty lanes to pass the tailgater and the slow-poke.

 

An example of a past experience for me (on Legacy) with regards to finding a name for a character when my first choice wasn't available for an Ice/Dark Controller:

My first name attempt: Black Ice

Yeah, totally not shocked that it was taken and was annoyed at not getting it for all of about 15 seconds. So I spent a few minutes think of alternatives for each word and eventually made my second attempt: Sable Drift

 

I felt fortunate the my first attempt was unavailable as I found it to be rather mundane to the name my character eventually ended up with.

 

[Apparition]

32 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

I am also in the unique names camp.

 

I find the "All the good names will be gone." argument to ring hollow, "good names" is completely subjective. What one person thinks of as a "good name" others might see as mundane.

Legacy CoH was live for over 8 years and people were still capably of creating "good names" for their characters. Did people have to crack open a thesaurus for names? Likely. Did people have to use words from foreign language for names? Probably.

 

That argument is a bit disingenuous.  "Legacy" City of Heroes had twelve North American servers compared to Homecoming's four North American servers, was only free-to-play for its last operational year in comparison to Homecoming being free-to-play off the bat, and had... what... 50? character slots per server in comparison to Homecoming's thousand character slots per server.

 

I know of multiple people who have over 200 character names in reserve on one server.  While not impossible to do in "Legacy" CoH, that would have been a very expensive undertaking at a minimum of four subscriptions per month and the money to unlock the character slots.  In addition, there is simply no possible way that they will ever get all 200+ characters to level 50.

 

It is a situation that is far greater compounded on Homecoming than it ever was on "Legacy" CoH.

[Necessity Bear]

On 8/20/2019 at 12:39 AM, Steampunkette said:

On Everlasting I created a character named Cyclone. I had to use an i for the L because somebody on that server is sitting on the name Cyclone with the intent to make a storm corruptor. She got the name from a friend who was sitting on it.

 

I'm the only person who has actually played a character named Cyclone on the server but I will always have that ugly capital I in the middle of my name...

 

Because the person who has it spelled correctly for an alt they haven't even created yet wants to use it for the character they originally wanted to make Stormsurge but that name was taken...

 

Layered irony and frustration. I would love if names were not unique but I don't I think they'll be able to set that out

I love the unique naming convention in CoH. Didn't have a problem with it on live and i don't have any issues on HC.

My experience on HC is that i often get the name i want straight outta the gate (this never happened on live). Even when it's a kind of an obvious name, i've been pleasantly surprised to find that no one else has it. When my name of choice is taken it usually takes me about 10 to 20min to come up with something else that i like, usually more so than my original choice. I don't even resort to thesauruses, or foreign languages.

Maybe im a lucky guy? Maybe im just not that discerning? Who knows.

Having said that, im sympathetic to your plight. What say you whack up a piccy of your character + bio (if you've got one) and perhaps we can help you out with some juicy alternatives? With the combined brain power of da forumz im sure we can rustle something to your liking. One of 'ems bound to be available for you to use. Then you too can be a happy bunny with a unique name, kill skuls and be happy?

[Steampunkette]

4 minutes ago, Necessity Bear said:

I love the unique naming convention in CoH. Didn't have a problem with it on live and i don't have any issues on HC.

My experience on HC is that i often get the name i want straight outta the gate (this never happened on live). Even when it's a kind of an obvious name, i've been pleasantly surprised to find that no one else has it. When my name of choice is taken it usually takes me about 10 to 20min to come up with something else that i like, usually more so than my original choice. I don't even resort to thesauruses, or foreign languages.

Maybe im a lucky guy? Maybe im just not that discerning? Who knows.

Having said that, im sympathetic to your plight. What say you whack up a piccy of your character + bio (if you've got one) and perhaps we can help you out with some juicy alternatives? With the combined brain power of da forumz im sure we can rustle something to your liking. One of 'ems bound to be available for you to use. Then you too can be a happy bunny with a unique name, kill skuls and be happy?

I'm a roleplayer and the character is level 44 at this point. She's had about a month of consistent play of a few hours every day.

 

Cyclone is just who she is, at this point. There's too many people around Paragon who know her by that name to make switching seem like an appropriate (And entirely random) decision.

[Necessity Bear]

4 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

I'm a roleplayer and the character is level 44 at this point. She's had about a month of consistent play of a few hours every day.

 

Cyclone is just who she is, at this point. There's too many people around Paragon who know her by that name to make switching seem like an appropriate (And entirely random) decision.

Fair play brother.

Can you make the name snafu part of your characters bio? Like some villain hit you up with identity fraud and now your out to get that fool that stole your true i.d.? 

[Necessity Bear]

13 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

Unique naming systems suck and are an obsolete relic, however I dont think it can be changed in COH.

 

It's irrelevant if you believe it makes "more sense" for the names to be unique becuase the fact is the result of doing so means the longer the game runs and the more characters are made the less good names remain and the less concepts become doable with half decent names. thus making it objectively bad for the game.

 

Not that it can be changed, but theres a lot of good things about the game. Unique names are definitely not one of them.

Naming characters appears to be the one part of the game i excel at. Please don't take that away from me 🙂

[RikOz]

My primary methods of coming up with unique names:

 

Coin a new word. My main is a leather-and-chains clad, female, fire/fire blaster named "Flaminatrix".

 

Multiple word names, because odds are good that somebody else isn't going to pick the same two-word combo.

 

Make my characters originate in countries where English isn't the primary language, and name them in their native language.

 

One of my self-contained super group concepts, the Solar Angels, is a team based upon the bodies of our solar system. They all have either multiple-word names or, since they're an international team, names in their native languages: Mother Sun (team leader, scientist who bestowed powers on the team), Girl Mercury, Venus Lass, Erdmadchen (German), Ms. Mars (an actual Martian), Fille de Jupiter (French), Saturn Signal, Princesa Urana (Spanish), Neptune's Child, and Notta Planet.

 

I have a Dutch character named "Heer Oranje" (Lord Orange), a Latin-named character, "Delcambre".

 

I've only had two "that name is unavailable" situations, and I found satisfactory workarounds. One was a SS/Rad brute I originally named "Rad Bull", whose origin story was that he drank so many energy drinks that he developed superpowers. When I moved him from Reunion to Everlasting, somebody there already had "Rad Bull", so I changed his name to "Red Beef", eventually decided that was silly, and settled on "Roentgen Bull" ("roentgen" being a unit of radiation measurement). Another was "Iron Savior", which is the name of a German metal band that sings about a sentient AI spaceship called the "Iron Savior". Alas, the name was taken, so I chose an alternate name for the same thing, based on a line from one of the band's songs, and he became "Savior Machine".

[Nexys]

On 8/20/2019 at 3:36 PM, Chance Jackson said:

But there are multiple robins & captain marvels in the same continuity, supermen & spider-men from different continuities have met etc, etc

Those are the exceptions that prove the rule, really.  If you look at the characters with the same name, it's a part of a storyline or plot point that they have the same name (alternate realities, "passing the torch," etc).  Just a casual "oh, yeah, there are like six...or, maybe, it's seven now...guys named Wolverine running around.  Oh, and three dozen woman all calling themselves Storm" doesn't happen.

[Nexys]

17 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

Unique naming systems suck and are an obsolete relic, however I dont think it can be changed in COH.

 

It's irrelevant if you believe it makes "more sense" for the names to be unique becuase the fact is the result of doing so means the longer the game runs and the more characters are made the less good names remain and the less concepts become doable with half decent names. thus making it objectively bad for the game.

 

Not that it can be changed, but theres a lot of good things about the game. Unique names are definitely not one of them.

I don't deny that you make some decent points, but I don't think you can say its "objectively" bad for the game.  Your opinion (which I may not share but do understand) is, by definition, a subjective matter.  Also, "half decent names" is a subjective judgement as well.  Don't get me wrong, I've seen some character names that make me roll my eyes, but the people who made the character might love that name.  To me, it's a bad name.  To them, it's not just "half decent," but amazing.

[Zep]

Something that works for me is Google Translate. Dont get the word in English go for French, German, Welsh and get the same word with some flavor. 

[RikOz]

18 minutes ago, Nexys said:

Those are the exceptions that prove the rule, really.  If you look at the characters with the same name, it's a part of a storyline or plot point that they have the same name (alternate realities, "passing the torch," etc).  Just a casual "oh, yeah, there are like six...or, maybe, it's seven now...guys named Wolverine running around.  Oh, and three dozen woman all calling themselves Storm" doesn't happen.

Of course, in a mainstream comic book universe, all of the characters aren't confined to one city like we are. There could be multiple characters using the same name, but they all operate out of different cities, distant from one another, and in the case of C-list characters on down, may be completely unknown outside of their own stomping grounds.

 

Kind of like band names. There may be a bar band named "Rock Monster" in every city, but nobody cares except for avoiding duplicate names within the same city. But if Rock Monster from Spokane, WA lands a record deal and becomes nationally recognized, all those other Rock Monsters are going to need new names.

[Oubliette_Red]

6 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

That argument is a bit disingenuous.  "Legacy" City of Heroes had twelve North American servers compared to Homecoming's four North American servers, was only free-to-play for its last operational year in comparison to Homecoming being free-to-play off the bat, and had... what... 50? character slots per server in comparison to Homecoming's thousand character slots per server.

 

I know of multiple people who have over 200 character names in reserve on one server.  While not impossible to do in "Legacy" CoH, that would have been a very expensive undertaking at a minimum of four subscriptions per month and the money to unlock the character slots.  In addition, there is simply no possible way that they will ever get all 200+ characters to level 50.

 

It is a situation that is far greater compounded on Homecoming than it ever was on "Legacy" CoH.

Legacy CoH also had more than 10x the amount of players.

The Homecoming team also has a strategy in place for freeing up names on unused character that will be more aggressive than the Legacy version.

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Legacy CoH also had more than 10x the amount of players.

The Homecoming team also has a strategy in place for freeing up names on unused character that will be more aggressive than the Legacy version.

And it isn't activated, yet. It's "Coming Soon" with no specific ETA.

[ZeeHero]

15 hours ago, Nexys said:

I don't deny that you make some decent points, but I don't think you can say its "objectively" bad for the game.  Your opinion (which I may not share but do understand) is, by definition, a subjective matter.  Also, "half decent names" is a subjective judgement as well.  Don't get me wrong, I've seen some character names that make me roll my eyes, but the people who made the character might love that name.  To me, it's a bad name.  To them, it's not just "half decent," but amazing.

What I meant is that by very simple logical deduction its bad for new people coming in as all the good sounding names will inevitably be taken, hence being bad for the game long term.

 

Whether unique names make more sense to you than non unique names IC is irrelevant. what matters is people being happy with their character names.

Edited August 22, 2019 by ZeeHero

[Fire Chief]

I lost names from LIVE and believe me I quit other mmos when I couldn't get my so-called siggy names But this game is sooooooo awesome HC inspires me to come up with others!!!

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Fire Chief

[RiotAce]

Naming wouldn't be an issue if you couldn't roll 1000 alts. That was a bad idea. NOBODY plays 1000 alts. It's essentially a namelock function. Having a limited amount of slots meant you had to put thought into what you wanted to do, this go around is create and forget. 

[PaxArcana]

One workaround I've used now and then, when I absolutely HAD to have a specific name, and it was already taken:

 

Append a roman numeral to it.

Couldn't get "Captain Fabulous" ...?  Fine, how about "Captain Fabulous II" ...?  I mean, you probably are the second guy on that server to try that name, right?

 

(Even so, I much prefer the approach Champions Online took for naming characters.)

Edited August 22, 2019 by PaxArcana

[WumpusRat]

5 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

What I meant is that by very simple logical deduction its bad for new people coming in as all the good sounding names will inevitably be taken, hence being bad for the game long term.

 

Whether unique names make more sense to you than non unique names IC is irrelevant. what matters is people being happy with their character names.

You need to stop saying "the good names" or "the good sounding names". Good is entirely subjective. What you mean is all the COMMON names will be taken.

 

Sure, it's a little annoying when a name I wanted is already taken, but that's when creativity comes into play. You know, that thing we're supposed to have as MMO players. Use the same word/term from another language. Use a slightly different term. Use an alternate spelling of it. Add an adjective. Etc.

 

Unique names means each character will be unique. Every (and I mean EVERY) game I've seen where they use some sort of global designator meant that the character name you chose became irrelevant. Nobody but NPCs referred to you as that. They ALWAYS referred to you by your global. Why? Because it was the only way to really signify who you were talking to. 

 

And what happens when people start saying "all the good global names are taken!"? What then? We'll be back in this exact same boat, with people claiming we now need a second-tier global to refer to everyone as, "so people can have the good global name they want".

[Steampunkette]

31 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

You need to stop saying "the good names" or "the good sounding names". Good is entirely subjective. What you mean is all the COMMON names will be taken.

 

Sure, it's a little annoying when a name I wanted is already taken, but that's when creativity comes into play. You know, that thing we're supposed to have as MMO players. Use the same word/term from another language. Use a slightly different term. Use an alternate spelling of it. Add an adjective. Etc.

 

Unique names means each character will be unique. Every (and I mean EVERY) game I've seen where they use some sort of global designator meant that the character name you chose became irrelevant. Nobody but NPCs referred to you as that. They ALWAYS referred to you by your global. Why? Because it was the only way to really signify who you were talking to. 

 

And what happens when people start saying "all the good global names are taken!"? What then? We'll be back in this exact same boat, with people claiming we now need a second-tier global to refer to everyone as, "so people can have the good global name they want".

My husband made a Malta agent named November Black Eight.

 

Well he tried. It was taken.

 

Even the out there ones often get snagged.

[PaxArcana]

36 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

that's when creativity comes into play.

Not everyone is creative in the same ways.  I've known people who could craft a wonderful backstory, full of so many twists and turns and details to explore, while all holding together remarkably well for plausibility and consistency .... but every single time they had to come up with a NAME, it was Bob.  Or Sue.  Or Mrs. Smith.  They would literally choke on the names.

Flipside, I've known people who couldn't narrate themselves out of a wet paper bag, with a team of native guides and a well-lit, paved road leading out.  But names?  In the space between two breaths, they could spit out three to five names.  Names that just oozed character, and story potential.  And were always setting- and genre-specific, across a wide wide range of possibilities.

...
 

So if someone says they struggle to come up with good names?  Don't just tell them "get creative".  They may already be exceeding the limits of their own creativity where names are concerned ...

 

[WumpusRat]

17 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

So if someone says they struggle to come up with good names?  Don't just tell them "get creative".  They may already be exceeding the limits of their own creativity where names are concerned ...

Hence the examples listed. Use a different language, use an adjective, use a slightly different term, etc. It's not just a dismissive "get creative, noob", it's "here's a bunch of things you could try".