Require Unique Character Names? Options

[Mole]

A decision was made on whether or not to require all characters to have unique character names. Is this something that we want, or do we want to allow different players to have the same name?

By allowing players to reuse names, this opens up some interesting possibilities in the game. It makes the game more like ?real life? in that there can be multiple players named ?George? running around our world. It could also add some fun confusion into the game. Just imagine the response when you walk into a tavern and say ?Hey George? and 5 people turn to you and say ?What?. Personally, I like the possibilities.

The other option is to require unique character names. This would only give us one character named ?George?.

Pretty much all MMORPG games opt to require player characters to have unique names. If we stuck with this option, we would not be doing anything out of the norm.

I?d like to hear what everyone things on this topic.

[silmaril]

I think the advantages of unique character names far outweigh the advantages of not having them. What I see as the most compelling arguments for unique character names:

We will have options for /tell type commands. Without unique character names this is impossible.
All guild, buddy, and other character-to-character commands can be done with /commands or without selecting from a list or avatar(like typing the name in a text field). Without this, one would either have to click a character or in other ways distinguish characters with the same name from each others.
The perhaps most important: non-unique character names open up an easy way for griefing. Who is to stop someone from making an alt with the same name as someone they dislike and go out doing things to give that person a bad reputation.


So I say we have unique character names. IMO we shouldn't look at something as strictly positive just because nobody else did it that way before.

[chicken_smugler]

Maybe First and Last names could be implemented. This way, characters could have the same first name but a different last name. For this to work, though, the last names would need to be unique (possibly the account names?). But this might make it harder because you might need to remember both the first and the last name. However, this is how it is in real life. I don't really know though.. those are just my thoughts on it.

[Jerky]

Well, my idea in that other thread about storing custom information regarding other players can also help out in this discussion. Say there are more than one guy named George in the world. You could have your own 'address book' (someone else mentioned this), that had people you contact all the time in game. When you add 'george' into it, it would be the george that you were focused on at the time you entered him into your address book. At that time, the client polls the server's user db, and grabs the correct (unique) character id and adds it into the address book. So, all the client would see is 'george.' The player would know the difference between the 'george' that he wants to talk to, so that is all that would be displayed in his Address Book. But, the actual address book file (xml) would have the players real unique number in it, so he would never be sending tells to the wrong 'george'.

Needless to say, I like the opportunities that Mole's idea brings to this. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to name my player 'Jerky' in a game and found out that it was already taken. Screw that. Someone should not be punished just because they joined the game after the player who took the name first. People should not be stopped from playing the character that they want to play. For many, a character name is huge, and it effects how they play a game. How about in EQ, when you could not get a last name until you reached level 20. I will tell you that I was excited when I finally got my last name and was able to become who I always knew I was. Again, I will repeat, names in MMOG's are huge. We can be one of the first games to let players play who they want to play.

The last names thing could also be a way to prevent this griefing that Silmaril was mentioning. If players did not get their last name until X# of hours of gameplay, or their highest skill reached Y, or someway to limit it and make it an accomplishment. This would make it harder to try to ruin someone's reputation by taking their name. We can't say that it wont be done, because it will happen, but we can do things to avoid it. Like, if the player was a higher level and already had a last name, then the idiot who wanted to defame him would only have the same first name and would really have to try hard to get the same name. We could also let GM's try and sort some of this out. If a player was getting harrassed, or defamed, then a GM could observe that player and then give him a name that he could not shake, like "dastardly" or "notorious". These are just ideas, but I think that there are just as many ways/reasons to have this feature and keep it under control, than to not have it.

[silmaril]

Allowing for space in the character name solves the problem with "Jerky" being taken. Now you just figure out a lastname for your self as well.

Having the client/server make an educated guess on who you are trying to communicate with will (I'm sorry to say) never work completely right. There are so many situations that can arise that we can never account for them all and try to figure out which George someone tried talking to.

[Jerky]

Please be more specific than "it just won't work." It is obvious how you stand on this issue since you made the decision without anyone's knowledge or discussion, but if we as a project are going to back you on it, we are going to need more reason than that. So far, 3 people have spoken in favor of this and just you in opposition.

You said it yourself, no one gets 'carte blanche'. Tell me why and I will give you another workaround. We are here to discuss this until a decision is made, not to have a decision handed to us.

BTW, it would not be an educated guess on the client side. The exact person would be pinpointed without mistake. It is a computer, (ie. binary) so it can either be right or wrong, there is no guessing with computers. Obviously this is an idea with some merit, so we need more than just your word on it.

[silmaril]

ok, I understood the meaning in your post wrong. The solution is technically viable.

I still think the disadvantages is greater than the advantages in this case. It will lead to extra work, how much is hard to say without spending more time looking at it. The points I mentioned above also still stands as well. Designing a system we know is likely to be abused and solve with it "let the GMs handle it" is not a good solution imo.

[Minthos]

I was initially in favor of allowing spaces in names and requiring them to be unique, but after reading this I actually agree with Jerky.

It wouldn't work without a good implementation, and an address book sounds like a good idea for this purpose. If character names are initially hidden, and automatically added to address book when you are "introduced" to a character (whatever that would mean), you will easily be able to distinguish between the George you know and George the imposter.

If two with the same name are added to your address book, there should be an easy way to tell those two apart. Give them a number, a color (or both?), anything to distinguish them not only when you send tells, but also ingame when you see their nick hovering in a crowd. Whatever is necessary to ensure that most users don't ever mistake a player for another with the same name.

Perhaps also have an info page about each character in your address book that provides some hard-to-fake basic info about the character like date of creation, honorary titles, guild affiliations, etc.

These things combined should actually make it to imposter someone than simply requiring names to be unique.

George
Goerge
Geonge
Gearge

George

[silmaril]

As I still don't think the solution proposed will solve the problems mentioned, I have an alternate way to approach it:


Separate between character name and character nickname.
Let the character name be a regular name with a firstname and a surname
Let nickname be a string that can include spaces
is unique.
Give players the option for how they want to show their name. Using myself as an example (Ole-Marius is my firstname, Moe-Helgesen my surname and silmaril my nickname)

Ole-Marius
Ole-Marius Moe-Helgesen
Ole-Marius 'silmaril' Moe-Helgesen
silmaril

/-type commands can be used either with "silmaril" in which case it is unambigious, or with either of the first two combinations of the character name in which case the server will have to perform a check to see if it is in case ambigious or not. Alternately let only /-type commands be allowed only with nicknames. Since the first option doesn't scale too well, I would suggest limiting it to the unique nicknames.


This have, as far as I can see, all the advantages given for non-unique names, at the same time it will give the players the advantages unique names have in other games. It doesn't have the "fun confusion" part that Mole mentioned for players that doesn't want it, but imo that is not a negative point.

The question of abuse is reduced, but is still higher than with unique names only.

[Jerky]

Great point Minthos. I realize that this is a very different idea for a MMOG. We are trying to create our own style of EMMORPG here and I think this is a step in the right direction. We need more to draw people in than just saying it will be Wish-similar. I believe this is an innovative idea that, if implemented properly, will add to our playability/appeal.

This entails a healthy discussion of all the drawbacks and benefits so we can refine the idea. I think we are making some headway, but still needs a little work.

To explain what I mean by appeal, I was added to the world team because of my knowledge of Psychology (I'm a Psych major). Large things draw people to play a game, but it is the little things that keep them playing. An example of large things is Graphics and an example of little things is the UI. This idea of names really ties in strongly with psychology because we are creating a fantasy for the person. If the person is able to immerse themselves in this fantasy more readily, then they will find out much faster if they like it or not. Choosing a name is a HUGE deal to players. Being able to have your name, whether other players already have it or not, it also a HUGE deal and will make a difference. This is one of those little things.

For example, my name is Erik. There is at least one other Eric here on the dev team. What if his name were spelled the same way as mine. If I can't play as Jerky (like I have mentioned before, this name has been taken many times in other games) then my fall back is usually Erik, or Erik the Red (if muti-names are permitted). Sometimes, when the stupid game wont even let me do that, I name my characters: Erikthe. Then, if I can get a last name later in the game, I can become Erikthe Red. All this hassle is done just so that I can find a name that fits me. I do not want to be forced to come up with something else. I am Jerky or I am Erik, period. Other players are the same way. This player becomes part of their real existence and they need to be able to be who they want to be, not who we make them be because their favorite name was already taken. This is especially important in our game because we plan on having only 1 server. In other games, I would try another server just so I could get my name on character creation. Even if my ping on that other server sucked, I would rather take my name, than have no lag. I am 100% positive that I am not an extreme example of this. I would say that a LARGE percentage of players (especially in the fantasy game genre) think names are important to them.

My point is that this is not just an idea that can cause problems (add room for griefing). The whole fact that people grief over names is because they are so important to them. This is a VERY important feature that I think we need to do everything we can to make work, not the other way around. This means trying to find workarounds/compromises to get the feature in the game, not take it out.

[Hankellin]

As I still don't think the solution proposed will solve the problems mentioned, I have an alternate way to approach it:


Separate between character name and character nickname.
Let the character name be a regular name with a firstname and a surname
Let nickname be a string that can include spaces
is unique.
Give players the option for how they want to show their name. Using myself as an example (Ole-Marius is my firstname, Moe-Helgesen my surname and silmaril my nickname)

Ole-Marius
Ole-Marius Moe-Helgesen
Ole-Marius 'silmaril' Moe-Helgesen
silmaril

/-type commands can be used either with "silmaril" in which case it is unambigious, or with either of the first two combinations of the character name in which case the server will have to perform a check to see if it is in case ambigious or not. Alternately let only /-type commands be allowed only with nicknames. Since the first option doesn't scale too well, I would suggest limiting it to the unique nicknames.


This have, as far as I can see, all the advantages given for non-unique names, at the same time it will give the players the advantages unique names have in other games. It doesn't have the "fun confusion" part that Mole mentioned for players that doesn't want it, but imo that is not a negative point.

The question of abuse is reduced, but is still higher than with unique names only.

I like this idea of a common known name and "secret name". If the player wants to give out his/her secret name that is his/her choice.

This could also give the rise to spells that have a slightly different affect if a secret name is used when casting them.

Think of binding a demon. Less chance of escapeor loss of control if it's secret name where wound into the spell of binding.

It would also give another aspect of divination spells: Learn secret name.
EDIT: Not everything would need a secret(true) name(ie EarthSea from SciFi channel) just Named mobs.

Just a thought.

[Blacksmile]

For /tell - like commands i would think that unique names were a good thing to have, but on the other side i like the idea of characters beeing able to have the names their players want. In my opinion implementation difficulty should stand behind game functionality if possible.

Personnally i would even go a step further and never publish the characters name to any other player. My idea works out as follows: The character name is chosen upon creation and must be unique. But this name would only be there to identify the char in the system and for nothing else (we could as well use unique numbers here but i think players would prefer to see "jerky_25" in their character selection screen over "character 32252".
How would players identify other characters now? Well, as a character (A) sees an other character (B) for the first time the unique id of B would be stored in the name mapping list of character A. The initial mapping would be provided by the server on request and be something like a quick visual description (ie "A very tall elf" or "A strong Ogre"). Maybe even this would not be needed as the graphics engine would give out this information already. The player could then change/create the name shown (for his char A only, the player's other chars had an own mapping) for character B however he wants. If he knew the name of B he could change the mapping to this name or anything else... if A's player thought he would like to remember B as "bad arse" then he can change the mapping to this. If you want to /tell someone you would have to click on him, or have created a mapping to do so. So you could do "/tell 'bad arse' Leave this town!", to stick with my example above.

I think there would be several advantages in handling names this way but also some drawbacks. I will start with the advantages:

+ Players could name their character however they want in game and would not be forced to take other names than they want to as noone would ever know the unique character creation name
+ It would allow to create characters that want to remain unknown (by name at least) and play a thief masquerading themselves or introduce themselves as someone else every time for instance
+ If no name at all would be shown unless there is a mapping i think this would add to immersion extremely
+ It would add RP-depth as characters would be forced to introduce themselves if they wanted to be known by others around them

The last advantage can also be taken as a disadvantage as some players might not want to roleplay an introduction to others. So i will now go on with other disadvantes i see:

- typing a name mapping for every character you deal with more often could be frustrating
- tells could only be delivered to characters you have seen (and named if you don't see them just at the moment) ... possibly we could add a player tell that would be addressed to the players loginname or nickname to allow players to contact friends
- This would consume loads of server-space as i think the mapping had to be stored on the server side as characters should not "forget" the names when a fresh client is used (which would obviously not have a client sided name mapping list)

After all i would still greatly want names not to be imprinted to the characters outside appearance and think it could really add to the immersion if you would have to figure how to call a character without seeing a name above his head.

[Pashta]

At least one other game has made it so anyone can use any name... Ultima Online. I had people make characters with my name and then try to PK with them to bring my reputation down ( I was rather well-known).

I really don't care either way, as long as my name is not taken. ;)

[Jerky]

OK, lets get this going again.

I actually like Blacksmile's idea and I think that the Personal Address book could be something to help out here. I can see that character creation and the likes would need unique names for server, but if a Player were to be naming people using thier own addres book, then they could add their own names, regardless of what the person was actually named.

To be clear, I do think that if this were to be implimented, the address book would HAVE to be stored client side. Again, this would allow for manual editing of it, but there would be no information in it that would actually matter (there would be no advantage/hack for those who edited it out of the game). In order to avoid it being wiped when the game is uninstalled, we could have it save in a folder *game name* in My Documents, like some other games do. This would be documented on the website and there would be disclaimers in the install and uninstall fields so the player would be fully aware of this. This would also allow players who create another character to already have access to the address book created by his first character (this could be seen as an advantage to some and a disadvantage to others).

Things such as introducing could be done by targeting the person(s) to introduce to and hit the introduce button. This would then pull the name you want from your own address book (which is created on Character creation when it asks what name you want to be "known by" in the game world).

An idea about a skill or a spell to learn other's names and such is still up for debate in my mind.

I think the personal address book idea can also work well with other ideas, such as famous people and criminals. This is still an unrefined idea, so bear with me.

There could be a bounty board next to the news board. There could be an option when clicking on either to auto-flag' players that were on the board. For criminals, their description would be there, so an autoflag would flag these players by automatically adding them to their address book, but not necessarily by name. We could set this just as "thief" or "murderer", etc. Famous people would have something similar, but their Names would be used, along with titles. So, if a character has read about them, then they should be able to recognize them.

To add to this idea (and complicate it), there could also be a set of opposing skills that weigh into the picture. A "disguise noteriety" and a "discern noteriety" could be used. "Disguise noteriety" could be used for those criminals who still want to remain hidden, even to those who have read about them. If their disguise skill was high enough, and noone around had a discern skill higher, they would still remain unknown to the people, even if they had read about them. This would allow for criminals and famous people alike to still remain unknown if they really wanted to. This would allow this system to still work, even for those who would not like the idea of being known automatically. They would still have a way of hiding themselves.

With these ideas involved, we could still have unique character names (for the server-side, but a personal address book held client side could help add immersion and realism to the game world. I know that this is complicated, but like I said above, Names are very important, so this is a possible solution.

Comments ensue.

[Minthos]

NO. NO, NO, NO. That won't do at all. First of all, reinstalling windows will delete everything. Personally I reinstall windows more frequently than I reinstall games, so it would just make the files vanish faster. Second, a HDD crash would still wipe it out. Third, a lot of games allow users to keep their savegames when they uninstall (the uninstaller deletes everything but the savegames directory), and there's not reason why PW couldn't do the same. Fourth, I hate putting anything not related to the os on the os partition, cause if that partition doesen't have a good amount of free space at all times, it's going to create problems. An address book of a size that would be a problem to have on a server would also cause problems if it's stored on users' os partition. Fifth, user would first look for the address book in the directory they installed their game in, and making things difficult for users is a bad idea. Even expecting users to know anything at all is a bad idea :)

The only way to make sure none of the users accidentally delete their address book would be to keep a backup of it on a server. If each address book entry is rather limited in size (max a few kilobytes), this is doable. This would be a backup server, not a database server, so a few hundred gigabytes wouldn't be very expensive. I reckon players will have up to about 10K address book entries, and with 100K users that's 1 billion address book entries. This is a worst case scenario. With 10 Kilobytes per entry, that's 10 Terabytes of data. That's obviously way too much, but then, 100K players is also way too much.

Other than that.. yeah, sounds good :)

[Jerky]

This is exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned that. A lot of games do it in that directory that I mentioned because it is seperate from the game folder, so the user knows that those are just the save games. I was not saying that we should install the actual game there.



Partitioning a harddrive may help you keep things seperate in your own mind, but unless you have a completely seperate harddrive, there is no real benefit to it (unless you have other OSes on those other partitions). I myself have not reinstalled my copy of XP in quite a while and have no problems at all.



First of all, text is the only thing that would be in this file. It would probably be XML formatted, so it would never grow very large unless there were entire novels worth of journals in it. I mentioned that this would be a feature that we told players about (both on the website and during the install), so this would not create a problem with them finding it, because it would be well documented.



This is very true. This will be a cause for grief. I agree that if these are not very large, then there would be no problem keeping them on the server. They could even be implemented into the main player DB's (although that would require the server team adding this to the design :))



At that point (having 100k users) I think that this would be the LAST of our concerns. Other Character data in itself would be much larger than 10k, so we would have had to have found another solution for servers (a donation or sponser to host our server with no limit in size).



Thanks. I like the idea and think that it will bring a new aspect to MMOG's. I'll bet this idea is even used my other MMOG's in the future.

So, pretty much, all the descussion above is wasted :). It should be on the server for best results. If we had to limit space, we could place limits and then give the player the option to store the rest on his own HDD at his own risk. Maybe even recommend they use a flash drive, or back it up, so things are safe.

[Minthos]

Let's take my worst case scenario of 10K address book entries at 10 kilobyte per, that would be 100 megabytes. If every game took 100 megs from my os partition, I would soon have to delete something.



I reinstall windows several times a year. The benefits of partitioning the hdd are these: you can format your windows partition without losing any of your data, you can have a relatively small windows partition and your computer won't crash if you fill up the rest of your hdd with junk, and you can run scandisk/defrag/format etc alot faster.

And yes, I have other operating systems on other partitions :)



Store everything both on server and on client computer. Don't want to create unneccessary client-server communication.

[Jerky]

Sounds good. I'm going to close this thread and put it into the design document. Thanks for the help.