Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hmm. This *could* be interesting. I'm still sketchy about changing names, though. Only way I would be in favor of it was if it happened during character transfers.

Yes please. You dedicate your character for so many years. Making people regret a name they took years ago is the worst thing you can do. Bind very strict rules to it tho. Just as other people said, keep old names in bio like corp history. Give it a cooldown of like 10 months or once a year like a remap with a cost like character transfers.

I refer to my post on page 1,

Whenever i see someone in local with a name I don't know, I have to look in their Bio to see if they used to have a name i recognize!!!

This results in many many more calls to the game database because a player has no way of knowing if another player is someone who is 'known' to whem without perfroming an inspection of the Bio.

It would also be a huge PITA to constantly check Bios, which does not lead to enjoyable gameplay.

Not a bad solution.....

1) now you have different names being shown to different people (i see original name, you see new name), this is going to get very complicated. And this also will make FC's cry.

2) What happens when someone has changed their name 4 times?

If name changes are permitted, accountability through name recognition goes straight out the window.

Just permitted with character transfers? Sell it to yourself. Have an extra account? Bounce between those each time you want to wipe the slate.

Consider the reasons people often want a name change, namely to drop associations tied to the name quite frequently.
This is why characters are sold, not skills.

It is a complete package, complete with skills, security status, name associations, all of that.

Will only say yes if your character has a sex change operation. Otherwise; no.

Here the thing that CCP and Bitter vets stand on, is that every choice you make has it consequences. So if you pick a bad name, you must make a choice, learn to live with it, or Biomass. And the next thing that CCP and Bitter vets all agree with is that a name should also carry weight, not only do you build or destroy relation ships based on your name, you name also carry all the past reputation with you, are you a good player? What kind of things have I heard about this? Do you think he will follow through with his deal? This idea destroys the very foundation of not only force to live with every consequence but also the choices of who and what you build your reputation with.

That whole argument would be valid if and only if there would be no trace anywhere of the previous name(s). The suggestion is that past names be shown in the bio of the character (in a new sub-tab for example). Remember that since the character ID is used to link everything in the database (not the character name like some seem to think), if someone puts you on his contact list and sets standing to bad, and edit the notes of that contact to say "this guy is a thief, do not trust", then all this would stay even if the character renamed himself, and the character will still show as a red. Only the display name would change.

Changing a name doesn't change standings or associations, only the label, the display name.

As for making a choice that has consequence, well... This game is 10 years old. Very old characters were created by players that were much less mature they are now (10 years older) and were created when that player didn't know anything about the game yet. Not everybody would change it because they want to go under the radar, actually I'm sure most would change it for example because they used all caps and realize now it's bad, or used numbers in their name while the movies Hackers or The Matrix were still cool and they feel ashamed of them today, or more simply because they forgot to capitalize their name when they first type it and it's bothering them now because they want to role play and their name is spelled wrong...

Whatever the reason, I see no valid argument against it if you can easily see a trace of the previous name in the character's bio.

Why would anyone want to change their character's name?


-or have to put something hideous in their bio?


Brackets power activate [coolname] [awesomebio]

sniiiifff - i smell a troll


my post was a sarcastic way of saying, consequences... i mean really, if you knew you were gonna play for a few years why WHY would you pick a stupid name... and you shoulda known better Ponyboy, you really shoulda KNOWN


bracket powers GO: [Ponyboy, reference to The Outsiders novel, included for illustration purposes only] [no actual Ponyboys were hurt in the filming of this post]