Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi o7

I'm posting again this idea here to have a feeling about the community reading the official forums.

The game has changed significantly over the last year and a half.
Lots of 'tabooed' lines / subjects has been crossed / discussed, like Skill Injectors, Skill queue, Clones mecanics, Sov mecanics, Capitals jump range and frequency, and so on.

I think it's time to cross that Character name change taboo.

Since last patch, you can't have someone in watchlist if himself don't have you in his own watchlist.
Something that made me think again about that character name change cause i concidered this (watchlist thing) a barrier for players to concider this feature.

I'm sure i'm not the only one coming up with this idea.
Please erase if it's redundant.

My "idea" :

-Make a Pilot's Service just like [Multiple Pilot Training Certificate] or [Pilot's Body Resculpt Certificate] to let player change the name of a character. [Name Change Certificate], buyable by AURUM or ISK in game.

- Make it usable only once lifetime. Or every year, 6 months or 3 months, whatever, to avoid abusive use of that (depends on CCP wishes).

- Make a [Name History] which will list all the names the character had in his game life just like the [Employment History] is listing all the corporations the character had in his game life.
Plus, name changes history must be exposed via the XML API for the benefit of alliances and corporations doing background checks.

- Make an option while searching a character name in [People & Places] to display result by actual name or concidering name history. Let's say you want to search for a character named "Lucy Loo", the results will display the actual player named "Lucy Loo" AND the other player now named "Eric Thing" formerly knowed named as Lucy Loo from 2007/12/05 to 2016/04/02.

- Character will still appear on watchlist even after a name change.
- Standing won't reset once name has changed.
- Players will get a notification whenever one of his contacts change his name.

[Edit 1] clarified standings and added 1 lifetime change.
[Edit 2] added notification and name history XML API.


Advantages :
- More money to CCP !
- No character disapearing from contact.
- Can still find someone with name 'A' if he change to 'B'.

Besides that, my original idea was to enhance the "spy" profession the game offers by just letting anyone, anywhen change his name without a history. Buyable by LP to corporation with very high standing.
In this ScyFi world, this is something that should be easily doable, and specificly by immortal capsuleers.
A counter idea would be to add to the "locator NPC" the ability to find an old name of any character.

I don't see why we should have to pay to be able to do this; it should just be a free feature of the game.

Very good questions. Simple answer: because people are daft and let companies easily rip money out of their pockets.

Sure, I'd be on board with the name change system considering the limitations and features you've added. It becomes a cosmetic feature at this point.

Fun fact: CCP has allowed a 'major' name change before.
Dust player named General John Ripper biomassed a character around the time of the great Dust player upheaval of Fan Fest 2014. Many other players biomassed en mass and CCP was open to players reversing their decision to biomass. John was one of those people however someone had already taken the original as part of a contest. He asked to change his name. He retained the corp history of the old character but was placed in a EVE npc corp. He also has two skill queues training per some odd glitch.

Before (someone picked up the original name after he biomassed):
http://dustboard.com/global/merc/General_John_Ripper

After CCP reversed the biomass:
http://dustboard.com/global/merc/Immortal_John_Ripper

Even though i'm agree about the fact that some devs' skills are put on other useless things, please stick to the primary .. subject. :)


Why no ?


Why ?


What would be the reason to forbid a player to change his character name ?

I've searched for your answers about that subject, and going through them, i could clearly see that your overall answers to changes are negativ.
I'm not here to discuss with people that conciders immobilism is the way to go in a game, i'm sorry.
Neither do i get here to discuss with someone that conciders other people's opinions as garbage if they're not equal to his :
I then stopped searching obviously.


Thanks for your response though.

So any "not-stupid" people who made spelling error, or changed his feeling about a character (going from alt status to main status for instence) should be penalised because the "stupid" people have to be punished for some foolish decision ?

Ok.

Wow, talk about taking a statement totally out of context. Here's a suggestion, go back to that thread you found that statement in and read the first post.

By the way, you should try reading the threads related to the topic of this thread, not just my posts. I'd have thought that would have been obvious, but apparently it's not.

Those are actually good questions, albeit on completely different topics (your post is off topic). You really can't just lump all those features together as if they are the same thing. Skill injectors are a whole different beast compared to ship skins.

I've also noted your sarcasm, and I find it stupid.

Lore-wise there is just nothing wrong with name changing services, and there is no reason to charge even 5$ for this service; it could easily be put in game for a few thousand ISK or something. It wouldn't even be a "real" name change because people could view your "name history" and see who you were in the past. Therefore name changes would be completely useless if you wanted to use them to throw people off. The only use they would have would be aesthetic. It's stupid to charge people 10 or 15 bucks for every little idea that gets put into the game.

Well i didn't want to, but if you insist :

- Skill Injectors are, indeed, part of the same services delivered by CCP that "should" be part of the subscription payment.
Think of class rebalance in other mmos, most of them being subscription based MMOs delivers a free 'rebuild'.

-SKINs are, for me, the same thing as Dyes, or, to be honest more like Costumes (like some F2P MMOs out here).

- Resculpt is debatable, some games make this a subscription service some not...

And yes, it was sarcastic.

I completly agree your last paragraph though.
That was my first opinion : "RP-based" name change, with the technology this game is supposed to live in, that's something that should be done easily by anyone, and could even be a pivotal part of the spy 'profession' this SandBox game provides.
And I turned to this whole AURUM-based idea because i thought it was something more acceptable by CCP and player base.



But you did.
If choices matter, Skill Injectors and extractors are then as stupid as the rename idea.
I agree with the principle, i'm just admitting that game player base, and overall philosophy has evolved (good or wrong it's up to any one's opinion) over the years and are not the same as the first games.

I won't discuss about the rest :)