New efforts!

[chuckv3]

No... <username>_<charactername>

There's your unique identifier

and maybe tag <server> on there too if necessary...

If we get the game back, it will almost certainly be in maintenance mode, with no source code. These suggested changes are probably not possible. I'm willing to be happy with I23, exactly as it was on live servers, because that's the most likely scenario at this point.

[MegaWatt]

its a shame we probably -cant- switch to the system cryptic uses now of CHARNAME @Unique global....come to think of it didnt we have Global names in CoX ? wonder why it didnt work like that in the first place.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

its a shame we probably -cant- switch to the system cryptic uses now of CHARNAME @Unique global....come to think of it didnt we have Global names in CoX ? wonder why it didnt work like that in the first place.

Potentially because they simply didn't think of it at the time. Perhaps they did, and simply didn't like the idea.
Personally, I'm a fan of character names being unique.

[Paragon Avenger]

No... <username>_<charactername>

There's your unique identifier

and maybe tag <server> on there too if necessary...

I would prefer <characterName>@<userName>, no need for server because that could change, as in server transfer.  The <userName> should be unique.


So just wauit for ...
Paragon Avenger@Paragon Avenger

[hurple]

I would prefer <characterName>@<userName>, no need for server because that could change, as in server transfer.  The <userName> should be unique.


So just wauit for ...
Paragon Avenger@Paragon Avenger

But, then, you couldn't have toon named a "Chicken Salad Avenger" on every server...

And, chuckv... for some reason I thought this was a discussion for CoH 1.5 or one of the new games.  Oops 

[Nebularis]

But should character names remain unique?  The only hazard I can see with this is some "wiseguy" decides to basically make a copy of your character in terms of name/costume/powers then goes around acting like a total jerk trying to upset everyone for the purpose of getting you in trouble, but with global names being unique a simple global name check can indicate who the culprit is.

Thoughts?

I thought that registering your character's name as a unique ID was one of the very clever principles of COX.  You're a super hero for heaven's sake, have an original name!

If I come up with something clever, I don't want someone else running around with my name.  For that matter, I enjoyed the security of all my superheroes being unique.

[MegaWatt]

most of my characters ended up being their civilian names because i joined too late to score their super name...i didn't manage to get Megawatt for instance. i find unique names to only good for people who can jump on them fast why should late comers have to suffer through Leglon (LegLon) because some one beat them to Legion ?

[Aggelakis]

most of my characters ended up being their civilian names because i joined too late to score their super name...i didn't manage to get Megawatt for instance. i find unique names to only good for people who can jump on them fast why should late comers have to suffer through Leglon (LegLon) because some one beat them to Legion ?

Unique names forces creativity. I never used the i/L trick unless it was a deliberate choice (e.g. the Parallel Illusions supergroup where everyone looked like Decoys from Illusion Control, or my husband and I made a set of twins whose name used the i/L switch so we were visual duplicates). I went through hundreds of characters from 2005 straight up to the end. I was making more new characters in 2012 than any other year prior to that. Creativity, man.

[worldweary]

most of my characters ended up being their civilian names because i joined too late to score their super name...i didn't manage to get Megawatt for instance. i find unique names to only good for people who can jump on them fast why should late comers have to suffer through Leglon (LegLon) because some one beat them to Legion ?

Then you better hope if the game comes back the beta testers will not be able to keep the names of the characters they make.Depending on how many are invited to the beta and how many characters they can
make they could use a few to test with,then make others to hold names like many intend to do the first
days of the game.
I want the names I had, all were unique and tied to their looks and powers but I understand that will not happen.As far as character names remaining unique I'm not sure how I would feel if others could just copy any character I make.

[Arcana]

They may not be able to read the tapes made by their earlier versions.

What's a tape?

[Arcana]

If we get the game back, it will almost certainly be in maintenance mode, with no source code. These suggested changes are probably not possible. I'm willing to be happy with I23, exactly as it was on live servers, because that's the most likely scenario at this point.

Without the source code, I could probably sooner add an entire new powerset to I23 than I could modify I23 to use non-unique character names.

Although to be honest, even with the entire source tree I could probably add an entire new powerset to I23 quicker than I could figure out how to alter character name mechanics.  Having source code is not the end of the problem, its the very beginning.  It would probably take weeks of study just to understand how the code was organized, and how to make modifications that didn't break things all over the place.  I spent years delving around and inside the powers system.  I'm pretty certain I understand it better than anyone outside of the actual Paragon powers team.  I wouldn't be starting from zero trying to make a new powerset.  I'd be starting from pretty much zero, if not negative numbers, trying to inherit and then support the source tree for City of Heroes because I haven't spent years studying the ins and outs of its implementation.  The only person I know outside the Paragon code team that has studied the game implementation dynamics that well is Codewalker, and I suspect even he would need months of study to take full command of the code tree if it was handed to him on a silver platter.  Inheriting someone else's code is not easy.  Inheriting several dozen someone elses' code developed over a decade is, as I often like to say, a non-trivial exercise.

And let's say a miracle happens, and you're handed the full source tree for City of Heroes.  Its a gift from the gods.  You can do anything, if only you take the time to figure it out.  What's the first thing you're going to try to learn how to manipulate in that source tree?  Character names?  Maybe, but I suspect if you could change anything, but every change was going to be extremely time consuming and require lots and lots of self-study of the codebase, anyone attempting this would have other priorities.

[Shibboleth]

Character name uniqueness doesn't have to be either or from a player persective.

If at character creation your character's name is unique it is locked to you. There is a name setting which can have one of three states: Unique, Permission, Open. You can only toggle from Unique to one of the other two states or from Permission to Open. So long as you have the Unique setting nobody can reuse the name. Permission means they send an in game request which you can accept or decline and only people you say yes to can reuse your name. Open means anyone can reuse the name.

[Codewalker]

Although to be honest, even with the entire source tree I could probably add an entire new powerset to I23 quicker than I could figure out how to alter character name mechanics.

Even without it I can tell you it would be non-trivial. I have a pretty good idea of some of the problems that would be encountered, just from having already encountered them with Paragon Chat, which does have non-unique character names on the 'server' side (out of necessity more than anything).

Let's assume for a moment that the real server could be magically fixed somehow -- database schema reworked, code rewritten to use global names (which the mapserver doesn't even normally know about), etc. You'd still have your hands full given how many things in the client assume unique character names. Even simple stuff like right-clicking on somebody and inviting them to a team depends on it...

[Arcana]

Even without it I can tell you it would be non-trivial. I have a pretty good idea of some of the problems that would be encountered, just from having already encountered them with Paragon Chat, which does have non-unique character names on the 'server' side (out of necessity more than anything).

Let's assume for a moment that the real server could be magically fixed somehow -- database schema reworked, code rewritten to use global names (which the mapserver doesn't even normally know about), etc. You'd still have your hands full given how many things in the client assume unique character names. Even simple stuff like right-clicking on somebody and inviting them to a team depends on it...

Yep.  Its obvious that character name isn't just a visual tag, its embedded in a lot of separate moving parts.  Which means references to it probably appear all over the place, and indirect references to it probably also exist which means someone just text searching around may not find everything quickly.  If I knew it was an isolated thing, I could theoretically locate the likely places in the code it was handled and concentrate there.  But when its something that could theoretically show up anywhere and everywhere, even in parts of the code that don't really need it but might just handle the data, its something I wouldn't want to tackle until I knew I understood the entire codebase well. 

If I were going to inherit the source code, I think I would probably concentrate my attention on the nascent LUA engine.  You could get a lot of bang for the buck with that.  And ironically, I wouldn't have to worry as much about computational expense as the original devs did, because computers are a lot faster and lets face it, I'd be generating code to support a significantly smaller simultaneous player population.  Its an itch I think I would be better qualified to scratch in any case than globalizing character names.

[HEATSTROKE]

I just want the game back... dont care how..

[JoshexProxy]

I don't know about you, but the game will not have a small population for long after the start. why? as I started to say, I don't know about you but I'm already going around and getting people willing to play the game if it comes back.

heck, if the game comes back I'm going to introduce it to China via Ielts english training schools as a way to practice their English. heheheh.

before you know it, there will be more paying customers than the THeM know what to do with. I can feasibly see 40 shards being used to handle it all lol. (you have no idea what goes on in net clubs here, the sheer scale of it would make you cry.)

anyone else doing this?

[LadyVamp]

you forgot the data loss factor, if it is on a magnetic tape there's magnetic bleeding to worry about. by now even two years later I'm sure there's /some/ corruption.

That, sir, is what I meant by shelf life.  I used to manage backups in another lifetime.  It's quite depressing to run a set of backups only to find they fail to restore when they're only a few weeks old and the legal team needs the data yesterday.

[LadyVamp]

What's a tape?

Sorry, Arcana.  It's this really thin, linear thing used when computers were really big.  Stored on these things they used to call spools, it was rumored to be fast at serial access but really poor at random access.  I'll skip the rest of the details.  It was a mythical form of storage and the stuff of bad horror flicks.

[LadyVamp]

We don't even have the game back and you guys/gals already talking about enhancements to the codebase.  I'd rather our devs focus on getting the codebase compiled and turned into a running system that's stable.  We can talk enhancements to toon names and new powersets later.

[Felderburg]

Unique names forces creativity... Creativity, man.

That's fine, but CoH's system penalized players who came in years after names they may think of were taken. Most people were reasonably clever, but creativity of one person can only go so far when there are hundreds of players who have been taking similar names for years. Plus, it may turn off someone who finds the game years later, and has a concept and name they're set on, only to find that they can't have it - in a game that supposedly has the best character creator in existence.

I really like the character@player system Cryptic uses now.

Character name uniqueness doesn't have to be either or from a player persective.

If at character creation your character's name is unique it is locked to you. There is a name setting which can have one of three states: Unique, Permission, Open. You can only toggle from Unique to one of the other two states or from Permission to Open. So long as you have the Unique setting nobody can reuse the name. Permission means they send an in game request which you can accept or decline and only people you say yes to can reuse your name. Open means anyone can reuse the name.

THIS IS BRILLIANT.