Free names of toons that have not been played for > 5 years

[Shaori]

I don’t want two names and I’m sure there’s many other people that don’t either. 

Again, this isn’t about getting that perfect name that I’ve been searching for for years, this is about freeing names so you don’t have to use two rng names smashed together, special characters or gibberish.

Sine this game is F2P, the chances of someone trying the game out, saying “nah this isn’t for me”, then never stepping foot back into SWTOR is really high. There is zero reason to protect their characters.

[xordevoreaux]

22 minutes ago, Shaori said:

I don’t want two names and I’m sure there’s many other people that don’t either. 

Again, this isn’t about getting that perfect name that I’ve been searching for for years, this is about freeing names so you don’t have to use two rng names smashed together, special characters or gibberish.

Sine this game is F2P, the chances of someone trying the game out, saying “nah this isn’t for me”, then never stepping foot back into SWTOR is really high. There is zero reason to protect their characters.

I can still make single-word names. Most of them I pull from Gaelic or other languages and tweak them to suit.

The creative burden is on you to figure out how to accomplish something similar. Don't use "Skywalker" and probably good to go.

[xordevoreaux]

People complain about the RNG generator not giving any good names, yet we place tremendous burden on Bioware's writers to be tremendously creative when writing the game's content.

How about we recognize that maybe we need to extend a little bit of that burden to ourselves and get creative with writing our own names. Doesn't require the RNG, doesn't require funky characters. It requires imagination. I've created way more than 200 characters since 2013 across all my accounts, and for all the ones with single names, rarely, rarely, did I ever get kickback that a name was in use.

Work harder at being creative, because even if a time expiration was put in place today to release names, that expiration would most likely be years off for some names, and the junk coming out of the RNG name generator won't be any better then than it is now.

Get creative. You can do this. I believe in you.

[Shaori]

1 hour ago, xordevoreaux said:

The creative burden is on you to figure out how to accomplish something similar. Don't use "Skywalker" and probably good to go.

I don’t know if this is a reading comprehension on your end or what but I said twice this isn’t about that perfect name that I can’t get. I have all single word names too but it usually takes me a while to get them because so much is taken.

And I’m not sure why you’re avoiding the point. Is it just for the sake of arguing or what? You still haven’t answer my question on why we want to protect the accounts of people that are more likely than not never coming back to SWTOR.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Shaori

[Shaori]

59 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

People complain about the RNG generator not giving any good names

No, not good names, ANY names. I’m not picky. As long as it doesn’t have special characters, spaces or a double name, I’m good with it. But every name I try to get a name from the RNG says “taken.” I don’t know why SWTOR is even set up this way. If the name is taken, it shouldn’t be in the RNG.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Shaori

[xordevoreaux]

9 minutes ago, Shaori said:

No, not good names, ANY names.

20 minutes ago, Shaori said:

And I’m not sure why you’re avoiding the point. Is it just for the sake of arguing or what? You still haven’t answer my question on why we want to protect the accounts of people that are more likely than not never coming back to SWTOR.

And I've already addressed this. Freeing up the names won't provide anyone immediate relief from using the name generator if the process for freeing up the names takes years to occur because of so many people who haven't logged on whose names haven't hit the expiry time.

Freeing names but not employing an expiry time to do so would mean people playing FTP or preferred who created a name three minutes ago would lose the name to a sub. There has to be a time before that happens, and that time will never be short enough to be both fair to those players and free up enough names for everyone.

 

 

[Shaori]

I don’t understand what you mean. Wasn’t the name release they did years ago was based on whether or not you logged on?

So why would a FTP lose it to a sub if they’re actively logging on their characters?

 

Someone linked the post on the first page. What’s wrong with just doing that again?

Edited May 30, 2023 by Shaori

[xordevoreaux]

Just now, Shaori said:

I don’t understand what you mean. Wasn’t the name release they did years ago was based on whether or not you logged on?

So why would a FTP lose it to a sub if they’re actively logging on their characters?

Based on how long ago you logged on.

At the risk of repeating myself, there must be time between a person's last login and when their name is eligible for expiration to be used by others.  If names are freed up, but no expiration time defined for that to happen, or one defined that's extremely short, people lose their names very quickly.

What that expiration time would be has been a contention throughout this thread.

 

[xordevoreaux]

Let's just say for the sake of argument that the dictionary of names or the algorithm that the name generator uses has been utterly exhausted, no names left. Nada. Zilch.

You tell me how long it'll be before Bioware gets around to doing something about that, because I've already explained more than once in this thread a possible work-around, which, given the premise names are exhausted, becomes the nécessité du jour.

Either use the random generator to create a two-word name, or get creative, because continuing to harp over something that's not going to get fixed right this minute isn't putting anyone one step closer to getting a name of any kind.

I don't doubt for a second that Bioware has been watching this thread as part of making up its ever-loving mind as to how to move this issue, but who knows when action will happen.

[SteveTheCynic]

3 hours ago, Shaori said:

Set a time frame, just using this timeframe as an example, 4 years, then send out emails. 

So there's no problem setting a timeframe because you just set a timeframe.  Did I get that right?  (By the way, "set a time frame" is what I meant by "draw the line"...)

Did you not read @xordevoreaux's post where he points out the problem with long timeframes, where someone wants a name, and the action doesn't free it, and CS says that the name is on a character that was last played 2.5 years ago, so the someone will have to wait another two and half years before it comes free?

3 hours ago, Shaori said:

It’s really that simple. And this isn’t about getting that one name I wanted so bad, this is about the fact we can’t even use the random name generator. I can’t even tell you the last time I got a name from the RNG that I could use. It’s ridiculous

Ah, OK, so what you're really asking for is not a name-unlock, but for BioWare to restock the random generator with new names?

[Shaori]

I believe there is two problems:

1.) Used names being in the RNG. If the name is taken, it shouldn’t be there. 

2.) Protecting character names on dead accounts. Like I pointed out before, this is a F2P game. People will try it, decide it’s not for them, then never play again. Those people shouldn’t be able to hold a name indefinitely.

I see nothing wrong with periodically releasing names, even if it’s a once a 4 year thing.

[microstyles]

Even if old unused characters have their names freed up, trying to create single word character names with just the alphabet is going to be a struggle.

I think the "Firstname Lastname" construction should be the suggested way to name characters. If you try a single word character name that's taken, I feel the game should suggest using 2 words. It's a simple way to construct a very likely unique name without having to resort to symbols and alt codes.

It's even lore-reasonable for surnames to be distinct from legacy names. Leia is a Skywalker even though her last name is Organa.

[Advocatis]

If nothing else, the name generator should never return an unusable name.  The system can run a check for availability before putting it on screen.  
When I was considering coming back, the first thing I did was create a FTP character to see what the game was like now.  Because I never intended to keep it, I grabbed a random name.  After at least 10 tries to get one I could test with, I face rolled the keyboard, just to get on with trying out the new game version.

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, Shaori said:

Like I pointed out before, this is a F2P game

No.  It's a subscription game with an astonishingly generous no-subscription option.

2 hours ago, Shaori said:

Used names being in the RNG. If the name is taken, it shouldn’t be there.

Subject to some oddities about it being taken on that server but not on this one, so the generator should be able to pick that name on this server, but also the occasional collision where the RNG on my PC picks the same one as the RNG on your PC, and one of us gets in first.

[Diamaht]

10 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

The big problem is where to draw the line between "away long enough to justify the unlock" and "nope, not long enough yet".  There's also the point that they should not *take* names from people.  Make it so names that are on unused characters become available, but aren't taken away unless another player actually wants them.  (That's more about declining the opportunity to actively harm players' accounts than it is about actually protecting them, since the unlocked name might get taken away by another player using it.)

This is a really good plan.  Thank you.

Its can be on a set timer, like 4 or 5 years.  If someone logs that character in, then the timer resets.  When it checks for name availability, it looks at that toons last login.

This way active players can keep all of there names.  If it's set to several years they just need to log them in once every 4 or 5 years.   Not bad at all.

[Shaori]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

No.  It's a subscription game with an astonishingly generous no-subscription option.

Dude this is a nitpick to avoid the point and yes it is F2P.

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Subject to some oddities about it being taken on that server but not on this one, so the generator should be able to pick that name on this server, but also the occasional collision where the RNG on my PC picks the same one as the RNG on your PC, and one of us gets in first.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here but it seems like you're avoiding the point again. Other games can have a RNG that doesn't offer you names already taken. Why can't this one?

[SteveTheCynic]

10 hours ago, Shaori said:

Dude this is a nitpick to avoid the point and yes it is F2P.

It's more or less an opinion-based definition game, so we should just drop this subject.

10 hours ago, Shaori said:

I have no idea what you're trying to say here but it seems like you're avoiding the point again. Other games can have a RNG that doesn't offer you names already taken. Why can't this one?

It could do it, but we should expect to see "name unavailable" anyway from time to time (because of collisions between me and you being offered the same name), and the check should be server-specific (me having Pherbb on The Leviathan shouldn't block you from being offered that name on Darth Malgus).