PlaneShift
Support => Complaint Department => Topic started by: duskDN on December 18, 2007, 05:23:34 am
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Now I am probably not the only one to complain about this, but I feel I must do so for the record. In my creation of my character I discovered that you cannot have the first OR last name of someone else.
This is rediculous as not only are there many people with the same last name, there are many people with the same first time. Some people even have the same first AND last name, but of course that would be going too far. If I want to be 'Greg Smith' for example, it shouldn't matter if there is a 'Greg Emmerson' OR a 'John Smith'... only if there is a 'Greg Smith'... not that I'm saying I want to be Greg Smith...
Please make the system more leniant.
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Talad had requested at one point to have the restriction on last names removed, but as you can see that has not been done. the restriction on first names will not be removed untill the day that we can tell who players are by some other method, the buddy list as well as a few other things work off the unique first name so this will not happen soon if at all.
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Then again is this issue really that big of a deal? I mean I don't know about you but I like being the only one to have my name. It makes us all unique. Something this game prides its self on.
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Never seen anyone complain about this before; most people don't really care about it. Think, this may be a world where names have deeper meaning than our modern society, just like in orthodox Judaism where God must be replaced with G-d. A name is specialized for a certain person and no one else. Plus, there are only 750 cycles of recorded history in Yliakum, so people aren't likely to share the same name.
Characters can already share a last name, just not in character creation (a GM can let you share a name with someone, or you can get married). If you were the first person with the surname Yarglarbithoqar, wouldn't you be annoyed if some random person, who your character was definitely not related to, had the same surname when you were the one who created it?
Aaand... sharing the same first name would screw with /tell since it requires the recipient's first name to be sent.
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I have a few interesting thoughts on this. First, my character is meant to have no surname, it is part of his past. Now luckily I created one early enough to not have to make one but I would be annoyed if a surname was forced. If anything when introductions are required could you release only your first or last name? It might really affect role-play. Second, are surnames passed down as in the U.S. or taken from your fathers name like often done elsewhere and in the past? If it is the former then due to Yliakum's closed society last names would greatly affect everything. You would have families with hundreds of members stretching back centuries, much like how dwarf clans are represented in-game.
As Raa stated do you really want someone you didn't know taking on your surname? Perhaps we could form families independently by choice, it would allow for a great range of role-plays. It would not only allow you to easily recognize friends you haven't met before because if they are in the family you can trust them. Also it would allow you to role-play children, at least adult children. If you wanted you could even role-play having several generations with a legacy or heirloom.
Personally I would prefer this method of choosing who would be in your family over almost random selection.
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Second, are surnames passed down as in the U.S. or taken from your fathers name like often done elsewhere and in the past? If it is the former then due to Yliakum's closed society last names would greatly affect everything.
The US uses the father's name. It's like that everywhere.
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Second, are surnames passed down as in the U.S. or taken from your fathers name like often done elsewhere and in the past? If it is the former then due to Yliakum's closed society last names would greatly affect everything.
The US uses the father's name. It's like that everywhere.
Umm... actually the US uses last names(surnames).
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Actually, in the US you take the married surname of your parrents. That is not always the father's surname.
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Actually, in the US you take the married surname of your parrents. That is not always the father's surname.
True, but traditionally...
My point was that it's not the father's name as it is in other cultures like Bob Johansonn whose father's name was Johan...
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Let me clarify overall most U.S. families choose to pass down the same surname. John Smith -> Phil Smith -> Will Smith
In other areas of the world, especially in the past you took your father's name. John Smith -> Phil Johnson -> Will Philson
Phil is probably not the best example but I believe you understand the overal point.
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Well these days it can go either way. You can take your soon to be husbands last name or you can keep your own surname or you can both change your last names and come up with a new ones. Question is ..... who cares?
Note: Edited what was no longer applicable.
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You all forget, of course, hybrid names which are more common than before. you could have the smith-jones. Also in the upper classes it has not been unknown for a man to take his wifes surname if her family was more important.
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Moving the subject back on topic... Would the system I suggested above be any real use? I think it could but might end up like guilds which would be a conflicting issue. Hopefully though a system would be worked out.
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I think a good fix could be to be able to use names of people who have been inactive for, say, 6 months. There are a lot of 3 year old accounts that were played for minutes, and they have names that could be used. Duplicate names wouldn't be that big of a problem then, and they could even get around the /tell and guild things, by putting a number next to them in that aspect. Let me clarify:
(This is a made up name)
John Smith logged in for 3 minutes 2 years ago, and never returned.
You want to be John Johnson. It has been a long time, so you are able to use his name.
John Johnson says: This is me in main chat
/tell John2: This is me in tells
Group/Guild:
John2
Erisnas
Bilbous
Guildchat: John says: The 2 disapears when I talk.
Is this reasonable?
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numbers in names will never ever under any circumstance be acceptable anywhere a name is used.
so no.
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He does have a point though about inactive accounts. I know everyone has issues with it but it is going to be hard to finally say what we are going to do about it.
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I have another suggestion:
No duplicate names. ;D
There's really no way to share a name without /tells and groups being messed up
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Best idea in this thread so far ;)
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I like the idea of dashes in names as seen with some NPC's
Proglin
Pro-glin
Prog-lin
different pronounciation at that. maybe that could work?
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All you really need to do is to have an integer primary key for every character that is unique and let the confusion be amongst the people as the server will always know who's who. It would make it a little difficult to /report someone harassing you from out of sight through tells but perhaps you could highlight the players name in the tell tab and it would send the key in the /report. Probably more thought would be needed for this approach.
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Never seen anyone complain about this before; most people don't really care about it. Think, this may be a world where names have deeper meaning than our modern society, just like in orthodox Judaism where God must be replaced with G-d. A name is specialized for a certain person and no one else.
Wouldn't they use YHWH? Not G-D? Since that's more traditional and all..
just think of how much tabbing you would have to do to find the right person...besides surnames were usually used to indicate where someone was from or who they were the son/daughter of. So say Duwyn was the son of Dowel and from x county...he would introduce himself as Duwyn son of Dowel locally (within that county) and outside of the county he would only introduce himself as Duwyn from x county. Also, your surname or family name would indicate the profession of your father (in a patriarchal society, which Yliakum is), so if Dowel was a Tanner, he might be introduced as Dowel the Tanner...son of blahblah, which in turn would be shortened to Dowel Tanner....
In short Unique and not duplicated names would make more sense given that it's fantasy based off medievish-society, rather than the iPod society we have now. I highly doubt that they would have hyphens between letters, more like different spelling depending on what region/race/language you have.
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Some pains have been taken NOT to mark the Octarchy as a patriarchal society. It is not.
If settings needs to write it into the game explaining this convention we will.
The names will likely stay as they are.
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Some pains have been taken NOT to mark the Octarchy as a patriarchal society. It is not.
If settings needs to write it into the game explaining this convention we will.
The names will likely stay as they are.
then why is it in marriage the female takes on the male's last name? isn't that an indication of a patriarchal society?
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Because i had not married anyone in game.
I will work to have that changed if so.
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Does it matter whose surname you take on? It's just a name.
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Does it matter whose surname you take on? It's just a name.
The name which you take indicates which sex the society prefers to be dominate and have the power. Since, in Western society, the name taken typically during marriage is the man's, it reflects the position of the man over the woman. Which is why there was a movement for women's rights, and the option for them NOT to take their husbands last name. If Yliakum was not a patriarchal society, there would a be choice of whether or not the female would take the male's last name and vice versa or not at all.
But you're right, OOC-ly it really doesn't matter.
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That wasn't the only reason for women's rights. Females are allowed to choose their surnames over their husbands', but it's more traditional to use the males' surname.
I wonder how this would work out for a krasexual relationship... ::|
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That wasn't the only reason for women's rights. Females are allowed to choose their surnames over their husbands', but it's more traditional to use the males' surname.
I wonder how this would work out for a krasexual relationship... ::|
but is that a 'modern' development, females choosing their own surnames, or has it always been around?
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Yliakum isn't our world, so that's sort of irrelevant. If both spouses agreed, they could take on the wife's name (by asking a GM).
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I will look into having engine make it optional whose name a married couple takes or even making their own. The settings team has made an effort to manifest gender equality within the game in the interest of making Planeshift more ideal than the world we inhabit.
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Yliakum isn't our world, so that's sort of irrelevant. If both spouses agreed, they could take on the wife's name (by asking a GM).
true enough, but those who created it are from our world, therefore there is a leeching (so to speak) of our ideals into Yliakum. =)
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/me leaves, unable to respond to people who want to go on about gender inequality when there is no such problem with it.
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What if someone leaves the game for say one year and wants to return and finds his character name is being used by someone else? Is that fair? I hope Frak and many others return before they loose their names then. Grroww, Althos, Magmir and Frak please return before someone else takes your identities.
And another thought, say someone thought of the name Grroww and there are players still around who knew him; how would they know it was not the Grroww they used to play with?
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And another thought, say someone thought of the name Grroww and there are players still around who knew him; how would they know it was not the Grroww they used to play with?
Talking to the imposter for 30 seconds
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But what about the players who want to play again with their old characters? They cannot have them back if someone is using their names? Just look in the R.I.P. section for proof. After all people come and go all the time.
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Loosing rights on your name? Quite frankly, that's silly. The only change to the current name system that should eventually apply is that you are able to share surnames on request, in my opinion anyway. And maybe that the surname of the marriage-proposing person gets changed to the one's who is proposed to, or the other way around.
There is no need for having duplicate firstnames either, just be creative when choosing a name or use a (fantasy-)name generator. I wouldn't want my reputation to be ruined because another Rongar is doing some humbug.
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There's only one way around the whole 'finite names' thing I can think of. It's a system employed in Anarchy Online (and I think also 'Matrix Online', and a few others).
Basically, your primary name is your 'nickname'. It's the name that the system responds to, and the name that appears in chat/groups. But you can also choose first names and last names, which can be duplicates of other names. OOC, people are referred to by nicknames, but IC they're often ignored - going by the first and last names you chose yourself (which, outside of RP, are inconsequential). The nicknames are unique, and can be virtually anything, giving an unlimited number of monikers.
It would get around the problem of 90% of the decent names being taken by people who'll never come back (plus their alts) and may even force people to think harder about their characters (i.e. "So, where'd you get a nickname like that?")
Just, thinking out loud here...
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Ok, well I see that a good deal of the conversation has defenently strayed away from my original argument. The last post has what I perceive to be an excillent idea with the nicknames, but I have to ask what is so horrable about /tell Creg Smith rather than /tell Creg. And the same such can be said for the buddy list. Is that truely so horrible that it is inconcevible!?
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Ok, well I see that a good deal of the conversation has defenently strayed away from my original argument. The last post has what I perceive to be an excillent idea with the nicknames, but I have to ask what is so horrable about /tell Creg Smith rather than /tell Creg. And the same such can be said for the buddy list. Is that truely so horrible that it is inconcevible!?
okay, what if your options are /tell Craig Smyth or /tell Creg Smith ? Or how about /tell Creg Smyth? What if you've met them all and they just happened to be brown-haired Ylians? Wow...so who do you want to /tell?
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Just a quick note to add on the discussion:
From past to present name came from:
Taken from father's name: Johnson
Passed down: John Smith -> Craig Smith
by occupation: Tailor (often respelled to things like Taylor)
by location: (cannot recall an example)
by events, usually tragic;
by description;
As for women not taking her husband's name in the past. Up until the 19th-20th century it really didn't matter. If both spouses agreed that the wife would keep her maiden name it would rarely be recorded and they could just start referring to her by that name.
The fact that the buddy system only uses first names will need to be refined eventually. As the project of PS grows it will become more and more of an issue. Hopefully something can be resolved.
On the Grroww statement. You should be more worried about someone possibly being able to take the name Grrrowww instead. This will only get complicated as things go on.
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Here's an idea:
I'm currently making a character (or trying to) named Seryn Wolfblade, but the name Seryn is already taken, as is 'Serin'.
So I thought of using middle names. These could have no importance whatsoever other than each middle name must be unique. That way, characters can have the same first and last name (last name can still have the warning so that you don't go messing with families). /tell and other things that use the first name can use either all three names at once (ex: Seryn Reigald Wolfblade), the first and middle names, or simply the middle name.
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The fact that the buddy system only uses first names will need to be refined eventually. As the project of PS grows it will become more and more of an issue. Hopefully something can be resolved.
I'd say it's already an issue. I just signed up and am trying it out, and I can't find a single first name that fits the character that's not already taken. I'm starting to get so frustrated with trying to find one that works that it's seriously tempting me to just give up. I did take a look at the rest of the char creation system using another name that I don't want to use(but is available), and I do like the idea of it, which is half the reason I'm still banging my head against the name wall. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few new players run into what I have and just turn and leave without even saying anything on here.
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I'd say it's already an issue. I just signed up and am trying it out, and I can't find a single first name that fits the character that's not already taken. I'm starting to get so frustrated with trying to find one that works that it's seriously tempting me to just give up. I did take a look at the rest of the char creation system using another name that I don't want to use(but is available), and I do like the idea of it, which is half the reason I'm still banging my head against the name wall. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few new players run into what I have and just turn and leave without even saying anything on here.
The game's playability should not suffer from an artistic vision... and if people are already having trouble coming up with names that will be accepted by the system, than this is already happening.
What is a great fantasy world if no-one can see it?... quite simply, its a delusion. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/delusion (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/delusion)
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Names occupied was an issue for me in the creation of both my characters; for my first character, a Hammerwielder, I spent half an hour trying to find a name which was
a) A good name for my char RP-wise,
b) Available for use
So yes, it's an issue already. Don't know what the devs will do with that in time, but for now, it can be *made* to work
About naming conventions:
The location naming could be: Lancelot du Lac (from the Lake)
With dwarves, you use 3-5 generations of names to achieve accuracy, e.g. for court or such.
Bakin might say something like this: "I am Bakin, son of Fundin, son of Balin, and I have come here to gain Justice!"
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Perhaps it is something of a failure of imagination. Your dwarf does not need to sound like every dwarf out of the Lord of the Rings, nor are your preconceptions of their naming conventions necessarily accurate. I do admit that it can be a bit of a problem coming up with a name at times but that usually means you are not being creative enough.
One thing I would like to see, though, is for the random name generation code to have the duplicate name check included so that you do not have to suffer rejection when you take this course. I had 5 random names in a row rejected because either the first or last was already taken. That is just not proper.