Silly, Unrealistic Names

[Harwen]

How will silly, unrealistic and offensive names be dealt with in PS?

Will there be an opportunity to have more than a single name? Last name and middle names?

Harwen K\'Harkarati for example. Or nicknames?



I\'m hoping that on character creation something will block names that have numbers in them, or that are all lowercase. Perhaps someone\'s name could be reported to discourage names that are offensive or just stupid. A warning could also be shown in the character creation.

Examples of unacceptable names,

KranKillaz, BillyBob, SquallLeonheart, CloudStrife, well you get the picture.

Something stricter would be to make names fantasy-like.

Perhaps adding a Random-Fantasy Name generator would be nice.  Last names Could increase the Amount of people that can have the same name, which I don\'t think would be a problem, since that happens in real life anyways, though it might upset some people. Nicknames would have to be original though, or perhaps First names and Nick names...

[Cyrandir]

Harwen\'s right, something should be done about it.  The random name generator is a good idea, but the problem with those kinds of things is the quantity of names availible.  Even the best stand-alone name generator tools out there for pen-and-paper RPGs only have so many names that end up getting repeated after a while.  How much more of a problem would this be for such a vast quantity of names.

I think possibly a better idea would be to create a blacklist of name that cant be used including the ones you listed and probably many more, along with strict rules about name creation (no numbers and limited special characters, etc).  The black list would be long, but not nearly as long as the necessary table for random names.  I think that would reduce the vast majority of problematic names.

[Harwen]

I merely added the random name generator as an addition to the blacklist and to solve people\'s problem with thinking of a name. Blacklists are good.

And a random name generator is only limited by the amount of letters avaliable. for Example
Rhondahn D\'Glyssth all those letters, many of them don\'t have to be cohesive. And you can tweak it by adding or removing a letter.

I want to stress the importance of first and last names, because Rhondahn D\'Glyssth would be hard to remember, and short and sweet names ( like Harwen   ) are hard to come by and that leads to the names being repeated.

If both first and last names had to be original that would make your name super-original and the chance that it would be repeated is less.

Hmm, looking for stable ground on this subject...

[Seytra]

Serverside blacklist! This way, updates are easily possible, affect everybody automatically and the client can\'t be modded to allow what it usually doesn\'t. Of course, not a permanent connection, but only when you hit \"connect\", the server would say \"no, bad person, try again\". Furthermore, once a name has been classified as \"no good\", it could be added and the next time the appropriate person tries to connect the server would refuse to connect and the client would automatically prompt for a new name.
Surnames are good, and I said somewhere that I\'d like \"high-order nicknames\" like \"the dark\" which would not be selected by the player but given by others (but modded, of course, so RARE).
Conventional nicknames (like Seytra) wouldn\'t need to be unique, but would only show up after you told the person what it is (Hi, I\'m , but my friends call me \"Rew\"). This way, they wouldn\'t be universally known and therefore be pseudo-unique.

[sesmi]

2 words: name chageing.

[Harwen]

Originally posted by sesmi
2 words: name chageing.

2 words: um, what?

[sesmi]

Originally posted by Harwen

Originally posted by sesmi
2 words: name chageing.

2 words: um, what?

being able to change your name (sry if you can\'t undersand me i\'m 12)

[Harwen]

Originally posted by sesmi

Originally posted by Harwen

Originally posted by sesmi
2 words: name chageing.

2 words: um, what?

being able to change your name (sry if you can\'t undersand me i\'m 12)

Then how would anyone ever know what your name was then?

[Moogie]

1. CB will have First and Surnames.
2. GMs will be hot on the case of anyone with an unrealistic or otherwise offensive name and will ask, demand if necessary, that the player change his name.

There\'s a rumour that GMs themselves will be able to change players\' character names ingame, but it is unconfirmed.

[Seytra]

Good to hear!

But: if players will actually be able to change their names anytime, wouldn\'t this ask for abuse? I thought more of only allowing a name change in case of a blacklist hit or GM intervention... (performed serverside to avoid client hacks)

[Harwen]

Originally posted by Mogura
1. CB will have First and Surnames.
2. GMs will be hot on the case of anyone with an unrealistic or otherwise offensive name and will ask, demand if necessary, that the player change his name.

There\'s a rumour that GMs themselves will be able to change players\' character names ingame, but it is unconfirmed.

Woo-hoo! Make way for Harwen Harkarati !

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Mogura
There\'s a rumour that GMs themselves will be able to change players\' character names ingame, but it is unconfirmed.

Rumor? No no no Moogie. It\'s already implemented.

However, people wont be able to change their name, they will need a GM for that. This is to prevent people from changing back and forward to make people confused as to who they are, etc. etc. A GM will only change a name if it is not suited for PS, and will change Last names in case of marriage (both first and last names are required to be unique at creation, so you can\'t start off with being married to someone). Asking a GM to change your first name is a definite no. Simply wont happen. If a GM should not agree with your name being roleplaying style, you will be asked to think of a new one which the GM will then set, or the GM will use the implemented random name generator to make a name for you, whether you want it or not. It\'s a rule that is pretty easy to live with, and by downloading PlaneShift, you\'re agreeing to the rules made by the team so there\'s nothing to complain about there.

[zabeal]

Also, CB will have a random name generator- I\'m not an expert on names, but one of the devs came up with a pretty good system of phonems(the sounds that make up words, kinda like syllables, but smaller), and presumabley there is a way to make more gravelly names for kran, and so on.

[Syzerian]

If I want a fantasy name I just bang my head on the keyboard and then play around with those letters for about 3 seconds and Ive just come up with a half decent fantasy name
I really hate those people called gandalf97 or ssjgoku8
A random name generator isnt that good if it isnt updated constantly, imagine how stupid it would be to use a random name generator only to find out that name has allready been taken

[Kuiper7986]

Yea LilXGamer and names like aZnbOi69er are so ghetto on an MMO game. It kills the mood that the game tries to accomplish.

But I do believe that you should have generation titles like

Kuiper Seniasi III maybe?
 or

Something Something II?