I really don’t care about having to find and use original names. A name doesn’t make my in game experience any less or more enjoyable. It sounds like a lot of hassle for the devs. Is it going to generate any revenue or attract new players?
I agree... That question was brought up a while back when AMAZINGLY it became possible to have a league name that contained two spaces. Which Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm… lkind of illustrates the technology does exist in game and works so why can't player get the option to have two spaces in name as well? You pretty much doubled or more the number of option... Cisco Kid can now also be "The Cisco Kid" or "That Cisco Kid" or "Cisco Kid 2" and on and on. The question has been asked before we just never got an explanation. ???
It actually would be incredibly little hassle for the devs. They already coded it and did it once. It doesn't require any changes from the way it was previously done, other than they need to flip the switch from Off to On. The previous Name Reclaim had two parameters. If you were not a Subscriber, and you had not logged in within 18 months, the name was freed up. There is no reason to change those parameters at all. It's like the bonus Source Marks, extra Episode Currency, bonus Stabilizers, bonus Catalysts, etc. It's something they can turn on, without having to make any changes, so there is no chance of bugs. It's almost zero work, because all the work was already done. As for whether it will generate revenue or attract new players, the answer to both of those questions is YES. Just roll back through this thread and you will see several players who are interested, prepared to pay money for Namechange Tokens, often purchasing multiples so that they could rename several characters. It generates money because people will pay to use it, and because it doesn't actually cost anything to implement, nor does it reduce purchases of something else. It is flat profit for no work. And as for new players? Sit down to make a new character sometime. You choose a powerset. You design an outfit. A character slowly takes shape. You choose colors and styles. You get everything exactly how you want it. And then and only then, you get the ability to choose a name. And the name you want is taken by some level 4 alt that has been inactive for 4 years. So you try your second choice. Your third choice. Your twenty-fifth choice. Until finally you either settle for some stupid looking name that uses a bunch of extra characters ( XXXXXdesired nameXXXXX ), or you get something random and not at all what you originally wanted. You get to suffer dozens of micro-disappointments before you even log into the Brainiac ship. For a bonafide new player, they have never played the game. They have nothing positive yet to balance this out. They are judging the game at this point solely on the character creator. They know they made a cool looking character, and then had to give them a stupid name. That bad taste is in their mouth from moment one, and then they enter the no-tutorial, lonely solo of 1-30 where nothing is going to change that initial first impression of "This is kind of disappointing". If you don't at least like your character, there is little to no chance that a new player is going to stick with it far enough to actually begin experiencing what the real game is like. The big complaint about the name reclaim was that, because the only one they've previously run happened in 2015, it was reclaiming names from 2.5 years worth of inactive players all at once. Because it was presented as a one-time event, and announced long in advance, many players scrambled to create hundreds of FTP accounts and claim hundreds of desireable names for the purpose of selling them. Except they can't sell them. Because there's no way to actually contact the owner. Which is why those characters are still level 4 and with no play time, just created with a Brainiac Ship Tutorial Skip and then immediately logged out forever. If they ran it again, we would probably see something similar, because we would now get to see 5 more years worth of abandoned names getting freed up all at once. Most of the players who did that initial name squatting, if they even still play, would probably not bother to do it again given that they never actually managed to sell those names and all it turned out to be was a massive waste of their time. But new players would try the same stunt, and it would fail just the same. What needs to be different is that the name reclaim cannot be an event that only happens once every 4-5 years. Every single Thursday, for Patch day, flip that switch again and free up all the names that expired that week. Make it an ongoing part of game maintenance. That rolls out those freed names gradually over time. That then makes it something where players aren't waiting online with multiple clients open to speed-reserve as many names as they can. Instead, it's just regular cleaning. If you aren't a subscriber, and you haven't logged in in 18 months, the name is free again. World of Warcraft does this, and does it very successfully. Every criticism we get here from the naysayers is either 1) Some people still wouldn't get the name they want, so we shouldn't bother with servicing the many customers who would benefit. 2) It would be too expensive or time consuming to re-use an event which has already been coded and successfully completed and requires no further work. 3) Last time it did work, but there was also a fiasco with certain players abusing it, so we shouldn't continue with it because some players might still try to reserve a lot more than they intend on using. And none of that stuff actually counters the true points of: 1) It is already completed and takes no work. 2) It makes money. 3) It will make some customers happy and improve their gameplay experience. 4) Players who do not benefit from it will not be hurt in any way.
You don't have to care about the name of your character to appreciate that some people do care. If you care about the game at all then you might want to support different players enjoying the game in different ways.
I didn’t say I don’t care about the name of my character. Your definition of caring about the game at all is to support ideas I disagree with? It’s not like I’ve said it’s a terrible idea. It makes no difference to me. But the game is developed on a shoestring budget. A couple of months ago we were told by a producer that updating the seasonals would impact the DLC release schedule. At that point, I became someone not in favour of updating the seasonals. You see how this works? I have a valid reason for holding the views I have, and disagreeing with other players’ requests is not something I do for the sake of it.
Caring means supporting quality of life improvements even if those improvements don't effect you personally. I understand your disagreement with the idea. But it seems to be based on the premise that a name reclaim is too onerous a task. I'm not sure how valid that is and your analogy to upgrading seasonal events seems a bit far flung.
It’s based on my perception of what goes on behind the scenes. Which is just as valid as any other player’s perception, yours included. I’d rather they got on with delivering good quality, regular and stable content and any additional time was spent fixing broken, unbalanced and incomplete initiatives, rather than deleting hundreds of thousands of characters just so someone can have the name Snowy or Zebra or whatever.
It's already been done once and nobody's character was deleted. And how dare you dis on Zebra like that!!
However, the Terms of Service does expressly state that no virtual property is actually owned by the player, and all virtual property within the game belongs to Dimensional Ink, including specific caveats that virtual property can be changed without the consent of the player, and in those situations the player is not entitled to retain possession of anything Dimensional Ink chooses to remove, nor will are they required to refund or compensate for changes, removals, or devaluations. That would certainly seem to suggest that all of those abandoned names frozen at level 4 don't belong to those long-gone players, and instead belong to Dimensional Ink to be able to redistribute however and whenever they see fit.
Nobody is arguing that dimensional ink doesn't have the right to reclaim the names. Nice try taking what I said out of context though.
I think the solution to this would be to use what another successful game currently uses! That is the "surnames and first names" option. Well, surnames would be the main names of the accounts so to speak ... Whereas the names, they could be free, being able to be repeated, once the "surnames" were different! This would give an almost infinite freedom of names, and would certainly solve this eternal problem that always comes up in the game. Eu acho que você tem que pensar sobre o tipo de prêmio lá. Falo porque existem os prêmios que são aqueles que só fizeram uma compra no jogo, e há aqueles que têm todos os DLCs no jogo, mais compras no mercado, etc. (eu iria para isso, mas atualmente eu sou um membro novamente). Tanto que eu sempre disse que o jogo deveria dividir os premiuns em categorias...
Hey, I am new to this community because my big sis got me hooked up in DC recently. Got back into this game after years and due to my Characters are all gone, I had to create a new one. And damn... even though trying to be "creative" it's realy hard to find a name. First I tried to create a Red Hood - Char (My favorite Character in the DC Universe ), but after failing to find a proper name that does not consists of more numbers then letters, I gave up on that. Even with an original character it was a real struggle... I rushed my hands random over the keyboard and still the game told me that the name was already taken. I hope that there will be another name reclaim or at least a change like that allows 2 usages of the spacebar or that everyone can have any name by adding a specific ID to every player. (BTW: sorry for my horrible English... XD)
