Name Reclaim Ideas To Combat Selling/Bots/Hoarders

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Dene, May 12, 2023.

  1. Dene Devoted Player

    Name Reclaim Ideas To Combat Selling/Bots/Hoarders


    I would like to preface this by saying that I am under no illusion that I will get any name/s I desire or that anyone is "owed" a name etc. I would like to also mention that some of the below ideas may seem contentious, crazy or not doable within the limits of technology etc but, in my opinion, something needs to be done and these may spark some more ideas or a better/fairer refined version of them that may at least help.



    Better Limitations

    There needs to be stricter parameters on current named toons and who gets to keep them, Look at CR, Level, hours of play or a combo of those e.g. must be level 20 with at least 20 hours of gameplay. A way for people with seasonal/bank toons to be safe is needed but there should be balance.


    There could even be account parameters - e.g. 1 toon on the account is a main that plays A LOT means the other names on that account list are immune to losing names regardless of parameters.
    Just logging in within the last 12 months or whatever is just a nothing parameter, in my opinion.. creating a ton of accounts to just horde/sell etc is unfair.



    Membership Could Be A Factor

    There could be parameters that include membership only


    e.g.


    * Account must have been a member for 30 days or a total of 90 days in the life of the account or something.

    * Members get a 48 hour head start (once the restart happens) just in the account that is a member to create/rename toons.
    OR
    * Members that have a certain parameter of hours played get a head start (contentious I know but why not?).

    Reporting

    Take a zero tolerance policy on the selling of names, create a clear and fair reporting system to combat sellers, especially for real money. I think proof is going to be hard, screenshots may be photoshopped etc but it is 100% doable.

    Bots

    Create a detection system for the bots, like you have for speed hacking etc and stop/ban the accounts and release the names.


    No More Big Renaming Events

    I do not have exact knowledge of this but the 5 minute googling I did, shows me that a few other MMOs seem to release names based on a fluid ongoing parameter e.g. not active for 12 months or 3 DLCs etc – if the rules are clear and you lose a name well then bad luck. Who knows maybe a new player comes along to play, and suddenly gets a cool name etc well good on them!


    Anyway, there are plenty of options, in my opinion, it needs to be fairer and, yes, a bit rewarding for ALL who want to actually play and enjoy.
    • Like x 5
  2. xGMZen Well-Known Player

    absolutely, dcuo should invest in new players. name horders are PREVENTING the vast amount of names from players just starting the game from the very start of character creation, this is extremely frustrating to new players so much so, that they end up quitting the game because the name they had to choose looks so horrible, the horders llook at their names, and offer like 5 billion in game cash to claim the name, TO A NEW PLAYER? of course the new player says no, because they're just starting out, probably just learning about how brokers work, and the entire time the horders have over 50,000 names... thats 100% against TOS!!! its extremely unfair to the people, the name of a character is vital for identifying who they are, horders are literally stealing the identity of thousands of players all to think theyre going to bank on all those names when they charge so high not even the average joe can even afford it, whats the point of selling names if no one can buy them? this hording business is predatory and people need to be banned. uphold the rules and real and fair money will flow for years to come. the game is too good and fun for people to quit. make the changes. new players matter.
    • Like x 2
  3. Nightcrawler Legionnaire

    Seriously. Is this really the problem everyone is making it out to be? This community seems to have a bogeyman mentality that everyone is out to get them or something. What exactly is a DCUO naming bot?

    Names are first come, first served. And get freed up as soon as someone deletes or renames their character. Granted, the game is planning on renaming a ton of inactive characters on June 1st (formally yesterday, sigh) which means the pool of names will be greater than it has been in years, but everyone has the opportunity to log in and try for any name they want. If a name is halfway decent, then chances are someone will snag it up again...maybe even you.

    Other than characters that exists in comics such as "Superman" or "Batman" both of which are invalid, is there that much of a demand to snag a name just to sell it later? I mean if someone else gets a name you want and tries to sell it, don't buy it and reward the behavior, right? This really doesn't have to be this complex.
    • Like x 3
  4. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    Yes.
    • Like x 4
  5. TI99Kitty Dedicated Player

    This, right here. And have people who work for Daybreak or DI actually in the game, as GMs. Then, maybe they wouldn't even need to wait for reports. At the very least, it'd be easy for them to check the chat logs to see that, yes xXxNameSeller219xXx was spamming LFG or Shout, advertising "OG names" for real-world money.

    As a bonus, it would be easier to go after lChanged1Letter2GetPastYourIgnoreList for selling in-game cash for real-world money, as well.
    • Like x 2
  6. RTX Well-Known Player

    I would agree on the "No More Big Renaming Events" aspect.

    The reason for that is, the customer is king. The level should not matter, or the hours played, or type of account (whatsoever), due to the fact that you would hit legit players without bad intentions.

    Reporting etc. would not make any difference since those people mostly going to spam selling on accounts specificly made for that, which means the names are hoarded on other accounts which you don´t know. Reducing the "Free-Accounts" even further would also have no effect, as it can be seen with Gold-Sellers, the only people they hit with chat limitations been new players who can only write a few messages. (Gold-Sellers simply relog and reset the limitation that way)

    No More Big Renaming Events, simply because "Get yourself a name" is not the same as "Make yourself a name". At the end it doesn´t matter if your name is "Superman" or "Batman", "Fire or "Ice" and whatever names people describe as Original.

    The thing which counts is what you do. The memories you share with other players, those will always show who you are, no matter the name.
  7. OneWhoLaughed Committed Player

    I'm all for these, the rest of the factors, as RTX said might be problematic as they're not as general across the playerbase.
    • Like x 1
  8. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    I have no dog in this fight. I don't sell names, I have no names 'hoarded', I don't really want any new names...especially TO hoard and sell. However, I disagree on some of these if for no other reason than we have more pressing issues to deal with than this 'problem'.

    If we are doing 'zero tolerance' policies, how about first we put one in for Money glitchers, item dupers, gold sellers, speed hackers? Is selling names that much MORE of a problem than any of these which are relatively 'allowed' to continue? If we are hiring GMs to police trade chat for name sellers, couldn't we instead have them police LFG and trade for N bombs, toxic chatters, scammers?

    I do agree with no more big rename events. There needs to be an annual or whatever, cleanup task, which can touch on some of those stronger limitations. If someone is permabanned, after 30 or 90 days (for a reasonable appeals process)...those accounts/toons are deleted...freeing up the names in the process and NOT at a predetermined 'release' date so harder to pick off by resellers.

    As far as a membership 'advantage' it only really applies if we have repeat 'big event' releases like this. Ideally this could be the last one if we got to a regular cleanup process....so not needed for the future.
    • Like x 1
  9. Raven Nocturnal Devoted Player

    They should add a CAPTCHA system when creating a character to prevent the bots from claiming thousands of names
    • Like x 2
  10. OneWhoLaughed Committed Player

    Unfortunately, this too can be bypassed: https://medium.com/swlh/how-my-robot-fooled-captcha-6705722e523a

    Bot detection is an industry worth millions more every year, as soon as one technique emerges, the fraudsters adapt.
    • Like x 2
  11. LowFlyingMoon Loyal Player

    The 2 solutions that work for me when naming toons: creativity and originality. Never had a problem getting the name I wanted. Your mileage may vary.
    • Like x 2
  12. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    They going to police discord too? Cause if they started monitoring in game, I'd guess the sellers would just take it elsewhere.
  13. jpharrah1010 Steadfast Player

    So eso does this and other mmos do it as well

    And this would effectively kill the name market instantly, and also free up not just some names but every name in the game that can be used.

    In eso you name your characters you make but they are actually named your login info. You can toggle whether you see other players login name or what they decided to name the toon (the default in most games is no matter what toon your on I just see your login info dc would be smart to have the default be the characters name be the default)

    There can be multiple versions of the same name, so if you wanted the name spoon for your character you could have it regardless if someone else named their character spoon the amount of people who could have that name would be endless

    Name tokens would not be dead. Cause when you are at the character creation mode you’d name the character what you wanted. If you decided you didn’t like that character having that name you can buy a rename token and change it.

    It actually might even increase the sells of these cause now people wouldn’t be locked into a name or out of a name.

    I don’t know if I explained this right

    Oh and lastly it would also help with putting people on ignore across multiple toons in that account… cause you’d be ignoring their login name since all characters are in that login name.
    • Like x 1
  14. Korlick Loyal Player

    How would the friend list/mail/tells work? I mean...if there are hundreds of toons with the same name, how would you add/mail/text the one you meant to?
  15. jpharrah1010 Steadfast Player

    Friends list would have to show the login name for it to work. The characters name would be what you see over their toon or on the screen during the instance in group, but in the friendslist you’d just see their their login name.
    • Like x 1
  16. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    I do think this would resolve the 'issue' for name hoarding and selling, but it does dilute things a bit when you can be running a raid with 8 guys named 'Superman' or whatever. Sure would make the scorecard and combat tab more confusing to say the least.

    Down with the account wide ignore bonus benefit though.
    • Like x 1
  17. Tolly Committed Player

    They could also take the opportunity to make sure that special characters and numbers are no longer used, now that most MMOs forbid the use of special characters.

    + make it so that official character names are not usable.
  18. jpharrah1010 Steadfast Player

    So many angry in game cosplayers ….so many
    • Like x 1
  19. Raven Nocturnal Devoted Player

    It still works very well in most cases, or else it wouldn't be used anymore... Plus, they wouldn't know what type of CAPTCHA the devs will set in place until the day of name reclaim, thus no time for them to re-program their shenanigans.

    Edit: Wait, why would people go through those extreme lengths of programming to bypass CAPTCHA for a DCUO name...
  20. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    To make money.