Character Naming

After the Telethon, it was clear that there hasn't been a lot of work with regards to naming. They indicated they had thought about a few ideas but currently, our present implementation was the best they had.

The current condition is thus:

• Immortal Adventurer and higher pledge reward, Last Name : Get your last name early! Experience in battle leads to Notoriety, but unlike ordinary adventurers, Immortal Adventurers will have the right to select and display both a first and last name right from the get-go!
• Additional character Slots are not implemented, so we don't yet know if last names will impact our other characters.
• Character first and last names are not unique. Only the combination of first and last name together is.
• Names are already locked down.
• There do appear to be reserved words that cannot be used in any combination.

Since I don't have access to an account that is just adventurer, I'm not sure if they actually are restricted from creating a character with a last name. Further, how do they earn a last name in-game? Will additional characters on the account be impacted by your selection?

Perhaps a more important question would be, if your last name isn't unique, why would we care about the reward of having a last name in the first place? If there are no benefits or mechanics to having a last name, it's significance isn't really meaningful.

Many people take time off work, centered around the release dates and final wipe to get in quickly to create their characters, and select their names and establish guild identity. Some people may not be aware (I know I wasn't), that the character names are already locked to the account and persistent. I had the same name for 20+ releases, only to find that after character wipe when I began testing naming and how it worked that my name was taken. I assumed next wipe, I could just choose my name again which wasn't the case. That'll teach me to test mechanics and features (which were clearly lacking in documentation) when a game is still in testing. In my opinion, that could have been handled better. There are probably still people who where waiting for final wipe to test the waters, and they're going to be months behind on character name selection because that portion has been persistent for how long now?

Ideas
From a design perspective, what would be an ideal system? Is the present implementation good enough, or are there improvements that could be made?

The reward states you could select and display a last name. If that's separate, can I select a last name but choose not to display it? Could we have a unique last name, and choose not to display our first name? (Obviously not currently, but as a mechanic would that be possible?)

One benefit of the current system is that you could share names across accounts. You could form the Cult of Bob, and have all of it's members named Bob (any last name). Or conversely, Dragons could all take on their (first name) Dragon. (Unless that's a reserved name, I never checked).

One draw back is that people can also take your last name and drag it through the mud. It's easier to confuse people with similar names. While you try to raise notoriety for your prowess in crafting, another sharing your name could be out stealing, swindling, and conning people out of their money. It also makes it much easier to create a name that visually looks like someone else's.

My impression was that our last names were going to be unique, and shared between characters. There were discussions about trying to limit anonymity, and the tendency to have have one immoral and nefarious character only to then swap to the upstanding citizen character. However, the use of multiple accounts would circumvent this (but require people to have at least purchased a second account which is a bonus).

Things like the Coat of Arms/heraldry are tied to account I assume. At minimum, this would be shared across all characters on the account, but in my opinion linking surname to the coat of arms would also add significance to the name.

Are there other mechanics that you can think of that would be useful? Or are you of the mind that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Do you have any Pros and Cons to the existing implementation, or suggested idea? Have better ideas or considerations you want to share?

 

There was some conversation about this in another thread.

Spoiler

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...o-with-last-names-prompted-by-telethon.50304/

I think it makes sense to make last names at least uniquely tied to a coat of arms. Since the COA is a reward that not everyone gets, perhaps there can be a way to share a family name over multiple accounts with approval from the COA owner (like joining a guild). So people can RP families and clans.

I also think if last names are required, we should be able to toggle them off overhead (keeping them viewable on paperdoll with inspect always).

 

Didn't even think to look in the release forums for discussion on this. Thanks for the link.

Since it's an ongoing discussion, I'll just paraphrase and post a response to that thread rather than cross pollinating.