One of my favorite parts of Champions Online was that names were non unique- if someone made a character named Mr. Biggles for instance, and having a character named Mr. Biggles was something you reaaaally wanted, you could also have a character with that name.

Will this be the case in Valiance? How much freedom will the character naming system allow? my biggest grievance with most mmos is the hours spent trying to come up with a name I'm happy with on character creation.

This is especially true here since many City of Heroes and Champions Online players will likely want to recreate some of their characters, and names are important.

That is something I really love about Cryptic; that its everything tied to an account name. Your character names do not matter for system side identification and you will never run into the need for a stupid name since all the good ones are taken.

I think an account.charactername is ideal. There are a lot of issues with having the character name be unique through the whole game or server. First, someone can use a name and then never touch that character again. The player can leave the game and still that name is locked. A clean up system can be implemented to clean these kinds of characters up but you will eventually delete a character that the user wanted and there will be trouble. Second, unique names causes people to start replacing letters with numbers or using clever spellings etc. This can be frustrating when trying to use chat or add someone to the group. An account.character name system fixes all of these issues.

What about giving each character 2 names. A hero/villain name and an alias name. Superman when the player is active as a hero and clark kent when the player is inactive or playing as a civilian.
It would be more elegant as the solution withvthe @handle.

Gerald Deemer wrote:
Nope. At least half my heroes are public identity. they don't -Have- a clark kent mode.

I don't think you're understanding a global handle correctly. it is -not- always displayed by your character name. and it can be hidden in the chat log in the options.

The global handle Zee is referring to is basically the player's account name. It serves as an identifier to the game itself that this is player #7. That way multiple people can have the name they want, even if it happens to be the same one. Because the game's system itself will see those players as Superdude@Player7 and Superdude@Player8.

However, that account name is NOT visible to players unless they manually turn the option on - so it's not an eyesore.

So with this system in place, you would be able to see more than one Superdude. But they would all still be separately identifiable by their global handles without having to worry about the constant on-screen clutter.

TigerOpsF36 wrote:
Correct. and having more than one Superdude is a VERY GOOD THING. becuase otherwise people who join the game later on are heavily punished by all the good names being "Taken".

it is absolutely imperative when creating a character to be happy with the name. and nobody should care if theyre not the only one with that name. There can be more than one Bob Smith in real life, so there should be more than one Superdude in VO.

ZeeHero wrote:
Oh I understand the system with the global @handle. I played Champions Online for nearly 8 years. They use this system you know?

I just thought it would be cool to have a civilian name because VO will offer a real secret identity which none of the other superhero MMOs did.
If your characters have no secret identity - okay but for the characters that will have one would it be great to see the civilian name when walking around as a civilian.
Of course this would also work with an @handle but still we need 2 namens then. In CO you always had to check the biography of the hero to see his/her civilian name.

I mean for me every solution is bearable because my crateive names are really unique. Nobody would "take" them before me.

I just thought about it and tried to find an elegant solution for the secret identity thing.

For me the names have to sound superheroish and catchy. if that means they're not so "Unique" its a very small price to pay.

ZeeHero wrote:
Not every player is thinking of names for the characters 2 years before release.

Interessting: Your characters will have superheroish names and mostly no secret identity. Looking forward to see what toons you will come up with.

Never said mostly. Said about half and half.