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Cipacadrinho

The dreaded rename character!

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Or, your login IS your character name until you set one, or a month after login.  Once set it or the first month expires, character name is locked in, THEN paid name change.    I think a year is a bit over the top for cooldown, considering other RPGs allow one per month.  3-6 months seems more reasonable.  IRL, it takes one instant for Joe to say "From now on, call me Stephen" and in most of the real world that is good enough.  Wurm time is how many times faster than the real world?  And we want to take a year to process a name-change, while incidentally allowing another one at about the same time the last one finishes changing over.

 

Retain the login name when viewing a character history, as that would never change.

 

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Thing is , in many mmo's, your Account name and your Player name can be two distinct things. 

 

In Wurm, they are the same. I understand this was probably done for simplicity's sake, but I don't see much of an issue with Re-naming your character IF certain conditions were made: 

 

1. If a player talks in chat, private or otherwise, you should be able to do something like CTRL + L mouse on their name and see if their name was changed. 

 

Example : Elentari : Hey Mike, how have you been? 

 Bob : Pretty well dude, working on my new deed, you? 

 

(CTRL + Lmouse click on Bob's name) = This player is formerly known as Mikeluck, his player name was changed approximately 2 weeks ago. No other changes have been made to this player's name.

 

Elentari : Oh you changed your name? 

Bob: Yeah mikeluck kinda wore out on me, so I went to an old school simple name.

Elentari : Alright, no worries.  

 

2. A player can also hover his mouse on another player and use "Examine name"  option from a distance to see their Identity. 

 

You see Loremipsum. 

This player has blood from the Freedom Isles.

This player is a citizen of the Freedom Isles.

This player has had two previous names, X and Y. 

 

This way reputation can be maintained throughout the game, players can check each other's identity whether IN CHAT or by proximity using the "Examine name" function. 

 

Problem solved.

I'll see myself out. 

 

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On 11/23/2020 at 2:32 AM, Wilczan said:

Area history when name is changed:

"Joe changed his name and is currently known as Stephen."

 

Player/target overlay for a year or so:

"Stephen was formerly known as Joe".

(for a pvp purposes could be also overlay over a local players tab)

 

And ofc name change should be payed option in the shop, with 1 year cooldown for each character.

see this right here would work perfectly!

 

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I do really like that idea too Elantari. Even something as simple as a Nickname(Smwoodburn)

 

Have it set up like the Mirror, except "nametag" which adds a nickname in front of parenthesis' character name.

Edited by Smwoodburn

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Well, i sold my accounts and bought as well. I am not the person i bought the account from, the person that got my accounts is not me. Didn't get a chance to get any of my accounts back before RMT and to what accounts my "reputation" is tied to now?

It doesn't even make sense to be overly paranoid around names after so many account sales and after 95%+ of population doesn't even play anymore for years

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On 11/22/2020 at 4:35 PM, Cipacadrinho said:

The final thing that I want to announce today is that we're also currently working on a long desired and requested feature which is a complete account system, the main purpose of which is to consolidate character ownership into a single account, improve the security of your accounts and ease the management of them. This will also help us with adding some more features that you could manage about your characters without logging into the game, improve account recovery methods and more.
We'll reveal more details on this soon.

 

Thats a quote from a Samool roadmap back in 2020 is sad it did not get any development sounded promising.

 

Also how about character rename in game feature:)

 

I am willing to bet it would help pay for atleast one more full time dev if not more.

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As someone whose account name is two woefully bad typos, +1. Even if there were major restrictions (like a long, long cooldown), it would be really really nice to at least have some way to change our name in this game.

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I wouldn't mind a menu option that is attached to rename characters where you can view former names as well as the range of dates for which they applied.

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Bump! With the quality of life improvements coming next year I'd really love to see character renaming added.

 

I would accept so many concessions on this to ensure that GM's lives remain smooth and that names have meaning still, like...

  • Easy access to previous names of accounts in chat (on mouseover? or as a menu option when right clicking names?)
  • Cost in silver coins to discourage abuse
  • Pre-change cooldown (1 week?) so it can't be done quickly and abused
  • Post-change long cooldown (12 months? or longer) so it can't be repeated
  • Names cannot be changed to any other former account name
  • 1 name change per account maximum (unless there are exceptional circumstances) (this would be extreme, but I'd still prefer this over no name changes)

 

What matters is that I would love, love, love if Wurm had parity with almost all other games and allowed names to be changed. I understand the concerns, but I think they can be entirely mitigated by solutions raised in this thread... so at this point, there's no reason not to allow name changes.

 

 

On 11/26/2020 at 4:59 PM, Tor said:

Well, i sold my accounts and bought as well. I am not the person i bought the account from, the person that got my accounts is not me. Didn't get a chance to get any of my accounts back before RMT and to what accounts my "reputation" is tied to now?

It doesn't even make sense to be overly paranoid around names after so many account sales and after 95%+ of population doesn't even play anymore for years

 

EDIT: This post, too. I wanted to write something about accounts that were traded and now have someone else's name, but this already summarises it perfectly.

Edited by Docterchese

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There are concerns about players abusing this feature, yes, but those can be addressed.

 

I think the major obstacle standing in the way of allowing name changes is at a low level, i.e. the player name is the database key. Allowing the renaming of characters would force every database access to jump through extra hoops, increasing code complexity and server load.

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As always when this topic comes up:

-1

 

I've experienced too many technical issues with this ingame to be able to support this idea. Unless the devs change how the database info is stored and retrieved it'll always be a solid -1 from me on this.

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7 hours ago, Aeris said:

I've experienced too many technical issues with this ingame to be able to support this idea. Unless the devs change how the database info is stored and retrieved it'll always be a solid -1 from me on this.

Can you elaborate on the technical issues please?

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10 hours ago, Sheffie said:

I think the major obstacle standing in the way of allowing name changes is at a low level, i.e. the player name is the database key. Allowing the renaming of characters would force every database access to jump through extra hoops, increasing code complexity and server load.

That's not how it works, passwords do the same thing. 

 

Please do stop insisting the server is some house of cards that is going to collapse if any change is made

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54 minutes ago, Archaed said:

That's not how it works, passwords do the same thing. 

 

Please do stop insisting the server is some house of cards that is going to collapse if any change is made

 

Passwords... do the same thing... as player names? That hasn't been my experience.

 

I also don't think increased complexity and load, i.e. decreased performance, is at all similar to collapsing like a house of cards.

 

Of course, it's quite possible that there's an elegant and powerful solution to the problem of renaming characters that allows efficient and simple access from the new name to the old and vice versa, and I confess that my experience of game development really has not focussed on server database access for more than a couple of months, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if I was ignorant of it. Feel free to enlighten.

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13 hours ago, Sheffie said:

There are concerns about players abusing this feature, yes, but those can be addressed.

 

I think the major obstacle standing in the way of allowing name changes is at a low level, i.e. the player name is the database key. Allowing the renaming of characters would force every database access to jump through extra hoops, increasing code complexity and server load.


The following is pulled from wu but i highly doubt that at this point in time there is a major difference between the way wu and wo store their player data

kqPzB89.png

As you can tell every player has a "WURMID" this is the same as the "PLAYERID" referenced in other tables, changing this would cause issues yes and require massive updates across every item and house and entity owned by said player

BUT changing the "NAME" field does not require this it never has never will if this was the case then players being forced to change names due to offensive names would not have been a thing and Rolf&co would have decided that an offensive name would result in perma ban of the toon instead if it really was that much work.
So no no increased code complexity or server load.

Wurm can do what runescape has and show previous known names on examine of a player or on name hover over in any chat and problem solved, the only reason this is not a thing is because in the past Rolf had stated that he had planned to make name change a paid for feature but never got around to doing it and then forgot about doing and then didn't feel like putting in the effort to make it be a thing.

Making a database edit of a single field really is not that hard given that every bit of code that calls for player name uses "OWNERID"(Same as PLAYERID and WURMID) for lookup while requesting the "NAME" field as reply and thus none of the tools or anything like that would even be impacted any more so then they already are when you examine something, in this sense wurm is really efficient on how it handles data, say what you will about how quirky the game is and how wogic is strong but when it comes to the basics of the code behind it the game is better designed at its core then most games are from small or big teams old or new games alike.

Wurm really is not that complex and a name change really is not that hard like i can keep throwing screenshots of code into here to try and show more of it but most wont have a clue what its about so i will just leave you with one more screenshot showing why I am all for having the way to purchase(in some way or another) a name change while it logs old name would not be a complex thing.

Below is a screenshot of the item table of the default wu adventure map and shows that the name is nothing more then a field that is only referenced for us the player and not for tracking purposes(Thank god to that) of who owns what or anything like that

W7yGbvr.png

 

 

 

Edit: Okay for good measure I will just add this to it
This is found in the WebInterfaceImpl file, this here already shows how easy it really is for a name change to happen given wurm already has this functionality build in and all that would need to be done for this new process is to call for this code and done rename of a player will be done.

    @Override
    public String rename(final String intraServerPassword, final String oldName, String newName, final String newPass, final int power) throws RemoteException {
        this.validateIntraServerPassword(intraServerPassword);
        if (WebInterfaceImpl.logger.isLoggable(Level.FINER)) {
            WebInterfaceImpl.logger.finer(this.getRemoteClientDetails() + " rename oldName: " + oldName + ", newName: " + newName + ", power: " + power);
        }
        String toReturn = "";
        newName = LoginHandler.raiseFirstLetter(newName);
        if (Servers.localServer.LOGINSERVER && Players.getInstance().doesPlayerNameExist(newName)) {
            return "The name " + newName + " already exists. This is an Error.";
        }
        if (Servers.localServer.LOGINSERVER) {
            toReturn += Servers.rename(oldName, newName, newPass, power);
        }
        if (!toReturn.contains("Error.")) {
            try {
                toReturn = PlayerInfoFactory.rename(oldName, newName, newPass, power);
            }
            catch (final IOException iox) {
                toReturn = toReturn + Servers.localServer.name + " " + iox.getMessage() + ". This is an Error.\n";
                WebInterfaceImpl.logger.log(Level.WARNING, iox.getMessage(), iox);
            }
        }
        return toReturn;


 

Edited by wipeout
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3 hours ago, elentari said:

Can you elaborate on the technical issues please?

 

The database retrieves info from a database table, and items in tables have unique identifiers. The table may contain a variety of information based on what's relevant, and the identifiers are used when information is retrieved from it. Typically the unique identifier is an ID number of some kind, but in Wurm it often uses the character name as identifier - Not for everything, but I've seen enough instances of it to make me uncomfortable regarding name changes.

 

I've encountered some quirks that certain people would not appreciate if I mentioned outloud, so I won't. But one problem I can mention is that deleted characters (aka players who were never premium) remain as ghosts in the system. We had a player in our village whose account was deleted due to inactivity and never having been prem. Months, maybe a year, later another player chose that same name. The new player was automatically enrolled in our village, and popped up in the village chat. He was pretty confused about already belonging to a village despite having just created his account - And so were we.

 

I recently deleted 30 or so [Unknown] marked names from a house in our village (we used to take in a lot of newbies). And while a lot of them were likely players who haven't been on that server since the latest database mishap I'd wager at least a handful of them were deleted accounts. Would I trust those [Unknown] tags not to allow a new player with the same name as a deleted player into the building? No, I would not.

 

 

Edit:
One glaring example of the way the database information is improperly handled on a regular basis is the Missions menu. Missions often have double adjectives in their description of an item or creature (for example large large anvil) or missing adjectives. That could've been shrugged off as just errors in the way the message is written, if it hadn't been for the fact that the two adjectives aren't always spelt the same - One recent example was a mission calling for a Large Largge item. We laughed quite a bit at that one, but it also showcases the unfortunate reality that the mission prompt picked up information about the same item from two different places (and one of them was misspelt, oopsie).

Edited by Aeris
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3 hours ago, Aeris said:

 

The database retrieves info from a database table, and items in tables have unique identifiers. The table may contain a variety of information based on what's relevant, and the identifiers are used when information is retrieved from it. Typically the unique identifier is an ID number of some kind, but in Wurm it often uses the character name as identifier - Not for everything, but I've seen enough instances of it to make me uncomfortable regarding name changes.

 

I've encountered some quirks that certain people would not appreciate if I mentioned outloud, so I won't. But one problem I can mention is that deleted characters (aka players who were never premium) remain as ghosts in the system. We had a player in our village whose account was deleted due to inactivity and never having been prem. Months, maybe a year, later another player chose that same name. The new player was automatically enrolled in our village, and popped up in the village chat. He was pretty confused about already belonging to a village despite having just created his account - And so were we.

 

I recently deleted 30 or so [Unknown] marked names from a house in our village (we used to take in a lot of newbies). And while a lot of them were likely players who haven't been on that server since the latest database mishap I'd wager at least a handful of them were deleted accounts. Would I trust those [Unknown] tags not to allow a new player with the same name as a deleted player into the building? No, I would not.

 

 

Edit:
One glaring example of the way the database information is improperly handled on a regular basis is the Missions menu. Missions often have double adjectives in their description of an item or creature (for example large large anvil) or missing adjectives. That could've been shrugged off as just errors in the way the message is written, if it hadn't been for the fact that the two adjectives aren't always spelt the same - One recent example was a mission calling for a Large Largge item. We laughed quite a bit at that one, but it also showcases the unfortunate reality that the mission prompt picked up information about the same item from two different places (and one of them was misspelt, oopsie).

 

Wurm's databases being buggy isn't a strong argument against adding player renaming. I don't think it's good to say a suggestion can't happen because there are bugs in a system it would use. Those bugs should be fixed regardless of the future of this suggestion thread, and the bugs are irrelevant to if it's a good suggestion or not.

 

 

3 hours ago, wipeout said:

The following is pulled from wu but i highly doubt that at this point in time there is a major difference between the way wu and wo store their player data...

 

Thank you for this post! I didn't expect Wurm would already even have a player rename function and would use player IDs (opposed to just simple names.) This is probably easier to add than I thought it would be.

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3 hours ago, Docterchese said:

 

Wurm's databases being buggy isn't a strong argument against adding player renaming. I don't think it's good to say a suggestion can't happen because there are bugs in a system it would use. Those bugs should be fixed regardless of the future of this suggestion thread, and the bugs are irrelevant to if it's a good suggestion or not.

 

1. The database and its tables aren't buggy - They are incorrectly set up and incorrectly handled. A very important distinction: This is not a bug you can swat. It's a deeper seated issue they have to show they've sorted out before a reliable name change should ever be considered. Ingame security is not a matter they should take a gamble on.

2. I'm not against the database issues being sorted out. And nowhere did I even indicate or suggest that. What I'm saying is that I do not Trust this not to become a major security issue in its current state.

3. I have just as big of a right as anyone to state my reasons for not wanting this suggestion to go live. That my main reason against it happens to be that it potentially poses a security risk shouldn't disqualify me from having an opinion.

4. It's important to highlight relevant issues when they pose a threat. When things get consistently overlooked they pose an even bigger threat if incorporated in new functionality. Even if it had been due to a bug (which it is not) it would've been relevant to highlight issues and point out "yo, fix this bug first".

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On 11/24/2020 at 2:21 AM, elentari said:

Thing is , in many mmo's, your Account name and your Player name can be two distinct things. 

 

In Wurm, they are the same. I understand this was probably done for simplicity's sake, but I don't see much of an issue with Re-naming your character IF certain conditions were made: 

 

1. If a player talks in chat, private or otherwise, you should be able to do something like CTRL + L mouse on their name and see if their name was changed. 

 

Example : Elentari : Hey Mike, how have you been? 

 Bob : Pretty well dude, working on my new deed, you? 

 

(CTRL + Lmouse click on Bob's name) = This player is formerly known as Mikeluck, his player name was changed approximately 2 weeks ago. No other changes have been made to this player's name.

 

Elentari : Oh you changed your name? 

Bob: Yeah mikeluck kinda wore out on me, so I went to an old school simple name.

Elentari : Alright, no worries.  

 

2. A player can also hover his mouse on another player and use "Examine name"  option from a distance to see their Identity. 

 

You see Loremipsum. 

This player has blood from the Freedom Isles.

This player is a citizen of the Freedom Isles.

This player has had two previous names, X and Y. 

 

This way reputation can be maintained throughout the game, players can check each other's identity whether IN CHAT or by proximity using the "Examine name" function. 

 

Problem solved.

I'll see myself out. 

 

Leaving aside all the technical aspects of making name changes, since in Wurm your reputation is your own, the only way I'd support name change is with a system like Elentari has outlined that allows other players to see who this person was before.

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-1

 

Never bring rename character. Bad idea. It really messes up a friends list. Terrible notion. Do not support. When they did this to RS , it really just confused the heck out of everything.

 

My Gorsh. If you want a different name, make a new toon w/ ur preferred name fcol.

 

I suggest Wurm formalize some code that solidifies all names, and completely makes it fundamentally impossible for anyone ever in the future to start up any rename character feature.

 

This is huge bad idea. Anyone who thinks they want this, I guarantee - you really do not want this.

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1 hour ago, TeeeBOMB said:

-1

 

Never bring rename character. Bad idea. It really messes up a friends list. Terrible notion. Do not support. When they did this to RS , it really just confused the heck out of everything.

 

My Gorsh. If you want a different name, make a new toon w/ ur preferred name fcol.

 

I suggest Wurm formalize some code that solidifies all names, and completely makes it fundamentally impossible for anyone ever in the future to start up any rename character feature.

 

This is huge bad idea. Anyone who thinks they want this, I guarantee - you really do not want this.

I played rs at the time they added that feature and honestly it really isn't that confusing, yes maybe if you come back years later and people changed their names you go "wait what" but a simple mouse over can see the last name used and we aren't asking for being able to change the name on the fly every few weeks or anything like that.
Any and all name changes should be kept track of either when examining the person or on hovering over their name.

And yes lets just throw away a decade+ of activity on an account to go use a new name on a new account and loose everything we worked for that's a great way for players to be dealt with.
Also this "I suggest Wurm formalize some code that solidifies all names, and completely makes it fundamentally impossible for anyone ever in the future to start up any rename character feature." is such a bad idea wurm needs a rename feature even if its just for the gms due to bad names and or names that are on accounts that go unnoticed for years before being asked to change, next to that tying down a name to make it impossible to change data wise would be a horrible way to go around as well.

Either way a rename feature exists already and we just hope that it can be expanded on to become a feature we the players can use while it also logs all name changes applied and that really isn't a bad thing

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14 hours ago, TeeeBOMB said:

-1

 

Never bring rename character. Bad idea. It really messes up a friends list. Terrible notion. Do not support. When they did this to RS , it really just confused the heck out of everything.

 

My Gorsh. If you want a different name, make a new toon w/ ur preferred name fcol.

 

I suggest Wurm formalize some code that solidifies all names, and completely makes it fundamentally impossible for anyone ever in the future to start up any rename character feature.

 

This is huge bad idea. Anyone who thinks they want this, I guarantee - you really do not want this.

So people that do not feel comfortable with their names, should rather create new character to avoid you feeling unconfortable about your friend list?

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On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2022 at 4:25 AM, Docterchese said:

As someone whose account name is two woefully bad typos, +1.

 

 

I like you just exactly as you are Docterchese. Please do not ever change 🙂 

 

2 hours ago, Wilczan said:

So people that do not feel comfortable with their names, should rather create new character to avoid you feeling unconfortable about your friend list?

 

LOL - no. Pick the name  you want, then go with it. If you don't like that name, create a new account with the name you like. How can this be difficult?

 

It has never been difficult to create a new account. So if you create a name you don't like - ditch it, create new named account. Do not continue playing on the bad named account , then 10 years later decide you want to muck up everybody's friends list because u suddenly decide you don't like your name spelling.

 

Maker names - friends lists - arch journal pages/mini tokes - for the love of God - do not ever allow anyone in Wurm to ever change their in game names.

 

Nobody really wants this anywhere. If someone has played a bad named toon for ten frick'n years, then they get no vote. The cemented their decision literally years ago.

 

Of course this entire gambit is a play to easily hide bad behavior behind easily gotten, cheap, alternate names. BAD IDEA. I never never never want an aged toon, been around for years - to have had its name changed, hiding a players previous activity.

 

So then you try to come up w/ a way to avoid making it so someone could change their name - and still yet remain accountable for their previous behavior. OMG, it's so frick'n easy - just don't allow changing names - this idea SUCKs.

 

So word it up all you want - I guarantee no normal player wants this in any context. Even if they post here, omg yes I do, lol. Any change of this nature to allow ppl to change in game names will wreck name consistency, and while technically, I can not speak for everybody - I can say I honestly believe my words here.

 

But - I also like people posting suggestions for new ideas. So keep coming up w/ ideas for what you believe to be positive changes - good work there. Just, in case you have not noticed, I hate this particular idea with a passion.

 

Having posted this - I must say, I am not  a great spokesman to champion honest causes like this one. I will just repeat myself and may verge on posting un appetizing remarks about my opponents mothers and their heritage, lol. So I would ask someone w/ better verbal etiquette talents argue this side, the correct side on this issue. Do not ever allow anyone in Wurm to change their name - SPECIALLY if they have played on their badly named accounts for 10 years.

Edited by TeeeBOMB
words

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Take into consideration that buying accounts was possible for long time of Wurm existence, thus many people bought accounts with names, that were not created by them.

 

I know, they shouldn't if they do not like those names, right? wink wink

 

And argument about hiding bad actions by changing name. How many times it was suggested that if you hover over new name you gonna see old name.... I guess not enough.

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6 hours ago, TeeeBOMB said:

LOL - no. Pick the name  you want, then go with it. If you don't like that name, create a new account with the name you like. How can this be difficult?

 

Yes let me bin off my skills purely because I gave myself a crap name years ago

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