Change character(s) name(s)

[Llana_Virren]

Secondly, why would they need to change AH history, or signed items?

A few reasons, which may sound petty; however, hear me out:

1. AH history. Any in-game accessible sale log is dual purposed. For one, it shows who sold/bought what, and for how much. This is not simply for bragging rights, but also for accountability. Perhaps the influence of the AH system is lost in modern times, however typically speaking, if you are buying tens of millions of gil from the AH at a time, it is significantly impacting the economy; players and developers should have visibility on those actions and individuals.

By not changing history, mules can essentially tamper with the economy, and "vanish" under the guise of a witness-protection-program for the in-game Mob.

2. For signed items, my philosophy is this: although some people say "who cares, people can just recraft it" the point is that there WILL be players who will want their signed gear to carry over a name change. And this would effect -other- players' equipment. Just as people here say "who cares, just recraft it if it's an issue", there are others, like me, who say "who cares, just create a new character if you want a different name/race."

3. Player reputation--or lack thereof. If a name has been associated with labels of "terrible LS leader" or "total asshat noob" you want to be able to avoid those players in the future. How can you do so if players change their names unexpectedly? Your friends' list (and block list) are based on character names, not POL IDs. While POL IDs may be running in the background, you will not be able to immediately associate a player to his "new" name, which would have major implications.

---

All is fair in love and gil, but the moral of the story is that name changes (and race changes, which has been suggested on another thread) serve no meaningful purpose to the gaming community as a whole. With the exception of asthetics there is nothing to be gained by the man-hours spent on implimenting such a system. Let me be clear, I have nothing against the idea of a name change, however I do believe that players need to mature and realize that choices in-game have consequences, just like in meat-space. I think players have gotten used to the idea that you can read a FAQ that tells you every option to pick in dialogues to ensure you get the uberest, leetest item available... but we've come accustomed to not accepting our past choices when we cannot change them.

Just chalk this up as another consequence of your decisions, and the next game you play, you'll be more prepared to make a decision about character name, race, gender, height, and other attributes.

[Sarick]

1.) Be more original with names and this wont happen.
2.) After the last merger, wherein everyone pissed and moaned about thier own inability to put any forthought into thier own names, SE gave in and allowed those people a second chance at changing thier names.
3.) Those people have the same right to thier names as you feel you do. They were not the ones that got merged. Are you saing you have the right to take thier names that they had first away from them?
4.) Before anyone starts yammering about "I want a name change feature," SE already said no.

THey don't have any right to a name if they don't play the game anymore. Existing customers should be placed before 8 year old accounts that don't even play anymore. I'm not talking about recently quit I'm pointing out the players that haven't been playing since before the mergers. There needs to be a name purge for players that haven't been on game in years. Followed up by a methoud to restore original names.

[Llana_Virren]

So when those players come back, how are they going to reaquire their original name? Why should they lose their rights automatically while you retain yours until a time of your chosing?

You chose your own character's name. Deal with it.

On a side note, how do you even know that a character's name is taken from an 8-year old non-active character? It could be a mule for all you know.

[Belmonts]

A few reasons, which may sound petty; however, hear me out:

You are more than welcome to express your thoughts and I really appreciate em.

1. AH history. Any in-game accessible sale log is dual purposed. For one, it shows who sold/bought what, and for how much. This is not simply for bragging rights, but also for accountability. Perhaps the influence of the AH system is lost in modern times, however typically speaking, if you are buying tens of millions of gil from the AH at a time, it is significantly impacting the economy; players and developers should have visibility on those actions and individuals.

Not quite, as I stated before, regardless of your game char name there is an ID for your account and each char, so i should't be a problem that if you are the char "A" with the ID "300" relate it with your new "B" name. Not impossible to do and even also can be paid for that.

By not changing history, mules can essentially tamper with the economy, and "vanish" under the guise of a witness-protection-program for the in-game Mob.

All changes that can be made on some ppl benefit can be used to abuse. Making mules and disappear em is nothing new. In fact, if you have to pay a reasonable fee for the name change it will be less expensive to delete a mule and make it again with a total different name and keep scamming others, lol.

Again it is not a matter of who screws over who, is a simple way to get something it might be lost in time cus one guy named a mule/main/whatever and then deactivated his/her account for years.

2. For signed items, my philosophy is this: although some people say "who cares, people can just recraft it" the point is that there WILL be players who will want their signed gear to carry over a name change. And this would effect -other- players' equipment. Just as people here say "who cares, just recraft it if it's an issue", there are others, like me, who say "who cares, just create a new character if you want a different name/race."

There will be ppl who care and ppl who doesn't care yep yep. But again, when you end a crafted item with a sign on it, it becomes an object with no relation with the char that made it. Is like you made a document with your name on it and then you decided to change your name 3 years later. You have to delete/scratch that document to make it related with your new name and it never will be the same.

On simpler words if you world transfer, someone got your name while gone and you come back after 90 days and had to change your name, will be absurd to expect all the signed stuff you made will sync with your new name.

3. Player reputation--or lack thereof. If a name has been associated with labels of "terrible LS leader" or "total asshat noob" you want to be able to avoid those players in the future. How can you do so if players change their names unexpectedly? Your friends' list (and block list) are based on character names, not POL IDs. While POL IDs may be running in the background, you will not be able to immediately associate a player to his "new" name, which would have major implications.

Prolly I didn't say it clear and loud, idiots/m***ns/f*ckers will exist on every server as they exists on rl, they can transfer, make another char and they won't change lol, but they will shine anyways and ppl will identify 'em this is nothing new at all. This can give em another way to hide, yeah, but they already had tons of another options to hide, but at the end of the day they end up being the same.
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All is fair in love and gil, but the moral of the story is that name changes (and race changes, which has been suggested on another thread) serve no meaningful purpose to the gaming community as a whole. With the exception of asthetics there is nothing to be gained by the man-hours spent on implimenting such a system. Let me be clear, I have nothing against the idea of a name change, however I do believe that players need to mature and realize that choices in-game have consequences, just like in meat-space. I think players have gotten used to the idea that you can read a FAQ that tells you every option to pick in dialogues to ensure you get the uberest, leetest item available... but we've come accustomed to not accepting our past choices when we cannot change them.

Just chalk this up as another consequence of your decisions, and the next game you play, you'll be more prepared to make a decision about character name, race, gender, height, and other attributes.

When servers merged we didn't had much of a choice lol, and tbh I'm happy with my chars names I'm talking for many of my friends who really made their choice on their own servers and with the names they wanted/had-to-deal-cus-it-wasn't-avaliable-anymore as you kindly state. But then, BAM! for w/e reason server merged and your name you choose is taken and you had to swallow it and change yours cus someone else had it.

Ok, sh*t happens and if someone else got it and is in an active account you got owned lol. But this is for [accounts that been forever deactivated with names that can get used by ppl who actually plays the game.

[Belmonts]

So when those players come back, how are they going to reaquire their original name? Why should they lose their rights automatically while you retain yours until a time of your chosing?

Although is unlikely that players come back after 2 or more years I def agree that they can return to the game. And yes after that long they will lose the right to use that name and they will have to change it accordingly if someone took it.
Even that happens if the player is on a shutdown server and he/she came back, they will get owned if the name is already taken in the new server lol.

You chose your own character's name. Deal with it.

When servers merged we were forced change our chars names, why should players have to swallow it quietly?, you are entitled to tell ppl to deal with it as I am entitled to not agree with the way ppl had to deal with this forced name change. Since it was our choice to had a name and not our choice that servers got merged and, therefore, had to adjust the char names.

On a side note, how do you even know that a character's name is taken from an 8-year old non-active character? It could be a mule for all you know.

It doesn't matter if its a mule or a main, neither our business to know the owner's name of those chars, there are DB triggers and flags that automatically can do all that job and release those names. Esp if they have been deactivated a DB flag turns on, so is np to do identify old deactivated accounts.

[Yinnyth]

So my request is simple, because the Olympus aka SE didn't care whatsoever on forcing/making us change our character(s) name(s) on merges and also MANY of the characters names we want is on an account that is deactivated years ago (1 or 1 1/2 years or more) Make those names available to use again and we being able to pay a fee to change names.

That is... far from being the simplest request I have ever seen made, but putting that aside, I see no reason a person shouldn't be able to pay the same fee they pay for a server transfer in order to change their character name. As long as the money goes into making FFXI a better game, I'll put up with Platinumknight getting a new name, but still calling any person he /checks "an RMT assclown". Ahhhh, the good old days before he got banned for harassment...

[Dazusu]

1. This is not simply for bragging rights, but also for accountability.

No one is accountable to other players. SE have tools to allow them to track these things by account ID. Doing it by character name would be slow and tedious.

By not changing history, mules can essentially tamper with the economy, and "vanish" under the guise of a witness-protection-program for the in-game Mob.

Delete and Create new character?

2. For signed items, my philosophy is this: although some people say "who cares, people can just recraft it" the point is that there WILL be players who will want their signed gear to carry over a name change.

There's a line.

like me, who say "who cares, just create a new character if you want a different name/race."

Your credibility for a serious debate just took a hike.

3. Player reputation--or lack thereof. If a name has been associated with labels of "terrible LS leader" or "total asshat noob" you want to be able to avoid those players in the future.

Such features normally have a 90 day limit. If someone if that bad of an asshat, they might find keeping up a ruse for 90 days pretty though. If they turn over a new leaf, what's your problem with it?

[Daniel_Hatcher]

So when those players come back, how are they going to reaquire their original name? Why should they lose their rights automatically while you retain yours until a time of your chosing?

You chose your own character's name. Deal with it.

On a side note, how do you even know that a character's name is taken from an 8-year old non-active character? It could be a mule for all you know.

They left the game, priority should be with active players.

A few reasons, which may sound petty; however, hear me out:

1. AH history. Any in-game accessible sale log is dual purposed. For one, it shows who sold/bought what, and for how much. This is not simply for bragging rights, but also for accountability. Perhaps the influence of the AH system is lost in modern times, however typically speaking, if you are buying tens of millions of gil from the AH at a time, it is significantly impacting the economy; players and developers should have visibility on those actions and individuals.

By not changing history, mules can essentially tamper with the economy, and "vanish" under the guise of a witness-protection-program for the in-game Mob.

2. For signed items, my philosophy is this: although some people say "who cares, people can just recraft it" the point is that there WILL be players who will want their signed gear to carry over a name change. And this would effect -other- players' equipment. Just as people here say "who cares, just recraft it if it's an issue", there are others, like me, who say "who cares, just create a new character if you want a different name/race."

3. Player reputation--or lack thereof. If a name has been associated with labels of "terrible LS leader" or "total asshat noob" you want to be able to avoid those players in the future. How can you do so if players change their names unexpectedly? Your friends' list (and block list) are based on character names, not POL IDs. While POL IDs may be running in the background, you will not be able to immediately associate a player to his "new" name, which would have major implications.

---

All is fair in love and gil, but the moral of the story is that name changes (and race changes, which has been suggested on another thread) serve no meaningful purpose to the gaming community as a whole. With the exception of asthetics there is nothing to be gained by the man-hours spent on implimenting such a system. Let me be clear, I have nothing against the idea of a name change, however I do believe that players need to mature and realize that choices in-game have consequences, just like in meat-space. I think players have gotten used to the idea that you can read a FAQ that tells you every option to pick in dialogues to ensure you get the uberest, leetest item available... but we've come accustomed to not accepting our past choices when we cannot change them.

Just chalk this up as another consequence of your decisions, and the next game you play, you'll be more prepared to make a decision about character name, race, gender, height, and other attributes.

EVERY account and character is linked to an ID number, not name. The name is accessed via the ID number.

For Example:

ID
1112

Name
John Doe

They then reference the ID: 1112 to get the name: John Doe and display that instead, using a name both slows down a search and also is bad design if for example they do a server merge. The amount of server lag you'd get for all the used names being edited through every history in the game would shut the servers down.

Having an ID and then getting the name via it means they don't have to lag the server so much.

[Llana_Virren]

No one is accountable to other players.

Which is why no one should have to give up an old account name, even an inactive one just to humor your whim.

Your credibility for a serious debate just took a hike.

I just repeated your argument back to you. You want to have a new character name... make a new character. Why should development time be wasted on implementing something as trivial as a name change, when there are more important issues, like modifying NM resistances, job changes, etc.?

Such features normally have a 90 day limit. If someone if that bad of an asshat, they might find keeping up a ruse for 90 days pretty though. If they turn over a new leaf, what's your problem with it?

If you bothered reading the -rest- of my post, you'd see I don't have a problem with it. My problem is that there are more important things that should be worked on, than to argue about old accounts having all the cool names taken.

[Belmonts]

That is... far from being the simplest request I have ever seen made, but putting that aside, I see no reason a person shouldn't be able to pay the same fee they pay for a server transfer in order to change their character name. As long as the money goes into making FFXI a better game, I'll put up with Platinumknight getting a new name, but still calling any person he /checks "an RMT assclown". Ahhhh, the good old days before he got banned for harassment...

No saying it should be the $25 we pay for world transfer (don't remember the exact fee tho) but a reasonable fee that covers the implementation/data edit. And GM keep banning people who harass, just they tend to hear jp player-base more lol. j/k :P

And I totally agree that the money should be put to improve the game ^_^b