Missing Genders: A request for Male Miqote, Female Highlander, and Female Roegadyn

[Soukyuu]

Why? Who decides what's a valid reason, you?

Square Enix does.
A question to you: who decides if I am allowed to express my opinion, you?

People can change names in real life as well as in many other games. What is your rationale for making name changes invalid in FF14?

While people can change their name IRL, their previous name still exists in the database and can be seen by the authorities in case something comes up, so people can't just run away by changing their names. This is different in this case.

edit: "different" being that the authorities (SE) is less interested in that information than the player community, and the player community won't have access to that info.

[PSxpert2011]

I'm basically pushing for Lunarian race. I can care less about new gender-benders(men play female characters anyway and girls get a kick from playing male characters) W...G...A.F !

Lunarians, GO! >=D

It would be a un-lockable race after a future expansion with CoP-like quest!

[Felis]

Hey guys!

The dev. team is working hard to try and create a system that will give you the option to change your name during the character re-customization process. They are performing tests to meet these expectations but keep in mind that we can't promise that it will be possible, but they are trying their best for you guys.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post744218

[Awahtochchina]

I'm basically pushing for Lunarian race. I can care less about new gender-benders(men play female characters anyway and girls get a kick from playing male characters) W...G...A.F !

Lunarians, GO! >=D

It would be a un-lockable race after a future expansion with CoP-like quest!

My only thing with this is that Lunarians don't look much different from humans (in this case Hyurs), so them being impltemented is unlikely.

I do remember something about a beast (was it dragon-ish?) like race being in the works. I personally think a Viera option would be awesome *_*

[Mirage]

Square Enix does.
A question to you: who decides if I am allowed to express my opinion, you?

While people can change their name IRL, their previous name still exists in the database and can be seen by the authorities in case something comes up, so people can't just run away by changing their names. This is different in this case.

edit: "different" being that the authorities (SE) is less interested in that information than the player community, and the player community won't have access to that info.

Yeah, Square Enix decides what is or isn't a valid reason. Yet, you claim that there is no valid reason. This is where you contradict yourself. Either you have talked directly to a SE representative about this, or you're saying there is no valid reason when you in fact have no way of knowing this.

SE could easily make this info available for a certain period of time after someone performed a name change.

I've never denied you the opportunity to express your opinion. I asked for a rationale for why your opinion is one that should be shared by others, such as for example Square Enix. If you can't, that's fine too, you can keep your opinion regardless.

[Nabiri]

I've said before, and I'll say again. I wouldn't be against having something in game that would show your old name for a month or two, along with the new name, so people wouldn't have to worry about people running from a bad rep (not that I think it's much of an issue in the first place for a one time name change).
It would be an annoyance I'd put up with for the peace of mind of others.

[MrKupo]

What about your name change? What's the reason you want to change? If it's just you not liking your current one, then why did you choose it in the first place? I'm not trying to be mean here, but allowing unrestricted name changes will just lead to confusion and in some cases people "resetting" their reputation.

My reason for possibly wanting to change my name is because I actually have a back story to my name of sort. Me and my cousin signed up together and decided we would be brothers in-game. So we both have the same surname. But if I change to (and i am planning to) a malequote and he (he is not planning to) does not, the whole brothers thing doesn't make much sense between our characters.

And there are many of us that also tried to follow some kind of guidelines to the races and clans naming system. We want our name to make sense, despite us LOSING OUR IDENTITY for a short time from those that already know us well. Resetting a rep isn't always a good thing y'know.

[Arkhan]

Just to give some programming level insight.
If the game's databases are built as badly as I fully believe they are, it could be that instead of each character having a unique ID, they utilize the character's name as it's ID, so changing the character name in one place would require a manual change of all the references everywhere. Which, when doing such a gigantic batch job as this WILL invariably generate a pile of errors and lead to things like missing achievements, loosing quest progression, GC rank, gil, inventory... Whatever sorts of things that the '[X] is no longer linked to [character]' error can issue.

Of course, here's hoping they manage to find a way around that.

Well, I certainly hope they aren't doing something that is that incorrect, especially since I'd venture to guess that first and last name are stored separately. Maybe not. Maybe the unique ID is a concatenation of both names.

Anyway, using any of the above combinations for a unique defining ID would be a terrible idea. I doubt they are, since they do force name changes for vulgar names.

A 32 bit integer alone would allow for more unique IDs than we'd probably ever have as players on the game.. (Over 2 billion IDs). Use a 64 bit one, and we get even more! Do the IDs on a per-server basis, and that's even more uniqueness.

So, my guess is that they can do it, but are making damn sure there aren't any unforeseen issues that will pop up from the mass gender change that is most certainly going to occur when like, 50,000 people all simultaneously turn into boycats and change their names from Fluffy McFurry to Sir Purrsalot or something.


Also, it'd be awfully embarrassing if they have database problems that games like UO don't have. You can have 7 characters with the same name on UO! Heck, two of my characters are the same exact name.

[Dragon]

That's irrelevant. I shouldn't be judged on why I want it. If others are allowed, I should be allowed as well. I pay just as much or more than most people who play this game (I have multiple characters.) My name change will cause no more confusion than others'. (Not to mention, I would still have the same last name anyways.) And no one knows me on that character. O.o

Nabi, I'm with you on this. I want my char's last name changed for personal reasons and I've no plans to change race/gender (yet, at least).

Well, I certainly hope they aren't doing something that is that incorrect, especially since I'd venture to guess that first and last name are stored separately. Maybe not. Maybe the unique ID is a concatenation of both names.

Anyway, using any of the above combinations for a unique defining ID would be a terrible idea. I doubt they are, since they do force name changes for vulgar names.

A 32 bit integer alone would allow for more unique IDs than we'd probably ever have as players on the game.. (Over 2 billion IDs). Use a 64 bit one, and we get even more! Do the IDs on a per-server basis, and that's even more uniqueness.

So, my guess is that they can do it, but are making damn sure there aren't any unforeseen issues that will pop up from the mass gender change that is most certainly going to occur when like, 50,000 people all simultaneously turn into boycats and change their names from Fluffy McFurry to Sir Purrsalot or something.


Also, it'd be awfully embarrassing if they have database problems that games like UO don't have. You can have 7 characters with the same name on UO! Heck, two of my characters are the same exact name.

Yeah, agreed. And if it is so damn screwed up as a database, they should take the database down for a month if that's what they require to fix it. Better to fix the crap when 2.0 is getting released than to wait until the database is overbloated like Facebook, because by then nothing will work.

[Skies]

Yeah, I just have the feeling that they are going to have to manually perform a lot of those required changes, and all of this work Rukkiri mentioned is more about putting failsafes to ensure no bizzarre occurrances occur than the system to change names itself.