Adventurers' Guild Registrar (Fluff feature idea/request)

[Roda]

So I've been playing a few alts, different characters, different races, different roles, different identities. Shakin' things up. and through my many different journeys I've hit a few stabbing annoyances, primarilly on my Hellsguard who I use a lore appropriate, game-generated name (Painted Dove) and EVERY SINGLE TIME an NPC calls me "Painted" casually, or "Ms. Dove" formally, I die inside. You're supposed to say both names! Saying just one or the other is weird and it throws out my immersion every time it happens. (And I'm sure male plainsfolk have similar issues.)

So I thought why not have a book in every adventurer's guild called the "Adventurers' Guild Registrar" where you could choose how NPCs refer to you by your name (Things like "use full name for every option" or "treat last name as given name and first name as surname" for othardians that don't want to use western name order, always refer by last name ([lastname] for casual [Mx.] [Lastname] for formal), etc). I could also see a prefix/suffix preference for those who are eternal bonded (an eternally bonded woman might want to be refered to as "Mrs.") or for those who want to be recognized by their GC rank and a pronoun choice option for those of us who chose to create a character that doesn't match their official gender variable because either that character's aesthetic is best displayed by the other gender (I've seen a lot of Nuhns and Tias using the female miqo'te model because they wanted a more svelte character) or the option for another gender doesn't exist and we're working with what we've got (people trying to make male viera or female hrothgar. I've got an NB character and I get slapped in the eyeballs every time I see a "she" 'cause I'm like "what? no?? Huh??? Oh, right. No they.")

And yes, I know it's an undertaking combing through every reference and call of the player's name and gender. Yes, it's a localization maze of naming customs. I know.
But if they could implement even a fraction of this idea, it would be a great boost to immersion in the RP part of this RPG

[Rongway]

The devs have mentioned at least being aware that some players want an option like this, from the JP side of the player base. Some find it jarring to see all the dialog in Japanese except when their character name comes up, and some JP players have requested the ability to set a Japanese dialog name. It shouldn't be a big ask to adapt such a setting to work for everybody and not just the JP client, if they ever implemented it.

I don't remember how long ago they mentioned this (FanFest 2018/2019 tour, maybe?) but it would be great if they could fit this in in the future.

[Doozer]

It's definitely a bit jarring to have someone run up in a cutscene and yell, "Dead!" and I can't tell if they're saying my character's name or that someone is actually dead.

[Iscah]

I definitely want this for names. Most particularly my Seeker who cringes every time he gets "Master Tia" and my Sea Wolf who would normally be called by a shortened version of her name, but I don't want to change it on her official character name.

I think the simplest route (if implementable at all) would be to have a small set of name references to be referred to instead of the character's default nametag.

I think the key building blocks if you were going to break it down are:
Forename (full/formal)
Forename (standard)
Forename (informal)
Surname
Name to be used with honorific (eg. Miss/Master or GC rank)
Full name

Full name as a separate field would be more effective than assembling Forename Surname because it would allow for variants - e.g. for male Seeker and Plainsfolk the formal first name and the full name would be the same, with nothing further to add. For your Hellsguard example, you'd put the same in formal, standard, last and full names (though there are NPC examples of using just the second half like a surname).

And I think you'd only then use a surname field for building honorifics, though I'm not sure that you need both, but it can't just be surname because for some races that might not be the second half of the name. For Seekers I would probably repeat their first names in this field.

Also - while I don't really know how it works - it seems like this could be something that could be kept client-side so it's not information that needs to be sent to other players, which might give it a better chance of being implemented than other types of new character customisation.

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Pronouns, on the other hand, seem less doable because it's not just a matter of a direct "insert word here". There are sometimes whole sentences that change according to the character's gender. Directly choosing Miss/Mrs/Ms or whatever might be possible, but characters use different terms in different places and they might prefer to maintain that variety. For GC rank it seems like the only people supposed to call you that are fellow GC members, or the script would have people from other GCs address you that way.

It feels like a very separate request to the customisable names, because that one is simply allowing tweaking to get the name right, but pronouns affect the larger script in a complex way.

[Raikai]

Oh, this would be amazing.

I've always wanted to name a character after an alias, like "Lady Hurricane", and it would be nice to have her addressed just as "Hurricane" by the NPCs instead of "Lady"