Names (both comander and ship)

[Bromley86]

EDIT: Just want to make it clear that I'm currently officially known in-game as 31337_BroMleY [KOOS]. This is the name that you will see when you meet me (and kill me for having a silly name) and also the one you'll see in the newspapers (my opinion of my abilities may be slightly inflated). My attempt to change to a more sensible [OOPS] ipoopedmythong was blocked by some vigilant person, although I see there's a CMDR Pooptart out there.
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Summary: Do you want 1337 commander/ship names?

Just changed my commander name per this thread. I'm now (and hopefully not forever!) to be known as BroMleY86 [KOOS]. Now trying for 31337_BroMleY [KOOS]. EDIT: Success, in that I now have a sillier name than before.

So, that brings up the point of silly names in the game. I'd assumed that with FD reviewing the names they were going to force people to do the following:

• Only (and always) capitalise the first letter. There are real-world and sci-fi examples where this isn't the case (al-Tikriti, von Bismarck, dinAlt, diGriz), but I'd assumed FD would automate this part of the name check process and forcing 1st letter only capitalisation is the easy way to go.
• No numbers. Nothing to stop you naming yourself Bromley the Third, if that's your thing.
• No non-26 letter English alphabet characters. That'd prevent @{[_<%& etc. It'd also unfortunately prevent the IRL acceptable "-" (as in al-Tikriti), but that'd just be a casualty of streamlining the naming check process (and IRL often similar names are displayed without that character, c.f. Al Saud).

Whereas, the reality seems to be anything goes, subject to a 20 character limit and a few minor limitations.

I couldn't find anything in the DDA about commander names. Has it been discussed? There is something about ship names. Interestingly, whereas we are prohibited from using profanities in our commander names, ship names can include swear words.

Anyway, I was hoping for (and expecting) relatively normal commander names: single, double, nickname+surname (e.g. Dread Pirate Liqua); all in common English format. That sort of thing. Whereas apparently it'll look like any generic online game (e.g. [OOPS] ipoopedmythong). This may be an immersion killer for me.

A subset of this is clan tagging. I'd rather have no clan tagging, but if it's going to be in the game because people can add it to their names, then I'd rather it was a separate field than part of the commander or ship name. That way it'd be possible for me to flick a switch to hide clan tags.

Anyway, thoughts? I'm aware this thread is basically me whining that other players won't conform to what I think is right. Hopefully enough people feel the same. Haven't added a poll yet as I thought I'd wait to see if there's something I've missed.

 

[JeffRyan]

I abhor censorship.

But... yeah I could go along with this. Nice idea. It'd go a long way to keeping immersion.

 

[ZeeWolf]

Why no numbers?

In Padstow harbor they used to have tour boats called "Jaws", "Jaws 2" and "Jaws 3 the revenge"

Lots of WW2 aircraft had humorous names given to them by crew that needed to keep a sense of humor.

Silliness isn't necessarily unrealistic

Obviously there is a line.

 

[rootsrat]

I totally agree. I love immersion and when I see someone named Commander as234!!RT4f in game, it just totally kills it for me. To the point that I may actually stop playing multi. This was always a massive disappointment for me in any online game, players choosing non-alpha characters in names or just making silly names (luckily I have not seen Commander Lleeggoollaass or Commander LichKingzzzz1337 in game... yet!)

Same goes for ship names. I don't think that whoever the governing body for processing ship name applications is (in game), they wouldn't allowed a swearwords ship names.

@FD, please make the game immersive and forbid that kind of practices when it comes to both player names and ship names.

Thanks.

P.S. Ship registration number 313373 should also be forbidden

::EDIT::

@Clan tagging, also totally agree.

 

[Tacheel]

I've mixed feelings.

Although i'm not particularly a fan of seeing l33t names, i do feel some of the people in the 3300's would use them as callsigns. I don't see a reason why the pilots federation would ban them with so many members. Also usually names are a good reflection on the playstyle/role of the person in question. I'm gonna be more wary of L33t_4ce_uSUXOR than Bromley for example.


As for the names breaking immersion, if you're roleplaying somebody living that far in the future, how sure are you that people won't be going around with names like that, i'm sure the youth of today would if they could. Give them some reason to have a callsign/handle and they will.

 

[rootsrat]

/snip

As for the names breaking immersion, if you're roleplaying somebody living that far in the future, how sure are you that people won't be going around with names like that, i'm sure the youth of today would if they could. Give them some reason to have a callsign/handle and they will.

Very true, but somehow I'd really find it extremely hard to roleplay that. I am unable to develop a tolerance for that kind of stuff, even in my imagination, as a XXXIV century space pilot

Spoiler

OFFTOPIC -- Bear in mind that I RP a lot of games, even if they're not RPG's. A good example is GTA series

 

[Bromley86]

I'm gonna be more wary of L33t_4ce_uSUXOR than Bromley for example.

And that was your first mistake .

Fair enough. ZeeWolf mentioned the common nautical format of slinging a number after a name that's already been registered in that jurisdiction. In ED's case, the system doesn't require that as ship names are not unique. However, I can see people might want it. My blanket ban on numbers was just to help streamline the approval process (i.e. to avoid Br0m73y), but there's no reason why such an automatic process couldn't only allow numbers at the end of a ship name.

That said, I'd be far more accepting of leet shipnames than leet commander names.

 

[Jax Herah]

my favourite Sci-Fi character names was from Tron 2.0 the name "ma3a" pronounced "mah-three-ah". It is the only acceptable name with a pronounced number being involved in the title. but generally im sure we can do without irrelevant numbers. I love roman numerals for that. its Classy. and that's what this is about at the end of the day. classical class that is.

numbers do feature prominently in the naming of astrological objects though.

on a side note, Starcitizen may adopt a linguist to define some new alien languages. this debate pertaining to numbers and symbols in ED could use a similar idea. maybe even a symbol set unique to the ED verse that would look good !

 

[Sloma]

So according to the OP now I would have to change my already approved (several months ago) name, because no "" characters would be allowed.

I'm against it, although I agree with some of the proposals.

 

[Tacheel]

Very true, but somehow I'd really find it extremely hard to roleplay that. I am unable to develop a tolerance for that kind of stuff, even in my imagination, as a XXXIV century space pilot

Spoiler

OFFTOPIC -- Bear in mind that I RP a lot of games, even if they're not RPG's. A good example is GTA series

And that was your first mistake .

Fair enough. ZeeWolf mentioned the common nautical format of slinging a number after a name that's already been registered in that jurisdiction. In ED's case, the system doesn't require that as ship names are not unique. However, I can see people might want it. My blanket ban on numbers was just to help streamline the approval process (i.e. to avoid Br0m73y), but there's no reason why such an automatic process couldn't only allow numbers at the end of a ship name.

That said, I'd be far more accepting of leet shipnames than leet commander names.

I agree with you both somewhat. My mixed view is down to my intellect arguing for the case of leet names being allowed vs my feelings of lack of tolerance for them, i have the same difficulty roleplaying without culture shock rootsrat. One of the questions is - is the Name an actual name or an handle, and do the pilots federatoin require unique names (i know technically FD do)

 

[Storagebod]

I do have mixed feelings about names but for example, someone might decide to role-play a droid pilot..and why shouldn't they? So they might have numbers in their name.

I don't like seeing names out of context and that breaks the immersion for me but then again I worked with someone called Thorin...and reality didn't break.

 

[rootsrat]

So according to the OP now I would have to change my already approved (several months ago) name, because no "" characters would be allowed.

I'm against it, although I agree with some of the proposals.

In this particular case the quotation marks are there to clearly distinguish the nickname from the real name. That should be allowed of course.


::EDIT::

I do have mixed feelings about names but for example, someone might decide to role-play a droid pilot..and why shouldn't they? So they might have numbers in their name.

I don't like seeing names out of context and that breaks the immersion for me but then again I worked with someone called Thorin...and reality didn't break.

Yes, but it the world would surely collapsed if their name was Th0r1n!

 

[Bromley86]

So according to the OP now I would have to change my already approved (several months ago) name, because no "" characters would be allowed.

I'm against it, although I agree with some of the proposals.

Of course there would be people who might be forced to change their reserved commander names if FD tighten up on naming formats. Nothing wrong with that.

In your particular case though, not necessarily. For example, when choosing commander names, you could be presented with three fields; first name, last name, call sign. First & last names would be proper names, in your case Bartlomiej Sokolowski. Call sign would be whatever, possibly including leet. The commander's name might well be displayed in different ways at different times, but the full form would be a la Commando comics, in your case Bartlomiej "Sloma" Sokolowski.

I was quite surprised this format wasn't adopted immediately post-KS, as I thought it was a nice fit with the Elite universe.

 

[Bromley86]

I do have mixed feelings about names but for example, someone might decide to role-play a droid pilot..and why shouldn't they? So they might have numbers in their name.

There are no droids (no AI) in the Elite universe (or at least in the bit of it we're in at the start).

 

[Cyborg3000]

[*]No numbers. Nothing to stop you naming yourself Bromley the Third, if that's your thing.

Excuse me? I do like my Commander name and prefer to keep it as it is.
I would find it a bit annoying to find a bunch of "CMDR 3548264" or similar at once, how in space am I going to remember that and unleash my revenge on them for dock-raging?

Anyway, I was hoping for (and expecting) relatively normal commander names: single, double, nickname+surname (e.g. Dread Pirate Liqua); all in common English format. That sort of thing. Whereas apparently it'll look like any generic online game (e.g. [OOPS] ipoopedmythong). This may be an immersion killer for me.

Do you mean immersion as in 2014 real life with the world wide web?
I do not have any stats about that, but in a post-digital year 3300, my bet is that artist names and alternative identities will be ever more present, and I have no immersion issue with that whatsoever.

A fair number of names though, such as "[OOPS] ipoopedmythong" will translate universally into "CMDR shootmeonsight"

 

[Storagebod]

There are no droids (no AI) in the Elite universe (or at least in the bit of it we're in at the start).

How do you know...perhaps they're alien droids pretending to be human...you don't know! Okay, calling themselves a number is a give-away.

Or perhaps they are some kind of loon who has delusions about being an android!

What's that tune I hear...something about a watchtower..

 

[rootsrat]

How do you know...perhaps they're alien droids pretending to be human...you don't know! Okay, calling themselves a number is a give-away.

Or perhaps they are some kind of loon who has delusions about being an android!

What's that tune I hear...something about a watchtower..

That last bit made me

 

[JeffRyan]

How do you know...perhaps they're alien droids pretending to be human...you don't know! Okay, calling themselves a number is a give-away.

Or perhaps they are some kind of loon who has delusions about being an android!

What's that tune I hear...something about a watchtower..

We can handwavium various explanations and permitting some lesser things that are understandable does open the door to the crazy nonsense I see on every other MMO. It'll probably be allowed here but I sincerely hope we can take steps to avoid it.

Commander Aaragorn123

 

[Jackie Silver]

There are no droids (no AI) in the Elite universe (or at least in the bit of it we're in at the start).

There should be as robots are mentioned in various places in the FFE Journals.

(The implication in at least some of the journals is that the robots are fully AI, and artificial intelligences (presumably as disembodied computers) are described as researching the Thargoids.)

(Unless there's some human-sphere-wide Butlerian Jihad thing supposed to be going on between 3255 and 3300?)

 

[Bromley86]

Be that as it may, it's been confirmed that there's no AI in the ED Elite universe. Yet.