"Character not found" - Issues with special characters in names.

Rodario

I wrote a CS ticket because I was unable to invite some people to my guild, getting the "Character not found" system message. Of course, I got the same message when trying to reply to them in chat or send them a mail to explain what happened.

If you're one of those people who wrote to Victoria Lux and never got a reply, this is why.

CS told me that when a character's name is similar to another existing name, the only difference being special characters like accents (Uther and Úther) the system sometimes can't handle it and goes "Character not found".

I hope this helps.

EDIT: This issue is known and currently being worked on.

TehMagnus

Someone made changes to their database and is struggling to revert them xD, this is the stuff you learn on first year of uni.

Epona222

You can't expect players in a game with a server in Europe where languages having accented characters is the norm, not to use them in their character names.

Zenimax needs to fix this.

Rodario

magnusnet wrote: »

Someone made changes to their database and is struggling to revert them xD, this is the stuff you learn on first year of uni.

I never worked on databases, so I have no idea what you mean. I get the concept, of course, but I don't know enough about the topic to understand how that causes the described issue.

AngryNord

And if you _insist_ that the only viable name for your character is Legolas, Tyrion Lannister, Ragnar Lodbrok, Raistlin Majere, Garamon Majere, Khal Drogo, Aragorn or Boromir - get a life :P

Rodario

Epona222 wrote: »

You can't expect players in a game with a server in Europe where languages having accented characters is the norm, not to use them in their character names.

Zenimax needs to fix this.

Agreed.

Rodario

AngryNord wrote: »

And if you _insist_ that the only viable name for your character is Legolas, Tyrion Lannister, Ragnar Lodbrok, Raistlin Majere, Garamon Majere, Khal Drogo, Aragorn or Boromir - get a life :P

Even though the issue is probably most common with this type of name, it can also happen with normal names such as Michelle. Someone chose Michele and you chose the French version Michèle, not even trying to modify a taken name.

ZOS_AmeliaR

Hey everyone. We want to let you know that we fully understand the frustration that's resulting from this issue (for both those players with special characters in their names as well as those trying to contact them), and we can assure you our teams are actively investigating a fix for it. We'll provide an update as soon as we have more information.

Rodario

ZOS_AmeliaR wrote: »

Hey everyone. We want to let you know that we fully understand the frustration that's resulting from this issue (for both those players with special characters in their names as well as those trying to contact them), and we can assure you our teams are actively investigating a fix for it. We'll provide an update as soon as we have more information.

Thanks for that statement @ZOS_AmeliaR‌. Good to know it's being worked on. I made this post because I was unaware of the issue until the mentioned CS reply and wanted to inform others of this, especially the people who can't be talked to ingame.

Pallmor

AngryNord wrote: »

And if you _insist_ that the only viable name for your character is Legolas, Tyrion Lannister, Ragnar Lodbrok, Raistlin Majere, Garamon Majere, Khal Drogo, Aragorn or Boromir - get a life :P

I will not give up my beloved Frõdõ Bággins!

TehMagnus

Rodario wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Someone made changes to their database and is struggling to revert them xD, this is the stuff you learn on first year of uni.

I never worked on databases, so I have no idea what you mean. I get the concept, of course, but I don't know enough about the topic to understand how that causes the described issue.

https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html

Basically, a change they made must have brought a change to the charset of their database and they must have trouble rolling back the change to the DB without breaking their dev.

I'm a bit mean when I say it's "the stuff you learn on first year of uni", when you see those issues it's mostly linked to websites. This game's DB must be huge and a pain in the arse to admin. The fact they couldn't fix this issue already means it would break many other stuff so I can only sympathize with the poor devs

MornaBaine

ZOS_AmeliaR wrote: »

Hey everyone. We want to let you know that we fully understand the frustration that's resulting from this issue (for both those players with special characters in their names as well as those trying to contact them), and we can assure you our teams are actively investigating a fix for it. We'll provide an update as soon as we have more information.

SOONER rather than later would be nice. Not only can I not whisper many of my friends but I CAN'T SEND THEM MAIL EITHER! This is completely unacceptable.

Luisen

You still can invite those players using "/Invite @name"

Rodario

Luisen wrote: »

You still can invite those players using "/Invite @name"

What if you don't know the account name?

ZOS_AmeliaR

As a follow-up to my previous post in this thread, if you are having issues with other players being able to send messages, in-game mail, or group invites to your character, we encourage you to reach out to our Support Team, who can manually fix the issue for the characters affected while ensuring you retain the special characters in your name.

MADshadowman

I'm not sure what the current system is, but i guess the best solution here would be to give every character, or better every account (or both) a unique ID number which is used by the messaging system to communicate between players.

My characters names are all very similar, the only difference between them is one or more apostrophes in the name. So the ID system could go like this:

Account
Madshadowman = 12345

Chars
Madshadowman = 12345-1
'Madshadowman = 12345-2
Mad'shadowman = 12345-3
'Mad'shadowman = 12345-4

So the system would for example communicate from 12345-2 to 23456-4 and pull the account and character names associated with these ID's from the database.

Like i said i don't know how the system is working at the moment, maybe it already works this way and there is another problem with it.

Chuggernaut

Can't you just reply to account name and not worry about umlauts and what not?

Daenerys

well this explains a lot.. i just thought everyone outside of my guilds was ignoring me lol

Rodario

Chuggernaut wrote: »

Can't you just reply to account name and not worry about umlauts and what not?

Not if you don't know the account name.

Rodario

Edited the title and part of the OP as the issue is known and there is no reason to not name your characters using accents and such once it's fixed.

capricorn152245ub17_ESO

ZOS_AmeliaR wrote: »

As a follow-up to my previous post in this thread, if you are having issues with other players being able to send messages, in-game mail, or group invites to your character, we encourage you to reach out to our Support Team, who can manually fix the issue for the characters affected while ensuring you retain the special characters in your name.

I tried doing just this now, but all I got was a rename request and the advice not to use special characters when I rename it. Between this and the blocking issues on my character, I am fatiguing of the problems with this game.

AssaultLemming

Allowing special characters in the first place was a stupid move, I don't even know how to type them on a standard keyboard. Simply remove them, give everyone affected a free name change and be done with it.

Rosveen

AssaultLemming wrote: »

Allowing special characters in the first place was a stupid move, I don't even know how to type them on a standard keyboard. Simply remove them, give everyone affected a free name change and be done with it.

Well the game was translated to two languages with special characters, it would be awkward for people using them to have EVERYTHING the way they normally write except their own names...

Rodario

ZOS_AmeliaR wrote: »

Hey everyone. We want to let you know that we fully understand the frustration that's resulting from this issue (for both those players with special characters in their names as well as those trying to contact them), and we can assure you our teams are actively investigating a fix for it. We'll provide an update as soon as we have more information.

@ZOS_AmeliaR‌ Do you guys have any new information to share on this subject?

fritzeb17_ESO

I too have that problem with my main character ever since. I don't want to needle the guys at Zenimax, there're more important problems that need to be solved. But what' sbugging me: I wrote mails to the support-team so often telling them I have this particular problem. A short answer would have been nice. Instead: nothing... -.-

Scamandros

fritzeb17_ESO wrote: »

I too have that problem with my main character ever since. I don't want to needle the guys at Zenimax, there're more important problems that need to be solved. But what' sbugging me: I wrote mails to the support-team so often telling them I have this particular problem. A short answer would have been nice. Instead: nothing... -.-

Maybe they are having trouble sending you tells too :P

daemonios

Scamandros wrote: »

fritzeb17_ESO wrote: »

I too have that problem with my main character ever since. I don't want to needle the guys at Zenimax, there're more important problems that need to be solved. But what' sbugging me: I wrote mails to the support-team so often telling them I have this particular problem. A short answer would have been nice. Instead: nothing... -.-

Maybe they are having trouble sending you tells too :P

Did you submit an in-game ticket asking for a character rename?

I had this issue on multiple characters - Náredhel, Dîngurth and Grishnákh-gra-Yargul. I submitted the ticket identifying the affected characters and was allowed to rename them exactly the same (i.e. keeping the "special" characters) and haven't had a problem since.

fritzeb17_ESO

daemonios wrote: »

Did you submit an in-game ticket asking for a character rename?

Yes, did that several times. Never got an answer...

daemonios

fritzeb17_ESO wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

Did you submit an in-game ticket asking for a character rename?

Yes, did that several times. Never got an answer...

That's a big fail by CS, as the problem is easily solved this way. Keep trying and good luck!

In the mean time, if your @ name (account name) doesn't have special characters, you can ask other people to whisper/invite you using that instead of the character name.