When I name a new character why does it have to be unique across every player in the game

$fractalknight$ · January 2016

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of the name that takes me 10 minutes to come up with. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

robkrush · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of that name. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

Sorry. Tigolbitties is taken!

Xendyn · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of that name. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

Not sure about the name issue but Bethesda has little to do with this game other than lore.

$fractalknight$ · January 2016

robkrush wrote: »

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of that name. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

Sorry. Tigolbitties is taken!

Dang you Robkrush!!

KewaG · January 2016

Alt codes are your friend.

robkrush · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

robkrush wrote: »

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of that name. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

Sorry. Tigolbitties is taken!

Dang you Robkrush!!

Lol. But seriously ive wondered the same thing. Like there are no two people in real life with the same name. And some cultures seem to have it worse.

AngryNord · January 2016

I don't know of any MMO that allows multiple instances of the same name on the same server? Database reasons, I'd say

UrQuan · January 2016

You can mail/invite to guild/invite to group etc. by character name as well as by user name. If 2 people had identical character names, how would they know which character to send the mail/invite/whatever to?

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Tandor · January 2016

It would be impossible to sort out tells and mail if there were multiple people with the same name, quite apart from the obvious database issues like crediting achievements and Crown Store purchases etc.

However, many MMOs, including ESO if I recall correctly, allow a second name at creation and that may enable a common first name to be accepted.

If you delete a character then that character's name should be immediately available for a replacement character assuming you don't leave it long enough for someone else to use the name.

My experience is only on the PC, no idea how it works on console.

HIghwayRobberBill · January 2016

im pretty sure you can reuse the names of deleted characters. ive recreated my characters bagheera and bilbo T.baggins a few times

wayfarerx · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count?

On PC at least, it would be hard for us to quickly tell players apart in some instances. I.E. if I'm healing and have two players in the group named "YoloNordBro", when I see one of their health drop who do I pop the healing spell on?

Likewise, it would be hard for ZOS to process player reports if there were 50 characters named "KhajiitRektU" but only one of them ran around spouting racist tripe in zone.

Finally, it keeps us from having 10,000 characters named "Dragonborn" running around.

As for the console side, I have no idea why they even have you name your character, but then again I can't really understand anything ZOS does with the console port so whatever.

UrQuan wrote: »

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Hopefully it's a secondary index with a uniqueness constraint, meaningful primary keys are bad kids

TERMINAT0R_XVII · January 2016

I dont have trouble coming up with names.

V

stojekarcub18_ESO · January 2016

AngryNord wrote: »

I don't know of any MMO that allows multiple instances of the same name on the same server? Database reasons, I'd say

Neverwinter

TheShadowScout · January 2016

There are always ways... character name taken? Add a surname. Rearrange some letters. Write it a bit different, going from Nagstol to Nag-Stol or something.

But yeah, it can be rather annoyng when you slave over thinking up a real nifty name for your shiny new character, and then find someone has "been there, done that". But hey, it'd be way worse in a Star Trek MMO! (For "where noone has gone before" reasons of course)

Nestor · January 2016

This will help you come up with a name, or a name you can add to your desired name as a Prefix or Suffix or Middle name

http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?q=namegenerator

UrQuan · January 2016

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Hopefully it's a secondary index with a uniqueness constraint, meaningful primary keys are bad kids

Very true, but I've seen things like this done too many times by people who should know better, so it would surprise me less for it to be some table's primary key than for it to be a secondary index.

Iluvrien · January 2016

Nestor wrote: »

This will help you come up with a name, or a name you can add to your desired name as a Prefix or Suffix or Middle name

http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?q=namegenerator

This. This generator produces some pretty nice names. I would expect that you have a pretty good chance of getting one of these past the database.

Don't do what I did. I didn't know about this generator so I pulled the list of every Dunmer NPC from Morrowind, decompiled every name into a pool of phonemes (suffixes, affixes, prefixes) and then started mixing and matching until I found combinations I liked. It took about a week. This is not the way to do it.

Tandor · January 2016

Iluvrien wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

This will help you come up with a name, or a name you can add to your desired name as a Prefix or Suffix or Middle name

http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?q=namegenerator

This. This generator produces some pretty nice names. I would expect that you have a pretty good chance of getting one of these past the database.

Don't do what I did. I didn't know about this generator so I pulled the list of every Dunmer NPC from Morrowind, decompiled every name into a pool of phonemes (suffixes, affixes, prefixes) and then started mixing and matching until I found combinations I liked. It took about a week. This is not the way to do it.

You should have got an achievement for that

!

wayfarerx · January 2016

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Hopefully it's a secondary index with a uniqueness constraint, meaningful primary keys are bad kids

Very true, but I've seen things like this done too many times by people who should know better, so it would surprise me less for it to be some table's primary key than for it to be a secondary index.

Yes but surely the good folks at ZOS would never commit such a sin...

*crickets*

Nah it's probably all just in MongoDB or something.

Edit: Apparently MongoDB without the DB on the end is censored, never knew that was a pejorative.

UrQuan · January 2016

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Hopefully it's a secondary index with a uniqueness constraint, meaningful primary keys are bad kids

Very true, but I've seen things like this done too many times by people who should know better, so it would surprise me less for it to be some table's primary key than for it to be a secondary index.

Yes but surely the good folks at ZOS would never commit such a sin...

*crickets*

Nah it's probably all just in MongoDB or something.

Edit: Apparently MongoDB without the DB on the end is censored, never knew that was a pejorative.

lol, one of these days I'll have to tell you the story of how some programmer using the wrong join in a query used by the UI caused us to have to do a painful emergency rollback of a software deployment... Easily avoided DB-related foolishness seems to plague my life.

Caligamy_ESO · January 2016

I like to use Latin translated names that suit the class I am playing.. Ignis for a flame staff wielding Dunmer, Lux Armiger for a Templar, Umbra Nocte for my Nightblade, etc..

And yes you can delete a character and reuse the name. Character names you create are designated to your @ name.

Just DONT use a lore-based name...

smacx250 · January 2016

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Also, I suspect that behind the scenes in the database they probably made the name the primary key of a character table, in which case uniqueness would have to be enforced in order to maintain DB integrity.

Hopefully it's a secondary index with a uniqueness constraint, meaningful primary keys are bad kids

Very true, but I've seen things like this done too many times by people who should know better, so it would surprise me less for it to be some table's primary key than for it to be a secondary index.

LOL - you guys crack me up!

ContraTempo · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of the name that takes me 10 minutes to come up with. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

So not every templar is named Roland or Aragorn, not every mage is named Merlin or Gandalf, not every DK is named Lancelot or Luke, and not every NB is named Bilbo

Oliumzen · January 2016

i trade naming a character Zukkara the other day..."sorry name is taken"
i was just like seriously? mainly because at that point i was literally putting random letters in to try and name the character something other then a spin off of Oliumzen, as i have an Oliumzen, Oli'umzen, and well now an Olium'zen lol

AngryNord · January 2016

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

I like to use Latin translated names that suit the class I am playing.. Ignis for a flame staff wielding Dunmer, Lux Armiger for a Templar, Umbra Nocte for my Nightblade, etc..

And yes you can delete a character and reuse the name. Character names you create are designated to your @ name.

Just DONT use a lore-based name...

And no matter how tempting it is, don't call your Elf archer some variant of Legolas :P

MrDerrikk · January 2016

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

I like to use Latin translated names that suit the class I am playing.. Ignis for a flame staff wielding Dunmer, Lux Armiger for a Templar, Umbra Nocte for my Nightblade, etc..

And yes you can delete a character and reuse the name. Character names you create are designated to your @ name.

Just DONT use a lore-based name...

Eh, my Argonian Healer has a name that's mentioned once in a very obscure book, so it's Lore based but still okay I guess

Volkodav · January 2016

fractalknight wrote: »

Why does my unique gamer name not count? It takes me a while to come up with a good name. Unfortunately, I am not the first one to think of the name that takes me 10 minutes to come up with. Party chat allowed my friends to hear my curses. I have not deleted a character yet, but if I do, I want to be able to reuse that name.
Dang you Bethesda!

When I deleted a character,I reused the name again.No problem.

NateAssassin · January 2016

I named a character John Cena with alt codes