Character Creation Order

[Game of Bones.8975]

What is the only thing about creating a character you have no control over .... the name availability!

I wish ANET would put naming the character as one of the first items in the character creation process. How many times do we spend time planning out our characters past and future, body and hair styles, only to have the name not be available?

If the name could be entered in first, the thing most defines our character's race and profession, we would be grateful!

[Goettel.4389]

That would surely be an improvement. In the meantime, just make a fast character with the desired name, if available, and delete it. The name will be reserved, I think for 24 hours.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

Also, before making a character, you can check in the "looking for friends" screen if a name exists or not. But yes, I would like to name the character first in the creation screens.

[Tolmos.8395]

Character creation templates would help a lot with this. It's a feature that you an find in a few other MMOs, but basically it allows you to create your character's appearance in totality, and then save it all as a template. That way, if something goes wrong or you don't think you can quite get it all in one sitting, you can just load it up later and keep going.

 

That would be neat to have.

[Danikat.8537]

I suppose it depends on how you create, or name, your characters.

 

I always pick a name based on their appearance or personality, profession etc. so I need to do all the other stuff first or I won't know what to call them. Sometimes I'll have planned them out in my head before I start, but in that case I'll have the name worked out in advance too (and if necessary I'll test and reserve it by making a random character with that name and then deleting them). If not I'd always leave the name till last even if it was the first option.

 

But it could be helpful to have a way of checking if a name is available when you're in the character creator but may not be finished and don't want to create the character and go to the tutorial. Name change contracts will tell you if a name is free without you having to click confirm, so maybe they could do the same with the character creator. Then if you need to change the name and it affects how you want them to look you can fix it once you've got a name you know is available.

[ReaverKane.7598]

Just skip to End, then go back?

Or idk, make the character, then test the name? It's not like you need to redo the whole thing if the name isn't available...

I honestly don't know what's the issue here, except some weird niche QoL thing.

[Biff.5312]

I also wouldn't care to have to come up with a name before designing the character. Not sure why this is necessary.

[Lord Kreegan.8123]

Since the character is tied to an account and account names are unique, it makes no sense to require character names to be unique. From a database perspective, the character's information should be relative to the account and almost certainly is organized in that fashion; lots of games therefore allow character names to be the same as other players' character names because they can be uniquely identified. As such, I have no idea why ANet insists on this protocol.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Lord Kreegan.8123" said:

> Since the character is tied to an account and account names are unique, it makes no sense to require character names to be unique. From a database perspective, the character's information should be relative to the account and almost certainly is organized in that fashion; lots of games therefore allow character names to be the same as other players' character names because they can be uniquely identified. As such, I have no idea why ANet insists on this protocol.

 

You might want to re-read some of the posts ANet's made on the topic. ANet (as well as many players) consider names to identify who you are in game. They are part of your reputation and allowing everyone to share names muddies the waters. Cooperative gameplay is undermined if it's harder to tell people apart.

 

There are other minor benefits:

* It's easier to invite "Ernest Kreegan" than it is to remember to type "Ernest.Lord Kreegan.8123".

* It's harder for someone to impersonate other players, for trolling, to undermine them, to take advantage of reputations for scamming others.

* It makes more sense to a lot of people, since we all share a single game. Any of us can be grouped with anyone else in the game (the sole exception being that NA can't group with EU at the same time, but anyone from NA can transfer to EU or vice versa).

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

> @"Lord Kreegan.8123" said:

> Since the character is tied to an account and account names are unique, it makes no sense to require character names to be unique.

 

Have you ever heard about Mrs. McCave, who had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave? Well, she did, and it wasn't a smart thing to do. You see, when she wants one and calls you "Yoo-hoo, come into the house, Dave!" she doesn't get one. All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run.

 

Dr. Seuss rebutted your argument preemptively decades ago.