My Totally Reasonable List of Demands for 2.1

Hey there, Bioware. Me again. It seems like Santa Bioware has been busily working on my list, and practically half these things are accomplished. Which means they have time for even more totally reasonable demands. Hooray!

1. More Zabrak Hairdos. No, wait, that’s not right. Attractive Zabrak hairdos. You have metrics, or hell, just look around the fleet. You see the same 2 hairdos repeated over and over because we girls don’t dig the receding hairline look. So hand em over.

2. Name changes are all fine and good, but if so many names are taken, that doesn’t do much for us. People who haven’t logged in for over a year should lose their names. Fair is fair. They have had the opportunity to log in at any point during the last year as F2P, and yet they haven’t done it. Clearly they aren’t interested.

3. Let us toss our companions into the customizer. I just want to get rid of Doc’s stupid beard, not change his entire head.

4. Where’s my hood toggle?

5. Body tattoos. Why do you give us invisible shirts and those… lovely bikinis if you won’t give us tattoos to show off?

XOXO

I just think it’s a slippery slope that’s better not ventured down.

If that person who has been away for a year comes back, is a forced rename really the best way to welcome them back to the community and convince them to stick around?

If you are okay with a year but not okay with six weeks, when during week 7-51 has the person been gone long enough to forfeit their names?

Assuming the timer only affects non-subscribers (Harbiner’s comment above is news to me, as it isn’t advertised anywhere, but when I do have a lapsed subscription I’m still logging into all my characters periodically for crewskills), why is it fair for a game that markets itself as free to play and sells stuff in its marketplace that is only usable by non-subscribers to turn around and strip them of their names if they’re gone for a month or two?

If you answer is that the subscriber is supporting the game more by paying more than the non-subscriber, can we have a absurd extreme of Cartel Pack item that lets you steal the name of your choice from its current holder (with that person of course free to buy hypercrates until they get the item to steal the name back)?

Like I said, I just think this is a path better unexplored. The real problem is the combination of an game that encourages alts (but only on the same server due to Legacy), large numbers of new accounts post-F2P, and a dwindling list of servers on which to have names. Redistributing desirable names doesn’t solve the problem, it just redistributes it (and probably to the random newbie who is fortunate to sign on the day that the guy with the name DarthSolo goes inactive, not to you, because you’ve already named your characters something else and moved on).

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My Totally Reasonable List of Demands for 2.1 — 9 Comments

HarbingerZero on May 2, 2013 at 1:53 pm said:

Its not F2P people who haven’t logged in that are holding onto names. I blogged last month about this – it appears characters are marked inactive after only a short time unless they belong to a subscriber. I had a character I was playing, took a six week break, had him marked inactive, and lost his name.

The name problem is more likely a factor of subscribers hanging onto them (or snapping them up in anticipation of name change tokens) and the pretty tight server consolidation.

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- Njessi on May 2, 2013 at 1:56 pm said:
  
  Oh weird! I had no idea that you could lose your name in as little as 6 weeks!
  
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Green Armadillo on May 2, 2013 at 5:12 pm said:

Please don’t encourage Bioware to implement an aggressive name revocation policy so they can force me to change my name before I’m allowed to log in and then have to pay real money to fix it once I’ve had a minute to realize that the new name isn’t good. It’s one thing to try a bunch of names, finally find one that isn’t taken, and get into your new level one character only to discover it wasn’t taken for a reason. It’s another to have a bad name stuck on a character you’ve made a significant investment of time (and possibly money) because you were forced to make a snap re-name decision. Now that Bioware is charging per customization transaction, they literally get paid every time they trick a player into a bad rename.

Also, as long as we’re screwing with names, please allow me to /friend my own opposite faction alts so that I can have auto-complete on mail to them. I was forced to change my name during the merges, I foolishly elected to keep it similar to the original name on the thinking that I liked the sound of the original name, and now I cringe every time I mail something to my main for fear that I’m going to accidentally send it to the other guy instead. Actually, better yet, implement legacy bank and include the ability to transfer credits between my alts so that I’m not obligated to rely on the mail system for routine transfers of goods and currency.

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- Njessi on May 2, 2013 at 5:19 pm said:
  
  I’d hardly call it aggressive to have names go up for grabs if there’s been no account activity for a *year*. I see your point – nobody likes a rename – but what I’m wishing for is something that only weeds out names that have been claimed by people who have obviously and clearly moved on.
  
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  - Green Armadillo on May 2, 2013 at 9:30 pm said:
    
    I just think it’s a slippery slope that’s better not ventured down.
    
    If that person who has been away for a year comes back, is a forced rename really the best way to welcome them back to the community and convince them to stick around?
    
    If you are okay with a year but not okay with six weeks, when during week 7-51 has the person been gone long enough to forfeit their names?
    
    Assuming the timer only affects non-subscribers (Harbiner’s comment above is news to me, as it isn’t advertised anywhere, but when I do have a lapsed subscription I’m still logging into all my characters periodically for crewskills), why is it fair for a game that markets itself as free to play and sells stuff in its marketplace that is only usable by non-subscribers to turn around and strip them of their names if they’re gone for a month or two?
    
    If you answer is that the subscriber is supporting the game more by paying more than the non-subscriber, can we have a absurd extreme of Cartel Pack item that lets you steal the name of your choice from its current holder (with that person of course free to buy hypercrates until they get the item to steal the name back)?
    
    Like I said, I just think this is a path better unexplored. The real problem is the combination of an game that encourages alts (but only on the same server due to Legacy), large numbers of new accounts post-F2P, and a dwindling list of servers on which to have names. Redistributing desirable names doesn’t solve the problem, it just redistributes it (and probably to the random newbie who is fortunate to sign on the day that the guy with the name DarthSolo goes inactive, not to you, because you’ve already named your characters something else and moved on).
    
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  - Green Armadillo on May 2, 2013 at 9:35 pm said:
    
    P.S. As long as we’re making demands, if there is going to be increased name turnover, I’d like a free transfer for my entire legacy off of the RP-server, so I can rename all of my people something that no one will take like GreenArmadillo*classnamehere*. I don’t know how strongly they enforce the RP name policy, but I at least take it seriously, and that’s more work than I want to invest in a name I’m going to lose the next time I go play another game for a bit. 😛
    
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Death Metal Nightmare on May 3, 2013 at 1:24 pm said:

every character i make has receding hairlines and grandpa/grandma looks.
MORE aged looks.

do not care about Fake Sexy Tap Out “hero” characters (“character” lacking) that all look the same.

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Aranim on May 7, 2013 at 9:46 am said:

Also piercings, Njessi. My large, green, shirtless Bounty Hunter seems like the kind of guy who’d have body tats AND some questionable piercings. He’s just too…clean…at the moment. No one believes he’d run around Makeb shirtless and yet lack the cojones to sport a big krayt dragon tat on his back, or some big spike through his ear, or better yet…both.

And to Green Armadillo – simple solution – make the permanent name lock (or 1+ year name-lock) something that is given to subs and purchased via cartel coins for FTP. That way, people who care about their names can spend a few bucks to lock them up, and people who don’t care can [rightfully] cede them back to the rest of us. Because six weeks may be too short, but forever is DEFINITELY too long. That slope is steep on both sides.

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- Njessi on May 8, 2013 at 3:21 pm said:
  
  Damn skippy we need piercings. Why should those Ratatouille get em all? Just cause they have no hair…
  
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Hawtpants of the Old Republic

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My Totally Reasonable List of Demands for 2.1 — 9 Comments

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