Smuggler Archive
Thread: The concept of renaming players
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Qualdrin
Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:23 pm
#1
As I was playing the other day, I got to thinking about spying on people and all it entailed. This eventually led to the concept of being able to have your name changed. Why, you ask? Think about this scenario (a bit contrived, I know, but it serves to illustrate my suggestion):
John Doe is known to be a Rebel traitor: he is still a Rebel in faction, but is loyal to the Imperials. A Rebel guild puts up a new base, and John decides to find out when the base is vulnerable. As it stands, if he goes to the city it's in he will likely be banned and won't be able to check the base out. So, he first goes to his ID friend and gets his appearance changed. Then he goes to his Smuggler friend and has his name temporarily changed to Bob Smith. John then goes to the city, and scopes out the base. Everyone sees him as Bob Smith, so no one knows any better. John reports to his Imperial contacts, with no one the wiser except his Imperial friends. After a few hours, his name changes back to John Doe.
How would this work? A Smuggler would have to slice into a certain type of terminal somewhere (not sure what terminals exist that it would work with), and attempt to change the records of John Doe in the net. Depending on how well he is able to cover his tracks, the changes can last from a short while to a few hours. Eventually, though, the changes will be found, and the corrections made (unless devs think permanent changes by Smugglers would be allowable).
The name would have to not be in use, and have to pass the current filters, so players wouldn't be able to impersonate other players, and grief someone by doing so.
I think Smugglers would like being able to do this, and if it proves feasible enough, this could be a way for players to have their name changed permanently.
Thoughts?
Qualdrin Mekanos
John Doe is known to be a Rebel traitor: he is still a Rebel in faction, but is loyal to the Imperials. A Rebel guild puts up a new base, and John decides to find out when the base is vulnerable. As it stands, if he goes to the city it's in he will likely be banned and won't be able to check the base out. So, he first goes to his ID friend and gets his appearance changed. Then he goes to his Smuggler friend and has his name temporarily changed to Bob Smith. John then goes to the city, and scopes out the base. Everyone sees him as Bob Smith, so no one knows any better. John reports to his Imperial contacts, with no one the wiser except his Imperial friends. After a few hours, his name changes back to John Doe.
How would this work? A Smuggler would have to slice into a certain type of terminal somewhere (not sure what terminals exist that it would work with), and attempt to change the records of John Doe in the net. Depending on how well he is able to cover his tracks, the changes can last from a short while to a few hours. Eventually, though, the changes will be found, and the corrections made (unless devs think permanent changes by Smugglers would be allowable).
The name would have to not be in use, and have to pass the current filters, so players wouldn't be able to impersonate other players, and grief someone by doing so.
I think Smugglers would like being able to do this, and if it proves feasible enough, this could be a way for players to have their name changed permanently.
Thoughts?
Qualdrin Mekanos
fishbrains
Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:44 pm
#2
there is no way this will happen, Ever. The potential for griefing is far, far too large.
KaernLegorah
Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:44 pm
#3
fishbrains wrote:there is no way this will happen, Ever. The potential for griefing is far, far too large.
/agree
rexan
Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:45 pm
#4
Kinda turns a smuggler into a spy.
One thing people were talking about was to allow smugglers to forge papers. Allow a rebel to "appear" purple to imperials. Or vs versa. Basically allow the smuggler to appear to switch sides with a skill roll.
Malgg
Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:01 pm
#5
fishbrains wrote:
there is no way this will happen, Ever. The potential for griefing is far, far too large.
Not only that, but from a practical/game implimentation/database standpoint, a character's name is probably the key to all the inventory tables in the database, and changing that would be a hairy nightmare.
fishbrains
Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:09 pm
#6
Malgg wrote:
fishbrains wrote:
there is no way this will happen, Ever. The potential for griefing is far, far too large.
Not only that, but from a practical/game implimentation/database standpoint, a character's name is probably the key to all the inventory tables in the database, and changing that would be a hairy nightmare.
LOL, they think they have database limitations now! If this got implemented the new smuggler motto would be 'all your database are belong to us'
KaernLegorah
Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:14 pm
#7
Malgg wrote:
fishbrains wrote:there is no way this will happen, Ever. The potential for griefing is far, far too large.
Not only that, but from a practical/game implimentation/database standpoint, a character's name is probably the key to all the inventory tables in the database, and changing that would be a hairy nightmare.
Indeed, ask anybody that once had an offensive name that got changed by a CSR. They give you one warning (which sometimes they actually forget to give) before they go ahead and change your name: pick up everything you own. Any structures you have placed will no longer be yours once they change your name, and if you had any items in them you can't retieve them because you're not an admin on the house. I think you might also lose anything in your safety deposit and any credits you have in the bank, but I'm not sure about that one.
Basically, yeah, it's database Hell
Malgg
Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:39 pm
#8
KaernLegorah wrote:
Basically, yeah, it's database Hell
XACTLY! And if it's such a pain to us on the end result side, imagine how much work it would be on the PROGRAMMING side. And I can attest personally, programmers always look to the point-of-deminishing-returns before embarking on a modification.
"Yeah, we can do that, but it's going to take x number of hours, and therefore cost you y dollars, and the drawbacks are a, b and c."
"Oh, you don't want us to do that after all? OK, Mr client."
Later outside in the parking lot:"See, I told you if we made it sound doom and gloom enough we'd get off the hook. "
NikolaTesla
Fri Aug 27, 2004 7:27 pm
#9
Nonsense. It is not that hard to change someone's name in terms of the software. Griefing? What are you talking about? The name is simply a varible. Have you ever used a word processor? There is this nice feature called "find and replace all". If someone has an account on ignore, that simply would change over to. You guys almost indicate that you don't want there to be the possiblity for fun at all, hehe.
fishbrains
Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:54 pm
#11
NikolaTesla wrote:
Nonsense. It is not that hard to change someone's name in terms of the software. Griefing? What are you talking about? The name is simply a varible. Have you ever used a word processor? There is this nice feature called "find and replace all". If someone has an account on ignore, that simply would change over to. You guys almost indicate that you don't want there to be the possiblity for fun at all, hehe.
Do you have any idea about human nature?
Eivo
Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:58 pm
#12
I think the point is that it wont have to change the database. A "temporary" name change would be like going overt then covert again. You name is the same, you still own all of John Doe's items on all the databases and that good stuff and you still receive all of John Doe's /tells and e-mails. However the name they see is just a mask over your real name. I'm not saying put it in or it will happen. However from the programming aspect all you are doing is adding a new system to interact with a current one. I put a post up a few weeks ago thinkking what would be cool for smugglers and one of them was an "Alias" skill. Basically it let you use up to three preset names. HOWEVER, I do see the point as to where this could cuase social interaction problems (greifing) and how it could be a huge mess with the Term of Agreement in the game. If you go by a different name other then that of your character and begin to pick fights and argue with people and they report your alias.... see where I'm heading with this. This could cuase explioting, lagging and all sorts of thing we done need right now. Maybe after the games luanch bugs get fixed (lol) we can focus on this. Otherwise I think it would be a fun aspect if it could be properly implimented.
KaernLegorah
Sat Aug 28, 2004 2:33 pm
#13
NikolaTesla wrote:Nonsense. It is not that hard to change someone's name in terms of the software. Griefing? What are you talking about? The name is simply a varible. Have you ever used a word processor? There is this nice feature called "find and replace all". If someone has an account on ignore, that simply would change over to. You guys almost indicate that you don't want there to be the possiblity for fun at all, hehe.
We just had 200 people banned from this game for credit duping, and you're trying to imply that nobody would try to take advantage of a system that lets you temporarily rename your character? Get real man; this would practically be asking for people to grief others. And if you think working past somebody's ignore list is the worst griefing people can do in this game, then you've got a lot to learn.
As for "find and replace all".... Firstly, don't compare a word processor to a database; they're entirely different things. Secondly, for a renaming feature to work the process would have to be automated, which (if we use your inapplicable word processor example) would be like always accepting MS Word's spelling and grammar changes. You've surely seen some of the corrections word processors attempt to make, and some of them are grossly incorrect, making the sentence or word far worse than it was in the first place. Lastly, "find and replace all" works because it's being run by a person everytime you want to perform the action. A fully automated process could easily contain bugs, and would be highly subject to both game and database lag.
In other words: the list of things that could go wrong in this "simple" operation is surprisingly long.
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