Alternate name registration solution

Well, I really don't see individual server registration as a solution and global registration, it appears, isn't going to happen. However, people still want to be able to recognize their buds with certainty without having to remember IDs.

So while pondering these problems something came to me.
What if, instead of having a server responsible for the names, the user was responsible for the names.
Let me elaborate...

I have my unique ID and then my buddy has the ability to always call my ID "Gimpb" no matter what server I go to it just looks me up by ID on his machine settings. Anyone not on his list that wanted to be called "Gimpb" would get a ".1" or whatever tacked on to show that it is not me. Thus my bud can be completely sure that was me. As a side note it would probably be a good idea to let peeps adjust their tags on their own and not require that those be part of the name. This would require the tag to be distinguishable from the name though, not sure if that would happen.

While this is fine and dandy and all, peeps of course aren't going to want to punch in names and IDs for the hundreds of players they'll want to have on their lists. Luckily this problem is easy to solve... teams could simply have downloadable lists of their team and names. Things like contradicting lists and such would have to be dealt with but surely that wouldn't be too big a problem to deal with.

If the IDs were registered with TWL people could perhaps download the lists from there making things really easy.

That'd work too. Should be easy considering TWL's XML jazz too.

I don't like the idea of an automated tag. I always hated that about t2. I wanna be able to customize my name how I want to, and arrange my tag in whatever color/order I prefer.

I actually like the T2 tribe tags. But it wouldn't be the end of the world without them.

The whole point of tags, IMO, is that they should be uniform. I don't want people designing their own look and feel for tags when there's a defnite way the team leadership wants it to look.

But the game doesn't really need to enforce that.

The thing I like about T2's tags is you can tell what part of a player's name is actually his tribal tag. You can also separate it out, so if you're logging names over time (for example), you can tell that "UberGuy (FT)" not distinct from "^NoS^ UberGuy".

Then again, you can do the above by tracking GUIDs, so it's all good.

You're looking into it a little too much. Tags aren't that complex, and if they are and you don't recognize what team it is, what does it matter? I could care less what team //-([(s||_entb0b)])-\\ is in..

pyrot3chnic said:

You're looking into it a little too much. Tags aren't that complex, and if they are and you don't recognize what team it is, what does it matter? I could care less what team //-([(s||_entb0b)])-\\ is in..

Click to expand...

Looking into things too much is why I'm a scripter.

The T2 tag system is what makes it easy to separate tags from names in code. In retrospect, for example, I should have written my kill tracker to track only player name, not full name including tags, since that records the same player with different tags as different people.

While there will likely be no such coding possible on T:V clients, it would be possible on the server side, and would factor into things like centralized stats tracking (a common server addon in other games).

All this said, it would still be possible to have a middle ground. The T:V client could allow for a "tag" function for your name that has no ties to any master server databases, but exists only to allow the two to be separate. But even that is such a low-yield feature I see no reason to actually include it.

If you want to track stats, use people's GUID, since I'm sure everything else will too. (ie. banning, possibly buddy tracking.. etc) No need to get fancy as far as the name system goes. Just keep it simple, maybe add some colors for customization, and you're golden.

Have whatever name you want, one of those is with your tribe's tag attached. Kinda like t1

You can edit the tribe's tag all you want, but whenever you save it, it will save as a separate one.

Serverside option to set your name to the tribe tagged name.