Per the talk on the other forum, can we put an end to the (intentional or not) exploitative names like Caba- Mara- etc?

Do we ban all names starting with a given set of three letter combinations?

CAB MAR TAR OUT SPE GAT GUA VAN HUN CEN CAP GAR ? That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more potentially exploitable strings.

I think intelligent enforcement is preferable here, rather than simply denying a set of given strings. That also means, later on down the road, when someone comes up with a novel string to exploit there isn't an excuse like "Well, you banned all the other strings so I thought it was OK" followed by drama.

Don't change naming rules just because frankly, you're too ####ing lazy to type out someone's name and want to use an abbreviation...get bent.

n/t

And stop embarrassing yourself.

Fighting Fortie conjurer.

Elf thief named Archor trips you!

Oh I'm dual wielding iron! Quickly switch to the thief!

Cranial arch

Yeah.

This is only a problem if you use an abbreviation - just as I said.

It used to be you HAD to type out the name of your target completely, this was changed years ago

Prior to this change, I played Selfren - a wholly acceptable name which would be discarded under your request.

Lets use your example:

you are fighting fortie Conjurer, and thief "Archor" comes up

Cranial Archor - problem ####ing solved ZOMG!!! those two extra letters make a game changing difference!

Stop being lazy fattie.

Oyea, go #### yourself.

I didn't realized you had perfect accuracy at 500 wpm when surprised by people. Not all of us are so magnificent as thee.

I am once again embarrassed for you.

In retrospect, you are wight! If the difference between typing "Archo" and "Archor" is entirely too much work for you, then obviously it needs to be changed.

I had no idea the labor I was asking you to go through in order to successfully target people in an online game.

Truly, my bad. They should definitely change this, so you can save the valuable calories it would take you to type an additional character.

Alternatively:

You could suck it up like the rest of us and type out names when necessary.

Then again, if typing 1-2 extra letters is causing you a hard time..maybe you should find a diff hobby.

try typing that quickly during combat

I type xh<TAB> -> my client completes the name.

Macro: I pre-bind X to Xharlasfinssinaa, type X (without hitting enter) -> my client completes the name.

Alias: I pre-alias X to Xharlasfinssinaa, type murder X <ENTER> -> my client
sends "murder Xharlasfinssinaa" to the mud.

yea, I don't understand the huge gap in client know-how...To me, what he posted about is a complete non issue *UNLESS* the person is actually using only a portion of the name E.G. Archo instead of Archor would be still bad. And, I think the IMM's snuff those names out as soon as someone lets them know.

Use a better mud client, preferably one with configurable completion

Setup your own aliases for potential targets
Setup your own macros for potential targets

and so on and so forth.

If they're obviously exploiting their name.

The Tribunal named Guar was a good example. If you're trying your best to exploit your name mechanically, the character should be denied. That'll put an end to that pretty quick.

Chatted this over with some other imms about a possible code fix but it's a little too complex. We'll pretty much handle these on a case-by-case basis, especially because it really does happen by accident sometimes. I did it myself once with a mort conjie named Elena and didn't realize it until some rager walked in and pincered my elemental. So I try and give people the benefit of the doubt here.

You can type out the full name Elena, and not hit the elemental.

These are not ideal names, but the issue is in completely control of the end user.

However names like Ele the conjurer who conjures elementals. Now that is bug abuse.
Since If I walk to you in a room as Ele the conjurer, I show up then my elemental shows up. So if you bash ele (me) you bash elem(ental) instead.

Which is borked, and the same case as the Guar guy, or Mara.

The main thing I was trying to say that as a staff we will rename these as we catch them. Send up a pray if you see one, we don't always scan the who looking for bad names. We moved the level requirement for rename down a while ago so most imms can now handle it, which I think will help overall with this.

Same was done to names starting with "Guar", but the server delete likely nuked the change.

You could always gather a list of the names you want gone, either put them to a forbidden list or make a mob with those as a keyword and put it somewhere unaccessible to players.

Unless the entire name is a server keyword.

If someone thinks it's a problem and doesn't want to spell names out,
he can setup his mud client accordingly to deal with it.