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Post by Kyousuke Sumeragi on Feb 21, 2005 10:15:09 GMT -5
Allright, this has been bugging Zengar (not-Berlap), and a few as well, that, if there is another person who comes in with a variant of that character's name.
An example I own Gihren Zabi, and considerably done a very.. ...very many RP on him in the SCW. Then a new member that goes by the Gihren Zabi, showed up... of course, that means that I lose the owner ship of Gihren Zabi...
It's very unfair, no?
Please post your opinions, people. So we could work out and fix this.
Oh and Zengar (not-Berlap), please post your comments about this, I forgot to ask yours about this, when you PMed me.
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Post by Umbaglo on Feb 21, 2005 13:28:50 GMT -5
Someone's logged in under the wrong account?
Anyway, I don't think it's really all that unfair. I mean, unless the person is maliciously doing it, is it not more unfair to say that a new player is not able to RP themselves, because someone else already claimed that character?
To be honest, I was thinking about some of the exemptions over characters we've made, and I don't see why characters should be limited at all. If we've already made exemptions for clones, why can't I just say that I've got a Mother Duplicator or whatever and just copied whoever I want? This is just an extension of the "Einst <Character>" type workaround that a good number of people have done.
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Post by Yanbetari on Feb 21, 2005 13:48:02 GMT -5
Well, having characters being limited realistically makes sense. Having 500 copies of some popular character running around the SCW would just be stupid.
But as for the new people picking names of claimed characters, I'm rather neutral. On one hand, it could mean that someone you've put time into RPing and setting up is suddenly lost, and perhaps doing something else completely out of character. On the other, preventing that sort of claim excludes new people from getting characters they like because everyone but the most obscure are already claimed.
Also to consider is the sheer fact of technical feasability, in that you can't read any of the ARC unless you're registered, hence you can't know who owns who, hence you can't know a name is claimed.
Honestly, the best solution would be to force everyone to use completely original characters, thus preventing anyone from claiming someone else's character. Of course, I know that even proposing this will probably get me lynched by the ARC vultures.
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Post by Sigfried on Feb 21, 2005 13:53:08 GMT -5
The whole "name registration" deal allows for gigantic loopholes and such.
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Post by MISTER TIBBS on Feb 21, 2005 13:58:45 GMT -5
Err.. Well Steve, you pretty much covered my thoughts about it. I don't particularly find it fair to lose a character you RP with just because someone joins with that character's name. Especially since a good majority of people who do that don't stick around, and you have to wait two months to claim that character again, while hoping someone else doesn't beat you to it.
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Post by Rooster on Feb 21, 2005 13:59:05 GMT -5
Also, what if Random Person X shows up, disrupts your claim of a character, then never really posts or gets into the SimChamber?
We could say that you have to start as an original character until a certain post count (establishing yourself as a regular), then you can ask to pull a Berlap and change your board name to that character... perhaps after negotiating with the current owner for actual possession.
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Post by Tilus on Feb 21, 2005 14:01:40 GMT -5
Honestly, though, that's not really a big problem.. so someone joins the SC under your character's name? That might be their absolute favorite character and by all means they should have exclusive rights to it, since it is their name and they can only lay such a claim to one character.
On the other hand, though, there is a problem concerning SCW character ownership which has brewed up a bit as of late. As I can tell there are three types of people with at least a somewhat large ARC account in the SC:
1) People who have taken claim to large amounts of non-original characters - their ARC is constantly maxed out, filled with them - and refuse to let anyone else even ask for any of their characters (examples: mafty, Kira Yamato, Eis)
2) People who have semi-large or very large amounts of non-original characters but either are willing to let others take characters if asked politely or shuffle out large amounts of characters constantly (examples: Kaiterra, BerlapSack)
3) People who have few or no non-original characters, and use mostly original characters, but may have a small sample of non-originals they like very much (examples: myself, Rayearth, Ebanis)
What's also surprising is that those in group #3 are the ones who by far roleplay in the SCW and use what non-originals they have the most, while those in group #1 typically hide in the corner and just sit on their humongous ARCs.
What's equally disturbing is the fact that when those in group #3 ask someone in group #1 for one of their characters, they will always be flat out denied.
Unfortunately, I have no solution for this. While I am somewhat liking Yan's solution, it will be no doubt very unpopular with many in the SC.
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Post by CowboyJohnny on Feb 21, 2005 15:43:37 GMT -5
As far as Yan's comment goes - perhaps we could let each person claim one or two non-original characters that would stop, or at least add restrictions for, new people taking over the character when they join. I mean, it would annoy me some if someone showed up under the name Akito Tenkawa and sat around doing nothing for several months... but I don't want to change my board name to stop this. (By contrast, if someone else wanted the character Cowboy Johnny that badly, I could live with it.)
More than one or two and you'd start getting the congestion problems, but I think that'd be a fair number.
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Post by Arad Baranga on Feb 21, 2005 15:48:12 GMT -5
I like Johnny's idea. Especially when you start thinking about peoples' AMs and how they may chip and/or unique customize a unit to be THAT character's unit. It'd suck really badly to do that and then have someone show up and get that character off of you by their name.
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Post by MaullarMaullar on Feb 21, 2005 15:56:16 GMT -5
Tilus, I think you'll understand why I'm about to say that's a gross overgeneralization.
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Post by Seth Valentine on Feb 21, 2005 17:50:36 GMT -5
Well, I agree with Johnny's idea, but there are some problems with that. Granted, that would stop people from owning huge harems of characters they probably won't ever use (Isn't that right, MAULLAR? ), but still, some people do use, or have plans to use, most, if not all characters in their ARCs. Like myself and Umbaglo, for example. I have plans to use most of the Martian Successors in my ARC, as well as some Nadesico characters, and even other characters that I own. But I haven't done so yet. And Umb has laid claim to a shedload of characters which he hasn't used yet, but plans to use in the future. (Not in the SCW, but for other reasons besides.) Only being allowed to use a few, or a couple of our characters would throw a wrench in our plans. Also, there are still people who might join as one of your one or two characters, or even your name. For example, it's very likely that someone else may join in the future as Zengar Zombolt. And this has happened before with Char Aznable. According to Quattro, at one time there were FOUR different variatons of this character on the boards at the same time. There's only one now though, but that still doesn't prevent it from happening again. What would we do if this happened again? Another option is that we could bar people who don't use the SCW from owning non-original characters other than their namesakes. But this is highly unfair, and elitist in some ways. Yet another option is to allow people to own any character from one or two serieses, but none after that, but this may be thought of as "just silly" and a way of expressing fanboyism. And if this happened, people like me would go on a quest to gain all the characters from Nadesico for example, and I'd probably clash with Johnny, who also likes Nadesico, and Kaiterra, who's also a Nadesico fan. Yan's idea of only owning original characters is very good too, because it stops all clashes, but more than half the board would have to change their names. And this doesn't stop people from completely ripping off famous characters and giving them a different name (as some people have alread done). Hell, you could consider clones and Einst characters a violation of this already, as they are ripped-off characters, but are original in the fact that they have been Einst-ized. Although if we enforced this original-only rule onto newbies, who could "pull a Berlap" (as Rooster so eloquently put it) if they decided to stay, it would help avoid angry veterans who lose their characters to people who don't intend to stay, and have to steal them back before anyone else in three months time. But in all honesty, Johnny's idea is a damn good one, and would help us SCWers to focus on the particular characters that we own, as well as on creating originals (as I believe there should be no limit to characters that you create yourself). I just wanted to share some of my opinions and suggest a few things that other people may want to consider.
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Post by MaullarMaullar on Feb 21, 2005 17:53:02 GMT -5
You'll notice that I already use a whole bunch of characters in the SCW, including a good range of originals. Well, you would if you paid more attention.
Wake up.
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Post by Seth Valentine on Feb 21, 2005 17:55:49 GMT -5
Not all of them though, but my apologies all the same. I was only kidding. ^^;;
I suppose Kira is more to blame for that, actually, as he owns all of the SEED cast, and barely uses any of them. >_>
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Post by MaullarMaullar on Feb 21, 2005 18:37:05 GMT -5
Aaaanyway. My two cents on the issue:
I'm very much against the "no unoriginal characters" thing. While some people do have large numbers of characters they don't use often, some people do use their non-originals quite often in the SCW (and in RPs in fights and such.) What I'm getting out of Tilus' post is that the ownership of characters isn't crucial to the SCW. I thoroughly reject this assertion. While our existing protections on people's subcharacters do create the opportunity for abuse, I think we can all agree that there'd be chaos if these protections were abolished. Hell, the only reason the SCW has been running smoothly so far is that we haven't had a user named "Akito Tenkawa" show up. Or a "Hokushin." Or, God forbid, a "Dizzy" (and we did have a "Millia Rage" surface a while back.) The problem is that there's no guarantee this state of affairs will continue. Instability could be introduced at any moment, and all it would take is some guy thinking it'd be fun to join as his favorite character--who just happens to be doing something crucial in the SCW.
And what if this new person names himself after his absolute favorite character? Should that just abruptly confer exclusive rights to that character upon him, at the expense of whatever's happened with him/her/it in the past? How much you like a character isn't a basis for legitimate ownership. For instance, I like Toone a lot, but until recently she was Zengar's. I recognized this, and lived with it. And what if the old owner of the character likes him/her/it even more than the newbie who takes that character's name? How do you measure how much they like this character? I simply don't see any compelling reason why being new should be a justification for snagging a character.
Furthermore, not all people name themselves after a character because they have any intent to use him/her/it. For instance, on a lot of message boards, you'll see people named after famous characters. Let's say they come here, keeping their name. Where's the guarantee that they'll do anything in the SCW? Or anything in-character at all? Or, in the worst case, they'll do something completely disruptive to the story built up around the character--and I've already mentioned how the SCW is vulnerable to this kind of thing. A less extreme example is that of Keiichi Morisato. He's not "the" Keiichi and doesn't do anything with him, but holds claim to the character nonetheless.
I don't have a solution myself, but out of what's been proposed, CJ's looks the best to me. Some protection over subcharacters is necessary.
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Post by Seth Valentine on Feb 21, 2005 18:46:29 GMT -5
I agree with what Maullar has said too. Some people do thoroughly disrupt a character's story, as we have all seen in much of the internet's badly written fanfiction (that's not to say that I'm any good. ^^;; ). For example, we could have someone join as, say, Amuro Rey. And the person in question could either A) not use him at all, or B) use him in the SCW and have him be the one who wants to drop Axis on the Earth, rather than prevent this (I haven't seen Gundam though). This would probably thoroughly annoy most Gundam fans on the boards, and would be silly to say the least.
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