I was talking to Garem, i think it was, on IRC about this issue. He told me that work was being done on it, and that the future looked bright for some way to get rid of the hovering names, so everyone OOC knows who that PC is. As we all know, this definately ruins some fun situations, and people just naturally Meta these type of things in their heads at least, if not actually expressed through their PC.

Anyway... i'd like to discuss this issue with the player base and more importantly, find out from the staff what the ETA is on this, and what exactly will it do?

What about the Chat window? We could all imagine the negative consequences of this as well. Perhaps, make it an optional setting, like how you can toggle PvP modes?

This would be annoying as hell. I already get enough emotes like "looks at the human/elf/myconid" etc. when there are five or more of them and I haven o idea if they loook/talk to me or someone else. If there are no more names, I'd have to start doing the same nonsense. And this little inconvenience/confusion seems to be just the top of the iceberg to me.

I have to agree with Linelle, but even if the DMs don't, don't get your hopes up. I wouldn't expect this to be anywhere near the top on the to-do list.

I'm almost certain that the DM's would much rather have the name tags on. It really isn't hard not not metagame these things. On another note it also skrews up the emoting process, since most will have no point of refrence.

Definatly more detrimental than helpful at least nwn the way it currently is, thanks to all models being the same size for each race/gender and no real way to enforce a description of a character. I also don't think folk want to be examining everyone in sight and generic/overly long descriptions at times.

Ahh yes, that was me. But I meant more along the lines of changing it to something else. A prominent watchmen was, for months, walking about without a last name above his head. Then ScottyB put his magic to work and one appeared! But removing them entirely? I think that's probably a bit of a stretch. Too hard to keep people seperated, and not everyone has the time to memorize NWN faces! Armor and everything else changes, mind you!

On an absolutely unrelated note, glad to see you around Linelle, thought we'd lost you out there!

I have a character who goes by a name that's not his first name. I've had a few people call me by my characters actual first name instead of the one he goes buy. While I understand that some people may remember meeting me, but not the name, I've caught a couple people (perhaps by accident) saying "Hi <firstname>" when I know I haven't met them before.

So in this sense, names should be removed.

HOWEVER, because people change their look (dyes, cloaks, armor), it makes it hard to tell people apart. Also keep in mind, there are a dozen characters using the same heads and hair colors. Whereas in real life we would be able to tell the difference between their various outfits and still recognize the person. Also groups like the watch and spellguard all have the same outfits/helms/etc. With the exception of male vs. female figure differences you can't tell them apart when they are in uniform.

So in this sense, we need to keep the names.

Also if you are looking for someone in-game, sometimes the game engine doesn't allow you to see far enough to identify people physically. When in real life, you could probably pick someone out at a distance, the names help with this. Additionally when people are chatting around the corner from you, your character would probably recognize the voice of friend/ally. The name stamp helps facilitate this.

Here, we would need to keep the names.

If people are going to meta-game the name, then that's really just them exercising poor RP.

I say keep the names, improve RP instead.

Not to mention, we DMs would REALLY like to know who's doing what. It's easier to port joehalforc666 to the DM jail for a talking-to than it is _ out of a dozen _s.

I also doubt the engine could support multiple blank names; at best everyone's name would be their EFUSL ID.

For the purposes of disguises, IF we ever get around to adding SetPCName, we might have disguised characters get a generic "Large, Moustached Human Male" name. Otherwise, I don't see it getting much use.

I don't think it would solve the problem. The people who metagame the name over people's heads would be the same people that abuse having no name.

They could change the way they act all the time, and deny being the person you previously met and wish to kill/beat up/charge with a crime..etc.

At the very least you would have to enforce some sort of description being written in the examine field, and then people could just metagame that.

Lots of work...wouldn't fix things I don't think.

And if people use different names it isn't that tough to keep track of, just right their hovering name in your journal, then the name you know them by beside that.

If I ever doubt whether I know a name or not I usually fire a tell asking what name I know them by to avoid problems

Completely unappealing. Just don't cheat. Our players are good and won't.

You can turn off the floaty names in your console if you don't want to see them.

As an experiment, try it and see how it works out for you. I did.

and what did you think of it?

I thought it was a good way to embarrass yourself by not knowing who the hell anyone is.

Even when you wouldn't metagame this it'd be annoying as hell.

Especially because the amount of head models is already very limited, and the main way to recognize characters now is via clothes - a thing which via, for instance, uniforms, is rendered completely useless. You'd have to start recognizing people by head models and bios, and would have to actually start remembering all those half-assed fantasy names that you can't even pronounce half the time.

Bad idea. Really bad idea.

Bad idea.

The limited amount of models will make identifying people impossible.

The level of character model customization in NWN is too limited for this sort of thing and people could still metagame by identifying the character's description. (The actual wording and writing style of the description, that is, not the facts conveyed therein which are obviously IC knowledge most of the time.)