Ban special characters in names

[VanillaPudding]

The title says it all, and I'd wager that most times they are effectively used to avoid the "silent" hostile commands so that someone is forced to click hostile them.

[Arch Rogue]

More like used by prententious wannabe 'artistes' like DanagerousDan looking for that special touch to dignify their latest questionable opus.

[Egon the Monkey]

Paranoia much VP? You can still get someone with a hostile with /c hostile all etc which makes sense most times you're the aggressor as people might retaliate with "enemies only" spells. I know several people have used special chars to stop themselves getting spammed with tells, and told me as much when I PMed them the long way.

AFAIK, it's only the Double Quotes ("Pretentious" Joe the Bard) that cause this. Using Single Quotes ('Pretentious' Joe the Bard) works fine, at least for tells.

[Johannes]

It does sometimes seem that people throw them on their names without the foggiest clue of what they mean, but it's not true in every case. In spite of what one might think right away, diacritics are an important part of the English language (principally, but not exclusively via loan words). They are far more than a mere nod to linguistic origins, and without them many of our words would simply fail to make sense.

As an example, take the word naïveté and the same word stripped of its diaeresis, naiveté. Diaeresis is typically used to extend a word with an additional syllable, hence whereas the first is pronounced nay-ee-vuh-tay, the latter you would tend to pronounce nay-vuh-tay. Similarly the acute accent over the e (probably the most commonly encountered in the English language) utterly transforms the phonetic meaning. A better example of this are the two variations of the word élite:

élite :  Pronounced ay-leet
elite :  Pronounced ee-leet

Both are used in English and the meaning is exactly the same, but there is a significant difference in the way that each would be pronounced. Although this is just speculation, my impression is that the transformation in the pronunciation of the word from élite to elite derives partially from the unfortunate tendency to omit diacritics when writing English words.

Names are truly no exception. Take the example of diaeresis in the common English name Chloë, which tames our immediate tendency to pronounce the name as we naturally perceive it (Clow) and forces us to pronounce the word with that final syllable: Clow-ee.

Of course, although there are words in English where missing accents can completely change the signification of a word (resume and résumé), you could argue that through familiarity with the true pronunciations of words without heteronymy in an diacritic-free English, we can automatically recognize the pronunciation of words such as dénouement (denouement), première, détente (detente) and séance (seance). However, familiarity is assumed and the system falls apart when reading words that we've never seen before.

Namely made-up or exotic character names in a fantasy setting.

Take the rather silly name Profidious Vile as an example. How is that Vile pronounced? Is it "vile" as the english word? Is it "veele"? vee-lay, vee-luh? Had it been spelled Vilé or perhaps Vïle its pronunciation would have been clear, and the name would have seemed slightly less ridiculous (vee-lay or vee-luh as opposed to vile tout court).

On the other hand, the completely random, senseless use of diacritics is greatly discouraged, notable examples including Airareè Mata'i (don't pretend! That grave accent means absolutely nothing).

I should add that in the entire record of EFU PCs, no DangerousDan PC name has ever featured a diacritic. You are full of shit, Caddies.

I understand that there are interface issues with players on US keyboards (they'd need to learn the keystrokes), but in most cases you should be able to provide an unambiguous partial name in voice commands anyway, specifying Airare instead of Airareè, or giving Mata'i as opposed to the first name if you absolutely must use a voice command. In spite of a few rare cases of abuse of diacritics, the use of diacritics in character names is more useful than it is harmful to the perspicuity of our setting.

[Halfbrood]

Halfbrood likes this post.

[Big Orc Man]

Egon, please stop being derisive towards people who make legitimate suggestions.  You don't have a monopoly on this forum!

If a naming convention gives someone an unfair advantage, or causes certain mechanics not to work, it's at least worth looking at.

[Divine Intervention]

I think you'd need to be pretty sad to have a winning mentality that means you go so far as to add special characters to your name in order to avoid hostiling.  I've seen pretty few of that type of name tbh and it takes a tiny amount of time longer simply to bring up the player list and click their name.

[Vlaid]

Seems a bit of a stretch to think anyone would use a "special character" in their name specifically to foil quick /c hostile name attempts, to me at least.

I think just banning them from all characters is likely a bit of overkill though. If a simpler, less cumbersome solution could be done I wouldn't see any reason not to do it.

[Egon the Monkey]

Egon, please stop being derisive towards people who make legitimate suggestions.  You don't have a monopoly on this forum!

As mentioned above, an immediate assumption that special characters are there to powerbuild a PC's very name for a theoretical edge in PVP rather than for a more obvious reason of "uses a Non-English keyboard" does suggest a bit of overcompetitiveness from playing a lot of PVP-focused characters. EfU plotting does get you a bit paranoid at times, especially on outlaws or anyone trying to use Bluff on a major scale. I don't think it's unfair to say that.

I believe my response was far less derisive than than many negative posts on this forum. Yes, I post here a lot. No I don't think I have any sort of monopoly. I enjoy the discussion and trying to pitch ideas in what is usually a very skeptical environment. I don't expect most ideas to work, but I know some have been used. Better to have 10 kind of crappy ideas and 1 good one than never try and make a good thing better. I don't see why there's so much anger around in a suggestions box to be implemented at the discretion of the DMs who are free to ignore or work on what interests them.

[VanillaPudding]

Using partial names does not work for the hostile command Johannes, at least not at this time. It does however work for the setally commands.

[The Old Hack]

Two things here:

First, I feel silent hostiling is very important, and ironically, I am speaking from the victim's point of view. I can think of at least two situations in the past where the nonsilent hostiling made me lurch and out of reflex prepare for combat -- bad habits left from WoW where roleplay was nonexistent and there was no such thing as gentleman rules. Even a metagaming hint at 'threat' made me automatically prepare for a fight back then and it carried over to EfU. This is not something I am proud of. :(

Next, I'm afraid me being an amateur linguist makes me totally agree with Johannes. It would make me sad to see diacritics and accents banned from names. However, if there was a coding solution to this, I would totally recommend it. (By the way, how do the use of single or double quotation marks affect this? I understand at least one of these sometimes screws up the Tell command.)

[VanillaPudding]

Quotes such as in the name  Will "Longshank" Meatshield or "Easy" Frankie Stokes make it impossible to send the player a tell normally, and thus require you to use /tp "account name" (with quotes, thus the error in the automatic usage of their name normally)

As for the hostile command, I'm sure it can work if someone feels like spending the time on it, as the ally commands work with partial names. I would assume it needs a new listener script or something but really have no idea myself.