Goblin Squad Member
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Soon we will enter EE and see the creation of the first companies of player characters and the War of the Towers (WoT). Many of the companies that will be formed in the early days of the game will be created to compete in WoT, and after that is over the companies will go on to some other part of the game, performing a role which might not match the name chosen at the beginning of WoT. Likewise as people enter and leave the game, company leadership will change, company goals will change, and companies names should also probably change.
Proposal 1: Companies should be able to change their name as the game progresses. Name changes don't need to be free; some Influence cost might be appropriate to capture the loss of name-recognition the company has gained over time.
Proposal 2: To make it possible to track companies that change their name to hide their past, a company's lineage - the list of all of the names the company has had - should be stored and should be knowable for characters with appropriate skills (Bard/Aristocrat skills). Optionally, the lineage might go back only a certain number of names or a certain amount of time.
Proposal 3: Company naming convention could allow multiple companies to have the same name, provided the name is only used by one sponsored company in a settlement. The basic naming convention could be $Company of $Settlement. So it could be possible to have two companies named "The Housecarls", but they would formally be "The Housecarls of Bigtown" and "The Housecarls of Littleburg". Of course, when that Littleburg company goes to join Bigtown, they'll have to change their name. I think such a naming convention might reduce problems creating lore-acceptable company names. (This last proposal is probably not time-sensitive and could be implemented in OE.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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1: I have no passion for this. Choose a name which is adequately versatile in the first place. Or just start a new company.
2: if company name changes are allowed, the naming history should be available to anyone who cares to look. Info which bears on reputation is to important to restrict to a couple of roles.
3: what about companies which aren't sponsored?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is a solution...
Charter Company A is the primary company. Then the membership forms companies:
A
A2
A3
A4
A5
A6
They then capture and hold the 6 alpha towers. When WoT ends, they all fold back into Company A.
Or, maybe GW will do the easy thing and let one company capture as many towers as it can, and try to hold them. The ability to hold them will become progressively harder, because of the thinning of the human resource and the widening of the PVP window.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1: I have no passion for this. Choose a name which is adequately versatile in the first place. Or just start a new company.
2: if company name changes are allowed, the naming history should be available to anyone who cares to look. Info which bears on reputation is to important to restrict to a couple of roles.
3: what about companies which aren't sponsored?
I generally agree with Guurzak on this. I'm not sure that Reputation is a game-monitored score for Companies, so a lot might ride on that name recognition. There are so many nuances to changing a Company name that I think it might be best to just disallow it entirely, and force the members to create a new Company if they want a new name.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Company names should be publicly registered, and accessible by everyone. The name history should be visible, and easily navigated, there should be no cap to the list length.
Unique names are necessary, otherwise you have one company that does really well, then a bunch of people copy their name. Limiting uniqueness to companies of a settlement will lead to problems when companies move, and the people that get scammed by the copy-cats aren't paying enough attention to know what settlement to use.
Name changes are a great way to get extra $, they are rare, and when people want to do them, they are usually willing to drop $15-25. Real money is also a great way to prevent frequent changing. You can never make something costly enough in-game to not be spammed, and still be fair to honest people.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Particularly once the War of Towers is over, I propose that company names differing from existing names by one character should be reviewed before approval, or simply disallowed.
If "Company" is actively recruiting, it shouldn't be possible for "Company." or "C0mpany" to siphon off interested applicants, or to start trouble that might be blamed on "Company" by unsuspecting observers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Really? I'm only familiar with that trick from EVE Online.
It happens in most of them. On my LOTRO server, I lost count of the number of Legolas variants somewhere in the 150 range...
At least with that one, I understood that hoards of preteens and teens wanted the name due to the books and movies, but I've run into at least 10 variations of IKillYou which is just an awful, uncreative name.
Back on topic, I don't mind a company being able to change its name, but its naming history should easily be available- you should be able to escape your companies misdeeds by simply changing your name.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Again the issue is that a company can only capture one tower. This is going to cause large companies to create many small companies, so that they can secure more towers.
This puts at a disadvantage smaller companies, not just on what they can hold, but what they can secure in the first place. We know based on Tork's interview, these settlements will have less training capability than the starter NPC settlements, rendering those smaller settlements virtually useless in the short term.
If a company could capture as many towers as it can, you remove these issues. It is important to remember, just because you can capture several towers, doesn't mean you can hold them. Larger companies will still have an advantage, as it should be, but they may also risk over extend themselves.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The current implementation of the WoT looks to be designed to force "stupid company tricks" on people in an order to hold multiple towers.
Since we are being forced into these shenanigans I'd like to see company renames either be easy and cost free or no penalty or cost for forming and reforming new companies.
AFTER the WoT I'd like to see company renames be rare and expensive. Your reputation and history both individually, company wide and settlement wide should all have meaning and carry consequences. Free or cheap renames defeat that and lessen the meaningful in "meaningful player interaction"
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure how much I agree about the renaming during WoT, but I absolutely agree with summersnow about the impact of a name. This was the main point I was trying to stress with the original agreement proposed; that is creating a coalition to publicly display, foster, and possibly police agreements of groups (those willing of course).
Names have power, and the ability to erase taint, to remake the self in an instant for a cheap price is... well it seems abhorrent to me and an absolute violation of the image PfO is trying to create, in my opinion.