This doesn’t happen super often, but every now and again, we’ll end up with a situation where multiple characters who share the same first name will end up in the same place at the same time. While messages and whispers display a full name, public actions and OOC posts do not. This usually results in a situation as pictured where everyone is just entirely confused:
This is somewhat mitigated by the popup to show the full name of a character speaking in a message, but if it were possible to display a character’s full name when someone with the same first name is in the room, that would help immensely. Perhaps something like such:
Yes, that is surely an issue, even if it is not too common. And it is not the first time it has been brought up:
I like that idea, but the implementation is surprisingly tricky. I think, in previous discussion, I landed on the idea of allowing Alias to be set per character. Do you think that could work…?
Ack! My bad! Apologies for the duplicate thread there!
That could certainly work. My only concern is that it would require the users to take a manual step, which they might not know how to do, and may only think to do it after the issue has occurred. I see in that original thread, there is also the idea of having a checkbox to display full names on the client side. That’s also a good idea, but it does suffer from a similar issue of putting the onus on each user in the room to resolve the issue individually.
Alternatively, what about something like name colors for every user? That could be available to all users, all the time, and provide an easy way to differentiate between characters, even when there aren’t duplicate names in the room. Users would still need to check who’s who in instances when there are multiple characters with the same name in a room, but they would only need to check once, rather than for every message. (Also it’s so much easier to check on mobile now, thank you for that <3)
This could be customizable for each character by their owner, like what Twitch has for chat names. We could run into a situation where two people with the same first name set the same name color, but at that point, that just turns into user shenanigans rather than a systematic issue.
One slight issue with this is that it could present an accessibility issue for users with colorblindness or who may need higher contrast, so perhaps displaying these custom colors could be disabled on the client side.
As a different suggestion: Perhaps a toggle in the settings to show full names or short names. Changing it will adjust the display accordingly live (so you can see all previous messages). It’s not as ‘automatic’, but some people may like to leave it on all the time. Or only turn it on when they need to. This could also affect more than just the current chat, but also teleport, transit, and other messages as well (I think those recently started showing full names).
Bumping this because it came up again with two Reno-s. Is it really that hard to say “is there someone in the room with the same first name? OK, show the last name, too.” There’s already the list of those in the room in the UI.
I see there was some detailed discussion of this earlier, but frankly I think it overcomplicates the issue. Yes, it might not work so well in scrollback etc. but when it is most needed the client usually has the state to do it. Best effort that works 95% of the time is far better than a full solution that never happens!
Reading through the discussion GR linked, with the suggestion for nicknames, there already is a workaround for this: focus name=color. I use it extensively to keep track of who’s talking, and it works very well for twins.
There are two problems with both focus and nickname though: It relies on the user knowing about the command(s), and it puts the onus on the user to disambiguate the conversation for themselves. If one player knows how to proactively use focus, they’ll be just fine, but then other players in the room are still suffering.
I get that it’s a notable load computationally to check every message to see if there’s a twin in the room. Could the check possibly be done when someone enters or exits a room? The system could then flip a flag on the twins to display full name instead of first name only. Then when someone with the flag on leaves the room, either through exit, teleport, or sweep, the system can check to see if there are still twins in the room, and if not then turn off the flag.
I do think this needs to be addressed one way or another. If multiple characters can have the same first name this is going to be a recurring issue, if a rare one at the current active player population.
I brought it up previously because even within messages and whispers, it does NOT default to showing a full name, you have to click on the name to get the full name.
Super tricky when one has multiple friends with the same first name and say ALL 3 of them decide to message you at the same time.
I figured it would be best for the client to default to showing the full name regardless.
When I pointed out that last names do not show in messages (or anywhere) without clicking on the name (which I did not know could be done at the time) someone made me feel stupid by going “Well you could just click on the name to get the full name” and that is true across the entire client, even in main chat. (But now I notice it’s not just me, so I feel slightly better now.)
