CCP Falcon wrote:I've always wondered how the player base would feel about this.
I'm not too keen on the idea of a name change personally, unless there was a one click ability to see all past names and aliases.
Even then, I still have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand a name change might be useful for people who've bought a character on the Character Bazaar and love the skill set but not the name, on the other hand your name is your identity and reputation in EVE and the prospect of being able to wipe the slate clean if you do something wrong isn't my particular cup of tea.
I'll be interested to see how this thread develops though, some valid points made already
i think this could be useful for many people. When i buy new char i can't be sure i know enough about his past. I don't care TBH.
Let's say you buy character. You don't need his name or appearance, you don't get his assets and ISK (unless previous owner didn't care about it), you don't care about his past. Mostly you want only skillset. So the solution(s):
1) Clear it all, mark character as "bought" and born with date of transfer (this could be visible somewhere but will not interfere with new name and history like it does stupid mark WANTED). So you can live with it as it is your character from start.
If somebody wants to check your character he just checks his birthday and sees: char was bought. No history remains. New owner. You either trust PERSON controlling this char or you don't. It's up to you.
2) Place "pre-buy" history/name/whatever to some "backseat" place like additional button in window "character info". Owner can ignore this area. And when someone too paranoid checks this char he can have access to all information he needs.
I have one character i've bought mostly for jump freighter needs. I really never checked his past. Only seen once in eve-kill that he got caught with some JF somewhere in 0.0. Maybe it is why char was sold? I don't care. Anything what could happen with this char has no connection to me (i mean PERSON).
Once again: we talk here about SPACE PIXELS. Characters don't do s..t itself. Some REAL person does it. Character is asset like ship. Yes for some "RP-like" people characters mean something. But in reality you never can trust any character. You only can trust PERSON controlling this char. And this information isn't a part of char employment history. Add here account sharing (illegal but used very often) and you have even less trust to character.