i am going to nuke your house (threat).
construct 5 compelling arguments to stop me.
Username rules updates
@dorset BF2142 was the shit. I am so sad that we can never play it again. It was such a good game.
6 months is an utter travesty. Why even create thread, gather the opinions of players if you're just going to ignore them. 12 > 6 months is somewhat a compromise, but I agree with @FtXCommando
"6 months is still ridiculous, 3 months is barely tolerable, 2 months is acceptable"
For convenience, here is a list of problems the reduction in rename frequency is meant to address:
- In-game communication
- Tournament player recognition
- Player reputation
In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.
- Ease of reporting the correct player
- Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
- Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
- Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing
Again, I want to stress that these last 4 were never the primary reasons for this change, just additional benefits.
Example of name inconsistency being a problem
Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.
List of players who have the personal trainer avatar.
List of players who should have the personal trainer avatar
I can’t just compare these two lists because the usernames are different. Autopsy- has the avatar, but is he supposed to? I have to look up the account Autopsy- and then look up his old usernames, and only then can I figure out it’s (probably) Grimplex. It might not even be grimplex, because what if he username traded with someone at some point?
Now say Grimplex didn’t have the avatar but was supposed to. I look up the name Grimplex and there are no results. Okay so he uses a different name at the moment. I look up all accounts which have ever had the username Grimplex and there are multiple results. Now I have to go through account by account to make an educated guess which one of these is actually the person I want to grant the avatar to. Now repeat this for potentially all 14 members of the trainer team.
TheWheiieNoob's post (not to be confused with TheWheLieNoob)
@thewheeiienoob said in Username rules updates:
Identity
The simple solution that's already been proposed is simply to make the unique player ID accessible on player cards or in chats with said player. Basic example pictured, and I'm surprised the mod team has ignored this suggestion as it fixes a lot of problems highlighted.
This has come up multiple times in our internal discussions. Personally I think it's the worst of both worlds. It doesn't solve our main concern in that you have to take extra steps to determine who someone is. If you've gone so far as to pull up the account data it's only one extra click to see their name history. Heck accounts already have IDs, they're just not easy to pull up. Let's say I told you that account 118363 did XYZ. Does that give you any useful information? No, because you have no idea who account 118363 is. Well that's Giebmasse/Viba. You'd have no way of knowing that unless you exhaustively went through accounts one by one until you found a matching ID. Are you expected to now memorize a 6 digit number for each player you might want to identify?
In my opinion (which isn't necessarily held by the rest of the moderation team) adding an ID section like that, especially in the lobby, just adds more visual garbage without actually solving anything.
@thewheeiienoob said in Username rules updates:
For a start, how do you define what each player's identity is? Farms has been TheWheelie for over a year and now TheWeakie, meanwhile pepsi is known by a name he has never used. It's not the mod team's job to make sure player X can recognise player Y, it has too many variables out of the mod team's control.
We don't intend to tell people what their identities are. The rule changes just lower the frequency that you can do so. If Farms wanted to change his name to TheWheelie these changes would not affect that decision, as long as he didn't intend to swap it again within 6 months. Pepsi's name comes from a purposeful misreading of a username he had previously.
@thewheeiienoob said in Username rules updates:
I didn't post any serious response until the mod team declared they'd be going ahead with the changes anyway, despite the negative backlash, so I hope they make the effort to clarify and focus their intention in a future post.
First and foremost I want to admit we fucked up. We should not have made the original post and then same day enforced the new restrictions. That's our bad, we fucked up, and in the future we'll try to provide time for feedback in similar situations.
Second, the up and down votes on the initial post never have and never will dictate moderation policy. For the simple reason that the people most likely people to provide input are the exact people most affected by the change. If we proposed a rule change that all smurfs are going to be unbanned, then we would expect the most feedback to be from people who have gotten banned for smurfing before. It can be used for an incredibly vague idea of community sentiment, but a mere 40 downvotes in a community of thousands is a near useless measure.
General thoughts
When I and some of the other moderators wrote this proposal, we never expected this to become a big deal. I'm honestly trying to avoid the "us vs them" mentality and to understand where this hate is coming from. I've done my best to outline what issues this has been causing and why we've gone in this direction. The responses thus far have mostly been "it's funny" and "why do you even need to know who people are?"
That's the whole reason for usernames is it not? If we truly don't care then we could go the 4chan route and list everyone as "Anonymous", but I don't see anyone proposing that.
Please, I'm genuinely asking, help me understand why a 6 month rename period is unacceptable to the point of having a 157 post thread on it.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
For convenience, here is a list of problems the reduction in rename frequency is meant to address:
- In-game communication
Who complained to you about it?
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
- Tournament player recognition
Who complained about it?
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
- Player reputation
Who said this was a problem?
Don't need names, just give me a total count of people telling the moderation team about these problems.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.
Well yeah, because you're focused on benefits "for the community" when nobody "in the community" was complaining about any of the reasons you said above.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
- Ease of reporting the correct player
So how many false reports do you estimate are caused by this rename issue?
- Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
That's not relevant at all to rename interval, make it a rule prohibiting it (which exists)
- Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
How many of these offenses do you tie directly to rename periods rather than
- people picking an inappropriate username at account creation
- people malding (they will still mald and pick a bad rename even at 6 months)
- Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing
What is the number of people you gauge are doing this? Rapid being uhhhh one rename a month if done religiously? Make it two months if it's genuinely that big of a deal for you.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Again, I want to stress that these last 4 were never the primary reasons for this change, just additional benefits.
So surely some general quantity of people in the community that complained about said community issues exists for you to mention right? It isn't just moderators picking reasons that seem good and announcing this is what the community wanted?
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Example of name inconsistency being a problem
Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.
I'm going to skip most of this because this issue is insanely easy to solve. Give Sladow a screenshot of both of the screens you posted and have him figure it out, because he will know who is on his team and what their names are. I can do it for you right now and I play like 1-3 games a week max.
Another solution which I also did when I was cleaning up avatars as PC. Remove all the people that have said avatar, announce it to said group, and wait for people to message you to give it back or give it if they never had it. This is even easier now that Discord exists. Coordinate with the Team Lead over people that may not be on Discord and to double check everything is kosher.
These solutions took me 5 minutes to think about.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
a mere 40 downvotes in a community of thousands is a near useless measure.
Scientific? Definitely not that robust. Damn fine as a thumb in the wind, though.
Why post this here for feedback then lmao. The whole point of downvotes existing is to provide a quick way to say the idea is terrible without flooding a thread with "this idea is terrible" which granted, didn't exactly stop it though it definitely could have been much worse of a thread.
You have quite literally zero evidence of "community" support in any capacity so acting mighty about the fact a sample size is bad is just hilarious. You have zero sample size, your entire policy which by your own words is fundamentally built on being a COMMUNITY benefit and not a MODERATION benefit (on the rename interval) has ZERO grounding in said COMMUNITY. It's moderators sitting in a Discord chat going "you know I got annoyed in this Gyle cast so we should change this for the community."
@ftxcommando said in Username rules updates:
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Example of name inconsistency being a problem
Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.
I'm going to skip most of this because this issue is insanely easy to solve. Give Sladow a screenshot of both of the screens you posted and have him figure it out, because he will know who is on his team and what their names are. I can do it for you right now and I play like 1-3 games a week max.
Another solution which I also did when I was cleaning up avatars as PC. Remove all the people that have said avatar, announce it to said group, and wait for people to message you to give it back or give it if they never had it. This is even easier now that Discord exists. Coordinate with the Team Lead over people that may not be on Discord and to double check everything is kosher.
These solutions took me 5 minutes to think about.
Just a small comment as I find some of the arguments already funny at this stage.
In a store, at the cashier, would you like the cashier to manually radio check 30% of all the grocery prices for all the people in the queue? No? Would the cashier like to do it, probably not. Would the store like it to be that way, no? Would anyone? Maybe a new person who gets a job out of solving those price checks all day in and out.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.
List of players who have the personal trainer avatar.
List of players who should have the personal trainer avatar
I can’t just compare these two lists because the usernames are different. Autopsy- has the avatar, but is he supposed to? I have to look up the account Autopsy- and then look up his old usernames, and only then can I figure out it’s (probably) Grimplex. It might not even be grimplex, because what if he username traded with someone at some point?
Now say Grimplex didn’t have the avatar but was supposed to. I look up the name Grimplex and there are no results. Okay so he uses a different name at the moment. I look up all accounts which have ever had the username Grimplex and there are multiple results. Now I have to go through account by account to make an educated guess which one of these is actually the person I want to grant the avatar to. Now repeat this for potentially all 14 members of the trainer team.
This is such a tiny and rare scenario that has absolutely nothing to do with renames being once every month instead of once every seventy light years. Almost all of the players have exactly the same names on both lists, and it will take approximately 30-45 seconds to look up the other 3 that changed their names.
Alternatively, just ask sladow about it, like FTX said earlier.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
This has come up multiple times in our internal discussions. Personally I think it's the worst of both worlds. It doesn't solve our main concern in that you have to take extra steps to determine who someone is. If you've gone so far as to pull up the account data it's only one extra click to see their name history. Heck accounts already have IDs, they're just not easy to pull up. Let's say I told you that account 118363 did XYZ. Does that give you any useful information? No, because you have no idea who account 118363 is. Well that's Giebmasse/Viba. You'd have no way of knowing that unless you exhaustively went through accounts one by one until you found a matching ID. Are you expected to now memorize a 6 digit number for each player you might want to identify?
In my opinion (which isn't necessarily held by the rest of the moderation team) adding an ID section like that, especially in the lobby, just adds more visual garbage without actually solving anything.
Believe it or not, but you actually do not have to memorize anything to moderate effectively. the Silent Majority
of the players do not have similiar usernames that are abusing I's and l's, and you can punish them just by comparing two names: one in the report, one in the game that was reported.
And for the players with similiar names, just add these ID numbers to the left of f11 disconnection menu or somewhere else hidden, so they dont clutter the normal UI.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
a mere 40 downvotes in a community of thousands is a near useless measure.
Then go ahead, send an email with a survey to every single email that was used to register a FAF account, and ban people that refuse to respond within 1-2 weeks.
I dont get why do you complain about only 40 downvotes on a random post made on a forum that is only visited by a small percentage of people.
Why does the most popular MrBeast video have only got 18m likes with 617m views? Thats less than 3% of people that liked the video.
Did the rest hate it? Should he take the video down?
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
When I and some of the other moderators wrote this proposal, we never expected this to become a big deal. I'm honestly trying to avoid the "us vs them" mentality and to understand where this hate is coming from. I've done my best to outline what issues this has been causing and why we've gone in this direction. The responses thus far have mostly been "it's funny" and "why do you even need to know who people are?"
That's the whole reason for usernames is it not? If we truly don't care then we could go the 4chan route and list everyone as "Anonymous", but I don't see anyone proposing that.
Please, I'm genuinely asking, help me understand why a 6 month rename period is unacceptable to the point of having a 157 post thread on it.
The problem is that FAF lacks any other means of self-expression.
Compare faf to any other popular game. They have skins, tags, banners, badges, achievements that you can pin to your profile, about me pages, roles, unique animations and tons of other cool things to make you unique.
Hell, even discord implemented some of those, because they understand how important it is for some people to be able to express themself and customize their profile.
and you want to take away the only way to change your in-game appearance in FAF, besides avatars, that are not available to the Majority of People.
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
Just a small comment as I find some of the arguments already funny at this stage.
In a store, at the cashier, would you like the cashier to manually radio check 30% of all the grocery prices for all the people in the queue? No? Would the cashier like to do it, probably not. Would the store like it to be that way, no? Would anyone? Maybe a new person who gets a job out of solving those price checks all day in and out.
You wouldnt believe it, but i have seen this happen several times. When a cashier did not have a pricing list for cigs/bread, they just asked the other cashiers/asked someone on radio to come help them out.
It is okay to communicate with the members of your team.
In terms of tournament recognition I personally would love to see a stream where TheWheelie (Farms) in this case would have to figure out who the 8 players are as they all have the same names.
Think it would make rather good casting.
The wheekienoob is attacking the wheekie while the ThewhekieNoob is fighting TheWhekeNoob
Ras Boi's save lives.
Since we are also on this debate.
If we cannot pay countries under sanctions.
Can we add Tournament prize for "1 Free Rename" as a reward?
Ras Boi's save lives.
Guys, I have an idea.
Lets makes a rule that all FAF usernames have to match Discord usernames, the community wants it because it will be easier for us to communicate with each other and not get confused because we're 7 years old and I'm sure the mods would love making things easier for themselves at our cost.
How many people have to tell the moderators they are completely wrong before they listen?how many people have to or uninstall before you realize this is total garbage?
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
@ftxcommando said in Username rules updates:
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Example of name inconsistency being a problem
Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.
I'm going to skip most of this because this issue is insanely easy to solve. Give Sladow a screenshot of both of the screens you posted and have him figure it out, because he will know who is on his team and what their names are. I can do it for you right now and I play like 1-3 games a week max.
Another solution which I also did when I was cleaning up avatars as PC. Remove all the people that have said avatar, announce it to said group, and wait for people to message you to give it back or give it if they never had it. This is even easier now that Discord exists. Coordinate with the Team Lead over people that may not be on Discord and to double check everything is kosher.
These solutions took me 5 minutes to think about.
Just a small comment as I find some of the arguments already funny at this stage.
In a store, at the cashier, would you like the cashier to manually radio check 30% of all the grocery prices for all the people in the queue? No? Would the cashier like to do it, probably not. Would the store like it to be that way, no? Would anyone? Maybe a new person who gets a job out of solving those price checks all day in and out.
Then give team leads avatar access in the mod client if the “job” bothers you so much. I really do not understand the problem here beyond moderators wanting to keep their fiefdom but being angry at it requiring any brainpower.
Punishing the whole community because you can’t be bothered to do a like once every 3 years job of resetting some avatars and working through with a team lead? What?
Why are we even commenting on that fact that he Index is comparing faf-names to discord names? Did Index already create a discord-ticket to remove renames? Otherwise this comparison makes no sense
@deribus this is a quick response to your first reply, I will save a proper treatment of your 2nd reply for its own post.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Take a look at BlackYps screenshot, I have absolutely no idea who any of those people are. I assume "TheWheelie" is Farms, Sladow is one of them... and that's it.
My point is this: why does it matter if you don't know who we are? It would matter only if there were some moderator action to be taken. I won't comment on this right now as you go into a bit more detail in your 2nd post.
From a player to player perspective, I don't think I've ever seen you in game, so if we weren't in this thread together the chances of me knowing who you were (or vice versa) would be close to zero. If I gave you a 4v4 replay with an average rating of 400, chances are you wouldn't know who any of those players were either. This is why I think this update would affect higher rated "known" players disproportionately, and why it's flawed to use "player identity" in a player-player context as an argument.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
A lot of the arguments against this policy have boiled down to "I want to change my username more than every 6 months because it's funny." And then we reply "we might even agree that it's funny but it causes all these issues". "Nuh uh!"
I think this is where we need to get to, help us understand how much of a problem this is! All we have at the moment are vague mentions of impersonation, and the obvious "TheWheelie" renames which are the prime example of it being used as a joke, and not problematically. I think I can speak for a lot of us that the proposed changes were a big surprise, I am definitely not aware of rename abuse being a major issue in FAF. If it is, please let us know the scale of it, otherwise most people are just gonna assume you're killing a fun feature because of a few annoying cases.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
To paraphrase TheWheelieNoob (because rather appropriately, I don't know who that is):
See above, why does it matter if you don't know who I am, outside of taking moderator actions? My points stand on their own, I hope.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Why do you need to rename so often? Imagine you had a coworker and every week they went by a different name. Do you seriously not understand how that would be problematic and bother people?
The example here would be referring to nicknames. In the same vein, no matter what I rename myself the people who know me already will call me boom, the people who don't know already me will be confused either way as to who I am.
To reiterate, if I rename it doesn't bother the people I play with regularly, because they call me boom either way - my identity in game is not affected past a second or two of confusion. This only even applies at higher ratings where it's fairly important to know who people are to judge their performance.
Your second post is more extensive so this was just a quick reply to the first one, @IndexLibrorum I will respond to you as well in due time.
I mean if naming ourselves all variations of Wheelie fucks it up this hard why cant we just go back to barcodes?
Same thing will happen regardless.
Ras Boi's save lives.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
Why do you need to rename so often? Imagine you had a coworker and every week they went by a different name. Do you seriously not understand how that would be problematic and bother people?
What a (to use a polite term) stupid example. Yes I'm sure a coworked will suddenly turn up with a new name every month (i like how you used every week to try to get a valid argument even though renames are monthly and "apparenlty" now getting increased to 6 months).
Try thinking of any ONLINE plattform regarding renames and you suddenly don't have an argument - what a shocker
Just to comment on these 3 "main problems"
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
For convenience, here is a list of problems the reduction in rename frequency is meant to address:
- In-game communication
As FTX said, who asked? But also lots of people when not knowing other players refer to the color (or maybe just use a marker??)
- Tournament player recognition
This is impossible to be an argument. Who is the "complaint" / "problem" from? If the player wants recognition he will just not rename??
- Player reputation
You must be talking about bad reputation here, as otherwise the above answer applies here also. If somebody else complained that they don't recognize someone for some reason, the simple answer should be: Add a note to that player.
Yes, it can be expected of players to do this if its that important to them. It is no alternative to remove the freedom of rename (or in this case the frequency) because of this.
Do not get me wrong, i genuinely do not get the "problems".
long time players are being way too elitist about this and the moderators are being way too tough in their proposals. constant renames and casual imitation with no persistent IDs are super annoying for the casual half of FAF and for those who don't play but still watch the game. let's be real, some people are dumb with respect to renames, they're allowed to be, especially if they happen often and imitate other users' names. I don't blame the 20% of people who have trouble keeping track of how many people WillowWisp, WillowNoob, FemboyWillow etc are and how many are just renames. But the reaction from the mod team is absolutely medieval. This sort of problem merits like, you know the thing that highlights which players spawn where with markers at the start of the game? Yeah, something like that, but with the unique username of the player. Like discord, steam, any serious gaming infra does, you have a name you signed up with and then a display name. You don't add nothing at all to the system and prevent people changing names for a full year. That's absurd
@deribus response to post #2.
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
In-game communication
Tournament player recognition
Player reputation
I believe I covered these already in my previous posts, but I'll go over each briefly here and outline why they either aren't problems, or are not fixed by this update.
1. In-game communication
I don't really see renames causing an issue here. Firstly, I've already outlined how player identity transcends renames, and people who regularly play together manage just fine despite there being 8 wheelies right now.
For players who don't regularly play with each other, they can always find a way to communicate what they need. For example, if a name is difficult to type, like "8o12s2s8j1j" (which is a totally allowed name), you can simply refer to a player by colour. You might even do this in the heat of the moment if you don't have time to type even a simpler name. Or, employ the dual gap classic and put pings on their base.
Limiting renames will not fix this issue, in my opinion.
2. Tournament player recognition
This is rather a silly point, as FtX pointed out earlier tournaments could simply force players to rename to their "tournament name" 1hr prior to start. Pretending for now this isn't possible, any player who wants to gain recognition could stick to a single name. But to be honest, the best way to gain recognition would be simply to win tourneys. If I were to win LotS every year with a different ridiculous name, I would be "that guy with the renames" and audiences might be wondering what I'll be next year.
My main contention with this argument, however, is that I simply don't think this is a problem. I remember before I even downloaded FAF watching a legendary bo15 between zock and blackheart. Blackheart starts off named as "Banana" and ends the bo15 as "Horse". He renamed mid tourney, and it was easy for me to follow, as a person who hadn't even played a faf game. I don't know of any instances where players have deliberately renamed in order to make casting or following games more difficult, so I think the problem solved by the rules update is almost non-existent.
3. Player reputation
I assume by this you mean the ability of players to track good or bad behaviour by others. Luckily, the friend/foe system as well as player notes transcends renames, so a player you foed can't sneak into your lobby by renaming.
The only arena where "reputation" is a significant factor, is the 1800+ arena where players who consistently under-perform can get blacklisted from joining lobbies. I'm sure it's a thing on gap too if someone keeps stealing mass or something. By making renames less frequent you're essentially trying to "brand" badly behaved players, so others can spot them and kick them from lobbies if needed. You're creating a system for a minority of players that affect the whole player base, when the simpler solution of just foeing players you don't want to play with already exists. You can even see the foe icon if they rename and are sat in a lobby.
Moderation angle
@deribus said in Username rules updates:
In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.
Ease of reporting the correct player
Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing
I'm surprised to hear this, as these are the only reasons given so far that I considered legitimate. As mentioned in my previous post, I think we'd all better understand the scale of this benefit with any sort of stats - even approximate will do (e.g. rename abuse makes up about 1 in 50 reports, so about N reports per year).
I don't think many of us consider the three primary reasons sufficiently justify the rename changes, but if your lives are a living hell because of renames please share.
The discord example
Frankly I'm surprised this is even mentioned. In all my years as a personal trainer on the FAF discord, not once did my discord nickname align with my FAF username - past or present. In fact I doubt most people in here even know my discord username. I like the forum system that uses people's in-game usernames to make them recognisable, but this has never been the case on discord.
So this comparison is simply flawed, as any player could have different usernames on discord and FAF, regardless of any suggested update to the rename rules.
Response to my post
I don't know what the mod client looks like, I don't know the steps of actually processing a report. I'm not suggesting to use only player ID in reports, but it would function as the unique identifying token in the case that there was a rename. It's impossible to give any more suggestions without knowing how processing a report actually looks like to you.
Do we have any stats on how often the average player renames, or how often it poses a problem in a report? I feel like I've been asking for this the whole thread, but it would help inform all the people who don't process reports on the daily.
Backlash, mod hate
I'd like to say that I never suggested that the number of upvotes/downvotes should be used to dictate policy. I understand the mods are people too, so I include the upvotes on the original post from mods as valid opinions. If most of the people in support of the change are mods, there must be some reason, right?
I think another factor that fuelled the fire was the lack of discussion - after the initial post, weeks went by without any moderator providing an opinion. As a player this really offended me, as this change was made and it looked like feedback was essentially being ignored. The first mod response then stated :
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
Therefore, the moderation team believes that user identification should not be compromised for the sake of having a humorous name.
Which to me reads "ok, but we're pushing this anyway." Bear in mind this is still is all from a single mod at this point. I understand FAF runs on people's free time, but it does feel difficult to halt a change once someone has decided it's going to happen. You can stick your arm into the cogs of the machine, but the wheels are just gonna keep turning - I'm currently thinking of weighing in on the area reclaim issue, but I'm not sure what good it would even do.
If rename abuse really makes your lives miserable, let us know the scale of it so we can actually understand the reasoning behind this change. The other points - tournaments, player impersonation etc, I don't think any of us players consider an issue currently.
Who cares anyway?
A common sentiment I've heard from people supporting the change is the idea that it's not really a major change, renames might be fun but all in all not much is being lost by this update. For the most part, I would agree - it's not a huge change, it doesn't even touch gameplay.
The problem most of us have is that if you shave off 1% of the fun of the game enough times, eventually you are left with a game and community you no longer want to be a part of. See Sladow and Terari both leaving - neither of them are ragequitting purely because of this change, but both have stated that there have simply been too many 1% fun reductions in the past, and they've had enough. Especially when trying to stop or even discuss changes before they are implemented can feel feel so futile, as an overwhelmingly negative response is dismissed by referring to the invisible silent majority who must be ok with it, or by ignoring posts that aren't dissertation length.
Sladow summarized it quite well:
@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:
I also dislike the "we're gonna do change XY and THEN wait for 10 user pages of good reasoning in order to revert them" mentality.
I've made the effort to voice my concerns this time, but there will come a time and change where I'll simply log off and never look back.
To Wrap Up
I don't think the issues in player to player interactions warrant these changes at all, for reasons I've outlined. The moderator side, which you've said are actually just "additional benefits", have some merit - but we still don't have anywhere near of a complete picture of the scale of this issue to justify limiting renames in this way.