Name Changing?

[North East Germany]

This may be the wrong place, if it is I apologise, but is there ever going to be a time when we can change the name of our nations?
I founded this nation 6 years ago and the idea I'm tyring to fulfil with this nation just doesn't fit with it's current name. I have founded a new nation Elbenland but I'm very reluctant to throw away a 6 year old nation. Is there any way at all that nation names can be changed, or even to merge two nations or literally anything to stop me from having to throw away a 6 year project?
It's the only real issue I have with NS, that and the fact we can't decide which order our nation names show (eg: French Republic rather than Republic of France).
Thanks for any responses

[Pogaria]

is there ever going to be a time when we can change the name of our nations?

No, that's never going to happen. The underlying code would have to be completely rewritten.

[North East Germany]

is there ever going to be a time when we can change the name of our nations?

No, that's never going to happen. The underlying code would have to be completely rewritten.

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

[Gandoor]

No, that's never going to happen. The underlying code would have to be completely rewritten.

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

No offense, but you shouldn't make statements like this when you have no idea what you're talking about.

Name changes will not happen because the game utilizes your account name as its ID and if you change your name, this will break all references to it across the game including: player dossiers, regions, the WA, mentions of your nation in factbooks/dispatches, people mentioning your nation in the RMB, etc.

I believe there was one, maybe two, instances where they DID allow a player to change their name and it literally required an admin to go and change ALL of the aforementioned things to their new nation name.

So no, unless the volunteer development staff of this game decide to completely rebuild the game engine from the ground up and attach IDs* to every single user account that are separate from your nation name (or you manage to go back in time to 2002 and convince Max to use an internal ID number as the identifier for an account for his website meant to promote his latest novel rather than the account name), then name changes will NEVER happen.

*There is an ID listed for most active nations (and quite a few CTEd ones) if you check their account in the Boneyard (mine is 68932, for instance), but that's the ID for their card in the trading card minigame, not an internal ID and I believe the mods have said that whenever season 2 of cards is added, then a new ID for their new card will be created

[The Gipper]

No, that's never going to happen. The underlying code would have to be completely rewritten.

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

The admins have commented on this several times, and telling them about how their own code works usually makes them turn a funny color. From what I recall, our nation name is still the ID that identifies that account to the game. Like most usernames/URLs/emails, capitalization does not matter, that combination of letters in either case references the same account. So an RMB post by The Gipper is still linked to me if I change my name to ThE GiPpEr.

Changing the letters altogether would involve updating every record in the game that references that nation. RMB posts, other peoples dossiers, telegrams, regions, WA lists, endorsements, etc. etc. The ancient design of this website from 2002 makes that impossible without a ton of work, which the admins haven't had time to do yet. I think they've said they would like to do it if it were ever possible, it just isn't going to be because of the time required to redo the core of the site. So it isn't that they are unwilling to make the change, they are just aware that it is such a fundamental change it likely will never happen.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Reploid Productions]

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

As Gipper and Gandoor have already commented, it is entirely different. Capitalization of nation names means nothing as you accurately point out, because in the system, your nation name is "north_east_germany," and whatever choice of capitalization you use doesn't change that. Your nation name is your nation's ID to the system, and there are a lot of things in the game engine that point to your nation's ID that can very readily end up completely breaking your account if that ID were to be changed and one of those connected elements wasn't updated properly. Regions, World Assembly, RMB posts, telegrams... basically every element of the game's functioning is linked to that ID. And our clusterfuck of late 2002 code cobbled together with a wide assortment of patches and MacGyvered fixes makes ensuring all those connecting elements all properly update following an ID change... very, very difficult.

[North East Germany]

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

As Gipper and Gandoor have already commented, it is entirely different. Capitalization of nation names means nothing as you accurately point out, because in the system, your nation name is "north_east_germany," and whatever choice of capitalization you use doesn't change that. Your nation name is your nation's ID to the system, and there are a lot of things in the game engine that point to your nation's ID that can very readily end up completely breaking your account if that ID were to be changed and one of those connected elements wasn't updated properly. Regions, World Assembly, RMB posts, telegrams... basically every element of the game's functioning is linked to that ID. And our clusterfuck of late 2002 code cobbled together with a wide assortment of patches and MacGyvered fixes makes ensuring all those connecting elements all properly update following an ID change... very, very difficult.

Okay, I understand why it would be so diffictult to actually do, but what I'm reading is it's not literally impossible. So why not introduce it as a paid element? Like, I 100% would be okay with paying $10/$20 to change my nation name, and if the act of changing it for the mods is so difficult, surely giving them the money I've paid would be incentive enough to be willing to do it?

Sorry if I'm asking questions that have already been asked, but I have looked through the forums for a related threat, but the search function on the forum is mind blowingly useless

[Ghost Land]

^ In a different thread, I seem to recall Fris explaining that it's not worth the hassle to shut down the game for weeks to overhaul the code, or whenever someone wants to change their nation's name. Personally I'm fine not being able to change my nation name; there are plenty of other names to go around.

[Valentine Z]

Not really, the code implemented to allow you to change the capitalization of your name is no different than the code needed to change a nation name. Computers don't process whether a letter is upper or lower case, they process which letter is being displayed A or a, and sees them both as individual letters with their own binary code. So, the possibility of nation name changing is already implemented from a computer and code standpoint, the question is simply, will they fully implement it and if not, why?

As Gipper and Gandoor have already commented, it is entirely different. Capitalization of nation names means nothing as you accurately point out, because in the system, your nation name is "north_east_germany," and whatever choice of capitalization you use doesn't change that. Your nation name is your nation's ID to the system, and there are a lot of things in the game engine that point to your nation's ID that can very readily end up completely breaking your account if that ID were to be changed and one of those connected elements wasn't updated properly. Regions, World Assembly, RMB posts, telegrams... basically every element of the game's functioning is linked to that ID. And our clusterfuck of late 2002 code cobbled together with a wide assortment of patches and MacGyvered fixes makes ensuring all those connecting elements all properly update following an ID change... very, very difficult.

Adding this to the fact is when you are a very prominent or a frequent poster.

If you are a small and new nation, that's already going to be a havoc to change the name. So... imagine changing the name and basically the ID for someone who has 100,000+ posts, telegrams, RMB posts, other historical stuff combined.

I think the admins will need maybe 40 days of work, and that's with a crapton of coffee.

[The Marsupial Illuminati]

Okay, I understand why it would be so diffictult to actually do, but what I'm reading is it's not literally impossible.

Just because something is possible does not mean that it is feasible and worth doing.

[Bears Armed]

Your best bet is to put the name that you now want people to use into your sig and factbooks, and say there that is what the existing nation should now be called. Some other players have already done this with their nations.

[Gandoor]

So why not introduce it as a paid element? Like, I 100% would be okay with paying $10/$20 to change my nation name, and if the act of changing it for the mods is so difficult, surely giving them the money I've paid would be incentive enough to be willing to do it?

Because even if they added name changes as a paid feature, that doesn't magically solve the issue that there's only a limited number of site staff and they are all volunteers, they've got real jobs and real lives they have to live in.

You seem to be focusing on this from the POV that you would be the only one who would pay for name changes and, while I'm not gonna claim IF they decided to do this there would suddenly be tens of thousands of people willing to pay, but even say a few hundred people deciding to cough up some dough to have their nation name changed would be horrific because they'd have to do all the changes to make sure EVERYTHING is tied to the new nation name correctly HUNDREDS of times for each player.

[Reploid Productions]

Okay, I understand why it would be so diffictult to actually do, but what I'm reading is it's not literally impossible. So why not introduce it as a paid element? Like, I 100% would be okay with paying $10/$20 to change my nation name, and if the act of changing it for the mods is so difficult, surely giving them the money I've paid would be incentive enough to be willing to do it?

Long story short, the revenue paid name changes would add is virtually non-existent next to the weeks of site downtime if not longer that would be necessary to basically completely rebuild the entire site's code from the ground up. Essentially, making it possible would literally require coding a whole new game site in terms of the volume of work necessary due to to Max's poor design decisions in 2002. Somewhere around a decade ago Salusa had once estimated that it could maybe be done in the span of about 2-3 weeks, and the game's code has only gotten more convoluted with additions and new bits since then, so I doubt that ancient estimate is at all accurate to the present.

[The Baldlands]

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I wonder if there if there might be a more creative way to merge nations that didn't involve all this work on the back-end.

I created a couple nations before it was possible to restore nations that had ceased to exist (the_baldlands vs. the_baldlands_people and jece vs. the_people_of_jece). I also have two nations where the only difference in the name is the use of an underscore vs. a hyphen (anti_the_baldlandsjece vs. anti-the_baldlandsjece).

It would be nice to migrate attributes from one nation to another. For example, maybe we could trigger different decisions or events in one nation that already occurred in another nation. The functionality appears to already be there for dossiers, where users can manually export their dossier for one nation and then upload it to another nation. If we add that functionality to issues and telegrams and whatever else would make sense, perhaps users can do the work of merging their nations without overhauling the site code.

Is something along those lines technically feasible? Or perhaps a similar feature already exists? For my nations in particular, I don't think that there would be very much to merge, although I guess that merging two extremely active nations might be resource-intensive.

By the way, is it possible to restore a region that has ceased to exist?

[The Unified Missourtama States]

It would be nice to migrate attributes from one nation to another. For example, maybe we could trigger different decisions or events in one nation that already occurred in another nation. The functionality appears to already be there for dossiers, where users can manually export their dossier for one nation and then upload it to another nation. If we add that functionality to issues and telegrams and whatever else would make sense, perhaps users can do the work of merging their nations without overhauling the site code.

The stat simulation is way more complex than it looks (if what the editors tell us is true ), but basically no, because stat changes are based on what your stats already are before the issue.

Furthermore, this takes all the time out of the game, it takes years to get some stats to where they are, if we can just send eachother any stat we want there's basically no real issues game. Sure they'll still be fun to be read, but why would I work hard to acquire policies and stat badges when i can just ask my friend to send me the code for 1%.

The transfer of telegrams would also be a big problem for the moderators, I imagine, there are definitely privacy issues lurking in the transfer of telegrams.

By the way, is it possible to restore a region that has ceased to exist?

Only by name, all other data is permanently lost.

[Frisbeeteria]

Is something along those lines technically feasible?

It could be done manually on a stat-by-stat basis (not including telegrams, dossiers, etc), but it's never going to happen. The resource-intense part is mod time. With hundreds of thousands of active nations, it would be all we do. Furthermore, a decision was made in the early days of the game to never adjust stats except by answering issues and voting for proposals. Short answer:NO.

is it possible to restore a region that has ceased to exist?

No.