Usable Names

Terah

<div class="IPBDescription">Required for teamwork</div> This should be obvious.

When playing as a Marine if you have some unpronounceable/unreadable/untypeable name then other marines (usually the Commander) cannot address you directly. Waypoints are great and all but direct instruction is better for all kinds of things:

1. Grouping squads (eg. "Terah, Shannon and HiDeHo you stick together.")
2. Assigning defenders to locations ("Hold that intersection for 2 minutes Shannon.")
3. Warnings of ambushes ("Skulk behind you Terah!")
4. Regrouping ("Terah fall back 1 room to regroup with squad.")
5. Chastisement ("Terah stop attacking the OCs! We will siege this Hive.")
6. Welding ("Weld me please Terah")
7. etc

Well none of this is possible with bad player names like:
. "[1337] |-|=X=|\|"
. "Ptptptptptptpt!"
. "Tlo_Oi_3_tt"
. "Any random marine"

If your name is unusable then YOU are a less useful unit to the team.

FlatlineUTD

I hate it when people have offensive or downright stupid names. I had to keep calling some guy "moosepooper," which led to a voicecomm filled with giggles from the 10 year olds on my team. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->

PeregineDive

LOL flatline, I played with him tonight.... haha. It never occured to me when I said his name over voice comm that it was pretty funny... heh

-PD

Pika-Cthulhu

I think that naming conventions would be a good idea, but you start to take away the individuality of the player, and some really witty names (Personally ive had several dozens of names, most of which were pretty funny, SpastiColoN, Public Enema, Scantily Clad Anime Babe Being Raped By Giant Green Tentacle Beast (Yeah its pretty long and in HL wouldnt show up if at all but it was a funny name, for all the 2 weeks I used it) And now I play NS under Titanium-Deficiency (I get called **obscenity** or WAR for my clantag, its much faster than saying my full name and I know who they are talking about but I do so like my names, they are a part of my schizophrenic nature, in that ive had far too many to recollect, and all as diverse as each other)

But I can see a problem with peoples names like above, and it does make it difficult to talk to your team memebers, but gladly all the bizzare names that look as if they spawned from Counterstrike (I B 1337 and their ilk) seem to sit on the Marine team and leave us humble named aliens alone. Anyway I usually call the Gorge tubby so they get my drift after a few TUBBY HEAL ME!!! TUBBY WEB THAT CORRIDOOR, TUBBY GET THE HIVE!!!