A Rose By Any Other Name

You know. You all know exactly who I am.
Say my name.

Thanks for commenting. I'll respond here, not there.

I get what you're suggesting, and it's not a bad idea. It would, however, require a complete renaming of almost everything AFTER someone clever and creative comes up with a good in-fiction concept behind the entire panoply of units.

As it is, what we have today is piecemeal work. That's the nature of Zero-K development. We can't get someone to design 150 units from scratch with a consistent art style and theming and concept, so we just hope we can get someone to at least do an entire factory. Similarly, but for different reasons, we can't do a complete overhaul of, well, anything, so we make small changes here and there. Like renaming all the aircraft after birds.

With names, these piecemeal changes have ended up bringing us towards a bland homegenization, which is terrible for several reasons we've covered elsewhere. One of the driving forces has been this notion of getting rid of all the OTA content, which is certainly right for artwork but not necessarily right for names. The best way to fulfil that driving force would be to do something like you're talking about here - take a big step back and rework the entire thematic concept of the game, and then use THAT to drive the development of the units' character. But we're stuck in piecemeal hell so that's not likely to happen anytime soon, or honestly probably ever.

So instead of coming up with a vibrant theme / trope / melieu (I hesitate to call it a "backstory" because game fiction is terrible)... you know, the kind of thing that you can see in the three (or four) factions in SupCom, or the three (plus) factions in StarCraft, or even the two factions in OTA...

We just have a game.

Which is fine, because it's a GREAT game. But if we aren't going to give the unit ensemble some kind of character as a whole, then we should at least make the names work well as a game if not as fiction. The current trend of simplifying and choosing laundry lists of bland synonyms is a terrible approach. We can do much better. In fact, we'd do much better just by leaving them as they are right now.

I think names should be as iconic as possible while:

a) not transgressing on already over-tilled soil

and

b) evoking the function of the piece in question

For example, many of the hurt-er units feel misnamed. All of the robots hurt shit.
- The scorcher doesn't actually use fire.
- Slasher doesn't slash, it prods like a pool cue.
- Pillager sieges and never gets near the spoils of war. Often sits at home while its friends are out raiding.
- Reaper is less about reaping and more about out-surviving.
- Banisher is a supportish tricksy name, on a riot.

Other thematic stumbles include:
- Rogue is a gaming class that plays entirely unlike how zk rogue operates.
- Roach evokes expendability and survivability, not suicide.
- The felon is not antisocial. It's a play-together synergy hug bear. Team work guys!
- Funnel web doesn't ambush. It's the inverse of its namesake.
- Scalpels dealing explosive damage (imprecise).
- Halberd being named after a weapon that doesn't assist in defense.
- Scallop doesn't have any defensive ability. Also it's got insane dps. Perhaps halberd and scallop should swap?
- Ducks don't float.
- Archer doesn't shoot projectiles.
- Phoenix is fragile and dies all the frkn time in enemy territory where is can't be reborn.
- Raven is more like a raptor than a scavenger. It swoops in and kills something.
- Defenders are not as good at defending as lotus. Which is a flower.
- Wolverine is a fragile piss-ant that tickles people from afar with its magical explosive claws.

There's nothing worth preserving in the names Warrior and Tick, except the getting-usedness and convenience of the current small playerbase.

Warrior is as generically boring as it gets, and it's OTA too.

Tick is a parallel to shieldbots' Roach. Both are crawly things, an insect and an arachnid. The comparison is cute, but not necessary to preserve.

In general, I support the spooky theme for the factory, as long as the names aren't too cliche and fit the units well. Ghoul and Wisp are spot on.

I really like Ghoul. Contamination with BlizzardCraft is irrelevant: we also have Banshees, Vultures, Roaches, you name it.

Ghoul fits the unit also on two unmentioned aspects: it regenerates, and it's considered repulsive/ugly in current meta.

SnuggleBass: archer fish catches insect by shooting them with water. Scorcher uses a heat weapon.

quote: bland boring names, theme is a list of synonyms

Because Warrior is an interesting, unique name and is not at all utterly generic. Yeah.

I'd be willing to agree that a few of our existing themes are lists of synonyms but evil magic is not one of them. It could have been made terrible, it contains a lot of synonym groups, eg:

• Spectre, Ghost, Wight, and Wraith.
• Ghoul, Zombie, and Thrall.
• Demon, Fiend.

If you picked names mostly from a single group you'd indeed get a bunch of synonyms. This is a problem in Shield and the vehicle facs. But note how existing plus proposed names for Cloaky are all from distinct groups.

I'd say most of the problems you have with themes is that the themes we have are misused. For example:

• a glaive is a long-reach two-handed weapon which you can't swing fast with. Sounds like Rocko.
• a scalpel is a precision cutting tool, like a laser, while a mace is a blunt bashing tool, like an explosive rocket.

quote: "Evoking the function" is a bad game to play. Nouns can evoke dozens of characteristics; most of them won't fit the unit in question, and probably at least one will, for someone.

Not unless your choice of nouns is terrible. The trick is to pick a noun which evokes the right characteristic most of the time. I have no idea how anyone could associate "Ghoul" with anything else than mauling stuff.

quote: I don't agree about the 'set' thing, since a set that lines multiple factories is wasted association.

On the contrary. Compare Thug/Rogue/Felon to Tick/Roach/Flea. In the first case, you know they're all shieldbots; in the second case, you know they're all small robots. In both cases you still have no idea which bot is which.

The difference is that with the shieldbots you have to learn which is which across Thug/Rogue/Felon/Bandit/Outlaw/Vandal/Racketeer/Gangster (wait, is that last one a unit or am I getting them mixed up again?) whereas with the insectbots you only have to learn to distinguish between Tick/Roach/Flee. That's why I say that a set of three is actually a helpful thematic naming whereas a set of seven (or worse) is a harmful theming.

Distinctive names are good. Names that can be tied to the unit are good. Sets of names that can be tied to each other are good. Large collections of essentially identical names are bad.

quote: a ghoul is a carrion-eater; a loathsome scavenger

No, a ghoul (غول) and sometimes used in the feminine form (غولة) is an evil demon who preys upon desert travellers etc.
(trivia: in present times it is used as slang for an unattractive person).
The carrion-eater theme is silly western culture.
Contrast djinn (or genie) which can also be good (Aladdin's for instance).

The shieldbot names aren't always the most distinct but Bandit, Rogue and Thug all have partly or really obvious connotations that fit their unit[?], and Racketeer is an obvious pun that connects to its weapon[*].