Come On People. This is Annoying

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Several months ago I posted about an individual’s complaint that my thrall name was profane. I had to enlighten him that in the Hall of Fame base, Dick Butkus was a much revered and feared linebacker in the NFL.

Now, I go to said base and what do I see? Dick Butkus has reverted to Lian. I tried to rename him and the game tells me that I cannot use prohibited words.

Did you know, that despite what 12 year olds think, Dick is a real nickname for Richard. Ever hear of Dick Van ■■■■? I’m sure the only part of his name allowed would be Van (Edit: Right on cue, this forum censored the last name of a beloved actor). Dick’s Sporting Good’s? Dick Tracy?

This is minor, but it is also stupid. I get that people who abuse the naming system are responsible. This is why we can’t have nice things.

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We can’t have nice things because idiots got the upper hand on society, unfortunately.

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That’s the problem when common names have a secondary meaning that’s deemed offensive.

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We can’t have nice things because the rich people have all the money.

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The solution is to find an offensive meaning for every common name and word and introduce so much chaos that it simply becomes infeasible to censor such things anymore.

Now in my personal opinion, the OP naming a thrall after a real life person is a bit weird, and in many cases on online games has been prohibited in its own right. But I’m going to use the OP’s examples given, as a baseline and example anyway of systems getting a bit weird.

He is correct that Dick is a nickname for Richard (and if you ever wonder how you get Dick from Richard, you ask nicely :stuck_out_tongue:). Its been common for a very very long time. Its censorship has been more of a recent thing. Imagine if you were born in the 90s, before common censorship of these words was done, but you have a name like Dick Van D.yke (I’m bypassing the filter to show a historical figure’s name), because maybe your parents liked his shows. But now you have two names that are commonly associated with offensive stuff. Your own name is going to be censored in media. Your own name is going to cause you major issues. And this will be for the remainder of your life or until you legally change it or take on a pseudo name. Which I don’t believe should be required.

I’m not a fan of people cursing in public. And I’ve been on the side of taking action against those people when they do it in online games. The reason isn’t because I find them offensive. I’m an Army Veteran who grew up in a Marine Corps household. Cursing doesn’t bother me. What does bother me about it is the sort of mentality behind a person who feels they need to do it in order to get attention and make a point. Its usually a juvenile attempt with very little thought behind it.

I’ll curse, make jokes (even offensive ones), and say all kinds of nonsense around my personal friends. But I don’t need to hear it at the grocery store from some riffraff that thinks it makes them cool or tough. And I don’t need to hear it in some form on online games from the same. Its more the person that ‘offends’ than the words.

But there is a point where actions in censoring go just a tad bit too far. When we talk about people’s names that is definitely one of them. If we’re talking about words that used to mean something else even in relatively recent times, that’s another. Of course its always about context as well.

Here’s a great example. If you tell someone to F-off, then yeah… probably not great to do. But if you’re with some clan mates, doing a little light RP, and someone accidently pulls a red dragon or some other monster and you go ‘oh f- that!’ before you start running then its probably fine.

Now… I’m going to circle back and play devil’s advocate here. Naming thralls or characters after real people can be a bit problematic. While naming thralls after historic football players is harmless. Naming them after current political figures may introduce a bit of issues that most people I would argue are playing the game to get a relief from. But it is all about context and well there is no context where that flies very well unfortunately.

But at the end of the day, I’m pretty certain the system didn’t allow Dick Butkus because of the first name and not the entirety. Which is weird because I’m sure Johnson, ■■■■, Dong, Prick, Sausage, Member, Manhood, and so forth are either all allowed or some of them are allowed. And if they aren’t… well you’re disallowing even more common names.

Now with all this said… @speedice what platform are you on? I’ve never heard of the thralls reverting names before. This is a new one for me. And I feel this wouldn’t happen in the avenues some of us play in. It also sounded automatic, which is weird.

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Interestingly, I did not consider the platform. It is a PS5, and Sony has all sorts of issues with these things. However, I doubt that Sony has any idea what is going on in a server they A] have no rights to control, and B] have zero access to in the first place.

I was able to re-name him as Butkus. So, it was the first name that the server did not like. The point of the Hall of Fame base was to have players who made an impact by being the best at their position, or being an innovator. There are few living players even named.

So far, Y A Tittle is still Y A Tittle, but who knows?

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I’ve heard of things on Xbox where it doesn’t let you input and inputs are done through their UI.

But a renaming is new. That has to be done on Funcom’s side. But I’ve never heard of the game having a list of inappropriate rules, so I think this is platform only and not on the server side of things. Which is why I called it weird, this the first I’ve heard of it.

Personally unless Sony/Microsoft has requirements as retailers, I don’t think FC should even waste time coding something like this.

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My father’s name is Jorma, a common name among Finns of his age. But it also has the same secondary meaning in Finnish as “Dick” in English. So far I haven’t seen a Finnish auto-filter that blocks his name. Then again, Finns do tend to be more sensible on average than Americans.

And yeah, I also grew up watching old Dick Tracy cartoons and Dick van D. shows, so this particular first name has never bothered me.

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Alter the name. Put or remove an additional letter or Number in it, so the filter won´t recognize it anymore.

Try: Diick Butkus or D´ick Butkus, maybe D!ck Butkus

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This doesn’t work, because for the government its perfectly fine if we don’t communicate at all. All what is needed of us is that we work and pay taxes. Everything else is a burden.

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I think I whined about this the other day, but Sir Turbish was reverted back to Cannibal Brute. All of my purge thralls are named from the show Disenchantment so it was a little friggin annoying.

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Yeah it is beyond ridiculous now.

I tried searching for ‘Blood’ in the admin panel, and got a message refusing to do so because it was ‘inappropriate’

Since when did ‘Blood’ become an offensive word now?

Not only that, but this was for an item search, for something in the game which is pretty much named exactly the same thing. I wasn’t even renaming anything lol

in a game that’s apparently meant for ages 18+

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Reminded me of a scene in a great Robin Williams movie called The Best of Times. His wife is mad about his football addiction and declares she doesn’t want to hear any talk about “Dick Butkus” at the dinner table.

Some countries have very strict laws about what can be said and shown in entertainment. Chance this stems from that as it’s easier to have one version and set of rules for the game rather than multiples that vary by company.

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Just left him as Butkus. I would not change his name because some busybody somewhere decided a perfectly legitimate name is offensive to one person who doesn’t even play the game.

The point of the build is to honor players who made an impact.

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In-game censor now even in the admin panel? What the fuuck?
In a game about cannibalism, rolling heads, dongs and BLOOD?
God, what did this game become…

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You might be overreacting, but then again you could be acting in a sarcastic way. I just don’t know.

May I simply submit that places where I create content, like YouTube, will commonly downrank or “shadowban” videos that have the verbal swear in them, accompanied by the written text, or cue. This is why when you watch Tosh.0, he’ll swear like a motherscratcher, but the corresponding screen cue (written text) will have the swear asterisked out.

This is usually because of International rules, which can be a bit murky.

So on the one hand we have content platform(s) pushing Creators to use caution with offensive text, and we have demonstrated bad boy shows self-censoring in order to (in my opinion) cater to a wider market and audience with fewer hurdles from regulations.

The Nexus of all this is when we have certain benign words that are potentially very offensive in German. For instance. If Funcom is erring on the side of caution, I believe they will loosen the restrictions over time, much like how they evolved this Message Board. :love_you_gesture:t4:

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Following up on the YouTube note, they (and other businesses) often have a sliding scale.
What would be a permaban offense on most accounts might instead get a high earner only a very brief pause in monetization.

Rules have only ever really applied to the less powerful or influential in society, the least amongst us must obey the most rules, while the greatest (but almost never good) make the rules that they are not held accountable to unless they fall from prominence.

Funcom will not be able to get away with what, say, CDProjektRed does. Not as much money, not as much clout. Even then, Funcom, as a wholely owned subsidiary, can only get away with what their masters allow, which is tied up in what their rulers allow.

Anyone know if the PRC updated their profanity and socially acceptable topics list recently?

Power is the currency with which freedom is purchased.

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Not sure if I share that opinion totally, but it’s a valid point at the least.

One point though: Blocking the name “Dick” is a private company’s voluntary decision, not mandated by any government.

Government censorship is what happens in e. g. China or North Korea. The, uhm, let’s say, possibly a tad overly protectionistic attitude towards cursing and “offensive” words is mostly motivated not by governments, but by economic reasons.

Provocative names and postings cause tickets to the customer service, thereby paid time of employees, thereby costs money, and bring a risk for negative attention, which may reduce customer numbers, in turn costing money, again.

The government - in most countries, at least - is perfectly fine with us naming our Conan Exiles thralls Dickus Longus, Stupid Steve or whatever, as long as you’re not insulting a particular person or violate local laws against holocaust denial, blasphemy and so on.

Naming your thrall “Poo Bear” and living in China, now that might cause real censorship and an irl character transfer. For those of us living in more open societies, let us cherish the freedom to swear, curse and bitch about our stupid politicians all we want.

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Actually, I did not try searching for the world ‘blood’ ingame yet, but if it is true, that you can’t, when a lot of items contain that world, is effed up.

I only play 1 hour roughly per WEEK with the game now.
Not because I got bored of it, but because of the changes like kicking the purge in the nuts, and make it even wonkier (I did not know it was possible, but Funcom did it), moving the chests away from world bosses, giving the Reach of the red mother and other endgame bows to a noob area. And the whole abrakadabra magic thing, which they abandoned already. It screams that they don’t know how to balance or even just make this game better. They just don’t know what to do. And how.
I always bring up Sea of dogs 2 as a prime example of bugginess, but Conan took the crown.

To the youtube part: I watch borderlands 2 playthroughs, and there is a weapon called Bitch. Or elite enemies, called badasses. And the streamer refers to the gun as that gun, or the badasses as baddies/bad guys etc. Which is absolutely nonsense, for example the weapon is called Bitch. It IS its name… (not to mention, female canines are called B|TCHES!!! Here, stupid censorship!! too.)

Probably because nowadays is so trendy to get offended by anything, that’s why these restrictions(?). The stupidest are the loudest, and Google, Funcom/tencent and the others only hear the loudest screams.

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This is somewhat true in the earlier paradigms, prior to Social Media, and specifically what we used to call the Bird App. During its heyday, my own account was silenced due to mass-banning by people running on a VPN in Germany. Sounds wacky, but true.

Some of the people I hung with were influencers, and they reported it as “these weird messages from German Bird App,” that eventually led to a 24-hour suspension. Over, in one case, the word “reacharound.” Glitchers always find a way, and a datacorp or software vendor removing a target spot is a very prudent and reasonable step to take, even if it steps on perceived “liberties.”