Okay, before you say "oh but people will type inappropriate names" and the like, hear me out.
Add an in-game currency, purchasable ship cosmetic that adds a painted on name to the side of your ship (I was thinking in the area just below the lanterns at the bow.), or even right above your mast, like your gamertag above your character.
When you purchase the cosmetic for the first time, you can type the name that will appear on the boat/ship. Now to prevent the profanities that would most definitely ensue, you could make a filter that prevents the use any sort of swear word. And the filter could respond with some sort of 'beard', like the errors, stating something like "Ye aren't able to use this name (Naughty beard)".
Let me know what you think! Myself, and my cousin, thought of this and we both believe it would be great, and it could make every ship just that much more unique!
Ship Name Cosmetic
@thtguyudntknow Top idea, I play predominately with my kids and we have named our ship, but having it shown on the ship would be brilliant, as would a Namebar type tag above your ship which could be used to alert you to crews you've met before (both hostile and friendly).
I think it would be better to use a combination of pre-set adjectives and nouns (for example, "salty" and "w***h"), or similar, so players could either randomize or combine the words themselves. This would only work if there were many many options to choose from of course.
But maybe it would be easier to programme som kind of anti-profanity filter as you say, I'm no expert.
But it would feel rather un-immersive to be chased by a galleon called "xXxFlappyboobs354".
@thtguyudntknow I would love to name my ship. But a profanity filter is far from bullet proof. 2 minutes with a profanity filter and you can tweak the spelling and still be rude. Sometimes I'm even surprised at how much rude slang these filters tend to miss.
I would love to name my ship and display it proudly on my ships side. But I would not blame Rare for not doing it because of the threat of rude profanity.
Perhaps instead a list of approved words and verbs that players can select to make their own combinations in a particular format like "Prefix" "Verb" "Term/name". example: "The" "swimming" "lemon"
@bo-bilgebottom I think a system of pre-set adjectives would be great! However, as you said, the list would need to be rather long so that people wouldn't sail around with the complete same identity.
But the reason I think it should be typing and filter-based, is because my Cousin and I had characters before that we deleted for a fresh start, and their 'roleplay' names were Grubo and Keith, so we (unofficially) named our new ship the 'Grubkeith' or 'Grubkith' in memory of the old characters.
