I know I am not the only one who has hunted for a specific id range or birthday but I was hoping this would be something easily coded. I myself am after a May 5th 2013 birthday which I found on an inactive pet. I just want the birthday.

Just clarifying. If there are low id numbers on an inactive account, could their be an option to reuse that id closer to when it is erased from subeta?

In terms of birthdays since switching doesn't seem to work, could it then be an item to purchase that would change that birthday/date created. I don't care if by that date it gets a symbol to show it was bought. Kinda like those genderless, gender berries or the gear gender.

You can only nameswap pets you own. I'd assume a feature like this would be the same, which would make it obsolete. Suppose that inactive user returns?

From what I recall, because of how pets are coded, it is impossible to switch pet IDs. It has something to do with the fact that IDs are the only way the pet exists in coding (as compared to names, which are more arbitrary and easy to switch). I suck at explaining this. Maybe someone can explain it better.

But yeah, no to switching pet IDs even if it could happen. It would make it too easy to get special "low ID numbers" (not something I personally care about, but I do know there are people out there that DO care). Pet birthdays I guess could change? I don't pay enough attention to birthdays to really care about that. If they could allow for the switch, I guess it would be fine... but it kind of seems weird to just go "hey, let's swap birthdays".

Another solution to what you want (as in, you want a certain birthday and an inactive account has it) would be to forcefully pound pets from inactive accounts... but staff has said they don't want to do that for the reason that mentioned: some people DO come back, and they would want there pets to be there... even if the names weren't the same, at least it would still be that pet.

Yeah, I don't really support this. The name-swap thing from the pound is close enough, and pets in the pound are pets that are freely given - you aren't entitled to the bare bones of a pet (the id, birthday, species/color) on a user's account, even if they are inactive.

If you really want a pet with a certain birth date, just make an adoption thread, look through the pound, and hope for the best. Or, if it's a birth date, you could just wait until your birthday, if you really had to.

I really don't like the idea of switching ID, birthday, or stats. To me, those three things really define the pet.

I have to agree with what is generally being said here but I would love for an admin or someone with knowledge of the inner workings of the pet system to weigh in

Birthday? How do you figure out your pet's birthday? o: Didn't know this was such a big deal.

it shows on their profile. it's the date they were created.

edit to add: I don't think this a great idea. It's just gonna create unneeded chaos.

The switching of ID's I get because I didn't realize that everything really ties in to it. However I am not asking for the pet to be pounded because that is the point of being able to grab a name off an inactive account. I should of clarified in terms of the name if there was an item to change it, or the ability to snag it. Just like the gender berries and the old hypno wand. If it could make the pet forget it's name who is say it would remember its birthday?

But why bother switching IDs when you can just acquire a pet with the ID you want and turn them into the species and color you want?

If the id you want is on an inactive account, you will never be able to acquire that particular pet. Staff won't force abandon the pets off the account.

Oic. I mean, I still don't even really get the obsession with IDs, even after it's been explained to me lol

I'm not sure if this'll help explain the whole "ID" thing or not (guess it depends on if you pokemon or not), but basically think of them like shiny pokemon. Other than visually, are they any different from other pokemon? No, but do people (in general) still want them because they're "special"? Yes they do. Do some people think shinyhunting is silly and a waste of time? Yup, but then there's another group of people who eat, sleep, and breathe shinies.

The same can basically be said for IDs xD They're literally no different/more significant/better than any other ID, but some of us just really really like them.

Anyways, that said, there's been a few boards like this recently-- involving swapping two already owned pet IDs (everything on ID A goes to ID B and visa versa), which I fully support. I would also support a means of having all IDs on frozen accounts being dumped into the pound and the accounts purged (accounts that're frozen for rule violations that will literally never be unfrozen, that is), but I don't support being able to "swap" ID's with inactive accounts or being able to take IDs from them as that defeats the purpose of why accounts go inactive now instead of being purged.

I also don't support being able to swap birthday's with another pet because part of the whole ID collecting bit involves a pet's birthday. If you could just change anything about the ID then it just feels like, idk.. using a GameShark/Action Replay to get a shiny-- why go through the effort of spending hours in the pound to find an ideal ID that fits the bill when you could just "hack" any pet ID you want?

That was a beautiful analogy. I too am in support of that switch too. I get your hesitance on taking from an inactive account but with the pound purge, I can't go through spending hours to find the birthday I want,there are not that many pets in the pound. Trying to find it from an id is a pain in the ass. I hit so many no such pet messages. I just happened to stumble upon on that is inactive. I only made this board because suggested I do so, when I made a ticket asking about if this was possible. That date holds significance, and the name I want also happened so to be from an inactive account. As it stands now I can change a pet to have that name, but I need that birthday too.

Well the reason I'm saying that is because the entire reason the account inactivity vs. purging was done was because wanted users to be able to come back to their accounts intact outside of their user/petnames. If we moved the bar to taking their pet ID's then they'd be coming back to a new pet with a taken name, and would it stop there? What if that pet was a teir 12, would the stats go with the ID or go to the newly created replacement? What about the TC items? It's just a slop and I really feel like it should be left the way it is.

And trust me I'm not biased in this regard because I am an ID collector (35/45 are under 100k) and I am very particular about birthdays due to zodiacs that I use for my OCs. The greedy part of me would LOVE to see this happen because I do often find myself looking at inactive IDs with a sense of longing-- however, with the intentions of the inactivity change in mind, I think it should be left as is. You could always send a sMail to those inactive users, stating that if they ever come back and are no longer interested in -petname- that you really really are beyond interested in that pet's ID; explain your reasons to them, and even offer to fund a rename if they want. More users don't care about IDs than those who do, afterall.

Oh I totally understand. I am trying to find an active user with a May 5th, 2013 birthday who would be willing to do a switch with me. I will pay for the name change, the recoloring/elixir .etc. I wasn't thinking about how stats would play into this. Stats would make it overly enticing. But what I was aiming for was more the ability I guess to claim or have those lower id's available for reuse. Now I know of 1 pet id with the birthday I want. I would pay to take that over when the account was set to be deleted. However for the most part I think there is a very select few who are after ids or would care if their pet's id was changed. I know I for one wouldn't notice. I am just after the birthday that particular id range is associated with. I am still hoping someone would be down for the cs item to change birthdays.

I think changing Birthdays should be possible; even if, as aforementioned, it had to have a marker to signify that the birthday was changed manually. It would especially be a neat feature for those of us who create "fanpets" or those that have pets in remembrance of or dedication to someone.

Even if you think it "should" be possible, it's probably impossible. If the pet id is the key in the database then it's simply not possible. Every row in a database needs to have an unique key, everything is attached to that key. You can't move around the key because it's usually also automatically numbered. If fields are deleted, then that specific key is gone. You can't move around the key either.

eg.: (going to use user id as example because it's a clear example imo) Fields: key, name, gender, country 1 Tobias Female Belgium 2 Flux Female Schotland 3 Cathii Female Canada

The "1" a.k.a the key is used in cookies, logging in, your HA, etc etc. The core of your account and the coding surrounding it is attached to the "1" in the database.

By asking to swap id's you are asking to swap the core of the pet and the database.

Hope it makes sense. (and I hope it's right, I haven't studied databases in two years)

I get it for the ids part but again if that particular id is going to be deleted because after 2 years the whole account goes poof, why not have like an option to buy into reusing lower id numbers that are now no longer associated with a pet?

I think that would only work if you do it with "create a pet" and basically start a new pet from that id? Because once a pet is attached to an id, I don't think it can be changed.