@ Malachi Alright if you want me to change my post that badly, I'll oblige. Done! Edited to reflect the post more accurately.

Also yeah I sounded brisk, doing a few things on the side and trying to go full-chameleon with work and this topic. Sorry about that!

Well, no, I wasn't telling you to change your post? Chill out a little? I was just pointing out that he hadn't rejected nor accepted the idea, I wasn't hellbent on you editing your post like you seem to think I was. lmao

You went from "YEAH let's make pet names available to everyone!" to "YEAH LET'S RESTRICT EVERYONE'S PETNAME CHOICES!" surprisingly quickly there.

So... Which of the two is it?

It's called 'compromising' bro.

:'| Shit, sorry. Yeah, I definitely took that the wrong way. We're cool, though!

Bro, I'm cool with compromising. I'm not cool with fucking everyone over. ._.

It's a concept that came up over the course of this board, that is my opinion of that concept?

It's called being open-minded to prospect of change. I'd prefer names to be non-unique, I stand by that choice and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that people hate it because yeah, I get it. However just because I prefer that concept doesn't mean I can't also like other ideas? Like, just because I prefer to drink margaritas doesn't mean I refuse to drink anything else y'know.

Wild thought that people always have to only like one idea and hate everything else.

@ Andrea It struck me as odd that you'd be all for a setting that's super restrictive in terms of pet names when you were all for non-unique petnames. That's all.

[edit]To elaborate: if the setting was on by default after adding the feature, it would affect all accounts, even inactive ones. So all the inactive petnames that are currently available would be taken out of the pool of available names, instantly (and quite massively) reducing the pool of petnames. With no guarantee that a user that's been gone for 2+ years would come back or that returning users would bother to toggle the option to make the petnames available.

And if it didn't affect inactive accounts, it'd be kind of a moot point because returning users wouldn't come back to their pets, there would still be rage and disappointment over "lost" petnames even with that system. Plus you'd still have the 3pm site deaths that I personally haven't experienced but I could just as well be oblivious to them because my internet speed is shit.

On one hand, Im selfish and don't want to share my pet names.

On the other hand, maybe I could finally fill up by empty pet slots with some characters that I haven't been stuck on for 7 years.

I'd still personally prefer it to be completely open for everyone. But if that upsets people too much and is a hard 'no' from staff, the idea of opting in for non-unique names would be a good compromise.

That way, people who don't want to share can't benefit from other people sharing either, and people who don't mind letting other people have their dream names can also get some nice ones. I'd greenlight my names so fast, honestly. Jasper? Lapis? Jude? Dorian? GO FOR IT. I'D BE OPRAH UP IN HERE.

You get a name! And you get a name!

It would be, absolutely, but again... if it's on by default, it's kind of doing the opposite of what the topic's intention is. ._. Like, what if I don't want Jude, what if I want a pet that's on an inactive or even a deceased user's account and I got toggled out of it by default. Like... Jude is cool and all, but his name doesn't fit my OC named... idk, Princess Fluffybutt.

I would assume that when a user goes inactive, the account would probably switch to 'open' by default? I mean it's all theoretical and I'm not sure if ANY of it is even possible, but that's the logical way to do it, I think. Once you're gone for a year, rather than losing your names, you lose the unique rights?

I can see both sides of this, but ultimately I'm for non-unique pet names becoming a thing, even if it means no compromise (meaning if they even just one day were like 'yep changing to IDs and that's all!) Obviously it would be nice if they allowed a certain number of free renamings for those that wanted to use them, because obviously there would be some need for appeasing those who oppose this idea.

Basically what it comes down to for me, is I obviously expressed in the past that I dislike having to mis-spell and adjust my pet names. I think it's borderline selfish and elitist to be so against this idea that your pet won't be the ONLY one on the entire site with the name 'Brachiosaurus'. (Used one of my own so as not to offend anyone with a randomly chosen name). I can understand it, I'd be a little disappointed myself if suddenly there were 20 more pets that were technically named 'Nikolei', but at the end of the day how much does it really affect you? I get having waited forever to TRY to get that pet name and having the pride and the thrill of the hunt and all that. I get it, you'd feel shirked, disappointed to have made all the effort for nothing. But the OP had a few ideas to appease that, which I see nothing wrong with any of those ideas. Mainly I guess I'd only even really be against the idea for the fact that we may lose a lot of long-term users to rage-quitting over it. Which would be bad, because those users generated revenue for the site. The only thing that would be unfortunate on my end would be I'd need entirely new profiles done for the majority of my pets, because I have had to compromise and use a RW for almost all of my pets. Does that make me biased? Not really, just that I see why having non-unique names would appeal to a greater base of people than the smaller amount of those who haven't had to find another name for their OC or their tribute pet or their fanpet.

-shrugs- Idk, maybe I AM biased. But this is becoming rambly so... I support this idea, officially, to whom it may concern.

Then you're back to square one in terms of site deaths at 3pm due to clearings. :'| And nothing much is really accomplished in that aspect. You're not really letting a user choose if you're just going to toggle it on when they go inactive, either. It's like: "Okay Timmy, you stay with us and your decision of keeping petnames yours alone will be fully respected! ... 8) But if you ever decide to leave..."

Accounts going inactive wouldn't kill the site in this scenario. The reason the site dies at 3:00 is the number users desperately auto-refreshing 50 tabs to try and beat all the other people to a name. If the name will be 100% open after that inactivity hits, no one needs to scramble to get it. People can come home from work or school and casually adopt the pet they want, because it's gonna be there tonight, tomorrow, etc.

And yeah, the inactive user isn't able to choose that, but... right now if you go inactive you're SOL entirely? In this hypothetical situation, you'll come back to discover that someone else has a pet named "Lapis", but you still have your Lapis. Your pet is still the same, you just don't have the bragging rights. With the current system we have in place, the person who had Lapis before me will never get that name back, and their pet now has an ugly, stupid name.

Like I said, though - this idea, while nice in theory, is probably impossible at worst and incredibly convoluted at best. I'd much rather just do away with unique names across the board, for simplicity's sake. I can't guarantee it would invigorate the creative pet community, but it would make the site a ton of money, which Subeta needs. -shrug-

@ Eevee Memo to self: 2:30ish AM is a bad time to try and weigh the pros and cons of something. :'| I appreciate the patience you're having with me, though.

I'm still on the fence about non-unique names because whooooboy is there going to be a clusterfuck of raeg, but if there's an adjustment period with free (or at least heavily discounted) nameswaps and renames, with compensation in the form of free renames for existing pets I think it could possibly work out? Or a mix of a mass release of petslots while making the renames free. idk, rambling. There'd still be a crapton of flak, and I'd personally prefer to get a poll going on it if possible to test the waters and get even more feedback and ideas getting tossed around instead of dropping it on users with little warning while expecting to reap the benefits of more cashmoney going into the site.

[edit]Also maybe a star on the page or something small and unobtrusive to signify a "legacy name", or "origin name" like we have with legacy pets. A way to show that hey, you are the first ever user to have a pet with his name! Congrats you!

I would be REALLY interested to see a poll, actually! Even if it decided nothing in the end, I'd just be curious to see the numbers on both sides. Not everyone uses the forums, and those who do aren't necessarily comfortable getting into a discussion like this. I also think having some kind of indicator that you had the original pet would be really cool, kind of how we have "legacy" pets right now? A little yellow star would be really cute x:

(Haha no worries, I actually almost didn't check this ping because... I ate too much cake and now I feel kind of ill. 8D; I'm such a good adult)

It's been aaages since we've had a poll and I can bet you dollars to donuts that a lot more people would be giving input on this than they are on this topic. :'D ALSOYES anxiety is a pretty big factor in... everything, so a poll gives people the chance to voice their opinion without going public with their opinion about the situation.

Yos. Something you can recolour with CSS, but that would be cute and not stick out too much.

(Cake is delicious, so I can't blame you one bit. =P)

& I think a little legacy star would be really cool for the original name holder. Plus that particular pet ID would always be tied to that star unless the name is changed. So there would be that rarity still, you know? People would want to collect stars eventually I guess lol I'm not picky though, I'd like to see a poll on this too, especially if staff decided this was all worth looking into with the pet name availability ever-dwindling.

Sorry to butt-in!

Yep! But also maybe if you rename that pet into a name that nobody else on the site has, or you make a pet with a completely new name that nobody else owned ever, you'd also have a star next to the petname on the pet's page. So if someone creates Prince Wiggles IV as a tribute to their corgi, they'd still get that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that hey, heyyou, you own the very first Prince Wiggles IV.

Also you're good, you're not butting in. x)

Yes exactly, so long as it's the first pet with the name they can keep the star. Because obviously that's fair. Plus as with pretty much everything else on a pet page, you can code it out if you don't care for it. I'm not even opposed to the idea someone else had about adding the line for 'name given: DATE' with the birth and adopted date. People kill for IDs, the stars would immediately just replace the rarity of being the only 'Brachiosaurus' on the website. I guess the only gray area would be - what about the people who have grabbed an inactive pet name? Would the star be on the VERY FIRST pet's page, or would it start fresh from whenever they implemented the stars? (meaning MY Brachiosaurus would have the star, not the one who got the ugly name when I adopted and name-changed my pet to Brachiosaurus).

If petnames are made free-for-all, then the person who originally had the name when this was implemented would have the star. For example, even if I went inactive, I'd still keep the star on Judyth, even if someone else took the name. Because Judyth wouldn't end up with a string of numbers after her name - the name would be available for everyone.