No, it very much is not the same experience I would say. This person was blatantly rude and accusing me of "stealing", while the complete opposite in terms of experience seems to have happened to Antimoany. It's not disrespectful to inquire on if someone's attached to a pet name imo if the profile is empty and shows no signs of any work being done on the pet. It's another thing to be rude and entitled, especially to a new user that's still trying to figure out the site and its 5 hundred rules (written or unwritten) and social faux pas

Ah, I may have neglected a minor cultural difference here.

When I said Sunder's owner "functionally told me to piss off", I don't mean that they were rude or aggressive. We had a relatively cordial, if consice, conversation: I asked if I could have the name, they told me in no uncertain terms that I could not. I don't bare any ill will towards them for wanting to keep what is theirs.

I've taken the time to read your post after being on hiatus for quite a while. I'm an old player and seriously - your post made a lot of sense .

The thing that puts me off of Subeta is the lack of actual-real-update / communication. We will get some very good support from staff, until there is not a single crumb to find for quite a while (and the site is literally a pain to use). It's mostly always the same staff helping around, which is making me wonder how many people work on Subeta now. Hell, I'm even wondering about the mythical recode tbh. I have not invested a single $ in months / if not years because of how poorly the site is doing. I am afraid Subeta will kick the bucket for good and we will be either notified on the go or simply locked out one good morning.

The staff are doing this on their own time without payment (apparently). There have been recent hiring calls, but those seem to be far and few in between. I mentioned in another thread that it is likely that they will need to hire more coders due to how long it's taking to fix the errors caused by the server move.

I've been here four years, and what's kept me here is probably the opportunity to make pet stories and being able to achieve my goals. Both are things I wasn't able to do on Neo. Neo hasvery strict filters for pet profile stories and it is very hard for me to earn currency on Neo. I'm not that good at the games, so I get low amounts of currency after playing them. I'm more bothered by site errors/glitches than names. When I buy pet slots, I tend to adopt pets more often than creating them. That probably weaned me off the name obsession (for lack of a better term).

I would probably just make the site easier to navigate in order to keep new players.

you seem to have missed my point entirely i acknowledged that ofc they would promote their active site. i am fully aware of why they would do that. the entire point was that subeta isn't a good alternative

I definitely understand when closing one site trying to get that user base to your other functioning website; if you can salvage some, or potentially increase revenue, why not try?

However charahub was a character site. Subeta is an avatar/collection site* that was once a petsite. Referring people here is like that ice cream store closing knowing 90% of its clientele are gluten intolerant but still referring them to their sister location that happens to be a bakery that only uses wheat.

• subeta shines as a collection site. Collect pet names, collect challengers, wearables, plushies, beanbags, weapons, stickers, etc. Pet names are a worthless (ie:cannot be sold or traded) commodity that is ultimately a show of "only I can have this specific thing" and therefore has a collectable value. Making names non-unique has such a backlash and was shot down countless times because they'd make pet names non-collectable.

The only reason the unique name system could even remotely continue to work is if name hoarding is addressed. And why is name hoarding a problem? Because allowed it. The constant expansions a user can obtain to have up to 100 pets is ridiculous. This should NEVER have happened. The only way to keep the unique name systems in tact means everyone has to forfeit the amount of pet slots they have and the cap needs to be no more than 30. There is no need to own so many pets.

But since Pandora's box is essentially open and we can't go back, non-unique name system is the only solution to the ongoing problem. My answer to anyone that doesn't want this to happen? Oh well. Sorry you don't get to be a special snowflake anymore.

Would it honestly be a bad thing to have one less collectable thing on here?

True, but that "collection site" nature doesn't give people right to hoard things to the point of going after other users because "so and so isn't using ____ right."

Sorry if that was a confusing statement, I'm 100% in support of non-unique names.

I was mostly saying that as of today pet names are basically a collection.

I'd also like to chime in to the pet name situation. I personally liked having my names be unique names that no one else could own at first, it was kind of cool to be that one person with a name. But as I look at my pets, I see names that, I'm not entirely crazy about, but if I give them up, I'll never get to use that name again, and so they stay on my account, because they're decent names and I might be able to work with it at some point. I would love to make fan pets for some of the games I love, but guess what, I'm not the only one with that idea, so all the names associated with that IP are going to be taken. I was LUCKY that Eorlund wasn't taken and that's not a fan pet, that's my irl cat's name. Oh and I can't make most of my irl pet or tributes to my past pets, because they're all taken. And I don't want numbers, alternate spellings or some other words just tacked on to a tribute to my actual pets.

And what really gets me, is when I go to these profiles that have the desired names. There were quite a few that had stated on their profiles that they have no interest in the site anymore and never get on except that once a year to ensure those names aren't available to anyone else. That's truly messed up and incredibly disappointing. Those pets names are literally just sitting there on that account to be taken up and not be used by anyone else. And when a name does clear? You better have a dedicated friend group to help you get that name, otherwise, you're out of luck getting it. I learned that the hard way trying to get my favourite Pokemon's name. So yea, it's really ridiculous that we can't have the names we want if the pets have unique IDs attached to them.

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough when reading through past discussions of this, but I haven't even seen reasons given why they can't get rid of unique names. If we at least get reasons why Subeta staff wants to hold onto the unique naming system, we could have a discussion about it and maybe even try to figure solutions out about it to help get rid of it. Or at the very least give us an understanding of why this is still a thing. We are supposed to be a community after all and the community can only thrive with communication to move forward.

Edit to add that I think the site would also make more pet slot money if people could name pets what they want, because I know I would buy more pet slots if I could have the names I actually wanted.

Uh Ive been arguing against the unique name system Unless ur like adding on to what I'm saying there was 0 reason to ping me and act like i support it lol

Holy shit. Are we actually getting rid of it. I would so throw 500 CSC at the site for a name change so I can have the name of my cat.

reading 's post has me like

I've always been against non-unique names because I'm old and stubborn, but I'm facing the reality of the points being brought up against unique naming. Being real, subeta had its roots as a neopets clone and you can't deny it - even though it's grown so far now. Being a neopets clone it's followed the example of unique names and I have to admit, neopets is the only pet site I can think of that has unique names for pets. I didn't know so many new people were driven away by the naming issue, being brought up on neopets and being used to "the way things are" and not considering the new norm. It sounds like staff will move forward with non-unique naming regardless, but in my stubbornness the only way I would feel "compensated" is

1. make at least the first rename free? Like many other people I've named my pets "alternatives" and if things are just going to open up to let me name them whatever the heck I want I kinda want the same opportunity as if I was creating the pet for the first time in the new environment. (I don't know how charging renames will work in the new system, if it will still be a thing or what)
2. Can we please get special characters back in names? It was taken away as some unspecified security issue, but if it's at all possible going to an ID-only system, I would really like to have at least accented letters back like ñ.

I know I'm not entitled to any kind of compensation but meh, just my true feelings and I'm only speaking for myself. It's a touchy topic but I'll admit I'm having my mind changed about things. However there will undoubtedly be backlash from staunch unique-name supporters who haven't seen this yet, as evidenced by this lengthy thread Non-Unique Pet Names

Coming out of lurking to say: YAAAAS! This is awesome to hear ;u; <3 <3 <3

i guess a lot of it comes down to a matter of perspective on what subeta is and what it should be. i'm one of those people who's not really up to snuff on "modern" pet sites, so by my standards there are a lot of aspects of subeta that i think are fine, but that don't exactly fit in with the other sites out there - and by extension, what newer users might be looking for in a pet site. so the question is, is subeta just not the sort of site they want and so they can use the sites that ARE what they want, or should subeta change to be more like "the competition"? well, if the aim is a happily growing userbase with solid retention of new arrivals, i guess we know what the answer is.

for instance, from my perspective, the unique name system isn't a problem because it's just what i'm used to from every other pet site i used back in the day, compared to which subeta always felt more generous.

so to me, pet names don't need to literally be a character's name, because they exist not within the vacuum of an individual user's account, but amongst the larger community of pets - and so it would be awfully boring to have hundreds of pets named Mary floating around just because that's what all those characters were named.

i actually, by and large, enjoy the creativity that arises from naming pets with something more abstractly connected to a particular theme than JUST whatever name i first think up, and the excitement of brainstorming until i think up a good name that's available. a few months ago i spent a long time trying to think up a name for my latest pet idea, but everything i liked was taken - until i came up with Autumnal, which was free! BUT that's not to say i don't also enjoy having pets with names that actually are, well, their names. for example i wanted a pet for my character and didn't really feel like thinking up an alternative to her actual name; the spelling i originally used was taken, but was pleased to find Mirriam with an extra R was blessedly available!

and so, if complete freedom of name choice in that way is how users want to play the game, you could either say "well subeta is not that game; go play one that is," or you could change it.

ANYWAY the name thing is just one little example of a feature that turns some people off; obviously there are lots of other things, largely technical issues and confusion around how to actually use the site in the first place, and those definitely ought to be addressed. as a long-time user there's a lot i take for granted regarding how "intuitive" it is to do certain things, find certain pages, etc. simply because i've been at it for almost 11 years!

I'm absolutely glad to hear that. I really really am, and I'm super hopeful that we see a change in the (near) future. This is the most promising thing I've heard in a while.

I'd love to have cause to actually give money to this site again <3

Edit2add: As person who's spent an absolutely absurd amount of money on renaming pets (IDs) I don't feel like compensation is owed. I got what I paid for each time.

Definitely would love seeing special characters as an option again, if coding permitted.

That's awesome!! Thank you for replying ^_^ I probably didn't dig deep enough as I said, so it's good to hear it's been adressed and you do want to move away from it. :D