Unique Pet Name Changes

July 26, 2020 7:18 pm

It's happening! This change is a massive shift over what we've done for the past 15 years and we know upfront that this change will make some people happy, and some people upset. We're making this change to preserve the future of Subeta, and to keep excitement for new users as high as for those of us who've been here for the last 15 years.

We've listened to feedback on this for years, and have looked at how other popular modern games handle unique names like this. We've come to a decision and are implementing it today.

The goal at the center of these changes is to give everyone on the site the freedom to be as creative as they'd like, and build characters around their pets without having to scour for the name you want for months - and to honor those who fought for names and waited months.

Pet Names

From this point forward pet names are no longer unique. That means, for example, there can be two pets named Spot on the site at the same time. You can build stories and characters around a name, without needing to add numbers or strange spellings. We're looking forward to seeing a burst of creativity!

Changes: The new URL structure for your pets looks like: https://subeta.net/pets/keith/AwesomePetName

And the sCode for linking to pets is: [pet not found] ...where "keith" is the username of the pet's owner, and AwesomePetName is the (hopefully awesome) pet name!

All of the links around the site have been updated to reflect this change.

Changing Pet Name

You can now change your pet name once per month with a gold account. That means one name change per pet, per month. We'll have a way for everyone to rename their pets soon!

Legacy Pet Names

To honor those who have spent time, effort and money in obtaining unique pet names up until now, every pet created on the site up until this news post now also has a legacy pet name that links them to their names prior to this update. The old URL structure and sCode will still work, and will link to the pet with that legacy name.

For example, if I owned AwesomePetName before this update, then https://subeta.net/pets/AwesomePetName here will still link to my pet AwesomePetName for the rest of time!

If I change my pets name to "TotallyAwesomePetname" the legacy name will continue to be AwesomePetName. This status will persist even if your pet is transferred to a new owner.

There is a line on the pet profile designating the legacy name, and this can be removed targeting the .legacy-name class with CSS. For example, the following CSS will hide it completely: .legacy-name { display: none; }

Other Changes

We will no longer be clearing old pet names - all old pets will retain those legacy names.

We will still be clearing usernames at the same time, as they continue to be unique. No pet names will be cleared.

[edit] There is a helpful user-made FAQ here which compiles information from various staff posts/comments: FAQ about Legacy Names/Non-Unique Pet Names

July 26, 2020, 9:13 pm by

god I HOPE that doesn't happen, lol. Pet names are one thing - I preferred unique pet names since IMO it does lead to more creativity, but if this is how it's going to be then that's how it's going to be, I guess. But non-unique usernames... noooo thank you. Usernames should definitely remain unique.

July 26, 2020, 9:12 pm by

Finally some good news in this cursed year that is 2020.

July 26, 2020, 9:12 pm by

No, pet names don't clear anymore because it doesn't make sense for them to "clear" anymore. Previously, you couldn't name a pet something if another pet already had that name. Clearings were invented as a way to make an exception for inactive pets.

But now, you CAN name a pet something even if another pet already has that name. So you don't have to wait for the frozen account to clear; you can rename your pets those names you want, right now :)

July 26, 2020, 9:10 pm by

I mean...just because other pet/similar sites handle it this way doesn't mean we need to. I was always happy to spend hours looking for a unique name, and thrilled when I found one I liked. But to be honest the site is dying anyway. I hardly come here anymore because I'm not in the CW game so apparently there is nothing for someone like me to do. Either way it sounds like minds are made up and this is how it's going to be. I can finally name my tribute pet Omega!

July 26, 2020, 9:09 pm by

Last comment, though. I definitely see there now being a time in the future in which multiple people will be able to share the same username, only with numbers to define them (Example; User [12345], User [123456]) I'm kind of seeing this as the beginning of removing all unique and a ton of same names and usernames all over the place, which will be weird and kind of boring tbh. Just a thought.

July 26, 2020, 9:09 pm by

a bit disappointed. it was interesting seeing people get creative using fitting words for a character. i've found a ton of words and things that are open despite people claiming there's no good ones left, and i haven't even been here that long. lots of unique options and opportunities to explore characters beyond just what their names are. still, people seem excited despite the fact we aren't exactly in a neopets situation, so it's probably a good move for the site. it just sours things for me.

July 26, 2020, 9:07 pm by

Since the pound already has 70 pets in it, is it possible for the pound to become flooded with pets?

July 26, 2020, 9:06 pm by

Nice compromise ^_^

July 26, 2020, 9:06 pm by

I can finally create a memorial pet for my soul mate pup who recently crossed the rainbow bridge, the one thing I’ve wanted most for quite a while. Thank you ❤️

July 26, 2020, 9:04 pm by

I get people want to keep a "unique" name but with the amount of pet slots we have, it's going to come crashing down soon enough with the unique names. There is only so many and we are using up a fair amount. I just hope there isn't a mass exodus over this. I get it's upsetting to some, but I don't think this should really be a reason to leave. No one is taking away how special a pet is to you, you make them special to yourself. The name is just that, a name.

July 26, 2020, 9:00 pm by

i get your not being excited, this news actually makes me less motivated to work toward/on pets now but hope you don't leave ❤ i get the feelimg, though, I'm bummed, too.

July 26, 2020, 8:59 pm by

Sorry to post again but I just thought of another question -

You said pet names will no longer be cleared; what about pets on frozen accounts? I was waiting for one such pet name to be cleared so I could grab the name. I guess it's a moot point now, I'm just curious.

July 26, 2020, 8:56 pm by

MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST UPDATE IN THIS SITE SINCE I STARTED PLAYING

I'LL CRY

July 26, 2020, 8:56 pm by

I'm not crazy about the legacy name thing, so I'm glad there's going to be a way to remove it. Also thanks for the code to take it off the pet profiles, since the addition of it has thrown some of my profiles out of whack.

That said, I LOVE the free monthly name changes for gold accounts! That's super generous.

July 26, 2020, 8:56 pm by

I am 100% in favor of this, having to scour for names you want among tons of others or being forced to use funny characters and numbers in order to have a name you had your heart set on wasnt a good way for new users to come into this site. The whole thing felt ridiculously elitist to me, and I'm really glad we now have the freedom to name our pets whatever we want. Thank you so much. (the legacy name thing is cool. I literally don't care but i know a lot of people were proud of their unique name and do care so its valid to want some way to show that off still)

July 26, 2020, 8:54 pm by

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I figured that's what happened, at some point it's just better to rip the bandaid off right? I also understand my problem is a very specific one, and overall I think this sudden change was for the better. Thanks for hearing me out though, I really appreciate it, and it seems the suggestion to remove a Legacy name entirely is getting a lot of support, so there's that I can look forward to.

Seriously though, thanks for the reply and thanks for the changes being done to the site! I'm looking forward to all the new things to be implemented and change, this is all really exciting and I can't wait to begin work on my pets again. : D

July 26, 2020, 8:54 pm by

whoops, got ninja'd! Yeah, I would've liked a warning so I could try and change a name or two, but oh well, hey-ho. Can't be helped now, I suppose.

Also I second the idea of a vote for future huge changes like this, please!

July 26, 2020, 8:54 pm by

I don't get the point of having legacy names if there's going to be an option to remove it now? Maybe I'm missing something.

July 26, 2020, 8:52 pm by

Not thrilled about this, and I wish we could have at least had some sort of heads up that it was happening (I only saw one vague comment along the lines of "it'll be addressed soon" on the forums - PLEASE put updates like this on the news too, not everyone looks at the forums!!), but I'm not going to be jumping ship over it either. I guess legacy names are an alright compromise (though I agree, please add an option to get rid of those too! if I want to rename a pet then I'd rather get rid of the original name altogether, lol).

July 26, 2020, 8:52 pm by

I understand why this change was made, and I know many people are happy about this, but I wish there was some sort of vote or reaching out to see how most people felt. Maybe there was some sort of a vote I'm not aware of it? If so, sorry! But if not, I would like to see some sort of democratic system in place for big changes like this is the future. Thank you all for continuing to run and update the site!

July 26, 2020, 8:52 pm by

I am working on providing the option to permanently remove a legacy name from your pet, for those who want it. Thank you to the commenters who brought that up here and linked me to the suggestion topic! The topic is here for those who want to discuss it further: Please allow us to remove "legacy" status from our pets.

To clarify one thing: Legacy names are set in stone, because they are meant to honor the name a pet had prior to today's update. We will provide an option to remove it, but there will be never be a way to change the legacy name to a different name, as that would defeat the purpose of them.

July 26, 2020, 8:50 pm by

this is the best news I've heard in ages

July 26, 2020, 8:48 pm by

I guess a lot of people are happy about this, so thats good, but to me even though I didn't have certain names I wanted, its still a really cool part of what made this site unique, allowing one to a name. It also forced people to become more creative, including myself. Now, a lot of the ideas in the Name forums won't ever find homes. Honestly, I see this ad a negative. I loved having unique pets only I had. I'm sure others felt the same. This removes that now.

July 26, 2020, 8:47 pm by

A bit of both. I had been waiting to see what the announcement of non-unique pet names would be before I changed names, but these were names I did want to have exchanged. Like said, I wish there'd been a grace period or forewarning of this, because I would have spent a lot of money to change names before the update to have the right legacy name. Now I have pets with the right name but with the wrong pet id, and there's not much I can do about it.

July 26, 2020, 8:47 pm by

This came down to me, and if the lack of communication hurt you and your trust in us -- I'm sorry. I made the decision to come up with a plan that served, what I determined were the various needs, and just implement it. If we'd posted this plan, we'd still be responding and tweaking and changing, as we'd been doing for the last ten years. We've had conversations in the forums that have stopped and started because we were unwilling to make such a huge decision, so I just.. made it.

TLDR: The team continued to work on this policy in the back end, taking feedback from the forums and elsewhere and I made the decision to make the change.

July 26, 2020, 8:42 pm by

This is SO exciting!! Oh man I have no idea what I want to do but I'm SO stoked that I no longer need to hold onto names I'm uninspired for, out of fear of regretting it if I adopt out. I'm so excited, and if I wasn't currently in a drive-through I would be buying a subscription to celebrate haha. Can't wait to get home and spend money on this site out of excitement and passion, rather than a feeling more like 'well don't wanna miss this month's book for my pet.' This is such great news!!! I'm so happy!!

July 26, 2020, 8:41 pm by

This is really good and I'm happy it's been implemented, but I would've loved some kind of grace period or forewarning? There's a pet I wanted to rename with a special pet ID. I'm sad that I'm stuck with the Legacy name now, since the pet's name reminds me of someone I am no longer in contact with and wanted a better name... ):

Is there any way to get rid of a specific Legacy name completely? not just hiding it with csc, just... erasing it completely, since I don't really want to be stuck with it forever, but don't want to give up on the ID either...

I know this is an overtly specific situation, and I'm truly happy to be able to get all the names I've stalked for years and can finally get, but I might as well ask if there's any way to fix this... if I have to pay the 500 csc to change the Legacy name then I will, no questions asked.

July 26, 2020, 8:40 pm by

Am I going to have to say goodbye to some of my friends on here who are too unhappy with the changes? I'll really miss them =(

July 26, 2020, 8:40 pm by

Hopefully this will be a good decision for the longevity of the site.

That said, I am horribly disappointed with how staff had handled this change in regards to communication. This is a big change and for a year and a half, we had very little communication with staff other than few scattered posts about it (some not even on the Non-Unique Pet Names discussion on forums...), an update not terribly long ago about a proposed nickname system and promise for a poll to be held to see the userbase's options on it (especially since not everyone is going to be social, especially on something that is frankly on a very outdated platform), and we never even got the promised poll.

I guess the legacy pet names is at least something (especially since that still gives a "point" to adopt out pets for people who may wish to do so), but for such a big part of the website, I had hoped for far better communication and I am really disappointed how this was ultimately handled.

July 26, 2020, 8:35 pm by

Legacy names are meant to commemorate a pet's name prior to this change, and they are set in stone. They can ONLY be seen on a pet's profile, where you can hide them with CSS if you don't want them to be visible.

It's okay - you're allowed to feel the way you do and to express that. To answer your question:

Quote

If someone steals art/code from others is this part of the "Do Not Steal Or Redistribute Coding Or Art" rule and can be reported?

Yes, of course! All this update means is that pets can be named anything you want, even if there's already a pet with that name. Art theft, plagiarism, etc are still 100% against the rules and reportable.

Sorry, that is still disallowed. I can see this changing, though, as we move more of our code to new.subeta.net :)

July 26, 2020, 8:35 pm by

thanks for the clarification! I think I'll just delete the line for now.

There's a ">thread in the suggestions section right now asking for a way to remove the "legacy" option. I hope this gets implemented, because there's some legacy names I'd just as soon forget.

July 26, 2020, 8:35 pm by

i tried but I still get directed to the legacy pet, no matter on which one I click.

July 26, 2020, 8:34 pm by

It's finally here!

Excited to see what the pet community does with all this. :)

July 26, 2020, 8:34 pm by

July 26, 2020, 8:33 pm by

Congratulations!!! Your pet (formerly aristokatz) is now named Saint!

oh thank you, staff ;-; Aristokatz was one of the first pets I ever made but.. I was 16 and couldn't think of any names I liked that weren't taken, so I settled for a weird spelling of a movie I liked. I've held onto my loyalty boxes for the last 2 years, trying to decide if I should pick the name change and if so, what to? Now I can finally rename them to what I've wanted for so long!

This is one of my favorite features on other pet sites, so I'm happy to see it implemented here.

July 26, 2020, 8:33 pm by

Awesome thank you! I didn't think about it until looking at the pets I could potentially rehome. Thank you for looking into that!

July 26, 2020, 8:32 pm by

Quote

For the pet search, are all names going to show up or just the legacy one?

They all show up.

Suzie search Dimple search

The weird thing is that only one pet shows up in the "exact results" section, and it seems to be the pet who was most recently changed to that name. For example, the mortiking Suzie is mine, and I just changed her name today (originally it was Suushie).

Both Dimples (the illumis and the hipottu) are mine, but the illumis' name was changed today from something else, whereas the hipottu was always called Dimple.

So the "exact results" section might need a bit of revamping, but you can still see both of each in the "pets" section.

July 26, 2020, 8:32 pm by

OMG! I've already changed a couple of pet names already. :)

I also had to go through every single pet to remove the legacy marker. I hope we get the option to completely remove that (not just hide it). I don't care if I had the first pet named that name. I have a couple of pets I'd like to erase any connection to their old names. I can't just remake one because he's a glitched birthday pet.

July 26, 2020, 8:31 pm by

Actually had a rl pet pass away very suddenly this weekend. Was considering making a tribute pet, nice to know I can give her her proper name if I ever decide to do so. Thank you for making that possible, Subeta staff =)

July 26, 2020, 8:31 pm by

Aww no :c Sorry your CSC went to this, were you experimenting to see if this would happen or were you trying to actually switch your pet names?

Thank you for the answer though! I'll hold off on name swapping my pets until I think some more and decide what I'd like to do.

July 26, 2020, 8:30 pm by

That.. was actually something I had overlooked! It is currently tied to the pet, but I'm working on changing that now to make it tied to the account instead.

Thanks for the report! The Search page should have correct links now; could you check if it's now working for you?

To be honest, the Search page is pretty out-dated, and was not updated to account for non-unique pet names. While we could put time and effort into updating it, we're opting to work on replacing it entirely with a new and better search experience instead. So stay tuned <3

Sorry, we do have an existing rule against misrepresenting pet information. The rule (here) is about "fake pets" but it also clarifies that "covering up their pet profiles with a custom one using 'fake' pet images and false information about their pets" is disallowed.

However, it is 100% okay to hide the line if you don't want it to be visible on your pet's profile!

July 26, 2020, 8:30 pm by

I hate it, but this is a net good change. crotchety old grandma who hates change I'm glad to see that the legacy names are a thing. Thanks for all your hard work. ❤️

July 26, 2020, 8:28 pm by

I tried this and it's the first option: (ie pet1: Bob (legacy name Bob) name swap with pet2: John (legacy name John) -> pet1: John (legacy name Bob) and pet2: Bob (legacy name John).

0/10 would not recommend.

July 26, 2020, 8:26 pm by

This is great news. As someone who has been on this site for 15 and a half years, I have a good number of decent names (including ones I've paid to change in the past), as well as a few names that are a bit 'off' to make them close to what I wanted. If this is going to help the site continue to thrive, I'm happy to share my names with others. And I'm excited to make a few name changes of my own. Thank you!

July 26, 2020, 8:25 pm by

Yay for non-unique pet names and legacy names! I've been waiting all week for this ^^ Thank you staff for all your hard work <<3

I do have some questions that I believe someone also asked previously, if we were to use the pet name swap function for 750CSC, would the pets still have their original legacy name on their profiles, or would they have the legacy name of the name they've swapped with? (ie pet1: Bob (legacy name Bob) name swap with pet2: John (legacy name John) -> pet1: John (legacy name Bob) and pet2: Bob (legacy name John) OR pet1: Bob (legacy name Bob). and pet 2: John (legacy name John)? If this makes any sense? ^^'

I think it'd be nice for people who would like to keep the legacy names of their pets to have the second option available somehow c:

Also, is there a plan to modify the name swap function in the near future (ie make it part of the gold accounts also or a price adjustment?) If so, I'll wait a bit to see how things go before swapping names around.

July 26, 2020, 8:22 pm by

Throw me in with the generally unhappy people about this change... After working so hard on my pets and their names, this still comes off a bit of a slap in the face. Just countless hours of planning, help of friends and actually being more creative towards characters, just feels like now it was almost for nothing. I know its an unpopular opinion but I'm just bracing myself for the ripoffs and plagiarizing. (If someone steals art/code from others is this part of the "Do Not Steal Or Redistribute Coding Or Art" rule and can be reported?)

For the pet search, are all names going to show up or just the legacy one?

I know the 'why' this was done and I know the team thought hard about this. I respect your choice and trying to do what's best for the site; it's positive to see more people happy about the change and being worth it over people grumpy like me. I'll probably come around in time once I process this more.

July 26, 2020, 8:20 pm by