Hello! General TL;DR: Legacy names are now the 'shiny pokemon' of Subeta and have potential to be a great system addition to not only make players happier by getting more unique pets but also potentially give the developers another area of monetization!

How I know things (maybe, but probably not) Before I begin, I want to explain my background so I don't sound like a salty old skool subeta player (tm)! I'm a game designer, I've been making games since 2009 but I have a formal education at a top NA arts College for game design and have formal work experience. But in all honesty, I'm a bumbling idiot and please take everything I say with a grain of salt!! I also recognize some of this comes from personal opinions, but do hear me out as I think Legacy names have potential to be something much more useful, even lucrative for Subeta should they wish to use it that way!

My experience with names & Legacy names on Subeta I've been playing Subeta since 2011 during the unique names era of the site. In my personal opinion, getting cool names was my favourite part of the experience. There was something really special about hunting for the perfect name, just like finding a special CW on sale, but I understand it was just my experience. Since the change I've been less motivated to own new pets and have spent more time on other areas of the site. But there was this kinda shift in how I and I think others viewed pets- that my Legacy named pets had a 'value' over the others. And it's hit me: Subeta's economy revolves around scarcity, and by making Legacy names only attached to old pets with no way to obtain them in the present, they are inadvertently makes new pets less 'special'. this is especially true given that once an account is frozen, legacy names are gone with it.

Think of Shiny pokemon-- They're only a different colour but people covet them. Legacy names have become something of that for Subeta- something everyone wants and somehow gives the pet something special about it that no other pet has. It's such a cool way to let people keep unique names but also get the ones that they want! But with the pools to remove legacy names and accounts freezing, legacy names are becoming fewer and there isn't a way to replenish them, making them rarer to come by as they are finite and impermanent. This is great in some regards but can pose a lot of problems, especially in the years to come.

My Suggestion to Subeta Staff: Permanent unique names are something that are sought after, and you can utilize that in a big way. Making it possible to obtain unique 'legacy names' through certain means would remove potential problems with the scarce 'resource' that is currently here. Especially if it's a cash shop item to give your pet a unique legacy name that no one else can have, you have a lot of potential for a really nice feature that I'm sure many people would happily buy into (myself included). It'd be a great way to introduce a fresh customization option and a new thing for us to spend our CSC on!

Of course, this is my own dumb game design brain that believes that this could be a really effective addition to the economy and it's totally cool if people disagree just please be kind :) I would just be very sad if these things get lost to time or that newer pets are seen being less 'valuable' for lack of a better term!

Oh, boy, I don't want a microtransaction of this.

Unique petnames were removed because people found that system too limiting, too inaccurate (accounts were flagged up for grabs a day early, or a day late) and felt it was too skeezy to stalk old accounts for name clearings. ._. Personally, I really don't want to bring it back with extra potential for harassment of whatever users are still playing because someone somewhere has to have a particular legacy pet name and is willing to go above and beyond to chase another user off the site or bully them into dunking their pet into the bathhouse pools just so they can have their legacy pet name.

The legacy names are a final salute to the old petname system. They were made to try and smooth over the huge change between unique and non-unique petnames because lots of people put so much effort into getting petnames (taking a day off of work, getting friends involved so they were much more likely to nab a certain petname they wanted, staying up super late/waking up super early, etc.) and staff didn't want all that to feel like completely wasted effort. Having them be available again for a fee just feels like the whole petname system change was pointless.

Well the legacy name was just a way to keep the original owners of pets from feeling too salty about the new naming dynamics. (People were still salty though). I don’t think Subeta wants to make pet names a commodity anymore, hence the change.

Absolutely no thanks to bringing back user-imposed rarities on pets. This straight up negates the point of moving away from unique names.

Pets should be special because their owner likes them, not as a status symbol. Legacy names do not affect gameplay such as battling, food/book high scores, etc. In which, if someone needs their pet to be "valuable", those are goals right there to works towards.

Just think of legacy names as many of us do pet IDs. Smaller and unique numbers are rare, rarer by the day, and very rarely leave accounts. When you get one it's something special.

This would just be taking a big step backward.

Artificial scarcity for the sake of profit sucks. Frankly, I think legacy names as a sop to users was a mistake in the first place. No need to compound it by trying to monetize it now.

Most of my pets have legacy names, but that's just because they were acquired while unique names were a thing and I'm resistant to change. My pets without legacy names mean just as much to me. I don't even know which pets have legacy names and which don't without actually looking at them.

Naming pets is hard enough as it is for me, I really don't want to finally choose a name that satisfies my pet planning only to be confronted with "oops can't have that name because someone paid money to make it all theirs and now you have to put in extra work to flail around to find another name." Basically it ends up being, yay you can use any name now, but...surprise...not really. I think that's called something like "bait and switch."

I also wouldn't like this feature, or if it was implemented this wouldn't be something I would ever really pay money for...? It seems to me it would just amount to paying money to have like a special star on a pet's profile? If people like legacy names there are always plenty of people adopting out legacy names on the adoptions subforum, and if people really want a name... they can just get it now. The non-unique names has been really awesome for subeta imo!

If you want a pet to stand apart from the crowd and be special, there are plenty of ways to do so, including putting the work in to create a pet profile for the spotlight, training for battle, working on reading/feeding a special pet, working on getting that pet to the top position on the job center etc. If someone isn't as motivated to work on a pet because they don't have a legacy name, I feel like there's some sort of disconnect there? Maybe the pet's name isnt inspiring you, and in that case... you can easily create a name that does!

This is like UCs on Neopets all over again... There are rumors that they'll sell "UC paintbrushes" over there for 1000 or so NC.

No thanks!

I struggled with the concept of non-unique names for ages (seeing as I'm a self confessed pet-a-holic, having spent way too long 'stalking' names for clearings! :P) but I don't want to see any system where we can 'buy' (with real money, or sP) legacy names. As other have said, the whole legacy name idea was implemented to give some credit (for want of a better phrase) to those who had worked hard to get those unique names originally....

I wouldn't clear my pets' legacy names, but I don't personally see legacy names as having any real 'value' - I mean we can't trade pets anyway, so the legacy name literally just gives a small mention on the pet profile (which I've hidden for some of mine as it doesn't work around their profile anyway!).

Part of what I enjoy most about this site is that items have measurable value - not pets. The pet trading system on Neopets was crazy. It's what I look to avoid here.

I wasn’t a fan of the initial change to non-unique pet names, but ultimately I do see why that change happened. That said, I wasn’t super into actively searching for names on site and tended to be pretty blase about getting names. I didn’t actively stalk names, and names I’d gotten in the past that were desirable were purely by chance. I also wasn’t super disappointed if I didn’t get a name I wanted, partially because I usually had other names I wanted and because in the end, I usually just moved on.

But with that said, I don’t think monetizing or even returning to a unique name system is the answer. A large reason why there was an implementation to non-unique was also because newer pet sites no longer have that system in place and subeta in order to retain existing users and draw in new users had to change with the times. It helped to draw in new users and to a certain extent, with users who weren’t fans of the pre-existing unique name system, it retained those older users.

Subeta made the choice to implement and stick with a non-unique pet name system, and it’s something that overall, i believe should be left as it was. The legacy system as it stands is personally fine for me, and I’m fine with knowing in the future I’ll likely have a finite number of pets I’ll own because I only plan on owning legacy pets. Additionally, i just don’t think monetizing names, and the ability to retain a legacy unique name is the answer, as in the long run, i think it’d draw away a lot of the user base instead of retaining and keeping the existing user base.

As someome that got indeed harrassed and verbally shamed* for owning certain Pet names way back with the old system I really wouldn't want all of this to come back in a slightly different costume.

(* a.k.a. I was told my character designs would suck and I should stop to embarrassing myself and better give the names away to someome with skills [=person who wrote me this of course] instead.

Unfortunately I am already my own worst critic so this mail hurt a lot and it took me a while to add texts back on my pet profiles at all...)

I agree because names are important and how would the moneytising benefit the free players? You're excluding a whole set of people who live on a fixed income as well. A pet name is important sometimes they're used to memorialise someone or a moment in a player's history and they want to document it somehow, it is a nice idea but think about the consequences of this. It could make people not want to pay for something that is already here and fixed in a better way and worse could cause more people to leave and we don't want that. At least I don't.