Maybe it's because I'm an older user, but I miss the value of pet names. I find there was also more activity around pets like putting them ufa and users put more effort in them. Maybe we could make pets more special/desirable again?

Also, there are a lot of legacies who are stuck in inactive and frozen accounts. I find that sad. Maybe the adoption center could have days where admins could adopt out the legacy names to active users?

It's a no from me.

The only "value" in pet names is sentimental value we users assign to them. They cannot be sold for currency or traded. Legacy names are intended to be a sort of medal of merit for users who went above and beyond to grab petnames back when we had regular name clearings and unique petnames.

We users don't know why someone was frozen or went inactive, and we don't know if they might be coming back. Going off the sentimental value of petnames: it would be pretty miserable if someone had go on a long hiatus due to IRL stuff, so they self-freeze for the sake of exerting self-control, only to return 2 years later and find out that someone yoinked most of their legacy names. :/

If you want more activity in the pet forums and more hype for pets, Keith did mention being interested in increasing the pet slot limits!

Ehhhhh....I don't think so.

I feel the pain when it comes to LNs on frozen / inactive accounts. On one hand, it bums me out and I want to scoop up those awesome LNs and give them love. On the other hand, active / frozen or not - the name isn't UFA so it wouldn't be all that different if the person was active. LNs are linked to the pet ID so for them to be "rehomed" it would mean staff taking the actual pet, not the name alone, from someone and giving them to someone else. That doesn't seem right to me, especially because people do step away for a variety of reasons and it doesn't mean they'll be gone forever. I know if something happened and I was gone for a long time but expected my pets and their names to be here when I returned, I would be super heartbroken to come back and find them gone.

I think the low activity when it comes to adopting pets in/out is minimally related to LNs at this point. The site as a whole is pretty "slow" and the forums even more so. It's a bit of a bummer, because I really miss the thriving and active site we once had, but hopefully things will pick up. There's a nice community of passionate pet people still here, but understandably we're all in and out based on our own schedules. The boards in my signature are a good place to find pet-loving pals, support, inspiration, and to share / support ideas that could make the pet aspect of the site more appealing / engaging for people (more activity in petland).

Legacy names are gone, and we're all benefiting from it. I deleted almost all my legacy names and I think that if they were all wiped out, that wouldn't be that bad of a thing.

Instead of being at each other's throats for certain names, we're actually collaborating with each other. There aren't feuds because someone grabbed a name someone else got in a clearing. Which happened a lot more often than you'd think.

My pets are valuable because I care about them, their story. Not because I got their name first.

Anyway, the reason why the pet community is slower is that we haven't had access to more than one slot a year since 2022. Which slows down the desire for adoption because so many people are at the cap, and cannot adopt more.

We got signs that more pet slots ARE on the way, so the pet community will be alive again soon

I would hate to have my LNs wiped. The "title" holds meaning to me, and I love that I have that little "special" connection to the first decade I spent on this site.

NUNs is one of the best things that happened for the site, it opens up space for so many people (a huge perk for new users) to have whatever names resonate with them and got rid of the disappointment, frustration, and drama of the old system.

Being able to change pet names more easily also cut down on adoptions I'd bet, because in the past the cost of changing a name when you wanted to switch up a character was significant and people would adopt out pets so they could refill that slot without having to pay to change the name. (I love that we can change names more easily!).

My pets are valuable because I care about them I was thinking the same thing. My pets are meaningful to me and it's because of my own personal connections to them - their history, name, character, etc. Granted, I do like to "collect" LNs since when the system rolled all my pets were LN and it's fun to keep with that, but that's a personal preference and not everyone feels the same (clearly lol). In the end I'd choose the right name over having all LNs and I'm sure at some point I'll make brand spanking new pets.

I think "pets" as a whole aren't as exciting to invest in (for the community as a whole) atm in part because spotlight has been reduced to 1 time a week with a crazy wait time for feedback / winning. In the suggestion board linked in my signature I have recommendations on improving this so more people feel inspired / motivated to "work on" their pets. You're totally right, the pet slot amount is totally a driving factor! I hadn't thought of that but between the limit (though I'd bet not a ton of people have maxed out) and the cost for more slots total movement of pets has gone down for sure. I can't wait for the new slots to roll out, omg I'm still so excited about that.

Glad that you like LN, but they're a really sore subject to me because they're a reminder of bad moments I've witnessed in the pet community in the early days, and I'm aware that it's a very personal opinion.

And I feel like this suggestion is feeding into that old, toxic mentality, where we were stalking old frozen and inactive accounts to scavenge their names, like we were a bunch of vultures/hyenas.

Pet clearings were very competitive, and I get that people liked that "sense of accomplishment" to win and get the name, but in the end, only one user was happy and the rest was dissapointed because they didn't get it!

We got away from this competitive, selfish mentality and I feel this suggestion would just bring it back.

Mmmmmm gonna have to say no on this one, sorry. :c laid out all the reasons why the old system was discouraging. As someone who wants their pets/characters to have their actual first names (and not a real word, or their last name, or their name with a period at the end, or any of the other things I had to do back then), name clearings were a nightmare (and also not fair to people, depending on their time zone/internet speed/etc.). I really, really do not want to go back to that system.

There are pets who still have Legacy Names, and that's great! I LOVE that we created a compromise for the people who didn't want to move to non-unique names. I don't want to change this good thing that we have created. I get feeling nostalgic for the days when pets were adopted out solely for their good names, but... oof. It was fun in its own way, and very, very discouraging in many other ways that made the site inaccessible for some.

I def. agree :)

That's a no from me.

I've pretty much only had LNs on my account since the switch to NUN, and for me that's worked. It's worked as a permanent stopgap to me simply collecting names just to have names because by relegating myself to LNs, I can work on my existing pets stories, profiles, art, etc.. and have to really think about whether or not I want a pet name on my account or not.

With that said, do I think that the legacy names on frozen/inactive accounts should, after a certain period of time, be up for grabs, definitely not. There's a myriad of reasons why a user on site may be frozen or inactive, and it's not always necessarily that they broke a site rule. They could have just simply decided to take a hiatus from the site and having them come back to see all their names up for grabs, yeah, I don't see that being good overall in keeping onto any of the existing site user base. Did I like having unique names, obviously yes, but I'm fine with the way the pet name system is now. And I'm already too late, haha.. Keith already spoke. I think his solution works in bringing more value to pets by giving value to existing things attached to pets.

I really disliked the old name system because names just do not feel like something we should be competing for, given how many of us use Subeta pets as a means to showcase our OCs. I never wanted to compete for names because I knew I would feel disappointed if I didn't get it and probably also feel pretty bad if I actually got it. I remember once I randomly saw a person happen to say they had a character with a name I had (not that I had a lot of good LNs, lol, but I had a few!) It was Tybalt I believe, and I felt really guilty that I had it. I remember I wanted to offer to adopt the pet out to them but then that would mean I'd have to spend time finding an alternative less 'desirable' name that I still liked, and I really liked the name Tybalt so I didn't really actually want to adopt him out. I much prefer non-unique names.

I don't necessarily dislike the idea of trying to increase value in pets but it's a bit hard to think of ways outside of things like IDs, names, battle stats, and the books read/food eaten collections -- and two of those things leave a bad taste in my mouth. I really am not a fan of the "value" for something like pets being in how unattainable it is for everyone else. I prefer it when value is more based off things that are achievable for even new users if they work toward it. While it's inevitable for users to put value on things like IDs and legacy names, I really don't want it encouraged by the site officially.

But really I think first we need to figure out the pet slot cap situation before we worry about increasing our pets' value ;)

Don't know if you've been on Discord, but Keith has said very very promising things in the last week concerning this. The create-a-pet page is being overhauled as well, meaning that they're paying attention to our greedy needs

I think a lot of people use pets/names as placeholders or as representatives for their own original characters at this point and I don't think adopting out names from older accounts is going in the right direction. I think focusing more on character creation and making it so people can more easily put their visions into them would be cool personally.

love the idea of showing battle stats & achievements (please let me show off how much i've spent on books at every point i can). really, i think the biggest thing is just a big overhaul of pet profiles and making it easier to customize them, but you've already mentioned that is in the works for kumos :) and i dont think i will ever use all the pet slots, but i am glad to hear they will be increased as i know many users have been asking for a long time.

as for the overarching discussion of this thread i LOVE my legacy names and you can pry them from my grabby hands. that being said, they absolutely should not be brought back. i don't wanna talk about how much fricken stress i went through trying to snag some names.

I'm indifferent about legacy names even if I like mine but I do kind of wish they weren't held on such a high pedestal and that we could still name swap while keeping the legacy title. People seem to prefer legacy names when adopting. There's ones I have that I wouldn't mind parting with but want to keep the IDs and I wish there was a way to make us both happy.