[edit] 24th Nov - seeing as we've got 5 more CS slots available (thank you!) and this thread took a side turn into non-unique names / hard caps, please can this be locked , as there's a (newish) thread about non-unique names here (link).

I support this if only just to help in tempting . But seriously more slots are great!!!

As much as I am a pet person, I am actually against more slots. We can have so many already; I'm already at 92 (I believe the current max is 95) and that is really so many. What many consider "desirable" names (real names/words) are rarely put UFA or pounded and with the daily clearings (and daily crashes thanks to the autorefreshers) it's getting harder and harder to find names to want. I can't imagine if we were given 5 more slots, on top of the yearly quest-a-thon and loyalty box.

Unless additional slots were drastically more expensive, I couldn't see myself supporting this or bothering to buy them (I can't even find names I can work with for a dozen IDs I already have). I'd much rather subeta create something else to draw in revenue from pet people.

- DIES You have how many? :o I don't need more slots since I struggle with what I have... But I know you're a good pet mama and could probably handle more. ;) I don't know where I would stand on this. I get the reasons from both sides. Maybe Subeta needs to create more to do with pets so the ones you have can keep you busier. ;P <3

I've got to agree with Andrea here. Pretty much the only reason why I'm on subeta is for my pets. But at this rate, the abundance of pet slots are becoming a bit of a problem.

I've been on many, many, pet sites. Most of them have crashed and burned into the ground for one reason or another. But a prominent theme with these sites is that there's been a combination of "Unique pet names coupled with "unlimited" slots." What ends (or ended) up happening is that a handful of users ended up with many, many, desirable pet names. Whenever newer users joined, anything they would want as far as RW and RN names were already taken. Thus, anyone who'd join with the intent of playing a pet site had little to no reason to stick around. User retention was failing. A site simply can't survive on the same old users, and things are already stagnant as far as anything pet related goes.

There's plenty of gorgeous pets and colors on the site. Unfortunately it comes up short when one of the most desirable things about a pet is their name. One thing subeta does well is making inactive names available after a year. However, it gets discouraging when anything desirable ends up with the same users over and over. It doesn't help that these same users are the ones responsible for crashing the site at 3PM due to auto-refreshing for clearing names.

If pet names were no longer unique, I could 100% get behind more pet slots. The availability of pet names just isn't keeping up with the abundance of pet slots as things are now.

Couldn't agree more really.

The pet aspect is almost not fun anymore, but I've got so much sunk cost/nostalgia/friends here so I stay but I have no desire to buy more slots (I bought them for IDs, of which I have nothing to name them because of everything you said).

If things keep going at this rate and more slots are given in mass we'll be at neo names in a handful of years.

I'm going to echo what and have said. I agree with what they both said.

Too much of a good thing is like not enough. Some users are approaching the 100 slots mark which imo should be set as the 'Hard cap' for pet slots. 100 is A LOT of pets for anyone to own. It's discouraging for new comers to see users with close to 100 'desirable' names, when all you're left with is 'Shadow_01'. It doesn't encourage new people to get into pets, since the most 'valuable' aspect of a pet (names) is almost unobtainable because many users have so many slots.

I remember when we all about 15-20 slots, we had to make choices, decide if we really wanted a name, let go of names so that we could get ones we really wanted with the slots we had. Now it's easy to have 20-30 pets that we keep just cause we have the slots.

Slots are fun, but we are facing a growing problem with them. So I oppose adding even more.

when i joined subeta round about 10 years ago, i was amazed at how many available pet names there were. even if a name i wanted was already taken, there were always plenty of great alternatives. it was such a refreshing change after neopets left me thinking up increasingly weird ways to spell names or mashing together random syllables if i didn't want names with numbers or underscores.

obviously that's changed over the years as more and more pets have come into existence. that's a natural part of a site's growth, and it will continue to be the case as the years go on... buuuuut i wouldn't want to see that growth continue at an untenably exponential rate. just this year i struggled to find a name for a new pet, because everything i could think of - including variants such as plurals, past tenses, and alternate spellings - were taken. and yes of course there is still a decent amount of nice options, but if things continue unmitigated, we very well could end up in a place that is highly discouraging especially for new users. the ability to have really good pet names is part of what made/makes subeta so special and appealing!

i get wanting to be able to have as many pets as you can afford slots for, but there's gotta be a limit eventually - and unfortunately for some, 100 might have to be it. that's SO MANY you guys, it really is. i myself have 30 and i really need to sit down and get these critters sorted.

[edit] holy shit is this thread freaking out for anyone else?

[edit] lmao nevermind it went away asjdnfdamkl

I agree with some of the others, and we really do need a hard cap (100 feels like a good number). The seemingly endless slots has become overwhelming to be honest. I love having more pets, but even I'm reaching that point of "too much of a good thing".

I kind of support this and also kind of agree with others- I like the idea of more slots up to 100 and then I feel like the price of them should jump substantially, because that is a lot of pets and the various aspects of pets (clearings, large tcs, battle events, etc) can be pretty taxing on the site.

This would give older, established pet enthusiasts something to still look forward to but slow them down a lot in the interest of other users and the site's health. Subeta needs a constant stream of money to survive, and sadly most of that money doesn't come from pet people anymore, barring a few. I don't think it should actively try to cut off people who have been habitually tossing their money at the site for a decade or more and still want to in the future.

I'm all for making pet names not unique. Dappervolk has this and I loved it, was able to name my pet whatever I wanted. If names were not unique I'd be okay with more slots.

I think the hard cap at 100 would be a really good idea. It would allow newer users to keep getting slots from QaTs without always being five years behind current users, while still having the opportunity to have the events.

I still believe there's other issues regarding the growing number of available names, and a very big issue with autorefreshers and crashing the site almost daily.

Overall the sites ability to bring in new users is essentially pets and/or wears. If the ability to find nice pet names keeps escalating to where the same handful of users having everything, it kills half of the potential new users joining and staying. I mean if the same token users can keep the site 100% funded and staff paid then I guess this isn't an issue.

I would also support non-unique names (all pets are tied to an ID anyways) and a lower unlimited pet slot amount.

I fully support this!

I agree with scrapping the unique pet name rule. I would also like to see more special characters allowed. I couldn't create a pet with the name I really wanted yesterday because it had two ' in it.

If there was more flexibility with naming pets it wouldn't matter how many pets individual players have.

tbh if they add a hard cap for pet slots, I know many users who would just not participate in quest-a-thons any more. At all. And loyalty totems have limited appeal if you remove the one really big ticket item for pet people. So that's a no from me. If I want to own 150 pets, and I can afford to buy petslots in order to have 150 pets, and I have the creativity to come up with 150 different characters for them, why piddle in my cornflakes? I mean, might as well set a hard cap for CWs too then, because you're eventually going to run out of cool and unique names for interesting items too.

That aside, I'm sorry to hear that some users are bored with their pets, but you don't have to lump everyone into the same basket.

On the topic of pet names being non-unique... I would like them to go by ID basis instead of petname, but Subeta's 14 years into its lifetime and I feel that this would cause a nightmarish mess. On one hand, more people would absolutely spend on the renames to get the real names they want! On the other hand, CSC would probably inflate.

And what's to say that you wouldn't get bored anyway? I mean you have the real name of your dreams. Effortlessly. Heck, you can own 50 pets, all with fantastic real names and characters that you love and adore... and then you run out of steam and it's not fun any more.

[edit]A friend was kind enough to point out one thing - outrage. Expect outrage if pet names were made free-for-all. Because some users have spent a shitton on renames. By making petnames readily available, you're basically going "well, sucks to be you, you've spent over 100$ in your playtime on things you and everyone else can now have for free. : ]"

Don't get me wrong, I understand both sides of the argument and I also understand that pet slots are not lightweight for the servers, but I feel that there's a better way to deal with this. What that better way is, I don't know yet but I'm mulling it over.

I'm an ID person who has spent a megaton over the past 13 years on renames and moving names around and I would not be outraged in the slightest if names were not unique. In fact I'd probably blow through my csc/be more inclined to buy more csc because I could actually get any name I wanted.

And CWs aren't unique. Wearables aren't unique, pet IDs are unique but almost (if not) unlimited , pet names are 100% unique. If a CW design is limited or private another user xan submit something similar. Once the similar pet names are gone then what y'know.

Dood, there's only so many spiffy sounding and fitting words you can string together for a particular CW name. I'm going to use one from my trades as an example: Tucked Up Snow Scarf. Yeah, you can have variations of the colour, but once that string of words is taken, afaik it can't be used either as another CW name, or a regular onsite item name. So the Tucked Up Snow Scarf can't be a name for a restockable, the site artist will have to think of something more interesting for that line of scarves that are tucked upwards. That's what I meant. And likewise, if a particular string of words is taken by an official item, the CW makers can't use it. At least to my knowledge.

I also like my low IDs but unlike you, I'd be both glad and a bit disappointed because hey, I could have spent that CSC on something else if I had known that the site would eventually switch to a more unrestricted system for petnames. I don't have enough income to be able to spend real money on Subeta without risking not paying my bills for the month, soyeah.

I get it, but also... I've seen enough chaos, drama and fuckery on this site to be leery of really big, loaded changes like this. :'| It's not just going to affect a small handful of people. It's going to affect literally everyone. And, no offense, but you and I are probably not a very accurate measure of how the other hundreds of users will react.

If it's possible for the unique pet name rule to be scrapped a staff member could create a topic about it in the Brainstorming forum. Would it be a good idea etc. ?

Subeta has had opinion polls in the past so this could be another way of getting users' views on the subject.

Possibly, but I think pet names are a more complicated issue coding-wise than they seem because of the way servers currently handle pet names and pet IDs. :/ To my knowledge, coding restrictions and security are also why we don't have apostrophes in petnames any more, and why pets with a period in front of their name are having issues with displaying properly.

I don't know if changing to an ID-based system vs. a petname-based one would allow us to use apostrophes and periods in petnames, if the switch to such a system is even possible to begin with. That's something a programmer would know more about and I'm not savvy enough with programming to even begin giving a reliable answer.

I have to agree with this, I feel like there are so many sites already where the only things that really matter are IDs and making your pets look pretty. I still play some of those off and on because I think the designs are nice to look at, but I have zero investment in those pets as characters. I think half the fun of Subeta is getting names that are intriguing but kind of a question mark and finding a way to make it inspire you. If I wanted OCs without any naming limitations, I'd just have off-site OCs. There's other sites where I can post them and write about them/etc. Honestly, as much as I love this site, Subeta hasn't been the greatest place for that anyway considering how many times we've had to fix all our pet profiles in the past few years.

I think everyone who tries for common names can understand the frustration of missing those names or not being able to find something close to what you wanted. Hell, I used to get so disappointed by this that I stopped letting myself give a name to a character before I had something secured. It's something everyone deals with, no matter how good their percentage of success appears to be.