I've been following this thread for a while but I haven't actually put into words what I was thinking. I won't pretend that I carefully read every response, some of them I definitely skimmed, but I'm going to try to organize my thoughts. I will be repeating some things that were already stated and I know this, I will try to indicate whenever I do this so it's clear I'm not just posting without having read both sides of the argument, but I think it's important to repeat some of these things in large part because I don't want it to seem like only one person has these thoughts and others don't also feel this way.
I'll put a tl;dr at the end of this so feel free to skip if you're like me and skim longer posts.
First things first, I'm agains this idea personally. I've read and seen the arguments on both sides and I can see where each side is coming from and both are coming from a good place. However, there are reasons I am against it, some personal and some general. Solutions to these (including ones posed before) will come after the list.
1. As was previously stated, this feels more like punishing users that can't necessarily get online often as opposed to rewarding those who do. There are plenty of ways to reward people for being active and many users worked extremely hard to get where they are and still come online often enough that they should be able to keep their names, which leads to my next point.
2. Just because someone has the time to log on and click a button to feed pets, doesn't mean they have enough time to get online and gather the food necessary.
3. This is very cost-prohibitive for users with large collections (previously stated) and while I understand that we're trying to move names, it'll hurt people who collect for memories or colors rather than "good" names.
4. For me, this deters collecting of really any kind (including names). You have to be extremely selective so you can keep your pets alive. Sure, it will end up freeing up names, that's a fact. However, it will also make a huge dent in the name market itself. Who wants to waste time buying a name that they don't absolutely adore just for the novelty (example: I sold Mustelid a while ago, no one except hardcore lovers of animals of that species would give it a second glance and even then probably only scientists because why have a name like that in your showroom when you can only keep up with say... 50 pets tops?). This wouldn't result in more name flow, it would result in less names and less of a name market in the long run.
5. A very large portion of my showroom is pets I'd like to sell or pets I'm keeping for when Kir inevitably asks for them. I'm sure a good portion of the pets I do have that I use that way will end up being allowed to die which just means more TU spent reviving them when Kir asks. However, why bother hatching often if it's going to be such a huge tax on you? Sure, you can just release pets you don't like, but those then end up in the forest where anyone can get them, resulting in a drop in prices for those pets and even less incentive to hatch more colors for those that DO sell them.
6. (previously stated) Why bother trying to sell pets? You have to keep them fed and the longer they sit (which can be a long time depending on the species/color/name/price) the more they cost you. You want it to go fast enough not to drain your wallet? Better be ready to sell for far less than you'd like. This combines problems from points 4 and 5 as well for even less incentive to hatch/collect and therefore less demand for selling.
7. (previously stated) It may not be what it was initially intended to be, but this is how the site has evolved. It has become a game of collecting more than pet interaction and while I see where it could be both, those who want to collect shouldn't be punished for it (looping back around to point 1).
Now then, I see how/why people are for this idea, don't get me wrong. I see where this appeal comes from so let's make list #2 here of things I personally feel would be important before moving forward with this, including things that have (you guessed it) already been suggested.
1. (Already suggested) Food pen feeding everything in your account. This is a no-brainer and would absolutely have to happen for this to be viable.
1a. (Already suggested) Better control over the food pen so we can pick and choose what's fed and what isn't (showroom categories, profile, rancher (categories?)). Maybe even include a priority list for what is chosen so if something HAS to go unfed it's the things you care less about.
1b. If we want to go even deeper, why not set how far we want our pets fed? Maybe a more gentle 70 that can provide a little buffer in our showroom (in case a food item fills them up over 70 so it doesn't have to be fed again for longer) but our profiles we'd want them at 90? This would go well with the last sentence in 1a. Nothing in lower "priority" categories is fed until everything in the higher priority ones is as full as it needs to be.
2. (Already suggested) Auctions shouldn't let pets go hungry, but we need a better limit on them. Auctions shouldn't be unlimited time. 1 week max (maybe 2, actual max time would have to be discussed) and you should only be able to make a set number at a time (5? That'd be my first suggestion). Honestly, even if this idea DOESN'T get implemented it'd be nice to get this update to the auctions. Some of the existing ones are absolutely ridiculous.
3. (Already suggested) Gardens. It'd be nice to have a way to make some of your own food. Not a punishing garden where food rots of course, just something that you can plant daily and come back to pick the next day or week or month depending on when you can get back online.
4. (Already suggested) More REs (automatically picked up like the TU ones) for free food. Either that or just some other way to get free food daily.
4a. (Already suggested) Make the apple tree less tedious. There are better ways to encourage interaction with our pets than forcing us to click through each one to pick apples. This would also prevent people from having to take out and put back and reprice all their pets.
5. (Sort of suggested) Make infinite use food items viable for this. Certainly not being able to put them in the food pen, that defeats the purpose, but perhaps updating the way they act. Right now, it would be restrictively taxing to use an infinite food item on all your pets. Perhaps each one can be used once daily (weekly?) to feed X number of pets (5? 10?). You could have a list or just a priority ranking (rank profile, showroom/ranch categories, etc?) and it feeds the hungriest pets in each section first? It would also be nice if the infinite food items all fed 100 points but that's neither here nor there. This would still require users to log in but it wouldn't make these rare, expensive items effectively useless.
6. Be able to see how many food points each food item gives. This is self-explanatory. I don't want to guess at how much a precious food item will fill my pets. We had this a long time ago and I'm still unsure why we lost it. I would advocate bringing it back either way.
While I see how increased NPC stock might help, in the end it's just going to get bought out just as fast as it does now to help feed the larger collections of pets. It'd be nice, but I think other methods of getting food are more important. I also don't think it's a good idea to make only rancher pets require less food. If we're going to do that, it should be showroom too. The reason we got showrooms in the first place (iirc) was because people were placing their pets at the max TU amount in rancher shops to "store" them and it was becoming unwieldy. If we only make rancher pets lose hunger faster everyone would just store everything in their ranch and we'd be back to square one in that regard.
Now, I've reiterated a list of things others have said and included my 2 cents for why I don't like this idea, but it's not fair to just say "no" and not provide alternatives. First, let's consider why we're doing this: To free names from users that don't play anymore. I've read multiple times this isn't to punish active players, even those that want to keep hoarding their names. So why not try some less drastic measures first? Here it comes, you guessed it, another list:
1. (Already suggested) Offer incentives for activity. We have the springs now, why not add a few more?
1a. I've always said this, but the springs could be more forgiving too, perhaps just drop a tier or a certain number of levels if you miss a day, not all the way back down. It's pretty demoralizing to have a streak of over 100 and suddenly be back down to 0 because you didn't have access to wifi for a single day.
2. We had exactly 1 round of name clearing from inactive accounts after the announcement that it would happen and then it was never mentioned again. Why not make it an automated process? If you haven't logged in for X months (12? 18?) your pets all get moved to your profile. All of them, everything in your showroom, ranch, all of it. They die naturally, lose their names naturally, etc. This prevents punishing those who still log on, but it removes the pets of those that don't.
2a. Make this process shorter than it is now. I honestly don't remember how long you have to be inactive to be cleared, but it's a VERY long time. 1 year is MORE than enough inactivity. I'd argue for an even shorter period of time (1 login is all it takes to reset the counter, not even doing anything while you're here, just logging in) but 1 year is a good starting point.
2b. With banned accounts that are definitely not getting unbanned (this will require some extra coding, perhaps a flag for "permanent" or "temporary" or "pending investigation" or whatever), make the timeframe shorter. 3 months? 1 month maybe.
2c. As someone who works with very large databases and huge piles of data on a daily basis, I know that clearing up unused data is EXTREMELY useful. There are places that the site is fairly slow and could be improved and one way is to simply have less data. I may make a different suggestion thread for this later but this would also help clear up rarities of items/pets and that would help in general with the site so I'm going to mention it here. Referring to point 2b, accounts who are 100% not getting them back, after the last pet on the account loses its name and is in the graveyard, they could simply be cleared out, the pets completely deleted from existence. Items too, and TU (although that won't help as much with the data issue but at that point it'd be for posterity). This will provide a far more accurate count of colors/species for pets and for the items that exist. There are currently 385 Regression Rays (for example) in existence. I'd be willing to bet that over 50% of those are actually on permanently banned accounts (not inactive, banned). If we're trying to help the economy, it's not just the pet economy we should be looking at but all of it, and a more accurate representation of where we stand with supply/demand is an important part of that.
3. (Already suggested) Give us more incentives to interact with our pets. Bring back training and battling, give us a bonus for interacting with a pet X days in a row, X days total. Maybe pets give us little mini-quests asking for a STOCKED item (meaning an item that can be found in NPC shops that aren't the BM) and in return they grow affection or give us a cute item or something. Things that encourage interaction and logging in rather than punish people that maybe can't every day.
4. The site is already moving very quickly in this direction and it's WONDERFUL to see, but I would be remiss if I didn't state the obvious in that a lot of the existing (smaller) complaints could be addressed. Small quality of life things that keep people coming back. I, for one, am ecstatic that we got a search bar in the hatchery, along with tons of other small updates that were made. These are all wonderful and as small annoyances are removed we can focus more on issues like this without having to turn around and say "yeah, well, these 10 other small things are getting in the way"
I'm sure I've forgotten some things I meant to include (some stuff about alienating users that have sunk real money into the site, users that have been around a long time, users that have worked incredibly hard for their names. Other stuff about how these people collecting names do contribute and how plenty of people don't care about these "good" names but are more interested in names many others don't want. Probably a multitude of other things as well), but this is long enough already because I'm terrible at organizing my thoughts.
tl;dr:
My feelings against:
- Punishing for inactivity vs rewarding for activity (previously stated)
- Time requirement includes gathering the TU/food in the first place
- Cost-prohibitive and hurting those who don't have "good" names too
- Deterrent for collecting
- Why bother hatching?
- Cost of selling
- Natural site evolution
Things that would have to/should change (imo) if this WERE to happen (although again, I'm overall against this idea):
- Food pen feeds all pets (better control)
- No hunger for pets in auctions
- Gardens
- More ways to obtain free food in a less time-consuming manner
- Infinite food items not useless in this new setup
Alternatives and ideas that might be nice either way:
- Auction length/number limit
- Food items show how many hunger points they feed
- More login incentives
- Inactive name clearing (automated)
- More interacting incentives
- Fix existing issues/user complaints
Edit: Added a few points I KNEW I'd forgotten.
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