If I want to change the capitalisation of my username (keeping it spelled the same), will it cost gems? As far as I know I can’t change the capitalisation of my username under the current system without changing it to something else and then changing back so I’ve been putting it off lol.Azurrys

Addressing your second question first: I’m not aware of this bug, and trying it out on our test instance of Mycena Cave doesn’t present any problems. What makes you believe you can’t change capitalization of your username directly?

To your first question — capitalization is a bit of a special case, since letter case is not considered in uniqueness checks: my username being “glitch” means you cannot set yours to “Glitch”, and the login system accepts any capitalization of usernames when logging in, etc.). As a result, changing the capitalization of your username does not have negative impacts on any of the problems we’re solving with this change, so I think it would not be unreasonable to allow capitalization changes without incurring the fee (though it would still trigger the 60 day cooldown period).

It seems meant to target a really small minority of users who change names frequently with an over-the-top “discouragement” that hurts everyone else, like swatting a fly with a bazooka.Jacq

I understand that it feels this way. Our view is somewhat from the other direction — several people on staff (myself included) felt that the ability to change usernames at all was a mistake, as it causes relatively significant headaches on our end. The feature to allow username changes was not something we discussed when first implemented — someone asked for it and I thought to myself “yeah i can do that” without really thinking about the consequences.

For example, the following are all real examples of issues we have to deal with as a result: people change their username and then forget what they changed it to are angry that our login system is “broken”; people change their username temporarily and find someone registers with their old username are angry that their username was “stolen”; many backend issues where we have to refer to players by their IDs which leads to issues when numbers get transposed; etc. However, after some discussion, we reached consensus that not removing the feature would be ok provided that its use was limited to only very important instances.

Regarding your QoL edit, this will help indirectly without any further changes, because username changes becoming very infrequent will result in many fewer broken links. That being said, these changes would enable avenues to maintain pings through username changes that we can (and plan to) explore.

This includes usernames you have personally used in the pastCrow

There was some (not unjustified) confusion about what we meant by that statement. This comes into effect after the change is pushed — so usernames that have been used in the past but are not currently in use are still available for use. This is in part by necessity, because we do not have consistent records of peoples old usernames.

“I can’t change my username, what if I regret it? Now I definitely won’t be able to get my old one back if I change my mind”@tracer

To a certain extent this was already an issue — if someone claimed your username while you were “temporarily” using a different one, you’d be in a similar place (this has happened multiple times). That being said, what you describe is desired behavior. We want to permit username changes only if you are really sure it is what you want. If you’re concerned you may change your mind, we do not want you to change your username.

I don’t really understand why users wouldn’t be allowed to use previously used names by anyone. Although this is a personal dilemma that I know many people won’t be facing, this policy change is going to affect something that I wanted to do because of how this rule will be implemented. [...] why does the UN have to be permanently eliminated from use by anyone just because it was used by someone at some point?Ally

Not being able to go from “Ally” to “Ally + Juney” back to “Ally” again is indeed an unfortunate side-effect of this change. With regards to re-using old usernames, there are two scenarios:

• I change my username, you change your username to my old username. This is one of the situations that is untenable for us and that we decided must change. In the (rare) occasions it has occurred, it has caused much confusion both for staff and for other players. It has also been particularly unpleasant for players who have changed their username and had their old one claimed by someone else
• I change my username, then I change it back to my old username. If we want to allow this but disallow the previous point, then once you’ve ever used a username it must be reserved such that only you can use it. We are not willing to grant “unseen powers or constraints” to player accounts: if you are Ally and I am glitch and nobody is Charlie, then it should not be the case that I am allowed to change my name to Charlie while you are not without having any visible indication of this power / restriction. An easy solution to this would be to publicly list every username ever used (and thus reseved) by each account, but we determined that this would undermine many of the reasons people change their usernames to begin with.

In order to “reserve” a username, wouldn’t another account need to be created?Yoshi

For reasons above, we do not want to allow the situation where one player uses the username that a different player has used in the past. The question then remains: do you get to use usernames that you have used in the past on your own account? If so, this would be reserving usernames for yourself (without creating new accounts). See the second bullet point immediately above for why we decided “no” on that.

Why not implement a tiered payment scale [...] first change is free, second is 3g, third would be 6g, fourth and on would be 9/10g?Malis

We discussed this to some extent, but ultimately decided against it for two reasons. First, in terms of effect, the difference between the tiered system you suggest and the one we decided on is that it is less effective at discouraging username changes (which is counter to our goals with this change). Second, our research outside of Mycena Cave indicated that creating mechanisms which have permanent negative effects on you (e.g. an account that has changed its username twice is “worse” than an account that has never changed its username, and you can “never go back”) almost always results in people being very unhappy, so we have strongly avoided ever putting Mycena Cave players in that kind of situation.

the more I think about Ally’s point the more I wonder how this will affect account trading/selling? If UNs are now locked you can’t keep your UN when you swap accounts even if you’re willing to pay, right? It’s effectively gone for good. That’s.. not idealCorvani

Like Ally’s concern above, this is another unfortunate effect, and also one we determined to be the lesser of two evils. It is indeed unfortunate that you can’t buy someone else’s user ID and rename their account to the username that you used to use on your previous account, but given the extreme rarity in which that happens (i.e. I believe we’re at around four or five in the history of Mycena Cave) this is not the case we are optimizing for. Between being able to do this and preventing two unrelated accounts from occupying the same name at different times, our decision strongly fell towards the latter option.

Sometimes a username you picked just doesn’t vibe with you anymore or can be downright awful to still go under. I will also say I feel like 10 Gems is really steep and especially on top of the cool down period.-FLOWER-

We agree that sometimes you just need to change your username — this was exactly the argument that swayed us from removing the feature entirely. That 10 gems is pretty steep was brought up as well. The purpose of this change is to dissuade username changes except when the player really cares. We decided that if the player does not care as much as they care about 10 gems, then we feel that they care little enough to make do with the old name. We used a very similar consideration way back in 2013 setting the price for theinitial Digis Customs Recreations.

So for instance if I changed from LaraAelric to…. idk… anything else, I could pay to get LaraAelric back.LaraAelric

I understand the appeal of having “an out” to get back. That being said, doing that is fundamentally incompatible with the goals above: preventing two different players from occupying the same username at different times, and not having “hidden powers” associated with accounts (e.g. a hidden list of usernames that only you are allowed to use).

I really don’t know what to say about all this. And I also hate bringing in outside websites to Mycena-issues, but as I’m a transplant from Flight Rising who changed their UN not that far back, well… here’s my two cents.

ON FR, (again, hate bringing in external site info but its a good example), you can change your flight/element ONCE for free. same for your UN. After that, there’s a charge, and it’s not cheap. from both a coding/administration side, I can see that it’d suck at an ongoing rate.

But I also didn’t mesh with my old username anymore either. My usernames on literally anything online become part of my identity and who I am. Right now, I most commonly go by Silent or Chaos (and more recently, Vairocanna). We as people grow and change over time. New names can also represent that.

“I can’t change my username, what if I regret it? Now I definitely won’t be able to get my old one back if I change my mind”Tracer

To a certain extent this was already an issue — if someone claimed your username while you were “temporarily” using a different one, you’d be in a similar place (this has happened multiple times). That being said, what you describe is desired behavior. We want to permit username changes only if you are really sure it is what you want. If you’re concerned you may change your mind, we do not want you to change your username.glitch

Perhaps a two-day grace period or something should be implemented, and if needed, the change could be revised?

Sometimes a username you picked just doesn’t vibe with you anymore or can be downright awful to still go under. I will also say I feel like 10 Gems is really steep and especially on top of the cool down period.-FLOWER-

We agree that sometimes you just need to change your username — this was exactly the argument that swayed us from removing the feature entirely. That 10 gems is pretty steep was brought up as well. The purpose of this change is to dissuade username changes except when the player really cares. We decided that if the player does not care as much as they care about 10 gems, then we feel that they care little enough to make do with the old name. We used a very similar consideration way back in 2013 setting the price for theinitial Digis Customs Recreations.glitch

I don’t mean this in a bad way, but this also seems a little harsh in terms of attacking someone’s identity and invalidate someone. IDK, personally I’m okay with the charge of 10 gems, but telling someone to essentially “suck it up” is a little unreasonable. I wouldn’t want to be uncomfortable in my own…skin, i guess?

So for instance if I changed from LaraAelric to…. idk… anything else, I could pay to get LaraAelric back.LaraAelric

I understand the appeal of having “an out” to get back. That being said, doing that is fundamentally incompatible with the goals above: preventing two different players from occupying the same username at different times, and not having “hidden powers” associated with accounts (e.g. a hidden list of usernames that only you are allowed to use).glitch

Why can’t usernames be locked to accounts? while I can understand that this falls under a category similar to “reserving usernames” (in which case, okay, that makes enough sense) but should the need arise, could it not be considered in the least?

TLDR; I can understand why you feel the need to bring in these changes, but some of it also doesn’t make sense to me? idk it’s midnight and i have an exhausted brain so i’m trying to process it as best I can. If I don’t feel like I mesh with me anymore, what’s gonna be easier to me as a player? Paying the 10 gems to change my name? Living with a name I don;t like/care for/can’t identify with, or taking my leave of MC for an undetermined amount of time? Some people will shrug (me being one of them), but others are definitely visibly upset. Perhaps this needs to be looked at a little more and/or have some community feedback as opposed to bringing the hammer down right away and just… “nope this is it this is what’s happening.”

tbh a lot of the posts here read to me like the main reason behind these changes being implemented has been totally missed. From what I understand, any time a user changes their username (frequently or not, whatever the intention), it causes a sizable backend headache, one that we (the playerbase) even see the tip of in things like broken pings, links, etc.

I am curious how this would display if you tried to check a username’s availability by going to a profile and replacing the username part in the URL with the one you’re trying to check, if it’s locked out but also not in use?

In general though I don’t really see the warrant for the huge and honestly, passive aggressive at best reaction from many of the comments here..? I’m kind of….idk, infamous in main chat for constantly changing usernames (I’m probably part of the reason for this honestly >>) because i’m terribly fickle and gain/lose interest in things quickly, so that 2 or 3-ish times a year hobby of mine is now shut down. That said, the change doesn’t feel like a huge deal and if I’m understanding correctly it’s not so much an actively punitive/pre-emptively punitive measure against users as it is a metaphorical tylenol for the backend headache.

I agree with Tsaiah for the most part. I’ve also been on a site where unchangeable usernames (a bit more complicated, there were display names like Chicken and Kippie mentioned, but also a name tied to a pet-sort-of that was tied to the account until that pet died or was retired, again, with a pretty hefty cost for early retirement - otherwise it would last 15 ingame years/180 irl days assuming the player logged in daily the entire time), once used, were locked to that account until for whatever reason, was released. What ended up happening was there being a mad rush for ‘cool’ names whenever a new fad came around, or once the name was taken, a ton of barely discernably different and/or obviously same names (using one accented letter, etc) would pop up and it created a ton of fuss and drama. On the flip side, people who weren’t well-liked would sometimes be impersonated due to the display name being freely changeable and non-unique with the sole purpose of defamation. Although tbf that site was 1. kind of a large hellhole to begin with and 2. placed equal importance on display name and the sort-of-permanent name, so it’s not really a good comparison. Just wanted to provide examples of bad things happening on what each side wants |D;;;;

At the end of the day though I think the best solution to this would be to separate account names and nicknames, as long as both are easily found on the player’s profile, since IDs are already stuck right next to usernames almost everywhere. But, that would probably be a hilariously + awfully huge coding project for a frankly tiny site (2 coders???) without ad revenue, monthly premiums, or any sort of FR/Pokefarm/etc kind of funding that is bothersome to the userbase. Most of the site’s income, from what I’ve heard?? comes from the site’s portion of artist-earned PP (rather than gems which are supposed to be the site’s main income as PP is supposed to support the artists, I think), so if the userbase decides it reeeaally wants to have changeable usernames we probably wouldn’t have any new content other than standard OoTs for like…probably a year at least? On top of other things the userbase is constantly pushing for, like new games and QoL updates and even just now when we got the huge d&d/RP quest system.

I mean, there’s a few far-between sites like sylestia that caves to almost everything the vocal minority within the userbase wants and it’s constantly a disaster of patching issues created from indulging those wants and then patching drama that occurs from having to backstep a bit or change things around the next time. On the other side of the spectrum you have FR whose staff rarely does anything the users actually want, so despite having some major-ish personal salt with some MC staff decisions in the past, I feel like they’ve generally been fair and consistent.

tl;dr, I don’t really think it’s fair to say the staff is just doing whatever they want to fix their own self-caused headaches and not listening to the userbase. iirc glitch said the icy soul event mechanics were a humungous thing and it’s planned to be integrated more in the future - could be wrong that’s just what I thought I heard. Regardless that kind of questing mechanics is something the community has been vocal about wanting since at the latest early 2015 (when I joined). Coming from sites like pokefarm/chicken smoothie/lioden/flight rising, etc, I for one feel like we have some pretty great staff and they don’t deserve this kind of aggression ; O ; </3

I’m going to look at the very first post- The Announcement itself.

1) Why does this 10 Gem Fee exist?/Why is it 10 Gems?
10$ is a steep price to pay for changing something that isn’t an inherent part of the game.
A price, mind you, that you can find somewhere else on site-
The Out of the Shadows Shop.
Changing your Username literally costs you the same as the monthly pet, something that is an inherent part of the game. To make a very, very blunt comparison:
That would be like paying 10$ for each Pokemon you caught. Why? Because while Roleplaying is a huge part of the COMMUNITY, it is NOT required to play the game.
What IS required, however, is the ability to buy/sell/trade the various OOtS colors.

2) Why does the 10 Gem Fee exist AS WELL as the 60 day cooldown?
Let’s be blunt- if it costs 10 Gems every time you change your username- then if someone decides they’re going to change their username 10 times in a week, that’d be 100$ spent in a week. For, ultimately, nothing. Especially if they change their Usernames back to what it used to be.

I want someone to please provide me with a reason why allowing someone to spend 100$ on something that has no impact on the game is a bad thing.
Because, let’s be honest, what are the chances of someone doing that. Heck, what are the chances of someone changing their username twice, for 20$, in 2 months?
Unless it was back to the first one…

3)

Additionally, this update will make usernames unique across time, meaning that no player may set a username previously used by another player. This includes usernames you have personally used in the past.”

I saw a lot of confusion about this, so incase anyone is still confused (and to provide the opportunity to correct me if I am wrong) here’s what it means:
If someone has used that Username after this announcement, ever, it cannot be used.
I cannot begin to properly verbalize how ludicrous I find this.

So, because of that, I now start referencing the Questions/Points already Asked, and the responses given by glitch.

There were two questions asked, and both answered by glitch.
The first asked by Oxton, and the second asked by Ally.

The scenario that Tracer is describing applies if you change your username with the intent on changing it permanently. In which case the problem then becomes, as Glitch pointed out, if someone takes the old username in the meantime. However, something stands out to me in Tracer’s phrasing

“Now I definitely won’t be able to get my old one back if I change my mind”Tracer

‘Definitely’
The difference between the scenario that Tracer is describing, and what would happen after the update is implemented is this: It becomes guaranteed. Tracer’s phrasing, to me, makes it clear they’re already aware of the chance of someone taking the username while they’re using another. This update would mean that someone else took your username every single time.

Ally asks about this point in the announcement as well. Glitch answered them in two parts, with two scenarios. The first being the one touched on in Tracer’s question (with someone else taking the username) and the other being that you want to change your username back.

Again, I will 100% admit that Glitch is right.

It has also been particularly unpleasant for players who have changed their username and had their old one claimed by someone else.glitch

I am sure it has. Emotionally, Usernames are Names. Names unique to you.
However, referencing point #1- The only reason they exist is for Identification Purposes. Which of course leads to a lot of confusion for everyone if someone else “takes” someone else’s username. So, it was decided to lock a username permanently to solve this problem confusion.

Which, on the surface, this makes the Update look more reasonable until…

User ID#s are considered
User ID#s, mentioned passingly when explaining that Mycena Cave is a game, are ID numbers that we cannot change. They are permanent, they are the number that the account is based on when the account was created.
This is static. This is what truely identifies a user.
So, while at the beginning a username change like that would be confusing- that shouldn’t last for very long.
Isn’t it equally as confusing when a user changes usernames anyway? Afterall, the username changes across the site.
Furthermore, anyone who really mattered would know. For starters, the staff are well aware of the User ID#s and any friends would already be aware of the username change. Thus, would instantly know that it wasn’t their friend since, hopefully, they were in semi-regular contact.

Now, I want to take this moment to mention that I have only changed my username Three Times.
Twice on Digis, both of which were temporary ones. One for Halloween “Spooky Sapphy” and the other for a silly event that blew up in the Forums “The Black Knight Sapphy” If anyone is over there, note I still have my primary username. (helping to illustrate how rare this is)

The third time, and the only time I’ve changed my username on Mycena was when I temporarily shared an account with Ishy.
At the time this account #103 became Ishy and Sapphy. Eventually, Ishy and I stopped sharing this account (as I’m sure you can tell from the Username). Under this new update- I would not be able to change back to BlackSapphire

Not being able to go from “Ally” to “Ally + Juney” back to “Ally” again is indeed an unfortunate side-effect of this change.glitch

This is not a side-effect. This is a replacement. Related to earlier, all this means is that your old username is guaranteed to be gone if you want to switch it back. There is literally no chance to switch back.
The only reason I switched back to BlackSapphire, is because I stopped sharing my account.

When someone changes their Username, they should be fully aware of the chance that someone will ‘take’ their name.
Especially if they have one based on Media (ie: Yoshi, Oxton) or if their username is like mine and is extremely likely to be replicated. (I am not going to pretend my username is particularly unique. It is an Adj. and a Noun, and two fairly popular ones at that ((especially after Steven Universe became a thing)) So, I can see how mine would easily be taken if I switched)

glitch does talk about an alternate option to this permanent ban, and also talks about why it is not used.

If we want to allow this but disallow the previous point, then once you’ve ever used a username it must be reserved such that only you can use it.glitch

The obvious issue with this is the possibility of someone “reserving” a bunch of usernames on their account by changing their username over and over. Except here’s the thing. I don’t even need to get into the details past that. I don’t need to dig into the details of ‘what about account/trading selling” (Corvani) It doesn’t matter if a username doesn’t ‘click’ with you.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS
Why?
Because by pointing out that there’s the option of ‘reserving’ usernames to an account…
It gave a VERY SIMPLE SOLUTION to those issues, and even to the confusion about if someone changes names in the first place.

What is it?

Only allow one reserved Username
If you can reserve Usernames at all. That means that, I’M SURE, you could limit an account to only have one reserved username.
I’M 100% POSITIVE of that. So, when someone changes their name, reserve the one right before it. Bam, done.
If they change it back, then there’s not an issue. If they change it to a new one, then the reserve one changes as well.
“But what if they keep changing back and forth?”
Then make it so if they change it back, it just erases the change. They don’t get to reserve the name since they went back. Makes sense to me, you had your chance with that name and you gave it back. If you want it back, you have to do it the same way you got it in the first place.

Meaning that LUDICROUS idea of a perma-ban on a name is absolutely pointless

Want to know what that’d also solve?
-Someone getting upset because their username was taken while they had a temporary username, or were trying out a new one.
-Confusion about who was who.
-If you typo’d when signing up or changing your name. (though, for that you could even have a ‘file a ticket’ scenario where it gets fixed without using up a Reset/New Username slot)

Now, this still leaves the problem of:

... then it should not be the case that I am allowed to change my name to Charlie while you are not without having any visible indication of this power / restriction ...glitch

Then, heck list it on their profile, even under their name on the forums! (aka: (“UN #2”)
It’s perfectly visible then.
Two, we come back to the the previous username is reserved if it’s a third username, they’ve relinquished it.

What about the possibility of someone reserving a name for the sake of reserving it?
(or to up the price of selling it)

You have a solution to that already, too.
The Wait-Time and The Fee.

To address The Fee again, since this is the biggest bullet point here.
Reiterating that it is too steep.
Way, way too steep.

Malis offered a great idea, in my opinion, with the proposition of a tiered payment scale.
While I can see why that might not be used, given the price they settled on and the system they chose this created a bigger problem
One that is probably the biggest issue with this update and put most eloquently by Jacq

It seems meant to target a really small minority of users who change names frequently with an over-the-top “discouragement” that hurts everyone else, like swatting a fly with a bazookaJacq

Malis’ idea would only target those who change frequently/a lot, given that it would only become expensive to change if you did it more than a few times. Glitch answered that it is, in fact, less effective at discouraging username changes.
However, Malis’ idea would only target those who changed their usernames a lot.
Another point in Glitch’s response was that creating mechanisms which have permanent negative effects on players almost always results in people being unhappy. However, I reference Jacq’s post again. I think more users are being made unhappy due to this update, users who would not have been changing their usernames often (if at all) because of the logical reasons to change a username, but not often.

There are many ways to have The Fee work, and work in ways that I don’t think would upset people very much.
However there are things that CERTAINLY need to be fixed:
1) Lower the freaking price.
I already went into why above, so, I won’t here. But, I will suggest that IF THERE HAS TO BE ONE AT ALL- that it should be no more than 3 Gems, IF that. Why? Because that’s the lowest Gem-Cost of a pet or item (aka: Game Mechanic) that is on site.
2) Given this is related to an account as a whole: Make sure that it is Gems that are getting used, not $$ not PP, GEMS, so that users who cannot spend $$ or get their hands on PP easily can have access to this feature. (I know gems were mentioned in the announcement, just reiterating)

Addressing the problem of just reserving a name so they have another taken:
This is already partially solved with how the Ctrl+Z username feature works. You’re only allowed to go back one, and when you go back you can’t just bounce back to the other. You have to use the Wait-Time.

Secondly- if you use The Fee logically…there’s a million ways to deal with this.
1) There’s a fee to reserve the name (again, no more than 3) and then the name is reserved.
2) There’s a fee to change the name, the previous one gets reserved. You need to pay the fee both ways, but the previous one is always reserved.
3) There’s a fee to change the name, the previous one gets reserved, there’s a timer. After which the old name becomes free.
4) There’s a fee to change the name, the previous one gets reserved, there’s a timer to switch back for free, after that there’s the fee again. (old is always reserved then even back and forth)
5) Alt to #3 - There’s a fee to change the name, previous gets reserved, there’s a timer- however you can pay to get the name permanently reserved. It can be ‘released’ but no refund and cannot reserve that same username (possibly on a timer)

There are a million variants, as you’re probably seeing.
I also mentioned a timer, which is the wait time.

You could have Malis’ idea play into that: have the wait time increase with how often you can change your username. Not the fee.

Ultimately what I feel like I’m pointing out is this update is bad. BAD all the way around and not thought through nearly enough that it should’ve even been considered in its current format. There are a million ways to accomplish what was desired. All of them better than this.