Celestine
I think that a lot of your post was directed at me, and I want to say that it wasn’t my intention to be passive-aggressive. I’m just aware I can tie myself in knots trying to be diplomatic and it generally just gets too confusing and leads to misunderstandings (the kinder I try to be in feedback posts, the more I’ve gotten in trouble in the past, tbh). So, for my part at least, I’m trying to be direct and not passive aggressive. If I misunderstood your post and responded oddly because of that, then I’m sorry! OTL

It’s very possible this change came up as a huge problem because of the new RPG mechanics (which are awesome). However, that’s not how it’s presented. The initial post doesn’t say anything about the back-end headache - only that it’s to stop people being “frivolous”. If it’s a back-end issue, why say it’s a “users being frivolous” issue? And if it’s presented primarily as a “users being frivolous” issue (as it is in the first post), then I think it’s fair for the response to question the level/extent of that frivolity.

I also want to reiterate that burying this sour note in the middle of an update took away from all of the positives within it: Warping the conversation away from the new coat/items, the raffle, the event, the very-first-time-ever-users-have-been-able-to-“make”-items-onsite, etc. I can appreciate the awesome stuff while not being happy with the not-so-awesome stuff. But I think it’s unfair to say that we shouldn’t be able to criticize the not-so-awesome stuff because awesome stuff exists too. If this had been presented as its own thread then I don’t think it would be overshadowing all the other cool things in the update.

edit: I also want to say that I think Ishy and Sapphy‘s idea of “Only allow one reserved Username” is fantastic. Her post overall has a lot of good ideas imo, and articulates some of my frustrations really well.

Jacq Oh no it’s not a passive aggressive callout at you orz;; sorry if I gave that impression! It’s more like, in general I feel like the staff on this site gets a ton of flack despite being much more accessible + open to the community than nearly every petsite I’ve ever had the pleasure (or displeasure) of being part of. |D;; tbh Tsaiah’s post was the only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn’t make me squint and ‘wat??’ a little.

That’s a good point, I think that could’ve been…definitely more clear (about half? the salt I’ve had on a couple occasions had to do with information/reasons/rules not being clearly stated or left too much ambiguity. That said, in every case of that sort of personal cel vs. the state of mycena cave case the decision/feature edit itself had been more or less logical, when thought about with a cool head.) I realize glitch only mentions it in his big answer post and it’s pretty buried; most of the references I’ve seen about it being a backend headache were in non-official news (eg questions being answered/discussed in main chat/private venues/etc) so I get where a bunch of the comments here are coming from a little more now, lol.

Personally I think Kippie’s idea of being able to set a few display names that are all obviously and upfront-ly displayed as tied to the ‘main’ name for the account (which is changeable for a steep fee, or other moderately difficult method - one site I was on allowed username changes by pinging the admin, who would manually do it once per user per 6 month period. For a site with 30k+ mostly chaotic evil through chaotic stupid users, that was definitely not ideal) - perhaps a ‘main’ username and up to…two?? or so, ‘associated’ names that could be switched as the forum/chat display name? Although given we have IDs tacked to usernames almost everywhere I don’t really know if that would be helpful.

Additionally I think a lot of bad feelings in staff vs the mycena community could be avoided or at least less of a stressful thing on all ends if, well, mostly,
- clear, all information upfront rather than explained-piecemeal-as-needed presentation of new/changed features on staff part
- mycena community tries to be less passive aggressive about expressing displeasure tbh?? direct and blunt is different from outright ‘what the hell, staff? ugh’ and the former is received much better in my experience than the latter or unspeakably more annoying (to me, at least) ‘well i guess this is a nice thing for some people but i and a bunch of others think it was a bad idea/bad execution/not fully thought out/etc’. it’s also nice to remember that (to my knowledge) none of the mc staff is mc staff as a full-time job, so it’s not really fair to expect the same things from them as the people over at stormlight workshop or dappervolk team, for example, even though we’ve gotten many more welcome updates and new features than FR despite being much tinier with a teensy, not full time team |D;;

Yeah, considering how much this blew up, I really want to put my two cents in. I am not one to change usernames. Heck, in my near decade on digis and 6 years on mycena, I think I’ve only changed my name once on digis for holiday reasons. (Shima Bells. Which got corrupted in hilarious ways if anyone remembers that.) So I feel like an outsider on this discussion as I have no desire to change usernames.

Being someone not emotionally invested in whether or not I can change my username, I can still say that this is an absolutely awful idea from every standpoint. The price (too high), the wait (why have a wait if you have a price?), the fact that usernames are gone forever for everyone once someone moves away from it. Like, the last one, seriously, what the hell.

I understand that it’s a bit of a headache for the staff to deal with numbers rather than familiar words, and a bigger headache when an “identity theft” user comes around. But I honestly don’t believe that solving that headache is worth these harsh punishments to the entire site. Not only are you punishing each and every member currently here, but punishing every future member by making their choices for usernames rather limited as they can’t use usernames that are in current disuse because they were used before they even joined the site. That to me is utter madness.

Celestine
I totally get what you mean about passive aggression on this site. I feel like mycena’s community is one of the worst when it comes to it. It’s always one of the things I hated about it. But I do think the negativity for this particular feature is warranted for once. I didn’t say anything before as it didn’t affect me at all and I’d leave it to those it did effect. But now that they’re being met with resistance, I wanted to show that it isn’t just those who are upset about the changes who think this is also a very poorly executed fix. I also find it hilarious you specifically mention the ‘what the hell, staff?’ thing as I just used it. Though I’ve noticed that this kind of direct outrage right now is.. rare. I’m surprised yet pleased.

Shima You actually made me think of something I hadn’t said yet.
New users wouldn’t know of all of this. So, their username choices wouldn’t take any of this into account. =\

Sapphy pointed out the missed phrasing in my post so I won’t bother pinging I just wanna address a thanks for that, and thanks to glitch for answering and explaining the thought process here as the news post was simply not clarifying enough as to why these changes were being made. It’s very appreciated!

edit: I’ll also point out that Sapphy basically expresses every single point I want to make so I won’t add anything else to that since it would just be repeating the same stuff again.

And regarding being passive aggressive… I’m not? If it came across that way that wasn’t my intention, I spent half an hour trying to write that post so it wouldn’t come across too harsh. I’m literally just trying to express my thoughts because I care about the site and I know the staff care as well. If I didn’t think they cared or were a good staff team I wouldn’t bother saying anything. I don’t expect magic out of them, but I know they like to listen and hear what their members have to say. One of the first inventory changes on the site was from one of my own suggestions and I’ll always remember how nice it felt to be considered on a site that I care about a lot.

Very few of the posts above come across as passive aggressive to me, a lot of them are trying to distinguish more clarity, setting where the boundaries are, and expressing specific concerns with some of the points. Then again maybe that’s just me… I have a penchant for reading things too literally and not picking up emotional cues in text lol.

edit: I forgot to mention, but after reading glitch’s more in depth explanation, it’s easier to get a grasp on the pros and cons from both sides, whose clarity is absent for all posts made before his. The problems with constant username changes have largely been silent, and that’s where a lot of the confusion has come from.

It should also be noted that it’s a shame this was posted in the monthly update along with all the good stuff for the month, as other people have mentioned! I’ve already ended up buying the OoTS for this month… I love the cheetah-esque markings on the nose especially.

Ishy and Sapphy Or, worse, old, absent users who might want a fresh start upon returning.

I still need to catch up on all this but one thing that strikes me as odd is that many usernames/online handles are not unique, and having old ones “locked” would be detrimental to new users who also use a fairly common handle. If I decided to change my name and another person wanted to sign up as Salem and couldn’t, that would be a point of confusion AND disappointment. I think part of changing names, especially if you use a fairly common moniker, is knowing that someone else could use it, and that’s the real deterrent for people changing names in some cases. I know the site isn’t that huge and it would just be coincidence if someone’s name was taken, but as the site grows the problem would only grow. Mycena Cave already has kind of a steep learning curve for new players, and something like this would not help new player signup or retention. Especially when joining a site people might go with the first name they think of or something, and to have to pay essentially $10 in premium currency seems a bit steep. This method seems like it can be partially abused by richer players to lock newbies out of names, in an “I don’t want to be this, but I don’t want ANYONE to be this” sort of manner.

Honestly I’m not a big username changer so if this stays it will be no skin off my nose, but those are just my thoughts esp when it comes to new players.

Thank you for the discussion on this new rule/feature.

I’m another user that this wouldn’t really affect, I’ve been ‘Nephele’ for somewhere between 7 and 10 years I think. I’m unlikely to change now. I think the site I did the most name-changing on was Wajas. And that was only for holidays, only a couple times as ‘Nephy’ doesn’t pun well, and for the mostly user-run Trick-or-Treating event where participants added “Lights On” to show they were open to visitors. However I tend to agree that these measures seem unnecessarily harsh. Particularly locking the names permanently.

While losing your previous username is a risk you take when you change names, that is not the same as knowing there is no chance you’ll ever get it back. Plus while its always a bit disappointing to sign up to a new site and find that the name you wanted is already in use, it would be horrible to sign up and find out that no one is using that name, but you still can’t have it.

Backend headaches and broken pings aside, I feel like a lot of these issues could be fixed with a little disclaimer that states that mycena cave and it’s staff are not responsible for whatever happens to a handle once it’s no longer attached to an account.  I feel like this is taking it upon the staff to right and wrong that honestly people have no right to be upset about? As at least one person mentioned before me, if someone changes their username and someone else joins with that name…. That’s the risk they took by using a new one.  I can understand why that would be weird and probably really uncomfortable but I don’t see how it’s the responsiblity of the staff to completely alter site policy because someone made a decision and had a negative consequence.  I dunno.  That probably sounds harsh but I just can’t even imagine changing my name and then expecting staff to intercede because I don’t like that someone signed up under the name Dakota Riley.

In other words I’m not a fan of the change but I’ll probably never change my name so it doesn’t really matter to me.  It just seems weird that this is all happening because we as users can’t take responsibility for our actions.

edit: ps I love the oots and I can’t wait!!! to see the new seasonal and the icy souls sprout!!!

glitch
I have the impression that I read about it in a forum thread at some point, but I can’t find the thread anymore to confirm this so I can’t say for sure how the idea came to be OTL. I never actually tried it myself because I was waffling over the change and didn’t want to incur the 60-day cooldown in case it didn’t work out and now I feel a little silly, because the change worked just fine |D Sorry for that—thanks for clearing things up and also for confirming that if I want to go back to my lapslock spelling in the future, I won’t have to pay the fee!

I’m going to keep my reply about the username change short. I’ve been reading through a lot of the other posts and I apologize if I missed something that was already brought up, but I don’t think this point has yet. It’s not a “nice” point but I feel that it needs to be pointed out.

I’ve never changed my username here. Have been Hina since digis. I have no desire to change my name either. I approve of restricting the name changes not because being able to change your names/identy doesn’t affect me, but because it very much does.

It’s been brought up that ID #‘s are permanent and what truly identify a user but it really doesn’t. We don’t identify other players by their account number, but by their user name. It’s how we quickly recognize who it is that we are interacting with. In cases where you have had problems with another user, for example got ripped off in a trade or just ongoing personality clashes or more serious issues like stalking/harassment, you’re not going to remember the account number of the person you have decided and/or been advised not to interact with anymore. You’re going to remember their name.

A lot of sites don’t allow users to change their names. Which makes it easy for users to avoid other users they don’t want to interact with. But when you allow people to just change through user names like they’re changing shirts it causes a lot of problems with troublesome users being able to basically wash their identity clean and start over, putting people trying to avoid them in uncomfortable situations that wouldn’t have happened if the username was locked.

Considering how many times the community has had the debate over if people should have the ability to block communications or accounts to avoid abusers/others I’m really surprised this issue hasn’t been brought up in this current discussion. Is it something that affects a lot of people? No. Probably not. But I know in the past that I’ve unwittingly been “tricked” into interacting with people that I had decided to stay away from because they just went and changed their user name, and I didn’t find out about it till later when someone pointed out “Oh! That’s so-and-so. They just changed their name.”

So for that alone I am glad to see the change. People should not have to keep a “black list” of account numbers to keep track of people they don’t want to interact with for whatever reason, or have to call in mods/admin for something that can be handled by simply not engaging in the first place. Yes it was fun to see some people change names and it was a nice feature. But in terms of user safety and conflict avoidance I can’t support this enough.

**edit - One more thing to point out, by preventing names from being recycled this would also prevent new people coming in from accidentally picking up a name that carries a stigma because of bad behavior of another in a case of mistaken identity.

Hina

Your point is hugely fair, but even after this change people can still continue to change their username if they’d like. This change doesn’t prevent them from changing their username. Unless I read your post wrong, in which case I apologise!

Hina

That’s fair, thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding. I was just unsure by the phrasing of your post and wanted to make sure there was no confusion!

Oxton

No problem at all! I was going for brevity and trying not to get too far off point and may have focused a bit too narrowly in my post. I’m happy to clarify

So I’ve read and reread everything the staff have posted so far, and I don’t know. I’m still standing by the fact that this is all confusing. There are chances that I missed some stuff, so I’ll address what stands out to me.

I thought the entire reason behind why user ID’s were a functioning feature and why [@ ##] works is because usernames weren’t supposed to be permanent. If a user changed their name, as long as the ID was used within the BBCode it would still link to the correct user. An example of this functioning is on Inari’s profile, who has art pieces drawn by people who I known have changed their names.

If people have “lost” their usernames because they switched, that is a shame that the user got upset with staff over that. I’m definitely not trying to defend that sort of behavior. Users taking unused names happens across the board with pretty much all sites, and a user throwing a fit over this is unheard of to me. With the prior ID thing mentioned, I was under the impression that usernames weren’t unique to begin with, and that there could very well be 10 Yoshis on the site. This is probably the root of upset if users who have lost usernames thought the same thing. However, if someone lost a username, that’s a consequence they’ll have to deal with.

Now, on the terms of users switching names around in order to deliberately harass people, this so far is the only legitimate point I’ve read in this thread. I remember a while back a block feature was suggested, but because the site is “so small” it was denied. I still think a block feature should be implemented, again, based on a user’s ID since it’s still possible to change usernames as long as a user is willing to pay. Who’s that malicious, I have no idea, but if this is a problem then a gem fee is only going to slow a user down.

Perhaps my opinion doesn’t mean much since I have no intention of changing my name. However, I think the biggest reason behind all the upset here is because staff has more or less said “This is how it’s going to be and we’re not listening to any suggestions or feedback.” Springing a big change like this on the users isn’t going to have a positive response. Staff closing off the users like that is of course going to make people upset. And even if this was something that had been discussed for months, pushing this onto the userbase without any reconsideration for improvement may lead to what some users feel are passive aggressive responses. There are a lot more users than staff, and there’s bound to have been at least one thing said that a staff member hasn’t thought of. I personally liked the idea I saw somewhere that yeah, we perhaps could be allowed to “reserve” one permanent username and be allowed to switch freely between other names (like for festive reasons). Perhaps have an indication of what a user’s “real” name is on the profile, next to the ID number.

TL:DR; More or less directed at staff, please consider user feedback before implementing large changes. Allow users to be more involved, so that a greater majority can be satisfied and a middle ground can be reached. As it stands now, staff comes off as very unapproachable with this, and users are clearly confused and upset with these changes.

I agree with others that the response is largely due to the fact it was buried in a monthly update and we weren’t really clued in on why this was happening until glitch broke it down further. Which does detract from the positives, yes, and that’s unfortunate. Perhaps in the future we could have a separate thread for a really big rule change like this? There’s a reason MC is the only pet site I really play nowadays. I generally DO believe staff is willing to have open discussions about issues like this and I appreciate all the work that goes on, so just because we disagree on something like this doesn’t mean I still don’t think that? The only reason people are so passionate and are talking about it is because they care and they just want the best solution for everyone.

Anyway… I just don’t get, as Dakota Riley pointed out, why the majority is being punished because of a few users not taking responsibility for themselves. If you lose an old name that’s on you. That has never registered as a staff problem to me. I don’t understand why names not in use can’t be used ever again though. That’s my biggest concern. It makes no sense for new or returning users like so many have pointed out. To sign up for a site and be told “oh you can’t use that because it’s in use” only to sign up finally and look around and realize “hey this actually ISN’T in use, so why can’t I have it?” is immensely frustrating. And since you already can’t have a UN under four characters this is going to decrease the available pool of UNs even further.

I also just.. don’t get then why we even have user IDs if they don’t matter? I understand the transposing issues (boy do I… I get numbers mixed up on the regular so I can commiserate with that), but if we have a hard ID already in place then why.. does a hard UN even matter..? As such, I REALLY love the idea of a separate hard login ID and changeable nickname. Even if it’s limited like others have suggested where you can only hop between a couple nicknames at a time. Surely that’s still better than never allowing someone to use a freed up username again?

At the very least, I think between the proposed fee and the 60 day cooldown it should effectively cut down on the issues staff is most concerned with so why must previously used UNs be completely frozen? I’m sorry I keep focusing on in this one point, but I feel it’s the biggest issue people are having overall (or at least.. mine & perhaps I’m just misunderstanding this point?).

People have mentioned a hard UN and option for nickname; gave me the idea that the hard UN could be reserved for the account and the nicknames are the ones that get freed up etc. when changed? :|
(as in only the account with the hard UN of CYZ could use the nickname CYZ.)
To cover the “how would we do this?” Just make everyone’s current usernames at the time of the switch their permanent ones, and any others are nicknames. Sure, you run into the if you switch someone could permanently take it still . But like others have said (and I believe I touched on in my Monster) that’s a risk that you take, and should not be the staff’s issue to fix or really even address.
If people are wanting to 100% switch, they could petition a change or something. Heck, maybe that’s when a fee would come into play. But there shouldn’t be a reason for it, really.

idk, the more ideas and comments I see and get from people posting just shows to me that there are Better ways to accomplish what the staff want to.

I’d like to add further support for the idea of being able to reserve just one username. This seems to pretty cleanly solve the issue of people getting upset over their old username being taken, while also allowing plenty of usernames to be freed up for other people to use, as well as preventing usernames from being hoarded. This also seems like it might even lessen/solve the potential impersonation issue, as presumably people would reserve a name if they’d been using it for quite a while (and thus had become associated with that particular name). And as BlackSapphire mentioned, simply listing a person’s reserved username on their profile would solve the “unseen powers” problem brought up in glitch’s post. Feasibly, there could even be a page on the site that lists every single reserved username, just to make it easier to look up.

To discourage people from reserving a username just because the option’s there, adding a small fee to reserving a name (in addition to the basic fee for changing your username) would probably work. Even something like 1 gem seems like it’d be enough to deter people from reserving a name just because they can.

Lastly, I also think that the other option that’s been mentioned of having one stable username plus a more easily changed nickname is a good idea as well. Something to consider might even be combining the two ideas, i.e. being able to change the hard username and keep just one reserved, while also being able to freely pick and change a nickname, with nicknames freeing up immediately for use by others as soon as they’re changed. To avoid any potential confusion, though, I think you’d definitely need to make it so that a nickname that matches a person’s username can only be used by the person with that username (and also probably apply this to reserved usernames as well, should that come into play).

Edit: While I’m here (and since it is tangentially related), I figured I may as well ask — is there any particular reason why usernames have to be more than three characters? The username I typically prefer to use is only three letters, so I’ve always been curious about this.

3 letter words on spellstones don’t raise the multipliershima

This hit way too close to home.  I need a minute to process all of this.

I’ve been reading and rereading the news since yesterday to absorb the new change for usernames.  (after being delighted to see my Tillamook Twilight design in the news ^,^  Yeah!)

It looks like much of the objection to all of this is that as staff, you’ve clearly taken time to discuss this at length.  Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and processes. 

That said, as a non staff player, this one came out of nowhere for us as a userbase (personally I’m not changing my own un ever).  It’s a foundational ability/part of the game.  It might have been more helpful to have your staff discussions regarding this, and then post your ideas and solution in a separate thread. It gets lost in our monthly news.

No one likes changes that ‘come from nowhere’.  Perhaps everyone would feel better about the change if they simply had a time and space to voice their concerns, feel like they’ve been heard (which this thread is doing), but also that they had some sort of imput to the decision making process.

PLEASE make a banner announcement, there WILL be an overhaul of the Username feature. If you put it as a banner up top like you’re doing for the current Quest for the Icy Soul event, that means EVERYONE who logs in will be aware of this change.  Some people have limited time on here, so they may miss this important news.

Notice:
Due to a recent software update, some drifted pets’ colors have changed slightly over the last few days. While the full gamut of colors is still available, we understand that many players have spent a substantial amount of time finding the “perfect” drifts, and that the prospect of going through that again in order to restore the desired colors is not a welcome one. We have filed a bug report with the upstream developers and are monitoring the situation closely so that we can restore the affected pets to their previous colorings as soon as possible.

omg my drifties…. i didnt even notice…. and i dont have screens of what they were before and quite a few of them look very different….

https://www.mycenacave.com/profile/pet/10753
https://www.mycenacave.com/profile/pet/17686

These two look the most different, BBB used to be more reddish and drfity boy was more orange

my drifty bebs are very important to me, hopefully this can be fixed and they can be restored to what they were before…

Oh dear, it looks like my Hisuiren got hit by this. She used to nearly match the hair she’s wearing instead of being pink. And I am really not a fan of pink… *hopes this gets fixed soon as well* Appreciate the heads-up on the matter so I didn’t get upset over it or confused in some fashion!

(Edit: My other drifty pet, Lex, may or may not be slightly different, I can’t really tell, and I don’t super care overmuch, so long as she’s a green shade I usually leave her alone until I get bored again. XD;)

Avis

We’re currently working on resolving the situation, and you can find more information in this post. Unfortunately, the issue is not directly with the coding of the website and must be patched by the people who manage some of our software; therefore, it might take a little time. We’re going to try our best to get all the pets to their former colors, though, if we can.