Topic

Encouraging More Unique Animal Names

I think pretty much everyone agrees that more unique animal names are a good thing in game; they make it easier to select certain animals during harvesting and are just more interesting to interact with.  

Most of the suggestions to date to solve this have relied heavily on:
a. staff monitoring of names (do they really have time? nope.  and who would want that job? not me.),
b. some sort of a log of previous names (which would make it more difficult to get rid of offensive or hateful names as they would then be logged forever or until staff manually removed) 
or c. attribution to the naming Glitch (which could start some conflicts - oh more staff time sucked away!)

I understand that we have the option of renaming the animals (and I do frequently), but it seems like a never-ending battle between animals who are accidentally key-jacked while being harvested (all those 'dd' chickens out there) and ones who have been the target of serial renamers (who just go through the game cut-pasting their own name onto every animal they see).  The problem is that both of these actions are easier and faster than coming up with and typing out a unique name for an animal. 

So what if we could only use a certain name once a game day?  

If you name a chicken 'DeSantis', that's fine, but the next chicken down the line tells you that "You just named another animal that!"  or " That's not my name!" and does not rename.  This solution wouldn't require too much additional server space (as they would only have to track your name activity for that game day) or staff time (as the results don't have to be constantly monitored).  

And if someone really, really wants to name all the chickens on their street "DeSantis", they still can; it will just take them a few days, rather than a few seconds, to obliterate all the unique names other Glitches have worked to put in place.

(Ideally this could filter to the single word level so once you had named a pig "DeSantis is (fill in the blank)", you could not use any of those words in another name for that game day, eliminating many of the issues with hateful renaming or repetitive political spam.  Even more ideally, TS could put filters in that caught the single letter entries (most often mis-keys, such as 'a', 'aa', etc.) and rejected them as well.

Posted 8 months ago by Tribeca Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I think this is a fine idea, even though I like having all my chickens in my back yard named "Camilla".  +1
    Posted 8 months ago by Carl Projectorinski Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The beauty is you could still name all your chickens "Camilla" (as long as your keyholders or visitors weren't naming them something else back); it would just take you as many in-game days as you had chickens to do it.  (I would never want to stand between a Glitch and his chicken name fetish ;)
    Posted 8 months ago by Tribeca Subscriber! | Permalink
  • YES.

    Or people can name their own chickens whatever they want and this could apply to regular streets.  

    Did I mention YES?
    Posted 8 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sounds good to me :) Well thought out post!
    Posted 8 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't really think having a bunch of animals with the same name in Ur is that big of a deal and it is easier to mark them as harvested if they all have the same name (which I know a lot of players do).
    Posted 8 months ago by rach.the.emobear Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +193846329786987265!!

    It's so hard to tell which pigs you've already harvested when they're all named Emery.  I think this system would be a great solution!
    Posted 8 months ago by Aurora Dellaterra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • YES!!!!
    Posted 8 months ago by Innie✿, Obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lovely, well-thought out, clearly articulated idea!

    A+!
    Posted 8 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Out of curiosity - in your idea, are the names filtered by street (i.e. one use of a given name per street per game day), or just applied to Ur at large (i.e. one use of a give name per game day, period)?

    Also, I wonder if people would freak out about naming filters on the basis of a freedom of speech, "ZOMG BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING" type thing.  But I still think it's an awesome idea.
    Posted 8 months ago by Aurora Dellaterra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Tribeca wrote: TS could put filters in that caught the single letter entries

    I like the idea with the exception of this bit. My own 30 piggies  are named a, b, c,.......z, 1, 2, 3 and 4
    Posted 8 months ago by IrenicRhonda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for all the support guys!  Just out of personal preference, I would argue for one given name per game day period as seeing the same name street after street seems more like advertising, like using an animal as a billboard rather than giving it a personal name.  

    I'm not advocating that TS set up some sort of restricted word list here, only that if you used a name previously in the game day, you not be allowed to use it again.  This seems like it would be transparent enough (and based on a purely mechanical filter, not staff monitoring) that few Glitchen's piggy-naming free speech rights would be greatly jeopardized. 

    IrenicRhonda - I understand what you are saying.  diaveborn mentioned the possibility that none of these rules apply when you are in your own yard or house and that seems like one good way of handling it.  But even if this exception wasn't instituted, would it be so bad to come home to Alphalfa, Binky, Coin Toss, Dipper, Eustace....and Zero?
    Posted 8 months ago by Tribeca Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +over 9000

    It's tiresome when someone names all the same type of animal on the same street the same exact name. Not only is it unvaried and unoriginal, it makes it EXTREMELY difficult (with the current UI) to determine what you've harvested and what you haven't. It's also annoying when people, either accidentally or on purpose, rename a perfectly good name into something like 'd'. Most of these people will ruin perfectly good names with this behavior.

    The suggestion above would be great. My thoughts:
    ♪ You can use this exact name only once per game day on the same animal type. (If even only on the same street).
    ♪ The given name must be a minimum of 2 characters long. (stops most accidental a, d, etc...)
    ♪ If an all-lowercase name is entered, the first letter of every individual word is capitalized automatically by the server. (it IS a name, after all).
    ♪ The name requires at least two DIFFERENT letters. This would prevent the intentional 'dd', 'dddd' and such that players are throwing around.
    ♪ Home and Home Street Owners are exempt from all above rules.

    Would not be too hard to throw some if-then statements on the rename function, I imagine, to make this happen. If the name entered by a player is too short, uses only the same letters repeatedly, or a repeat of an already applied name... the local chat would simply state that the name was erroneous and to try again. Simple enough solution.

    The capitalization suggestion is simply because it's a pet peeve of mine when people name something "sally" instead of "Sally" or "mr pork" instead of "Mr Pork". It's inconsistent and improper.
    Posted 8 months ago by Lorraine ♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Some good ideas here. If you've seen my other posts elsewhere on this topic, you know that the repetitive names are a pet peeve of mine. I think the basic suggestion of not being able to repeat the same name the same day on the same street is good.

    Controls beyond that, however, are a bit too much, imo. I don't have a problem with one letter, one number, lowercase (ee cummings, anyone?), or whatever, as long as each name on that street is unique. The essential problem is being able to identify which animals you've interacted with, and limiting repetition would correct that. But if you just don't like a name (too short, not creative, not capitalized, whatever), then just rename the critter!
    Posted 8 months ago by Dr.Maud, Obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dr.MaudGonne - totally agree!  The main issue is definitely identification, and that doesn't need a whole whack of fancy controls and limitations, just one!
    Posted 8 months ago by Aurora Dellaterra Subscriber! | Permalink