Guild Wars 2

I know this has been brought up several times before, but it is a travesty that the game client doesn’t remember ranger pet names.

This is a core concept. You want the player to identify with their menagerie.

The game encourages you to swap between multiple pet setups to match up to each situation. If you do that you lose pet names every time.

If the data database cant/wont handle all that extra data, per character/account, just please make the pet naming happen client side.

This is such a fundamental class quality of life issue, please make it happen.

I agree! Atm I just remember ~10 pet names and rename them if I swap for longer, but it’s annoying.

I use only these names so I have no problem remembering my pet name or what they like. AoE Happy/AoE Addict.

I fully agree. I like to name all my pets individually, and I have to keep their names in an Excel file and rename them whenever I swap them out. It’s ridiculous I should have to do something so cludgy for something so small in a game of this caliber.

You want to know what’s really ridiculous though? My wife’s a programmer and DBA (database administrator), and I was defending ANet to her on this whole issue, the usual arguments of, “Well, maybe it’s harder to do than it seems, or maybe the storage space is prohibitive.” She just scoffed.

I don’t remember all the technical terms she used, but basically, just looking over the interface, she figures ANet stores all the pets in one main relational database and then has “linking tables” for each ranger which tell which pets the character hasn’t unlocked yet, so you can’t equip those pets. Apparently, all ANet would have to do to fix this is insert a single text field into the linking tables. According to my wife if they allowed 50 characters per pet name, it would only take about 3K of storage per Ranger. That’s nothing. And setting it up would take one moderately skilled database person about an hour and a half (plus time for testing, which will vary depending on their testing practices). And there’d be pretty much zero maintenance once it was set up.

So minimal effort to fix, negligible storage space consumed, and no maintenance after the fact. The only reason I can see that ANet doesn’t fix this—or that they didn’t do it right in the first place—is because they just don’t think it’s important enough to bother with, despite all the feedback they’ve gotten on it.

Would love it too. Just not on their radar i guess. It’s been requested many times in the Suggestions section.

Seeing how much whinging the latest non-stats-related update genarated (Rainbow Jellyfish), i doubt the motivation to bother anymore will be all that high.

I’d like to see it happen, but I also realize that if it did myself and many others would complain that they put effort into this when actual profession and gameplay issues were far more important.

JonSP.1940:

I fully agree. I like to name all my pets individually, and I have to keep their names in an Excel file and rename them whenever I swap them out. It’s ridiculous I should have to do something so cludgy for something so small in a game of this caliber.

You want to know what’s really ridiculous though? My wife’s a programmer and DBA (database administrator), and I was defending ANet to her on this whole issue, the usual arguments of, “Well, maybe it’s harder to do than it seems, or maybe the storage space is prohibitive.” She just scoffed.

I don’t remember all the technical terms she used, but basically, just looking over the interface, she figures ANet stores all the pets in one main relational database and then has “linking tables” for each ranger which tell which pets the character hasn’t unlocked yet, so you can’t equip those pets. Apparently, all ANet would have to do to fix this is insert a single text field into the linking tables. According to my wife if they allowed 50 characters per pet name, it would only take about 3K of storage per Ranger. That’s nothing. And setting it up would take one moderately skilled database person about an hour and a half (plus time for testing, which will vary depending on their testing practices). And there’d be pretty much zero maintenance once it was set up.

So minimal effort to fix, negligible storage space consumed, and no maintenance after the fact. The only reason I can see that ANet doesn’t fix this—or that they didn’t do it right in the first place—is because they just don’t think it’s important enough to bother with, despite all the feedback they’ve gotten on it.

That’s the technical part.
Then, you’d have to include that database part into the actual game code(storing pet names does nothing, if the game client doesn’t receive the actual names, so another 1-2 hours of work) and, most importantly, have the whole database update to the new tables with an additional entry and create a new patch for the game(for a database of that size, probably 5-10 minutes downtime and another hour of work).
Depending on regulations and technology, these things might take longer/not that long, tho.

It is a shame, shoddy programing to say the least.

cafard.8953:

Would love it too. Just not on their radar i guess. It’s been requested many times in the Suggestions section.

Seeing how much whinging the latest non-stats-related update genarated (Rainbow Jellyfish), i doubt the motivation to bother anymore will be all that high.

I think the devs have a very thick skin when it comes to stuff like that. They know that players tend not to post on the forums unless they are unhappy. I was playing through a bunch of the things added in this last patch and I didn’t post about a lot of them because I was busy enjoying them. It might be a highly praised act to change things like the rainbow jellyfish or pet names but it will be very much appreciated by many of the people who use those features.

naphack.9346:

you’d have to include that database part into the actual game code(storing pet names does nothing, if the game client doesn’t receive the actual names, so another 1-2 hours of work)

If they’ve coded efficiently, then they should have to change only a single reference, way, way back where the data layer interfaces with the business layer. Still, not difficult to do. But with testing, yeah, maybe one more hour. So we’re up to 2 1/2 hours, including testing. Fair enough.

naphack.9346:

and, most importantly, have the whole database update to the new tables with an additional entry and create a new patch for the game(for a database of that size, probably 5-10 minutes downtime and another hour of work).

Provided you’ve tested the tables in your testing environment, you can actually add them to the game while it’s live, so no downtime.

And as for the patch, they patch the game every month anyways. Acquiring patches is—or hopefully is—an automated process. They are probably running a continuous integration system. Every time someone checks in their code, the build server acquires the code, compiles it, notifies anyone if there’s problems, and keeps a record of what changed from the previous build. So there’s no extra work there.

So, we’re at 2 1/2 hours, but that’s actually really, really cheap in developer time (and that even includes documenting the changes). So it’s still an easy fix. ANet apparently just doesn’t think it’s worth even that minimal effort.

After picking on this so much, I feel I should add that I do really respect ANet as a development team. I think they’re smart, competent people who’ve done a fantastic job on the game overall. But I also think they’ve made some less-than-stellar choices in some areas, particularly in the small-but-significant details, like this one. But making those choices is just part of their job.

And pointing out our dissatisfaction with them is part of ours. :-)

Pet names go away?

Wow. I had no idea. So if I name a pet, I will have to re-name my pet each time I swap it?

Yah, I have a 80th level ranger with 4 pets – 2 water/2 land I need to get out of WvW more often.

If you were to introduce a 3rd land pet in your rotation, names would start to be forgotten.

Here’s the added insult.

Each ranger pet remembers where it was charmed, they each have an entry for that. For some reason that is more important than the pet’s name.