I haven't seen this suggested, let me know if someone has and I'll close this.

There have been a couple threads about optimizing transferring by moving the button to people's profiles or through the hoard menu, but what really gets me is this one, and I haven't seen it mentioned.

We have a couple threads for gifting (offhand, the Giving Tree and GAME: Give Something To The Person Above You, and I'm sure there are others), plus people in the forums mentioning they could use x, y, or z in a thread about their lion, and there are people who like to send treats to newer players (food, fancier cubs, etc). Some people, including myself, like to send some little gift to someone who's particularly helpful on the forum, something we especially see in 'help design my heir' threads.

When I receive things from someone, it's always a pleasant surprise, but at the same time I have a couple minutes of searching, to see if I was in a gifty thread, or if I know this person from somewhere, or I made a vague forum post and forgot about it, or what.

My suggestion is that on the Transfer page in the Trading Centre, we add a little box for an earmark/note (I don't care about the phrasing).

Preferably, the appearance and usage of this would be how transfers are now, but under the slot for 'Member #' there would be a third option with 'Notes.' This would have a character limit of 100 or so, so that someone could say 'thanks for the help' or 'For reclaiming your lionesses :)' or whatever applied (if it was longer, they might as well just send a transfer and a message).

It would be optional*, either made possible to just leave that section blank, or a tick box to opt in. This way, people wouldn't have to type out something every time they tried to quickly send something to their alternate, or to someone who was expecting items and sending 6+ in a row.



*If optional is too much of a pain to code, it could be non-optional, but acceptable to do just one character, so it wasn't entirely annoying for people transferring to their own side/main.
*Preferably the text box would be marked optional, but I forgot and didn't want to re-text that image again.

Currently, messages read:

Item Transfer
From: User (#000000)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
I've transferred Item!

The change would make it so that they read something like one of these:

Item Transfer
From: User (#000000)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
I've transferred Item! [Earmark as written goes here!]

Item Transfer
From: User (#000000)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
User has transferred Item to you, with the note: [Note goes here!]

Or, for example:

Item Transfer
From: Panya (#48512)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
I've transferred Dream Root! Thanks for your help with my lion!

Item Transfer
From: Panya (#48512)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
User has transferred Dream Root to you, with the note: Thanks for your help with my lion!

Or, in the case of things from threads, or simpler reasons:

Item Transfer
From: Panya (#48512)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
I've transferred Dream Root! Wishing tree :)

Item Transfer
From: Panya (#48512)
Sent On: 2014-11-14 13:14:40
User has transferred Dream Root to you, with the note: Wishing tree :)

If there was no note, that section would be blank. If possible, the 'with the note' in the second one would disappear.

The benefit of the first format is that there is little change, and people fear change ;). More seriously, it looks better if there is no note, and it reads in a sort of friendly way.

The benefit of the second one is that it doesn't look completely weird if there's only a one or two word note, unlike with the first. The drawback is that the lack of note is more conspicuous.

Unfortunately I know basically nothing about coding, so I don't know if this would be too much work.

Alternatives, suggestions, and improvements:
- Instead of an optional earmark on the transfer, there could be an option to transfer when sending a message to someone- for the user, it would be sort of like adding an attachment on an email.
--- A non-essential bonus on this point would be giving it tick boxes for what to attach like in trades, so that multiple items could go at once. (NB: I do not think multi item transfers matter to this thread otherwise, but transfers by message would mean changing the system anyway)
--- If this was how it was done, users would be able to turn off transfers still, as they can now, it would just be 'disable messages with items' or something instead. If multiple items were implemented, it would also be nice if people could either allow a certain amount per transfer, or turn off lion transfers, so as to keep people from dumping all their unwanted cubs on someone.

- An idea for if this really really took off would be to add some automatic ones in a drop down list, with an option for 'leave blank,' then options for 'Thank you!' 'Studding refund,' and a couple other things, and a final option for Custom where people could type it in, as originally suggested.

- [more suggestions?]