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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
This is exactly what i meant further up.
Combat Pets are nice and so on : but WHAT about if Players - like "Two Sides" - gather for a HUUUGE Battle where they for Example fight to either defend or attack a City ?
I could imagine that even "stronger", more capable Computers will have their Hands full smoothly animating everything, if HUNDREDS of Players are present and the Battle couldn't be more epic.
Then - > for some Reason - many of them decide to whip out their Battle Pets.
AAAARRRG (lol) MY EYES !!!!! Th- THE FRAMES !!! It's the FRAME-POCALYPSE !!!!!
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Meta will tell.
Combat pets isn't a philosophy based on which an mmo gains a following (faction based, lore based pvp, instanced encounters and ladderboards, daily gameplay, story driven content on ez overland map with story dlcs, owpvp and guild conflicts). It most certainly isn't part of the main aspects of AoC that define it.
Steven and the devs may have ideas that they are working on, which include the usage of pets, but the fact remains that they are visual clutter and their mechanics aren't fascinating to those that never cared for the summoner playstyle.
Call them what you will but players would rather use their class/character to deal with various situations rather than manage pets in action. The design could be redirected towards adding more unique tools to classes and increasing their appeal, rather than people running around with pets for XYZ reason.
You don't need to research something that you know you don't enjoy and you'd rather show the devs the reasons as to why people may not be interested in them, since they aren't part of the core philosophies behind the game.
Whether they are more than just extra dps or not, based on the wiki info you threw here, if combat pets improve your chance for success in certain situations, people will be forced to have them. I am all for character progress but managing pets is the same things as you liking the summoner archetype. People dont want to play summoners on ANY situation, if they don't want to play summoners.
Maybe the designs they are going for aren't as good as something else suggested by the community.
Beyond no p2w, beyond owpvp, beyond limited instanced contend with focus on conflict and reward, beyond meaningful travel and resource distribution/economy everything else can be completely rejected by the playerbase, rightly so.
Building up a pet should be an activity that takes time and costs something (IE, animal husbandry, gearing, xp/training, quest line, etc), rather than just "do one thing and here's your pet"
One thing that I do *NOT* like about pets is visual clutter. ESO had the worst combat pet in the form of the Twilight Matriarch. Large demon wings flapping across your screen every second if you stood in the wrong spot. And since the pet followed you, it was in the wrong spot a lot. Made the pet spec for sorc (which was OP for PvE DPS, and trash in PvP) completely unplayable to me.
And easy solution to combat pet clutter is to put in a client option to "show standard low profile pet graphics". Every melee combat pet is a generic small wolf to people with this turned on. An option to "make pets transparent" could also be good, but would probably be bad in PvP if pets are a viable combat threat
Combat pets can't be something that dies easily to one swing or to AE. Aside from being a corruption grief waiting to happen, it makes them mostly useless
The issue I and many other players have with combat pets, be they spell summoned, item summoned, quest given, any form of given. Sure they are cool from a RP perspective, and I do like to RP in my games, however they are awful from a gameplay perspective.
Is that, they give more capability to the player that has one, than one that does not.
They devalue player agency during a fight, simply by existing.
The only pet I would like to see is cosmetic only, cant be targeted, doesnt have a hitbox or collide with anyone.
In one of the newest Videos there was a "Duckling" following one of the People in the Video around. I doubt it was a Battle-Pet, though. More like a simple Pet.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
This quote from Steven doesn't make sense to me... I get that he's trying to explain that pets don't offer raw power but seem to offer more like a counter to certain mobs or situations. Isn't that just... power? If it increases your chance to win the battle that is power, whether it adds raw dps or not. This system just requires more micromanagement and collection. *rolls eyes*
Also someone was mentioning "fixing" visual clutter by toning down graphics on combat pets. Couple reasons that won't work. 1. PvP, people need to be able to see what is attacking them, you can't make things smaller, or make all pets look the same, despite this not actually fixing the problem of clutter. And 2. This still doesn't alleviate the extra stress on the server for processing all the extra pets and their actions. (yay more lag!)
to avoid visual clutter and micro management: Combat Pet could be an augment a skill or a proc: summon Combat Pet fighting for you for 10s to 20s or using his special abilities and disapearing.
AoC class wish: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/422108#Comment_422108
That would be a nice Trait, too.
Make "Combat-Pets" something like short-timed Summons. You can summon them once every few Minutes - but they only hold like +20 Seconds or so. (Hrr hrr hrr ^^)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
So even the idea that targeting might become an issue should be addressed. Especially with the 8 man groups and large raids. I am hoping they aren't targettable or able to be killed but more of a cosmetic or variety.
Maybe they do 30% of your auto attack damage but they reduce your own by 35%. So they might add consistent damage but less burst damage.
Just totally depends on how they implement it.
"Combat pets are categorized by class and will adhere to a simple trinity structure (Tank/DPS/Support).[4]
Tank pets will maintain threat against enemies independent of the pet owner.[7]"
I feel this might devalue the class-based trinity. Not that I'm strictly against it, I just think that one has to be careful and think far ahead when introducing tank pets.
* smiles in Necromancer * >:-)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Pets should only be class based. For example Necromancer can summon horrorlike creatures, summonner only certain pets depending on its story, etc. Of course I think they should get us some power, but with mechanics (not only "attack that target")
Oh, and add minis like in GW2 pls.
My favorite "pet" system was from Spectrobes Origins for the nintendo Wii- I haven't really thought much about how to transfer that gameplay style to fit into an mmo setting, but I had a lot of fun with controlling pets in that game nonetheless.
Some key things that made pets fun in that game were:
1. Active/passive commands, and character management- It was fun managing both yourself as a character, and your pet during battle, and also the position of each of you. Doing that while also managing when you would use your own active skills and let your pet act passively, vs. giving taking the time to give your pet an active command, made for some fun pet combat gameplay.
2. Exploring to find the fossilized pets- it was very fun to find secret locations that had hidden pet "fossils" that unlocked new pets.
3. Excavating the pet artifacts, to determine the quality they would be- I really enjoyed this excavation skill check, and it reminded me of Fossil Fighters series for the nintendo DS, which also had fun fossil finding and fossil excavation, which would help determine the quality of your pets, and also other features/skills they might have, based on how well/how quickly you could excavate the fossil.
4. Raising and fine tuning your pets- this included having a home for your pets where you could care for them, and feed them things which would help boost their battle performance and allow you to customize their stats and optimize your pet's build. This kind of reminded me of the beloved "Chao Garden" from the popular Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Gamecube game. It was extremely fun and satisfying to hunt for specific collectibles or to beat certain challenges in the levels to earn specific collectibles, of which represented specific stats or attributes that you wanted to use on your Chao, and to care for them and raise them in the garden, to then command in chao battles and chao races. It was a classic feature in a classic game for a reason.
5. Managing your squad of pets- this had that Pokemon element to it, where you would decide which pets to include in your party and how you wanted to strategize and assemble your team of pets, and then decide when to use each pet during battle, since you could actively switch between them during a fight.
6. Satisfying sense of discovery/progression- the way you learn about the existence of new pets, new moves, new combinations, new tactics, etc. really adds to how satisfying the progession is and how the player experiences a fun sense of discovery, mastery, and overcoming challenges.
Another game that didn't necessaily involve "pets" per say, but has a similar "game feel" as far as "managing yourself and other entities that you have control over, on the battlefield" was the Megaman Battle Network series. This has extremely fun combat where you can place items/pets/etc. of which have different real-time movement patterns and behaviors on the battlefield. Managing these tools on the battlefield along with yourself as the player, is very engaging and fun. This could potentially help serve as additional inspiration for creating fun pet behaviors and balancing them in a real-time setting on the battlefield.
In AoC they are essential as a huge part of crafting. Some will be breeding/taming pets and or selling them with unique combinations/coloration.
Why dont you like them?
No, i like them.
What are the benefits to the game?
What is the benefit to necromancer pets? Should we just forget about them too? Same difference.
What negatives do they bring?
None. Only when a pvp group of 50 vs 50 or 100 vs 100 all have pets out does it become a nightmare.
What parameters would make then acceptable?
Make the pets non-combat. Only allow certain classes like ranger be able to utilize them more fully. Or make every class have to level together with said pet to essential be attuned to gain function with pets that takes time per pet. To be able for anyone to pop a pet out and use it instantly i am totally against. Can we ban necromancers from using combat pets and summoning since this is OP, thanks.
There would be no Point in being a Necromancer if one can not raise undead Minions/Summons to fight for himself, though ... ... 😅
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Not-necessarily do they *need* to summon anything could just be a dark version of the mage ststem with leeching instead of direct healing. But not what i was implying.. they should not be able to summon necromancer pets and combat pets like a bird. Necromancers already have pets why let them summon and use a stable pet(non-necromancer pet). Now the OP’s problem would be double.
skelly please...
Okay, a skelly raven or a skelly crow would fit in well with a necromancer.
Summons* ;->
And Yes, indeed. Those are the only one's i mean. There would be no Point in being a Necromancer, if one IS* a Summoner-Class : but can not even use his own Necromancer-Summons.
Combat Pet with for example the "Unseen Order"-Skins would be nice - but in the Case of Doubt i am confident the normal Summons of a Necromancer are already enough.
OOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFF imagine a huge Siege Battle for a City/Node and +50% of all Players present are Summoners with 3 Summons. 😅 . 😅 . 😅
And THEN everyone wants to whip out their "Combat-Pets" as well - adding to the Models. The Polygons. To everything that is burdening the Graphic Cards and Hardware-Drivers.
I get a Headache just from thinking about it. Maybe for Siege Battles Combat-Pets should REALLY be disabled.
I mean, all Players already "have" Allies, right ?
Many Allies - versus many Enemies.
For what would they even need Combat-Pets on top of that, then ? 🤔 Summoners would already fill the Battle Field with more Figures/Beings than the Players themselves are providing with their own Characters.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
even better.... or maybe a zombie-style raven or crow, partially decayed and alarmingly unsettling...
I'm more concerned about the cosmetic pets being visual clutters.
I hope Steven manage to balance the combat pets well so that players with or without a combat pet are equally strong. Having a combat pet should not be an advantage over not having one but a fun and different way to play your class, so it should not be totally pointless either.
Would you be willing to lose half your xp gained while the pet is summoned for a small amount of help?
That's how balance is achieved.
Has it been confirmed that we have to sacrifice xp while having the combat pet summoned?
I only know what can be read at the wiki and from that I understood that we sacrifice a bit of our power since combat pets wont increase our power like the summoners class pets does.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Combat_pets
If we must have them, I'd prefer that you pay a cost in Cooldowns and Basic Attack speed.
Then, at least, it has a flow to it, and people are less likely to call them in tougher or more dangerous situations where they need those things, but can use them for versatility or fun in less 'bleeding edge' content.
Plus, I consider that overall easiest to balance 'per pet', even if different classes get to do different things with them overall. Almost every other 'cost', I feel like people will work around somehow.