Utility Pets - Scavenger/Loot Pet

I guess I just couldn't help but think of this after playing a lot of ARPGs recently. The latest was The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing and it was decent but it had an interesting mechanic I've not really seen done elsewhere.

In Van Helsing you have a permanent companion of the lady Katarina who you can set to auto-loot gold and items into her own separate inventory for you including just setting a gold value since another function she has is to make a shop run to sell whatever is in her inventory.

With that preamble out of the way it did get me thinking since I was researching MMOs again recently including Ashes and it made me think of what other games have similar features. I suppose the most prominent one is Runescape with a lot of endgame items dedicated to auto-looting and cleaning up trash drops.

Still, I haven't really seen it done in a more 3D first person MMO.

Now I've speculated on what utility pets and companions Ashes could have since it's been stated as a goal and so far there's of course been speculation on pets that help with gathering skills and whatnot but what about combat pets? There hasn't been much given on what combat pets could do so it's all just been speculation.

Now I would love to have some racoon, red panda or even weasel type pet to loot some corpses while I continue fighting but it's hard to say it would be good for the game. Plus without much of a drop table in Alpha-1 it's hard to even say whether a utility pet for looting would even be that useful but there is at least a couple ways I could imagine a utility pet could enhance loot without even doing something as dubious as auto-looting.

One example is a pet that eats or otherwise eliminates corpses that have been fully looted. This could give extra crafting components such as essence or what have you. Call it a corpse eater pet if you will. It could almost be thought of like the Desecrate ability from Nekros in Warframe.

Perhaps the ultimate loot enhancer pet would be one that enhances your skinning/butchery and eats the corpse after you're done so you wouldn't have to switch between those two types of utility pet.

Obviously this is just me spitballing but I hope it's given you food for thought on utility pets and what could be possible outside what people might normally think of.

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Comments

CriminalCupcake

Not for....
Not for As.....

You know what? I cant even bring myself to say it, considering how bad looting is right now. I agree as long as it wouldnt get OP or paid for.

Khronus

I actually like this idea also lol. I've never played a game where something looted my kills and had its own inventory. What if this thing was killable and dropped all the contents on death. This would be a really cool implementation and bring more value to certain mount/pet professions! Maybe a special mount (or something in place of a summoned mount) could follow you around and work like this so the risk would be, you can't mount up and run away if someone decides to engage you? Cool idea.

Noaani

I'm not keen on it having it's own inventory - as inventory management seems to be a thing in this game.

I am also not keen on it going back to town to sell items on your behalf, as going to nodes to sell your certificates is actually a key thing in this game.

This just leaves the assistance in looting. I'm all for making it easier to loot in any game - deciding which items to pick up and which to leave is a necessary skill in many games. To me, by the time we get to just making it easier to pick up loot, we are not really needing to go as far as implementing a pet system - they could just change the looting UI.

Not that I am against it being pets - I just don't see a need for that once you pull out the parts of it that are not suited to Ashes.

Puck_Goodfellow

Noaani wrote: »

I'm not keen on it having it's own inventory - as inventory management seems to be a thing in this game.

I am also not keen on it going back to town to sell items on your behalf, as going to nodes to sell your certificates is actually a key thing in this game.

This just leaves the assistance in looting. I'm all for making it easier to loot in any game - deciding which items to pick up and which to leave is a necessary skill in many games. To me, by the time we get to just making it easier to pick up loot, we are not really needing to go as far as implementing a pet system - they could just change the looting UI.

Not that I am against it being pets - I just don't see a need for that once you pull out the parts of it that are not suited to Ashes.

Ya, I don't think a pet that can sell your trash loot for you would work for AoC. As for having something that has its own inventory we've already had an example in having a pack mule for holding your gatherables such as mining materials. I think it was talked about in a Q&A but I distinctly remember Steven himself talking about it.

My thoughts are simply expanding on it from just passive extra storage to something that can take a more active role. So a pack mule would be a low level companion whereas a loot assist companion would be a higher level companion.

Regarding improving the looting UI I don't disagree that having a better UI would make a loot assist pet redundant. However, my main focus was to talk about loot enhancement where an example would be getting extra crafting components.

As you mentioned it doesn't have to be pets that help with that sort of thing but maybe in some circumstances it would be nice and would certainly make Taming and Animal Husbandry more valuable if it can assist in more than just better mounts.

I'm probably biased though since I've played Runescape for a long time and see Summons/Pets/Companions and whatever you want to call them as more than just something that gives you more damage.

To reiterate, some possible functions of utility pets don't have to be done by pets per say and could simply be done by some utility item as it were but I still think it's cool to have that style of having Summons/Pets/Companions help you outside of combat.

ViBunja

I like the idea, but it'd be nice for pets to go and fetch items and you just pick them up and put them into your inventory instead. Then I don't think I have any issues with it.

Voidwalkers

I'd prefer auto-loot over a looting pet though.

Imagine a 25 ppl raid prying through an evil dragon's lair with 25 squirrels hopping behind cleaning up the dragonkin corpses.

Hmmmm.

ViBunja

Voidwalkers wrote: »

I'd prefer auto-loot over a looting pet though.

Imagine a 25 ppl raid prying through an evil dragon's lair with 25 squirrels hopping behind cleaning up the dragonkin corpses.

Hmmmm.

But 25 rabid squirrels tearing a dragon apart sounds badass.

Roko

I like this idea. I want to focus on the combat or where I'm going or the quest I'm doing. Currently I dislike having to stop to loot the corpses. I also agree with noaani, I want only one inventory. My opinion is that I prefer to only have my own inventory to manage instead of having to manage a separate inventory on top of mine. It also doesn't have to be a pet maybe the items and certificates from the stuff you kill are auto transferred into your bag as they die.

JamesSunderland

I Really like the idea of non-cashshop looting pets, not only as a nice quality of life but as a risk vs reward factor, for example, as your looting pet would have it's personal bag and become a walking loot piñata or looting to your own bag but nerfing your power like a combat pet would as possible prices for your quality of life.

Noaani

Voidwalkers wrote: »

I'd prefer auto-loot over a looting pet though.

Imagine a 25 ppl raid prying through an evil dragon's lair with 25 squirrels hopping behind cleaning up the dragonkin corpses.

Hmmmm.

Indeed.

I can see an autoloot feature being a possible skill mules could have, which seems like the most appropriate place for it.

Enigmatic Sage

When gamers become too lazy to loot for themselves they result in a pet or entity to do it for them.
Reminds me a mechanic that belong in a slot machine game diablo 3.
What's worse is usually these things cater to bot and players to use bots.
Additionally websites and groups try to use mechanics like these to farm and monetise things in the game they try to sell online or in-game which would alter the player built and driven market of the game.

Then it evolves into, why cant my pet skin the animal for me, why cant my pet cut down the tree for me? why cant I have a pet that just plays the game for me?

I'd be ok with an auto-loot feature as long as the radius is not too ridiculous.

Enigmatic Sage

But then again, even auto loot can be manipulated by players to exploit farming items and experience as we've seen with the druids in WoW where they just spam aoe's in zones that have faster respawns as hordes of mobs are aggroed towards them.

Kionashi

NO...just no....

Auto loot makes easier to fill the game with bots that will ruin the economy...and as @Enigmatic Sage said, It only encourage lazyness and being less engaged with the game...I want more stuff to do not less!

ViBunja

I still like the idea to obtain a pet or even better, have the tamers also train pets with skills. It will give them something to do and create another gold sink, of course given some limitations. In Warframe you can get a pet, Kubrow, that is capable of not only picking items (a single one at the time), but can find treasures and can open up locks and get secret treasures, but they can only get one item, run to you and go back. It's slower than you doing it, but it's a fun mechanic to have in the game.

Iffithy

I don’t like the idea of the pets or an auto loot function but I wouldn’t mind a loot radius that way if you end up killing several mobs in one area you don’t have to loot every single one. Instead looting one would loot all around you at once. Saves some time but still Makes stopping to loot relevant

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