How will AoC diversify / reward the summoner class’s summons when played casual vs hardcore?

It’s both enervating and frustrating when summons are uniform across the board end game - same stats, same damage, same abilities / features; especially when you take into account casual vs hardcore play styles since pets are your specific extenuation of your respective class / archetype.

It’s my hope they they will take into account the player’s weapons / armor stats profile when calibrating pet strength, stats and even the addition of unique passive and active abilities.

Pet classes seem to always be left behind when other classes benefit from their gear equating to increased damage mitigation, greater damage output and increased healing and weapon procs; while summoners / pet classes are uniform across the board, which I attribute to lazy devs.

Vanguard Saga of Heroes was creative in allowing players to harvest grafts from unique monsters, which then unlocked new abilities for their pets. It’s my hope that with as in depth as AoC is, they don’t take the easy way out with regard to uniformity and lack of diversification among pet classes. Yes, I realize you can create unique combinations based on archetype, but a hardcore player’s pet shouldn’t be the same as casual players.

Again, other classes benefit from raid loot with better stats awarded from gear translating into increased performance; the same should hold true with all pet classes. The easiest way to facilitate this is to calculate their pet’s stats off of the player’s avatar. I’d also love to see the option to unlock unique pet abilities from raid loot. A summoner in end game raided armor and weapons should unequivocally outperform a casual player in rare tier or equivalent gear. Another idea would entail collecting / harvesting rare materials from bosses / raids that are required to unlock new pet skills and or pet *tiers.

I implore you AoC to elevate your pet classes; this game looks revolutionary on so many levels - get this class right!!

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Voxtrium

I should probably read the wiki a bit but regardless, I would love to see the animal husbandry system incorporate the summoners pets. We haven't heard jack pickles about the summoners or their pets but considering the work and excitement they seem to show over their husbandry system I half expect them to already be planning to use the husbandry system for summoners as well.

Solvryn

Necromancers are shaping up to be the entry level summoner.

Pushing for Wild Blade to be the summoner with a stupid high skill ceiling.

Summoner should just have a naturally higher skill ceiling, in a lot of games the thematic summoner classes often get the dogshit nerfed out of them because they're too easy for a high reward, not a fan of that.

SirChancelot

Solvryn wrote: »

Necromancers are shaping up to be the entry level summoner.

Pushing for Wild Blade to be the summoner with a stupid high skill ceiling.

Summoner should just have a naturally higher skill ceiling, in a lot of games the thematic summoner classes often get the dogshit nerfed out of them because they're too easy for a high reward, not a fan of that.

I want the broodwarden to be that high end summoner. I think it would be awesome to be able to tank group content through pets if properly geared and built for it.

TriforCe

Agree, in EQ a pet group could be just as viable and A LOT of fun to play as pure class builds.

If you spec in a specific archetype and are restricted to those specific build pets, they should be pretty damn strong for specializing and restricting your other options; maybe not 1:1 compared to a specific single class but at least with the *opportunity to be 75%+ as strong, especially if you are donning top raid gear on your summoner.

Bosses should be killable with pure pet groups and I don’t see any problem with this; it makes no sense to restrict content based on class... All classes should be able to clear raid content (assuming the holy trinity is in play - damage dealer, healer, tank) pet class or *Not; especially if they are shooting still for a party size of 8, which I still think is too damn many people; really hoping it’s 5-6.

When games start imposing tons of content restrictions, this also *nerfs the fun / freedom / immersion factor. Restrictions are and always will be paradoxical in a fantasy based game and I don’t play them to be repeatedly reminded of this. The old school MMORPGs got it right with imposing minimal restrictions.

Solvryn

SirChancelot wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

Necromancers are shaping up to be the entry level summoner.

Pushing for Wild Blade to be the summoner with a stupid high skill ceiling.

Summoner should just have a naturally higher skill ceiling, in a lot of games the thematic summoner classes often get the dogshit nerfed out of them because they're too easy for a high reward, not a fan of that.

I want the broodwarden to be that high end summoner. I think it would be awesome to be able to tank group content through pets if properly geared and built for it.

That'd be cool. I'm hoping Wild Blade doesn't have "pets" as much as it does animal spirits that kind of become weapons.

Depraved

TriforCe wrote: »

It’s both enervating and frustrating when summons are uniform across the board end game - same stats, same damage, same abilities / features; especially when you take into account casual vs hardcore play styles since pets are your specific extenuation of your respective class / archetype.

It’s my hope they they will take into account the player’s weapons / armor stats profile when calibrating pet strength, stats and even the addition of unique passive and active abilities.

Pet classes seem to always be left behind when other classes benefit from their gear equating to increased damage mitigation, greater damage output and increased healing and weapon procs; while summoners / pet classes are uniform across the board, which I attribute to lazy devs.

Vanguard Saga of Heroes was creative in allowing players to harvest grafts from unique monsters, which then unlocked new abilities for their pets. It’s my hope that with as in depth as AoC is, they don’t take the easy way out with regard to uniformity and lack of diversification among pet classes. Yes, I realize you can create unique combinations based on archetype, but a hardcore player’s pet shouldn’t be the same as casual players.

Again, other classes benefit from raid loot with better stats awarded from gear translating into increased performance; the same should hold true with all pet classes. The easiest way to facilitate this is to calculate their pet’s stats off of the player’s avatar. I’d also love to see the option to unlock unique pet abilities from raid loot. A summoner in end game raided armor and weapons should unequivocally outperform a casual player in rare tier or equivalent gear. Another idea would entail collecting / harvesting rare materials from bosses / raids that are required to unlock new pet skills and or pet *tiers.

I implore you AoC to elevate your pet classes; this game looks revolutionary on so many levels - get this class right!!

what does casual or hardcore have to do with anything? do you mean summoner with 1 subclass being easier to play than summoner with another subclass?

Taleof2Cities

TriforCe wrote: »

When games start imposing tons of content restrictions, this also *nerfs the fun / freedom / immersion factor. Restrictions are and always will be paradoxical in a fantasy based game and I don’t play them to be repeatedly reminded of this. The old school MMORPGs got it right with imposing minimal restrictions.

Noble points, @TriforCe, but don't lose sight of balancing summoner gameplay with the other archetypes.

A higher skill ceiling with one type of summoner class does not mean it should be OP, unbalanced, or even "meta".

Can Intrepid keep pet summons unrestricted but still balanced?

We shall find out in Alpha 2.

TriforCe

@Depraved has nothing to do with skill ceiling. A hardcore summoner’s pets should be better than a casual player’s pets. This can be accomplished by unlocking special pet active or passive skills by collecting raid materials or basing the pet’s stats off the player’s weapons / armor. I just don’t want to see level 50 pets uniform across the board where they are just based off the player’s level vs the time investment and raid accomplishments they have achieved.

Garrtok

We don't know anything about the class nor the second class.

Kilion

From all I know, I would speculate that Summoners will be able to acquire new summons through loot and maybe "craft" them so to speak (animal husbandry of sorts).
I might direct readers to the Wiki to see the difference between regular combat pets which is basically a stat transfer from the player (class independent) to the pet and the summons which do not transfer stats but are basically newly generated entities controlled by the summoner.
It would only makes sense that these newly summoned entities are basically like a fireball spell of a mage, meaning they scale with the stats (and therefore equipment) of the Summoner. And I suspect that there will be special gear at some point that can modify summons or allow us to summon whole new things. e.g. you find a fire dragon scale which can be crafted into a staff that either gives Summons a fire aura, dealing consistent damage to nearby enemies or allows them to summon a small dragon or fire lizard.

And 100% will there be non-purchasable cosmetics

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