"Combat pets"

...keeps popping up within the AoC community since the recent interview that Steven gave.

At some point in L2 we all rolled around with combat wolves (the animal that captivates me most in reality) for the dps they added.

We shared xp with our pet wolves (which we had to quest, lv up and gear for) but all in all they made progress faster. And they were EVERYWHERE.

I disagree with combat pets, they steal focus from all classes and they make everybody a summoner.
They are visual clutter.
They are not a new gameplay experience. They are mandatory meta annoyance.

Will it impact negatively animal husbabdry sooo much? I dont think so.

I say we give our feedback.

Why do you like combat pets?
Why dont you like them?
What are the benefits to the game?
What negatives do they bring?
What parameters would make then acceptable IF you dont like them.

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Comments

Aszkalon

George_Black wrote: »

Tldr. "The visual clutter that is combat pets needs to be implemented properly".
Moving on.

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 !!!!!

Noaani

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Like others, my issue with pets is that in every game I've played they have either been pointless (Archeage), or required (early casters in Rift).

If pets are going to be a thing, having one up should slow your casting, or lower your damage - or something similar. Make it so having a battle pet is a trade off, you lose some of your power, but in return you gain that pet that may have abilities you don't.

This makes it an actual choice, which is far better than either worthless or required.

Like most things, it has been discussed and put out there already. People tend to comment first, and research last. Most of the previous posts in this have already been ruled out or debunked. But hey, why stifle discourse. Let your freak flag fly.

Yeah, but regardless of if it has been shot down already or not, it is still my answer to this question;

Vaknar wrote: »

How would you like to see Combat Pets implemented into Ashes of Creation?

So... yeah.

George_Black

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Like others, my issue with pets is that in every game I've played they have either been pointless (Archeage), or required (early casters in Rift).

If pets are going to be a thing, having one up should slow your casting, or lower your damage - or something similar. Make it so having a battle pet is a trade off, you lose some of your power, but in return you gain that pet that may have abilities you don't.

This makes it an actual choice, which is far better than either worthless or required.

Like most things, it has been discussed and put out there already. People tend to comment first, and research last. Most of the previous posts in this have already been ruled out or debunked. But hey, why stifle discourse. Let your freak flag fly.

Combat pets, which can be acquired by any archetype- and this is essentially an item that exists within your backpack- you cast the item to summon your pet. When it is summoned it's not intended to be a vertical gain of power, because when you make combat pets a vertical power gain, then it becomes a no choice solution: you must have a combat pet if you want to play efficiently- you must have a combat pet; and I wanted to steer clear of that because the way I wanted to approach combat pets was more of a horizontal power choice; meaning: depending on the type of encounter you're facing, depending on the threat assessment you have, a combat pet might be relevant, or it might not. One combat combat pet might be more relevant than another combat pet and that's part of your gear acquisition, your item chase to attain this more comprehensive selection of combat pets that you can have available to you and can be summoned in the event that you want to engage an encounter with a different aspect of your power curve: Not vertical, but horizontal.[1] – Steven Sharif

Combat pets generally have a horizontal progression, not a vertical one. Unlike Summoner summons, combat pets do not increase a player's power, but instead require a sacrifice from the player.[2][3][1][4][5]

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.

Spif

I very much like the idea of combat pets, since they add variety to the character build. The wiki specifically states that combat pets are horizontal progression. Summoning a combat pet will lower your own combat power a bit. That still leaves a lot of wiggle room for pets being good in niches. For example giving a cleric or tank more DPS when solo/small group. Giving a rogue or mage an offtank, etc.

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

Ruerik

Vertical or horizontal progression makes no difference actually.

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.

Raven016

Spif wrote: »

One thing that I do *NOT* like about pets is visual clutter.

I want rain with cats and dogs 🌧️🌩️🐈🐕

Aszkalon

Notice me, Forum-Senpai's !! lol

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.

Taaku

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

Combat pets, which can be acquired by any archetype- and this is essentially an item that exists within your backpack- you cast the item to summon your pet. When it is summoned it's not intended to be a vertical gain of power, because when you make combat pets a vertical power gain, then it becomes a no choice solution: you must have a combat pet if you want to play efficiently- you must have a combat pet; and I wanted to steer clear of that because the way I wanted to approach combat pets was more of a horizontal power choice; meaning: depending on the type of encounter you're facing, depending on the threat assessment you have, a combat pet might be relevant, or it might not. One combat combat pet might be more relevant than another combat pet and that's part of your gear acquisition, your item chase to attain this more comprehensive selection of combat pets that you can have available to you and can be summoned in the event that you want to engage an encounter with a different aspect of your power curve: Not vertical, but horizontal.[1] – Steven Sharif[2][3][1][4][5]

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!)

Freemeta

maybe:
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.

Aszkalon

Freemeta wrote: »

maybe:
to avoid visual clutter and micro management: Combat Pet could be an augment a skill or a proc: summon Combet Pet fighting for you for 10s to 20s or using his special abilities and disapearing.

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 ^^)

Fiddlez

I'm worried about combat pets but Steven assures us it's horizontal progression and they seem to have a pretty smart crew.

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.

Songcaller

A combat pet can turn you corrupt so they are more than cosmetic...

Voirak

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Combat_pets

"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.

Songcaller

Sounds like a summoner with a tank combat pet and a dps or healing summon will be a beast of a soloer.

Aszkalon

Neurath wrote: »

Sounds like a summoner with a tank combat pet and a dps or healing summon will be a beast of a soloer.

* smiles in Necromancer * >:-)

Smaashley

Vaknar wrote: »

Interesting discussion to read through!

Another question I might add to this thread is - How would you like to see Combat Pets implemented into Ashes of Creation? Or "In what ways have you seen combat pets utilized well in other MMORPGs?

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.

Ace1234

@Vaknar

Another question I might add to this thread is - How would you like to see Combat Pets implemented into Ashes of Creation? Or "In what ways have you seen combat pets utilized well in other MMORPGs?

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.

Sweatycup

Why do you like combat pets?
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.

Aszkalon

Sweatycup wrote: »

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 ... ... 😅

Sweatycup

Aszkalon wrote: »

Sweatycup wrote: »

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 ... ... 😅

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.

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