Ok new pet owner here (Crat and Engineer) and I've been wondering about the pet pathing issue. The way I see it there are two predominant problems with pet pathing. The first is pets have a difficult time following you thru missions, dungeons, and heck even outdoors. The other is that pets have a problem reaching a target after an attack command has been given.
The second problem seems to be more difficult to solve requiring a great deal of programming but the first seems trivial to solve, atleast with a compromise, to me and I don't understand why it hasn't.
If the pet is not currently attacking something nor is it currently under attack (including it being snared, rooted or mes'd) by anything then why can't we have a pet command that INSTANTLY warps the pet to the exact player coordinates? Something like "/pet comenow" or "/pet here". If the pet has agro my suggestion would not allow you to warp the pet to you but otherwise you could position the pet into any room or place that you can get to yourself. Pets already warp when they fall too far behind when outdoors (I love watching them fall from the sky when they catch up to me in my Yalm) so warping pets alreadyy exists. Heck I've been warped by squad commanders I feel like a yo-yo.
To me this would be a dirt-simple way of solving over 50% of the pathing problems. Why do I say "over 50%"? Well part of the problem of the pet finding a path to the target you told it to attack was that it didn't necessarily have a clear path to the target because it couldn't follow you around a table, into a room, or around a pebble! If you were able to get your pet to warp to your exact position you most likely already have a clear line-of-sight to the target and the pet could start its attack path from that position.
I'm 100% sure that someone must have brought this up before and I am just looking for a reasonable (non-flame) explanation of why this isn't a workable solution. I can understand that a pet suddenly appearing without using a nano formula or some such thing might appear unrealistic but to me isn't it more unrealistic that a robotic pet 25K years in the future can't navigate a room?
Please give me a reason why something like this shouldn't be done. I must be missing something, perhaps I'm too tired.
Wooti (QL200 Fire deflection shield is on)
PS - originally posted this in Beginners' Corner but I wasn't getting many response and I really would like to get some discussion going.