Dramatic Rethinking of Pet Professions (PVE/PVP) Fixes & Balancing Regarding All MMOs

[Xaun]

Introduction: I will start this out with a small overview of the perspective from which I am approaching this from. My hypothesis will be based on the history of pet professions stemming from Games such as Final Fantasy, Diablo I&II (LoD), Fallout 1&2, MMORPG's through the ages till present day. I will be posting this also in the AoC Forums for review as well. This applies to all games but will reference it to only 3 actively and the rest passively. Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, World Of Warcraft. My main target for the implementation of this pet system in AO would be with the new engine in 18.x.x (etc) When speaking of AO and the future, please take for this one discussions sake a general roll back of the way Pet professions were Pre-AI, meaning not including all the OP'd "Fixes" we've seen as a result of the problems I will tackle in this project discussion.

I must credit the many pet users of AO in these forums and my time in the AoC Beta in helping to make this idea click.

The Hypothesis: Pet users work great with existing systems in PVE only games; but fail to perform adequately in PVP without major work arounds due to the fact that People don't attack pets on purpose in PVP without sufficient reason. Attacking the pet is in almost all cases futile.. you ignore it and kill the owner.. Since the only real logical previously suggested notion to address this is to force taunting to work in PVP to which some people have major aversions to.. even tho it should work CC is another issue and I do not want to mix it in to this discussion because it is it's own so please refrain from bringing CC into this debate/discussion.

Supporting Arguments:
To start I will break down pet users in to sub-categories to better understand the application of the revolutionary idea I am going to present and how it is both logically sound and theoretically the solution needed to advance a stagnating and dying off area sub-genre of gaming styles within class and profession systems as well as free form non-class skill games. The types of pet users are broken down in to the following categories:

• Necromancers (Exploiting corpses to control pets)
• Summoners (Calling a pet out of thin air/other worlds/dimensions)
• Charmers (Converting a living unit to fight along side the character)
• Constructors (Building pets out of parts)

Now AO sadly does not have all 4 types of pet users accounted for, neither does AoC nor WoW. In AO we have the summoner (MP/Demonologist/Warlock), the Charmer (Bureaucrat/Trader/Hunter) and the Constructor (Engineer). The main difference between a summoner and a constructor being that one requires raw materials of a particular type to produce, in the case of engineers they spend credits and get a shell.. other games may not use this type at all or approach it differently than in AO but the principal behind these four types of pet classifications I believe is pretty sound.

The failure of pets.. Is in a few parts.

• Raw AI CPU Time
• Pet Pathing
• User control over the AI.
• Modes of AI (Passive Scripted Behaviors)
• Active Pet Abilities

In regards to CPU time given to AI I fully understand how this goes.. here's to hoping you all can afford new things with the future and servers.

The pet pathing fixes in AoC are far superior to that of AO.. is there some way to address finding a similar fix (making pets always warp to the same plane as the user when changing plane surfaces for example). I believe pathing will improve a lot with the coming Engine updates as physics will likely be addressed in the engines core routines to make way for the future.

User control is equivalent in this discussion to both keyboard and GUI input. Currently I feel AO's input methods and AoC's input methods severely lacking. Requiring mouse only interaction with buttons is not a wise move. This I feel would be easily remedied by giving programmable key-bindings for each pet command to the keyboard or input button press.

The various modes a pet can be put in to such as "aggressive, defensive, passive" must be made easily controllable for the pet user along with the individual commands of direct user control in giving attack, defend, heal, etc, type commands. I believe that this is one area where modern MMORPG's are severely lacking overall. I will detail this out below in my solutions for each pet profession type and how it can be addressed and used instead of ignored as a benefit to the users of pets. This will be thought of as passive pet abilities vs the active ones below.

Active Pet abilities are quite simply the individual commands able to be given through what ever method from the pet user to the pet. literally, heal this, attack that. These abilities can be automated but are not automatic.. meaning passive. The user is required to direct Active pet abilities.

Auxiliary Observations:
Please note that making pets unable to taunt or hold aggro as a fix to make Pet classes "Viable" in PVP.. like making the Demonologist into a nuker class in AoC for example with a useless pet that is merely a decoration / passive buff.. or the MP Situation of AO's present which I need not elaborate on.. or Stun Procs for Crats.. next comes Engineers.. I believe one of the fundamental flaws is in how this concept is handled as it is still being approached from a PVE perspective first then nerfing and boosting based on PVP performance.. I believe they were trying to see if they could fix the problems never fixed in AO in AoC but feel perhaps a different approach could prove more useful. Since a person cannot be made to attack the pet, to make pet professions PVP'able the role of the pet is being downgraded.

Just like the previous example from AoC take one from WoW. In PVP Hunters max out their Marksman line not beast mastery.. same for Warlocks and their dots vs pet.. PVP uses one PVE the other.. In AO the fixes has been basically.. Ignore the pets.. boost the main class in form of stuns, AS weapons, in short.. constantly borrowing from other professions toolkits to bandaid a frustrated playerbase that keep asking for more effective pets.. and CC (note CC not this topic).

Conclusions:
Now that we have covered the problems it is time to see the solution and then how it can apply to AO and other games in this genre and how I hope my idea may actually fix pet classes once and for all. I think it would be rather ironic if FC (notoriously bad at pet classes) is the one who brings this revolution to market in it's games.

To properly explain this I will have to do it via a context so for these Hypothetical Examples I will refer to AO exclusively. The principal is that the Pet user and the pets life and energy must effectively be combined and yet remain separate.. I will elaborate below in the aforementioned examples.

Pet General Abilities

• Wait
• Way Point Add/Remove
• Patrol
• Follow
• Return
• Report
• Note: Wait denotes a location to wait at, Way point Add/Remove handles setting up for patrols by pets, Follow returns the pet to following the selected target, Return causes to pet to follow you, Report is a status report of life/energy/location/%distance between two waypoints/etc

Pet Buffing & Damage Mitigation: For each type of pet active the controller receives the passive boosts to their own stats and share hp and damage between based on type of class and type of pet. Mind you this is very preliminary and I expect that I would require the wisdom of the number crunching pet users out there to aid in finding the right balance for such a proposal knowing their own toolkits far better than I do. As such I am only putting these templates below out as archetypal suggestions from which solid based on hard numbers, eg, factual application of specifics to be hashed out in the thread's progression. I would expect there to be applications of existing nanos some exact and some with slight modifications as well as new nanos needing to be created for each pet using profession.

Meta-Physicist:
Type: Summoner, relational verbiage and/or supporting imagery, "Deity", Able to manifest their anger into a tangible entity, etc. Under this premise the pets are literally an extension of the creator.. not really separate entities such as an employee or robotic construction so I have have tried to approach it from this perspective. Having said that I back it up with the premise that many of the core abilities of survival to an MP rely directly on the pet such as healing or calming vs a doctor healing or a Crat Calming.. It is with the MP that I think of as the most pure Pet class really equal to the Engineer in Magic/Psionic vs Scientific... Summoner vs Constructor.. The summoner makes a pact binding itself to its daemon. I also believe that it's future instead of insane blockers, evades, AR weapons etc, perhaps give the MP the ability to have thier Mezz pet reanimate and control a fallen corpse or a minion from it's body making it go one step further and become the summoner/necromancer since there is no necromancer class in AO nor anything remotely similar really.. lest you think that better saved for giving traders pets a purpose.. but I have something else in mind for them..
Pet types:

• Heal pet
• Mezz Pet
• Attack Pet

Buffs: Heal Pet +Heal Delta for all pets individual HP and the casters HP, Mezz Pet -%Interrupt/+Nano Init/Nano-Resist, Attack Pet +Nano AR/-Resist Check
Damage Mitigation: Each pet would equally share all dmg as all hit points would be linked directly to their creator being that they are a physical manifestation of the creator. Each pet would give a direct HP gain to the caster as well as the linked buffs and passive healing delta shared by all.. the multiplier of having 4x+heal gen should make the scaling nice if set properly from the start to offset the gains of HP being 100% shared and HP not being the bonus it should be in AO by default.
New Pet Abilities:

• Heal Pet
  • Passive Pulsing "Self+Pets" Regeneration
  • Team AOE heal
  • Direct Target Heal
  • Cone Heal
  • AOE Heal
  • Note: These behaviors should be programmable to keystrokes and button presses so that they can be changed on the fly. Sending a direct heal target command before a recharge interval of a passive pulse for example could cost the pet double energy to gain a direct effect on demand. Direct heals do more per tick while AOE does the least. Cone does a middle of the road. Team being stronger than AOE but weaker than Cone. The passive pulsing regeneration would be split between the combined life of the pet user and all active pets (effectively stopping wasting unused pet healing or requiring annoying unintuitive micromanagement of each pet's dmg and would be considered the standard mode for solo'ing.
• Mezz Pet
  • Reanimate
  • Calm
  • Snare
  • Note: Reanimate would effectively give the MP class a Necromancer like ability in AO which has never before been a possibility.. whether it is an exact duplicate of what is dead with some pretty hefty cost vs reward factor or another manifestation of much lesser power like little zerglings of sorts.. I will leave the specifics of checks n balances for stats to those with heads more for numbers to discuss and propose as it is not my thing. Calms pretty self-explanatory and same with snares.. improvements really in effectiveness in burst scenerios with diminishing returns and harder to resist but shorter durations.
• Attack Pet
  • Attack
  • Defend
  • Guard
  • Scout
  • Hunt
  • Note: Each of these would modify the general abilities with additional behaviors. Attack gives the pet a temporary AR buff after being given and a temporary speed boost based on which buff run on it. Defend would attack those that attacked the pet users target, Guard would cause the pet to attack anything with a hatelist or side flagged for PVP that enters it's range. Scout will cause the pet to wander till it generates aggro then return without engaging the target, Hunt is Scout only instead of returning it attempts to kill the target.

[Xaun]

Bureaucrat:
Type: Charmer; The basis I went on for this class of pet user was the nano "Take the Bullet". It presents a first step toward a solution I feel and it is from that concept I take the approach to this class.
Pet types:

• Bodyguard
• Carlo
• Charmed

Buffs: Bodyguard +Perception/-%received critical damage modifier/+evasion modifier, Carlo +AR Modifier/+evasion modifier, Charmed Variable modifier based on the type of creature charmed, perhaps even giving each mob a different passive buff perhaps be exactly the one the mob already uses.. I've seen some strange things mobs get.. extensions to nano lines can be.. sharing the buff with their team at a -%efficiency.
Damage Mitigation: Each pet would passively add their total HP to the Charmers HP along with giving a passive evasion buff and a -damage cap modifier. Effectively making it so that to kill the crat you'd have to kill the pets first.. by layering the HP of the pets "On top" of the Crats.. this is not like the MP's where all the HP is evenly divided between all pets and the caster as one whole and killed off equally by sharing all damage between them. Effectively to kill the crat you'd have to kill the pets.. even if you are shooting the Crat itself and not the pet.. However, attacking the Crat directly reduces the damage each pet receives meaning.. if you want to kill the Crat.. attack the pets first because each will die faster.. than attacking the crat to diminish the HP off the pets.. however.. there would be like a %damage penetration effect that would basically cause the crat to still take "some" damage but not nearly as bad as if they didn't have such reliable meatshields..
New Pet Abilities:

• General ABility: Retrofitting/Outfitting, Character/Equipment panels for the bot and carlo with new items that can go in the bot window and normal weapons/armor for carlo.
• Bodyguard
  • Sneak+Sneak Attack
  • Grapple, eg a snare
  • Attack
  • Defend
  • Guard
  • Scout
  • Hunt
  • Note: The ninja style just so says "sneak+sneak attack" and since pet users do want more useful pets vs being forced in to more of a AS role. The rest same as MP Attack Pet.
    
• Carlo
  • Slam High%chance to Moderate range AOE stun on command (Active skill), fairly lengthy recharge for reliability would be the only trade-off. In PVE this would be used as an AOE Taunt as well.
  • Grapple, eg a snare
  • Attack
  • Defend
  • Guard
  • Scout
  • Hunt
  • Note: This would be trading off the proc stun of current gen for a reliable, fair use, similar purpose, controllable, stun that makes sense and would be fair. The rest same as MP Attack Pet.
    
• Charmed
  • Pet Dependent
  • Note: The passive buffs gained from each type of charmed pet should be significant. An example.. massively increasing your HP by charming something like a Heckler, while massively increasing your AR with another type, evades with another and so on.

Engineer:
Type: Constructor; Master of gadgetry, tinkerer, creator of robots.. I used a similar principal as the Crat but with some noted differences of, killing the operator does more damage to the pet being controlled by it.. in essence the more banged up the operator gets the worse the bot functions.
Pet types:

• Warbot
• K-9

Buffs: Warbot +AR/+#Personal Special Blockers/+All Nanoskills/+HP, K-9 +AR/+#Personal Regular Hit Blockers/+All Inits/+All Tradeskills/+HP
Damage Mitigation: Under the principal that in reality an engineer would be no where near their pets during combat and this not translating into a game very well and I am trying to utilize this principal when approaching this profession. As such I feel a similar means of handing damage mitigation as the Crat would have in that each pet would represent a layer of HP to have to eat through before effecting the character itself. However, the amount of HP and AR that the larger warbots have that can be twinked in is rather huge so how to approach this would be delicate indeed. I see it working as a layer but with a 50% split between all pets before passing 50% of that to the user.. effectively balancing out the giant difference this would make in terms of the chicken for example.. How this works differently than the Crat is that attacking the pet user does double the damage to the pets.. but only like 5-25% of the damage to the user before the pets are dead, where there-after the user would take full damage just like the Crat after the pets are dead.
New Pet Abilities:

• General Bot Enhancements Retrofitting, Schematics, Loadouts. In short, Retrofitting allows for changing core types of bot mechanics with schematics, Schematics are saved/preset configurations of loadouts, Loadouts are like equipment/implants panels for bots where you put new items not yet in game added as future content into slots to augment your mechanical constructs. In short twinking for your bot.. eg. putting a railgun in or a chainsaw.. Melee bot vs ranged bot.. Speed boosters vs HP boosters.. etc..
• Note:The utility of bots overall should be increased.. there was a very weak attempt to make some usefulness of a bot for NW and Orbitals.. but it failed because it was to simple to be made strong enough to be effective.. I suggest giving engineers the ability to make bots based on the principal of a total "Skill value" of combined TS+Nano stats relating to the pertinent areas that then allow for a various number of bots of varying types and purposes, sizes etc, each given a "score" of subtracting from the total value of the variable from our sum of the TS+Nanos called "Engineering" or just use the raw stat itself. Basically in short.. many little bots that do simple things or bigger more complex bots that do more complex things with output capacity logically scaled to the rated values assigned by potential situation
  
• Warbot
  • Weapon specials relating to the active Retrofitting.
  • Note:The warbot should serve as the Archetypal BIG RIG MECHA BOT representing the top of the previously presented note.
• K-9
  • Weapon specials relating to the active Retrofitting.
  • Note:The K-9 should serve as the Archetypal SMALL UTILITY BOT representing the lower end of the previously presented note. These could be anything from bombs to scanners for people in sneak to emp <aka Evac jammers>, Orbital Jammers, Etc.. My suggestion would be making the smallest of the size of a spider mine concept.

Trader:
Type: Charmer; Similar also to the Crat, but using the principal of "pass the buck" if you would.. basically each of the pets serves to take some of the blame of the person above them..
Pet types:

• VP - Operations
• VP - Marketing
• VP - Internal Affairs
• VP - Public Relations

Note: The Duration of these pets should be considerably lengthened say maybe 5 on 5 off or 10 on 10 off hell even maybe put them to 30m on 5m off.. and their damage and AR brought up to date with todays standards.. Addionally I believe one pet should be awarded at each title level after 3 starting with the lowest tier aka 4. So one at TL4, One at TL5, One at TL6 and the final at TL7.
Buffs:Each Pet active would grant the controller a passive bonus to evasion, a %dmg modifier on perks and AR where appropriate to land them.
Damage Mitigation: Each pet would be given a tier number. In short.. their stock holdings in the company. In this percentage they would share dmg with each other in a food chain of sorts. Basically.. if you shoot the trader you hit the trader for say 5%, the Tier 1 pet for 10%, Tier 2 pet for 15% Tier 3 pet for 25% Tier 4 pet for 45%. If you shoot a pet.. it works in the same order but split evenly from that point down. So if you shoot a Tier 3 pet you do 50% to it and 50% to the Tier 4. If you shoot the tier 2 then you do 50% to the tier 4, 30 to the tier 3 and 15 to the Tier 2 and so on..
New Pet Abilities:

• VP - Operations
  
  • Specials: New IPO - Offensive modifiers to all pets + controller
  • Hostile Takeover - +Nano AR or -%NR Check with sufficient checks to let it land on the medium range setups. eg High without NR, Average on NR1, Low on NR2
  • Note:These are prototype ideas.. so bear with me here please I am only tossing out rough ideas here and not putting exact numbers on too much other than to illustrate a point not suggesting that this all be perfect and complete.. that is where you all come in majorly again
• VP - Marketing
  
  • Specials: Black Market Import - Team Nano Regen multiplier based on number of active pets
  • Black Market Export - +All Nanoskills + Max Nano
  • Note: See note above

• VP - Internal Affairs
  
  • Tactical use pet, Offensive modifiers to all pets + controller
  • Specials: Blow their cover - AOE +Perception buff (sided/teamed)
  • Take cover AOE +Conceal Buff (Sided/Teamed)
  • Note:See above
  
  
• VP - Public Relations
  
  • Specials: Scape Goat - Sacfice HP to heal other pets and controller
  • The customer is always right - +speed buff
  • Note: See note above

[Xaun]

Suggestions:

Retrofitting the warbots could work like the implant panel. Simply cast the basic pet, target the basic pet, and do something like /upgrade on it would open the warbot's "upgrade panel". Items that improve pets will require the owner to meet tradeskill reqs in order to install. Ways to improve the pet could go like this:

head slot: Computations
increased nanoskills for landing snares/nukes (pets that nuke randomly ftw?)
increased nano resist
increases all inits

eye slot: Targetting
increased crit chance
increased AR
higher perception

ear slot: Sensors
increased evades
increased perception

chest slot: power supply
increased speed
increased armor
+damage
more AR
increased reflects
increased nano resist
increased healdelta
increased max HP
increases all inits
increased NCU

waist slot: gyro
increases all inits
increased speed
increased evades

Legs and feet:
Increased evades
Increases all inits

Arms:
Increases one init type
Increased AR

Hands:
Place your weapons here.

OFAB, ICC, Omni-Tek and the various clans could all produce different weapons with their own strengths and weaknesses. Weapons with high min damage but slow attack/recharge, or weapons with a wide damage range but fast attack/recharge etc.

PS.. yes I know another 100,000 points of wall of text Damage Xaun posts.. you gotta love them by now

[Xaun]

Meh...taking one more just in case

[Klodovik]

I would make it more simplified.

Remove support pets completely (MP case) and make healing and CC be dealed by caster itself, be it passive, aura based, or single cast. Support pets are just a burden.

All this you counted should lead to pets getting their HP massively enhanced (for all profs) and their resistances caclulated from existing ones their masters have. Virus scanners, root removers and other debuff removing crap should automaticaly work on pets as well, once used on master.

In general, it's a very nice suggestion.

[ragerayden]

I like how klo seems not to give a **** about your ideas xaun. Overall its some good ideas but.... needs to much work to get IG thus it wont ever happen, seeing how AO staff seems reluctant to even create new meshes for bacpacks.... Don't forget to take in account pet heals... quite different among the 3 pet profs.
Klod if you want to make a thread on ur own you can...or maybe you can't...

[Xaun]

I would make it more simplified.

Remove support pets completely (MP case) and make healing and CC be dealed by caster itself, be it passive, aura based, or single cast. Support pets are just a burden.

All this you counted should lead to pets getting their HP massively enhanced (for all profs) and their resistances caclulated from existing ones their masters have. Virus scanners, root removers and other debuff removing crap should automaticaly work on pets as well, once used on master.

In general, it's a very nice suggestion.

Hmm.. I still think support pets serve a purpose and don't personally like the idea of removing them. Even if it would "simplify" things.. I think part of the magic of being a pet class is having a pet you like to control. Thanks for the compliments and other than that tho do you have any serious numbers you might crunch up for me on the types of buffs you think would be needed to offset the things people are complaining about now if this theory of mine strikes true to many more? Also, yes that is exactly what I meant regarding the debuffs, roots, and other ways people exploit pets right now.

I like how klo seems not to give a **** about your ideas xaun. Overall its some good ideas but.... needs to much work to get IG thus it wont ever happen, seeing how AO staff seems reluctant to even create new meshes for bacpacks.... Don't forget to take in account pet heals... quite different among the 3 pet profs.
Klod if you want to make a thread on ur own you can...or maybe you can't...

Hehe actually I didn't find anything offensive in Klod's post.. His final words were. In general it's a very nice suggestion. Also I have a different sort of faith than most people I guess. I still love Funcom.. and think that people bitch whine and complain alot but don't offer valid or good working suggestions. Sil and co have been working on things like crazy and I respect that and therefore I give them the benefit of the doubt

[ragerayden]

Don't get fooled the last sentence is here to make you feel he cared. He is just posting his idea.

[crattey]

Anything that would offer interaction between pets and their masters would be a huge leap forward. Pets that have some sort of special ability other than functioning as a DoT that randomly runs into walls and gets stuck on teleporters.

Having crat pets take damage for their master always seemed to be the way it should be to me. It's what we revolve around entirely in PvM, along with our CC. Something similar to Demo locks in WoW with their voidwalker out.

Also I have a different sort of faith than most people I guess. I still love Funcom.. and think that people bitch whine and complain alot but don't offer valid or good working suggestions. Sil and co have been working on things like crazy and I respect that and therefore I give them the benefit of the doubt

heh.. wimminz..

[Xaun]

Don't get fooled the last sentence is here to make you feel he cared. He is just posting his idea.

Well I invite people to share ideas in discussions. I thinking my wording in there welcomes it

Anything that would offer interaction between pets and their masters would be a huge leap forward. Pets that have some sort of special ability other than functioning as a DoT that randomly runs into walls and gets stuck on teleporters.

Having crat pets take damage for their master always seemed to be the way it should be to me. It's what we revolve around entirely in PvM, along with our CC. Something similar to Demo locks in WoW with their voidwalker out.




heh.. wimminz..

[Jenshiye]

Sharing HP is interesting but then you can keep casting a new pet to re-boost your health and would effectively have a HoT as they heal very quickly.

[Xaun]

Sharing HP is interesting but then you can keep casting a new pet to re-boost your health and would effectively have a HoT as they heal very quickly.

Each pet type would have a form of restriction applied in how the HP would be subdivided.. and yes it would increase the survivability of the support professions without making it ridiculous and allowing pets to be more useful without making pet professions all become Agents without a full FP kit! (as if Agents have one )

It's late and I stayed up for a couple hours typing this stream of consciousness so you'll have to give me a bit to formulate stuffs as I am likely to pass out soon xD

[ragerayden]

Which means they would have to create a lock on the pet nano, lower the pets HP, MP crying about engis/crats having pets in their inventory. What if crats leave their pets behind near an AVT ?
What if a NT come & area nuke a MP ? dmg x3 ? Engi/crat dmg x2.XX ? a doc or NT use his dot on both pets & caster i'ld say MP's HP will go down quite fast.
> such Dmg mitigation will never occur.

[ragerayden]

TTB ? - -*

What if this incredibly good but yet balanced nano make it IG

[Xaun]

Which means they would have to create a lock on the pet nano, lower the pets HP, MP crying about engis/crats having pets in their inventory. What if crats leave their pets behind near an AVT ?
What if a NT come & area nuke a MP ? dmg x3 ? Engi/crat dmg x2.XX ? a doc or NT use his dot on both pets & caster i'ld say MP's HP will go down quite fast.

No not a lock.. a sacrifice.. A few things would need to be tweaked but again it is the only reasonable solution other than pets going the way of the "useless follow me art" route they area headed is addressing the PVP vs PVE usefulness of a pet

> such Dmg mitigation will never occur.

It already does..

PS: nite!

[Klodovik]

I like how klo seems not to give a **** about your ideas xaun. Overall its some good ideas but.... needs to much work to get IG thus it wont ever happen, seeing how AO staff seems reluctant to even create new meshes for bacpacks.... Don't forget to take in account pet heals... quite different among the 3 pet profs.
Klod if you want to make a thread on ur own you can...or maybe you can't...

Don't get fooled the last sentence is here to make you feel he cared. He is just posting his idea.

Maybe you should just zip it? Crattey at least has a brain cell or two and can respond fairly inteligent, when needed. You just...

/fail@everything.

Hmm.. I still think support pets serve a purpose and don't personally like the idea of removing them.

They just tend to be on a wrong place at wrong time, especialy the heal support one. That's why I want them to go away and come as a replacement in another form.

Even if it would "simplify" things.. I think part of the magic of being a pet class is having a pet you like to control.

Pets would still exist, but it's easier to control 1-2 of them then 3, with current game mechanics.

I would gladly give away 2 support pets and that silly bow for 2 attack pets (or one super attack pet), team heal/nano heal aura and regular calm/root nano.

Thanks for the compliments and other than that tho do you have any serious numbers you might crunch up for me on the types of buffs you think would be needed to offset the things people are complaining about now if this theory of mine strikes true to many more? Also, yes that is exactly what I meant regarding the debuffs, roots, and other ways people exploit pets right now.

I'll keep to MP pets only, but I have nothing special to add.

So, about existing MP heal pet... It should be transformed into some kind of aura (team heal/nano heal aura (some 5 second pulse with 1k heal will proly do - not sure if it needs to be higher or lower, with all that massive pet's HP and its fast ticking HD that is going to be shared with master - HP/healdelta buff described down there)).

I would completely remove mezz pet with single calm/snare/root nano(s) (crappier version of NT/trader/crat ones, probably very short duration and higher chance to break on attack). I don't like your "more pets via reanimate" suggestion. IMO it will just bring more complications into already complicated situation.

Extra HP/fast tick pet healdelta buff for (future) attack pet(s) to deal with massive damage at PvP, which doesn't make us go pox after AS/burst/FA + regular hit on pet (no need for blockers and insane evades anymore, if damage mitigation between pet's HP and master's HP you are suggesting, gets introduced).

[Sidana]

Just a few thoughts: your classification is too specific, methinks the two classes are summoners and charmers, regardless of methods used. But this is just an irrelevant oppinion in the matter. Also pooling pets (aka "minions") with master is not exactly something new, neither it is the silver bullet because it presents it's very own problems.

If I look at your Eng/Crat idea it seems pets would become something like a walking blocker, essentially a walking Coon. This wouldn't be a problem if the pets were to serve this and only this purpose but they have other abilities as well. This would result in pet professions's abilities knocked off over time which is not exactly how other professions function who have the same capabilities regardless of 1 hp or max hp (runspeed excluded). If yu make the pets tougher you can very well upset the short term balance (until pets start falling) and OP the users. Not to mention smart aggro management in PvM where these blockers could be exploited pretty easily and severely, unless they are totally useless in any other aspect, which leads to...

Walking Buffs.

MP pets seem like flying HP buffs with abilities, they have the same problems as the other two. If they were actually hardwired to the user so it doesn't matter which one you shoot as they have one single, unified health pool that would degrade the MP to "keeper with fancy buff gfx". See how your proposed pets are interchangable with area nanos according to Klod? And he's right, that's what they are.

That being said, from the ways to "force" users to play like the AI does (or at the very least leverage) the later is the only workable way. It still sucks and this stems from how AI and humans work. Soren Johnson had a nice lecture on AI during GDC 2008, you can google that, it really good reading material. Essentialy it all boils down to the fact that we don't want the AI to act exactly as a human would in the game (or certain professions would have a very short half-life in-game), yet we can't really expect, only force humans to take a suboptimal path of actions, and that's a slippery slope.

One alternative method I see is dedicated pets for both PvP and for PvM, if that is not acceptable than the visual buff is the way to go. In my humble oppinion. But I think the only "real" solution would be to give pet users PvP-only love that makes them capable without their pets, and this is exactly what FC was doing (among other, not-so-bright stuff).

[Xaun]

They just tend to be on a wrong place at wrong time, especialy the heal support one. That's why I want them to go away and come as a replacement in another form.

Pets would still exist, but it's easier to control 1-2 of them then 3, with current game mechanics.

I would gladly give away 2 support pets and that silly bow for 2 attack pets (or one super attack pet), team heal/nano heal aura and regular calm/root nano.

I'll keep to MP pets only, but I have nothing special to add.

So, about existing MP heal pet... It should be transformed into some kind of aura (team heal/nano heal aura (some 5 second pulse with 1k heal will proly do - not sure if it needs to be higher or lower, with all that massive pet's HP and its fast ticking HD that is going to be shared with master - HP/healdelta buff described down there)).

I would completely remove mezz pet with single calm/snare/root nano(s) (crappier version of NT/trader/crat ones, probably very short duration and higher chance to break on attack). I don't like your "more pets via reanimate" suggestion. IMO it will just bring more complications into already complicated situation.

Extra HP/fast tick pet healdelta buff for (future) attack pet(s) to deal with massive damage at PvP, which doesn't make us go pox after AS/burst/FA + regular hit on pet (no need for blockers and insane evades anymore, if damage mitigation between pet's HP and master's HP you are suggesting, gets introduced).

While I can understand the concept of handling pets with current methods I agree. which is why I suggested making the pets have keyboard input controls as well. It makes it more interactive. If you notice what I did was try to find a way to make pets a bonus again each with a controlled set of functions. AOE or Team buffs for maintaining the passive element. The thing I enjoy is having more direct control over your pet. While I also understand your desire for less pets in particular to your case it is because I feel your still thinking of controlling them the old fashioned way. I am rather proposing a more intuitive method of interacting and thusly controlling them than trying to propose making them smarter..

That being said, from the ways to "force" users to play like the AI does (or at the very least leverage) the later is the only workable way. It still sucks and this stems from how AI and humans work. Soren Johnson had a nice lecture on AI during GDC 2008, you can google that, it really good reading material. Essentialy it all boils down to the fact that we don't want the AI to act exactly as a human would in the game (or certain professions would have a very short half-life in-game), yet we can't really expect, only force humans to take a suboptimal path of actions, and that's a slippery slope.

Thanks but I've read that and many others before it But yes it is a good article for those who haven't. The suggestion I propose is not to "Increase AI" or even the CPU time for them.. rather to make them an extension of the user in various different ways based on type.

I've had some meaningful dialog with pet AI devs of FC before and understand the reason they've taken the path they have but I couldn't come up with anything better at the time. After thinking about the problem the Dev presented to me when expressing the logic behind pets being downplayed in exchange for boosting the Pet owners abilities. Pathing is not as much of an issue if your pet is ranged vs melee right? Now add to that the defensive combinations of Pet and owner.. it gives each pet profession different styles of gaming totally in how they would handle their pet. Right now pets are really being phased out of games more and more because of the PVP element each class is believed to be viable in and how balancing for that is near impossible without this element.

You see in the mind of every player who looks at a Pet Profession is this: But your PET <insert random attribute or ability> regardless of how that works in PVP.. Since the pet can be nullified in so many ways. The more you power up a pet the more gimp a pet user becomes in PVP because of the tradeoff to personal caster power or raw dps output.. But then you have to factor that back in to how everyone views the combined effect of all of them summed up in to one massive bunch.. Since you cannot force the human to attack a pet.. or be capable of being taunted by the pet.. then the only logical way to save pets for pet professions is to make the pet part of the caster based on a premise as I've outlined in my hypothetical application to AO's pet professions..

By linking the pets in various ways to the HP of the controller you increase the survivability of the pet profession the way it works in PVE without being forced to OP the caster's defenses forcing the nerf or eventual extinction of pet updates because pet professions know that the trade off for a better pet is being more gimp personally.. this is a way to fix that. Mind you it is also a way to fix it without requiring an AI overhaul. The pets AI doesn't have to fundementally change in how it behaves other than allowing for the user to have a more direct response from the pet.. I haven't really seen any game implement a good system that allows the pet user to control the pet directly while maintaining control of them self but I think this would be a way to make it work and be fair.

PS Shoulda named this topic "Save Pets for Pet Professions'!"

[Spart]

I think Xaun wanted me to look at this, so bump.

Nerf wall of text though (much <3 Xaun)

[Klodovik]

While I can understand the concept of handling pets with current methods I agree. which is why I suggested making the pets have keyboard input controls as well. It makes it more interactive. If you notice what I did was try to find a way to make pets a bonus again each with a controlled set of functions. AOE or Team buffs for maintaining the passive element. The thing I enjoy is having more direct control over your pet. While I also understand your desire for less pets in particular to your case it is because I feel your still thinking of controlling them the old fashioned way. I am rather proposing a more intuitive method of interacting and thusly controlling them than trying to propose making them smarter..

Anything that moves me away from being agent without perks, with drunken pets, works for me.