Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Interesting news about creatures and CH.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Spazzers, I think your description is accurate, or at least that's how I understand it as well. But you and I come to different conclusions about it.
Here's how I see it:
Mainly I think this signals a role-change for BE's. BE's used to have pretty close to a weaponsmith/marksman relationship with CH. If a CH wanted to have a useful pet, they went to a BE to craft one, then they go use it.
Now the relationship is a lot closer to what BE's have traditionally had with chefs and tailors. It is the CH that creates the pet. If he wants a graul, he first decides whether he wants to invest in a "BE graul chasis" and then "constructs" the graul himself with or without the "BE graul chasis".
Will you sell more "pet chasis" then you sold pets before? quite possibly. But you do now have a new role.
I don't disagree with this at all. BE's have always been the middlemen (people) with the exception for pets. Now BE's craft a pet that can be enhanced by the creature handler instead of the creature handler purchasing an end product. Regardless, the "pet chassis" is still going to be a better starting point than a "wild chassis."
BE's are placed squarely in the middle with regards to pets now. You can discuss amoungst yourselves whether this is good or bad. Be this as it may,I would argue itstill better than crafting high end pets for a profession that has no players. I believe people will be drawn to CH nowbecause of the new dynamics, which will in turn infuse a needed boost to a stagnant animal market.
Any good change to CH is a good change for BE. I've always believed this. I mean where else am I going to get a CL70 gnort?
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Spazzers, I think your description is accurate, or at least that's how I understand it as well. But you and I come to different conclusions about it.Here's how I see it:Mainly I think this signals a role-change for BE's. BE's used to have pretty close to a weaponsmith/marksman relationship with CH. If a CH wanted to have a useful pet, they went to a BE to craft one, then they go use it.Now the relationship is a lot closer to what BE's have traditionally had with chefs and tailors. It is the CH that creates the pet. If he wants a graul, he first decides whether he wants to invest in a "BE graul chasis" and then "constructs" the graul himself with or without the "BE graul chasis".Will you sell more "pet chasis" then you sold pets before? quite possibly. But you do now have a new role.
I agree with you, pet crafting has been made about as exciting as crafting a gun or the like, with a few stats to modify and that's about it. It was at its most interesting before the CU but after the creature re-spec. It was crazy and buggy, but it was interesting. I'd like to see BE get more interesting crafting again with more options you could play with. The problem is their new combat system isn't too tolerant of too much mucking around with creature stats before balance goes out the window. It would be cool if you coudl get some more out of this patch but I doubt it will happen. Perhaps you can influence the exp rate or something like that as part of the intilect stats... that would be nice, but I'm doubting it will happen.
Still, I don't think this patch will hurt BEs more than they are now. And if BE pets can have random abbilities, you should be able to sell pets at a brisk rate despite their actual stats, a possible boon for up and coming BEs. CHs would buy your pets by the case load on the hopes of getting one wtih a cool abbility to learn.
Kivrin wrote:
Thanks for posting Galacium.
We're happy for you - any profession getting attention is worthy of celebration. I don't think BE vs. Wild creatures should be a better / worse scenerio nor would I be bothered if wild pets got more powerful.
Unforunately some BE's, myself included, really enjoyed the creature customization aspect pre-CU. After getting an order for a pet with certain weighted criteria I'd spend a good amount of time on SWGCreatures researching and designing it. It was really cool when it exceeded the customer's expectations and they were excited over it.
However with resists gone, the insipid CL system, stat shifting, and now no special attacks the customization potential is nil. We can tweak the health and a damage a little.
Best of luck to you guys in Publish 21.
Spazzers wrote:
I believe people will be drawn to CH nowbecause of the new dynamics, which will in turn infuse a needed boost to a stagnant animal market.
Any good change to CH is a good change for BE. I've always believed this. I mean where else am I going to get a CL70 gnort?
Of course. The viability of pets has always been the deciding factor for the creature handler profession. This system is exactly what you'll find in WoW, and I mean exactly. The system works and a lot of people play hunter because the system works. Regardless of where the idea came from or who actually developed it, if this SWG take on the system works as well, I believe people will be drawn to the profession.
I get a base animal that has great stats. Now I have a reason to go out and tame stuff I wouldn't tame otherwise, just to see the ability it has. I learn that ability and train it to my base animal, making it even better. I'd call that game content for creature handlers, something to do that actually serves a purpose. How could that not draw players?
How does one get "oh my gosh, we're going to be useless" out of, "we're changing the way creatures are tamed in the wild and their abilities"?
Good grief. I guess if you really want to complain about something, you can find something you don't like about virtually anything. Quit raising the alarm before we actually see the changes. They might work in our favor, you never know. We might be able to use the abilities in clone creation.
Spazzers wrote:
Of course. The viability of pets has always been the deciding factor for the creature handler profession. This system is exactly what you'll find in WoW, and I mean exactly. The system works and a lot of people play hunter because the system works. Regardless of where the idea came from or who actually developed it, if this SWG take on the system works as well, I believe people will be drawn to the profession.
I get a base animal that has great stats. Now I have a reason to go out and tame stuff I wouldn't tame otherwise, just to see the ability it has. I learn that ability and train it to my base animal, making it even better. I'd call that game content for creature handlers, something to do that actually serves a purpose. How could that not draw players?
If the best possible pet that can be made and trained to perfect still won't follow a command, still gets stuck on a wall or rock, still can't keep up with a groupof your friends, still isn't effective as having a double combat master then it won't draw players. Usuability and bugs are key, balance second, content third. The content is meaningless without the first two. It is like trying to play a game of poker with a deck of magic cards, even though the cards are prettier and have a lot to read on them, you still can't play the game of poker you want to play.
True. The CH correspondant has already paraphrased some of the developer comments regarding pet AI. We got the lame "its a hard fix but we're working on it" response, similar to what has been told to the tailors for the last month or so.
A pet special is worthless on an animal that won't follow commands. Hopefully pet AI will work. They have a little over two weeks to convince me. Even so, at least they are doing something other than Jedi. 
Digital_Rex wrote:
How does one get "oh my gosh, we're going to be useless" out of, "we're changing the way creatures are tamed in the wild and their abilities"?
Good grief. I guess if you really want to complain about something, you can find something you don't like about virtually anything. Quit raising the alarm before we actually see the changes. They might work in our favor, you never know. We might be able to use the abilities in clone creation.
Spazzers wrote:
The system is still on test so it is still early. From what the CH correspondant has been able to gleen from the developers (they are actually talking to him so it would appear SOE is taking CH seriously) the system is random but works in this way;
A CH (me) can "learn" an ability from a wild animal over time by using the pet. The CH can then teach that ability to another pet (a BE pet).
In practical theory - I buy a BE CL70 razor cat. The BE animal may or may not have inherent abilities. We will assume no. A huurton hunter has an ability I would like to learn but I don't want a huurton hunter for a long term pet. I tame a baby and I'm able to use the baby from the word go. Over time (we don't know how long) I learn the huurton's ability. In the meantime I'm using the BE'd animal so it gains pet xp. When the pet gains enough xp a slot opens and I can train the BE'd pet with my learned ability.
This system - theoretically - allows a creature handler to customize a high end BE'd animal using multiple learned abilities from wild animals the CH doesn't intend to keep.
This gives a lot of content to CH's they didn't have before. It allows me to have a unique custom high end BE'd animal I have direct input into, which I didn't have before. This also makes CH more inviting to new players which means more BE'd animals to sell.
Realistically, if I am going to have the ability to combine animal talents from multiple animals in just one, I am going to want that one to be the best I can get, which means a BE'd animal.
You will still have to compete with wild animals but this isn't new. You've always had to compete with wild. What this change does is make to "wild only" CH's take a second look at BE'd animals, since a CH pet will not resemble anything wild any longer. They will all be custom and unique to the owner because of the owner.
So get out there and learn your trade. You market just became high quality high end animals, instead of churning out run of the mill non-CH pets.
With the current situation on Live servers where CHs are not getting invited to hunting groups or asked to put away their "huge" BE crafted pets, I don't see a strong pet market. Certainly we will sell pets to a few CHs or be asked to create a ton of "trash" pets for the new CH to train.
The "size" issue does not look like it will change as it was stated that it is working as intended. If CHs are able to solo with their pets then size will not be an issue. How many CHs will buy a BE pet just so it can follow him/her around town?
Kivrin wrote:
I don't see anyone here saying we're going to be useless. I see people mentioning that a BE's involvement in making unique challenging creatures is probably going get a bit smaller.
Digital_Rex wrote:
How does one get "oh my gosh, we're going to be useless" out of, "we're changing the way creatures are tamed in the wild and their abilities"?
Good grief. I guess if you really want to complain about something, you can find something you don't like about virtually anything. Quit raising the alarm before we actually see the changes. They might work in our favor, you never know. We might be able to use the abilities in clone creation.