Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Interesting news about creatures and CH.
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.
If the new specials were spread out a bit such that BE's could get some from DNA that you could not tame, and you could learn some from creatures that we couldn't sample, then it may be a little more interesting. However given the Devs dislike of cross-profession dependability since the CU I highly doubt they'll have something like this in place.
Best of luck to you guys in Publish 21.
Galacium wrote:CH here... (with a BE alt on occasion)
I don't think it's as bad for you as you might think. So long as you can continue to craft creatures with base stats that are different/better than wild creatures, then your critters would still be in demand.
Your creatures start as babies as much as normal ones do, so if your critters stats are better (which they often are) then we'll want your creatures to be the final creatures we teach our specials to, and well want wild creatures to learn the specials from. BE pet plus leaned CH specials = best pet possible.
Its kind of like cars. You engineer them, and we get to tinker under the hood.
The Creature Handler profession has always had the extremes of people that prefer wild or perfer BE. Those people are still going to have those preferences. That is not going to change as long as abilities can be taught to either type of pet.
If any of these new abilities enhance existing stats, then there may be even more reason to seek out BE pets. To use aggression as an example, Aggression (L1) was shown in a screenshot. A BE pet with a high aggression may not need this ability, thus freeing the slot for something else the CH may want to teach it. Or maybe the CH wants to make a super-tank that no one can pull aggro off of by training a BE pet in this stat.
Potentially, this could help us both. At worst it should have no direct affect on BEs. Indirectly, if CH becomes functional again there will be more of us, so there will be more demand for pets.
Cindal wrote:
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?
The current situation on live is pretty much the end of creature handler. Something had to be done. The BE pet market eventuallywould have become a situation where you sell low end pets to new CH's. By the time that new CH gets half way into the profession they learn just how broken it is and drop the profession for something else, or just go to another game where the pet handler dynamic actually works.
For those that may not know; The "in-live" pet dynamic -
Pets don't follow commands unless you spam the command multiple times. They become mindless killing machines when sent to a target or, god forbid, a lair. If you call your pet back to you before the target is dead, you break the pet, it will not follow any commands at all. Instead, the pet sneaks back to the original target to finish off the job, even if you don't want it to.
Pets take up a slot in a group, which deters groups from inviting creature handlers. Pets are nothing more than aggro creators. Sic a pet on one critter and the rest of the mob attacks the CH. A rifleman can consistantly pull one critter at a time by firing a conceal shot from 65m. A creature handler, one the other hand, can pull the entire moball at once, which again deters groups from inviting creature handlers. One poor CH made the mistake of sending her pet into the imp outpost on Dant. One imp attacked the pet while the rest of the outpost mobbed her, completely ignoring her pet. Needless to say, it was an instant trip to the cloners. She dropped CH shortly there after.
Would you have no changes made to CH? Business as usual, based on the "in-live" version means no business. Something had to be done for the CH professionor you end up with two skill trees allowing you to create a product no one buys. You're already making tissues for a broken profession. Do you want animals to be the same way?
I'd recommend waiting to see how this effects the live servers. You better hopethese changes havea positive impact on the CH profession because otherwise you have no market for pets. Besides, a CL70 eopie is very usable, even if it is larger than wild. You also seem to forget about the twins and triplets master CH's are able to use. 
Spazzers wrote:
You also seem to forget about the twins and triplets master CH's are able to use.
As someone fortunate to have a MBE and a MCH on seperate toons I will be watching with anticipation.
Someone said something about HUGE pets. I jsut love my DL70 nightspider I made for myself, it looks sooooooo cool. Oh and then chest high DL69 Durni 
We won't know unless someone on test makes and animal and has it tamed.
I believe BE'd pets do not get an inherent ability because the inherent abilities seem to be tied to the type of animal that is tamed, for instance a huurton will have an inherent ability while a brackaset has a different ability. The thing about these inherent abilities is that not every huurton is going to have the it. It is random. Some have it and some don't. You don't know until you tame the animal. Think of it as a golden coin inside a chocolate bar. All the bars look the same. You don't know which has the coin until you open them.
Apply this to BE'd pets. Would you have a random generator decide whether your crafted pet gets an ability or not or would you have every huurton you craft have the ability? I believe this may be the reason BE'd pets were left out of the inherent option. Regardless, BE'd pets should still gain pet xp and still be able to learn abilities just like any other tamed pet. The only difference is the inherent L1 ability.
Does anyone have a BE on test that can craft and animal? I am very interested to know whether BE pets have the pet xp display.
Lammergier does - poke him ... He's probably testing this as I post it, or else he is still at work.
-- Dor
in the past, many TC players have been unable to create a toon on TC-clone servers... we'll see if that's the case.
I just crafted a CL69 razor cat on TC (which won't see any use until TC is restored in a week or so). everything that worked before works now. everything that didn't work before (armor effectiveness, to-hit, defense specifically... but also 'crit hit' and 'crit save', which I still haven't seen work) still doesn't work.
additionally, NEWLY CRAFTED/TAMED pets (and ONLY new one... I just deleted all my old pets, rares/elites/oddities) have a 'pet xp' stat in the datapad. for my CL68 fambaa (new), that value is 0/388000 (can't remember the exact number... and server is down). for my CL69 razor cat, that value is 0/399000 (again, number is accurate to 1k). after a few dead sayormi, these pets have gained 1 xp per kill. from other folks' testing, this xp seems to be equal to the xp you'd see from normal combat (ie: CL vs CL... since these kills were well below the CL of the pets, 1 xp per).
BioE pets have no specials. wild pets have random specials (or none... it's a crapshoot right now). if we ignore the bugs, the system will work like this:
CH tames WILD pets with specials. CH uses these WILD pets, gains xp. as the CH uses these WILD pets, the CH will 'learn' their specials.
as a CH uses a WILD or a BIOE pet, it gains xp. as a WILD or BIOE pet gains xp, it gains 'ability slots'. a CH that 'knows' specials from wild pets can train WILD or BIOE pets with available 'ability slots' these commands.
so... CH's will need wild pets to learn specials. once they know these specials, they'll be able to stack them in another wild pet... or in a 'pet chassis' made by a BioE.
as the code stands, BioE is out of the specials market. our current 'customization' options include:
skin
color (which works on some skins, and not on others)
health
damage
CL (and size)
name of clone (deed)
we might have 'aggro generation', 'state resists' (which all the notes to date indicate are actually 'state effectiveness reductions'), and... if they work... 'crit hit' and 'crit save'.
CH here and I too am concerned with the system. The biggest issue for me is different then for your ofcoarse my concern is for my legacy pets and whether they will be allowed into the new system I hope so. I may be one of the few CHs that prefers buying pets to tameing pets.
It will probabally boil down to this issue.
More specials means CH will be more of a special dealer then a tank or a ranged fighter. This will make CH more playable, and the more playable the profession is the more business there is for BEs since more people will play what is a dieing profession.
A hopeful view is that the devs have moved away from generic pets and will actually allow more customization to be put in, and if thats the case then players will really need more BE pets. Here is to hopeing.
Dodece wrote:CH here and I too am concerned with the system. The biggest issue for me is different then for your ofcoarse my concern is for my legacy pets and whether they will be allowed into the new system I hope so. I may be one of the few CHs that prefers buying pets to tameing pets.
It will probabally boil down to this issue.
More specials means CH will be more of a special dealer then a tank or a ranged fighter. This will make CH more playable, and the more playable the profession is the more business there is for BEs since more people will play what is a dieing profession.
A hopeful view is that the devs have moved away from generic pets and will actually allow more customization to be put in, and if thats the case then players will really need more BE pets. Here is to hopeing.
so far, old pets = no conversion.
hence "just finished deleting all my pets."
I've got a heap of OTHER concerns... like... I need to master CH, then I need to master every 'weapon' I want to use? as a BioE/CH, I'm noncombat (or rather, 'combat ineffective'). having mastered CH with combat, and with TTR (Tame, Train, Release), I can say with certainty: combat CH's get xp faster and easier. noncombat CH's might find themselves left out with this change.
what does this mean for BioE? maybe that BioE/CH isn't the viable skillset it once was. with pets REQUIRING combat to 'level' up, noncombat CH's will, at best, find the process to be painfully slow.
Grambacca wrote:
This is a good point as a DEV has recently stated that the Female Narglatches are not intended to have the 8k health at their level. Those critters will be changed with next patch. Also ALL Elite wild pets such as Great Plains Stalker will no longer be rare elites.
Dev's have stated there wil no longer be any Elites pets in game. Sad to see happen but it is what's coming.
My point is that a CH will be wanting a good set of triplets or twins from a reputable BE. That's not going to change.
When I was a BE I specialized in mid ranged pets that went together as a team. It was a very fun and involved challenge to get the right combinations at a specific level that complimented the creature handler. I believe that dynamic will always be to the bio-engineers benefit.
What the CH correspondent is telling us, and my understanding of the dev's post is that the elites will still be in the wild. When a creature handler tames an elite baby, the stats shift to that of a "normal" animal of its type. You should still be able to find and sample elite wild animals. We, as CH's, are not going to be able to own them any longer.
One question I keep in the back of my mind, and something that should be tested by you players that have BE's on test, is to see if a BE'd animal has the ability to gain pet xp. When the animal is tamed, do you see the pet xp display in the datapad? It will look similar to 0/xxxxx. That tells us all that a BE pet gains pet xp and can be taught new abilities. If this display does not show in the datapad when a BE pet is selected, it would mean BE pets do not gain pet xp and a huge alarm needs to be sounded. I'd recommend looking into this as soon as possible.
Technically there shouldn't be a difference between wild or BE pets. BE pets should even have a chance of having a natural trait that would be collected on the DNA that has a chance of being transfered over tothe clone.
What I took away from what I read is that this system only works for wild animals. It specifically said wild, not a generic term like pet. So BE pets may be excluded from the wild animal for maybe another system or just left at being weaker than wild animals. BE pets may no longer be an item the devs want in the game. After all the cl10 exploited pets, having that come back is probably not desired, so just leave BE nerfed. It was the solution for pet wars, so this is something they are willing to do.
here's a hint... if you want me to see something, put it in a thread I've replied to.
/immediately regrets that advice.