Creature Handler Archive

Here it is, the revised True Initiative concept, which I hope takes into account all the comments made by everyone so far. I’ll list the stuff that needs extra attention at the very bottom (of course all of it can always use extra attention).

By True Initiative I mean a pet making decisions for itself, and having these decisions be affected by past experience with its master as well as primitive motives. It's based on the desire to do something that first does not exist yet, and then begins to form, and keeps growing and growing until satisfied. Eventually, the desire becomes greater then the continuous desire to obey commands. First some examples:
- If an animal has been out and about without much rest, it must recuperate. At some point, it simply can’t go on without lying down a while.
- An animal that hasn't been fed in a while will want to eat, the hunger will grow and grow until finally when you tell it to follow you, it will tell you to stuff it where the sun don't shine and it will go and eat some meat off the last kill it made/grab a nearby shrub to snack on.
- A pet that isn't on Guard mode on its owner will sit idly by when the owner gets attacked by a wild animal. However, a pet that has really grown attached to its master will simply not allow that. Even though it was not commanded to, it will throw itself into battle to protect the player. This might go as far into blind affection that even when you during the fight tell it to stop fighting, it will disobey you and continue the battle.

These examples are ideal cases and do not take into account the way it currently is.

Other random notes:
- This concept can be toggled on and off once, after that no more. Toggled so that players who want to command pets and be the undoubted and obeyed master can remain that (that’s how it is for everyone now), where another player might decide he wants to go through the bonding with his pet and improve the relationship with it, getting some cool extras along the way.
On and off only once because otherwise if you are on the verge of getting a bad effect for not caring for your pet, you could simply turn it off a while, turn it back on at your convenience and have the bonuses without the work.
- The goal of this concept is to provide much more atmosphere to the CH-pet relationship, and make having pets actually fun. It will give the CH something to do FOR his animals rather then WITH his animals. The pets cease to be nothing but tools of the trade and become companions that become somewhat unpredictable at times.
- Vitality is off if this concept is turned on. A decrease in trust and the third factor is the penalty for pet death, which is as forgiving as a pet dying a number of times till stat loss occurs. Having both penalties is too much and too confusing.
- I've revised this concept to include the opinions up to the 29th reply.

Alright, back to the main points. Pets can make decisions for themselves, so we must have aspects that affect decision-making.
Things that affect these decisions vary from its own actions in gameplay to a permanent hidden counter for it's affection to the player.

Factors:
- Tiredness:
A number of things make your animal tired, running being a small factor, fighting being a large one. Standing idly slowly recovers the pet’s stamina, sitting/lying down will do it quickly Also, doing it in a camp will add a little more speed.

- Hunger:
This factor grows simply over time and through the expense of energy by running or fighting as in Tiredness. It can be satisfied through a few means: using the ‘feed’ radial menu option like normal, letting your pet hunt for sustenance or letting your pet eat from a recent kill made.
(By hunting for sustenance I mean a herbivore will look for a nearby shrub, a carnivore will look for a nearby easy kill (determined by predator and prey’s CL). The longer it has gone without food, the further herbivores will wander in search of good food, and carnivores will accept tougher prey to kill and eat.)

- Experience in battle:
If it always turns up on the wrong end of a battle, it will lose trust in the person pitting it in those unfair battles, being the player. Losses are counted and added up, a death counting as two, being incapacitated counting as one loss.
This trust can be restored by putting your pet into some easy battles and letting it win without outside help. The less you damage the enemy and heal your pet, the faster it will regain self confidence and trust you to make the right call. The tougher the enemy it can defeat by itself, the better its self confidence will grow as well. Even matched fights without your help will regain its confidence and trust fastest, but of course poses the risk of it losing.

- Affection:
Hardest to explain, a number of factors influence this one. If you fail to take care of your pet as described above, its affection for you will decrease. It will increase slowly over time just by having your pet near you as you run through the wilds and sit in a camp and through victory in combat. It’s a somewhat slow process to increase it, whereas decreasing can go quicker. However, it will be easy to avoid decrease by simply resting or feeding your pet when it indicates it needs to.

- Devotion:
This is the most player-controlled aspect, because some players might find it positive while others might find it a nuisance. A devoted pet will guard you at all times, not being able to suffer the thought of you getting hurt. Devotion is something a player can increase by putting the pet on Guard Self a lot of the time, whereas telling the animal to stay back while you fight would decrease this.
An added bonus would be that a devoted pet is more outward in its emotions. It will growl at things it doesn’t like (or you don’t like for that matter), and take a sniff at things it’s interested in. It can decide to accept commands from another player you spend a lot of time with, without you telling it to trust that player (it would also remember that it accepts commands from that player when you log off and on). I think it fits in this category because a devoted pet has learned ‘human emotion’ so to speak. Its emotions become more complex than me-eat-me-sleep and show more often.

Effects:
- Tiredness:
Negative: If you run to the next fight right after the first ends, never giving your pet a moment to stand or sit quietly, it will tire out and not be able to hit as hard or fast as it usually can. A 10% decrease in attack speed is the end-result.
Effects on obedience: eventually, your pet will tire out so much it can no longer attack. It will follow you just a little longer and finally tell you to stuff it and stop in its tracks to lie down and take a nap.
Positive: Letting your pet regain its strength often means it is always alert and remains agile. It will gain a 10% increase in its chance of evading enemy strikes.

- Hunger:
Negative: Starving a pet will not just piss it off, it will weaken it. Not allowing your pet to eat, getting it to follow you before it’s done eating for example, means it will suffer a 15% decrease in damage.
Effects on obedience: hunger is a strong feeling and will make itself known sooner then Tiredness. When it gets moderately hungry, it will indicate the desire to go and fetch itself some food (scavenge a shrub/kill a rasp), still waiting for the OK from you. If you still don’t allow this, it will eventually no longer follow you and grab food instead. It might still obey an attack command because it means it can eat the kill afterwards. Whether or not it will obey depends on how easy it could get food otherwise, if your target is a rasp and there’s only a grand wrix nearby, it will obey.
Positive: Keeping your animal well nourished means it is physically strong and has a 15% increase in damage.

- Experience in battle:
Negative: It will lose confidence in its own abilities, as well as lose trust in your ability to pick out the right targets. In a fight, it will be pre-occupied and not remember what to do, causing a 10% decrease in its chance of evading enemy strikes.
Effects on obedience: always losing means eventually it won’t attack animals with a Challenge Level higher then 80% of its own.
Positive: When confident in its previous experience, it will be a better and quicker fighter, getting a 10% increase in attack speed.

- Affection:
Negative: if your pet doesn’t care for you and doesn’t think you care for it, it will doubt you and not accept your commands without question. It will not directly make it disobey, but it will put a shorter fuse on the other three aspects. If it doesn’t like you, it will get tired of following you more quickly and desire a rest faster, etc.
Effects on obedience: a very extreme possibility is that if you REALLY seem to hate your pet, it will eventually stop obeying you altogether and run away, resulting in your pet being lost from the datapad.
Positive: Having a very solid bond with your pet means it will be more forgiving of mistakes you make in your care for it and make it willing to go to further lengths for you without thinking of its own desires. It also means it will trust you enough to obey certain commands you normally can’t ask it to do.

- Devotion:
Effects on obedience when not devoted: it will obey you, even if it’s not the best thing to do. It’s for the player to decide in comparison with devotion which they find positive.
Effects on obedience when devoted: it will obey you, but not when it means putting you in danger. A very devoted pet will always guard you no matter what. Telling it to stay and back off might work for a while, but if you’re losing the fight, it can’t help but jump in to save you. If you are killed in battle, a devoted animal will go blind with rage and grief and plunge into battle headfirst against whatever it was that took you down regardless of what it was doing. If it was attacking two reptilian fliers and a bull rancor is what got you down, it will immediately switch targets and go into a frenzied battle. To reflect the frenzy, it will get an additional 5-10% armour and go into Enraged mode. This is fun and roleplayish, which is positive, but it’ll also get your pet killed as well, so you decide if that’s something you’d prefer.
The second bonus is that your pet will be more outward with its emotions by itself. If you /duel another player, it will growl at them. If you smile and thank another player, it could sniff at them or something.

Extra attention:

General: I've attached some numbers to the effects rather then general statements, but of course a lot of this is what came from my own opinion. I've read through all the replies again to include the opinions, but I'm glad to say half of them just say it's a great concept. What this baby really needs is some hard factual criticism including the numbers and reasons that would work better in its stead. I might have missed something that already HAS been mentioned, or I might have subconsiously repressed it because I like myself better, which is something I tend to do without noticing. Please do mention it if that has happened

Devotion: Everyone will have their own vision on what would increase devotion. Someone might find relaxing with a pet would increase it, someone else might believe their relationship with their pet to be based more on loyalty than love and think of petting as weird. I don't really know a good universal way of doing it that will work across the board.

General: there might well be some more factors that can be fun to include that I simply missed alltogether. Any additions are very welcome. I've posted this concept to get it out there and have the entire community discuss it and improve it. Sure, the more players take part in the improvement, the further it'll go away from what I initially wanted, but it does improve the chances of it ever happening. Discuss away.

Thanks so far to every poster in the 29 replies below who have contributed in improving this thing.

A last added note: My opinions come from my experience as a Master Creature Handler in the past and my general imagination. However, my preference lies with the cats of SWG. I absolutely love my Mottled Wrix Nyan'nyan, and for tough fights used a level 56 BE Gurrcat that I was also quite fond of. Sitting in a camp fire with a prowling gurreck (which is my next CH goal) can be imagined as a bonding experience straight from The Call of the Wild. Sitting in a camp fire with a Kimogila however, is a different story altogether, and since I hardly ever used Randy, my Rancor, I can't really speak for the people who like the big pets. This concept could use some POVs from that side.

Message Edited by GTOfire on 05-23-2004 11:05 PM

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GTOfire wrote:

One thing I was missing from CH is the lack of a relationship the game allows you to form with your pets that can actually affect gameplay, this post is a nudge towards that concept.

First off, this concept would be toggle-able (perhaps not on after it's been turned off once, to avoid possible exploits) by the pet's owner and not on by default. If it's off, none of this applies, so I'll only deal with it being on:

By True Initiative I mean a pet making decisions for itself, and having these decisions be affected by past experience with its master. It's based on the desire to do something that first does not exist yet, and then begins to form, and keeps growing and growing until satisfied. Eventually, the desire becomes greater then the continuous desire to obey commands. First some examples:
- If an animal has been out and about without much rest, it will form a desire to lie down for a short while to regain it's strength.
- An animal that hasn't been fed in a while will want to eat, the hunger will grow and grow until finally when you tell it to follow you, it will tell you to stuff it where the sun don't shine and eat some meat off the last kill it made.
- A pet that isn't on Guard mode on its owner will sit idly by when the owner gets attacked by a wild animal. However, a pet that has really grown attached to its master will simply not allow that. Even though it was not commanded to, it will throw itself into battle to protect the player. This might go as far into blind affection that even when you during the fight tell it to stop fighting, it will disobey you and continue the battle.

Aspects that affect decision-making:
Things that affect these decisions vary from it's own actions in gameplay to a permanent hidden counter for it's affection to the player.

The things from it's own actions would be:
- tiredness: it becomes slowly tired when continuously asked to fight and run to the next fight. Simply resting a little while will restore this. This aspect grows very slowly when running, normally when fighting and not at all when idle.
Effects would be a small decrease in speed and damage, gradually increasing up to -10%
Obedience remains unaffected a very long time, because the pet can see you too are continuously fighting and running and such, it will first assume you have good reason to ask the same from it.
Consequences After that very long time, it will take a rest regardless of what you command it to do. Attacking goes first, a little while later, it won't follow anymore either.

- Hunger: you can feed a pet yourself or let it get food on its own. If you always ask it to follow you before its finished eating (the animation when it's eating would end when its hunger is satisfied), its hunger will remain. Hunger grows very slowly when idle, slowly when running, and normally when fighting.
Effects would be a slight decrease in its to-hit (chance of hitting the enemy), gradually increasing to -5%
Obedience is affected after a medium amount of time, because hunger is such a powerful thing. Given enough time without food has passed (we're talking about an hour, hour and a half real time, since it'd be quite easy to feed the animal to avoid this), it will no longer obey the player and look for food instead.
Consequences Following and attacking is reversed in this case, because the need for food will cause it to want to attack something. Eventually it will disregard any command you give it and either find a recently killed corpse or a new prey to eat. If there is no easy kill in the area, this time frame is extended slightly, until eventually eventually they will attack the easiest animal in range, even if the easiest animal is a tough cookie. They simply MUST eat or die trying.

Aspects that come from it's experience with the player:
- experience in battle: If you constantly pit your pet against animals it loses out against, it's morale will drop slowly. The quicker the defeat, the quicker this happens. If you ‘let’ your pet get to 10% HAM, the count starts. It will only increase very slowly if you heal it again and defeat the enemy.
Effects would be that it's own to-hit (chance of being hit) increases up to 5%
Obedience is hardly affected unless it is actually incapacitated a great deal of the time.
Consequences If it is not usually incapped, it will continue to fight against whatever you want for a long long time. However, if it is killed or totally defeated all the time, it will no longer attack animals with a CL higher than their own.

- Affection: this is one permanent stat that is affected by the above three and keeps counting up and down based on your actions with your pet. If you never let it rest, not only will it eventually tell you to stuff it and lie down, it will also have a negative impact on this stat, because you have failed to take your pet into consideration. Failing to allow your pet to rest when it needs to, or eat when it becomes hungry will mean that you don’t care for your pet and it will know. Also, if it dies while you are not in combat mode or running in its direction to save it, it will get the feeling you let it die without caring.
On the other hand, if you throw yourself in the line of fire to save its life, it will love you more because of it. This will also grow simply over time because you’re bonding with your pet whenever it’s out, giving a new meaning to relaxing in a camp with your pet at your side.
Effects having a low stat here will decrease the time it takes for your pet to grow tired of your commands and fulfil its own desires in the other categories. If it normally gets hungry after 2 hours, and it doesn’t like you, it will not obey you after 1.5 hours already, whereas if it loves you, it will continue to obey you without affecting anything for 2.5 hours. Basicly this stat is affected by all the other stats, and in turn affects all the other stats positively or negatively, depending on how high it is.

okay, I'd say I'm about done for today
hope anyone reads it.

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This idea sounds really cool, but its something that would require a much more advanced AI than we have, which has its own problems.

Those are all neat ideas, but chances are slim you will see any of it in this game any time soon. They have bigger fish to fry as it were. So far there arn't any games with pet AI to speak of in the MMPORG arena. Someday. Still good ideas for some future game.

I think about all we CH can look forward to game change wise is all the other classes getting nurfed down to our level when the combat rebalance rolls in. Other than that we get the content every class gets to play with. Personaly I just love playing with the pets, parading them around, making them interact with people in cantina's that sort of thing. A simple thing I'd love to see is a way to make our pets do emotes, kind of a ventrilaquiam sort of deal. I doub't well ever see that either.

yeah, I know full and well it'll never happen, nor will another game in the future have it I imagine. I don't believe there's any game out there that has such an involved animal AI going on. Well.. maybe tamagochi, but let's NOT go there
One must keep trying though. I'm usually all about the bugs-first-news-later, but to be honest, I reallly never noticed that many bugs that bother me.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, nice to know a post was read andappreciated.

Some really great, well-thought out ideas. If I might offer a few observations, though:

There doesn't seem to be any tangible upside to the effects that you propose. Namely, the current state of pet behavior (obedient, self-sufficient, conservative) would only be achievable through ideal perfection. Anythingelse on the Hander's part would result in Bad Things(tm) happening with their pet. Without some sort of tangible reward to balance out that risk, it's difficult to imagine any but the most die hard of roleplayers wanting to partake of it. I'm not sure if lack of punishment constitutes enough of a reward (my personal feelings would lean toward "No").

Pluto brings up an interesting point with regard to vitality, though.Folks havesuggested in the past that some sort of UO-style "loyalty" system be used instead of vitality. Whereby a pet that is constantly being DBed starts to refuse commands and become generally uncooperative. Engaging in fun "relationship-building" activities with the pet would be a way of undoing these loyalty hits. Basically going for the "tamagotchi" style play that Holocron originally envisioned for Creature Handling. You'd just have to make the pet mini-games fun and unmacroable.

Some thought-provoking stuff here, to be sure.

They CAN do this. The exact same thing was done in UO by the same people. Animals didn't lie down when tired, but if they were hungry they'd get mad at you, and some would even attack you. My ki rin would fight to the death for me and I never told it to guard me once. It took them time to gain trust in you, and for several days it was iffy if they would listen to you unless you took incredible care of them. The better care you took of them, the stronger they became, and it took a LONG time. You could actually train a deer to be as good a fighter as a bear, if you did it right and didn't let it die.

*waves at Designer Dragon* You did some great things with that class initially, and they did some great things after you left. I'd really suggest hopping on Atlantic or something, and work a tamer for a bit and see what the class is now. I'd bet you'd get a LOT of ideas for what could be done here.

~~The Secondhand Lion

The thing about having your pet automatically guard you, though, is that the penalty for pet death is harsher than the penalty for player death. At least if you're the sort who develops an attachment to your pets (presumably the target audience for this design idea), I don'tthink you'd want your pet taking Vitality hits needlessly.

When things go wrong for me in battle, my first priority is getting the pets out of harm's way. I definitely wouldn't want them jumping back into the fray on their own.