Creature Handler Archive
Thread: What is SOE's vision for Creature Handler?
bah
i find it strange that none of the "top 5 issues" are being adressed
this is typically a PR response so they " look good"
Holocron,
I've noticed a pretty good number of responses from you in this forum and I wanted to pipe up and say thanks! The team there needs to do a LOT MORE of that and it's nice to see someone leading by example.
You folks need to look long and hard at that last patch you did. You've made it difficult in the extreme to even grow a CH never mind actually use the pets in combat and you people seem to have this thing for forcing interdependancies amongst the professions. GIVE IT A FRIGGIN REST! I did'nt spend all the time I have growing a Scout/CH so I could go running back to town to locate a bugged out BioEngineer every couple hours to blow the VERY little bit of creds I get from the mission terms just because some fool decided animals can't heal the same as characters.
I am so sick and tired of you people embedding some dependency on another profession in classes. Successful cooperation is voluntary, NEVER forced! Lets not even talk about how that completely contradicts the statements made that characters could play independently or in cooperation with others.
BTW: The big joke amonst my friends right now is that you can lead a scout to water but you can't make him drink! So much for living off the land.
Tyd
Ok I'm not going to post a long well thought out reply to you Holo. Others have done so and very well I might add. You people are NERFING the fun out of this profession in so doing you are NERFING the ONLY fun I am or was deriving from this game. You are nerfing my Money right out of your pockets I kid you not. If you do not REVERSE this AR nerf I WILL CANCEL my account and not look back for a second.
The AR nerf has just turned EVERY **edit** CREATURE in the game into a box of ANIMAL CRACKERS. Yea they come in different shapes and sizes and look a little different but they ALL taste the same and crumble the same way. I'm not paying $15 bucks a month for ANIMAL CRACKERS. I don't give a **edit** what your STATISTICS tell you. WE are telling you you are NERFING the FUN ($$) out of this class/game/your wallet
Is that clear enough for you?
If its not I can make it CRYSTAL CLEAR with a canceled account...
Ajie- MASTER CREATURE HANDLER? MASTER (of what?)
StarSider
Account Canceled? (we'll see very soon)
"2. "That I have to sit for hours and hours waiting for my pet to regen after each battle."
"3. That if I choose to heal my pets instead of waiting, I have to expend thousands of credits in order to buy enough Stims."
"4. That I am forced to use points and train in Novice Medic or suffer immense downtime."
"8. That I can't take my pets into PvE without suffering immense downtime to heal them. "
"9. Downtime healing pets."
"10. Downtime healing pets."
"11. Downtime healing pets."
"15. Wasting skill points in medic."
"16. Wasting money to buy hundreds of stims."
So, 9 of your points basically said, "I don't want to have to put points into Medic to heal my pet, and I hate downtime."
Well, I kind of hate to say this, but I think it's worth pointing out that all classes have healing/downtime issues. It's hardly limited to CH's. In short, welcome to the game every other combat class has been playing all along. 
If you want to solo, you have two choices. The first is to have a bunch of downtime. The second is to put points into Novice Medic and procurestims. By the way,from theScout prereq for CH along withNovice Medic, you have all the tools you need to make your own stims from harvested creatures - that is, once you find some inorganics (one empty lot and a personal harvester makes this "piece of cake" easy).
While it's true that healing a huge HAM pet takes quite some time, even with good quality stim B's (Org. Chem 3 iseasily reached since you'll craft bunches of stim A's along the way), that's the breaks of having a huge HAM pet to take the abuse for you. When you supply that tank for a group, if that group has a Doctor and perhapsanother Medic,it won't take nearly as long.
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And just to be fair, I totally agree with this point:
"There should be a benefit from going from 4,4,0,4 to4,4,4,4 other than 1 extra dwarf nuna pet."
No, I understand perfectly. But that's where a balance issue comes in. You have enough skill points left over to master quite a lot of combat skills. All of a sudden, you'd have a creature handler who without engaging is a match for an elite guy, and when he does engage, overmatches anyone.
Sure, we have the ability to master CH and a combat skill, but you aren't taking into account a pets slow regen rate. Without medic skills, even a mid-level creature with 3k HAM can take hours to heal on it's own, and a high level creature with 10K HAM obviously takes much longer. So, if we are master CH and master in some combat profession, we are effective for extacly ONE tough fight a day with our pet. That is alot of downtime. The only other option is to get medic skills to have the ability to heal your pets, which takes away from your combat skills, making you less effective asa fighter.
A solution is to make pets regen at the rate of a PC. With pets having litreally 5-10 times the HAM of a PC, it still will take some time for them to regan. Also, make Creature Healing skills available in the CH tree, so that we are not forced to pick up another prfession to make ours playable without 90% downtime.
Holocron wrote:
CavemanGamer wrote:
I am sort of the 2nd half of the kind of CH that you described... I like pets... but, as such, I was hoping to take it ALL the way... and go totally weaponless... I wanted to be the lonely ranger kind of beast-master sort of player... My main goal is always to protect the pet above myself (after all, I can clone).
I don't know if I'm explaining myself well enough. But I hope you get what I mean.
No, I understand perfectly. But that's where a balance issue comes in. You have enough skill points left over to master quite a lot of combat skills. All of a sudden, you'd have a creature handler who without engaging is a match for an elite guy, and when he does engage, overmatches anyone.
Here's an idea Holocron. Look at the numbers.
- Master Pistoleer costs 92 skill points
- MasterCarbineer costs 92 skill points
- Master Rifleman costs 92 skill points
- Master Creature Handler costs 106 skill points
- Master Commando costs 169 skill points
- Master Combat Medic costs 169 skill points
- Master Bounty Hunter costs 217 skill points
Now, Holocron, by your definition, which of these are "elite guys" ?
- I'm assuming you think Master Pistoleer/Carbineer/Rifleman are not elite guys.
- I'm assuming you think Master Commando/CombatMedic/BountyHunter are elite guys.
- I think the majority of the community wants Master CH to be an elite guy. I know I do.
Rather than nerf CH into oblivion, restore us to our SWG release date former glory, and raise our skill point cost to 169.
Holocron wrote:
OK, sorry, I had a meeting there for a bit.
So I hear ya. My takeaways form the thread here are:
- We screwed up the gurreck change by not compensating for the armor reduction at the same time as we made the reduction
- We are overestimating the value of the armor (we may have to agree to disagree on this one--but if we can compensate for the armor in other ways, will that be sufficient?)
- You aren't competitive in combat compared to combat classes--and the issue isn't so much being an even match, but but in the ballpark. We're overstimating the value of the pets, basically.
- There's a lot of bugs with pathfinding, pets getting autostored, etc, that we need to address.
I that a fair summation?
Honestly - Your not even close. Your still not listening to what we're trying to tell you. For weeks now we have been making these Top #5 lists and im guessing you havent even begun to look at them yet from the questions your asking in both and the other profession forums. For several weeks now - long before yesterdays bombshell -We have been trying to tell you that its no no longer an incentive to be a Master CH. It was supposed to be to control 3 pets at once - but with these new caps to bring us "Inline" with otehr professiosn - We're forced down 1 CL50 pet and 1CL 20. Using the CL 20 is a waste in most situations so your just down to 1 Pet - period. With the way the skill tree works out now, you dont have to be a MAster to be able to have 1 CL 50 out, you can skip an entire tree and get the same result.
The cheap faction pets has just compunded this sense of "Why should i go master". I know - I own an ATST. Even you you cap it at one per player - Its still more advantagous to me to have 1 ATST than 1 Gimepd gurreck or who-knows-what else. Sure i can only use it as overt, but now i can spend those skill points elsewhere.
I also strongly disagree that youhave done more "fixes than "nerfs". More things got broken in the "big patch" than the number of things you fixed for CH's. Besides the one time youve come in here Holo to give us our Top 5 list (Which wasent even that - you just went through this weeks top 5 and picked out the less contreversal and easy to answer issues" -Most of your otere visits have been to annouce nerfs and whatnot to "balence" us. Your balenceing us so well that any other Elite combat class can now totally dominate any creature pet a CH can field out. In the ame ballpark? Even in the same City, State, Anything would be nice. (Take a look at the Damage a Master TKA, Rifleman, etc do in 1 shot -Look at what the avg hit of a gurreck is and how often it lands it). again -Why should i spend all thsoe points on Master CH?
Holo -I know your a busy man -But pull up the Top #5 list threads from the past and read through them carefully. Dont trust the corespondants reports on everything. Your probebly getting a disorted view of what the community thinks. Read the actuall posts from community members.
Holocron wrote:
Berratus, because the game is classless, the assumption is that you pick up multiple skills, multiple professions. Making an elite creature handler equivalent to an elite combat profession would mean that every combatant would need to be a creature handler, because the added benefit of having an NPC tank is enormous. Some of the pets you control are by themselves as powerful as an elite combat player, and that's not counting you, the CH, into the combat equation.
I guess all I am saying is that it's not a one to one comparison.
This statement in itself shows that you, Holocron, do not know anything about the elite combat professions and pets. Any pet I can own can be killed by any elite combat player.
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Well it's kinna obvious what he means. Take 3 players, A, B, C.
A is Master Pistoleer, Master Bounty Hunter
B is Master Pistoleer, Master Creature Handler
C is Master Dancer, Master Creature Handler
You cannot balance C against A or B would be too powerful against A.
You need less than 50% of your points to get MCH so you should not be balanced against somebody who uses 100% of his points in Combat or Support Professions. If you want tocompete with a fully combat specced char, then go full combat spec.
BTW I am pretty sure I'd have a 10 - 20% chance of killing any Master Elite Combat Class in spontaneous PvP (not duels) as a Novice CH, Novice Carbineer with a Grand Wrix at my side, of course it totally depends on the situation or the set up. Without pet I would have zero chance except the guy is AFK lol.
I do not mean to imply Combat Classes are balanced in any way, a lot of balancing still has to be done, so yeah nerf bounty hunters,nerf pistol moves, evaluate knockdown, fix carbine moves, fix all kind of weapons, fix Commandos and so on and so on, but that does not belong here.
Holo and to whom it may concern-
First of all, thank you for posting in this forum and at least letting the CH community know that you are listening and reacting to what we have to say. I, and others in this forum, appreciate that more than you know. There are many on this, and other, forums that see a post by a developer and use the fact that you are reading and posting to verbally bash others and push their own agendas. I don't plan on doing either.
When I first heard of SWG, and all that it entailed, I couldn't wait till the game came out. I have been playing and programming games since I was a small child on a Commodore Vic-20. I am a gamer, pure and simple. Not a power gamer, as I hold a 50+ hour a week job, just got a new puppy, and have many other interests, but I love to play games. But back to my point...
The CH community knew that a 'balance' was going to happen to our class, and we gave many ideas of what that balance was going to be. Some got ignored, others got implemented. Some, on the other hand, came from god knows where. I think the biggest complaint of all these happens to be the CL70 cap on a master.
I understand that for a PVP standpoint, the ability to have out 3 rancors could turn the tide of a fight in a very large favor to the CH. I could post an argument here about how many MCH actually really participate in PVP, but I have neither the facts nor the time to do so.
What most of us want is to have the CL limit raised to a point were being a master means something. Right now it really means the ability to have out a creature that, if it catches agro in most of the encounters that a MCH is going to be in, is going todie. The 3rd creature right now is nothing more than show.
I would ask you this - have someone look over the posts on the CH forum, create a CH, and see if any of our concerns are valid. I think you will find that there is alot of fluff, but some float to the top as legitimate concerns. These are the ones that we not only would like fixed, but to keep this class (and the people playing it) in the game, need to be fixed.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, whomever, and thanks for creating a universe unlike no others.
LIFEMATE PETS
The main difference between what we have now and what I envision is that pets don't get stronger. I would like to have a few primary pets that I use all the time, that grow older with me, that can die, and that get more powerful over time. I would do this with LIFEMATE command. Once pet becomes lifemate (only MCH can make this), it can't be sold, transferred, released. Further, it can permadie, if we don't take care of it. The benefits should be that it can handle extra commands like staying on the same target command instead of switching around (non-lifemate pets should still change agro as they currently do), should be able to be retreated, etc. In addition, it should get stronger with more kills. Basically, reroute current CH experience from lifemate pets into an experience pool for them. As they get more kill exp, they should SLOWLY get stronger. I would probably keep the experience requirements of pet level vs. npc/mob level. Lifemate pets should have an eventual challenge level cap of 1.5 times the original (after hundreds of hours of combat) and the lifemate pets adjusted challenge level should not affect the cap on total challenge level. Further, a MCH should be limited to 3 Lifemate pets (they need lots more love and attention). Only by deleting one of the three, should the MCH be able to develop a bond with another lifemate pet.
CURRENT FIXES
I would not fix the pet changing targets issues or give people retreat, unless the person is MCH. It's totally workable as is. However, the MCH should have better pet control.
CHALLENGE LEVEL CAP
I envisioned the MCH being able to have a defense and an offense. Thus, when i send my pet in to attack, I envisioned having a back up pet to protect me if something agros. I think the MCH should be able to have two 50 pets. ALthough I liked three, it seemed unbalanced.
Thanks for listening,
Lieluu Sangrante
Eclipse
we dont even have a good rep behind us..... no wonder are class is going down the tubes
holo even said that he dose not know enough about CH... WHAT IS THAT ALL ABOUT? if you dont know enough about something and you going to be representing thousands of people dont you think you would try to figure it out? holo are you 11 years old?
i became a CH because i wanted to tame high level mobs and beable to solo anywhere i went. well i cant do eather one now....