Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Top Five Issues with the Creature Handler Profession
So please list your top issues with the profession, trying to keep in mind the upcoming changes that we've already been told are in the works.
Whatare the current upcoming changes?
My top 5 issues. Hmm. hard to condense it to just 5.
CL cap is too low for Master CH
Not enough storage slots. I think a stable / corral building as an add-on to a house would be good for more room.
Not enough high level pets to choose from
Pets stopping fighting and running back to me
Pets auto storing themselves during combat (or any time)
My issues:
1) Pets are NOT healing in the datapad. This needs to be fixed.
2) Pet pathing still needs work. Mine get stuck constantly, particularly on hills.
3) Pets auto-storing at random times.
4) CL for master needs to be increased.
5) More pet storage! I agree with a corral or some kind of storage of pets for my home.
I saw a Giant Dune Kimoglia breathing fire. I think special attacks on creatures would be awesome! Having a pet as your form of flamethrower definitely sounds good to me! ^_^ Also, will there be a rancor mount anytime in the future? If the witches of Dathomir can do it, why can't CH?
I also agree thatMaster Creature Handler needs more of an incentive. Kimoglias and Krayts are two of the most sought pets in the game. My graul was killed in one hit by a lightning cannon. Perhaps it's time to bring out the heavy creature artillery.
One final thought regards flying creatures. I hope in future patches, CH will be able to use giant peko pekos (or other large avian creatures) to soar over the landscape. That would attract more people to the Creature Handler profession. ^_^
I'm a Master Creature Handler that's been playing Creature Handler since Beta 2 (well, as much as the devs let us in Beta 2) and I've seen a lot of changes come through. The 2 biggest impacts that I've seen so far are the CL cap and the reduction/elimination of certain powerful babies (Arachne Webmasters, Frenzied Grauls, etc). These 2 changes have basically killed any real reason to go all the way to Master Creature Handler. These 2 changes seriously need to be reviewed and revised or the Master Creature Handler will more than likely become extinct. Before I go on to my top 5 the following is very important...
Pet warping/random storing. Thisis literally killing me. Like so many others have said, this bug kills me more than ANYTHING else in the game.
Ok, on to my top 5 issues as a Master Creature Handler:
5. Non-CH pets. This one really bugs me. I'm sorry but I don't think anyone but CHs should be running around with creature pets. Droids are supposed to be the pets for the non-CH. Pets are for people with CH training. Granted in the real world everyone can have a dog or a cat but how useful would those pets be in combat? Not very useful. God knows my cats would be useless. Letting everyone have a pet is a slap in the face ofeveryone that's spent skill points on Creature Handler skills. Why does the Creature Handler profession have to share it's unique abilitywith EVERY OTHER PERSON in the game? Non-CH pets should be limited to non-commandable, docile animalsonly. This way you can have mounts and normal pets (like real life horses, cats, dogs, etc) and still let the Creature Handler have its uniqueness.
Let me try a different approach... Cananyone use everyone elses skill specific itemsno matter what profession they've chosen? How many people can use a T-21? That would be Riflemen only. How many people can use flamethrowers? Oh right... only Commandos, how silly of me. What about scatter pistols.. oh right only Bounty Hunters. How about lightning guns... oh right, Commando or Bounty Hunter. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Let's thinkabout this in yet a thirdway, let's say...in a canonical frame of reference. How many people do you see walking around in any of the movies with creature pets? Now how many with droids? Now think about how many people are walking around in-game with creature pets or droids. The last time I looked I see creature pets everywhere and almost no droids. That's the exact opposite of ANY of the canonical reference.
4. Pet storage at my house. This simply needs to happen. EVERY OTHER CLASS CAN STORE EXTRA TOOLS OF THEIR TRADEIN THEIR HOUSE. I can't think of anyother profession that can't store their extras in the bank or their house... Bio-engineers can store untamed pets, crafters can store any of their inventory in their house, combat fighters can store extra weapons/power-ups/armor/etc. Why can't Creature Handlers store extras?
3. Reduction/Elimination of specific babies. Thisone has really hurt Masters. I have yet to understand the logic behind allowingmultiple pets of well over CL 100 each (AT-ST) for people with ZERO pet controlling skills while you remove the ability from people that have spent a sizeable chunk of their skill points into getting that skill set. Pets in the Star Wars galaxy should be as varied as the people that are playing. Every person that's at Master Creature Handler basically has the same or similar set ups. Mid level creatures have some variety but let's face it, above CL 35 or so there's only a couple of pet configurations that you can use. This limitation ruins the Star Wars feeling of the game. Besides, it's just plain boring to see the same pets following everyone around. Personally, I never thought that the nerfed babies were all that powerful in the first place, especially when compared to things like an AT-ST. I just figured that people still hadn't figured out the right tactics to use in combat with these creatures. This is true of AT-STs right now. They aren't too powerful, they shouldn't be removed. Tactics just need to be developed. But if a reduction of the AT-ST isn't in order then the high level creatures shouldn't have been reduced/eliminated either. Hell, maybe those aforementioned babies were too powerful but is it really the right thing to do to remove them entirely? What happened to the diversity of the Star Wars galaxy? It's vanishing, that's what.
2. Creature Level limit. For the love of God fix the CL cap to be something more appropriate. Either reduce other professions/peoples abilities to call high level pets (3 AT-STs... anyone? Bueller?) to be in line with the Creature Handler limit or raise the Creature Handler limit to be competitive. Period. The way this is now, in order to actually be the best "Pet Handler" you have to be an Imperial not a Master Creature Handler.
1. Master Creature Handler. This level of this profession is right now... useless. I've been a creature/pet handler of some type in almost every MMORPG that I have ever played. I have wanted to be a Master Creature Handler since beforeI got into beta. When SWG went live I focused all of my energy in 2 things, getting resources for my PA and getting to Master Creature Handler. Sadly, being a Master Creature Handler is turning into a waste of my time. This is my favoriteprofession but alas, at the moment, a fairly useless mastery. While good at the mid-levels, there is just no real reason to go for Master. I am keeping my MCH skills for a while longer in the hopes that this profession will get back to some sort of useful state. One thing is for certain, if this profession is not returned to some of its former power, the master of this profession will be dead. Right now there is no great benefit of being a master. Sure, you get some slightly higher skills but those skill adjustments are close to worthless with the existing CL limit. What good is a third pet ability if you max out your CL limit with just one good one? Why do Masters need a limit at all? Isn't the 3 pet limitation enough? If an Imperial can have 3 AT-STs, why can't a person that has devoted the majority of their skill set to pet control have 3 rancors or 3 grauls, etc? Certainly not because they're too powerful.
Ok, this turned into a novel instead of a regular post so I'll refrain from any closing comments.
Love and kisses,
-Nekhi
1. Pets stopping while they are following me. Everytime I run somewhere with them folllowing, ilook at my radar and realized they stopped. Then I have to set up a camp just to call them back out.
2. Pets running away when commanded to attack an enemy that cannot be seen. I have this happen at fort tuskan a lot. If they can't attack make it where they just stay there instead of running away.
C. Let us put pets on a vendor and a storage device in our house.
4. Give medic xp for healing pets. Like 10-25% of what is normally given when healing things would be good. So medics get a little out of healing the pets.
5. Put another command in empathy like sit. And while the creatures sitting it makes his regen rate speed up or double.
Nekhi wrote:
5. Non-CH pets. This one really bugs me. I'm sorry but I don't think anyone but CHs should be running around with creature pets.
Let me try a different approach... Cananyone use everyone elses skill specific itemsno matter what profession they've chosen? How many people can use a T-21? That would be Riflemen only. How many people can use flamethrowers? Oh right... only Commandos, how silly of me. What about scatter pistols.. oh right only Bounty Hunters. How about lightning guns... oh right, Commando or Bounty Hunter. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Actually anyone can equip the weapons, just at a lowered damage ratio. Just like any non CH can have a pet, at a lowered damage ratio to the CH pets. I'm not out and out disagreeing with you here, just pointing out a flaw in your logic before moving on to my point
Let's thinkabout this in yet a thirdway, let's say...in a canonical frame of reference. How many people do you see walking around in any of the movies with creature pets? Now how many with droids? Now think about how many people are walking around in-game with creature pets or droids. The last time I looked I see creature pets everywhere and almost no droids. That's the exact opposite of ANY of the canonical reference.
Not to flame you or anything but this has been brought up many many times by CH and non CH alike. Usually it is brought up by people trying desperately to have our class removed from the game. Why is this the only thing people call canon over? What about the rampant crime rates in the cities. Run by (lol no cars yet) shootings, mass murderers running through town killing pedestrians (targettable NPCs) and any and all animals hapless enough to be in the range of these maniacs. What about everyone brandishing rifles, pistols, carbines, and heavy artillery everywhere they go? You also never saw that in the movies.
My point is, don't call canon unless you're going to call it on everything. Otherwise you're being hypocritical.
Insofar as no one having droids is concerned, there is no real reason to have a droid if you are not a crafter or a medic. Do the power droids actually sore power? (if so they would still only be needed by people with things requiring power. It would be nice if they were actually little roving fusion generators like they are supposed to be in the... **edit** where did I read that?) Protocol droids are unnecessary by anyone because no one needs a translator or help with protocol as long as they have an LLC, FWG or the like. R2 units? No need unless you want a crafting station. Personally, I will be one of the few people with an R2 and R3 unit (once they fix the factory bug with R3s and allow DEs to customize the colors on R2s) just to have them.
Droids are next to useless, and have little variety (when they aren'tbroken altogether). That's why you see so few people with droids following them.
Not sure if any of these have been mentioned already, but I have a couple things that I would really like to see and just wanna throw up my 2 cents
1. Pet healing. Currently we can heal mind dmg really easy with the tricks. But other then that, itsa pain to heal pets. They have huge HAM stats, wich im not complaining about, but this makes it a pain to heal them. Theres a couple of ways around this of course, the first is to just cycle pets, one gets beat up, pop a camp, bring out a different one, keep going, and do this through all your pets, and by the time you get back to the first, hopefully it will be okay again. You could also sink a buncha skill points into being a medic and do it that way, one of the easiest ways to heal a pet as it where. Unfourtantely, some of our master plans don't allow for that. I won't have that many skill points (4) left when I reach master CH master rifleman (with master scout and the ranged support line) so thats not an option for me. Heck, at that point I won't even have medic for myself. On top of wich with the crafting system, any sort of crafting kinda requires a bunch more skill points to be sunk into the survey line, that is, if you want to be able to be self-sufficient. Now with no medic, your option is Pet Stimpacks. These are a great idea requiring no medical use, but un-fourntely because nothing increases there ability, including medic stuff, you burn through allot of them just to get a pet back up to normal. So what im suggesting in this long rant and explanation is that Creature Handlers get in one of there lines a set of vet skills. Probably in empathy would be the best places, because thats just where it makes sense. And it would only really need to be a skill or so. The equivelent of Treatment Effeciency specifically for Pet Stimpacks (For those who don't know much about medic, its skill level directly adds a percent to how much a stimpack heals for). Given that most pet healing is done after combat is over, a "treatment speed" skill isn't really neccessary, but im sure there are those who would appreciate it as well. This would make creature handlers even more of a creature handler, as they would be a semi-vetrinary as well. (If you think this steals thunder from medics, it really doesn't, medics should be for healing people. If my doctor offered to operate on my cat I'd look at him funny and never see him again.)
2. I know different creatures have different specials. it would be nice to be able to train them to do those specials on command. Even if it wasn't specific just a "do a special" command. This would not only drain a creature HAMs for doing the special, but the CHs for issuing the order. This would make what creautre you usea bit more tactically sound.
3. Even if you coudn't train them to do specials, if they have a ranged attack, itd be nice to be able to train them specifically to do there ranged attack. Thus having 2 kill commands. "Kill Melee" and "Kill Ranged". Much like teaching a dog a "speak" command to get them to bark (something a friend of mine did when walking by herself. If she saw someone who didn't look paticulary friendly, she'd whisper something to the dog and he would start barking at the stranger) this would be like teaching a dog to spit at things. Not paticularly good habit, but something that would be very usefull none-the-less
4. I will say one word, and only say it once, as many people have probably said before........."Mounts"....and thats all I have to say about that.........
5. Though "Creature Knowledge" is primarly a scout and ranger thing, I think creature handlers should get skill in it as well. Since they would be the king of beasts as it where, they should also know more about animals then just your normal scout.
When is our correspondent planning on submitting the ideas to the Developers...?
"Actually anyone can equip the weapons, just at a lowered damage ratio. Just like any non CH can have a pet, at a lowered damage ratio to the CH pets. I'm not out and out disagreeing with you here, just pointing out a flaw in your logic before moving on to my point"
True enough, but a pet can be trained to use all the commands and those commands can still be accessed by a non-CH person. This means that a non-CH player with a pet trained by a MCH can use the advanced commands like patrol, formations, etc. That's more than a novice can do on their own. So once again the untrained player gets more CH abilities than a novice of the profession does and it's not because he has the necessary skills.Additionally, can Iaccess the special movesof the other classes? Nope, so I think my point is still valid. Even if it's a lower CL creature, the non-CH still gets access to those commands that only higher up CHs get. It is the combination of advanced commands and higher level pets that make the complete MCH not just his ability to use the higher level pets.
"Not to flame you or anything but this has been brought up many many times by CH and non CH alike. Usually it is brought up by people trying desperately to have our class removed from the game. Why is this the only thing people call canon over? What about the rampant crime rates in the cities. Run by (lol no cars yet) shootings, mass murderers running through town killing pedestrians (targettable NPCs) and any and all animals hapless enough to be in the range of these maniacs. What about everyone brandishing rifles, pistols, carbines, and heavy artillery everywhere they go? You also never saw that in the movies.
My point is, don't call canon unless you're going to call it on everything. Otherwise you're being hypocritical."
I'll agree with you here. There's a ton of stuff in this game that is not canon but this thread was specifically about the top issues with Creature Handlers so I stuck with the topic, using other professions for comparison. This issue (non-CH having CH pets) is not the only thing I would call canon over. I would love to make a laundry list of stuff that is way out of canon but, like I said, I was trying to stick with the topic at hand. As to people carrying weapons... actually there are many instances in the movies showing people carrying and using their weaponry aroundin public,especially in places like Mos Eisley (Greedo and Han in ANH for example). Carrying weapons mostly appears to be a personal choice amongst the canonical characters, not a social hurdle. But I digress.
"Insofar as no one having droids is concerned, there is no real reason to have a droid if you are not a crafter or a medic. Do the power droids actually sore power? (if so they would still only be needed by people with things requiring power. It would be nice if they were actually little roving fusion generators like they are supposed to be in the... **edit** where did I read that?) Protocol droids are unnecessary by anyone because no one needs a translator or help with protocol as long as they have an LLC, FWG or the like. R2 units? No need unless you want a crafting station. Personally, I will be one of the few people with an R2 and R3 unit (once they fix the factory bug with R3s and allow DEs to customize the colors on R2s) just to have them.
Droids are next to useless, and have little variety (when they aren'tbroken altogether). That's why you see so few people with droids following them."
Totally agree with you here but I don't think the answer is to give everyoneattack pets. Attack pets should be the sole domain on those players that invest skill points into the set of skills that allows them to control creatures. As it is now, every Tom, **edit** and Harry has a pet, thereby ruining the uniqueness of the CH profession. So what if I can run around witha rancor, I hardly ever do because of the CL cap. If the profession is going to be nerfed (as it has) then the uniqueness should remain by reducing EVERYONES ability to use the nerfed ability. That means if you take away 15 CL worth of available pet CL limits (they took more than that from CHs but I digress, again) then those that would have onlyhad 15 CL available to begin with should havezero, zilch, nada. Give the MCH a CL a limit that allows him to really show that he's mastered the profesion and I have less of a problem with non-CH have CH pets but it's still not something I would endorse. The real answer here is to make the droids useful but that is for another board. 
-Nek
Let me put it this way, when concerns are brought to the table, because we are asked what we would like to see changes inand our concerns are voiced belivingthat they will be taken seriously, then when devs get them, they are mearlyshrugged away....well it's simple economical since to make the changes and forget about the expense! When we get bored with something we throw in the towel and move on. Most of the players here are male, which are by nature "graphical" we need to see something to be stimulated, most people that play here are highly IQed, and like to live in a fantasy world. We alsoneed challenges!! Don't lead us down a dark road only to figure out that it's a dead-end, we will find this out and tell others. Which if we are not stimulated and get bored we will move on to something elsefunner and even morechallenging. Please keep us happy so we renew our subscription so that profits can be made so you are happy and I am to.
I do not like to use the words we and us so please replace them with me and I.
Those are my issues, I like to play the "game" but please listen and act on these concerns so that there can be here together for years of enjoyment and profits.
HOW ABOUT JUST GETTING THE NOVICE CH SKILLS TO WORK PROPERLY
at novice ch you gain +15 creature levels, and a +1 additional pets
christ, if everyone can call and use a lvl 15 pet, then come on alread let novice ch get the
added skills teh gain letting them call 2 pets and a total CL of 30, this will also bump the MCH above the
70lvl skill mark and make them happier
peopelwork hard to get to CH and when they get there they dont even get the bonus skills granted to them
from the skill
not like this will ever get read
1: Please make your grouped pet affect mission levels.
2: Please make your grouped pet affect mission levels.
3: Please make your grouped pet affect mission levels.
4: Please make your grouped pet affect mission levels.
5: Please make your grouped pet affect mission levels.
MY PETS ARE MY WEAPONS!!!!
Let me stress this again: MY PETS ARE MY WEAPONS!!!