Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Here's A NEW Idea for CH, has anyone thought of Breeding? (Poll, all MCHs chime in!)
I vote no.
No matter how you sidestep around the terminology ("breed" vs. "genetic manipulation"), you're talking about dipping directly into BE domain. Yes, you gave various caveats and stipulations, but it still just amounts tocreating more customized pets than what can be tamed naturally in the wild, which is the BE cloning market. Adding this ability to CH would have one of two effects:
1) If "bred" pets performed well enough to make breeding a viable activity for many CHs, the BE market for cloned pets would be severely impacted, especially since CHs are the BEs' primary customers.
2) If "bred" pets had sufficient limitations on them such that BE pets still clearly reigned supreme, performance-wise, most CHs would say "why bother" to "bred" pets, making breeding a waste of development effort.
I'd much rather see some totally new niche for CHs added in, rather than a very similar variant of another profession's ability.
I realize that no one here is consciously trying to take anything away from BEs. I'm just saying that you're being too idealistic about it. Either bred pets will offer very minimal advantages, and thus not get used (for every one of you who would do it because the concept is cool, there will be 20 players just looking at the stats), or they will offer significant combat advantages (over tamed pets), and thus hurt the BE market.
I offer you this challenge: come up with a way of framing this such that it CLEARLY benefits BOTH professions, e.g., some totally new function bred pets could serve to the playerbase at large, and requiring cooperation between CHs and BEs.
Zip_Moonblast wrote:
I vote no.
No matter how you sidestep around the terminology ("breed" vs. "genetic manipulation"), you're talking about dipping directly into BE domain. Yes, you gave various caveats and stipulations, but it still just amounts tocreating more customized pets than what can be tamed naturally in the wild, which is the BE cloning market. Adding this ability to CH would have one of two effects:
1) If "bred" pets performed well enough to make breeding a viable activity for many CHs, the BE market for cloned pets would be severely impacted, especially since CHs are the BEs' primary customers.
2) If "bred" pets had sufficient limitations on them such that BE pets still clearly reigned supreme, performance-wise, most CHs would say "why bother" to "bred" pets, making breeding a waste of development effort.
I'd much rather see some totally new niche for CHs added in, rather than a very similar variant of another profession's ability.
Those are two good points. "Creature breeding" is something I really loved in Final Fantasy VII (breeding Chocobos to increase their appearance, abilities, and statistics). If there was no Bio-Engineer profession, I think this would be an awesome way to add more interest to the CH profession. The"I like to tame pets in the wild" aspect of the game and the "I like to craft pets and sell them to others" aspectare already at war with each other, though. Adding a third chair to the pet creation table at this point seems like it would make a messy situation even messier.
Don't get me wrong, I think these are some great ideas. I just think it would be difficult to balance breeding in such a way that it's simultaneouslyworth implementing yet doesn't stamp all over both the BE and tamed in the wild markets.
Vert is that Mark or Eric Messier? GOD I LOVE LORD STANLEYS CUP. How about Rancors that play Ice Hockey on Hoth for the Emporer's Cup? Sorry lol that may not be funny. I have been up a long long time.
All right, first I want to thank Pluto for responding, and no hard feelings whatsoever, I was just getting discouraged. I did put the same post up at the top of this thread on your thread, with a few alterations. And I want to thank everyone's opinion, whether you agreed with my ideas or not.
Okay, then, the biggest issue seems to bewould we trampling on BE turf with this idea? Many say yes, many say no, one or two say not really. It's a completely valid question.
The limitations I put forth were for the sole purpose of trying to ensure that we did not do this.Some say we are cutting into BE territory, I say we are not. I will say why again. Under theideaof my system, the BEs will still be able to sample, combine and generate one of a kind mutant pets that we will not be able to create by simply breeding.
Under the basic idea of my system, you could optionally breed say, a gsp and a crimson razorcat until, 5 to 10 generations later WITHOUT breeding failure, you have a level 50-60 razorcat-type hybrid. It would not bea mutant pet, but more like a mongrel dog, and have a lot of the strengths of the gsp and crimson razorcat, and maybe a few improvements, like damage, attack speed and HAM. What we couldn't do is give this gsp a ranged attack like a Toxic Merek Battlelord has. You will be limited by species.
Wouldwe hypothetically be competing with the BEs? Of course we would, but probably not as much as you would think. But our process would take longer, and this is obviously putting a bad taste in a lot of mouths. Other issues might be due to the longevity of breeding the 'perfect' specimen of aspecies, and in thinking in the long-term....we would have to charge more for ananimal like the above-described 'uber cat' than a BE would have to charge for one that he/she could manufacture within a day.
Therein lies the dilemma. For those of us that would be willing to go through the trouble of doing such a chocobo-like breeding process (with the added-in chance of failure with each newborn), is it worth the trouble? Some of us (like me) are willing to go through the trouble of spending literally months looking for the rarities like the GPS or the Frenzied Graul, I just think this would make the process more interesting.
It's a tough proposition to balance out with to both a.) not make the BEs upset and b.) make it worth doing for us.
In order to do this, the rewards the CHs get for going through the trouble would definitely have to be worth it. But that was the whole purpose of my idea of breeding, anyway. To get more out of our profession. No, the rewards wouldn't come easily. But it would be like any other challenge, and the rewards are there for anyone who wants to try.
But I can tell you, from personal experience, for some goofy reason, there was nothing more exciting in FFVII than breeding a chocobo, waiting that 'overnight' split-second anxiously to find out if you bred a new color (which meant a higher level), like a blue, green or the last one at the end of the breeding line, the mighty Gold Chocobo. It literally took weeks the first time I attempted this in-game to do it, but it was a rewarding experience.
Maybe it is something for the CHs, maybe it isn't. Maybe a new profession would have to be created to implement such an idea (which the devs would likely never go for). Or as I said earlier, maybe it should be given to the BEs.
Again, all your opinions count, whether you agree with me or not. My mind (and ears, so to speak) are open.
Tycalibur
I can tell you really enjoy the creature handling profession and view your pets as more then mindless killing machines. I like the idea of being able to create creatures based on ones I already have and we would be able to create one of a kind pets. For instance I have a merek King and Queen harvestor and would like to combine their dna to see what happened. Why I like this idea is if you had 2 identical pets such as Frenzied Grauls you could create more frenzied grauls. That is something a Bio engineer could never do and would create a whole new market for creature handlers because we could produce the rare pets equiped with their area attacks and special resists. This would need stables for this to work otherwise would have no room to place creatures and raise them. Also create a niche in market for creature handlers who have a pair of rare pets to create these creatures.
My only question is you mentioned that the pets you create would not be sterile, so does that mean the creatures you create with the higher abilities could then be used again and again. Would doing this cause any vitality points from the pet being used or would there be a limit as to how many babies could be produced from each pet.
Something definitely needs to be done to revamp this profession. I have trained so many handlers to see them walk away because other professions are more appealing for pvp or leave for following the holo. This is a great idea and would give us a financial means to compete with bio-engineer.
Sign 
Milteck
Radiant
Tycalibur, all of the limitations that you list for your proposal still ignore the basic problem:
All this does is increase the number of creature creators/sellers, without increasing the number of buyers.
Thus, it will either hurt BEs, if bred pets are worth using in combat, or be a waste of development time, if they aren't.
I'll use some simple numbers, to illustrate it another way: Suppose there are 600 people who would potentially buy pets. Suppose as well that 300 of them would go to a CH for a tamed one, and 300 would go to a BE for a cloned one. Now add in breeders, and suppose they can make some decent middle-ground creatures like you described, some stats customized and others not. The result? Now 200 people buy tamed animals, 200 buy bred animals, and 200 buy cloned animals. A cool new option and source of income for the CHs (who cover both the taming and the breeding), but a kick in the tookus for the BEs.
As I mentioned already, this would be much more likely to fly if bred animals did something new to increase the number of buyers, by creating some new niche of customers that didn't exist before, like specialized agricultural animals for new Chef productsor something. To use an analogy from economics, you have to increase the size of the pie, not just cut it into more slices, because each of the slices will just be thinner.
I put my ideas in that thread as well, on the latest page. Did it yesterday. Didn't get much of a response from Pluto on it, but you and I are on the same page basically.
No taking away from BEs, but perfect breeding over time is the goal to creating the occassional one of a kind super pet with the power of an animal like the GPS.
I was just trying to think of a way to breathe life back into our profession without asking the devs to just hand us back the super pets of the olden days, but with a healthy compromise: we would have to WORK for our super pets (by breeding them), and not just have them handed to us.
It would be about 50 billion times more exciting to me to breed my own petsthan blowing up 100 frenzied graul lairs in the hope of MAYBE finding a baby, or searching the landscape of Corellia 3 hours a day for a GPS. Not to say that these aren't challenging, but they ARE monotonous, and have literally put me to sleep at times. How many MCHs out there have fallen asleep at the wheel of your X34 and woken up in the corner of the Corellian map looking for a GPS?
As I said, I'm willing to compromise many limitations to make us unable to make BE obselete for the ability to do this. And if you are an MCH that doesn't want to do this, then the option of course is there NOT to do it. You can still tame wild animals and buy your BE pets. I am NOT propounding this as a requirement of CHs, not in the slightest.
Ty and Zip,
There are two workables to this that I can figure. Size has been mentioned. Every Graul enthusiast like myself would love a man-sized Graul. SO slective breeding over time to reduce size. Would be something that is non-BE related, as things are currently. It does not affect any combat stat. I have mentioned Base Movement Rates. This as well is non-BE and a non-Combat stat. There are things I believe could be tweaked in pets that are not already. And lol just because I want it in the game, I am still looking for the ultra rare albino pet of any sort. Where is Hyper-melanistic? I really think with imaginative and logical ideas there are some breeding things we can ask for.
I'll use some simple numbers, to illustrate it another way: Suppose there are 600 people who would potentially buy pets. Suppose as well that 300 of them would go to a CH for a tamed one, and 300 would go to a BE for a cloned one. Now add in breeders, and suppose they can make some decent middle-ground creatures like you described, some stats customized and others not. The result? Now 200 people buy tamed animals, 200 buy bred animals, and 200 buy cloned animals. A cool new option and source of income for the CHs (who cover both the taming and the breeding), but a kick in the tookus for the BEs.
Zip...
I completely understand what you are telling me. All things being equal, I would agree. However, things in a realistic sense, are not equal. I became an MCH shortly after the last major creature patch in December and shortly before the bikes came out. The CH's being able to train mounts was a big deal when the mounts first became available, and it made them money. The patch that released the vehicles made mounts virtually obselete (though many of us own mounts, how often do we REALLY actually use them vs. the vehicles for travelling?). It has been my experience that NO one comes to the MCH to purchase creatures. And why would they? We have no way of putting creatures we tame on a vendor like a BE does. We can't create uber pets like the BEs can time and again, because we have an extremely limited method of storing them. Long story short: Your equation makes sense, but from experience over the last 4 months I can tell you that no one has sought me out to tame a pet for them as a service.
Maybe I'm just on the wrong server, but I have never been approached by strangers or seen someone even spamming at a starport 'LOOKING TO BUY A MOUNT PST'.No oneasks me to tame aBE pet for money, because very likely they already have a friendwho is a CH that will do it for free.