Creature Handler Archive
Thread: What does the currently in discussion topic of pet permanent death have to do with *BALANCE*?
Permadeath is not incredibly bad.. Just i'm not going to be as willing to go off to endor with a group and let my pets take the damage.. Even in a large group of skilled players, one goof ball pulls one too many mobs and the camp gets over runned.. I'll be storing my pets before anyone knows whats going on..
But the risks that CH's will face far, far outweigh the risks any other class takes in combat.
They will lose an hours time on a bad encounter while the CH loses 5-10 days time..
Where are the time sinks for other classes? Oh.. sorry, hehe there arent any.
Harric,
How many of the other games you have played with pets were sci-fi games? I have had doubts all along about being able to transfer the things players are used to froma fantasy setting to sci-fi. Like you say, in fantasy games, you just summon up a pet magically and buff him up and send him in to fight. We don't get to magically summon pets in a Sci-fi game.
I will leave the debate now. Like I said, I know that we will not convince each other. The fact remains, that they WANTED you to worry about your pets, and to go out of your way to keep them alive. Permadeadth has done that. If people were not so worried now about keeping their pets alive, we would not be discussing this. So, they have accomplished their goal. Was there a better way to do it? Maybe. Has anyone presented them with a better solution? Not that I have heard, and obviously not that they have heard. Do you think they like all this decention? If they knew a way to accomplish their goal, that did not cause all this ill will, do you not think they would do it?
Graeme wrote:
Harric,
How many of the other games you have played with pets were sci-fi games? I have had doubts all along about being able to transfer the things players are used to froma fantasy setting to sci-fi. Like you say, in fantasy games, you just summon up a pet magically and buff him up and send him in to fight. We don't get to magically summon pets in a Sci-fi game.
I will leave the debate now. Like I said, I know that we will not convince each other. The fact remains, that they WANTED you to worry about your pets, and to go out of your way to keep them alive. Permadeadth has done that. If people were not so worried now about keeping their pets alive, we would not be discussing this. So, they have accomplished their goal. Was there a better way to do it? Maybe. Has anyone presented them with a better solution? Not that I have heard, and obviously not that they have heard. Do you think they like all this decention? If they knew a way to accomplish their goal, that did not cause all this ill will, do you not think they would do it?
By that rationale...
The DEVs want you to worry about taking on some of the tougher mobs... so the make your character be perma-dead when they get dealt a death blow. Time to start a new character. Makes you worry about taking on a tough mob, no? Come on man. The same agument you are making could be true in this instance as well. But is it gonna happen? Not unless you are a Jedi..... and lets not even get into Jedi issues..... sure there will be plenty when it happens.
Graeme - Actually it will hurt you if you use your pets at all in any combat.
I use my pets that are MY level and still every so often something happens where I get a DB or my pets get a DB. I only fight things that are even to blue, and occasionally a yellow.
On Corellia, the most of the wrix family all death blows and all run faster then burst speed. So, even those are even to me at times, I could risk a death blow. So, with a nerf like this it would force me to only fight blues if I wanted to ensure my pets never got killed.
I have two pets that were my very first tames and they are the only ones I have named. I constantly use them in my battles - Kitty (wrix 1100 HAM) and Kelly (bageraset 900 HAM). I have done ALL of my CH leveling without exploits. (CM 4, Taming 3, Training 2, Empathy 2) - I would be absolutely crestfallen if I lost either of those.
My pets also WARP clear across the zone, and if this hasn't happened to you then you are lucky. If that is the case and my pet warps and I become incapacitated by fighting the mob my creature was going to help me fight, then I lose that pet.
Not to mention the unstableness of the servers. I cannot even mention how many times I've been in the middle of a fight and been dropped and the server has to reset, taking about 30 minutes. When I come back my pets are luckily back in my datapad, but if there were deaths due to this I would be livid.
It is so apparent to me that SOE has just jumped on the band wagon of all the people screaming "nerf the CH" instead of actually following around some real CHs and observing for a few weeks and see what they are doing.
There are definite problems. Datapad healing is a bug and should be corrected. Fighting with 3 Rancors and soloing stuff it takes a party of 10 to kill is overpowering. Pets warping is a huge bug. Pets constantly spamming "play" and "hungry" is annoying and stupid since feeding and playing with them essentially does nothing since they will ask again 30 seconds later. Transferring powerful creatures to lower level CHs I assume is not as it was intended, and should be fixed.
So, yes, those issues I listed above are REAL creature handler concerns and should be addressed. But, taking out a pet we've taken 10 days to mature - 10 REAL life days, is insane. I'm all for having to pay 1000 credits to insure each of my pets from this possiblity, but not even remotely supportive of permenant death for pets, unless their growth time changes to 1 hour to full growth.
It's not such a horrible think, but I have one overriding concern: I DON'T WANT MY PETS TO DIE PERMENANTLY DUE TO BUGS. Like warping. Like being disconnected from the server. Like having a camp of 7 aggro mobs sponteously spawning right on top of me and being unable to make my pets flee.
Pet perma death does nothing at all to our situational combat effectiveness
I beg to differ!
a (baby) pet is 10 times weaker than its adult counterpart. it takes 10 days (ten!!) for a baby to grow to an adult.
we are allowed 14 pets. if we limit ourselves to 14 episodes of PvP combat per 10 days (thats slightly over 1 fight per day) how the **** are we supposed to gain CH xp, or do anything besides sit on our lumps for 98% of our gaming time? i guess we will have 98% of our gaming time to look for more pets to tame.
14 episodes of PvP combat, because UNDOUBTEDLY a pet will become the FIRST target of every person on the opposing team. especially if its a 2 story tall Rancor or what not.
14 episodes of risky PvE combat (required for acceptable xp gains)
do you think that we as CH's want to do only 1 PvP or risky PvE fight per day?
argh, i miss typed... only a master CH can have 14 pets.
a novice CH trying to get XP will be even more limited in the number of combat encounters he can have. maybe every other day?
rediculous.
Lorildeh, if you read, I am saying that situationally it does nothing to reduce our combat effectiveness. It is my assertion that all it does is adds a massive, massive penalty for mistakes or being victim of bugs. I don't know if you quite understand what I meant, but in essense it is this:
A permadying pet is no weaker in combat than one that does not heal to full during a store/recall. Since the given reason for all these changes is to make pets weaker (something I cannot agree with at all since it is basing master CH against the power level of other combat classes who are working with extremely poor equipment and have not progressed far in their profession at this point), the whole concept of dying pets should be thrown out because it will do nothing to silence the screaming masses who will still see creature handlers as too strong. The only thing it will accomplish is giving us penalties for losing a battle that are 10-20 times more severe than anything else incurred by a player for losing a battle.
Completely agree. Excellent points all (no flames either - well done).
My issue is that the "risk factor" they've implemented is largely beyond the player's control. Too many factors can affect using pets safely - as many others suggest.
If they still want an element of risk I'd support a % chance of the pet going wild in combat - but only if that % was something the player could affect. I.e. a well fed, non-wounded pet at the same level as the CH wouldn't ever go wild, but an injured pet far above the CH taming level would run a high risk of turning on the CH every time it begins a fight.