Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Issue/Request List Housekeeping
Vertexon wrote:
I know there's a lot going on right now, but the concern has been expressed to me that it might be time to make sure our Issue List is up to date (particularly now that Publish 10 is out the door). I'd especially like to make sure that the Top Five items on that list really reflect our five biggest priorities. Here's what's there right now:
1: Pets 'poof' back into datapad occasionally. Seems more common in crowded regions, in battle, or right after dismounting a mount
Pets also seem to have trouble attacking when on an incline or decline of terrain.
2: Many more creatures should spawn babies than currently are. Every creature under CL 70 should have at least a chance of spawning a baby
On top of that, but color variation and perhaps HAM variation on the babies.
3: Profession no longer has a niche in which it is particularly valuable. Melee players provide better tanking and damage-dealing, while Bio-Engineers sell better pets
We all pretty much know about the ideas to help correct this problem
4: Pets that have been trained as Mounts will not follow their master
I haven't had a problem with this as of yet.
5: Ongoing pathing problems (pets start moving very slowly or stop following altogether)
Still a very big problem, especially when said pet is trying to move around collidable objects.
6: The special attacks "Poison," "Disease," and "Knockdown" do not work with the specialattack1 and specialattack2 training commands. The useranged training command switches pets to Ranged Attack mode, but cannot switch them back to melee.
Only way to get the specials to workon occasion is to spam them, or a long or looped macro. Pets with a ranged attack tend to use nothing but ranged even when in melee distance.
7: Some pets run away when they come under attack in battle (more common with some body types than others). May be related to creatures having different ‘ideal attack ranges’ that they constant try to move to.
Still a BIG problem with some "model" types. Also many different pets are still standing on the owner, not keeping their distance.
8: Remove pet vitality loss from factional deaths, to be consistent with normal item decay rules
Hopefully this has been corrected.
9: The /tellpet command sometimes will not work for players. This generally happens in isolated episodes for players, both preceeded and followed by tellpet working perfectly with the exact same pets and commands.
An uncommon problem, but still a problem.
10: Creature Handling is not an effective tool at all against a PvP-oriented combat professional. A skilled Creature Handler needs to become more of a threat as part of the Big Combat Rebalance
Many suggestions already posted. Hopefully the CB will take care of this as well.
11: Mounts need to be valuable when compared to vehicles. Current mount advantages are not enough. Suggestions include improved mounted combat, improved mount speed/gallop, improved mount selection (flying mounts?)
Again, many many suggestions for making mounts more appealing, plus the addition of CH only mounts such as Rancors, Tortons and such.
12: No perceived advantage to using one’s Taming skills instead of just buying Bio-Engineered pets. Money is easy enough to acquire that "worse but free" does not feel very rewarding to Tamers.
Plenty of suggestions on this one too.
13: Ability to drop stored pets off either in a regular house or a specialized 'stable' structure
I vote for a CH stable structure.
14: Pet-calling delay of any length is not needed, as specific examples of 'exploit' behavior haven't been produced. Particularly given the fact that creatures are the only "weapon" that cannot be "equipped" while already in combat
Absolutely NO reason for the calling delay!
15: Rancor does not seem as powerful as has been established by Star Wars continuity. Even the weakest rancor should be a high end predator that is feared by players
Rancor's should be just about THE defining CH pet.
16: Pets need more variety in desired properties besides just Light Armor and Kinetic Resist. Varied damage types, armor piercing, and creature-unique "droid module" type functionality
Many many suggestions on this. Hope you find my In Concept Combat Roles suggestions worth mentioning, Vert.
17: Creature Handler "Epic Quest" (similar to RIS armor) with a valuable reward (i.e. unique pet, one-time use "tame adult" ability, etc)
Make the quest difficult, but not INSANE. Powergamers and casual gamers alike should have this opportunity.
18: Some Creature Handlers feel they should be able to see a wild creature's Difficulty level without buying the Master Scout skill
Atleast the difficulty level and specials.
19: Mount wearables/armor such as we have seen concept art for in online developer interviews
*crosses fingers*
19: Ability to carry items on mounts (using them as 'pack animals' as seen in the films)
*prays*
20: Multiple wild pets are not nearly as effective as one big one (reverse seems to be the case for BE pets)
The CL of a pet should have something to do with it's overall "power."
21: Ability to sell tame CH pets on vendor/bazaar
This should be limited to non-ch level pets, and mounted pets methinks.
22: XP rewards to successfully taming/training do not scale appropriately with creature difficulty (more XP should be awarded for taming/training more powerful creatures)
Definately.
23: CH-specific missions and content (i.e. 'Taming' missions) available from terminals and/or NPCs
Plenty of suggestions for the devs to read through.
24: Ability to train pets through the commandline (i.e. /train followme Follow)
Would make life easier for us.
25: More variety in creatures/pets in the wild. Different colors, slightly different capabilities, etc within a species
Yup yup and yup.
26: More new pet commands/tricks
Again, plenty of player input on this one.
And 27: You forgot to add the issue of rare tameables being a bit too rare in accordance with their stats. (this is an issue with many of us) Even with better stats, nothing should take 9 months (and counting) to accomplish. The rarity needs to be toned down regardless.
Other than that, all seems ready to go...
Message Edited by Aakhperkare on 09-03-2004 10:05 AM
Message Edited by TheLoneBowler on 09-03-2004 01:37 AM
The special attacks "Poison," "Disease," and "Knockdown" do not work with the specialattack1 and specialattack2 training commands. The useranged training command switches pets to Ranged Attack mode, but cannot switch them back to melee.
- Stables - Give us a structure or little fenced in area to place our pets rather than having them disappear into a datapad. This also encompuses the idea of more storage space.
- Mounts are worthless. We need speed, looks, size, and more variety (ex. cats, tortons, rancors, flying mount, etc.)
- Certain creatures need revamped stats- The riverside sulfer mynock is the only creature under 40 with armor. Drop the armor. However, certain ones like the gaping spider queen, kliknik queen, and prowling gurreck took MAJOR shots in stats, dropping from having light or medium armor to having none. These stats need fixed, and not dropped. Others like the ravenous torton deserve armor due to its huge shell. Same for the tortur bull when it becomes tamable. Maybe keep one of them lower level with armor but lower resists, then make the tortur bull level 53 or 61 with light armor and much better stats. Lastly, no masters use 3 pets anymore because it is pointless. Increase the pet used levels so we can have two level 50's out, then people wont laugh at us (as hard)
- Pets need to be allowed to be sold on vendors. Would improve the CH economy.
- Rancors and gurrecks are the laughing stock of CH. Make them scary in the eyes of players once again by fixing their stats. (if you cant tell, alot of pet stats need much better balancing. i would give my left leg to take on a project such as this, i have actually gone from planet to planet and wrote down every creature with its stats and then wrote down what i think they should be. this needs done if we are truly getting "rebalanced!"
Vertexon wrote:
I know there's a lot going on right now, but the concern has been expressed to me that it might be time to make sure our Issue List is up to date (particularly now that Publish 10 is out the door). I'd especially like to make sure that the Top Five items on that list really reflect our five biggest priorities. Here's what's there right now:
Pets 'poof' back into datapad occasionally. Seems more common in crowded regions, in battle, or right after dismounting a mount AGREE
- Many more creatures should spawn babies than currently are. Every creature under CL 70 should have at least a chance of spawning a baby AGREE
- Profession no longer has a niche in which it is particularly valuable. Melee players provide better tanking and damage-dealing, while Bio-Engineers sell better pets AGREE
- Pets that have been trained as Mounts will not follow their master It has gotten worse to where they will not even attack when stuck in "WILL NOT FOLLOW" mode. Worse still is they cannot be healed nor stored. I deleted my favorite mount last night because I was in a rush.
- Ongoing pathing problems (pets start moving very slowly or stop following altogether) AGREE
Number 4 seems kind of suspect to me. Are there still people experiencing #4 in-game (I don't believe I have been for a while)? Is there anything in the rest of the list that deserves to be up here instead? How does the ordering feel?
Folks have suggested new issues/requests in theprevious thread, and I'd like to look at folding them into the list. Here's the rest of the existing issues:
The special attacks "Poison," "Disease," and "Knockdown" do not work with the specialattack1 and specialattack2 training commands. The useranged training command switches pets to Ranged Attack mode, but cannot switch them back to melee. And idea I had to make CH mean something is the /commandline for these commands. They should cease being trainable because this allows Non-CH access to CH perks. Instead they should work more like /bodyshot1 or /bodyshot2.
- Some pets run away when they come under attack in battle (more common with some body types than others). May be related to creatures having different ‘ideal attack ranges’ that they constant try to move to. This should also include pets run when dizzied. I am sure some other state moves apply but this one sticks out because I live on Dant and kill Pikets in large quantities.
- Remove pet vitality loss from factional deaths, to be consistent with normal item decay rules I have this theory that anything crafted should be better but degrade with use. Wild pets while not optimal for certain scenarios should not decay and thus be more viable in content. Making free better on one hand but making bought better on another.
- The /tellpet command sometimes will not work for players. This generally happens in isolated episodes for players, both preceeded and followed by tellpet working perfectly with the exact same pets and commands. I have more problems with this being the case against AI NPC's.
- Creature Handling is not an effective tool at all against a PvP-oriented combat professional. A skilled Creature Handler needs to become more of a threat as part of the Big Combat Rebalance I have no solution for this of yet, and currently am "happily" waiting for the combat rebalance. /wink Garva
- Mounts need to be valuable when compared to vehicles. Current mount advantages are not enough. Suggestions include improved mounted combat, improved mount speed/gallop, improved mount selection (flying mounts?) AGREE and when I have more time will link mount thread.
- No perceived advantage to using one’s Taming skills instead of just buying Bio-Engineered pets. Money is easy enough to acquire that "worse but free" does not feel very rewarding to Tamers. See my solution for Issue 8.
- Ability to drop stored pets off either in a regular house or a specialized 'stable' structure Give MCH the option to redeed pets or in case of wild make deed.
- Pet-calling delay of any length is not needed, as specific examples of 'exploit' behavior haven't been produced. Particularly given the fact that creatures are the only "weapon" that cannot be "equipped" while already in combat AGREE all forms of exploits that we know about seem to have been fixed.
- Rancor does not seem as powerful as has been established by Star Wars continuity. Even the weakest rancor should be a high end predator that is feared by players Continuity went out at XMAS with the Holiday Holos.
- Pets need more variety in desired properties besides just Light Armor and Kinetic Resist. Varied damage types, armor piercing, and creature-unique "droid module" type functionality Agree
- Creature Handler "Epic Quest" (similar to RIS armor) with a valuable reward (i.e. unique pet, one-time use "tame adult" ability, etc) OR A CORRAL
- Some Creature Handlers feel they should be able to see a wild creature's Difficulty level without buying the Master Scout skill Agree
- Mount wearables/armor such as we have seen concept art for in online developer interviews AGREE
- Ability to carry items on mounts (using them as 'pack animals' as seen in the films) AGREE
- Multiple wild pets are not nearly as effective as one big one (reverse seems to be the case for BE pets) AGREE
- Ability to sell tame CH pets on vendor/bazaar See my solution for Issue 13
- XP rewards to successfully taming/training do not scale appropriately with creature difficulty (more XP should be awarded for taming/training more powerful creatures) Not sure this can be argued effectively since they are all green cons and once tamed are not agressive.
- CH-specific missions and content (i.e. 'Taming' missions) available from terminals and/or NPCs AGREE
- Ability to train pets through the commandline (i.e. /train followme Follow) I expect to see this (did the no looping fix go in)
- More variety in creatures/pets in the wild. Different colors, slightly different capabilities, etc within a species Can we get ID's to groom our pets???????
- More new pet commands/tricks See useful pet commands.
28. NERF NON-CH PETS. In fact, remove them from the game. It gives them free checkers (/wink TH).
29. Make Master Creature Handler mean something. /transfer is really bogus. A couple extra pets stored. One additional pet out is useless when there are few viable duplet combos let alone a triplet.
30. Give hand held device (chair, whip, cattle prod) that give the CH a certain percentage boost per blocks of CH filled. Allowing us to be incrementally better without relying on a second profession and forever ending any debate over combat or support.
31. Make Train As Mount delevel the selected mob to 0 or 1 so the CH can still use 2 other mounts. Do not let mount be trained attack commands or special commands.
On a side note, can someone confirm a stealth fix/bug for me?
I was riding my now dead mount (see mount bug above) and I was able to heal my other creature with stims while mounted. This seems cool to me, not sure if it was intended or if I missed it in the Pulish notes along the way.
GnomeAd wrote:
I wouldn't say you're going to get flamed, but I will disagree with you. To use your own analogy of a shield, I can change my armor even while I'm in combat. Sure, it takes longer now, but it's still faster than swapping pets under the current system. I don't really see how this could be exploited in the PvE sense. I can see some people complaining about it during PvP though. The reason is that you could pull a pet as a surprise during or just before a duel.I still don't agree even this is anexploit however, since you can do the same thing under the current setup. Hide your rancor (or a BE durni even) and give him the attack command after the duel starts.
In short, I still don't see how this can be exploited. I should be able to swap my weapons and armor just like any other combat class. Perhaps we can sell the devs on shortening the timer. Make it equal to the new weapon switch timer and it would kinda eliminate our argument, but still keep a timer in place.
I would agree with you under the old system. Now, however, every mob has a chance to aggro you instead of your pet. Even under the scenario you present here, you're still not risk free. Think of it like a concealed rifleman. The chances at master are about the same as getting aggroed by your targets. Besides, while not really unbalancing us for PvE (based upon the new MOB AI above) it would allow for what some CHs have been wanting. A CH that doesn't require any other combat skills.
Wabit wrote:
yes you can switch armor, but you are still taking damage yourself in the process... with being able to call pets like this, you can take no damage to yourself, wearing no just clothes and get a brand new 10k HAM shield... with 20 stored pets this could go on for quite awhile...
i guess that my thoughts are that with this there is really no danger to the CH as long as he has pets left
in his datapad
GnomeAd wrote:
I would agree with you under the old system. Now, however, every mob has a chance to aggro you instead of your pet. Even under the scenario you present here, you're still not risk free. Think of it like a concealed rifleman. The chances at master are about the same as getting aggroed by your targets. Besides, while not really unbalancing us for PvE (based upon the new MOB AI above) it would allow for what some CHs have been wanting. A CH that doesn't require any other combat skills.
ok, say i'm soloing a kryte with my pets...
send one pet in he pulls the agro, i then attack... the tank will forever keep the argo...
send the second pet in, when the first get low HAM...
peace out for a sec...
let the second pet pick up the agro...
call the firt one back, start attacking the kryte again, open the datapad, wait 60 secs to store the first pet...
peace out for a sec, store the first pet, pll the third pet out, start attacking...
if you do this correctly, it will take less than 5 secs for the entire sequence to be done... with HS3 at roughly 1k damage per hit... saves me 10k for waiting to call a new pet... and i still face virtully no risk to myself...
vert asked for the possible way for the 15 sec delay to be used as an exploit/grief... i've had csr's called on me for doing this with the 15 sec delay... if you get a a good BE to make you lvl 35 gurrecks (no pathing issues that i've found) with the only special attack being intimidate, no ranged attack... one pet can tank for around 45 to 120 secs (depends on when the intimidate sticks)...
for those of us that rememebr when we could call out pets without camps instantly... yes it was a great thing, but too easy to take advantage of...
Message Edited by TheLoneBowler on 09-03-2004 10:59 PM