Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Creature Handler *TOP 5 ISSUES* (New! September 4, 2005)
MirthDragonfire wrote:
This vendor issue would also solve all of our pet storage problems. I could offer pets to my Merchant alts vendor and thus store hundreds of pets.
1. Pets generally get the best XP gain when NOT grouped while you level them. So if you're in a "grinder group" you don't have to worry about the spot in the group being dedicated to the pet. As long as the pet isn't drawing aggro (which is shouldn't as long as you're a CL 80 combatant), most creatures you'd grind on won't even attack the pet so the group (for health monitoring and level bonus) isn't necessary.
2. Focus. If you're out grinding, grind. If you see that awesome rare baby, sure at that point stop the group and go grab it, but for the most part if you want to level a pet, stick to that. You pretty much have to decide if you're taming or training so to speak on your trip out, otherwise you'll do neither well.
3. It seems learning a pet's abilities is connected directly to the number of kills it makes, NOT how much XP it earns. So you can (if you really wanted to) AFK yard trash around starter cities to learn your pet's abilities. Thus, XP rate of gain is not at all relevant to you learning a new skill, it's only relevant to making a pet gain ability slots/points. If you're trying to learn Thick Skin (L3) off your CL 68 pet, you'll be just as likely to do so by killing 400 wild chubas as you will 400 mission-generated pikets.
4. If we reduce the XP requirements to level pets, then the very highest level pets will be that much easier to "cap out." While this may look good on the surface, it may bring the nerf bat down on Creature Handler (yet again) if it turns out a CL 70 pet with a full set of skills and abilities is very powerful and the profession becomes the FOTM profession again. If the XP requirements stay higher, more power is justified and it is less likely to become a widespread problem IMHO.
5. Plus, and I empathize with your limited playtime, but I have been able to join up with Dantooine grinder groups and roll over my high-level pet's XP 5-6 times in one two-hour block. And I can only play at most 3 or so hours a night a couple days a week in the past month. The problem is, you can't ever make it work for everybody. If you make it extremely "casual-play" friendly and dramatically reduce the XP requirements, then the "powergrinders" cap out that much sooner.
If everyone really wants me to bump this up the priority list and work to get it changed, I will of course do so, but I'm trying to play devil's advocate here and see it from all angles. I'm open to discussion, as I said the Top 5 list is a draft right now so I will be happy to adjusted if I misread the importance of this issue.
And Milteck... Elites are likely gone for good, Keldarin said this system is designed to replace the need for such pets. I think the idea was that rare skills and the fact that you can tailor a pet to your specifications was supposed to be sufficient replacement. What I'd honestly like to see are some elite skills that are very rare and hard to find that we could find on pets, to have something other than the rare babies to chase again.
I agree the pet time call delay has just about gotten to be ridiculous. In groups this means a ch has to walk to the next mission while everyone gets on a barc and zoom zoom zooms. You cannot store a pet in combat anyway so what is the point of this. A Ch should be able to call store a creature instantly in all situations except for combat. If the player is in combat or the creature is in combat this is a non issue we couldnt hotbox the datapad whether we liked to or not.
Pet speed needs a serious looking at I do not expect a pet to keep up with my bike but oh to keep up with me walking yes.
The abilities while they do show some usefulness need to be checked for effort to import. For example the L3 of something should be three times stronger or last longer. Marring storm is a good example of poor thinking out. Its far better to have just marring storm 1 then to have all 3. All this can lead to is one player laying out 24 specials and makeing a spam happy enviroment.
I agree the grouping of pets is a serious issue that needs looked at in pvp a lvl 70 creature is toast in under thirty seconds, and most players many of which are level 80s refuse to leave the group to accomodate our pet needs. The net result is I have to leave the group thus makeing it so I cannot rely on the group for healing passive group buffs and the like. A good solution would be to have the Ch receive some avatar icons next to their name, Needless to say the group bar is generally confuseing annoying and in a nutshell far to screan consumeing.
Pet decay has to go especially with the group biasing. If we cannot afford to leave the group our pets going to be toast in any high end content. We get no adks and it takes a heck of alot longer to generate a signifigant pet. First you have to find a good BE then level it up then ability it up. Net result a krayt scatter can be replaced in under a hour a creature pet fully trained 1 week not reasonable.
What good does it anyone that baby spawn at wild lairs is increased, when there is no wild lair to be found for several square km?
Yesterday I spent 4 hours looking for one of several CL 10 babies ... most of which was spent driving over an empty Tatooine or Naboo. I am actually afraid to go to Talus or Rori, as they are even more empty (outside the huge CL 1 spawns right outside cities).
All on Gorath, actually, but I hear other servers have the same problems.
after reading some of the posted i just realized i should have added that they need to fix wild spawns on many planets
On my server (Naritus), talus, rori and sometimes lok and dantooine will not spawn any wild creatures at all. the worst is talus and rori since it has been like this for months. lok and dant will do it off and on. does anyone else experience this?
its very hard to get abilities when many of the ones i see listed come from talus animals much less getting a creature you may really want to use from there
- Nearby friends of certain creatures/npc's seem to often automatically attack the toon, (ignoring, but not breaking maskscent/cover if under those states) when the pet initiates an attack, even if the toon is itself /peaced and/or over 65m away. Relative CL seems to make no difference. (Suggest aggro should pass to the pet if the toon does not get involved, and maybe a 'perception' to break maskscent/cover, allowing aggro to pass to the toon)
- Call and Store timers are way too much, especially given recent vehicle calling changes, and reduces the group-viability of a creature handler. Either reduce call times to 5s per creature, or allow multiple calls at the same time, and drop the 60s apres-combat store timer completely. Allow calls during combat (otherwise we're completely gimped if we run into a bunch of agressive mobs) - but continue the ban on storing during combat.
- Pet taming seems to fail significantly more than before - (suggestion - why not give a small cumulative bonus to re-tame attempts on the same creature...?)
- Learning specials off of pets can take an insane amount of time. It's ok being random, but please limit the upper scale somewhat. Needing several hrs of constant grinding to learn an ability from a pet you'll immediatly delete is too much, particularly for casual players.
- Pet AI sometimes seems to get stuck, and pet ignores all orders given (only thing to do is to wait until combat is finally over and store & recall)
- Difficult to tell what abilities are working and what are not.
- Pets still occasionally vanish for no apparent reason.
- Show the species of the creature in the datapad /examine window.
- Confirmation of the Pinning ability
- Difficult to get matching armour pieces in the colours we want (ok, ok! I know that's an AS bug,,,
)
As an aside, unless the pet gets affected with (5) above, not really having trouble with autoattack of the lairs anymore. Previously, if an attack order was given to another creature whilst attacking a lair, it would go back to the lair once the creature(s) were dead, despite given a follow order in the meantime. Now, a follow order will effectively clear the pets attack 'queue' (where attack will add the targetted to it), so any attack orders given after a follow will just aggro those targets.
Ko-aIri wrote:
While I do agree that the XP requirement is fairly extensive, especially for the highest level pets, I'm not sure I agree with prioritizing XP rates at the moment, and here's why (to hit your major points):
4. If we reduce the XP requirements to level pets, then the very highest level pets will be that much easier to "cap out." While this may look good on the surface, it may bring the nerf bat down on Creature Handler (yet again) if it turns out a CL 70 pet with a full set of skills and abilities is very powerful and the profession becomes the FOTM profession again. If the XP requirements stay higher, more power is justified and it is less likely to become a widespread problem IMHO.
If everyone really wants me to bump this up the priority list and work to get it changed, I will of course do so, but I'm trying to play devil's advocate here and see it from all angles. I'm open to discussion, as I said the Top 5 list is a draft right now so I will be happy to adjusted if I misread the importance of this issue.
I for one agree that the XP requirement is high but worth the effort!
What ever happened to working hard towards a goal? if they reduce the XP requirement it takes some of the prestige away!
I say keep the XP as it is!
Mounted pets slowing down when engaged in combat.
There is absolutely no reason to have this any more, as we can no longer attack when mounted.
Valin Horn
MCH/MR
FarStar
i also like to add the issue of deserted areas or planets. on eclipse talus is a dead planet right now and rori seems not much better. lots of areas on tatooine bursting with life not long ago now are deserted too (eg. the area around the mos espa race track).
another point i would like to mention is the poison/disease issue (just so its not forgotten). lots of creatures should have this - some even refer to it in its name like venom-filled arachne, nightspider poison spitter, etc.. i know this is a general issue probably effecting the whole game engine - so just as a reminder to keep it on the big list.
Great list, Ko. Number 3 is my personal mission in life to get fixed. I want to be able to trail two GSPs behind me as I zip over the Corellian savannas. I want to have a giant peko peko pace me in my AV 21.
I think the issue of pets attacking lairs has been fixed, with one exception. I'm having no problem issuing "follow me" orders to my pets to get them to stop banging on the lair, and when I designate a new target, they'll go after the new target, not get fixated on the lair.
The exception is mount critters. My mount-trained dewback will not attack a lair unless I put him right on top of it and then he'll hit it six times and stop. Non mount critters will attack the lair untill I issue the follow me order to break off the attack. Having to spam "attack" is just as annoying has having to spam "follow me" was.