Creature Handler Archive

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Vertexon wrote:

I'm working on writing a document to explain the current and desired direction of Mounts in SWG (largely using feedback from the forum and from my "Let's Talk About Mounts" thread from a while back).

Hypothetically speaking,let's saythe Devs introduced a real awesome new mount (flier, cat, kliknik, whatever). Would you...

(A) Want everyone to be able to get one, so there would be a market for selling to non-CHs

(B) Want to keep it as a CH-only perk

(C) Want to keep it as a high level/Master CH only perk

This is just hypothetical, to help me with my writing. No developer intentions regarding mounts should be inferred.

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(B) Want to keep it as a CH-only perk

I think the two-tiered idea is good. Some mounts limited to CH and some to MCH only. I'm not one yet, but there's not a great incentive for me to invest SP into MCH, and that would be a plus.

But, as mentioned,until mounts are at least closer in speed to vehicles, I think you could introduce 50 of them and it wouldn't make a heck of a difference. My Bantha looks cool, but anything over a few hundred meters is a drag.

A new mount would be cool.

Some thoughts.

1. No mater what we get (if we get anything) as a new mount, you can be fairly certain BEs will be able to clone it.


2. Flying pets, while very cool, are very unlikely. I think if we ask for them we are going to waste energy asking for something that simply cannot easily be delivered.


3. Very large mounts, again... very cool, but again.. very unlikely. For the same reason you have to stunt the growth of giant carion spats, you will not have large mounts. Asking for these will also probably be a waste of breath.

Having said all that. I think a long term goal should be some flying mounts and larger mounts (Fambaa and Torton come to mind). But something more emediate would have to be something along the same size and skeleton as the current mounts. The kwi and other cu-pa like are good guesses. I would think the Epe (sp? animal from episode I) would also be a good bet.

If you absolutely don't want BEs to be able to make it, it better be something they don't have a schematic for. Not that the devs could not add it but if that is the way the community goes.

I personally have given up with a CH being able to make any money asside for the occasional tip to train an animal. I make money running missions and gathering hide and meat. it's not much but we all cannot loop sample missions offline for 200 milion.

I would rather have something only CH can ride and something with some good combat abilities. Of course we can get a BE to make something like that for us now for the low low price of 100-200K. /sarcasm off

I would like to be able to ride my rancor. I know that is unlikely because of the things I mentioned above. In the absence of that, I honestly cannot think of any creatures that I would like to have as a mount (that is not excluded because of the list above).

I don't want a piggy-back off my Rancor (uk term for riding on the shoulders of someone). I would love a (large) MCH flier mount.

What I dream of is a Torton with a heavy gun turret

*dream on dude*

Flying mounts are probably not as "un-doable" as some people think. Although it would likely be "hover" type flying we see pets doing already. As much as I would love to see my giant peko peko be saddled up and used to soar over the landscape at speedbike speeds, I just don't see them letting us get away with that. Lantern birds or ancient reptialian flyers might be more likely just due to size, but again, matching vehicles in a race might still go against the Star Wars grain -- even for a MCH

I would love to see additional mounts, but with the prevalence and ease of acquiring a vehicle I do not forsee any market for them. Additional CH-only mounts could be used as status symbols but I freely admit I bought a vehicle to speed my travels. Mounts just don't cut it except for looks.

As far as attacking from mounts goes, absolutely note. If you have a ranged weapon you can already do this without the game having to worry too much about collisions, distanceand all the other factors that go into melee combat. Since there's not much of a third dimension in SWG, fighting with your survival knife from the back of a savage humbaba ought to be fairly useless. So we'd have to include a new stat for weapon length on every item and we're back into database problems again. I also don't think lance-wielding jousts is particularly "Star Warsy", even from the back of a giant carrion spat.

I also want to register my continued vote against rancor riding. Leave that to the Force-sensative witches. Or maybe when you take your FS slot up to MCH and allow us to automaticallyknow you are a Force-sensative threat to the Empire with an automatic TEF for it.

Rancor riding! Feh!

Good idea, maybe a Master CH mount faster than a speeder or at least equal

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spreadsheet wrote:

Vertexon.....you going to be at the FanFest?

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I wish I could, but Anaheim is just too far away for me. Maybe if they have one in the midwest sometime.

It would be awesome if folks who are going could ask questions and gather info relating to any creature announcements, then come back and make a report. I would be most eager to read that.

My vote for mounts:

1) All mounts need to be faster, humbabas, spats, all of them. While some people seem to think that the patch for the vehicle exploit in publish 8 is going to bring us a lot of business, I completely disagree. Time is the most valuable commodity in the game, and vehicles offer far more of an advantage even with regular and expensive maintenance than mounts do.

1a) Another option would be having speed modifiersadded to the existing CH trees that increased base speed and also worked something like theCenter ofBeing modifiers (duration, efficacy, etc) for gallop, so that a novice creature handler would have a typical mount, but additional boxes would grant additional base speed, additional gallop speed, and additional gallop duration. Essentially, it would be a reflection of a creature handler's ability to improve the endurance of an existing mount, as well as their ability to motivate the creature to run harder, faster, and longer (gallop) when necessary. This wouldn't improve mount sales in the slightest, but it would certainly make mounts more worthwhile for us to ride.

2) If special mounts are added, make them CH only.

3) If I had to choose between the addition of cat mounts, flying mounts, and bug mounts, I'dvote for cats. There isn't really any Y-axis to speak of in the game, so it's not like you'd ever get any higher off the ground than the idle animation for flying mounts anyway. Plus, I like cats.

Message Edited by Nhari on 04-22-2004 05:25 PM

its sucks beinf a MCH now. i have been one sice the beginning and when mounts came out i was excited. well now with bikes and stuff, you dont see anyone riding their mounts... i still hop on my kaadu. just cause i like him and run with the bikes. they get mad that im slow but i tell them oh well im a CH... it would be neat for MCH to be able to ride rancors, but it wont happen. they are force sensitive only... so why not a graul personally i want to hop on the back of a giant lantern bird from endor... i likem them. they look like pterodactals.. unlike the peko pekos who look like toucan sam.....lol but we should definitely get something neet for MCH, like a flying creautre... peronally i feel that when you hit MCH u should be able to tame any animal in the wild and have it grow to be a mount.. fitting it grows big enough... but it would b neat seeing that....

I think it should be kept as a MCH perk. There are some things that still need to be fixed within the profession itself and other things that need to be fixed outside of the profession(i.e."Solo-Hunting"). Hypothetically speaking if this was to happen, and they didn't fix the current issues first, it wouldn't be a solution; it would just be another problem; something to cover our eyes from the real issues that are at hand and allow more procrastination,thus impedingthe progress of CH becoming a better profession.

=Aaryn Crayson=