Creature Handler Archive

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b.) Increase the MCH's creature levels to 90-100. This will not take away from the BEs, but just give them the chance to make higher level pets.

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This would be nice. New babies at that LVL..........maybe. Even without new babies it would help a lot. 3 pets out might be worthwhile if we could have LVL 100 max.

I see a lot of Faction cities poofin away. The large neutral trade cities are gettin bigger tho. People are leaving the game there is no doubt. Cities may not be a good indication of that however. When player cities were introduced every guild wanted a city. It was a gold rush of sorts. Now many of them are ghost towns.

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Vertexon wrote:

The January State of the Profession that you refer to is... well... from January. It is out of date, and will be replaced soon. The Issues List that I submitted to TH is very current, however, and does have majorsweepingthings like "give us a useful niche in which to excel" and "make us more competitive with other combat professions" right up there toward the top.

Ryyger makes an excellent point. I can and am asking for the "sun, moon, and stars." Big things don't happen fast, though. So it is logical to also ask for smaller things that might be doable sooner to tide us over.

I would disagree with the statement that CHs are "leaving in droves." I don't have access to any server statistics, but I still see lots of CHs both in and out of game. This is still one of the highest traffic profession forums on the SWG website (threads slip off the front page after 10-11 hours, as opposed to 6-7 days on some profession forums). Which is not to say we're in a perfect state... but let's work together to constructively get there.

Message Edited by Vertexon on 04-13-2004 03:52 PM

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Yvile wrote:

Yes, there are a lot less CH now. Yes, we're not as powerful as we were.

If you remember back that far (and were a CH) you'll recall everyone and their chimpanzee had pets. And Pet Tanking was all the rage. And lo there were pets as far as your eyes could see.Granted, a lot of CH made money off this demand market but it also caused all the "Pet Wars" joke. When we got hit, and pets no longer were as powerful as they were, everyone fled to Bounty Hunter because they were overpowered. Now everyone is a TKM. When the Orbital Nerfbat (tm) descends, everyone will flee TKM and change to whatever other profession is suddenly perceived as having all the power. And the TKA will all complain they've been nerfed to uselessness.

The shift is always towards the powerful character template. In a perfect game, the difference between classes would be in style of play and not power. But that's not how things work in reality. Yes, I think they've shoved the knob too far in the opposite direction for CH. I don't think it's reasonable to demand everything go back to the way it was. With some of the changes to other gameplay factors I could certainly see us getting close. But I don't believe making us overpowered is the way to go either. In a game like this you can't simply remove a single class or profession, tinker with it alone in the lab, and then plop it back into the environment. You want a dynamic world so you have to consider how a change here will affect something over there. I do wish that instead of beating something that is arguably overpowered into oblivion that you figure out where you want to go and take incrimental steps.

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I don't think anyone is really asking to be overpowered again. But with them saying the combat rebalance is going to be put back on hold for 6 months the least they could do is roll back the changes made to CH. (They dont have to be back to being overpowered there is middle ground between USELESS ----> <---- OVERPOWERED).

This rebalance is going to take a lot of effort and time, but its not fair to screw up ch then leave it that way for 6 months until you can get around to finishing the job.

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loonatik wrote:

I left a few things out;

What everyone wants is to be more effective.

Its impossible to say exactly how to do that without balancing everyone. I think your goal of wanting to rebalance all combat professions is a great one. One that should be done and well thought out. But trying to rig our profession to be a little more competitive just long enough for you to have time to rebalance the other professions then nerf us again later is ridiculous.

The simple quick fix is to un-nerf us. Maybe even not 100% un-nerfed. But bring us back to what our pets were like pre december. That will at least let us fight until you can go in and spend the time to rebalance all professions.

Bruno Salieri

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I don't feel CH is nerfed. I'm happy with the changes made from the beginning. CH is an exquisite profession instead of what it was when it was started - a free for all profession that everybody wanted because it was extremely overpowered. Now that it is not what it was, you can go back to your regular gameplay and please, if it sucks please stay away from it.

I see many cries to improve CH and most of those have suggestions to make pets stronger and bigger and faster and invulnerable and godlike. I think they're fine, but what I'd like to see is what Vertexon is asking for, non-combatideas. CH rocks, and you don't, Bruno.

Wokka-wokka

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Wokka wrote:

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loonatik wrote:

I left a few things out;

What everyone wants is to be more effective.

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Wrong, I am already effective, speak for yourself.

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Its impossible to say exactly how to do that without balancing everyone. I think your goal of wanting to rebalance all combat professions is a great one. One that should be done and well thought out. But trying to rig our profession to be a little more competitive just long enough for you to have time to rebalance the other professions then nerf us again later is ridiculous.

The simple quick fix is to un-nerf us. Maybe even not 100% un-nerfed. But bring us back to what our pets were like pre december. That will at least let us fight until you can go in and spend the time to rebalance all professions.

Bruno Salieri

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I don't feel CH is nerfed. I'm happy with the changes made from the beginning. CH is an exquisite profession instead of what it was when it was started - a free for all profession that everybody wanted because it was extremely overpowered. Now that it is not what it was, you can go back to your regular gameplay and please, if it sucks please stay away from it.

I see many cries to improve CH and most of those have suggestions to make pets stronger and bigger and faster and invulnerable and godlike. I think they're fine, but what I'd like to see is what Vertexon is asking for, non-combatideas. CH rocks, and you don't, Bruno.

Wokka-wokka

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There are still creature handlers out there

Just not as many master creature handlers. People are leaving the master ch profession because are frustrated with pvp or are holo hunting and need to drop the skills. What I am seeing is once people become master they tame the pets they want and then after that find no further challenges in the profession. The release of rare creatures back into the game has helped because it gave me personally some rare pets such as the Bull Rancor to showcase and use.

Here are the biggest problems

1.) Financially ineffective profession. Bio engineeres beat us hands down because of their abilities to sell there pets on a vendor. Why cant babies when freshly tamed have the ability to be deeded so can be put in inventory.

2.) No storage: Give creature handlers an exclusive structure such as stable to store fully grown pets.

3.) Very underpowered in pvp. The rare pets need medium armor to endure the pounding of tkm and other high end pvp professions. Also make certain pets invulnerable to certain attacks such as knockdown. A rancor should not be able to be knocked down by a human. And if a pet uses a poison special they should not be vulnerable to poison.

4.) Remove pet decay

5.) Creature handlers should be immune to disease, bleed, and poison attacks. Only makes sense becuase there are people in real life immune to the bites of their venomous pets. This would also help in pvp because we would be immune to docs and others who throw poisons.

Improvement in any of these areas would make ch a much more effective profession.

Milteck

Radiant

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Vertexon wrote:

The January State of the Profession that you refer to is... well... from January. It is out of date, and will be replaced soon. The Issues List that I submitted to TH is very current, however, and does have majorsweepingthings like "give us a useful niche in which to excel" and "make us more competitive with other combat professions" right up there toward the top.

Ryyger makes an excellent point. I can and am asking for the "sun, moon, and stars." Big things don't happen fast, though. So it is logical to also ask for smaller things that might be doable sooner to tide us over.

I would disagree with the statement that CHs are "leaving in droves." I don't have access to any server statistics, but I still see lots of CHs both in and out of game. This is still one of the highest traffic profession forums on the SWG website (threads slip off the front page after 10-11 hours, as opposed to 6-7 days on some profession forums). Which is not to say we're in a perfect state... but let's work together to constructively get there.

Message Edited by Vertexon on 04-13-2004 03:52 PM

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The Issues List that I submitted to TH is very current, however, and does have majorsweepingthings like "give us a useful niche in which to excel" and "make us more competitive with other combat professions" right up there toward the top.

Message Edited by KzinKiller on 04-21-2004 10:44 PM

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Vertexon wrote:

I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't think the nerfing is just a minor inconvenience, but I don't think our profession is completely shattered and ruined either (if you look at it objectively from an "is it possible to have fun being a CH?" perspective).

I do think we need a lot of developer attention to get back to a state where we're "very good" or "excellent" instead of "just okay." You're welcome to disagree with me. If everyone agreed with everyone else, there would be nothing to discuss and no point in having forums.

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Vertexon your job is to convey how the creature handler community feels to the developers. Have you not been reading the forums? Do you honestly feel ALLL of these posts are not justified?

"is it possible to have fun being a CH?"

I could find a way to have fun in just about any situation. What on earth does that have to do with the state of our profession?

get back to a state where we're "very good" or "excellent" instead of "just okay."

We are not "just okay" in PvP.

We are not "just okay" when attacking high level creatures.

We are not "just okay" when it comes tomaking money from our profession.

We are utterly useless.

About the ONLY time I can find any use in my pets is when attacking lower level creatures with newbie groups. Then and only then do I ever feel useful.

1. In the early days of SWG, there were no buffs, there was no armor, there were only pets. The only way to take on high end content was to have pets out.

2. CH was one of the few elite professions that worked, Many of them still have specials and entire lines (pity the commando) that are broken.

3. These two factors gave CH dominance on both the PvP and PvE battlefields. FOTM types flocked to CH to get the power they commanded due to the two factors above.

4. The result: pet wars. And the SWG crew had a public relations nightmare on their hands, not because CH was overpowered alone, but because everyone else was underpowered.

5. The solution of the meatlumps: the nerf bat, as opposed to fixing the other profs. It's so much easier for these twits to nerf, or to double the HAM of the mobs, than it is to take the time to analyze what is happening, because the meatlumps are essentially lazy.

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loonatik wrote:

Vertexon your job is to convey how the creature handler community feels to the developers. Have you not been reading the forums? Do you honestly feel ALLL of these posts are not justified?

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