Creature Handler Archive
Thread: NEW: Top 5 issues, please discuss
1.) Forthcoming 30 second delay issue.
I think most of us agree that we have no problem with a 30 second delay in the wildnerness areas, but we wish to have calling in camps, cities (municipal zones) and declared residences remain as they currently are, with no delay timer and thus, no unnecessary time sink. This issue obviously impacts all players in the game, but creature handlers most of all.
2.) Broken special attacks.
As it stands right now, without a macroed workaround, our pets will not perform special attacks on demand. They will use the special attacks in a fight, but we cannot command them reliably to do so. Also, if a pet has two special attacks AND ranged attack, you can only train it a command for the two special attacks (for example, strong poison/strong disease), the "Use Ranged Attack" option does not come up under the training radial menu.
3.) Missing tamables
Currently, many creatures sub-level 70 do not have babies. If the rebalance was successful in bringing a balance to the game, and we have no reason to believe it was not, why do not all creatures CL 70 and below spawn babies? A thread on this topic exists already, for reference:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=creature_handler&message.id=159187#M159187
4.) BEs cannot craft pets with certain special attacks
Although a BE issue, we are the one buying these clones so it is actually a CH issue as well. Certain special attacks will not stick on a clone no matter what a BE does. These special attacks include Area Combo, Plague Strike, Open Wounds, Force Strike, Poison Spray, and possibly something else I'm missing. Again, if wild creatures below CL 70 can use these attacks, why are they not able to pass to the clones? If it's a bug, it needs to be addressed. If it's by design, it needs to be explained. Currently, only a few tamables have any of these attacks, one of which is extinct, and some of the attacks are not present on ANY tamable.
5.) Reserved for any other issue we need addressed.
Constructive comments welcome, let's give Vertexon something to pass along!
I'm going to go out on a limb and state these might be our most current top 5 issues. Please keep the discussion civil and constructive, and if you are not a creature handler, please don't post here just for the sake of trolling. Creature handlers, please refute, discuss, refine, whatever, so that we can help Vertexon out and give him more to work with as he fights for us.
1.) Forthcoming 30 second delay issue.
I think most of us agree that we have no problem with a 30 second delay in the wildnerness areas, but we wish to have calling in camps, cities (municipal zones) and declared residences remain as they currently are, with no delay timer and thus, no unnecessary time sink. This issue obviously impacts all players in the game, but creature handlers most of all.
This is not really a top 5 issue, however, I would like to stay declared residence camp and city instant pet call stay in effect, while wilderness calling comes with the penelty stated above. The devs said that instant calling would open "a myrid of griefs" and even with the current instant pet calling system I have not been able to grief anyone pvp or otherwise.
2.) Broken special attacks.
As it stands right now, without a macroed workaround, our pets will not perform special attacks on demand. They will use the special attacks in a fight, but we cannot command them reliably to do so. Also, if a pet has two special attacks AND ranged attack, you can only train it a command for the two special attacks (for example, strong poison/strong disease), the "Use Ranged Attack" option does not come up under the training radial menu.
These 2 little things were suppose to be givin to us sometime in November or was it December? Im not sure, the fact on the matter is that 2 bugs going unfixed for months for who knows what reason is unexcusable! Also, could you please post the "macro workaround" that I keep hearing. Myself and many others would like to know how to work around this bug.
Also i would like to add that BE pets that say on the deed they have ranged attack pet, do use range attack when they fight, but we cannot train them to specifically use range attack as defult attack. ( command doesn't show up on list )
3.) Missing tamables
Currently, many creatures sub-level 70 do not have babies. If the rebalance was successful in bringing a balance to the game, and we have no reason to believe it was not, why do not all creatures CL 70 and below spawn babies? A thread on this topic exists already, for reference:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=creature_handler&message.id=159187#M159187
This is a very good topic, and I think post level 50 babies should spawn along with ALL wild creatures in the game that do not spawn babies already.. some were originally taken out because of balanace reasons but after the big creature nerf this is no longer a concern. Also we would like to see more variations of popular pet types.. (wild)... lower level rancors, level 50 graul type ( non rare) ect.
4.) BEs cannot craft pets with certain special attacks
Although a BE issue, we are the one buying these clones so it is actually a CH issue as well. Certain special attacks will not stick on a clone no matter what a BE does. These special attacks include Area Combo, Plague Strike, Open Wounds, Force Strike, Poison Spray, and possibly something else I'm missing. Again, if wild creatures below CL 70 can use these attacks, why are they not able to pass to the clones? If it's a bug, it needs to be addressed. If it's by design, it needs to be explained. Currently, only a few tamables have any of these attacks, one of which is extinct, and some of the attacks are not present on ANY tamable.
Never paid much attention to this one because specials never work like they are suppose to.
Chttp://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=creature_handler&message.id=159187#M159187
5.) Reserved for any other issue we need addressed.
Constructive comments welcome, let's give Vertexon something to pass along!
Fix the pathing bug, our pets running around and pets standing on top of us now, not 3 months from now please, and we will have a working profession again.
The "macro workaround" is just to give your pet the "Follow Other" and "Special Attack" command in sequence. Something like:
/tellpet follow;
/tellpet special;
And I did mention that you can't train the ranged attack command on pets... is this only happening for BE ones? Are you actually getting "Use Ranged Attack" on the radial from a wild pet with two special attacks plus ranged? I don't get it in either case, wild or BE.
1. I fear that the 30 sec delay will apply no matter wherewe are - we shall see. If we have to wait 30 secs in cities & camps, it will be annoying but not devastating. I rather look forward to not having to make tents. Though it suks big time that tentsmay have no application in the game, because a lot of us have spent a LOT of time getting xp for the skill to make high level tents. (And if the only application is to save time on calling pets, that still suks!).
2. It will be nice if they can get these fixed! Some creatures have devastating special attacks, and if we can command our pets to use them on cue that will go a long way to greatly improving the pets combat effectiveness. I dare say they might even stand up a bit better in PvP. I know nothing about programming, but I'm more than willing to give the devs the benefit of the doubt andthink that the reason the specialshaven't been fixed is because it's a lot harder to correct than we realize. (Yeah, yeah, I know- I'm naive.I alsowhistle while I work. What can I say?)
3. As I've never even seen so much as foot prints of any of the rare babies, I certainly would like to see more higher level tamable pets. Though high level tamables should be something special, soI don't mind if there are a limited number of high level creatures that spawn babies. Just not as limited as it stand now. And I like a challenge, so I don't mind that theybe hard to find either. Just not quite so hard to find as the Abominable Snowman 
4. I don't want BE to be able to clone special attacks and certainly not be able to clone pets better than a CH can tame. That is Not a slam against BE. If I were BE I'd want to be able to make the best pet I could too. But Buy vs. Tame has been discussed near ad nauseum in other threads, so I won't go down that road here.
5. Give people a reason to want to use a mount instead of a vehicle. I don't mean to say that a mount should be better than a vehicle. Rather thatthey both should have advantages and disadvantages the other doesn't have.That vehicles are expensive to repair (once bug is fixed) is one way to make pets a viable alternative. Vehicles should be faster - that's the real advantage to vehicles after all. But maybe mounts aresuperior in rough terrain. Let people people use special attacks while mounted. Something so that people might be willing to buy a mount instead of - or along with! - a vehicle.
DaBudo2 wrote:4. I don't want BE to be able to clone special attacks and certainly not be able to clone pets better than a CH can tame. That is Not a slam against BE. If I were BE I'd want to be able to make the best pet I could too. But Buy vs. Tame has been discussed near ad nauseum in other threads, so I won't go down that road here.
I see where you're coming from here, but as I said, several of the attacks aren't available on anything we can currently tame. I believe we can get Open Wounds (the extinct Frenzied Graul), Poison Spray (one or two of the extinct Mereks), Plague Strike (Bull Rancor, Mantigrue Screecher) and that's it. As it stands right now, we can't tame or create pets with these attacks in general, and that's what I'm looking at. Also, it's pretty common knowledge a BE pet can have far superior stats over an existing same-CL wild tame, our only real advantage over a BE pet is either a unique body style they can't make, or just the fact of a rare tame. So, adding a few more of these special attacks wouldn't really hurt.
And although there is a 'fix' for the pets standing on top of me issue on test centre - the feedback Ive seen on this suggests its made NO differene to the biggest game stopper - Pets running.
My number 2 vote goes to increasing the amount of ways a CH can earn money - since I can no longer do missions (see point 1 above), I do not currently have an easy way to gain cash - Im currently selling hides/ meat on the bazaar - but due to (1) above, I cant kill stuff quicly enough to make much cash using this method....
get the feeling there's a vicious circle forming here?
My last vote would be the 30 second rule - but I fear we're fighting a battle thats already been decided. Im not a programmer - but I think we've been nerfed by the Devs grafting on the vehicle system onto the exisitng pet system (they even occupy the same datapad 'page') - since they want to stop people 'flamming and riding', they have to change that sub-system - unfortunetly, we are right in the middle....hence, unless the Devs are going to find a way of separating out vehicles and pets, I fear no change will happen and we will get hit by the 'anti-vehicle griefing' nerf (I also think the devs know they are in a corner over this - hence the nonsensical comments about Pets and PvP)....
Anyway - I dont want the devs spending ANY time on anything CH related UNTIL they have fixed the 'pets running' bug imposed in Pub 6.