Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Thoughts on the Creature Handler Profession
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Dagrin
Mon Jul 04, 2005 11:53 pm
#1
Fulfilling a defined role has been something missing from the Creatur Handing Profession since the original nerf a year and a half ago (turning CH from the premier tanking class to a novelty). Since the CU the profession has had to deal with all the "balance" changes involved in restructing the game, many of which penilized us, but has not yet been endowed with any abilites that have given us a new function.
From what I've gathered from the devs various comments, they currently plan the following:
1. Creature Handler is not to be defined by any single role, but instead be able to serve many different functions depending on the choice of pets.
2. As a side effect of this flexable design the CH will not excel in any role, probably rating a 3 or at best a 4 in their 5 point role design scale. In particular the CH will NEVER be restored to the tanking power house status they once had.
3. There is a design for a new pet skill system in the works. The system should involve collecting different pets, some that inately have a desired skill, and then using it to train other pets to build your skill set. The design sounds promising, but a bit too lofty, like the never materialized smuggler revamp.
2. As a side effect of this flexable design the CH will not excel in any role, probably rating a 3 or at best a 4 in their 5 point role design scale. In particular the CH will NEVER be restored to the tanking power house status they once had.
3. There is a design for a new pet skill system in the works. The system should involve collecting different pets, some that inately have a desired skill, and then using it to train other pets to build your skill set. The design sounds promising, but a bit too lofty, like the never materialized smuggler revamp.
One issue I think the devs are not paying enough attention to is creature variety. In what I'm sure was rush job to get the CU moderatly playable, the devs have removed any sense of distintion between different races of creatures. Every creature has stats calculated by a simple formula who's only variable seems to be the the creature CL with a margin of error of about 1%. Every creature of the same CL has nearly identinal HP, Damage, Defence, and Hit rate. Given the mission/party/experience design (love it or hate it) these CL centric formulas are probably a unavoidable. But that does not mean we have to live with cookie cutter stats. Instead, expand the fomulas to include a trade off balance system where each stat for the creature has a rating, but the average of these ratings for all stats must be equal to that of other creatures. Lets say that all creatures currently have a rating of 3 for all stats on a 5 point scale, making the average also a 3. The trade off I'm refering to would allow one creature to have a damage rating of 5 (say 25% higher than current creatures of the same CL), but to keep their average rating a 3 their HP rating might be reduced to a 1 (only having say two thirds the normal HP).
AI Issues getting in the way:
1. Bad "follow" AI is keeping pets from being able to even keep up with their master
2. Pets seem subject to the same Hate system as wild creatures, making target switching a problem
3. If it becomes nesissary to pull your pet back, and then re-engage your target, your pet often wont close the distance to be able to hit their target. This is probably tied to the issue above in that calling your pet doesn't really clear their target.
2. Pets seem subject to the same Hate system as wild creatures, making target switching a problem
3. If it becomes nesissary to pull your pet back, and then re-engage your target, your pet often wont close the distance to be able to hit their target. This is probably tied to the issue above in that calling your pet doesn't really clear their target.
Chessack
Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:32 am
#2
"CH will NEVER be restored to the tanking power house status they once had."
This is actually a fundamental design flaw that is going to doom the devs for all eternity, and here's why, in a nutshell: Their AI sucks. It has sucked since launch. It still sucks. It's incredibly, extremely simplistic, and for all that simplicity it is bugged to hell and back. Mobs are stupid as all getout, and this translates directly to pets being just as dumb.
Now what does stupid AI have to do with whether pets should be tanks or not? Well, if you think about it, the simplest, role to code for, really, is tanking. As a tank, all the pet has to do is stand there and take damage. It doesn't have to do anything but take damage, and hold some aggro -- that's it. Any other role you can imagine for a pet is going to take a much more sophisticated set of AI algorithms, and after 2 years, the devs have not yet come up with anything that works. They can't even get 'store' to work right all the time... nevermind getting the pets to be able to combine specials to do something sophisticated like true crowd control or state application.
I think the decision "pets should not be tanks" is a perfect example of how the devs shoot themselves right in the foot every time they make a design decision. They're doomed to months, probably years, of pet bugs and CHs complaining about pet bugs, because the one role pet AI was up to the task of doing -- tanking -- has been taken away from them. We know they were up to it, because they did it before. They've NEVER been up to anything more sophisticated.
This is a place where the game design needs to be made subservient to what they know they can realistically program. Instead, they have given themselves the task of creating a system that not only doesn't exist, but there is no indication ever CAN exist. Of course, it's a great excuse... they can just keep saying "changes are coming" and never *really* fix anything. But it's exactly why almost every system in the game is busted to hell.... they design something they can't code, and then they spend months and months trying to make workarounds so it will be semi-usable, until they realize "we never had the ability to code that in the first place and still don't," and they re-design it from scratch (CU anyone? Or any of the other various revamps they have had, all of which have introduced their own massive bugs/problems?).
And instead of learning from this mistake, like some mental deficient with a severe learning disorder, they keep making it over, and over, and over again. And frankly this is why I quit CH -- because I saw that they were just going to keep making the same mistake over again, and because pets, which rely on their buggy/never-working-right AI, are always going to have the worst of it.
C
This is actually a fundamental design flaw that is going to doom the devs for all eternity, and here's why, in a nutshell: Their AI sucks. It has sucked since launch. It still sucks. It's incredibly, extremely simplistic, and for all that simplicity it is bugged to hell and back. Mobs are stupid as all getout, and this translates directly to pets being just as dumb.
Now what does stupid AI have to do with whether pets should be tanks or not? Well, if you think about it, the simplest, role to code for, really, is tanking. As a tank, all the pet has to do is stand there and take damage. It doesn't have to do anything but take damage, and hold some aggro -- that's it. Any other role you can imagine for a pet is going to take a much more sophisticated set of AI algorithms, and after 2 years, the devs have not yet come up with anything that works. They can't even get 'store' to work right all the time... nevermind getting the pets to be able to combine specials to do something sophisticated like true crowd control or state application.
I think the decision "pets should not be tanks" is a perfect example of how the devs shoot themselves right in the foot every time they make a design decision. They're doomed to months, probably years, of pet bugs and CHs complaining about pet bugs, because the one role pet AI was up to the task of doing -- tanking -- has been taken away from them. We know they were up to it, because they did it before. They've NEVER been up to anything more sophisticated.
This is a place where the game design needs to be made subservient to what they know they can realistically program. Instead, they have given themselves the task of creating a system that not only doesn't exist, but there is no indication ever CAN exist. Of course, it's a great excuse... they can just keep saying "changes are coming" and never *really* fix anything. But it's exactly why almost every system in the game is busted to hell.... they design something they can't code, and then they spend months and months trying to make workarounds so it will be semi-usable, until they realize "we never had the ability to code that in the first place and still don't," and they re-design it from scratch (CU anyone? Or any of the other various revamps they have had, all of which have introduced their own massive bugs/problems?).
And instead of learning from this mistake, like some mental deficient with a severe learning disorder, they keep making it over, and over, and over again. And frankly this is why I quit CH -- because I saw that they were just going to keep making the same mistake over again, and because pets, which rely on their buggy/never-working-right AI, are always going to have the worst of it.
C
woody4077
Wed Jul 06, 2005 2:50 am
#3
the a.i. is just one in A long long long list of problems
with the creature handler profession
to be honest i started playing WOW a week ago
and after spending a week as a night elf
hunter(read creature handler) i can offically say that my patience with SOE and there excuses is GONE if a company like blizzard which never did an mmo before this can make one with such style and simplicity that EVERY profession and class has its role and thatrole GOES with the game world and everything in it
after that i have little sympathy for SOE and there constant
"we look at the problem andcreate a solution"
truthfully i'm leaving ch once i get my master box
Dagrin
Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:39 pm
#4
I don't disagree. The AI is just plain pathertic. It's not just the pets, it's all creatures. This is why taking on a group of creatures is just a numbers crunch involving no real strategy. That said, it can't be allowed to continue and bandaid the CH class by makingpet only as tanks again.
Does EverCrack have any decent AI code? If so, they should steal that like everything else that's been borrowed. And no, I don't really want to make this game just like EQ, I'm just saying anything has to be better than this.
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