Creature Handler Archive

The changes are good. I personally agree. The downside is these noob CH's are going to realize just how borked their pets are, even with the new specials, and become just as frustrated and jaundiced as the old time vets.

I don't care how many special abilities your animals have. If your animals fail to follow even the simplest commands, they are not worth using. If your animals can't even keep up with a person running on foot, they are not worth using. Those things needed to be addressed way before a completely new specials system was implemented.

I used my pets today... they seemed to be responding well. Maybe it is a fluke... dunno... I am hoping things are good.

A little more info. By reacting well, I used a Lvl 11 Swamp Gurrcat (old), Lvl 50 Gurreck (old and new), a Lvl 23 Razor Cat (old) and a Lvl 32 Cowardly Gurreck (new).

All of them were able to do the following:

Sent to attack a lair. Mobs spawned, used follow me command to bring pet towards me, then issue an attack command against a mob. Pet went after the new target and attacked. After mob was killed, pet started after lair again, was able to recall with the follow me then stay command. Pet was then ordered to attack another mob from lair (lair was still up). Pet attacked new mob, after mob was killed, pet returned to me.

I was shocked the first time this happened. I had the pet attacking the lair, and not thinking sent it after a mob that spawned. In the past this would have likely caused a fatal error in the pet AI (especially with the cats and their aggression). But pet followed commands.

At that point I pulled out others to check to see how they would do, all of the above ones followed commands properly and never entered into the "crouching mad at the world but doing nothing about it" stance LOL.

I will continue to test this, but initial results look good.

Dotck
MCH/MBH

The above post answered the questions I had

I hope this fix continues and isn't just a fluke. Congrats. It may actually be a good solid patch after all.

Message Edited by Spazzers on 08-05-2005 01:40 PM

I don't normally use pets on a lair, but yesterday I did to see how this was working. Mine continued to focus on it no matter what I tried. I could call them back and break combat though, so that is better.

Pets do seem better behaved than pre-Publish 20, but they still do not listen as well as they did long, long ago. If it keeps improving I will be happy.

I noticed that based on the natural aggression of the pet, they will stay focused on the layer, but will return to you. Use a stay command and let them cool off about 20 seconds, and send after a mob. As soon as mob is killed, recall pet and use stay command. I found after doing this a couple of times, the pet would "forget" about the lair.

I used this on the pets I listed above, none were "hyper" aggessive like a GPS, or Plains Hunter, Swamp Stalker, or Forrest Gurreck.

These may need alittle more monitoring. But the wild Gurrecks I used do have above average aggression, so it they are a good example that the dreaded AI bug of once in combat the mob had to be killed or pet becomes usless has been fixed.

I hope so, but I want to test it out more.

Dotck
MCH/MBM

I agree thatfor the most part this is good for ch's....but as far as getting CL 10'sfor non Ch's as mounts...this is NOT good in my opion...Non ch's cant get their pet xp so now we have to do it... this is a long process...I have a CL10 Cu Pa that I have lvl'ed up 3 times and is still not nearly big enough to mount... another player has been trying this with a carrion spat and has lvl'ed them up

Yonks!

I didn't think of the mount issue. Well, that puts a crimp in the hose.

Dotck
MCH/MBH

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Spazzers wrote:

The changes are good. I personally agree. The downside is these noob CH's are going to realize just how borked their pets are, even with the new specials, and become just as frustrated and jaundiced as the old time vets.

I don't care how many special abilities your animals have. If your animals fail to follow even the simplest commands, they are not worth using. If your animals can't even keep up with a person running on foot, they are not worth using. Those things needed to be addressed way before a completely new specials system was implemented.

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The quote you've highlighted refers to the pet AI (pets getting stuck in combat or attacking the lair and nothing else, pets being slower than a player on foot, mounts slowing down for combat even though you can't enter combat while riding a mount), not the pet abilities customization. There are some encouraging findings regarding the pet AI working better than it did before patch 21. I hope these early findings are correct, otherwise the quote you've highlighted still holds true.

With the old system you had to "wait" 10 days for your animal to mature before you had a fully functional pet with two specials and a ranged attack (never took 10 days but I'll play along).In the new system you have an animal with all the stats of the adult version from the word go but you still have towin the lottery, get a pet with an ability. You then get to grind this pet in order to open one more slot, then grind it again to open another slot, lather rinse repeat. You also have to grind other pets that have different abilities so you can teach those abilities to the first pet. How long do you think that will take?

Whether you create a bond with your pets is debatable. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. You'll be churning through wild tames looking for special abilities. Something like 1-7 tames will produce an animal with an ability. If that ability is on a worrt or a spineflap you're probably not going to keep the pet. No bond will be created. It will simply be tame a bunch of worrts till you hit the lottery then grind the poor critter till you have learned the ability then cast the oversized frog aside and move on to the next critter.

Regardless of which system you prefer, the pet AI is what makes or breaks the profession.