Development Cycle Archive
Thread: “Oh my…sir, he says there are several creatures approaching�
Well I think that resolves every issue I had.
So after all this the only CH specific 'nerf' is CH will take longer to grind. That stings a bit for up and coming CH. And especially since almost anyone that isn't MCH is going to have to have to regrind at least half their boxes to get better ones under the current system. But overall better than before.
I'm actually glad the aggro is going to work the same as beinggrouped, because I usually always group with my petsanyway. And I've pretty much adapted to that already. The only hard part is sometimes it's hard to target something running at you. But if you're smart you'll just have your pets follow and run for it till you can get combat back under control.
Fan shot gets me in the most trouble though: i.e. hitting creatures AND the lair since creatures almost always aggro anything attacking the lair.
I'm also glad you mentioned medics/doctorsmight be able to call a surgical droid. The main thing I was worried about was losing the surgical droid bonus when healing pets in camp.
As for useranged being stronger than the specials. I'm not sure I can agree with that when you havespecials like poison DOT, intimidate and blind, especially those last two. Intimidate effectively cuts the mobs damage in half. and blind makes them miss quite a bit. The pets do use their specials, but it is pretty rare that they actually work.
I just got one question though will useranged force them to always use ranged until you tell them otherwise?
I'd hateto spam the range command for their every attack. And will issuing the range command again make them stop using ranged? (to keep it consistent with the group command)
Excellent changes!!! The return of extinct pets is such a relief considering i went to go tame every1 that went extinct, the day those babies were wiped from the face of the earth.
nice save on the CL 70 keep, 60 would impose many problems and mass rioting in my opinion, but kept that in mind, most CL 60+ pets are quite large (flashback to kimogilla pet days), will the same problem that the kimogillas faced of being to larged and having to be pushed out of cities by CSRs arise as a returning problem or will the new 60+ pets be small and versatile like the size of a gurreck?
With the return of the extinct pets bothers me in a certain way for a certain reason... will the stats on the returning extinct pets change at all? i.e. Arachne Webmasters change from AR2 to AR1 or lose some resistances or drop resistance rates?
Also will there be an exclusively rare pet to each planet, if there is it would make traveling to different planets much more inviting. (I myself have never visited yavin4, never heard of anything interesting to do there, and Talus just has GSPs.)
Nicechanges!!! The return of extinct pets is such a relief considering i went to go tame every1 that went extinct, the day those babies were wiped from the face of the earth.
nice save on the CL 70 keep, 60 would impose many problems and mass rioting in my opinion, but kept that in mind, most CL 60+ pets are quite large (flashback to kimogilla pet days), will the same problem that the kimogillas faced of being to larged and having to be pushed out of cities by CSRs arise as a returning problem or will the new 60+ pets be small and versatile like the size of a gurreck?
With the return of the extinct pets bothers me in a certain way for a certain reason... will the stats on the returning extinct pets change at all? i.e. Arachne Webmasters change from AR2 to AR1 or lose some resistances or drop resistance rates?
Also will there be an exclusively rare pet to each planet, if there is it would make traveling to different planets much more inviting. (I myself have never visited yavin4, never heard of anything interesting to do there, and Talus just has GSPs.)
Very nice response TH, actually gives me hope, especially the parts about certain professions being able to call out more than one droid. 
The faction rank meaning something is great too, I'll concede having a "squad" of STs untill I work up rank, thats only fair.
I'm unclear on the response about the mounts, do you mean that BE's can make some of the other mounts rideable by non-CHs beyond those Hideously Ugly Kaadus and Carrion Spats? I hope so, I wouldn't be caught dead on one of those two and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Any ETA on female human characters being able to Wear Tusken gear and when Bantha mounts will be introduced?
$.02
/agree
I love the ammement to the changes.
Also if you read test center about mount everyone will have to get new creatures.. The new command Grow to Mount is going to play a big role so it doesn't matter if you have mountable creatures that you want to use after the patch goes live.
Why do pets affected by a DoT (poison, fire, bleed - doesn't matter which) randomly attack targets (sometimes > 100m away) every time the DoT damages it? This is bad in PvE and absolutely horrific in PvP. Examples:
Last night in Imp base on Naboo (holocron spawn): My pets ran away and attacked enemies 120 m away (other side of the base!) on several occasions. When I called them back they usually warped right to me, followed shortly thereafter by 2-4 imps that had aggrod it. We almost died several times because of the unintended drawing of enemies (while recovering from a previous assault - everyone was roughed up at that point). This happened several times in the evening.
PvP example: Two graul maulers helped in defense of anchorhead. As usual with PvP they got: fire, poison, bleed and possibly disease. This means dead graulers very very fast. Of course I was dead a lot faster. Point being, I clone and try to store pets (who by now are out-of-range). I can't because they aggrod. What this lead to in the end was a: incap, wake up, aggro loop. Since I can't cure fire even as a master doctor, I had no way of stopping my pets from dying (normally you could store them). Also, as a bonus, every time the pet aggrod I got a TEF. This meant that to even get to the pets to call them back to me, I died 3-4 times. In the end the pets lost in the range of 45-50 vitality and 25-30 vitality rspectively before I finally managed to followspam them away from enemies (and keeping them near me by continued spamming) while I healed...
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it's not only annoying but greatly takes away from the joy of playing the game as a creature handler. In PvP using pets is equal to sighing up for a large drop in vitality (i.e I don't do it anymore and thus avoid PvP completely since I have no combat abilities). In PvE it's just extremely dangerous to use pets against enemies that inflict DoT (since they end up pulling pets to you). Also if you get incapped and the pets have DoT they can get into the vitality loss loop in PvE as well.
P.S. I like the new revised CH changes a lot. Enough for me to consider not following the advice of the holocron (master pistoleer). The exception is the revised XP scheme for multiple pets. If I drop CH to go master pistoleer, becomign MCH again will be an absolute nightmare.
Now I'm a lot happier with the proposed changes. Thunderheart's post (Part II) had me feeling quite ready switch to the Drak Side.
I Still like the fact that the CL control is distributed accross the board. I don't mind the change in XP granting for using 2 pets ( especially since I haven't made it that far yet.) But, it is nice that (2) active pets at Management III is back.
Too bad I have classes tonight. 
Thunderheart wrote:
So, we are going to leave this in and instead change the XP-granting function so that you don't get double the XP for having two pets active.
About that, What happens if i take an adult creature and a baby creature out. Currently the adult gives 1 xp while the baby will give me 150 or so. How will that work?
Amen I never understood why im still grinding up investagtion and see so few mbh and so many ch. I always thaught ch should have the same skill requirements as bh and im about done waiting on my fixes.
Danderson wrote:
Since Creature Wars vs Star Wars has already been discussed (and most people agree that SWG should not look like this), I will give my opinion on one of the developers' favorite subject - class balance.
I am usually one to refrain from calling on changes to a class (either buffing it or nerfing it). I am a believer in everything becoming a bit more static so that people can better plan their character. However, if there are still to be fundamental class changes, and the developers want to bring balance to the classes, here is my opinion on balance.
/put on flame resistant suit
/stand on soapbox
I will do a comparison with a Master Bounty Hunter (pure combat class) and a Master Creature Handler (not a pure combat class since they can make additional money be selling creatures to non-CH, but I'll ignore that for now)
Doing some very quick calculations, a Master CH requires 106 skill points and a Master BH requires 217. I believe that a Master BH is approximately a level 25 (correct me if I am mistaken) - i.e. a level 25 creature cons white to a MBH. Even with a level 15 pet (assuming levels are additive - a bit oversimplifying I know, but still in the ballpark) a MBH could be a level 40 (25+15). That is 5.4 skill points per level (217/40). A MCH can have 60 levels in pets, thus are 20 levels more powerful than a MBH. This is 1.8 skill points per level (106/60).
Now when you take into account that CH is not a pure combat class (i.e. they can sell pets to non-CH and they will be able to sell creature mounts soon), there is a definite balance issue here. Now there are other arguments not taken into account (e.g. creatures only do kinetic damage, creatures can have better protections than existing armors, etc.), but the comparison still holds.
Now, am I calling for CH nerfs or BH buffs? No. I'm not even convinced that classes should be balanced. However, the developers have stated class balance as one of their top priorities. If this is the case, and if people want to see fewer pets and CHs, then something needs to me done.
So, is lowering the CL of non-CH pets the answer? No. Raising droid levels? Perhaps. Even so, this does not balance the classes (unless CHs can't use droids). Possible solutions could be one or more of the following: a) do nothing, b) make pets smaller, c) nerf max pet levels, d) require more skill points, e) buff other classes, f) turn CH into a merchant class (creature mounts), g) turn CH into "Droid Handlers", h) many other things we have yet to think of.
Developers need to decide 1) how they want the game to look and 2) how much class balance they want. They need to act quickly. Few things are more frustrating than planning you character, building your character, then having your character fundamentally changed by a patch, and having to replan your character. The longer they wait, the more upset customers they will have.
/remove self from soapbox
/double check flame resistant suit
-BS
Here is my concern:
I am not a Creature Handler. With at least two of my characters, I don't intend to be. I want a brackaset as a mount. I don't want it to fight, I just want to ride it. Please, please, please tell me that non-CHs aren't going to be stuck with the really ridiculous choices of carrion spat and kaadu. (Because if they are, I'm stuck for another month until vehicles come out, as I am far too dignified to ride either an overglorified duck or vulture.) I understand that BEs will be able to lower the CLs...please tell me they'll be able to lower them enough to give me some dignity...
Say no to mountable fowl!
