I wanted to ask about:

[Lost]

I wanted to ask about pets and talk about them. I would like to pre fab summoning pets as a magic skill. I d also to see "customizable pets" as a crafting skill and control skill to handle them.

Customizable Pets

There would be a creation window like Player creation , but with 3 models for the pet, varies add on and texture skins. The pet would be broken into 3 types :

Bio-Tech : Like a cyborg , capable of learning magic skills and mounting armor plates/weapons. The weapon slots would be known as "hard points" , the magic slots "soft points" and the armor plating "armor points".

Full Tech : robotic pet , with built in immunies , armor and lighter choices of weapons.

Non Combat pets : smaller pets which give a buff when summon but drain thier energy source over time.

Pet skills would come from the player's point pool. The armor would buy able or makable.

[amz181]

Some of the forum members will know my supreme distaste of mounts and pets. They SUCK!!!!

I would go into a 2 page long speech right now but i wont waste your time :p.

Your wording of the question gave me an idea though, one that i like. Summoning.

Summoning would be much more friendly to the economy and makes alot more sense that a pet kitten nipping away at a deva's ankles. And only make it available fore special classes of a race so...

For Algar maybe a necromancer that can summon dead to fight at its side

For Deva maybe it can summon spirits that can fight at its side

And for the Humans, maybe little fighter robots, though i cant see how it can be summoned intsead of bought.

[Lost]

How can you hate pets? Didnt you have a puppy as a little orc warrior?

[wassar12]

Yea. I like pets... and i like the whole customizable pets thing thats really cool yea maybe pets wont be available to everyone... like only ppl who focus on that skill or something ^^

[Moloch]

A good question, Lost. I've checked back through my records and I can't find anything about (a) pet class(es).

Devs?

[amz181]

lol i only just realized u were a mod moloch :p

But nyways, what i want for pets, if included is as lost gave me the idea, summoning.

A seperate summoning skill which the higher it gets the better monsters you can summon, or not neccaserily a stronger monster, maybe a special type, like one that can fly, or a mount, or even a flying mount.

Each of the races have their own summon monsters, and it can be specialised for that race.

So the Algar's summoning skill could be primarily necromancy and the sort, like summoning a skeleton warrior, and the lowliest lvl 1 summoning monster being something like a zombie bird or something believable like that instead of a kitten.

Devas can summon spirits and stuff of nature

Humans have robots

Like normal summoning they can only be summoned for a certain amount of time, and to make the human one more believable it could be running out of battery. Also as i mentioned before about advancing summons not neccesarily being stronger but mountable and flying etc etc. It could also have a longer life span.

Also for the mount option it could last forever but it cannot attack until late levels, which are dual.

That way i wopuld not mind, and it wouldnt destroy the economy, it would be a useful skill which could be very lethal, say a person 15 levels below comes along, but he could summon a level 50 robot (or ent for deva or a magical dark knight for Algar - my creative juikces ran out :p -) and kik ur buttocks.

[Rauko]

LotRO's Lore-Master is like this already. You get different pets to summon at higher levels. And there are special craftable items that can change the appearance of some. Like change the hawk to an eagle, etc.

[Will]

Things are likely to change but we have one tree devoted to a pet-class style build, and pets make an appearance in another tree as well.

[Lost]

Things are likely to change but we have one tree devoted to a pet-class style build, and pets make an appearance in another tree as well.

Please keep pets , I will order the entire team 2 large speciality pizzas and bread stick (and 1 20 oz soda to share) if you keep them in. I m looking forward to seeing how this develops. (thank you for the answer)

[Nurvus]

Well, in a game where everything is meant to be meaningful, it would be a major turnoff to see "puppet pets" running behind everyone for pure visual candy...

Sure, from a starting point I can imagine a character with a Raven on her shoulder, or a Snake around her torso and neck, or a cat around her neck... perhaps a mouse in a pocket, occasionally running across her torso in a random animation...

But I'd like them to be useful for something, yet not godlike creatures.
Those pets I mentioned above might be useful for scouting, while bigger pets might be decent fighters.
But all requiring training.

I doubt a warrior that knows will be engaging warfare at any moment would carry around a helpless being unless he could protect it.

[jimmy6154]

Pets are great but the notion of them over powering a class happens. When I played EQ back in the day, I would set my specra pet loose in some dungeons and it would basically clean up the place and I would come in later and reap the rewards. Not sure what the opposite is here but there is a and definitely needs to be a balance between people who have pets and people how don't while making them both equal. Not sure what I'm getting at but from my experience when a game if first launched the first flames are to the class that is able to use pets and notable one of the first classes to get nerfed.

[Nurvus]

There are alot of ways.
This seems specially easy since this game is supposed to be class-free.
So I assume you will be customizing your character more freely.

As long as there are "finite" Training/Talent Points, the Designers may make it so you need to spend Training Points to be able to train a pet to do anything useful.

This Beast Taming talent/skill would grant you access to a new Talent Tree - Beast Mastery.
If you spend 5 Talent/Training Points in Beast Taming, you have a total of 5 points to spend in Beast Mastery.

So to make your beast more powerful, you give up more of your character, thus there is an inherent balance in this.

And please don't bring WoW's Talent trees to this... they were broken from the point where you can learn 95% of a character's skills from a Trainer, spending nothing but Gold...

Lineage 2 is not better since any "class" can learn 100% of its skills - no customizability.
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Again, the pet concept works.
The problem is the designers behind them, that in order to include a "popular feature" in a game, end up turning that feature into an unbalanced joke...

So don't judge a concept by the bad implementations.

[jimmy6154]

I like that as it would make it equal across all talents depending on what that person chooses to focus on.