Easy way to add a lot of diversity and fun

30/09/2012 20:38Posted by Alyia

No it wouldn't be diverse. Everyone would pick the most OP one of them all and stick with that.

Not only that, if it was possible to choose your own pet skills as suggested by the OP, people would have less of a reason to go out to explore and search the world for different pets.

30/09/2012 20:38Posted by Alyia

The actual system is fine as it is, there just needs tuning and bug fixing.

Indeed :-)

01/10/2012 13:46Posted by Auctioneery

That doesn't follow, at all. I'm not ragging on the pet battle system, it's great. But it could be even greater. All I'm talking about is having one (1) open slot for an optional skill or item which would be gained from dungeon drops, crafting and so on. And nothing OP. Just minor things. Say, a totem that gives you 10% off shadow damage. etc.

I did not think you were ragging on the pet battle system at all, in fact we very much appreciate that you would spend this time coming up with ideas for the pet battle system :-)

01/10/2012 13:46Posted by Auctioneery

Edit: but back to the non sequitor: how would this make us less willing to collect pets?

Because having a selectable pet skill combined with two "racial" pet skills is much more likely to result in specific cookie-cutter pets, and our experience tells us that as soon as something is cookie-cutter, the majority of players will go for that without question and ignore the rest.

Cookie-cutter pets would mean less flavour simply because the majority of players would go for the same handful of pets, and the rest would simply be disregarded and ignored. People are prone to select the things that are considered best, and in this case it would be a specific handful of pets because their "racial" skills combined with a specific selectable skill would make them superior and therefore the obvious choice... people would simply be inclined to just go get those three pets in the game that are considered best and then stick with those.

I'm not a game developer beyond PHP/Ajax stuff on a hobby basis, but I have a hard time understanding how this can be a problem outweighing the benefits unless it's been implemented with little thought. Of course some combinations are going to be very good but so are a myriad of others.

If what you are really saying is that the excel nerds will completely demolish the people with random cute pets, a little more than now, then I can sort of see that.

I'm not saying an idea like what you suggest couldn't be done and wouldn't be fun, but I am saying that it would most likely result in something that is not intended with the pet battle system. One of the goals with the pet battle system is exploration, to go out into the world to find and gather pets, and to experiment with the different synergies between different pets and pet families... The pet battle system is not meant for the min-maxing crowd, it is meant to be a rather casual yet fun thing you can do in-game whenever you have a little spare time available.

How about adding passives to (some) pets beyond the pet families? Maybe steal some spells off the players? I've collected a decent bunch of pets by now and there's not much variety. That's where I'm coming from.

Edit: I also want to re-emphasize that I'm not whining about the pet battle system, I'm having great fun with it. Spent the last few days going through zones and collecting rare pets and achievements. But I'm seeing maybe 3-4 amazing team combinations; there could be more if pets weren't so strictly formulaized with the same skills across hundreds of pets. Or, having a free slot as suggested in OP. Or, a small chance of one of the skills on a collected pet being drawn from a random pool.

I get where you are coming from, and calling for more variety is never a bad thing. It will just have to be done in a way that will not render a huge portion of pets irrelevant as a result of customisation making a handful of pets the obvious(and therefore the only) choice. :-)

How about a minor glyph type system instead? a vanity thing.

Something like mini pet gear that has no stats but looks funny, imagine a cockroach with a viking helmet or a squirrel with a superhero cape.

And maybe a really rare vanity item that could change the pets size for as long as they have it equipped.

Ofc all items would be equippable by all pets so you won't pick any specific pet because of what it can wear.

I'd go nuts for stuff like that.

LOL. That would certainly bring more variety to pets ;-)