Imp Suggestion

User avatar
Agony
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2010 1:10 am

Imp Suggestion

Post by Agony »

I know that this may have come up before, but I'm thinking about stats and value of pets, bio's etc. Pets are worth maybe 200k max if a pet breeder works for a month doing it exactly by the book. Bio's are worthless. Who needs a 3k hp bio when you can have 5 or more 1100 hp imps that can repeatedly die with no penalty?
My thought about this - Do away with imps. I know this is somewhat extreme but think about it. Imps are the reason that bio's are worthless. They are also the reason that all maxed pets are second rate and dirt cheap. If you do away with imps, we would then need something with high hp that can afford to die without losing stats (bios), and also pets would skyrocket in demand because of how convenient they are to carry and disperse. Think about how this could improve the economy and game quality here in Excelsior.
This would cause a bit of friction with players who have imps, but I think that many players who have the capability of seeing the big picture here wouldn't put up much of a fuss.

*edit*
Many will say that it is the cost and time of maxing imps with the expensive oints etc that make it challenging to have them. If you are here for over 2 years, you will find that this isn't the case. I've maxed imps and given them away. There is just nothing challenging about them.
...Dimiir Borgu
Alex
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 791
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2012 11:31 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Alex »

I have no opinion on this just asking some questions:

- How will you kill the ice wyrm and paroxy with no imps? Your bio will get butchered several times, losing stats every time (same goes for all other pets).

- To make Bios properly you need 7200 luck which means it will make a select few uber rich and newer players will have no chance at making gold by selling their imps
User avatar
Agony
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2010 1:10 am

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Agony »

Before imps, I killed the ice wyrm and parox many, many times with pets. It will just make the game a bit challenging and maybe make GoC's a bit more valuable.

*edit*
Doing away with imps will change many things in the game. One thing it will do away with for sure though is excess boredom due to the inability to just run around and release imps on everything with no consequence.

Maybe a tweak can be made to bio's to make it a bit fair to people who cannot pay to play as well...

*edit*
Also, if imps are discontinued and the value of pets skyrockets, it will be worth using the oints in the breeding process. The demand and value of ointments would most likely go up.
...Dimiir Borgu
Alex
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 791
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2012 11:31 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Alex »

worth thinking about, I just dont see getting rid of imps a possibility for the reasons you mention.

I know Yoda and Devlin have made some attempts breeding and selling different types of maxxed pets.
User avatar
Melkor
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 997
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 1:30 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Melkor »

I doubt they would upset all the players who love their imps. To me, it seems the new lands will be the answer. I don't see imps helping you too much there.
Image
TDC Guild
User avatar
Agony
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2010 1:10 am

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Agony »

Yeah.. The fear of upsetting players keeps many things from changing here.
The new lands, I doubt any pets will make a difference. I'm speaking about just making taming worth while. Not just getting it to 110 or 120 to be able to use stuff. There is so much neglected potential with this skill. The only thing that I see beating it down is the fact that you can have 0 taming and own the shard with the most powerful pets available in the game.
...Dimiir Borgu
User avatar
Yoda
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 813
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:38 am
Location: Canada

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Yoda »

the imp situation is very very difficult.. there is no solution that doesn't annoy someone at some level.

if they were to destroy all imps as you suggest, what does that cause for people who have a fully maxxed out pack, are they reimbursed in some way for the costs associated with maxing out the imps? very tough to do because some hunted the oints others purchased the oints. and over time the value of them has changed drastically.

I agree that they do destructive things to the system of taming, and bios. but as it was pointed out to you bio creation is a very rich player's arena, due to the luck gear requirements. and removing imps altogether has the impact of taking another revenue source away from less well to do players.

Balance here is going to be rather difficult to achieve. I am of the mindset that they need a resurrection delay, or some other means to make keeping them alive more of a priority. making them statloss like the other pets causes another potential bout of negativity.

Its one of the situations where its impossible to make a choice that doesn't cause a wave of negativity from somewhere.

If we were to take a step back and find a compromise there is one way that springs to my mind.

1. Imps suffer a temporary statloss on death, as opposed to no chance at all. perhaps a 1-3 day period of time where they temporarily lose stats. They can't have a permanent statloss due to the legacy imps in the world that have millions invested in them.
2. Resurrection delay the ability to revive an imp immediately is problematic and gives them a sever advantage.

now before anyone says "but how to we kill icy wyrm solo now"

let me ask you this question.. were you ever supposed to be able to solo him in the first place?

the other petal to balancing this issue out is dealing with the breedables in their own right.

2 and 3 slot pets should be better than their 1 slot counterparts. again really balancing them would involve throttling nobles and mules, and people would whine in spite of it being the correct course of action. So the solution/compromise is to do a more positive change to 2 and 3 slot pets, improving them to make them viable in spite of the 1 slot pwnage of those 2 species.
In other words give something like nightmares an advantage over mules to make their 2 slots meaningful. Give dragons something even greater to make their 3 slots make sense.

the honest truth is all 1 slot pets when maxxed out can do interesting things. species like hellhounds and ice hounds being canine pack instinct make them a neat accessory to imprisoned pets.. ad a special like fire breath or stun into the mix. thats just one example.

its a generally complex area of the shard that needs to be adressed fully, and with a great deal of deep thought every step of the way. I have confidence we have the staff that can accomplish this

What needs to happen is these various specials need to have more impact, so that there is incentive to deviate from the conformity of imps, nobles, mules
Guildmaster: JDI - Est 2011
User avatar
Melkor
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 997
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 1:30 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Melkor »

I have a ridable spider I like to ride around for RP factor. I found a really high level one, maxed it out and put all the 130 pet ps into it. Its barely worth my time to jump off it to let it fight. And its 3 slots.
Image
TDC Guild
Aryck
Grandmaster Scribe
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Nov 29, 2013 12:39 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Aryck »

If we do away with X because it makes Y worth less I think there are a lot of better places to start than imps.

Lets do away with ALL the Mistvale dex gear and weapons, it makes Bat Wings, Pug Gloves, Jackals, looted weapons, blaze of deaths all pretty much worth less.

Lets get rid of Deceit in Fel, or take it back to how it was, since it has lowered the value of leveled weapons, ointments, essences.

Lets do away with using pets at champs (maybe except for Kronus) since that brings the values of Powerscrolls down since anyone with 100k worth of pets can do them.

Same with gauntlet, no pets makes the value go up on the artis.

Etc.
aaron
Grandmaster Scribe
Posts: 79
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:28 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by aaron »

Aryck wrote:If we do away with X because it makes Y worth less I think there are a lot of better places to start than imps.

Lets do away with ALL the Mistvale dex gear and weapons, it makes Bat Wings, Pug Gloves, Jackals, looted weapons, blaze of deaths all pretty much worth less.

Lets get rid of Deceit in Fel, or take it back to how it was, since it has lowered the value of leveled weapons, ointments, essences.

Lets do away with using pets at champs (maybe except for Kronus) since that brings the values of Powerscrolls down since anyone with 100k worth of pets can do them.

Same with gauntlet, no pets makes the value go up on the artis.

Etc.
When I played OSI, people used pets of all varieties. Start with a drake, use it with a nightmare. Eventually move on to dragons or WW's. Unfortunately no one on this server uses these. The very select pets that everyone uses (imps, nobles, mules) are so much more powerful and unbalanced that the classic tamed pets are not even close. Although I agree that it's a difficult situation to "fix", imps are up there at the heart of the problem alongside relayers. You can basically replace every item you mentioned with imps. I can take on most mobs in the game with little to moderate difficulty as long as I have 5 imps. I can probably do it with minimal gear on and without having to use any powerscrolls as well.

I don't think it was intended in the beginning, but the shard's main draw is now the ability to become godlike and solo anything. Unfortunately the shard's been running too long to turn back so it seems the GM's have to build around it.
Dementika
Journeyman Scribe
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 4:06 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Dementika »

The complete removal of IMPs would show a lack of knowledge to work around an issue. To me, the whole relayer system is MUCH worst for excelsior than IMPs will ever be. Everyone is running around with way too many str/hits, reflect, luck and pretty much access to any stats in game. There is absolutely no variety between veteran A and veteran B, everyone either use an ornate axe or a yumi, end of the story. Most veteran don't even use IMPs because their own dps and survivability are better anyway.

As a new player, and taming lover, there will always be a drawback to using pets instead weapons to do your hunting. The main one is their speed, a player with a yumi on a mount will outrun a pack of IMP by a good 3 times. The second one is the lack of control over their type of damage, a player can use consecrate weapon to always hit for maximum damage, where as any pet will have locked damage type, so if you run into something that has high resistance to that type it will take a long time (even if imp hit in 2 area). Of course, there is advantage, usually on any server, tamable will deal more damage and have more hit points (even if they don't usually tank as good due to the lack of life leech). This is no different on excelsior.

IF devs think that IMP are so much more damaging than the relayer system (who knows, i don't), they could simply either remove their pack instinct, or lower their damage type from 2x 100% to 1x, which in both case would massively bring down their damage while not completely removing the option of being a pure tamer/mage instead of following the mold of the yumi/ornate 220 dex godbuild.

Another idea would simply be to add new tamables (2-3-4-5+ slot control) that are in line with IMPs in term of power, with new abilities, to create some diversity. Those pet would need to be equally powerful, yet not More powerful, but offer a wider range of gameplay to players, then perhaps you would see players running 2x draketypemob instead of 5 imps, or 1x hugewyrm, if they offered a different benefit to players that some would prefer.

As for players who believe that any content added cannot be balanced due to IMPS damage and hit points, you obviously never scripted if you think so, there is so many mechanic that exist in the game that can make certain monsters or boss so much more powerful against pet without affecting the player itself (not one hitting players). For some example, you can add :

1. some monster deal 50-100-200-500%-etc more damage to tamable
2. some monster impossible to be attacked by pets
3. some monster reduce the stamina when attacked (pets don't regen stamina like players, once they hit 0 it take a full minute to be back to decent swing speed)
4. some monster take reduced damage from tamable (again percentwise)
5. add more area effect spell that become more powerful the more target are in X radius
6. make pet refuse to attack some monster 95-90-80% of the time

Those are only a few example of easily scriptable things devs can do to work around IMPs without simply creating 1 hitting monsters to player. Its not like its even hard to script. The idea of something being challenging to me is not something that hit for 500 damage, its something that require players to be creative (area effect, weapon effect (stun, double attacks, whirlwind), chance to spawn monsters when hit, chance to teleport players, reflect damage/spell, drain stats) . Hopefully we see some of those in the future instead of simply monsters with way too much health that deal way too much damage.
User avatar
Ishamael
Elder Scribe
Posts: 170
Joined: Sun May 09, 2010 4:45 am

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Ishamael »

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. There are mechanics in the game that can be utilized to make using imps a bad idea, Netopir for example. I can go in with a pack of 5 imps ,and get my butt handed to me, because netopir drains life from the imps to heal itself. I tried, Literally ran out of piety trying to keep em alive and I did net even manage to get Net down below 80%. Leave the Imps alone. I am not a rich player walking around in all relayered gear, I have my imps and a few GoC pieces, yet I still die often enough. There is nothing wrong with the imps. I can see tweaking the pets that take multiple slots, to make them more balanced with the price of taking 3 pet slots, but there is nothing wrong with imps.
EndeR
Master Scribe
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Dec 15, 2013 2:31 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by EndeR »

I do like some of the ideas dementika brings up regarding monsters and the way they attack. I especially like the one about having mobs that ignore pets and go straight for the player.

I think the problem with imps has nothing to do with imps. It is all other pets. Maybe make other pets faster or require less pet slots to make them more useable. I would like to see bio pets faster. Make it so when u mount a bio it can move as fast as a player running.

I do think the gms have said they r going to eventually make some changes to pets and perhaps ask for player is input when the time comes.
heyyo
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 210
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:11 pm

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by heyyo »

I kill paroxy and the ice wyrm all the time with 3 former maxed mules (they've probably died 500 times each, they have like 30-40 resists). They're just 1k hp meat shields, and although it takes a few pit-stops to rez my pets and heal them, it goes pretty smoothly overall.
User avatar
Wil
Legendary Scribe
Posts: 1128
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:19 pm
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
Contact:

Re: Imp Suggestion

Post by Wil »

Ishamael wrote:Netopir for example. I can go in with a pack of 5 imps ,and get my butt handed to me, because netopir drains life from the imps to heal itself.
I could see a 3-slot or 4-slot breedable pet with an immunity to life leach where immunity = pet takes damage but the damage doesn't heal the leacher. Nudge things from the imp/mule/noble/relayers dynamic without having to nerf anything players have worked for.
Locked