About the pets

[+Nyx]

Well, and one should not underestimate the sheer magnitude of griping and entitlement that players project toward the staff anytime anything changes. We all recently saw a player have a very public meltdown over the vendor changes, which aren't even set in absolute stone yet. Providing "don't hate us" compensation gifts upon a major change is, in general, a very bad idea. Many players would then feel entitled to such for every little thing that changes or happens to them. We get enough of that as it is.

Changing the imps in a way that does not negate the usefulness of having them fully ointed would mean that those who have spent those millions to do so aren't suddenly holding a bunch of very expensive useless items, thus there wouldn't need to be any sort of compensation. Besides the fact that finding out who did what with oints to each imp on the entire shard would be a massive undertaking involving probably a hundred hours of coli's time, it's just not really feasible. I could see us doing something fun to lessen the irrational aggro we'd get for changing imps at all, but I don't foresee us ever giving out a chunk of ED to essentially apologize for doing something for the shard that is deemed necessary.

[+Veritas]

Yep...and it could very well play out that the investment made of putting all those ointments into the imprisoned pets is one of the things that will be different with the future ones. Maybe they will only be able to come with 700 hp? It is very possible.

+V

[Kevan]

I didn't say hand out ED, I said "ED-equivalent."

Or, to clarify further: Let's presume for a moment that the new pet system will include new pet ointments. The new ointment introduced is a relatively rare drop in Elysium, and based on its drop rate and farming likelihood, the GMs roughly hypothesize that the ointments will sell for approximately 5,000 gold on the player market.

A database search is conducted (Nyx, the players currently holding ointed imps would receive the compensation in my example, not the person who ointed it, so it wouldn't require hundreds of hours) and a sliding scale is placed based on the stats of imps within individual players' possession. If Devlin has 5 maxxed imps in his possession, maybe he's provided a special "Elysium Pet Starter Kit" which includes 50 of the new ointments per imp, an enchanted leash per imp, and a hitching post per imp. Kevan, meanwhile, has 5 imps which have roughly 400 ointments applied per pet, so his starter kit only includes 20 ointments per imp and a regular pet leash.

It's a minor amount of compensation to soften the blow of nerf, and it also encourages players towards getting a head start with their new pets.

[+Nyx]

It's not as simple as a database search, as ointing imps doesn't output that data anywhere in particular that would provide an easy search. It's similar to the leveled weapons, we can't simply provide an "undo" service, because there's nothing tracking every single weapon every step of the way. Weapons start at all sorts of different base attributes, then those same attributes can be improved or added via leveling. When an item recovery/weapon undo is requested, Coli has to dig through the saves in order to find it at its original state. It isn't easy, quick, stimulating or interesting at all. Ointed pets are the same way, he wouldn't be able to just whip that info out inside 10 minutes. Remember, this is a game that was made in 1997, and most of these functions are entirely custom to free shards or Excelsior itself. So, please don't try to instruct me regarding how long a staff-only process would take. You don't have the knowledge to do so.

In any case, it's just not going to happen that way. We aren't going to give out starter kits/money in the wake of a change. As I mentioned previously, we already deal with far too much entitlement and that would just feed the problem and set a standard that isn't appropriate to set. In any game there will be drastic changes, and usually one can expect some sort of fun/silly trinket to commemorate and amuse. In WoW, when they made some major changes several years ago, players affected by it received a sort of collector's edition pet that did no damage but had a special graphic and provided a mild buff for the owner when used. Something along those lines would be possible, even likely, for any changes to the imps. But again - money/kits aren't the right thing to do given the nature, economy, and population of our shard. They also aren't a particularly reasonable option since chances are we aren't going to implement anything that negates the usefulness of applying ointments to one's imps. Any money one has spent on them would still be money well spent after the changes.

[Kevan]

So, please don't try to instruct me regarding how long a staff-only process would take. You don't have the knowledge to do so.

You're telling me the current hp/sta/AR etc of every imprisoned pet on the server aren't currently stored in a SQL or Access database? Or even a text file? (I'm not familiar with what type of database you're using for the server). I'm not talking about how they were applied.

Do you have a problem with constructive conversation? I don't understand why you always want to take things to such a hostile level.

[+Nyx]

I'm not being hostile, I'm requesting that you not make statements based on assumptions that you do not have any knowledge or information to back up. Seems a perfectly reasonable request, do you have some problem with reasonable requests?

[Kevan]

I've dealt in database management off and on for the greater part of 10 years so you're incorrectly assuming I have no knowledge. If you want to tell me that the current values of every imprisoned pet's stats are not stored then say that.

[+Nyx]

You have no knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes for this shard, what is logged or how or even in how much detail, which is what I said. Having knowledge of databases doesn't mean you know anything about what would take Colibri a long time to do for Excelsior.

[Cornbread]

Saying you want compensation for a nerf to imps is insane. I have imps that at the time cost 15-20 mil per to max. I've seen them sell for half that in the last 6 months. Do I deserve compensation? I don't think so. They have worked quite well for what my investment was/is. No need to get your money back or screw the economy anymore.

I've also been here long enough to see that pets are great for mid range players. I use pets for all of 4 mobs in the game. Bio for Kronus and imps for Paroxy, White Wyrm and sometimes Ruby dragon. Anything and everything else I can kill without them as easily if not easier. What would be great to see is a need or a reason to actually use pets. If you make a dragon have flamebreath that actually hurts that would be awesome, but probably overpowered. From what I've seen, Devlin is going in the right direction with his original post where he tries to break everything down.

I'd like to see bios move faster, if they did I'd probably actually use mine just to speed up killing. If you could shrink them would be nice to. Imps should have a cooldown timer of maybe 1 minute. They die you have to wait 60 secs before unshrinking again. They could have a skill loss, we have nothing invested in that and as long as the powerscrolls we've used on them are still a reality who really cares if they lose a little, they gain very fast. The other pets, tbh, I don't care anything about. I think you make them all one slot and maybe give a small bump to certain things, like higher HP, more dmg or special abilities.

Feels like people just want to start a big crying party or get something for nothing out of this. The GMs are actually trying to improve play experience by giving us more options instead of "try to be like Cornbread when you grow up". If they modded the few bosses I named earlier we could just have +Colibri delete all pets from the game as far as I'm concerned and things would be good. I wouldn't even cry about the 100mil or 2k ED I have invested in my imps. They made me far more than that over their 3 year or so life span.

[Devlin]

One has to remember that this game is as old as dirt, and the mechanics are limited. What has been done and the plans for new stuff are the equivalent of creating a masterpiece out of pasta and glue.

This is an MMO, despite being a free-to-play custom shard. MMO's need to be changing and evolving constantly or they face players losing interest/becoming bored or having it too easy in the game. The current system of how players hunt absolutely needs a revamp. (Just don't touch 220 Dex. The sun may implode.) For petes sake, theres a Godmode Formula on how to play this game on easy mode (who put that there?!) A couple skills and some pets basically lets people coast through what should be difficult, enjoyable tasks.

[+Nyx]

One has to remember that this game is as old as dirt, and the mechanics are limited. What has been done and the plans for new stuff are the equivalent of creating a masterpiece out of pasta and glue.

Seriously, I love you a little bit right now. Very few people seem to recognize the miracles we're managing to work, with as you put it, pasta and glue.

Edit: I also think that a lot of folks could do with a bit of perspective. When WoW makes a change or nerfs something huge, there isn't a discussion. It's implemented, and that's that. One wouldn't even be able to complain to the regular game masters, let alone the owner if they wanted to. This shard is, obviously, much smaller and thus our players have a lot more access to us. But that doesn't mean that players should expect us to only enact changes that everybody wants. Sometimes doing the right thing for the shard as a whole means a lot of folks will be pissed off until they get used to the idea. It's just the nature of having a smaller setting with more ways to "reach" the people in charge.

[+Veritas]

Also...she said you have no knowledge of our database. She didn't say you have no knowledge of databases. I will say, however, that you have zero knowledge of how to not tick off the staff.

+V

[fingers]

Funny this was brought up, because +Nyx and I were just recently discussing the need to make some modifications to the current pet system. Imprisoned pets have pretty much killed that market, and before that it was noble steeds. The way I see it, there needs to be some drastic changes if we are going to see diversity in pet usage again. I miss the days of actually seeing people use frenzied ostards.

My thoughts:

-Make every single loss incurred by stat loss recoverable by either adding more ointment types to cover all losses, or removing the current losses that are not covered by stat loss.....OR......making the amount of stat lost at 2%, or in 2 random areas instead of across the board.

-Base pets with 1000 hit points should be 1 control slot (No way nightmares in their current state should be 2 slots)
-Fire-breathing pets with 1000 hp should be 2 control slots, or 3 control slot pets with fire-breathing should have 1500-2000 hits
-Beast bio-pets should either be reduced to 2 control slots, or hits increased to 4 or 5k, or some other feature that makes them appealing to use (able to shrink?)

...and time for the gut punch. Imprisoned pets need to have a drawback...even if it is just one. I say this knowing I will get a good deal of flak, but that is okay. Lets be honest with ourselves though, imprisoned pets dominate the pet world. New players only use non-imprisoned pets as a substitute for when they get imprisoned pets, and then that is what they stick with. It is hard to compete against a 200% damage pack instinct pet that receives no stat loss on death, takes 1 control slot, and can be shrunk. Plus (Nyx's opinion) in a magical world of dragons, orcs, ogres, hydras, and an assortment of other scary beasts...squirrels are at the top of the food chain?

Also, some transparency and consistency on the success rates of breeding at generation levels would probably be welcomed with open arms.

Thought's?

+V

Great post and great ideas. I agree with all of the above. I have only red the OP so I am going to read all the other posts now as it seems to bring pretty heated disscussion.

A few thoughts though: Imp pets being by far the optimal solution for thoses hunting with pets, I have, myself, not only got rid of the two maxed bio pets I had (and for really cheap ), but also invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours farming the oinments for my imps. I can see why OP's proposition to nerf them would meet resistance.

Also, if I remember well, bio pets took a few hits some time ago (10 powder of translocation to move them around instead of 1; also, when forgot somewhere, they poof forever instead of going to a bio pet cimetary where they used to be recoverable, etc.). I used to love to play with my two muses (I had female human bios, looked great with their SOT and their red boots, lol) and if they are brought back at par, it feels like I am going to get two other ones... So yah, I can understand that players in my case feel like yoyos (going up and down) which can become somewhat frustrating.

But overall, OP's proposed changes sound motivated by adequate observations regarding the shards balance and the proposed solution are creative and sound like very fun add-ons.

Alright, time to go read the whole thread now that I have given my opinion without being influenced by other opinions (avoiding to jump on the bandwagon, heh!)

[Yoda]

I think whats important is nothing has been done yet

and the fact that the staff is having a discussion at all indicates they are open to at least hearing suggestions, concerns, etc

I have a set of 6 imps that are all rather ointed (since like corn I use them 4 places) I haven't gotten around to finishing them.. now if some change happened that diminished these imps would I expect items and compensation no..

its about the big picture.. the front page of the site lists custom tameables as a thing.. which is great but.. due to how the imps are structured and a general lack of reason to use said custom tameables..

well.. they sit.. when was the last time you saw someone use an aqua stang? or a wyrmy wyrm, or a jugguarnaut bear etc etc etc.. if the change to my imps brought about use of those animal types and many others..

and breeding said special pets I used to have pet lines for all sorts of things, that eventually I turfed because there was no point to it.. if there was a point Id be all over it again and it would give me more things to do besides run the usual spots for gold etc.

haven't I already in effect been compensated?? opening up a world of possibilities is compensation in itself.

so calm down have some nice warm milk

[dillingham]

I still miss my Nightmare from when I played on OSI well I did tell some reds got him..... jerks