Revamping Interactions for Your Chocobo

[SenorPatty]

I would like to see "affection" assets used in a particular mini game in shb for chocobos. Playing with it, feeding it and grooming it could raise it's affection level and grant you some perks. For example, at "level 5 affection", it will start "picking up" random items from the ground like plant materials or gems. Maybe at a higher level, it can revive you if you die on the field.

Another thing I'd like to see is bardings granting different abilities and/or stats to the chocobo, with each barding granting unique or situational abilities. For example, equipping your chocobo with a full maelstrom set nets you 10% extra wolf marks for participating pvp in a maelstrom team.

[Roda]

I would like to see "affection" assets used in a particular mini game in shb for chocobos. Playing with it, feeding it and grooming it could raise it's affection level and grant you some perks. For example, at "level 5 affection", it will start "picking up" random items from the ground like plant materials or gems. Maybe at a higher level, it can revive you if you die on the field.

Another thing I'd like to see is bardings granting different abilities and/or stats to the chocobo, with each barding granting unique or situational abilities. For example, equipping your chocobo with a full maelstrom set nets you 10% extra wolf marks for participating pvp in a maelstrom team.

This is a great idea. The chocobo stables are kinda similar, but they feel really weak compared to what it could be. (just feed every hour and "train" with a samey cutscene that you skip every time)
I'd love to be able to actively interact with the chocobo like you do with things like pokemon-amie or pokemon camp.

Giving a treat could be, instead of just getting a single plant, you could cook something up for a boost of affection

You could play with them by playing fetch (go into a little chocobo ranch solo instance that' will replace your hotbar like you're in a vehicle. You have skills like "throw ball" "point to ball" "give treat". The more you play it, the better they get at fetching, the less you have to point to the ball. As they get more skilled they'll be able to get extra drops and items from the open world.

Training could be something similar where your chocobo is training against a mammet, and you have command skills like "strike high" "strike low" "interrupt" "heal" and "give treat". The mammet will give tells and you'd have to command your chocobo the responses to said tells. This training could shorten the cooldowns to your chocobo skills the more progress you make with it.

Maybe they could even have grooming, where if you regularly clean your chocobo their experience gained by kills, affection gained by playing, and.. uh let's call it "aptitude" gained by training gets a boost.

At this point, I'd almost rather see a retainer as a companion over the Chocobo. At least you could have a glam buddy assisting you in combat.

Honestly both would be cool. Maybe give bonuses when summoned depending on what you chose?
(Choose companion slot anywhere you can currently use glamour plates)

Chocobo companion: Chocobo mounting cast time instant. Riding speed automatically max speed (3 star map) at max bond you can play chocobo hot and cold every X minutes to find items (maybe map exclusive items? Like the rare and expensive stuff should be on the loot table but super rare still)

Battle retainer: Extra drop chance from monsters without training required. Grants duty action based on the role. (Ultimatum for tanks, mana shift for magic dps, Peloton for ranged dps, Leg sweep, but aoe, for melee dps)

MIN/BOT retainer: Higher hidden node proc rate (up to 100% as your bond level increases), gathers crystals from the node you are gathering from.

Fishing retainer: Allows you to attempt to mooch with a NQ fish (lower chance to aquire mooch only fish than an HQ fish, takes longer for a fish to bite). Boosts chance to obtain mooch only fish when mooching. Lowers time it takes for a fish to bite. (all effects become more powerful as bond increases) (When retainer's effect is active, it's the retainer actually catching the fish, so animations should play on them instead)

The retainers should also have a bonus feature where they can talk to you and other npcs as you're going about your business as well as interact with the environment as you would. Nothing super fancy, just a little quip about the settlement you just entered, a greeting towards a guard, a "HAVE AT THEE" to a monster you are fighting, and if you do an emote, they too should do one especially if you're sitting. You should go through a dialogue tree to set their AI as well.

[majormischievous]

I agree, the chocobo stables feel way too passive. It's just "set and forget" and not at all how I imagine taking care of a chocobo would be. Love the idea of an affection level and the things you could do to raise it, and also being able to cook something up for the chocobo (as one way to raise it) sounds cool, even it it's just making a salad lol!!

I always wished I could use my own chocobo in the mini racing game, but that aside, having mini games for just you and your chocobo like fetch would be amazing. The instance could be started from an option in the stable menu, or maybe going to that chocobo farm in Central Shroud or somewhere in Thanalan since there's lots of open space.

[Shougun]

Would love to see just in general a revamping of the chocobos (chocobo paradise, new chocobo jobs/sub job concept, hot and cold, new looks/emotes, etc). Of course interactions in that would be awesome.

I like the passive ideas a lot, had originally just suggested something like if you dance your chocobo might dance or if you wave they might wave (if you do it to them rather that blankly/at someone else the chance would be 100%).. but it would be really something special if they whistled occasionally, investigated other chocobos, minions, came to sniff/nuzzle you, responded to weather changes, or whatever else. In terms of content I thought chocobos might occasionally wark or kweh depending on some special chocobo event (special fate like thing) or / hot and cold event happening, but that'd not be very often.

Passive actions would add a really nice amount of life to them.

I would like to see "affection" assets used in a particular mini game in shb for chocobos. Playing with it, feeding it and grooming it could raise it's affection level and grant you some perks. For example, at "level 5 affection", it will start "picking up" random items from the ground like plant materials or gems. Maybe at a higher level, it can revive you if you die on the field.

Oh that would be cool. I actually liked in WoW having to take care of my pet lol, obviously it'd be a different vibe since unlike WoW you'd probably not be able to feed them in the wild if you ran out of food (and stacking 999 greens just seems easier), but was something nice. Occasionally realizing I need to fish to feed my croc or whatever I had out.

If they did for some reason add food other than greens to zones (perhaps just using other veggies in the game), it might be cute to see them gain a bonus of some sort if you fed them food from the environment they're in, just to encourage players who want to play 'off the land' to do so. If you didn't want botanists to get too happy, sorry lol, you could always bind it into a chocobo hot and cold concept- such that you dig up greens from the mini game and can use those to keep them happy (or feed them the basic greens if you don't want to bother with higher affection gains and other buffs). Clearly we've some special foods, like the attack up food, that could be reserved for more of an aside gourmet system perhaps (no need to remove, just make sure they don't become useless if you encourage in zone living off the land concept).

What if once a chocobo is summoned they don't need food but they just get hangry?

Such that if you feed them well they'll do well, can be part of managing their affection (starving them not getting you any bonus points lol, perhaps starve them too long and they die then they just bounce xD). Going back to passive actions they can wark at you or bump into you (if you're stationary) when they're hungry lol. I only think that because if you feed them the basic summoning green at least it seems too tightly wound to just summoning them, not that it's a huge problem but I feel taking good care of them being separate from calling them would enhance the idea you're taking care of them instead. Unless you strictly meant the plants outside of greens being good (like sylkis, rather than the basic summon greens). Not needed to do that extra step, just a discussion of 'feels' lol.

Hopefully grooming isn't exclusively to having to stable a chocobo (don't want to go through all those extra menus of kicking them out of summon state so I can go through a number of menus to confirm their stable state so I can take care of them and then finally take them back out again haha), like I can do basic grooming in the wild with a grooming kit (which I do like the idea of, grooming my stinky birb), of course there could be some advanced treatments- pamper your boco to the spa .