Pet Classes /Personalization/?

[Shougun]

I wanted to know what everyone was thinking for summoner and beastmaster, or any other possible pet class. Edit: Cant believe I forgot puppetmaster (which we know there are auto's in game, a very very likely class) Thanks Kaiser!

From FFXI the beastmaster really had no connection to its pets (summon from a jar was the closest thing to being connected lol), I was hoping to see a much tighter experience between pet and master for 2.0, am I alone?

The thought was largely sparked by Duelle's post reminding me of Interceptor, Shadow's trusty dog.

If you want to go down that route, it'd be nice to have combat companions to choose from:

1) Chocobo
2) Moogle
3) Path Companion
4) one of your retainers
5) A suspiciously familiar doberman

If no why? Do you see any pet class that has a deeper personal experience with its combatant and friend?

Or do you think the chocobo is everyone's pet and that's enough (which we can personalize)?

If yes what kind of personlization are you looking forward to, pet tree, pet armor, loyalty amount, any self reliance (like the summoner will be able to cast spells to help fight) or total reliance on the pet?

I personally would like to see a beastmaster class with some closer relation to its pet - but I am curious how the chocobo and personal pet dynamic would work (double options lol), and if you can also use a path companion at the same time you've got a full party.. (or at least 4 is pretty solid).

What about being able to raise combatable pets (its assumed we can use the tame spell on wild animals, like some other games (WoW, FFXI and probably a lot of others :P))? Perhaps the ability to turn passive pets that everyone can use into combat pets (class/job only ability) - so babemoth the destroyer.. lol

Semi Casual thread so long as it is about pet classes go.

Damm We Are BORED!!!!!

Yes



(I realize personalization isn't an oft word, but you can understand it cant you? :P)

[KaiserDrill]

Thats why i loved pup so much in ffxi. You could customize the hell out of them. My auto was MY auto and i had a close connection to him. Cant wait to play arcanist/smn but im looking for thay same feeling and connection to my pet as with my automaton.

[Warlock]

BST Rongo-Nango style

1-5 pets following you wearing armor and not been mindless give them good AI
can go either FFXI way of dumb pets been thrown endlessly at mobs till they die which you have 0 connection with your pet.
Or have just 1-3 pets with personality that grow with you

[Shougun]

BST Rongo-Nango style

1-5 pets following you wearing armor and not been mindless give them good AI
can go either FFXI way of dumb pets been thrown endlessly at mobs till they die which you have 0 connection with your pet.
Or have just 1-3 pets with personality that grow with you

Thats an interesting concept, I was thinking how to make the difference from puppetmaster to beastmaster to summoner and keep them personal.

Because as SodRansom says, and as you say throwing a chain of pets mercilessly at the enemy with no connection - feels pretty lame.

But how would you balance a player that choose 1 versus a player that choose 3 pets? Or what would make the play style difference from puppet to beast (1 pet vs 1 auto)? Forgive me but I didn't play puppet master so that may have been a silly question. I can imagine the growth of the pet and the auto would be different, one is equipment the other is a literal growing and time (perhaps they could include some sort of nurturing events as well).

Still, I'm interested to hear :P. Like I said I've got 0 for puppet experience so perhaps the answer is obvious lol

[Warlock]

Thats an interesting concept, I was thinking how to make the difference from puppetmaster to beastmaster to summoner and keep them personal.

Because as SodRansom says, and as you say throwing a chain of pets mercilessly at the enemy with no connection - feels pretty lame.

But how would you balance a player that choose 1 versus a player that choose 3 pets? Or what would make the play style difference from puppet to beast (1 pet vs 1 auto)? Forgive me but I didn't play puppet master so that may have been a silly question. I can imagine the growth of the pet and the auto would be different, one is equipment the other is a literal growing and time (perhaps they could include some sort of nurturing events as well).

Still, I'm interested to hear :P. Like I said I've got 0 for puppet experience so perhaps the answer is obvious lol

Something like this.. as the Master i want my pet to be deadly and protected at the same time there is a bond between us



Puppets on the other hand are just tools

[Tonkra]

Puppets on the other hand are just tools

no they arent.. a puppet also felt like it had a soul. and was bond to me

i felt like being with a vivi alike thing around.


and i hate taming monsters personally.. because they are so "standard".. standard monsters which you fight in battle... and you have hundreds of hundreds tamer classes especially since hunter in WoW...
thats why i prefer puppetmaster over beastmaster. its fresh and different.

but unfortunatley i think they go with beastmaster first -_-

Thats interesting as well, the desire for the animals to actually remain in a sense wild. Never fully tamed?

its not an interesting system... it was an annoying mess in FFXI. and the reason why no one EVER invited a beastmaster into his group, when there is a huge risk to get hit by his own pet each time.

Trust me, Dark Age of Camelot had also some kind of system... in the end after 10 years now.. they ended up with permanent charm, because no one used that other charm anymore.. it was too ineffective.

you can do it like that... monster with the same level as yours -> permanent charm... level above yours -> charm which can resist from time to time.

Yeah I hear ya with the no soul or personality. And I agree with you as far as jug pets go. I guess with charmed mobs though I always felt like they did have a personality, albeit not the same kind as a puppet might. I can see how with pup it's nice because you have the same puppet that you can build up and customize, and you grow attached to as you go up in levels. But I think that the beastmaster charmed pets also had a personality, but a different kind. There's was more of a wild, untamed personality. As you start charming the same mobs over and over you start building up a connection with them, and you have memories about monsters that you killed together. For example, in the La Vaule zone of ffxi, I feel a huge affinity with those pugs down in the trenches. I killed so many of those La Vaule nms in that zone with those little dudes...and they got me killed more often than not too lol.

But that's another thing about bst that I hope they keep. That element of danger that accompanied the job. You never knew whether a charm was going to succeed or not. And while it was usually a reliable skill, the fact that it might fail made the job really exciting. True, you're going to bitch and moan when the charm fails right when you need it the most, but that danger element made the job really attractive to me. That's another reason I don't want a kind of beastmaster that just gets a pet familiar that follows him around. That seems like a cop out. There's no danger there, your pet will follow you around no matter what. There's nothing that separates a good beastmaster from a bad one really.

seperates a good between a bad beastmaster?! ah come on.. the charm system itself did not need anything like "skill"

the charm did not last longer if you were a good or a bad beastmaster.. there was a time when the charm broke for 100%.
i think that kind of charm system sucked (i knew that kind of charm system already from the minstrel in Dark Age of Camelot).

To make the beastmaster useful for a group it'd be better for them to implement a permanent charm..
to be a useful party member in an instance the beastmaster should be able to... dont know.. to have about 3-5 "save slots" to save his personal pets. and call them wherever he wants to.


thats the only way to make him an attractive job for groups and instanced raids. a charm which we know in FFXI just sucked. and that was the reason why it was a solo class.


give him about 3-5 save slots for his personal pets (like the skill slots for the blue mage in FFXI). so that he can call his pets wherever he is (in instances etc).. and make him able to exchange his existing pets against new ones.

[Shougun]

its not an interesting system... it was an annoying mess in FFXI. and the reason why no one EVER invited a beastmaster into his group, when there is a huge risk to get hit by his own pet each time.

Trust me, Dark Age of Camelot had also some kind of system... in the end after 10 years now.. they ended up with permanent charm, because no one used that other charm anymore.. it was too ineffective.

you can do it like that... monster with the same level as yours -> permanent charm... level above yours -> charm which can resist from time to time.

I think they could change it so when the pet disobeys it perhaps runs away or like pokemon says "rush evolved Charzard: F U" and does nothing. In this way they are not a threat to be invited to party. Since a beastmaster relies on their pet fully it is still quite punishing to have your damage output lock up because of poor play. Say taking in that balancing act idea in my post, instead of the monster beating you to shit he does something a little less realistic so beastmasters are not a threat to the party.

[Exn]

Stuff about BST..

You talk as if you never actually played BST in XI...

1) BST not getting invites to parties had NOTHING to do with charm; they simply had two decent party roles, Fish or DD, and they effectively were terrible at both in comparison to the other.. more party-orientated.. classes. Even still, in my 6 years on XI (pre Abyssea...) I was in quite a few parties with BST when I couldn't find anything else to fill the spot.

2) Charm could most certainly last longer if you were a better (geared) BST; Not to mention a noob BST has a much smaller chance of a successful recovery after missing a charm...

Beastmaster should DEFINETLY keep charm/tame as a staple to the class, period.

[SodRansom]

Beastmaster should DEFINETLY keep charm/tame as a staple to the class, period.

I totally love the discussion that is going on here. Shougun and Tonkra, you both have some really good ideas that frankly I need to just stop reading because I get too excited lol.

But I needed to quote this from Exn because I TOTALLY agree! Charm and Tame are imo the staple of beastmasters. They are what make that class totally unique. Without them they don't seem much different to me than a summoner, you're just summoning from a jug vs something else. The ability to interact with the mobs you find out in the wild is something I find extremely attractive, and that should NEVER go away. Otherwise you just get a canned pet that, while it is appealing to have a permanent "companion," the fact that you can't tame any other beasts you find goes totally against the lore of the job.

As far as the value a bst brings to a pt goes, it's true that this could probably be tweaked more, and ffxi's solution to this was to do away with charm and just make bst a glorified dd, only as good as his jug pet was. (lol, there went the millions of gil I spent in +chr gear). But this is where the discussion would need to take place if SE was ever going to implement bst into ffxiv. How do we let a bst interact with his environment in order to bring value to a party.

Having said that though, I was always content to play solo in ffxi. I loved being able to do things in a low man party that would take others a whole party plus some to accomplish. That brings on the question, is it ok to have a job in an MMO that is more viable for solo? Imo yes it is, because there is more interaction in an mmo than just fighting in parties, but others might disagree.

Also, to clarify what I meant by this:

seperates a good between a bad beastmaster?! ah come on.. the charm system itself did not need anything like "skill"

It IS true that charm in itself does not require any skill (unless you count what gear you have as skill, which I really don't) But what you do when charm fails, and how you react to that situation, especially when it happens in the most inconvenient moment IS what separates a good bst from a bad one. That's what I meant by this. You take that element of danger away, and it's really just hack and slash..all the time.

[Elexia]

Puppets on the other hand are just tools

Using this logic pets in most other generic MMORPGs are just tools as well because the majority were only useful for:

1. Riding
2. Auto Attacking a.k.a aiding in your DPS.

That is the definition of being a tool. Automata were much more than just "tools" but if you actually played FFXI and actually played PUP, I'm betting you were one of those PUPs who only had the basic 8 attachments and wondered why it did nothing useful.

The storyline itself should tell you they're more than just tools..and hell, the fact it (along with SMNs and their Avatars) has storylines already put it above what the majority of MMOs does with their pet systems. Not to mention, the differences in behavior with the 3 pet jobs was explained pretty well in game:

1. Avatars have a pact with you and depending on that pact affects their behavior, i.e Avatars will auto attack anything that attacks you because their pact is to protect and serve you for proving your worth against them, exception being Carbuncle who joins you of her own free will.

2. Jug Pets are mindless monsters that need guidance to do more than just what their nature intended, thus why them along with Charmed Monsters won't give a shit if your face is being ripped off. The reason enemy Beastmaster's pets attack is due to the fact they have automated mechanics from being NPCs. Something easily changed.

3. Puppetmaster's automata aren't soul less tools, they actually have a soul and they grow with you as long as you program them properly, which is why without proper programming, they won't be as efficient. Their efficiency also lays in how well you as the master know how to use and maintain maneuvers.

This is probably why they're going the cop-out route and using the "essences" system for SMN.

Btw, you're less likely to have a bond with a war lion or war elephant bred only for transport and killing because chances are they weren't bred by you than you are with programmable A.I designed and maintained to your spec, just sayin.