Rework on the Arcanist class promoting pet management in Final Fantasy XIV

[rawker]

What are expected from pets?

• Pets fight alongside the player by dealing damage and/or protecting the player/party.
• Players should be able to control the pet's placement and default behavior and are prioritized over scripted actions.
• Players can designate the pet's target.
• Pets have abilities of their own that either the player, or themselves, can use, depending on its customizability.

How much contribution should the pets bring?
Depending on how the class will evolve, at least half of the player's personal DPS is a good baseline. The main idea is that you have to manage your pet to get the full benefits of playing the class. Noticeable variance between the damage distribution defeats the purpose, especially when the distribution heavily favors the caster more than the pet. I will dive deeper with the damage scaling below.

But my pet is not responsive and/or 'ghosting' my commands which made my experience worse that I don't want to touch the job again.
No system is perfect. In a vacuum, every system will function flawlessly. Depending on how the game interprets and processes player input, be it from our own character or its extension (pets), this will dictate player experience and job design.

In the case of pet responsiveness, any player-issued command should take precedence and the pet should drop whatever automated action it does.

If the command is related to positioning, i.e. issuing a Place command while the pet is currently in the middle of a cast animation, then the animation should end abruptly. The player is already capable of this feature when weaving oGCDs; why can't pets do the same? Furthermore, pet base movement speed should be faster than our player to compensate from the time it takes for the player to press the Place command, designating the position, and for the pet actually reaching its destination.

When commanding the pet to use an action, just like player movement, it should drop any automated action/animation currently queued and prioritize the action being commanded to do. It should also be prioritized more than player-issued movement commands.

Upon processing a player-issued action and if the pet is out of range, then that's when the AI should start to pick up and nudge the pet closer to meet the range requirement. It is frustrating to find out that the pet ignored our command just because it is out of range. Another optimization is to just allow the pet to do the action while it is moving, just like how players do when they weave oGCDs or any instant-cast GCDs on the go.

Finally, pet commands should be processed locally, rather than waiting for the server to confirm. You can test this when you have an unstable connection. You are still able to press abilities, animation still plays but no damage registers. Do that with your pets -- it does nothing. This simply means that pet commands are sent, interpreted, and after receiving the response will be the only time we see pet movement/action on our end. It is like playing on two accounts where the other account is on a remote computer. This compounds to the issue of unresponsiveness and clunkiness of pets. Failed cooldown usage from pets, in extreme situations, should also be compensated with an instant-refresh of said ability.

You mentioned that pets should be able to protect the player. Do you mean that pets will take damage once again? That sucks.
Part of playing any job in FFXIV, let alone any game in general, revolves around learning its core mechanics and how to use it to your advantage. This is the core of pet-management.

Relating to what I said earlier regarding damage distribution between the pet and the player, if the pet does significantly lower DPS than the player, pet death will be taken lightly... unless you are a hardcore min-max'er. This raises the question, so the pet dying is punishing players? Why yes, of course. It is equally terrible as missing out on your cooldowns. The only reason why it was such a drag to do so back then was that summoning a dead pet was slow and expensive, requiring Swiftcast to an extent. Pet death situations can be alleviated with the pet going to a downed state that will last for a few seconds, increasing its recovery duration with successive pet deaths to avoid neglect, rather than it leaving the battlefield completely, requiring resummoning.

On the flip side, DPS heavily skewed towards the pet, upwards of 75% of your DPS is also terrible as it will elicit laziness on the side of the player and will turn require more micro-management through mechanics that target the pets.

What about mechanics that require a lot of movement? It will be painful to manage two entities at the same time. To this, I completely agree. If pet mobility is greatly boosted, this means that the Retreat command will make sure that your pet moves with you all the time. Also reducing pet hit box size, in contrast to how boss hitboxes are nowadays will also help.

So what about SMN and SCH? How will this change affect those jobs?
As much as possible, the pet management should stay confined within the ACN class. SMN and SCH will sprinkle actions and abilities that solidify their designated roles, i.e. SCHs can go all out on their healing/shielding potential while SMNs will gain access to slow and more powerful summoning while ordering th pet around and to some extend take damage for them.

What about PvP? It's unfair that I am being sniped from afar by the pet without any form of retaliation to the caster.
I know how it feels to be nibbled by Hunter pets in WoW or Spirit Bear in Dota 2 while the Hunter and Lone Druid are behind, laughing at you. Pets in PvP should not have increasing resistance to crowd control. Furthermore, pets should also drop its target once the distance between it and its master is too far. How far is too far? That I cannot say yet as I am not that into PvP to give a more qualified opinion on this matter.


With that out of the way, let's get on with the reworked abilities/actions/traits:
Actions/Spells:
Lv 1: Ruin. Single target filler spell.
Lv 2: Sustain. Heals the pet with a fixed potency
Lv 12: Resurrection. No change.
Lv 15: Aether Pulse. Ranged filler AoE attack centered around the target's location.

Abilities:
Lv 10: Burst. Gives a sudden burst of speed to the pet that lasts for 10 seconds. Effect is removed upon doing any action. Can only be used in combat. Recast of 5 seconds.
Lv 15: Rouse. Temporarily increases pet damage and healing 10% for 25 seconds. Recast of 60 seconds.
Lv 30: Aetheric Manipulation. Switches position with your pet. Recast of 90 seconds.

Traits:
Lv 2: Pet Mastery I. This opens up the entire pet tree. Pet commands becomes available. Maximum downed state duration is 10 seconds.
Lv 15: Pet Mastery II. Increases the pet's movement speed. Also lowers the maximum downed state duration to 7.5 seconds
Lv 20: Maim and Mend I: Damage dealt by Caster and Pet is increased by 5%. Sustain restores 10% more pet HP.
Lv 30: Pet Mastery III: Increases pet's Max HP and reduces the damage it takes. Also lowers maximum downed state duration to 5 seconds
Lv 40: Maim and Mend II: Damage dealt by Caster and Pet is increased by 10%. Sustain restores an additional 10% more pet HP.
Lv 50: Rouse Mastery. Upgrades Rouse into Spur increasing the damage dealt and healing to 20%.
Lv 60: Sustain Mastery: Sustain now applies a Regen effect to the pet that lasts for 15 seconds.
Lv 70: Pet Mastery III: Permanently Increases pet's movement speed and Max HP.
Lv 80: Aetheric Manipulation Mastery: Enables Aetheric Manipulation to hold charges. Max charges: 2.
Lv 90: Pet Mastery IV: Lowers recast timer for Pet abilities by 0.5 seconds.

Pet:
Lv 2: Stay. Orders the pet to hold its current position.
Lv 2: Place. Orders the pet to move to a designated position.

Lv 2: Sic. Changes the behavior of the pet to be aggressive. It will attack a designated target or find the nearest target to attack. Stay will be canceled upon issuing this command.
Lv 2: Guard. Changes the behavior of the pet to be reactive. It will attack the first target that attacked the pet or the ACN/SMN/SCH.
Lv 2: Heel. Changes the behavior of the pet to passive. It will not attack anything while under Heel.

Pet Abilities. (Can change depending on job. This is to ensure that SMN and SCH can customize the abilities the pet will have.)
Lv 2: Scratch. Delivers an attack to a single target.
Lv 4: Kick. Delivers an attack to a single target. Combo Action: Scratch
Lv 6: Spin. Deals AoE damage around itself.
Lv 10: Tackle. Delivers an attack to a single Target. If the pet is under Burst, it will deal additional damage.
Lv 15: Leap. Attacks from long range closing its distance to its target.
Lv 22: Curl. Temporarily reduces the damage taken.
Lv 26: Poison Nails Delivers an attack to a single target. Combo Action: Kick

[Keichi]

But whe had all of that allready. And it was removed, because it maked problems.
That the pet is damagable is a pain, because because you dont have the time to give the order to flee and to run in a safe zone yourself. At last, if you dont has the Mode active, that its following you and stand near to you. And even that is messy, when you look at the chocobo, who allways stand in aoe fields.

And than would whe have again, that you summon 1x the pet and dont change it afterwards. The people allways runned only with ifrit, because he was the most usefull of them. And that didnt fullfilled the summoner fantasy.
Or are you meaning, that the carbunkle would by together with the summon skills be used (one problem is, that he is currently useless)?
That could be become to much by itself. With where to place all the Extra buttons, you mentioned (the 2 or 3 skills for each of the primals + Player own skill + Bahamut/bird + seperated skill for carbunkel?
For the moment wouldnt i know, where to place all that skills, to not become confused or, to have them at a nice place.

[rawker]

But whe had all of that allready. And it was removed, because it maked problems.
That the pet is damagable is a pain, because because you dont have the time to give the order to flee and to run in a safe zone yourself. At last, if you dont has the Mode active, that its following you and stand near to you. And even that is messy, when you look at the chocobo, who allways stand in aoe fields.

And than would whe have again, that you summon 1x the pet and dont change it afterwards. The people allways runned only with ifrit, because he was the most usefull of them. And that didnt fullfilled the summoner fantasy.
Or are you meaning, that the carbunkle would by together with the summon skills be used (one problem is, that he is currently useless)?
That could be become to much by itself. With where to place all the Extra buttons, you mentioned (the 2 or 3 skills for each of the primals + Player own skill + Bahamut/bird + seperated skill for carbunkel?
For the moment wouldnt i know, where to place all that skills, to not become confused or, to have them at a nice place.

Said problems were not dealt accordingly, and they just copped out and did the most terrible thing to do.

The responsiveness issue came from multiple variables.

• Pet movement speed is not snappy or fast enough. Come to think of it. If you issue a move command to your pet, you want it to do something other than pre-positioning. Ever notice that some of the games with a permanent companion following you: WoW and even Blade and Soul to some extent, the companion moves faster than the summoner. Also, if you issue a command to the pet to use an ability to an enemy, the pet gets a burst of movement speed or will snap to its target's location to do its attack. Old FFXIV pets didn't do that. They did not consider increasing the pet's movement speed.
• Players are capable of canceling animations but pets don't. For some reason, it has to finish its animation before it can even begin doing what it is told. This has something to do with pet commands being sent to the server. With what I gave an example, it is like "you are trying to control an alt account on a remote computer". If you have SMN or SCH, find a way to saturate your upload and download speeds, see how responsive the Place command is. But try to move your character with the WASD keys. You still move as usual despite other people not seeing you actually moved until some time passed. Somehow compensation is not applicable to pets.

[Raikai]

Until they make structural changes to upgrade their netcode, I hardly believe that a true pet class (that micromanages a second entity for most of it's activity) would be possible in this game for the main encounter design.

I'd love it, but I know that kind of thing is a huge undertaking. Probably would benefit many other aspects of the game too.

[rawker]

You may be surprised to find out that the current responsiveness of pets in terms of acting out the commands issued are already very good compared to it a few years back. Like what I said above, the responsiveness issue also stems from the pet's slow movement speed. Also, pets should be allowed to use or cast abilities while moving.

[SieyaM]

The dev team hated pets and balancing around them and coding for them, I doubt they will be embracing it for a new job that isn't limited.

[rawker]

So turning a pet job into a mindless button spammer flash greande a better approach?

[HappyHubris]

So turning a pet job into a mindless button spammer flash greande a better approach?

For us? Probably not? For the devs? Probably yes.

[ThorneDynasty]

Yeah, it's kinda mind boggling that a video game developer can openly excuse controversial design choice with "but it makes OUR job easier" and the fanbase eats it up. For example the entire 2 minute meta that dictates everything about gameplay right now.

I can only hope are burning up the goodwill they spent years cultivating as fast as they deserve, because I'd rather SE gets a wake up call sooner rather than later, before they repeat every single mistake other MMOs have already backtracked from.

EDIT: I mean, FF14 has basically managed to against all odds in a really tough competition make itself the fancy restaurant of MMOs. And right now that fancy restaurant is handing out paper plates and telling to our confused faces it's so much easier for them not have to invest in dishwasher. A lot of people, still star struck by the reputation, are nodding along and saying "sure that makes sense", but for anyone else it's pretty obvious that kind of coasting on your previously earned clout can't last for long.

[EdenElsewhere]

Yeah, it's kinda mind boggling that a video game developer can openly excuse controversial design choice with "but it makes OUR job easier" and the fanbase eats it up. For example the entire 2 minute meta that dictates everything about gameplay right now.

I can only hope are burning up the goodwill they spent years cultivating as fast as they deserve, because I'd rather SE gets a wake up call sooner rather than later, before they repeat every single mistake other MMOs have already backtracked from.

EDIT: I mean, FF14 has basically managed to against all odds in a really tough competition make itself the fancy restaurant of MMOs. And right now that fancy restaurant is handing out paper plates and telling to our confused faces it's so much easier for them not have to invest in dishwasher. A lot of people, still star struck by the reputation, are nodding along and saying "sure that makes sense", but for anyone else it's pretty obvious that kind of coasting on your previously earned clout can't last for long.

Developers made the 2-minute meta in Endwalker because players were already doing it themselves. Classes that had an awkward burst (SMN had a mixture of a burst and sustained damage but was forced to work in the burst window because you skipped over most of your bahamut trance) forced themselves into the burst window. The devs have openly said that they were following what the players were doing. We dug our own graves here.

And people who hate current summoner are more of a loud minority. Happy people don't have a reason to be loud. While yes, really braindead class, it's okay to have a variety of classes.