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

[SodRansom]

I personally would LOVE to see beastmaster in ffxiv. I was a hardcore bst in ffxi, and eventually quit because they broke the job. There were some elements to that job that were really promising and they never fully developed that job to be as good as it could have been. It really just turned into a generic dd.

The direction that ffxi did not take is one that I hope to see in ffxiv one day. The bst job needed to focused around charm, not around Call Beast. We turned from beastmasters into magicians really, pulling rabbits out of a hat. I hope that in ffxiv we will actually get a class that needs to know the strengths and weaknesses of the wild enemy in order to use them to fight to our advantage. We would need to know the wild terrain better than the city streets. I hope that we actually have to tame the mobs that we see roaming the landscape instead of mobs that we pull from our pocket. And that's where our pets would come from, not some premade familiars that follow us around. If that were the case we wouldn't be bsts anymore, but smns.

[Jinrya-Geki]

Pretty Sure Tonberries were supposed to be among those options :P.

[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

[Elexia]

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

So like Puppetmaster (from XI too), where your pet grows in terms of how much work and effort you put into it.

[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

[KaiserDrill]

The mechanic of the automaton was heavy customization. You had heads and frames. It wasnt beneficial to mix and match head/frame combos, except when they introduced the whm and blm heads.

Where the customization comes from are the attachments. Think of them as gear for your auto that either provides a stat boost or grants an ability.

Each attachment has a cost to equip based on the elements. Different heads/frames have different thresholds in each element. For instance, the soulsoother has 7 light threshhold but only like 3? In fire.

Not to mention just like player characters in ffxi the automaton has skills. However it's limited to melee, ranged, and magic skills. Automatons learn ws just like players, by reaching a certain skill level in ranged or melee skill. They automatically learn new spells by skilling up the magic skill, no scroll needed.

This is why i liked pup. Im not knocking bst or smn players but i didnt feel either has near the customization options as pup. Avatars and charmed/jug mobs just seemed expendable with no soul or personality.

[SodRansom]

This is why i liked pup. Im not knocking bst or smn players but i didnt feel either has near the customization options as pup. Avatars and charmed/jug mobs just seemed expendable with no soul or personality.

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.