Pet Classes /Personalization/?

[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.

[Tonkra]

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.

so what did i say differently? i know that BST was also VERY too average.
but the charm system was also a VERY (if not the most) reason for a BST not being in a party (especially in an instance)

i also wrote they should implement more skills than just a charm to the BST to distinguish much more to other classes:

for example things like:
- berserk mode (boosts melee damage, reduces defense)
- savagery (boosts evasion and acc)
- transfer pain to the pet for a certain time (20% ish)
- sacrifice pet (regain HP + stat boost for a certain time)
- use horn to call one of your saved beasts
- roar (reduces targets attack and crit chance)
- WS that cause bleedings
- fear...

many possibillities


well and you did not listen

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...

woohoo.. so much better..

and you are so totally wrong.. it was not just because beastmaster was so "average" in every thing, because you cant take your beasts into an instance.. thats why i say a beast should have about 5 save slots for his tamed beasts to call them everywhere..
the jug pets in FFXI have been just a big joke,.

what does a beastmaster is useful for in a dungeon where he cant tame a beast? how useful is it for a group, when the boss itself is hardcore enough, and additionally the beastmaster has to handle/ "fight" against his own beast... and of course the worst case that he gets knocked out because of his own pet..

THESE are BIG ISSUES for non permenant charms. thats why no one wanted a minstrel in Dark Age Of Camelot to use his charm in a group ("leave your pet please aside it hits you every fucking 30 seconds..")

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

welcome to the last century...

and dragoons in FFXIV still have wyvern pets... yes...

this is FFXIV and not FFXI and they shouldnt make the same mistakes twice.
and a BST in FFXI was an ABSOLUTE design mess. A Dragoon in FFXIV is now also very much more popular than it has been in FFXI.

the same should happen to the BST, if they are going to introduce this job.

[KaiserDrill]

Like i posted earlier, im not slamming bst or smn players. I just dont feel there was as much depth to the pet system. I always thought of drille as a robot more than a puppet, and like elexia said earlier the better you program them the more efficient they are.

On the subject that they were just souless tools XD. Smh. If you played ANY of the toau storyline, even as a non pup, how would you explain aphmau's automatons? Or if you did play the pup storyline how would you explain iruki-waraki's auto deciding to run off on its own?

[Exn]

More stuff

No I listened, er well tried too, but your making little sense to anyone who actually played the class. Perhaps why your not getting much support... Aside from that, your ideas of abilities to supplement charm/tame aren't bad, which is why I didn't bother to address them.

My two statements still stand, regardless on if you want to try to change your view now to agree. BST invites had NOTHING to do with charm... (well in my 6 years of playing); and skill/experience definetly factored into using charm/tame effectively, not just random dumb luck...

You last comment about tame/charm being last century?! So I guess while were at it lets remove elemental magic from BLMs, Healing Magic from WHM, Jump from DRGs, etc... Yeah, you sure do make an excellent point there..

Anyway, I'm not trying to change your rather skewed opinion on the matter, I just responded because you seemed disappointed that people weren't replying to your views on the matter..

[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.

[Sanne]

I loved the tamer in Ultima Online.

You tamed it , and then could train it and stable it, or sell it to other players.

Horses were low level, and anyone could own them, and they were used a lot. Also there were tamers who sold dragons to other tamers, this especially worked for tamers who just got skill enough to own them, but failed to much to tame one.

In the past you could have any amount, but later they fixed it.
I remember having 6 white wyrms, and feel pretty save.
Of course you had to watch out with commands, and make sure they all were happy, else they could go wild, and attack you.

Of course it was overkill, so they created a point system, you would have 5 points in total (you did need the tamer skill I believe to get more then 2 points, but you could have a horse with no skills at all), some animals were 1 point, and some more points. Like my white wyrm was 3 points and my nightmare that I used to ride on was 2 points.

Also having a pack of certain animals, gave a pack damage bonus, so in pack some did more damage together then a dragon, but of course the dragon had more HP, so the pack animals were sooner killed and the pack bonus was destroyed.


They only go wild on you if you didn't feed them enough. Also high lvl pets always had a change to not listen to commands, if it happened their loyality dropped a bit.

I still miss my pets from UO, like now, I really want to activate my account to see them. But I did own a few of them for around 2 years. Having capped skills, and somehow in my mind they had personality, it seemed my white wyrm Angel always listen much better then my white wyrm Bossy.

I also like animist from dark age of camelot, they had a few pets, (plant kind of things if I remember correct, most of them couldn't move) But it is really long ago I played that game.

I also love the puppet master in FFXI, you felt connection with your pet, it was always the same, but you could modify it with attachments.

I did have a lvl 99 bst in FFXI, but I was very dissapointed that you couldn't own and train a pet. I like the idea of having a stable with different kind of pets for different kind of situations, and training them.

Like someone said here, maybe that you can tame higher level pets, but you can't own them, and they can go wild.

I am really interested in the chocobo breeding and companion. I hope they really feel like a loyal pet, that you can ride and if needed use in battle. Getting a connection with them.

I so want to have a little chick following me with my adventures (optional), till it grows strong enough to help me in battle.
I really hope with kind of friendship meter, how better the friendship is how more it wants to help you.

And of course emotes with them.
Saying hello emote will make make a sound as a kind of hello in their own way, when you dance to them, they do a little dance.
When you emote angry at them, they show a sad reaction.
While a happy motion will make them happy also etc...
A hug animation and a kiss animation with your chocobo

[Warlock]

~snip~

FFXI didn't invent puppets....
That said.. Automata are an extension of you and you have full control of them ..they are empty shells that follow the moves of your hands/fingers to execute attacks. The 2 automaton in FFXI had a soul/personality for the story line just like Jhonny Five

[Shurrikhan]

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).

To be honest, this topic kind of brings me back to wanting a somewhat limited pool from which to draw all class's development (in other words, some exclusivity). I want pet-raising to be huge. Absolutely huge. But I don't like the idea that you'd require a whip or the like just to work with said pet. It doesn't seem like an armory type decision at all. Nor does it really seem like a "job" decision as jobs have been dived thus far throughout the series (essentially classes, rather than pursuits). [I personally see the ideal role of jobs as being a pursuit of some sort of personal preference in the way one fights (and more) that manifests itself in certain class choices that eventually develops into a very specific fitting "job" that probably isn't even preset.] I'd rather lose some sort of 'ingenious insight' that I'd otherwise have into some other art, be it swordplay or archery or black magic, in exchange for the experience of basically sharing the entirety of my pursuits with this pet. No matter what particular class I'm in, I could still work with my pet; he's a relationship and a share of my combat mechanic and combat power (not necessarily an augmentation, just a diversifying share) first and foremost. He is not a familiar. He does not vanish into another plane as soon as I'm not feeding him magic. He might well complain from lack of food though.

Like in leveling with a path companion (in the way I would hope to be possible), Chocobo, etc, one's time, the building of the relationship, and perhaps even "keys" (notably levels and likely pet-type-unique quests) will probably come into account. If I were staying as a beastmaster (kind of like the choice of equipping a job stone as opposed to having the open class version) consistently, I'd be seeing the pets I leveled with all the time--they're my primary or co-primary tool of combat after all. But, let's say I didn't want to divide my learning up at all, or wanted to focus on something else. Depending the way xp works (yes, we are solidly grounded in ambiguous theory now, not just the way ARR currently works and likely will continue working), that pet may be progressing, akin to a dynamic NPC, as you do, and you'd still be seeing it at learning from it at different points in time before restarting your partnership. Or, perhaps that could be the case only for key beast NPCs, which would truly function like your path companions, but with an additional level of control for Beastmasters. [Mage classes for instance would have additional things to enjoy from quests involving spirits or repeating spirit characters, and physical classes to their respective weapons, such as in 'In Pursuit of the Dark Sword' type quests.] Well, that's ranty enough. I'll stop there.

Speaking of Puppet-masters... I'd love to be able to take a cursed weapon from one boss, the head from a Halloween special scarecrow boss, a mechanical carapace I dug up from an archaeological site in deep Thanalan, and a still-beating etherial heart from a Black Shroud outskirts questline, and from all that and my own crafting expertise have my perfect puppet. It's hard to beat Puppeteer in terms of carrying your leveling experience with you. As long as the puppets' building process is open to upgrades and adaptation, it's a perfect sink for one's own collection, perfectionism, and resourcefulness alike.

Tldr; I want huge adaptability with great investment (in terms of choices and experiences, not just as a time sink) for every class, but pet classes are where it should be most noticeable and key to the class experience [as opposed to skill and theory or "know your class, know thyself", pet classes should be more "know your partner, know yourself"]. However, I don't know how well it will do as a stand-alone class and especially how well it will do within the armory system. Personally, I'd prefer them as something of a job augmentation onto another class, almost like a Swordsman-Beastmaster. This would allow greater and more reasonable versatility in how one works with their pet. [I'd actually would have liked to see summoner as a augmentation onto Conjurer, Thaumaturge, and Arcanist separately, each with different pet types and priorities befitting their respective elemental-spiritual, dark-ritualistic, and theoretical-magic ties.]

To me "Tamer" seems like a Disciple of Land class, with skinning and herding being sub-components of that class. It does not seem combat-capable until having already reached the title of Beast Master. Its strength should then lie in its adaptability and diversification of earlier class playstyles and complementation of their roles. After that, certain ties between pet and weapon types (without forcing pairing decisions) should be able to lead to advanced jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

Sorry, Shougan, it seems I wrote another long one.

[Shurrikhan]

thats no solution.

imagine a bossfight against garuda with a beastmaster in party.. after 3 minutes "oh sorry guys.. my pet ran away"
do you REALLY think a beastmaster would get invited then anymore? a beastmasters positive aspect is his pet and its monsterskills. when he loses it many times within a fight its nothing more than ineffective, useless and annoying of course.
the only guys who liked that job in FFXI have been pure soloist players or masochists. the system itself was just poorly bad. (and that opinion coming from a person who loves pet jobs)


and isnt it better to have a real "companion" with you as a beastmaster instead of always wild and timid pets who run away how they want to? Does a wild horse run away after you succeeded taming it?..

to make him a useful class for groups.. and of course.. less ANNOYING..

*the resistable charm would give BST the option to charm mobs, that are at a higher level with a risk that they can break the charm at anytime.

because a pet only does not grant you a place in a party. when they are going to introduce BST they should do a bit more than just a charm skill.

You could always change the way a Beast-master works depending on his being in a raid vs. simple leveling. Having the possibility of your pet running away, while being fairly bursty when able to partly influence that same wild (and thereby non-weakened) enemy beast would be a fun part of leveling. Though even then it would certainly help to have a spare consistent (weaker) pet at the ready to back you up.

All it really takes is formula changes. A "tamed beast", as compared to a "pet", would keep its additional abilities and strength, rather than sharing strength with you based on your stats and its calculation types, but is able to flee. A single additional pet slot already allows a beast-master to be used to cause friendly-fire among enemies in the worst of cases, without the risk that comes with being unable to replace the risky minion at a later time. If that's not enough, we could set boss fights to keep "tamed beast" type skills at "pet"-calculated loyalty and strength. This would allow certain pre-scripted encounter variance dependent on having certain beasts from before the boss fight, etc, without immense risk (aside from perhaps losing whatever bonuses you've worked up between you and your pet during the fight before fleeing or going berserk on your party).

I'd prefer that taming itself not be too easy at low levels, and taming by spell alone not last long without due later effort even at high levels. I'm fine with seeing it rarely used in instances when there's not enough time to lead a lonely-looking enemy wolf away with a line of meat slabs, kind telepathy, and some petting. We always have our primary pets, and at some point we'll hit the limits of our kennel sizes, no matter how much room we're given.

Edit: I completely agree with SodRansom that taming should be a major element of the job though, for those who wish to use it. It's a feature of the job that goes beyond merely how it does combat, and removing it would be like a Gambler class without any risk involved in its structure. Trusting the instinct of a beast, guarding against it, efficiently or optomistically balancing both... those are some pretty cool thematic elements, to put it mildly.