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I have a few suggestions regarding pets some of which I have thought should have been done on OSI for years so of which occured to me today while training them.

1) This is something I think has been needed with many pack pets and affects mostly smaller pets. I think it would be cool to double all slot values of most pets and double the slot value of the the tamer (IE an AW would become 10 slots and a tamer wouold have 10 slots). The reason behind this idea is there are many "pack pets" and while most would be doubled in size it would allow for some current 2 slot pets to instead become 3 slots.

This makes a lot of sense too me personally because some of these pets have "pack instinct" and a pack consists of more than 2 animals. It also makes sense because to me in this new system, it leaves room for more adjustment to balance out slot values without majorly changing a pet lineup. and it would allow for there to be a wider amount of pets used and you could tweak pack instinct pets in general more easily without destroying the pack instinct bonus.

For example, the Yoshis were considered over powered when they were all 1 slot, so they have now been changed so that many of them are 2 slots. Instead of nerfing them to the point that no one uses them at all now (aside from those that still have 1 slot yoshis) They could in the system I'm suggesting have been made 3 slots instead of 2, and therby allowing someone to still control a smaller "pack" instead of just a pair.

Now I realize this suggestion would be a major change, but I think in general most pets would merely double in value. And some of the current 1 slot pets would stay 1 slot (IE Cats, Dogs, smaller more basic animals.) and this could allow for some cool little motley packs as well (think 9 small hell cats with you mounted, they die in 1 hit on anythign major but theres 9 of them.)

Like I realize that this woould be a fairly major change, but I think if it was implemented it has the potential for a more balanced system that is more easily modified with more levels of inensity on modification. Meaning that editting the slot count of pets easier without getting players up in arms about it.

2) Have Resist Spells on pets act like it does for humans and make their resits more like an "armor" value. Meaning that if a pet has GM resit spells they aren't going to have a resist below 40. ( I realize this woould have to be tested to make sure it doesn't unbalance the system, but it sounded reasonable to me).

3) Allow the "All Stop" Command to actually break all target locks and hostile flags for pets. This has been an issue for years, and I believe that the staff here could actually manage it unlike anywhere else I have played. As it is currently If a guildmate attacks you and all you're pets are on guard they will attack that person and they won't stop unless you leave them off guard stance for long enough for the hostile status to fall off (The same thing happens in a way when the person accidentally targets the pet) Currently, Stabling, All stop, Stabling and then Logging off and Back in, and every other way we've tried besides waiting it out don't work.

4) Allow players to "feed" pets powerscrolls. I don't think this would really unbalance pets as players would still have to acquire those scrolls and be willing to use them on a pet instead of a character or keeping them for trading (120 Magerys are hard enough to find, so that rarity and player demand in and of itself should help balance this out)

5) Add fish steaks and raw fish either to the meat category or as an additional category because I see no reasons why my cats IRL love fish and why my coourels and hell cats refuse to eat it, it makes no sense XD

6) Make courels use the hell cat sound bytes and stop barking XD (yea death they still bark XD)

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15705

Sorry forgot one

7) Allow for many pets to learn and use the detect hidden or tracking skill (IE if they are fighting somethign and it hides they can follow it using tracking, and possibly even reveal it)

What made me think of this is how skilled at tracking many dogs and big cats are, I mean if you set a blood hound on somethign it will track it for miles, having pets that do this is UO would only make sense since we do have that skill in the list.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15706

I think it is an idea that allows more flexibility with the pet slots for sure. In reality, you gain the max benefit of a pack with 3 pets of the same pack type for a maximum of 50% damage increase if they are all attacking the same target.

It would help balance pet slots in ways that havent been possible before since the slots had to be a whole number. THey couldn't make a pet 1.5 slots or 2.5 slots.

I like the idea overall, and think it could balance well.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15708

I have a few suggestions regarding pets some of which I have thought should have been done on OSI for years so of which occured to me today while training them.

1) This is something I think has been needed with many pack pets and affects mostly smaller pets. I think it would be cool to double all slot values of most pets and double the slot value of the the tamer (IE an AW would become 10 slots and a tamer wouold have 10 slots). The reason behind this idea is there are many "pack pets" and while most would be doubled in size it would allow for some current 2 slot pets to instead become 3 slots.

That's a little more controllable than a bracelet idea that adds a pet slot. The danger that arrises with items that give a pet slot is if it's de-equipped, however with skill that's 100% doable. If we were to add more slots (Which I agree, is an interesting and rather good idea and I wouldn't mind seeing it come to life on AOV) it would be on 2 conditions:

1) Your pet slot is dependant on your proficiency in HERDING. Yes, that's right, you will need to take up herding for those extra slots. Taming alone won't raise your max pet slots (It already has an effect on numerous OTHER aspects of taming, including your stabling). We'll say maybe at gm herding or so, you'll get 5 slots to allocate towards pack instinct animals (Every 20 points in herding = 1 pack instinct pet slot) Human skill may already give u 1.

2) Creatures with no pack instinct (IE: Ancient wyrms) will not be able to fill up those 2 slots (That means you can't drag around 2 aws, sorry). HOWEVER, pack instinct damage will have an effect damage wise according to the tamer's herding skill (Pretty sure this is possible outcome). Also, existing pets that do not have a pack instinct, may get a pack instinct (Like wyverns inheriting a "dragon" pack instinct).

2) Have Resist Spells on pets act like it does for humans and make their resits more like an "armor" value. Meaning that if a pet has GM resit spells they aren't going to have a resist below 40. ( I realize this woould have to be tested to make sure it doesn't unbalance the system, but it sounded reasonable to me).

tbh, not really sure if resist spells has an adequate use these days. Instead of just reducing the effect of curses, we could possibly make it so that some spells get nullified at certain resist spell levels OR get reduced in damage (Like for every 20 points of resist spells, 5% spell damage is absorbed or something). I'd rather not touch it resist wise as that's a little bit more unpredictable and would possibly confuse players if they see that a pet has 40 fire resist somehow because of the effect of resist spells. This is another idea to brainstorm upon.

3) Allow the "All Stop" Command to actually break all target locks and hostile flags for pets. This has been an issue for years, and I believe that the staff here could actually manage it unlike anywhere else I have played. As it is currently If a guildmate attacks you and all you're pets are on guard they will attack that person and they won't stop unless you leave them off guard stance for long enough for the hostile status to fall off (The same thing happens in a way when the person accidentally targets the pet) Currently, Stabling, All stop, Stabling and then Logging off and Back in, and every other way we've tried besides waiting it out don't work.

Although there are other methods involved to break targets, including the soon to be introduced invisibility potions which anyone can use, I can see how pets often like to hold grudges against some people, even when they are repeatedly told to stop doing it. I remember back on the big D, yoda's jerk of a white wyrm killed me at least 7 times on numerous occasions due to running into my line of fire, then holding a grudge on me when my axe made contact with its leg.

For target breaking, there are mechanics in the game right now and there will be even more to go in soon, that will greatly help a tamer avoid getting centred (Invisibility potions and confusion blasts will work perfectly). As for the holding grudge thing, we can see that they quit doing that to your guild members (Or yourself).

4) Allow players to "feed" pets powerscrolls. I don't think this would really unbalance pets as players would still have to acquire those scrolls and be willing to use them on a pet instead of a character or keeping them for trading (120 Magerys are hard enough to find, so that rarity and player demand in and of itself should help balance this out).

I'm not particularly into this idea as I know the implications of giving a pet permanent 120 magery AND 120 eval int. It's best we don't go there, although it is an interesting idea. How about this instead: To give a benefit to cooks out there, we can add some food that once fed to pets, will increase their proficiency in a skill for a short duration. So say you feed your pet a special cookie, their skill in magery would increase by 50% over the cap for maybe 2 minutes or something. It would somewhat follow your idea, but not be as big an issue because it's duration based AND required you to craft the item. It would also give quite an edge for all the cooks out there.

5) Add fish steaks and raw fish either to the meat category or as an additional category because I see no reasons why my cats IRL love fish and why my coourels and hell cats refuse to eat it, it makes no sense XD.

Fish steaks fall under a different category and not every pet likes fish, so this is valid not to include it as "raw meat" (Some creatures prefer a nice bloody piece of carcass as opposed to sushi). However, that can be added to coeurls and hell cats because they ARE cats, and cats take a liking to all things fish.

6) Make courels use the hell cat sound bytes and stop barking XD (yea death they still bark XD)

lol it's the same sound ID. Damn coeurls always want to growl . I'll have to props your pets later as they might have serialized the old sound ID (Can almost guarantee that's the problem). If so, we'll either have to change it manually or set an override in the script to take effect.

7) Allow for many pets to learn and use the detect hidden or tracking skill (IE if they are fighting somethign and it hides they can follow it using tracking, and possibly even reveal it)

We can add that in as a special for a certain pet. I'd rather not add that ability to be gained for all pets as that puts stealthers at a disadvantage as tamers could get any of their pets to track. We could however, add some smaller pets that could act as "scouts". Like a bloodhound dog that takes 1 slot and has canine instinct, but not really high damage potential. However, it would make up for this as it would have a really high detect hidden and reveal skill so he'll be worth bringing along on journeys.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15710

In regards to number one I'm not sure if you understood it esactly or did and decided to take it on a different tangent.

What I was saying is Double all pet slots. Tamers have 10 slots. And double all pet slots as they currently are. AWs are now 10 slots, Mares and Courels are 4 Slots, Horses are 2 Slots.

Then Use the new adaptability to the advantage (Basically we just made it possible to have 1.5 slot pets).

So for example in the system I proposed you could edit 2 slot yoshis (which are 4 slot pets in the proposed system) to be 3 Slot Pets. Now you can have 3 yoshis in a pack so they get the full bonus of pack instinct, but there aren't 5 of them so they arent way overbalanced like 1 slot yoshis of the past. This could apply to any 2 slot pets cureently that have pack instinct, Or that are underpowered for their slot value.

This also adds The ability to nerf a pet in less drastic ways, say hypothetically the staff introduces a new, custom scorpion that is 5 slots in the new system but the scorpion happens to be completely sick when paired with another one, you can Up this pets slot to 6 slots, which would allow someone to still pair it with a mare (4 slots in the new system) which would still allow them to have a good powerhouse team but not nerf it to where no one wants to use the scorpion.

Now don't get me wrong I kind of like the herding Idea, almost, but the major problem with it that I see is requiring another skill in a tamer format can have severe complications and can be seen as nerfing the taming profession further (The super AI already makes it hard enough). It's already hard enough trying to balance having 3 slots in the profession and 4 if you include magery (Which Most tamers agree is essintial to a tamer template with the super AI since you HAVE to be able to heal yourself and Invis) Requiring 4 skills in their would make most bard tamers have to drop meditation which makes it almost impossible to run a pack because unless you are standing On top of the mob you are fighting you cant be next to 5 members of a pack and vet and withotu med you wont have enough mana to heal unless you drop all your luck gear for MR. So I mean the trickle down effect adding herding to list of needed skills would unbalance more than it wouold solve IMO.

All I'm saying is that I think we can fix the slot problem through the system I suggested (which doubles all current pet slot values and the tamers slots and then allows us to tweak from there) without making it skill based and nerfing what promises to already be a harder class to play given the loyalty changes goign into effect and the super AI that is already In effect.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15711

how about some craftable peanut butter for some people to feed to their hell hounds?

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15712

lol to that last reply Doc, but anyway lol i kinda read most of and and most of it sounds good lol but i dont want the pre-patch (1 slot yoshis) to change lol

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15713

Plastic Man wrote:Sorry forgot one

7) Allow for many pets to learn and use the detect hidden or tracking skill (IE if they are fighting somethign and it hides they can follow it using tracking, and possibly even reveal it)

What made me think of this is how skilled at tracking many dogs and big cats are, I mean if you set a blood hound on somethign it will track it for miles, having pets that do this is UO would only make sense since we do have that skill in the list.

This happens already, except, theres no pets that have those skills, other then summoned DFs. (AI will only train skills that are higher then 0.1)

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15714

Plastic Man wrote:In regards to number one I'm not sure if you understood it esactly or did and decided to take it on a different tangent.

What I was saying is Double all pet slots. Tamers have 10 slots. And double all pet slots as they currently are. AWs are now 10 slots, Mares and Courels are 4 Slots, Horses are 2 Slots.

Then Use the new adaptability to the advantage (Basically we just made it possible to have 1.5 slot pets).

So for example in the system I proposed you could edit 2 slot yoshis (which are 4 slot pets in the proposed system) to be 3 Slot Pets. Now you can have 3 yoshis in a pack so they get the full bonus of pack instinct, but there aren't 5 of them so they arent way overbalanced like 1 slot yoshis of the past. This could apply to any 2 slot pets cureently that have pack instinct, Or that are underpowered for their slot value.

This also adds The ability to nerf a pet in less drastic ways, say hypothetically the staff introduces a new, custom scorpion that is 5 slots in the new system but the scorpion happens to be completely sick when paired with another one, you can Up this pets slot to 6 slots, which would allow someone to still pair it with a mare (4 slots in the new system) which would still allow them to have a good powerhouse team but not nerf it to where no one wants to use the scorpion.

Now don't get me wrong I kind of like the herding Idea, almost, but the major problem with it that I see is requiring another skill in a tamer format can have severe complications and can be seen as nerfing the taming profession further (The super AI already makes it hard enough). It's already hard enough trying to balance having 3 slots in the profession and 4 if you include magery (Which Most tamers agree is essintial to a tamer template with the super AI since you HAVE to be able to heal yourself and Invis) Requiring 4 skills in their would make most bard tamers have to drop meditation which makes it almost impossible to run a pack because unless you are standing On top of the mob you are fighting you cant be next to 5 members of a pack and vet and withotu med you wont have enough mana to heal unless you drop all your luck gear for MR. So I mean the trickle down effect adding herding to list of needed skills would unbalance more than it wouold solve IMO.

All I'm saying is that I think we can fix the slot problem through the system I suggested (which doubles all current pet slot values and the tamers slots and then allows us to tweak from there) without making it skill based and nerfing what promises to already be a harder class to play given the loyalty changes goign into effect and the super AI that is already In effect.

Your idea is interesting but a bit more complex to add in. I don't think adding another skill will really harm anything though. You can think of it as an upgrade or an addon to taming. Kind of like how you can have tamer mages, necro mages, nox mages or scribe mages. They all use magery but have that extra skill to branch them off

So in that sense, you could have mage tamers, chiv tamers, bard tamers and now.....herding (pack) tamers.

So for those who want to pursue a herding tamer, they would get more slots allocated to pack instinct pets while sacrificing another skill. So instead of gaining a barding skill, they walk around with maybe a pack of 4 coeurls and carry around some invisibility scrolls/potions and confusion blast potions to get out of tough spots.

This would also give more use to lower end pets. You can mix and match. 2 horses with equine and 2 feline instinct hell cats to help you do different damage types.

The benefits would be you could essentially split your damage (Have 2 cold pets and 2 fire pets attacking while getting damage bonuses for following pack instincts). The downfall would be pets with less hit points that might die easier, and having a large pack to take care of.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15716

Red Squirrel wrote:

Plastic Man wrote:Sorry forgot one

7) Allow for many pets to learn and use the detect hidden or tracking skill (IE if they are fighting somethign and it hides they can follow it using tracking, and possibly even reveal it)

What made me think of this is how skilled at tracking many dogs and big cats are, I mean if you set a blood hound on somethign it will track it for miles, having pets that do this is UO would only make sense since we do have that skill in the list.

This happens already, except, theres no pets that have those skills, other then summoned DFs. (AI will only train skills that are higher then 0.1)

I don't know about all skills, but I thought you changed it so that pets had to have at least 20 points or so in a skill to gain in it.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15720

Actually the AI will go by .1, but yeah some skills need higher. Like I think spellweaving needs about 30 or so as that is the minimum spell. (mobs dont use ALL spells, just a lot of direct target ones, but not stuff like arcane circle)

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15721

Doc you are sick.

Munson if there are 10 slots available for for pack instinct pets (as per Deaths herding slot idea) put in and there are still 1slot Yoshis around, I can't how they could risk not changing all of somethign that was already nerfed so that you cant run 10 yoshis. (Part of the beauty in my idea of just changing all pets current and not to double the amount of slots and giving tamers 10 slots and moving from there)

Death, If you are basically turning it into another type of tamer, then you need to add more variety to the packs. IE Horses at the moment (And Fire Steeds for that matter) don't show having any pack instinct, althoguh for steeds i think you said its hidden? If this is going to become a template in and of itself, then it is especially important for things to show their pack instinct if its hidden. It also becomes important to have more variety with what does actually USE pack instinct (I hate yoshis, one vareity of creature that can do anything to me is kinda lame XD), not to mention perhaps adding certain types of pack pets that heal friendlies (Including the tamer and pack members) but use the ranged type AI like liches and such.

That is something as a player I'd have to ask for if you make a herding tamer a viable role. Instinct would need to be expanded from its current form in order for it to have a spot within the lineup of tamers if they must giveup much of a secondary skill. And I like the concept, if it is given the full package and not just thrown in without taking a good look at current pack instinct animals (As from what you said those are the animals that would fit in the extra slots). And I would be more than happy to help research into said animals as I have had a lot of experience with packs and have run more types of each than most people I know of since the inception of instinct XD

And like I said death I knda like you idea and I realize that mine would take more work to implement, but personally I think that in the long run it would pay for itself with its added flexability/adaptability and I think that it could help manage the strength of ALL pets as well as accomplish what you are suggesting could be done with the skill slots.

I also think that my idea harbors less risk of unbalancing something unforseen as it is merely making the existing system more flexable without changing anything until its in place (IE Global change to make all pets double current slots so nothing that it how it is now is anymore powerful ever "pre-patch" pets retain their unique powers). So i think in the long run reimplimenting a more flexible version of a tried and true system is less risky in terms of game balance and offers with its own flexability a way to fix current problems that there may be with balance.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15722

Yes, there would obviously be more variety in pack animals and the pack instincts would show if this were added.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15723

DOCTOR THUNDER wrote:how about some craftable peanut butter for some people to feed to their hell hounds?

I would feed it to my jackals, after smeering it on my nads.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:2479, old post ID:15727