nonsensical taming chances/slot use

[Raptor85]

With the ramping up and adding of more and more powerful pets something weird happened...we started getting more powerful pets that take less taming/lore to control and fewer pet slots than older pets that no longer serve much use. I know it's been brought up a few times but generally the conversation goes in the direction of buffing all the pets to GD level and I can't say I'm really for that. Why not instead lower the taming requirement on the wearker ones and tweak slot use on some? For instance, the nightmare is pretty patheticly weak these days, even back when the rune beetles came out they weren't great but were better than nothing to fill out those last two slots, but it still requires 96 taming and lore, so it's a 192 point investment to be able to ride one, though probably the worst offender is the fire steed where even having two of them is a joke and requires a 210 point investment.

Why not take these weaker pets and scale down their taming requirements to bring them more "in line" with the more powerful stuff, right now every pet in the game is basicly either unusably weak or requires GM skill to control even if it's barely just an assist. Could bring back some template diversity if the taming requirements were brought more in-line with reality and bring back use for a lot of the currently completely unused pets, for instance if a white wyrm didn't require just a hair under the same taming requirement as a cu or a greater dragon, it could actually be a good tradeoff to have a more powerful mage or dexxer char with a midrange pet backing you up, whereas right now why would you bother with a white wyrm other than nostalgia? with that much skill you could control a rune beetle or for a tiny bit more a greater dragon...or have a red mage with a pair of fire steeds backing you up It's just so screwy how it is now with a lot of older monsters who are super weak in comparison like hellhounds and lava lizards requiring about 90 taming + lore....who's going to spend 180 points on their character these days to be able to hunt with a pack of hellhounds? (not even including the vet you'd need to be constantly resurrecting them since they die pretty easily). half that, make them take 45 points to control, and I could totally see scraping 90 points off my other skills to have pack of firey dogs with me. Or have the "useless" critters like unicorns/kirin actually usable as mounts! Or maybe have a little drake following along helping you out...you know...if they didnt take pretty much the same level of control as a rune + bake como. Basicly i think anything pre-SA really needs to be looked at and for the most part (with exceptions, for instance rune beetles are still exceptionally strong and their difficulty is pretty much right) the taming requirement is near double what it feels it should be for them to be useful.

Oh, and as far as slots go too, there's weird inconsistancies in them, for instance a blue beetle and a dragon take the same number of slots... A few of the 4 slot ones like hiryu and reptalons are too slow/low hp to be useful as the only pet attacking and would make a lot more sense as 3 slot pets to be paired with another lower end pet

 

[Uvtha]

With the ramping up and adding of more and more powerful pets something weird happened...we started getting more powerful pets that take less taming/lore to control and fewer pet slots than older pets that no longer serve much use. I know it's been brought up a few times but generally the conversation goes in the direction of buffing all the pets to GD level and I can't say I'm really for that. Why not instead lower the taming requirement on the wearker ones and tweak slot use on some? For instance, the nightmare is pretty patheticly weak these days, even back when the rune beetles came out they weren't great but were better than nothing to fill out those last two slots, but it still requires 96 taming and lore, so it's a 192 point investment to be able to ride one, though probably the worst offender is the fire steed where even having two of them is a joke and requires a 210 point investment.

Why not take these weaker pets and scale down their taming requirements to bring them more "in line" with the more powerful stuff, right now every pet in the game is basicly either unusably weak or requires GM skill to control even if it's barely just an assist. Could bring back some template diversity if the taming requirements were brought more in-line with reality and bring back use for a lot of the currently completely unused pets, for instance if a white wyrm didn't require just a hair under the same taming requirement as a cu or a greater dragon, it could actually be a good tradeoff to have a more powerful mage or dexxer char with a midrange pet backing you up, whereas right now why would you bother with a white wyrm other than nostalgia? with that much skill you could control a rune beetle or for a tiny bit more a greater dragon...or have a red mage with a pair of fire steeds backing you up It's just so screwy how it is now with a lot of older monsters who are super weak in comparison like hellhounds and lava lizards requiring about 90 taming + lore....who's going to spend 180 points on their character these days to be able to hunt with a pack of hellhounds? (not even including the vet you'd need to be constantly resurrecting them since they die pretty easily). half that, make them take 45 points to control, and I could totally see scraping 90 points off my other skills to have pack of firey dogs with me. Or have the "useless" critters like unicorns/kirin actually usable as mounts! Or maybe have a little drake following along helping you out...you know...if they didnt take pretty much the same level of control as a rune + bake como. Basicly i think anything pre-SA really needs to be looked at and for the most part (with exceptions, for instance rune beetles are still exceptionally strong and their difficulty is pretty much right) the taming requirement is near double what it feels it should be for them to be useful.

Oh, and as far as slots go too, there's weird inconsistancies in them, for instance a blue beetle and a dragon take the same number of slots... A few of the 4 slot ones like hiryu and reptalons are too slow/low hp to be useful as the only pet attacking and would make a lot more sense as 3 slot pets to be paired with another lower end pet

Good idea. I think pets need a overhaul all over in terms of taming difficulty and slots.

 

[Raptor85]

I'd just like to see some diversity brought back to the game really, it gets old never seeing pets other than a GD and dreadmare (or on VERY rare occasions the rune beetle), slight variations on 5 templates really being the only things "viable" to play as, and everyone always wearing robes and half aprons to hide how unbeleivably ugly their armor is or get those few extra stat points. I know someone will chime in and say "but you CAN pick whatever skills/armor you want!" so I'll answer that now....yeah...technically, but aside from the aformentioned variations on standard templates/gear anything else you may as well just use UOAssist so you can view in color while a ghost....because that's the only way you'll ever be able to hang out with other players. The skills are just so skewed towards REQUIRING 100-120 to effectively use them at all these days that it limits your variety, there's a lot of abilities that "could" be useful currently unused if they didn't require GM+ before they had any effect in the least (a lot of this could be negated by changing failures to a system like bandages have where instead of whiffing or completely failing it works but only slightly....imagine if an investment in 60 or so disco could give you a "half-discord" on monsters that currently require 120...that would open up things like beaing able to choose to lower your own damage so you can lower the enemy stats for you and your partner instead of essentially forcing one person to be a pure bard/healer and the other the tank as the skill requirement to do barding (really min 240 skill for anything SA+) is too high to fit in a damage template..taming aside )....or imagine if when fighting all the 160 skill stuff on a dexxer instead of whiffing it quartered your damage and no specials can take effect....it wouldn't make THAT much difference on a pure damage template as the 5 damage you'd be doing on those is nothing compared to the 300 damage AI's but it's more fun and FAR less frustrating. (same for mages, instead of fizzle cast...so long as you DO have the skil required to even attempt, it scales the effectiveness down based on how bad the failure is)

That's a pipe dream though, that would take some system overhauls but hey...a guy can dream cant he!

 

[Gilmour]

I just want a greater White Wyrm, .. really

I think the slot system works fine as is, cause if you got with a GD that is your only source of damage, while if you bring a mare and a runebeetle, that might even out dps a gd somewhat. but lacks durability of GD. But has the advantage that you can jump on mare and use it as mount, while with a GD this is not an option.

Another example, Dread mares is a step up from mares, they also take 3 slots, meaning you cant combine them with a dragon or ww.

So all in all, i think the control slots is balanced towards how good/many/which pets you can control at any one time.

And i don't really see the issue.

-Gilmour

 

[Sauteed Onion]

I just think it's time they add more tameables to the game, to add some diversity! Also more hues for Dragons/Greaters in general. Greater White Wyrm been on my wish list before I tamed my First Greater Dragon.. Actually I think I went and checked white wyms to make sure they weren't already in game before I went and checked out the greater dragons. Hehe. Anyhow, what about Shadow Wyrms? What about big nasty slugs.. big ones, like dragon size... What about revisiting reptalons? Pet breeding similar to gardening system.. breeding for different hues of pets. I mean there is all kinds of candy to eat.. just got to make it. Meow.

 

[Meatbread]

Very good idea. Always thought it was silly that all pets below GM taming were total trash.

 

[Uvtha]

I just want a greater White Wyrm, .. really

I think the slot system works fine as is, cause if you got with a GD that is your only source of damage, while if you bring a mare and a runebeetle, that might even out dps a gd somewhat. but lacks durability of GD. But has the advantage that you can jump on mare and use it as mount, while with a GD this is not an option.

Another example, Dread mares is a step up from mares, they also take 3 slots, meaning you cant combine them with a dragon or ww.

So all in all, i think the control slots is balanced towards how good/many/which pets you can control at any one time.

And i don't really see the issue.

-Gilmour

I want a dread walrus.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Don't underestimate a bake kitsune. They require well below GM taming and a pair of them can take on some pretty impressive stuff in their owner has decent vet skills.
Bake kit and rune beetle are a nice pairing if you have got higher taming and will chew through some creatures faster than a GD will.

 

[Raptor85]

Don't underestimate a bake kitsune. They require well below GM taming and a pair of them can take on some pretty impressive stuff in their owner has decent vet skills.
Bake kit and rune beetle are a nice pairing if you have got higher taming and will chew through some creatures faster than a GD will.

Bake is pretty useless on his own, though he is the lowest skill "useful" tame requiring only 160 points investment, sure a pair of them can do OK damage, but with the points you've already invested into taming to control them you might as well invest 30 more to do a ton more damage with a rune beetle

Meatbread most of the pets ABOVE GM taming that were created pre-SA are trash too, that's part of the problem, many of them would be "ok" pets if you didn't have to sacrifice all of your damage ability to control them as they're too weak to do much on their own. There are at least a hundred tamables in this game and only 4-5 are ever used because they pretty much all have hte same control requirement....so obviously only the strongest will even be considered!. Before they start going and adding even MORE super-pets I'd much rather just see them fix what we already have

 

[Meatbread]

I don't even have a tamer, but even I have wondered over the years why some guy with 65 taming or something couldn't tame... I dunno... a wyvern or something and use it. You know, instead of some worthless bear an ettin would squish.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

damage ability

as mentioned in another thread, I think control slots should be influenced by their (combined) damage output.
Fully skilled tamer, 5 cats or 1 GD? yeah, I'm bad!
I consider the gimp they made tamers the same as pwning an unarmed opponent in Fel, Cal said it best about taming, LAME

 

[Sauteed Onion]

I really think pet breeding should get a "looking into". If not for anything other than new colors for your babies! But perhaps adding perks to current pets in combination with various magic skills.. Chiv tamers can "armor" their pets and it may not alter the appearance of your pet, but adds like 5-8% in all resists to the armored pet.. necromancers can make their pets undead'esque you know, a'la vampiric embrace, so your pet gets leeches in the 5-10% varieties, mysticism tamers can make their pets go into a type of stone form state adding higher levels of immunity to bleed and poisoning attacks, spellweavers well, I dunno! But something similarly cool!

Might be a different way of bringing new use to old pets, and not just blowing current "IN" pets too much farther over the top than they already are. Often times I find myself wishing my nightmare/runebeetle combo had just a little extra ass to get kicked so I could bring them to some of the newer areas, maybe with the chiv or necromancer abilities I suggested it'd give them that extra little something to make them substantial. And I'm sure there's a whole lot of cool ideas people could throw in here, but I figured I'd get into my thoughts some hopefully to start others thinkin on what they'd like to see, because it doesn't seem like we'll be getting any new tames, but might be a better chance that old tames get revamped or something along them lines.

 

[MagicStar]

I always kinda wished some pets would have several skills you can choose with certain caps
Kinda like how you can choose skills on your char and raise em then lock at the number you want or go to max
So we can diversify them
And some lower end monsters get less points but have some skills available that higher end ones cant have
Either way just an idea to work with if anyone likes it

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Here's another thought, but it might not win any roses but here goes.

Some pets can add bonuses akin to talismans, like a familiar of sorts. Hear me out this may get lengthy, perhaps not, but I'll try to punctuate and put it into reasonably readable paragraphed form.

Perhaps revisit basic animals that anyone can tame, some birds, dogs, rabbits, cats. A player at some point can go and choose what his animal affinities are. Like let's say they implement this in a publish, upon logging in you get a pop up similar to the veteran rewards gump, so at that time you can choose if your character likes dogs or cats more or birds. You could also choose to just close the gump and fool with it later or if at all. With that portion of the idea out of the way moving along. Like let's say your crafter is logged in and you decide HMMM, I think I'll choose dog. You at that point decide to leave your house and go get a dog. Yay, you tamed or purchased a pet dog, happiness!

Now the true benefits do not become apparent until you bond with your pet in standard bonding fashion. After that time passes and you bring your dog home or where ever you do your crafting you begin getting a bonus to your crafting success rates, and you won't know how high that bonus chance is until you bring the pet home and experiment with it. Like let's say there's a hard cap of uh 9% normal chance and 9% exceptional chance for having your cute pet with you while crafting. Here's another layer to it. A mage decides they want to choose a cat as their favored pet. They bond with it in normal fashion, and then they can get up to like a 9% spell damage increase while their pet is ALIVE and with them. This should not stack with the already SDI caps, but kinda add a little breathing room for people who struggling to hit max SDI in their suit/template and also have that added flair of a pet with them. Now I mentioned maximum percentages in this crazy thought process here, and it should be like a talisman. Like once your tame your pet, and feed it, stable it and then get it a week later and feed it again, it assigns a % bonus that that particular pet gives. If you don't like it.. well bye bye pet, go tame another. Now this may be hard to discern how the pet knows which skills to augment, so at the time of the bonding of the pet it randomly picks a skill off your current skills on that character to augment. So if your mage is a scribe as well, it has a chance to increase inscription successes by 9% and 9%, or it picks your magery and you get that 9% damage bonus.

Another thought, make it so all pets give the same bonus % of like 9% or whatever isn't sooooooooooooo overpowered for whatever it's augmenting and that % scales to the pets happiness level. If it's not extremely happy you only get like 5% of the maximum 9% augmentation. Perhaps make it so that the different no taming skill creatures just automatically augment only certain skills, so that takes the element of randomness out. Like make it so cats will only increase cooking skill success chances and spell damage increase, make it so dogs increase your chance to actually catch fish instead of bs with fishing skill, and give a straight damage increase, make it so birds increase archery damage. Pets should not stack with other pets.. So a person couldn't bring 4 dogs out to fel and have like 32% Damage increase just for having dogs with him. 1 pet at a time. To further simplify this, make so that the first pet that comes out of the stable is the one that you get a bonus from, every pet after that gives no bonus until all pets are stabled, and then reclaimed in whatever order. Make it so that each time a skill check is performed, it takes a very minute amount of the pets loyalty rating down, so that you will have to give your pet some attention, aka. food treats hehe. Once a pet reaches angry or whatever you just don't get a bonus until you feed him or her.


Little things like that can breathe life into some oft looked over pets, such as cats and dogs and birds, and help define a person who's trying to go for that type of role play appeal and give him a little benefit for doing it. Some may say oh just go tame a cat or dog and just use it anyways.. I already have. ^ ^ and still bring my kitties to the abyss with me sometimes.

In closing, I also think they should add cinnamon rolls to the game. Meow.

 

[Saint of Killers]

A dread should be 4 slots imo.

 

[Lady Storm]

I agree with the need to revamp the pet / pet slot requirment. I do not think a ethy should be counted and any small pet such as a ferret, dog, cat etc..
I dont want to see NEW WW's just up the power of my exsisting one please. As for the Dread 4 slots ??? give me a break the darn thing cant get out of its own way much less be a threat... my old ai nightmare is 10x better. Ether drop the slot requirement on a GD to 4 so i may ride my ethy or give me a damn saddle for the GD.... ether way the GD's for me stay inthe stable.... I really want my old pets I have trained back in use... Sorry
14 years with the same Dev arms race is getting old...

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I do not think a ethy should be counted .

/Especially This!
They cannot be tamed or commanded, and do Zero damage. unlike the Ghoul, Shade, Spectre, or Wraith
Maybe when they put this nurf in, it nurfed common sense too?

 

[MalagAste]

I want a Greater White Wyrm too!!!

And I want to be able to tame Fairy Dragons, Black Widows, Dread Spiders, Bane Dragons, Dread Warhorses, and cranes. I'm sure there are many more things that should be tamable but aren't but right now can't think of them.

And many pets should be revamped like the Reptalon either that or their slots need reworked..... reptalons are NOT that worthy of being more than 2 slots same with Skree.

Also I think it would be nice if we all got another stable slot... making the regular joe get 5 stable slots.


And I'm sorry to several but I totally don't agree. Ethy's need to take up a control slot.

 

[Raptor85]

While I understand a lot of you would like more high end pets up with the GD it's kinda besides the point I was making in this thread, maybe split that off in a seperate discussion? I think it has some merits as well as truly there arent all that many "high end" pets to choose from at the moment but it has little bearing on my point of taming like many other skills essentially being "GM or bust" right now which puts huge restrictions on the ability to make hybrid templates. Like I said there's literally hundreds of tamables in UO but pretty much everything that doesnt die in one hit to an ogre requires around GM Taming AND Lore.

 

[BeaIank]

I for one would welcome lower pets requiring lower skill to control. My archer paladin should totally be hiding an unicorn.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

taming like many other skills essentially being "GM or bust"

I feel the same way towards any that require several skills to do a single thing. and remember GM is Dead, "120" is the goal now.
Compare to a fighter... your buddies are all killing away in the dungeon - maybe just lizard guys and ettins - maybe they'll all wait till i get my own weapon (Pet) so we can all fight together, besides, the 90's isn't that far away. Oh wait, I can get that ugly wooly cow thing (boura), just like driving granpa's car, old and not very cool.
On second thought, even the past Producer said taming was Lame. *flushes skill*, *sets swords to Up*

For equal points spent, tamers deserve equal consideration in choice of weapons (pets of choice), just as dexxers get

 

[Raptor85]

I feel the same way towards any that require several skills to do a single thing. and remember GM is Dead, "120" is the goal now.
Compare to a fighter... your buddies are all killing away in the dungeon - maybe just lizard guys and ettins - maybe they'll all wait till i get my own weapon (Pet) so we can all fight together, besides, the 90's isn't that far away. Oh wait, I can get that ugly wooly cow thing (boura), just like driving granpa's car, old and not very cool.
On second thought, even the past Producer said taming was Lame. *flushes skill*, *sets swords to Up*

For equal points spent, tamers deserve equal consideration in choice of weapons (pets of choice), just as dexxers get

to be fair swords is in the same position, if you don't have 120 swords and 90+ tactics there's basicly nothing you can do....after that you're basicly forced into a small group of skills due to how so many skills are reliant on each other now...I have 120 swords on stone and I never use it anymore since a lot of mobs seem to have their damage scaled way up these days so they can even put a DENT in a GD's hp, archery my damage and area attacks are the same expect my armor rarely takes damage and I don't get hurt much. And don't forget a dexxers weapon effectiveness is determined entirely by the level of weapon skill, tactics, AND anat. Neither dexxers nor tamers are really effective under 2+ skills over GM...see my post above for the proposal on how to fix that that stands about a good a chance to be implemented as me winning the lotto...without buying a ticket.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I like the breeding idea. I think systems like this taming, are the best systems in the game and can be expanded on greatly. Look at imbuing, how it was an off spring of smithing and then they added reforging and rounded out the loot, even though it's not complete you can see how much the skill has grown.

What I would like to see is similar to alot of the ideas and I would be happy with alot of the things people have discussed. I would like to see them all come together, even if it means adding another skill or pet breeding.

But I was also thinking the opposite of what most people tend to think. I get the impression that there is a trend of trying to use less skill and I feel the opposite should be done where you use real skill and go with the max amount or total base of all the skills.

For example: A small change to what skills do could be added so that the skill does more, similar to armour and weapons.

So, you might be able to build a system that would give these animals different advantages without the control slots being affected but have it based on skill.

For example: The Vet skill could give your pet a defense chance increase. So, if I tamed a scorpion and had Vet, the scorpion would gain a percentage of defense increase. If my Vet was 120, it could be a 120% increase.

Now, the reason that I use the 2 is because it helps the person learn and gives them a way to understand. Healing is a type of protection and defense is a type of prevention.

So, the taming skill could give a percentage to the attack so that the hit chance increase of your pet would be boosted depending on your taming skill.

Lore could be used to base the chance of it using a special, where it would increase that chance that is already on the creature. So, if it's based on the dexterity of the creature, how many times it will try to poison then the percentage would go directly to that.

Now, it's really some kind of fusion that would be between the tamer and the animal, where the tamer automatically inspires the creature giving it abilities it would not normally have based on the skill of the tamer.

So, things like strength and intelligence and dexterity and even the skill cap ratios could be based off of percentages of the tamers total skill. So, if a tamer had 360 points in taming and say maybe a new skill was added we would be up to 460. You could see almost a 50% increase in the creatures hit points or stats, directly based on skill.

So, say you tamed a pet, like a greater dragon and the possibility of hit points was between 1,000 and 2,000 hit points. Now, with the taming bonus there could be a chance of 2,500 or an average of 2,250 for a tamer who was maxed skill.

The advantage is the averages would be much lower for those with less skill.

So, this is something to think about before we even get into breeding and synergies so that the skill itself has alittle more meaning.

You could also scale the pets so that rather than they had a peak what would happen is, as they aged, so they would have to add aging or the time that they have been bonded which roleplayers would probably appreciate aging more.

So, that over time the animal would increase in strength. It would increase in resistances and its' skill.

So, kind of imagine that you can see the cap, we'll say it's 70 today and you're at about 30 resistances. The pet has been bonded with you for a long time so it increases the cap to 75. This way an older pet becomes more valuable.

So, then you could touch base with breeding as well, where eventually you would cap out at a certain age depending on the skill of the tamer and then there might be a point where they are to old to make babies so that the caps remain low for breeding purposes and of course they would be to young and they would be much weaker at younger ages.

I would even like to see it expanded to where a tamer receives moves similar to a weapon being held by the tamer so that you could command the pet to use its' special move. Maybe some kind of animal tactic skill could be added so the pet would try to DP or maybe fire breath on command, which I think would be more interesting than the pet just doing it on its' own.

I would like to see it tied more to skill first though, and then somehow expanded making the pet more powerful but mainly based on the tamer and his ability.

 

[Olahorand]

What, if there would be a chance, to transfer the skills and resists of any pet to another one? (of course together with all the limitations tied to the original pet)
I assume, a brown horse, which has the powers of a Greater Dragon, would be an interesting experience.

 

[popps]

With the ramping up and adding of more and more powerful pets something weird happened...we started getting more powerful pets that take less taming/lore to control and fewer pet slots than older pets that no longer serve much use.

Hmmm.......... like the 4 control slots Reptalon, for example ??

I am sorry, but having tamed and "tried" to hunt with a Reptalon and cannot agree........