Tamed Constructive Criticism

Atticus,

I found this to not be the case in R22. A pull is a pull is a pull. There is no actual XP from a pull, rather it is a pull (more a counter than an XP type). A pull is not divisible across skills. When I had summoning turned off it did not reduce pulls necessary for leveling Refresh, Concentration, Combat Training, or Obedience Skill. The first level of any of the sub-skills required 12 pulls with or without summoning turned off. I evaluated that by leaving summoning on until it hit level 20 while leveling up Combat Training, Concentration, and Refresh. I then turned off summoning and after several levels of the other three I bought Obedience and sure enough it duplicated the number of pulls required for each level just as the other three had originally done. If you look here you can see the details. I used Obedience to double check the other skills, but never added a column for it I got it up to level 20 while getting the other skills to level 26. All in all my testing showed that a pull is not split between skills. It makes me wonder if other skills really divvy up the XP gain at this point but I've never taken the time to observe this in more detail.

One does have to question the reason to continue to level summoning, though - it provides nothing. Maybe it will give another card at level 30?

 

Ah you mean its not a joke... It's alright I didn't mind you saying I was wrong anyways, what I wouldn't be nice about is the way I would describe the problem, such as is perpetuated by many... even yelling at a dog is like so full ; its a dog sometimes its scared and it goes on the floor or barks incessantly because it think it heard some creature he never heard before.

Also I'm not against the concept being applied to some mythical beast which is powerful enough to require a beating down to tame... but not wolves, not bears, not cows...

It's plain wrong, its the new paradigm, all words and thoughts are vibrations.

I'm not going to get too much into detail but theres also something about properly killing an animal that you are going to eat.

To be more exact I am not saying lets apply all ethical and hygienic principles to the game it gets too tedious, but for sure the game must have a clear line drawn between the states of before shardfall and after. Things like that could be still done (beat an animal into submission) but there should clearly be bad karma and bad reputation to those who pursue that course.

In fact none of the systems of the game, especially in pre-alpha should implicate such crimes as if they were commonplace. This is not going to help if thousands of new players join into release, they will "judge" the community and the game and we certainly want to be a community that cares about such things while not getting in the way of portalarium.

For this we must seek truth in all things... stop the fear.

 

BTW ... holy...



I pretty much agree with all you stated.

 

is this serious?
LMAO


But to the point, I agree with you Bluefire -- to require 8 silver ore for every single tame attempt is ludicrous. We've seen it takes hundreds of skill uses to get to a competent level in any skill - however, it seems that in order to be a competent trainer one needs an entire silver mine.

If the collars are to be treated as reagents and used up, then the components need to be much much less costly/rare.

If you are going to maintain that the collars need to be made from expensive components, then they need not to be used up unless the pet is tamed.


I have personally never understood the idea of 'beating the animal's health down' -- even from UO that never made sense to me. It seems to be a rather old fashioned, heavy-handed, neanderthal way of going about taming.... but then I'm female. I would prefer gaining the animals trust and cooperation through familiarization and rewards like treats. I think overall that tends to be more efficacious. So in a way I agree with what the previous poster is saying, but i'm not trying to pass any moral judgements on the thing. And i'll tame under whatever system we end up with, because I want an animal to go fight with on my archer.

 

ok so i guess i will have to take back the 'female thinking' thing, since i just found this thread:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/my-thoughts-on-taming.39094/

you guys are awesome

 

Okay people I see my comparison seems to go in the wrong way. Taming is neither crafting nor a fighting skill, it is a combination out of it. The skill part uses the collar as reagent, but the crafting part make it into a weapon (tamed animal). So the costs you put into taming an weapon may look high for small wolf spider but not if you tame an obsidian bear with it. If you craft a sword or armor it takes also a big amount ressources but is similar to the amount you need for one pet (normally 4 collars + whistle at least for me). Sure to level the skills it is big amount of res needed, but each collar gives you the same push on the taming skill. Perhaps they can make it easier to level next release in giving more XP into the skill per use. But taming is more like a crafting profession, you should be able to sell what you got. So it should be possible, that you can tame on your own, but to become a master if will be really hard, like crafting.

And one word regarding hurting the animal to tame it. That is not needed, hurting it makes it only a bit easier. If you don't like it, don't do it. If you make it clever enough, it won't see you till taming failed. So if you are lucky you can tame without getting hurt.

 

To the extent this is your new argument that the current mat cost to craft taming essentials is anywhere close to the level required to engage your average player, it isn't very persuasive either.

The time cost is way, way higher than the average player will justify. There isn't another mechanic in the game set up this way.

 

I wait for the time when we don't own the XP multiplier and people will have a hard time to gain skills. Than taming will not look that hard anymore. We agree that we don't agree on taming. I like the challenge it has now, because it will give me something to do that last more than a month. It is nothing that everyone can do because of the time needed, but everyone can use the result. And with the grandmaster help, you can boost this skill. There will be other ways to boost skilling this. So in the end we will be all taming obsidean animals after one month.

 

That may be a fair point. I haven't really played at "live" speed. That said, if the other skills take even 1/5th what taming takes to raise I just won't play. I'm too old to sit at the computer hitting a node or a mob for hours on-end these days.

 

Still wonder if I'm serious @Sophi ?

 

There is one thing they could do to make the high expense if raising taming more bearable.

Make it so Non combat tamables (eg chickens rabbits etc) only require an animal collar to tame, not a taming collar. At least then the resources are easier to find at a low level, and although the resources needed are still fairly high(2 leather straps and 1 metal ingot) at least you won't need rare silver to grind your skill....

 

In an previous post, I mentioned the need for a "species specific" drop that can be used to help in taming. I am still for that as opposed to beating down a creature. These can be rare drops off tamable creatures. This would be a consumable. It would also provide an alternative way to build up taming skill without using collars till you are confortable enough to attempt to tame with collar.

Basically you use this drop, and it stuns the creature for a few secs, allowing you to then use the collar when it is at a rate you wish to attempt.

Not sure how easy it is to incorporate a lot more drops that are "tame specific" per critter and giving them unique names that could "calm" a creature. Examples could be something called Deer Scent Gland or "Wolf Treat", etc. I aint very creative with names though.

 

Yes there was a little bit of (attempted) humor in the form of an ironic contradiction, but other than that, I'm trying to be pragmatic (could be here also translated as "constructive") about it...I mean, I do love what @Bowen Bloodgood has suggested in that other thread, but not really holding my breath about getting the devs equally excited about it. Not in this episode at least.

I was indeed (assuming you meant "QA" instead of "Q&A" because of the mention of "passing" it) a little bit sloppy in my writing, apologies; instead of "logical" I should have probably written "consistent with the internal logic of taming as apparently intended by the developers". I guess I have been beaten into submission by the present day "tl;dr culture" and "twitter illiteracy", where the most common apology on a forum is about having written a "wall of text"...back in the "old" days (actually not that far back) that was simply referred to as a screenful of text. Guess I'm "old school" that way (but adamantly refuse to admit that there'd be anything old school about my ankhvatti ).

I do find it somewhat amusing that folks would get so worked up on "cruelty to animals" in a game where violence, cannibalism and skull trophies are common themes. This is perfectly fine, just remember that a) an equal amount of "cruelty" is applied every time an animal is killed (perhaps tranquillizer darts and aetheric energy stunners would make a nice stretch goal, if that is so important?) and b) more importantly, the events of the world affect animals too. For example, Veimor in West Ravenswood (one of the beginner's Braemar quests) was very explicit about the fact that animals are disturbed and therefore not behaving normally either -- for instance being extremely aggressive and attacking anyone on sight, plus ganging up with each other, and even with the undead. So breaking this trance/unconsciousness (reminds me of some Tibetan buddhist themes) and forming a bond with a virtuous avatar would seem like an act of compassion and mercy, no matter how it is achieved.

No ankhvattis were harmed while writing this post.

 

Alright I will accept the "shardfall" affecting the animals as a lame justification not to write more complex AI for episode 1...

But I think you don't get it, noone is offended you can do cruel and inhumane acts ; we are offended because they are included in the game by design and this isn't respectful to the people who want to play this game without violence as much as possible.

Remember we wanted to please all playstyles ?

People should have the freedom to do it, but the game needs to draw a clear line between virtuous and not. Don't tell me a chaos mage/necromancer is going to do an honor to a beast by breaking it of its trance and binding it to anti-virtue and use it to kill and rob other people ?

This is called roots and its the first concepts storytellers must elaborate so we get a feel of where this is going, so we can forge our roleplay and desire for learning lore.

Game of Thrones is a good example... if the lore had no sense and progression I would have stopped watching early in the series, there is a big difference between gratuitious violence and theatrical rendering.

 

I have seen wolves hunting deer and spiders feeding on rabbits. In game; that is beyond most games around. Yet the AI is not perfect, animals should attack for a reason (hunger, defense ... ). And everyone but the undead should try to run if badly hurt. Yet the AI is fairly good IMHO.

About hurting animals as taming technique, while is good as AI improvement, it do not looks like a real technique to me. I would suggest to elaborate further the issue.

1. What can driva an animal to become domesticated? Most likely providing it with water and food (and, for a non free animal, providing water is a much faster and better way to befriend it than food). So, what about a couple of spells, hypnotic kind, that induce the animal to feel thirsty and hungry... then we provides the much needed provisions to it, helping the taming process.

2. Alternatively, spells to summon a feared antagonist, say wolves to tame a deer, wasps to tame spiders, and so on. The animal would fear the antagonist and fight it. We the players will then help the animal, we will defeat our own summoned nightmares and winning the animal's friendship, easing the taming process.

Beating might be OK for some kind of beast, like the big bugs in UO (no one complained on them). Players need need to beat them in submission (no real taming, however.)

 

Well, at this point I'm just annoyed as heck. The tedious process with taming has been well documented but...

I got lucky I suppose; I used a couple tactics I thought might help and my 1st tame was a Timber Wolf on the 3rd try.
Blah blah blah: Then tonight....I happened to die...Having previously dismissed said pet....when I res'd the damned wolf was gone.
Now I may not agree with the 60 seconds or w/e it is (60 seconds is like insane) to res a pet if IT dies on you but wth is up with losing an un-summoned pet?

I try to keep my complaining down to a dull roar...I fly the Pre-Alpha flag often and long but this is pretty bad.

idk....I"m not racing off to waste time with it at the moment... as somebody else mentioned elsewhere...at some point one must have (just a little?) fun!

I'm just not seeing the reward for all the effort at the moment.

 

I agree Solazur.

After the hangout yesterday Chris hung around in chat awhile answering questions. He said we would 'see relief soon' regarding the taming collars. So hang in there, perhaps with the new release next week they will put in a fix

 

Encouraging to hear @Sophi. I may break out the few collars I've made and even make some more. I'll wait until it happens though.

 

We were able to bring Chris looking into taming. On the short hand we will see hopefully for R24 a change in the recipe of taming collars and a raise of the rez time to 90 sec instead of 60sec. Furthermore there will be changes on the tamed pets (they should get stronger, the longer we use them) and the taming chances will be adjusted. From the table is the idea to call several animals.

 

Like, call several animals at once?

I think that should be an option, but at a cost (for all summons).

Limits for balance are / can be built in to the system. example:

Summoning a single pet should reduce your Focus pool by 25% or so. 2 pets would be 50% or so. Three would be 75% or so. 4 and you're not using any spells or skills at all. Or something like that. Likewise, non-tamed pets (from the magic schools) should work that way aside from the Undead pets which require a hefty investment alone (roughly 3 times the others). Those should allow multiple summons simply based on their timer and focus cost to summon. This would work well with co-existent tamed pets (of someone wanted to do both) because the Focus costs if each would balance the other quite well I'd imagine.