Taming Nerf

There missing the point here, people love to tame- gotta catch em all, oh wait wrong game..

Uo had the best taming ever, and it was a blast ok it was op but coulda been ballanced. this was the laziest approach to ballancing a poor initial design possible, some people loved to do it and the grind wasnt so bad because it was worth doing, you saw a pay out for your time. Currently there is only really a slap in your face approach. Reminds me when the whole cloaks have armor cant wings have armor thing came uo on the telethon the first thing they thought of was to nerf cloaks. How about finding a fun aproach to accomplish what you want.

We all know taming was implimented poorly, doing a poor fix isnt gonna make the game more enjoyable. Id suggest look at taking a fun thing and make it funner while also ballancing it to meet your objectives.

 

Some data points for people to analyze and draw their conclusions:

#1. I am not going to get into discussion on how level affects tames, as most people just prefer raw HP/focus stats. But suffice to say, you could give a level 20 pet 500 hp, and it will still suck more than a level 60 pet with 200. And the LEVEL of the pets has been reduced drastically. For those who use the HUD, go look at your pet's miss rate now. This is the bigger issue, but it's harder to convey simply.

#2. As long as a player's maximum summon level is less than the tamed pet's max, the pet is reduced to that level and stats adjusted accordingly. It does less damage, hits less, gets hit more, etc.

#3. Because level is reduced, some pets are now identical. For example, unless you are higher than GM in both summoning and combat taming, a large red spider is equal to a ferocious red spider. This is my personal primary complaint, as taming above 40 is now worthless, as everyone can get a large red spider and be at "max" effectiveness until they get over 130~ summoning skill. Pet max levels should have been adjusted down for this change.

#4. This does however restore balance, as a lot more pets are "Viable" now. I personally suggest trying out an obsidian stag if you haven't before and see how different they play.

#5. Some interesting data points for you all, courtesy of many players in the r33 QA server, who worked to compile data and propose changes, although sadly not a single change was detectably made to this from when R33 launched on QA until it went live. This looks to be the exact same formulas despite a week of feedback. We tried.

I will be giving data in terms of spiders since that's what most people are used to:
Data provided as:
Summoning skill level/CombatTraining level|||SpiderHp/SpiderFocus
94/63 ||| 186/295
76/84 ||| 157/267
59/84 ||| 127
53/60 ||| 111/217
44/72 ||| 98/202
41/39 ||| 86/188

Or to phrase another way. At near GM skills, with ~4 million exp invested, your pet will die in 2 hits to a pvper with chain lightning. And will die in 5-6 hits to a greymark archer, and 2 hits in the rise, which is one of the places people farm at gm... Also remember if you don't res it (which costs reags) it disappears for good and costs more resources to get another one (minimum 1 silver ingot and some straps and 0.5 metal ingot). I personally recommend everyone pick a mage pet they like and use that for the next release.

In the meantime, us tamers have been graciously asked to either be useless for at least a release, or give up at least 2 million experience to reclaim our exp, and spend money on buying a second skill relearn book since they only give us one but taming requires 2 skills(collar recovery + taming). Which is kind of basic knowledge the devs should have known....


I have more complete, but this should give you a rough idea of how progression works.

 

I am writing is to share something my daughter said to me last night. She is playing WoW and she was bragging how her pet one shots everything and she just follows it around collecting the loot. I found the timing ironic, and it made me think about the perspective. While we fuss over balance to prevent unfair advantages, in most other games it is "just the way it is". Still, there is no harm in having hope for a balanced game as long as we are nice to each other and don't let ourselves become unhappy by getting all stressed out.

I am more concerned that somewhere down the line all pets will be made equal. I hope that does not happen. Some pets should be better than others and those pets should be very challenging and rare to catch. Just because that is the definition of fun. If all pets are equal, it will be just a boring fashion show.

It's only natural for everyone to care because this is the game we are making together.

 

Exactly Umuri Taming is useless unless you have 200 in both skill
Pet are no longer are weapon just something that follow you

 

New National sport... Faceplant from a 3 story house to raise summon pet

 

Maybe I'm daft, but I can't wrap my head around why you say this? You said too, taming level increases the HP (and overall power I imagine) better than Combat Training.. I know you need both, but leaving taming at 40 would be bad, no?

 

IMHO Taming is useless until you have 3 GM skill in the tree
Any other tree you can do something withou being gm

 

Unless you think the untamed creatures are overpowered, the tamed ones aren't either. The problem was who had them and how many there were. Given proper balance, they're right where they should be (or were)

 

Taming doesn't increase hp.
Taming has NO EFFECT on pet strength when using it.
That's summoning.
Taming just affects what you can tame.
Right now, no matter what you tame, it has its level (and stats) reduced to whatever your max pet level is (which is raised via raising summoning + combat training).

Taming just lets you get pets with a higher max well, if you have the other skills to reach it.
But right now the large red is so high, that even at gm skills people aren't maxing it out.

 

Derp.. yeah I'm daft getting words/skills mixed up. Thanks for the explanation! And now I 'get it' that's gotta change, it's worse than I understood.

 

I dont think the issue is this at all. The issues is when you sell that to a guy who is adv lvl 5 and he takes it into an area and it just utterly owns everything and gets them bucket loads of free exp.

 

Let Richard Garriott play a mid-Level Tamer for 1 hour and ask him about his opinion on the recent changes.
I bet his answer is something like "It's frelled up!".

 

Angry I raised safegall now

 

They should NEVER be your primary "weapon" Pets would be more like a companion, not something you set back and just watch and collect the loot after it does the work for you. I was a tamer in UO, and once you got to the level of taming Dragons and such, you were pretty much set. My ideal pet would be a companion, something you get fond of, and when you fight it fights along side of you. Kind of like a damage over time thing.
Of course this is just MY opinion.

 

Everyone agrees this was a issue, that ones been fixed now there are atleast 10 on the other side of the spectrum.

 

I'm tellin ya! Lets just bring back cock fighting!! Everyone should be able to tame and get a chicken to max stats!!

 

Its true, though when u spend a month 12-16hrs a day into a skill tree and it lasts the first second of every fight thats an issue as well.

 

*whisperwhisperwhisperCHICKENSwhisperwhisperCOCKFIGHTING* . . . .

 

I disagree. With enough training one should be able to have a pet as their primary weapon. Why not?

 

PETA??