Taming Nerf

This was something people were testing and reporting on in QA, that people with high taming skills still had really weak pets. Was no one on the Port staff reading the QA forums? If you change a major system and ask people to test in QA, shouldn't someone be looking for that feedback?

And that a tiny brown spider effectively had the same stats as ferocious red spider based on your taming skills. I get scaling the pets based on your skill, but also shouldn't there be a baseline that some creatures are weaker or more powerful than others to create some variety?

As it is, testing in QA means swapping between huge patch downloads, and taking time away from leveling in the persistent world. If people are catching these things in QA ahead of time, but those reports in the QA forum go ignored, then people likely won't see incentive to test in QA at all.

 

Please fix also the tame creature skill which is also linear.

 

Not possible.
Your screenshot is either from having 200 in every skill (trillions of XP required) or this is from some other build that isn't Live.
Please show us a screenshot with that same pet with 50 or even 100 in each taming skill, and then come back and say it's working as intended.
Not cool. This is a massive PR disaster and you're glibly waving it off like it's nothing and we're all "doing it wrong". Very insulting.

 

From my point of view I'm not after a super powered pet that kills everything. Even before this release my ferocious spider wasn't the main damage dealer in a fight it was me, and by the time it got involved the target was generally dead and the spider of limited assistance. Personally I'm just after mine being able to take a bit of damage and not die on me in a few seconds and be nice to take out with me for the duration of the game. Maybe if you wanted the pet to be a main damage dealer then a lot more points need to be allocated to various skills as it will be an advantage for the player, but for others who just want a slightly helpful companion with them they would only need to train up say defensive skills for.

Also, different pets should have differing advantages.
I already think the wolves attack with less damage but more often so are useful for setting on an archer or mage for interrupts, where a bear hits less often but with more damage and better suited to melee targets. Maybe have a spider type as more damage but more fragile, especially to fire and melee. Having pets with differing abilities/strengths even if small would help make not having one pet to rule them all scenario.

 

I agree with most here @Chris , your spider looks nice, but what levels are your taming skills at? I expect as a fledgling tamer, that my spider should be pretty decent at GM levels.. what are the spider's health levels at with 100 summoning and combat training? Anything higher is nice to see, but please use 100 as the level to show us things.. I HOPE your screenshot was not maxed out skills, because who is gonna do that?

 

Sorry Chris this just is'nt true for me.

My Skills are 79 Taming, 67 Summoning, 73 Combat training (+7 Pet Level) 70 Concentration.

The Obsidian Wolf I tamed myself with some effort (6% Chance to Tame) just prior to Release had 380 Hp for a Focus Drain of -70. With 540 Points invested into the taming skill tree at this point, this is a fair amount, considering Summoned elementals have 200+ Hp.

Following the Release, the HP Of the Obsidian Wolf was down to 129 HP for a Focus Drain of 104. I then summoned a Elder Wolf, (280 HP prior to release) this also had a HP of 129 for 104 Focus Drain.

For me, with all the Sacrifices a tamer has to make to use a Pet - 540 Skill points invested into the skill tree, Pet death, Sacrifice of a Necklace Slot and the requirement of high level resources to train the taming skill for no Adventure XP, for me makes the whole taming profession useless at the moment...considering I can just spend a little time grinding up a Mage skill like Fire and training the Fire elemental Summon which comes with Higher HP, higher damage, no pet death, and a low resource cost.

I expected having to raise Summoning to around my taming level to be make my pet viable again, and have been grinding up Summoning since I heard of the changes, however even the Pet I can tame quite easily (Elder Wolf) and of which I should have high enough Summoning to use has had its HP reduced by over half and Focus drain increased by 50%.....

 

I really try NOT to be a negative Nancy here but Chris, get out of god mode.... play the game.... you will learn what you need to fix by playing the game. Now making gold is next to impossible with the new system of loot tables. I just spent time in a 5 skull and killing things (without my pet) and still only receive (broken shoddy short bows) well that may get me all of 10 gold from a 5 skull...I might as well go to a 2 skull or 1 skull and receive that loot table. Where is the incentive to play a 5 skull besides exp?

When people who work for a company and don't utilize what the product their company makes proves they do not believe in their product enough. This has been proven by PORT as well. No way would someone who plays the roll of a tamer and be a DEV at PORT would just now be noticing a "flaw" in the release of this new patch that screwed over taming. Sounds like PORT is getting some negative results that will cause them to loose out on money and new people coming into the game and are just now addressing this issue.

 

Let's hope it get's to be something more reasonable. Fwiw btw, perhaps you should delete the post showing the "potential" of a FRS... as it stand that pic was rather dismissive imo and, frankly.. given the amount of time I see you devote to making yourself accessible.. answering questions etc it (the dismissive tone) isn't up to the standard we have come to expect.

 

i disagree there, there were several games already going a similar way, for example: starwars galaxies.
ive been tamer + bio engineer, no other weapon skill at all.
They did exactly the same: Ignoring the people that exploited the tree, and instead killed the tree itself, killing my playstyle completly.
(oh btw... those people with maxed out weapon skills dont need long to find a replacment, which will start the "balancing" circle, that rarely ever stops)

i wasnt in the game that long, but luckily, taming was not available for me, so i went to archery first.
Farmed in graff mines for the last week inside (up to the skeletons) and outside to buy taming necklaces (now compare the cost of necklaces to the cost of arrows - or non at all for other professions).
This wednesday, i saw an obsidian wolf, bought it, and liked it.
yes, it could solo the mobs even 2 at a time (i could do that too)
and (in my opinion), it should be able to.
Adds were still happening alot at times, and i simply like the sit back, heal/buff and in general controll the fight.
pull that other add on me, assist once everything is under control.
With the focus cost of an active pet, there were times i simply died because i ran out of focus. Thats awesome, and thats another thing the tamers have to look out for.
Same as agro management. Its a playstyle of its own.
(You dont like it, dont use it - i dont like heavy armor, so i just dont use it. Let other people play their Palading of Virtue. Im happy meeting them.
They can tell stories of how they struck down that evil lich, while i can tell stories of how my wolf tore apart that huge bear. )

A tamed creature shouldnt get weaker through taming, it should become stronger with increasing skill level(or its own level at some point). But it should start from the natural powerlevel or close to it.
I would love it, if i had to get my skill up to call it out - 60 to 70 summoning - similar to my archery tree, which lets me farm there with ease already(barely have the first 2 rows at 40 in archery).
Considering how easy it was to level archery, and how painfull it is to level the taming tree, i dont see what the whole nerf is supposed to tell the tamers?
while the first solution would have been pretty easy, as stated several times: skill requirements, let tamers be tamers and restricts access to non-tamers.
What if the Whistle would be no longer neck slot, but instead as a hand slot? Or wear down with use? Just like other equipment does. Repair or get a new one after a while.
A horse trained to run fast, will always run faster then one trained to pull weights. Different breeds give boni to that - its not something that gets into a game overnight, but killing one part of the game without touching the root of the problem wount help. People will just find a replacement to improve their gameplay - which then gets the same kind of "balancing"?

If someone levels both trees: all the power to them. Just like someone with plate armor, swords, and sublety etc. trees. They spent tons of time and exp (and even more money as in taming) on them: let them have the rewards.
Finetuning can be done later - but for now, there wount be much feedback to actually fine tune taming, if 50% drop the profession and the other 50% cannot use it anymore.

if the devs realy want one of the most difficult to level trees to be only "cosmetical" - no problem.
i just dont want to believe that yet.

What realy worries me about all this: Test server players reported this issue.
And still, the devs rolled out the patch as it was.
A more then awesome community with a dev team that (from what i thought) listens to their players.
Understandable, there has to be balancing - but changes THAT grave...?

Several games with great ideas already died due to"ignoring reported problems and stealth nerfs" happening too much, thats what can easily divide the best community too (as it happens in this discussion already.)

one part of me still hopes, - as stated earlier - that it was just a small error with huge impact, and that it might be hotfixed.
Ill wait for that.

Thanks for Reading,
Michel Waylander, Ranger and Beastmaster at heart.

 

Are we supposed to train up Obedience to get the HP boost now?

 

They could probably do this if the pets are bound to the tamer. The problem is buying a pet can be the same as paying for power leveling. Have to pick one.

 

*claps* *claps* *claps**claps* *claps* *claps**claps* *claps* *claps**claps* *claps* *claps*

And don't make us wait till the next patch to fix PORT's error that effects us in game so negatively. Would greatly hinder game play. If we have to wait that long I will go back and play UO where I can use a dragon efficiently.

 

Honestly the fact that so many people A. went out and tried to game the system to over 100 taming before R33 ignoring almost everything else and B. that SO MANY players are coming and complaining about taming shows just how out of wack the whole taming thing was. Personally I feel like the players who spent all that time on taming pre R33 knew what they were getting into knew the waters were muddy but dove in full speed anyways in hopes of getting to really high taming skills thinking the nerf would be in gaining the skill points not in the pets themselves. The reason most of you are upset is because you tried to game the system spending all your time on taming and turns out that was a pretty bad idea. It was a valiant effort at gaming the system early on but fell on its face. This is what happens when you speculate on stuff like this sometimes you pay the price. Get over it and move on you knew the risks of what you were doing live with the results. There are plenty of other viable options in this game WITHOUT taming being one of them for at least the short term foreseeable future.

 

Do those peoplr who were encouraged to delete taming (the free book) get thier skills restored ?

 

I think the only frusterating thing here is there was a detail constructive qa thread that detailed all this before live. Is it safe to assume qa feedback is a waste of time?

 

@EtherBunny "I thought we were friends.... Meh, I'm in Alabama. Here, you either get the Bud Lite, Coors Lite, (sadly) Natty Lite and Yuengling drinkers. I upgraded form the Coors line and found my home with Yuengling."

Since that other thread got closed, I figured I'd answer your reply here in the thread it got redirected to...

I would definitely take Yuengling over any of those other beers. I don't dislike Yuengling, it's just not one of my top picks. I'm more of an IPA fan. Dogfishead 90 Minute IPA is my favorite so far.

 

Most here were upset but polite with. There were a few recent ones not, but that's the internet and the world. On a positive note though it is great to see so many people passionate about the game. If big changes don't get a lot of us upset then the game isn't in a good way, thus glad to see the rage on this topic. Its a difficult job balancing all this for sure and I'm sure there will be lots anger over the years! just take heart that's it because we all love the general game and are all enjoying it.

 

Technically speaking, Yuengling is my 2nd favorite. My personal is Asahi, a Japanese beer. I can only find it in 2 places, 1 of which seldom has it in stock, the other is a restaurant.

 

I applaud DEVS for having us not wait for the changes... but will it fix the problem? who knows, but I will wait to see the changes before I speculate.