Hello!
First of all I want to mention that I was motivated to make this suggestion by a user expressing their difficulties with the pet system.
I want to start off by providing context, I have saved my suggestions for the end.
Why do users want pets?
They provide various benefits to support combat (examples)
- Goblin Leader - Increases damage to Demi-Human monsters by 3%
- Incubus - Max SP +5%, May leech 1% of the damage as SP
- Marionette - May activate (Neutral Resistance +20, 100 HP Regen/2 sec) for 3 seconds when physically attacked
- Nightmare Terror - Sleep Resistance +100%
- Scatleton - Increases the recovery rate of Fresh Fish by 100%
- Succubus - May leech 5% of the damage as HP
- Tikbalang - Damage to Bakonawa, Bangungot, and Buwaya +10%
They want to compliment their aesthetic with cute monsters (they look cute, examples)
They have a favorite monster that they want to be able to see while they play
- I don't have much to add here. Personally my favorite monster is Moonlight Flower / Cat O' Ninetails.
As it is right now, this is how pets work
- Hunger rate for every pet is different
- Each feeding will increase pet's hunger level by 20
- Each feeding will decrease pet's intimacy by 100 when overfed
- A pet’s intimacy decreases by 20 points when its owner dies
- If a pet is starving, its intimacy decreases by 20 every 20 seconds
- Intimacy doesn't decrease when a pet is returned to its egg
A pet is given a random number of intimacy points between 100 and 399 when it's first hatched. The higher level the pet is, the less intimacy it will begin with. Feeding a pet increases its intimacy relative to its level and hunger; higher level pets get less intimacy per feeding, and vice versa.
What isn't working.
1) Hunger rate and starvation are massive deterrents to utilizing the content. Its no surprise that users in RO like to afk in town with their friends. If you have a loyal pet and afk for 15 minutes, it will run away. If you don't have a loyal pet and forget to put it in the egg, it might run away in the time it takes you to go to the bathroom.
2) Dying affecting loyalty deters players from using pets in combat situations, which is their primary use case. Losing 20 loyalty might not seem like a big deal, but if you have a high level pet, it can take several feeds (in optimal feeding range) to regain that lost intimacy. Put simply, by dying, players might lose 30 minutes to 1 hour of feeding their pet.
3) There is too much babysitting. In order to keep a pet functioning you need to constantly be focusing on the pet's emotes and dialogues to let you know when to feed it. This distracts from the actual game. Personally, when I level I am trying to dispatch as many monsters as possible in the shortest amount of time. I don't want to pause every 2 minutes to feed a pet.
4) Catalyst items are the bane of player's existence. I don't think anyone wants to carry around more junk in their inventory than they have to. Pets require incubators and food (lots of it). Nobody likes when skills require this, gemstones, elemental stones, points, bullets, arrows, cannonballs, fuel, paint, paintbrushes, throat lozenge, acid bottles, thorn seeds, blood suckers, flower pots, (and I'm sure many others). Its really annoying to restock on basic stuff like that and weigh down your character with catalysts.
Opportunities to improve & incentive to do so.
1) Removing hunger and feeding will be a tremendous step toward a useful and accessible pet system. Players will be able to idle in town without fear of losing their pet. By now, I don't think it will shock any executives to find out that players like to afk in town and look cute. Having a cute pet is something players can get to improve their experience while hanging out in town. A lot of people like to roleplay, and a pet follower can unlock more scenarios for the imagination to explore. Removing hunger and feeding will also resolve the problems with unwanted catalyst items in inventory. I do not think "Pet Hunger Bars" is a real solution to this problem. It is equally tedious and doesn't address all of the other problems listed above.
2) Remove harsh combat penalties for dying while using a pet. It doesn't make sense that a pet would become less loyal to you because you died. If you die, just let the pet stand there and do /sob or something. Dying sets players back hours of idle feeding which can be very discouraging to use the pet at all. Very few people desire to be stressed out by babysitting every 2-3 minutes over a few small % of leech or damage reduction, as there are very few use-cases where it is even remotely necessary. Pets are a luxury buff, much like shadow gear. They don't make the biggest difference but they are nice to have. If shadow gear required maintenance, I wouldn't use that either. Maintenance =/= Gameplay.
3) Pets can have some pretty cool effects (see examples above). Much like shadow gear, these pets can further expand the potential of players to succeed in combat or hunting situations. Think of pets like a piece of gear. If Gravity can make the pet system more accessible, they can launch new; stronger pets that will really open up the possibilities for players. For example, the Faceworm Egg Shell [1] gives 50% more damage and 50% reduction to monsters in the Faceworm Instance. What if you could tame a Faceworm monster from the instance that also granted an additional 10% damage or 10% reduction?
4) Keep loyalty, but make pets more loyal based on how much you use them. For example, your pet could gain 1 loyalty per hour of being used. Then you could tack on cool thresholds (similar to +9 requirements) where at different intimacy levels, the pet's passive gets stronger.
5) More products to sell. Nobody wants to pay $20 and get pet tames, then have your pet run away for some frustratingly annoying reason. Take away the risk of loss, throw on some luxury benefits and some cute pet costumes and suddenly you have a solid offering to include in boxes. These pets can be the latest thing to push builds to the next level.
If you made it this far, THANK YOU FOR READING!! My goal is to fully outline the situation so that WP will have something they can point to as an example as to why this change can be hugely beneficial both for their business and their customers. If you have any thoughts on the pet system (aside from 'its never gonna happen') please post them so that WP can have more sentiments to share in their meetings.
Edited by Scuba, 09 October 2018 - 03:42 PM.
