Pets - Feral pets to populate the game/help with player retention

[Goliath]

Really well put Lychwood, agree completely.

I only have one thing to add, which is that wandering pets are an absolute smorgasbord for petmasters. It's such a rich-get-richer situation in terms of xp gain and stat gain, and I don't know whether it's a problem that needs solving.

If the Cordilleran pets are made weak enough, I'd suggest them be considered to have a level 9 or 10 master. That way, the XP received by PMs would be rather low.
High level characters would still be able to farm them for pet kill grinds, but low level characters would still stand to gain the most benefit from them.

[BLORTH]

I think a solid addition to the new player experience might be some weak, lower level (decent XP for 1-9) roaming pets in Cord like rats, shambling zombies. Give them the standard poisons/curses or whatever so healing can work and the new player can learn about basic status effects. Give one of these pets an innate soak so that the soak value display is shown in the combat text too. People want to take melee/ranged combat and actually hit something. It could end up that they're over farmed by the t3 players for pets killed grind, but there are better ways to do that too.

Kandarin:
Certain pets can be made exceptions to the pets killed grind, or made only to apply at lower levels

Big Daddy K says it can be done.

[SignedName]

A way to avoid the "overharvesting" problem could be to have these wandering monsters "de-activate" instead of despawn when defeated, but allow them to be freely reactivated by people that haven't killed them yet (and for them to automatically reactivate after X amount of time). Don't know how hard this would be to code but might as well throw out that idea. And it fits in with the malfunctioning security bot angle.

Another, even wackier idea could be for there to be special "training" pocket dimensions where you can spawn pets to fight, maybe even with adjustable difficulty by including multiple enemy options. This would be a simple way to completely avoid the overharvesting problem, though it also runs into the risk of discouraging exploration and hunting in favor of grinding.

[erikune]

Oh hey, I remember a similar suggestion during Breath 4. One of my thoughts then was to make them sort of combat teaching aids for new players, along with being a source of interaction and XP. By that, I mean a few different pets to display some different game mechanics in a (relatively) safe environment.

One pet was the Vulture. This was a flying pet, meaning that players who attempted to melee or punch it would get the typical error message. Perhaps label it "Vulture (Flying)" to help clarify to players. Attacking it would provoke the standard counterattack, although only bows/guns/thrown weapons would provoke. I guess excluding melee players would be a bit harsh, but it feels like it would be too complicated - or seem too arbitrary - to make some mechanics that would force it to the ground. No such mechanics exist against players, after all. I'm not too sure if vultures would fit in with the setting of Cordillera very well, though.

A second, to take from an idea earlier, would be a Cleaning Robot. This would be a pet with soak (perhaps just soak 2) and an aura (perhaps impact 3). I'm not sure if I'd even give this one an attack. Just let it be passive and have players deal with the aura damage in such a fight. The aura can help be mitigated by finding some armor and wearing it, while the soak can show players how soak works with a small enough number to be overcome.

Another one, from earlier, would be Rats. These would be the weakest, although their bite could inflict Minor Poison on a hit. This gives players a fight that doesn't require ranged attacks or dealing with an aura, although it does make them look into healing and perhaps the importance of keeping a FAK or two on hand.

As for stats, make them fairly weak (around 10HP) and fairly "low level" (the Lv.1-9 range) giving 5XP. That should avoid some of the high-level farming potential. At those stats, a character would be getting 1XP for the damage and 0XP for the kill. Perhaps only allow players in the Lv.1-9 range to get pet kills from them as well; no Elder Power is impressed by the grand Wizard using Flame Bolt to kill a rat or two.


The other aspect I'd consider is the pet behavior. Including the pets would be nice, but having them do specific things would be more interesting. It would add more flavor, it would show off more things to players - and it would give higher level players some reason to pay attention to the pets, besides wiping them out. Vultures would appear around corpses found outside, perhaps always one step away and circling around them every tick. Cleaning Robots would show up on tiles with items that had been dropped - before the item eventually vanishes. It would point players towards something interesting - a corpse or item - and perhaps show off a feature they might not have even realized.

The tricky part is what to do with the Rats. Cordillera doesn't have a sewer system anymore (at least, I don't think it does). I'm not sure that I'd have them spawn inside random houses, since the "pick a random house and hide" is still somewhat effective - if underutilized - and having rats spawn and kill newbies in their sleep is counterproductive. Maybe if they showed up in specific houses, like the multi-square ones like Malls and Warehouses, it would make more sense. The original idea was to have them spawn near sewer entrances to show where they were to players, although I don't know if there's a utility like that for them anymore.

[Kandarin]

There's significant consensus inside devteam that something like this is desirable. Promote.

[Kandarin]

I think we can safely describe NPCs as an implementation of this suggestion.