Are Pet Classes getting Phased out of Modern MMORPGs?

Dattelis

It feels like more mmorpgs that have came out within the last decade or so have been straying away from having actual pet classes (or at least classes with a permanent pet) similar to WoW's warlock/hunter or even ESO's sorc (if you go that build).

I mainly started thinking this after doing more research on Lost Ark's next 'class' coming in December, the Summoner, and realized it really just 'summons' stuff to do skills, but doesn't really have a permanent pet (which is kind of common to have at least one pet build in an ARPG style game).

This reminded me that FFXIV kind of completely gave up on a 'true' pet system after they made every single combat pet in XIV untargetable, so summoner just kind of summons stuff and then is 'infused' with the power of the summon for a bit (outside of having phoenix/bahamut, doing stuff on their own for like 20 seconds). To be fair to Yoshida and FFXIV, he admitted that he hated designing pet AI, so its kind of inevitable for pets to end up the way they have in that game.

I'm pretty sure New World doesn't have a pet 'build' or plans to introduced 'taming.' Elyon doesn't matter what it had since its shutting down (though I dont think it ever did have them and Mystic was kind of horrible in Tera anyway, so I dont think they could've made a good pet class either way). I think Bless Unleashed has pet taming but I'm not sure if that's just for mounting or combat as well, plus console version is getting shut down (pc will inevitably happen as well). BDO only has the tamer but I dont think many people play it because the pet kind of becomes useless later on. Blade and Soul only has the summoner which is a cat and only one race can play it. It plays well enough I guess but honestly it just feels like its there for NCSoft to sell extra cosmetics for it.

I'm sure there's some 'more modern' released mmorpgs I've missed but it feels like over the years pet classes have either been designed (personally) gimped or just outright omitted from games. What are your guys' thoughts on pet classes in recent mmorpgs (probably within 10 years) and if you care about that type of class at all?

Amaranthar

Just the other day I had the same thought. I haven't played anything in years, but I realized that there's no talk about the old fashioned Tamer. 

I loved Taming and the means to control them through spoken commands in UO. I played some (Hunter?) in WoW and thought they had some good ideas there, especially when you could play the pet yourself. That's something I think <Mages should be able to do with Familiars, too. 

Taming does seem like a very interesting "class", and does seem to be very lacking. 

Note: I think Mage Familiars had always been very underwhelming in their deigns, too. 

Amaranthar

Also, I liked "training up" pets in UO. They had limited growth capability, by use, similar to Player Characters with Skills. Only just in HPs and Damage, maybe attack chance too. 

Quizzical

In Astella, every class was a pet class.  Too bad it shut down.

Dattelis

Quizzical said:

In Astella, every class was a pet class.  Too bad it shut down.

Yeah, if the game's engine and monetization was better, it might've lasted longer.

Quizzical

Dattelis said:

Quizzical said:

In Astella, every class was a pet class.  Too bad it shut down.

Yeah, if the game's engine and monetization was better, it might've lasted longer.

If you're so upset about a choice between buy to play or a subscription (that's "or", not "and"), then what exactly is your idea of good monetization?

Theocritus

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Amaranthar

One of the things I'd like to see with Taming is a wide variety of abilities with the Pets. 
Beyond the regular combat attacks, and based on the pet type...
- Stealth and Backstab
- Poison, paralytic or damage 
- Distraction
- "Hold/Grapple/Web/Entangle"
There's a lot that could be done there. 

cheyane

Changed my mind about this post

Lithuanian

Lotro has Loremaster. And this class uses pet heavily: ranged attack, melee etc.

Captain has...human pet. Herald, that can perform certain roles.

Age of Conan had some Necromancer that could summon an undead army. Not sure if this count as pets.

Amaranthar

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Why was that? I didn't play WoW enough to realize this. 

Amaranthar

One thing about Pets is that they can easily make the Tamer overpowered. 

Dattelis

Amaranthar said:

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Why was that? I didn't play WoW enough to realize this. 

Probably the number one reason is poor pet pathing in wow. There's many dungeons that people may want to skip certain packs of mobs or take shortcuts and pets usually navigate throughout the 'structured' path in order to reach the owner which tends to bring a lot of aggro, so people usually ask hunters/warlocks to dismiss their pets before going forward until they fight. The second lesser reason is that hunter pets tend to taunt to alot if the owners aren't manually toggling it off.

DigDuggy

I don't play enough of them to know.  The ones I have played have all had pet classes.

Amaranthar

Dattelis said:

Amaranthar said:

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Why was that? I didn't play WoW enough to realize this. 

Probably the number one reason is poor pet pathing in wow. There's many dungeons that people may want to skip certain packs of mobs or take shortcuts and pets usually navigate throughout the 'structured' path in order to reach the owner which tends to bring a lot of aggro, so people usually ask hunters/warlocks to dismiss their pets before going forward until they fight. The second lesser reason is that hunter pets tend to taunt to alot if the owners aren't manually toggling it off.

The aggro thing sounds to me like players were doing it wrong. 
Didn't Tamers stay behind so that their pets would not extend their location towards other MOBs? 
I mean, it seems to me that there should be a way to handle them to prevent problems like that. 
So, was it the players or the game? 

Dattelis

Amaranthar said:

Dattelis said:

Amaranthar said:

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Why was that? I didn't play WoW enough to realize this. 

Probably the number one reason is poor pet pathing in wow. There's many dungeons that people may want to skip certain packs of mobs or take shortcuts and pets usually navigate throughout the 'structured' path in order to reach the owner which tends to bring a lot of aggro, so people usually ask hunters/warlocks to dismiss their pets before going forward until they fight. The second lesser reason is that hunter pets tend to taunt to alot if the owners aren't manually toggling it off.

The aggro thing sounds to me like players were doing it wrong. 
Didn't Tamers stay behind so that their pets would not extend their location towards other MOBs? 
I mean, it seems to me that there should be a way to handle them to prevent problems like that. 
So, was it the players or the game? 

How pets work in wow is that they aggro mobs passively just like players do, so if they run infront of an aggressive type mob, it will start to attack. Couple that with pets pathing following a 'specific route' to reach a player when depending on terrain elevation. So if a play were to jump from a cliff to skip running around, the mob will run around to reach the player instead of going down the cliff. I think Blizzard did ultimately make it to where the pet disappears if they get too far from the owner but if they'd aggro'd stuff before then, the aggro will directed at the owner. Now one can interpret it as a player problem depending on how you see it. A) its the owners fault for not dismissing the pet before going down the cliff and/or could be the group's 'fault' for wanting to skip a pack and not educating the pet owner that was the plan. Pet pathing is still pretty bad in wow to this day but they do have some safeguards, like more pets have a 'stealth' and lower aggro detection range, etc, but it still comes down to personal accountability.

Amaranthar

Dattelis said:

Amaranthar said:

Dattelis said:

Amaranthar said:

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Why was that? I didn't play WoW enough to realize this. 

Probably the number one reason is poor pet pathing in wow. There's many dungeons that people may want to skip certain packs of mobs or take shortcuts and pets usually navigate throughout the 'structured' path in order to reach the owner which tends to bring a lot of aggro, so people usually ask hunters/warlocks to dismiss their pets before going forward until they fight. The second lesser reason is that hunter pets tend to taunt to alot if the owners aren't manually toggling it off.

The aggro thing sounds to me like players were doing it wrong. 
Didn't Tamers stay behind so that their pets would not extend their location towards other MOBs? 
I mean, it seems to me that there should be a way to handle them to prevent problems like that. 
So, was it the players or the game? 

How pets work in wow is that they aggro mobs passively just like players do, so if they run infront of an aggressive type mob, it will start to attack. Couple that with pets pathing following a 'specific route' to reach a player when depending on terrain elevation. So if a play were to jump from a cliff to skip running around, the mob will run around to reach the player instead of going down the cliff. I think Blizzard did ultimately make it to where the pet disappears if they get too far from the owner but if they'd aggro'd stuff before then, the aggro will directed at the owner. Now one can interpret it as a player problem depending on how you see it. A) its the owners fault for not dismissing the pet before going down the cliff and/or could be the group's 'fault' for wanting to skip a pack and not educating the pet owner that was the plan. Pet pathing is still pretty bad in wow to this day but they do have some safeguards, like more pets have a 'stealth' and lower aggro detection range, etc, but it still comes down to personal accountability.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. 
It seems to me that Guilds, where players know and talk to each other, and can get such problems ironed out, and continue to play together, would be a huge benefit here. 

I also think that Pet specialties as I mentioned earlier in this thread could be a huge benefit to a group. A game design that works with that and polishes it up is what I'd like to see. 
But these days, from everything I hear, Players want to speed rush through content. That's not really fun game play, to me. And it takes away from tactical choices and planning-on-the-fly. Which is a lot more fun than just the basic hack and slash. 

cheyane

Theocritus said:

I remember in WoW whenever I took a Hunter into a dungeon players threw a fit if I used a pet.

Not to knock other games but when I first played WoW I thought they had a fabulous way of introducing the taming steps and finally the long arduous task of gaining loyalty. That is no longer the case with the pet becoming the best friend at break neck speed. What a waste of design where playing and building a relationship with the pet actually meant something.

I never had the guts to take my hunter into a dungeon after reading and listening to the horror stories and laments about hunters I was scared of adding my own mistakes to the tales. Pity really as I always adored the class to bits.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

cameltosis

I've never been a fan of pet classes admittedly. I did have an endgame loremaster in LotRO but the pets were rubbish, in any sort of group content they'd just get killed by AoE too quickly and the pathing always sucked.

It also bothered me that pet classes are usually balanced around having a pet summoned.....so if you love the class but hate the pets, you'll be playing gimped if you don't use them.

I have the same issues with companions of any sort too. Its one of the reasons I really dislike Bioware's games: virtually all of them give you companions at some point, and they always suck! They can't path where you want, they attack the wrong targets, they don't use their skills anywhere near the frequency they should......and they usually have irritating personalities. I ended up playing the majority of SWTOR without a companion summoned for that very reason, they just pissed me off too much.

Amaranthar

cameltosis said:

I've never been a fan of pet classes admittedly. I did have an endgame loremaster in LotRO but the pets were rubbish, in any sort of group content they'd just get killed by AoE too quickly and the pathing always sucked.

It also bothered me that pet classes are usually balanced around having a pet summoned.....so if you love the class but hate the pets, you'll be playing gimped if you don't use them.

I have the same issues with companions of any sort too. Its one of the reasons I really dislike Bioware's games: virtually all of them give you companions at some point, and they always suck! They can't path where you want, they attack the wrong targets, they don't use their skills anywhere near the frequency they should......and they usually have irritating personalities. I ended up playing the majority of SWTOR without a companion summoned for that very reason, they just pissed me off too much.

My dog thinks yer hard to get along with. He just named his bone "cameltosis." 

Amaranthar

cameltosis said:

I've never been a fan of pet classes admittedly. I did have an endgame loremaster in LotRO but the pets were rubbish, in any sort of group content they'd just get killed by AoE too quickly and the pathing always sucked.

It also bothered me that pet classes are usually balanced around having a pet summoned.....so if you love the class but hate the pets, you'll be playing gimped if you don't use them.

I have the same issues with companions of any sort too. Its one of the reasons I really dislike Bioware's games: virtually all of them give you companions at some point, and they always suck! They can't path where you want, they attack the wrong targets, they don't use their skills anywhere near the frequency they should......and they usually have irritating personalities. I ended up playing the majority of SWTOR without a companion summoned for that very reason, they just pissed me off too much.

Yeah, pets are hard to balance. 
I think there are possible solutions, but I suspect none of them would make Tamer players happy. I think it's worth exploring, though. 

Mendel

Amaranthar said:

One thing about Pets is that they can easily make the Tamer overpowered. 

I suspect that balancing is one reason games are moving away from the idea of a controlled pet.  In many cases where the balance wasn't maintained, pets could (and did) outperform many player classes.  Even in the earlier days of EQ1 and UO, the likelihood of overpowered pets was present.  The problem is simple really: having 1 player control 2 (or more) avatars wrecks havoc in a game, disrupting progression rates and causing player jealousy.

So, to correct a design imbalance and lack of developmental self-discipline, games appear to be moving away from the pet classes.  It's a case of fixing a problem by omitting the thing causing the problem.

Dattelis

Mendel said:

Amaranthar said:

One thing about Pets is that they can easily make the Tamer overpowered. 

I suspect that balancing is one reason games are moving away from the idea of a controlled pet.  In many cases where the balance wasn't maintained, pets could (and did) outperform many player classes.  Even in the earlier days of EQ1 and UO, the likelihood of overpowered pets was present.  The problem is simple really: having 1 player control 2 (or more) avatars wrecks havoc in a game, disrupting progression rates and causing player jealousy.

So, to correct a design imbalance and lack of developmental self-discipline, games appear to be moving away from the pet classes.  It's a case of fixing a problem by omitting the thing causing the problem.

This is what makes me sad. 'Fun' and uniqueness is usually sacrificed for 'progression rates.' The funny thing about progression rates is that only a handful of people take it seriously compared the entire game's population. Thinking about how enraged people were at how 'overtuned' Saragares was in Legion or even more recent, the whole P8S drama in FFXIV, simply because either the classes/jobs people wanted to play were 'underperforming' for a 'world-first clear' and would've easily been forgotten about if they cleared it the next week due to more gear coming in. I do think some people are right that the 'higher-end' does impact the game, just not in the way they are thinking about. I miss the days when the latest content just wasn't cleared because more gear was needed (like the dinosaur island in MoP if anyone remembers that), but now that's just seen as lazy game design.

cheyane

Dattelis said:

Mendel said:

Amaranthar said:

One thing about Pets is that they can easily make the Tamer overpowered. 

I suspect that balancing is one reason games are moving away from the idea of a controlled pet.  In many cases where the balance wasn't maintained, pets could (and did) outperform many player classes.  Even in the earlier days of EQ1 and UO, the likelihood of overpowered pets was present.  The problem is simple really: having 1 player control 2 (or more) avatars wrecks havoc in a game, disrupting progression rates and causing player jealousy.

So, to correct a design imbalance and lack of developmental self-discipline, games appear to be moving away from the pet classes.  It's a case of fixing a problem by omitting the thing causing the problem.

This is what makes me sad. 'Fun' and uniqueness is usually sacrificed for 'progression rates.' The funny thing about progression rates is that only a handful of people take it seriously compared the entire game's population. Thinking about how enraged people were at how 'overtuned' Saragares was in Legion or even more recent, the whole P8S drama in FFXIV, simply because either the classes/jobs people wanted to play were 'underperforming' for a 'world-first clear' and would've easily been forgotten about if they cleared it the next week due to more gear coming in. I do think some people are right that the 'higher-end' does impact the game, just not in the way they are thinking about. I miss the days when the latest content just wasn't cleared because more gear was needed (like the dinosaur island in MoP if anyone remembers that), but now that's just seen as lazy game design.

This is normal when you're playing with other people. Things they want may not be what you want and what is popular may be less challenging in the end. That is why if you want things that are unique and more challenging single player games are the way to go.

These MMORPGs have evolved in many ways that are a devolution rather than an evolution. I play the MMORPGs for the people I play with and when they leave or the game has a population that manages to rub me the wrong way there is little to keep me around. I also think that this is the reason people flit from game to game.

I never tried UO because I started with Everquest and that game absorbed me like no other game has done but it was the people I met there that kept me playing it. UO also was PvP then it was before Trammel so that completely turned me off. Over the years I have met other people in other games but never as long as I had played Everquest.

The current MMORPGs that action based don't interest me so I often go back to older MMORPGs and if I meet people there I stay a little while and enjoy the game for a few months. I rotate now between games as that seems to keep my interest best.

Amaranthar

Mendel said:

Amaranthar said:

One thing about Pets is that they can easily make the Tamer overpowered. 

I suspect that balancing is one reason games are moving away from the idea of a controlled pet.  In many cases where the balance wasn't maintained, pets could (and did) outperform many player classes.  Even in the earlier days of EQ1 and UO, the likelihood of overpowered pets was present.  The problem is simple really: having 1 player control 2 (or more) avatars wrecks havoc in a game, disrupting progression rates and causing player jealousy.

So, to correct a design imbalance and lack of developmental self-discipline, games appear to be moving away from the pet classes.  It's a case of fixing a problem by omitting the thing causing the problem.

I think the key is to limit Pets to what other players can do with Special Attacks and Spells, etc. Things the Tamer has to give up in order to be a Tamer. 
But therein lies the rub. Players want too much in the manner of the Fantasy Hero.