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[Column] Camelot Unchained: A Pet Class That Isn't a Pet Class
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
How do you make a pet class for a game that is being built for large scale open world pvp battles? As much as I love them (and have loved them since I first dabbled in “Creature Handler” way back in Star Wars galaxies) pets in any game are hard to get right and in a PVP game they can be downright game breaking! When I heard CU was going to have a “pet class” stretch goal my skeptical pager started buzzing!
Read more of Timothy Eisenzimmer's Camelot Unchained: A Pet Class That Isn't a Pet Class.
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Comments
It does seem like the Theurgist class, will have to wait n see XD
yeah looks like , awesome
Tim & MMORPG,
Thanks, for the coverage. I agree with you, I think taking chances is important. It's what we promised people when we started the KS. And it will be, as always, the players that tell us whether we did a great job or not. But no matter what, it is worth the risk.
Mark
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
Glad you enjoyed the Theurgist. Was a fun class. I think we have some fun and different ideas for this class. I hope that our use of portals will be a nice addition to pet classes and frankly, I'm looking forward to playing one of these as my main alt.
As always though, time will tell.
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
Thanks, glad you like it but as per above, we have to put it in the game and prove that they are fun to play and not just to concept and think about.
Mark Jacobs
CEO, City State Entertainment
Theurg is coming! ooooh i love and hate that class at the same time.
looks awesome!
Avid MMO Player
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
My understanding of it is that uses the basic spell system so much as each spell is an object within the world so they interact with the game's A.I.R. system. The spirits are not so much as pets but merely complex and specialized spells. They interact with the world the same as any other spell which all but eliminates typical pet pathing and A.I. issues. The portals situate the origin of where the spirits entered the world thereby eliminating the need to path back to a moving caster. It also makes this class a turret class.
You stay sassy!
this isnt a pet class
just copy WOW's pet system
Very good to see Mark Jocobs answering here in this threat. It is nice when the developers actually try to listen to their audiences.
I hope that the classes become broad, so that 2 of the same class, isnt exactly the same. The more classes the better
Timothy
Great article. Keep up the good work.
They can do that after Blizzard donates several million dollars and a few senior programmers to CU. With the current resources, the spirit pets are a fine workaround.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
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― CD PROJEKT RED
One of, if not my favorite, features of DAoC was the huge variety of classes and how no two classes (even across factions) played the same. This goes double for the pet classes, DAoC had the most inventive, and fun to play pet-classes of any MMO I have ever played. I can only hope they don't try and stay too far from some of the concepts they had back then....
I mean, in my book, it doesn't get much better than the Bone Dancer, Necro, and Animist, not to mention the 5 others I never even dabbled with. The Bone Dancer especially was an insanely fun (if not slightly op) class to play, I mean it was like having your own little army.
This class looks interesting, like the Theurg from DAoC, which wasn't my thing, but I know a lot of people enjoyed it. I really hope we see a Bone Dancer-ish class, but that's asking a lot, it seemed to me that class was very hard to balance...a great concept, but hard to carry out, and it seems like that is something they are actively trying to avoid (strangely!?), so I won't be holding my breath, but until the game hits beta anything is possible afaic.
Really, more than anything else I'm hoping that each faction has it's own "Bard-type" class. Above all I love playing support classes, and the Bard, Minstrel, and Skald were my absolute fave's and my mains.
It is a very fine line to be drawn when making pet classes,as mentioned,especially for a pvp setup.
I definitely do not like silly ideas like the pet creating an ability to warp around,that is getting out of hand and really makes it more a spell than a pet.
I do like how they are trying to think outside the box though,makes me happy.I also do like the idea of using in game resources,i don't like fake pet casting even though i love my BST in FFXI,jug pets are just unrealistic,however taming them is good.
IMO there is only one way to do it,pets can add enough dps to make the class o/p however the pet is dumb unlike the player,so it should be easy to sleep or root or basically weak to any enfeeble.The player itself should have some decent dmg as well,i did mention the class has the ability to be o/p however the class would depend more on the pet skills and have few limited spells/abilities for the player itself.
I do not like a whole mush of pickem spell or ability choices,i find that to be a bad game design,however i loved the sub class design because what it does it offer up BETTER choices than say a Pet class for certain reasons.Point is that there are a lot of factors that go into making a pet class work just right,offer so o/p but at the same time weak to certain situations.
No question it is a tough design,i would not fault any developer for at least trying something creative.My gut says they will be tweaking their original ideas often.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Um, why would CU want all those problems???
I am a pet hater because of WoW. And, I am not thrilled about the so-called "spirit pets" but I still like the creativity and risk involved in trying something different. Simply eliminating pathing issues makes this worth a try, although I doubt I play this class. Good luck to all those that do! I hope it works well for you.
And, hey, Tim, that was another nice article. Gratz!
I believe the actual main reason why traditional pets are not implemented is due to RvR performance. Performance is primary concern when developing every aspect of the game from the engine up. CSE (MJ) stated early on that there would be no real pet class. This is indeed a workaround simply to add something different, cool and as pet-like as possible because MJ has stated he loves pets and even has several ideas for pet-centric game in itself but wished to implement some of the ideas within a CU class.
It is entirely designed not to be a traditional pet class but still offer something akin to it that falls within the design parameters of the game.
Also I lol'd over the copy Wow's pet system ... because it was perfect right?! 0.o
I played a Warlock for years and every pet issue any game every had was in Wow too ... just slightly less of an issue than most and certainly large issues early in the game. As mentioned too Blizzard likely spent as much money over the years on fixing, updating, model/texture making on pets as CU has for an entire budget.
As for the spirit system in CU I doubt you will be able to interact with them through CC designed for players unless those CC abilities interact with the A.I.R system too. These are spells just like any other spell and countering them is likely the same as countering or interacting with all spells (See the CU wiki for more information on A.I.R).
As Tierless mentioned, the cool aspect of this pet-like system is that each realm does not mirror classes so we will likely see very different variants of this concept for each realm attached to likely different class archetypes. This is one of the greatest features of DAoC and possible the greatest single feature of the realm pride concept. Wow only did this originally with Paladin and Shaman which was actually rather great in itself and differentiated to 2 factions (until raid balancing ruined it) ... now imagine no reason to balance for pve raid and the incredible uniqueness of knowing no other faction has your abilities. It is great fun.
You stay sassy!