Add 4th ability to pet families missing them

Add 4th ability to pet families missing them
  • Thread starter Thread starter Ahamkara
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This idea/suggestion is Open. You can respond to ask questions or discuss the idea and either vote it up or down if you believe it should or should not be implemented, respectively. Popular suggestions and ideas will be considered by the development team to become reality in-game.
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Proposal
Add 4th special abilities to pets that are missing them.
Justification
Many pets are not currently optimal because they don't have a 4th special, making them strictly worse than pets with access to one. Other servers have made these changes and it increases the viability of lesser used pets.
Motivation
A lot of pets are significantly worse than others, limiting the amount of viable pets.
  • The Amphavian family does not learn Defensive
  • The Amphibian family does not learn Defensive
  • The Ape family does not learn Claw
  • The Avian family does not learn Puncture
  • The Bunny family does not learn Puncture
  • The Canine family does not learn Flank
  • The Caprine family does not learn Puncture
  • The Insect family does not learn Damage Poison
  • The Flying Insect family does not learn Health Leech
  • The Rat family does not learn Disease
  • The Simian family does not learn Claw
  • The Theropod family does not learn Slash

    This list is of changes other servers have made to balance pets that are not used. Making these changes would increase the pool of viable pets and make more pets worth creating from bio-engineers,. There was a previous PV posted about this a couple years ago that seemed reasonably popular but wasn't implemented, I'd like to change that.
 
So in your long list every place it says "does not learn" you want to change to "can learn"?
I don't feel like that's a long list, but yes that would probably be simplest. All of those changes seem balanced. Most of them are just brought in line with basically the same pet with a different skin. If the devs are open to different changes I'd be fine with that too, but figured just using these was simpler and made the most sense.

Here's an example: The Flewt is a Flying Insect. It can learn Bite, Puncture, and Wind Buffet. These are the same abilities as the Bat and Nock family, except those can also learn Health Leech, meaning there is no reason to ever use a flying insect.
 
To Savaccs point, this PV is kind of written backwards. It would be more effective/beneficial if the discussion could name which new abilities you'd like to see on which lacking pets.

There does exist functionality in game already to get pets to use abilities they wouldn't normally have access to, although this doesn't resolve the main complaint of certain families being inherently less viable than others.

Also keep in mind that CH/Pets can be incredibly overpowered in several areas of the game due to CU-style combat, so I would recommend lobbying for the added pet abilities to make the less viable families unique, rather than combat min-maxed.

Also keep in mind, there are ongoing known bugs with some pet abilities, which may impact some peoples responses depending on what abilities get called for
 
I'm primarily a Creature Handler. I don't agree with him. They don't need uniform pets. If all pets are the same, what will the BE do? You need a different pet against Jedi and a different pet against mobs. This is one of the problems with the game.
 
I'm primarily a Creature Handler. I don't agree with him. They don't need uniform pets. If all pets are the same, what will the BE do? You need a different pet against Jedi and a different pet against mobs. This is one of the problems with the game.
So you don't understand the point at all then, gotcha. They can add different abilities if they want, It doesn't matter what ability they add. I just figured the list of differences was easiest to just implement since they're clearly not broken since they already exist in those ability sets.

I would be perfectly happy if they added different abilities, and we're talking about that in the thread in the creatures channel in discord. It's about pet viability. As it stands right now many pets are just much worse than others for no good reason, including some third stage mutations.

This change would literally allow you to use more types of pets, not force you to. There is nothing negative at all.
 
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I would think allowing more pets and letting people be able to have more freedom in choosing what pet they have or "skin" they are able to use would be a good thing. I support looking at the pets and addressing the lack of abilities for certain families of pets is a good thing. upvote from me.
 
Posted this on discord and thought i'd share here too. Wrote a draft to fill in those pet families with only 3 abilities.

Amphavian - Damage Poison
Amphibian - Damage Poison
Ape - Bite
Avian - Flank
Bunny - Flank
Canine - Claw
Insect - Health Leech
Flying Insect - Damage Poison
Rats - Disease
Simian - Enfeeble
Theropod - Flank
Equine - Spit
Camel - Defensive

Can switch out Rats' Disease for Claw if we really don't want to copy legends on that but these all seem like fair additions
 
I think everyone who has replied so far is missing the point here, let me bullet point this so people can digest the information one step at a time, with some extra context as to why the 4th ability matters.
  • By default, pets can only use 3 abilities.
  • With the "Rancor Handler's Bracelet" item from the WoD themepark, pets can use a 4th ability.
  • Some pets do not learn 4 abilities.
  • These pets, which do not learn 4 abilities, will not be used over those that can learn 4 abilities.
  • OP wants a 4th learnable ability to be added to the pets that can only learn 3 abilities.
  • The added ability does not have to be from OPs list, That list is changes other servers have made to entire pet families which SWGR does not need to copy.
If you do not understand any of the above points, I don't think you should be weighing in on this PV until you are more familiar with the CH class, how pets work, and maybe the English language as a whole. Now on to why I personally think this PV is a good thing:

This is not a buff. This should not add extra power to the CH class, because many families with 4 abilities already exist. Unless the devs do something like add "Flank" to the Canine family, which would make slice hounds specifically too strong, however those situations are avoidable and are why we have the test centre.

OP has given a strong example with the Flying Insect family. They have the same 3 abilities as Bats and Nocks, but those other families also have "Health Leech" as a 4th ability. Meaning there is never a situation where you would use a Flying Insect over a Bat or Nock, and adding Health Leech to Flying Insects would not make them stronger than Bats or Nocks. It also makes sense (think mosquitoes).

This does not make all pets the same. For one, the devs don't have to make them mirror match existing families. Using the above example, they might add a defensive ability to Flying Insects instead of Health Leech. There is still ability variety among the many families and there are also differences in natures as well i.e. Defensive, Offensive, Balanced, Avoidance, Armored etc.

The purpose of this PV is to add more options for pets (for BE to craft and CH to use) by making some redundant, unused, families viable as an option as well as the existing families that already have 4 abilities. This creates more business for BE, not less.

And before i get umm ackshuallyyy'd by someone; Yes you can teach "Provoke" to any pet, i know. But in many situations you do not want a taunt, which provoke is, and it can even be worse than not having a 4th ability in some situations. Further, since you can also teach "Provoke" to families that already have 4 abilties, if you wanted the taunt you would just teach it to a pet you already own which has 4, since you can retrain it whenever you want without having to buy and level another pet.
 
this is a very reasonable player voice. so many of the pets in game are ever ever used or wanted. I end up making the same 10 pets over and over and some critters, just randomly thinking, gualama, kaadu and khammurra are never ever requested as a crafted pet. adding missing 4th abilities may make more pets attractive enough to branch out and try some. I dont think anyones looking to create the next Tanray level critter but some more viable use ones would deff be a step up. up vote for me.
 
Please see the Brainstorming Thread under Creatures on Discord, where we are discussing which abilities to add to the "Eclipsed" Pet Families