Would You Shrink Your Pets?

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to play an EQ necromancer. I was a rare breed of raid-necro who, unlike many, used my abilities to support groups and raid parties rather than exclusively solo, as many necros did.

One of the utilities that made EQ pet classes easier to play on raids and in groups was the ability to shrink-- first confined to Shamans' spells, but then spread throughout the game to other classes and via potions and crafted items. Necromancers like myself, among the other pet classes, greeted the 'Minimize Pet' spells with great happiness. They virtually eliminated calls to 'Get your pet out of the way!' in groups and raids.

Chatting with a good friend tonight, he admitted to me that this was one of his big complaints when grouping with masterminds-- getting stuck behind or not being able to reach the enemies for having lots of pets in the way. I admitted that this was a big concern to me as well, especially when I played my Robot/Force-field mastermind. It's easy for a group of bots to block off a room. I've seen demon summoners run into much the same problem.

There are some problems with shrinking your pets. First off, a good mastermind can use the bulk of his pets to shield him and his squishier teammates from melee attacks. When the enemies can't get around your bots, they can't hit you. Shrinking the pets to allow players to get around them more easily would have the negative effect of allowing enemies to get around them more easily as well.

Second, there are game engine limitations that would need to be taken into account before shrinking any NPC beyond the current limits. In the case of pets, the AI scripts might require lots of work.

Finally, there's a lot of aesthetic appeal to having huge pets. There's not a lot more intimidating than having a large robot or demon loom over you. By comparison, a waist high robot isn't terribly threatening. It's comedic.

All that said, if you could shrink your pets for use on teams, would you?

I wish I could shrink a giraffe !

I always make sure my henchmen are in the clear and not blocking any doorways or otherwise preventing teammates from getting through. I'm like the only Mastermind in the game who does this.

So far, it's worked out really well. No need to shrink them.

Coming in I19: Flea Control.

You heard it here first, folks.

An open letter to NCsoft

In EQ, a lot of the sizes were arbitrary. Wood elves stood about half the height of Vah Shir catmen. Gnomes stood about half as high as wood elves. A lot of the look of the game was just as arbitrary. Players could choose to load high-poly models or stick with lower-poly models that were much more blocky and stick-figure-like.

Accordingly, the idea of summoning a wolf companion or a spectre that was very tiny didn't seem the strangest bit out of place, especially when you were tooling around the tight corners of the Soulesk mines, which had been dug by gnomes. A tiny little dinosaur (chokodai, iirc?) could actually be much more effective than a huge tiger in those pits due to it not getting stuck as easily.

CoH, on the other hand is defined by appearance. The costume creator is one of, if not the most, important aspects of the game. The visual appearance of players and enemies is vastly more important to the feel of the game. It'd be hard, in some cases, to justify having comedicially small pets when the look and feel of the game is at stake.

That's not true in all cases. Imagine a Bots mastermind who's anchored his forcefield casting tools to small 'scooter'-type machines to wheel in and around of his more combat-oriented mecha. While the effectiveness would likely not change from the standard leiutenant-grade protector bots, the aesthetic 'feel' of such a character would be more like a 'point defense' system rather than a 'overlapping bubbles' system.

Animation would be a problem, as would AI, if the robots were to move in a dramatically different pattern. The aesthetic would not necessarily be bad, however.

no I really dont shrink my pets i just have coversations with them when im bored in a place with a lot of people around so people start starring.Yea i like the attention

Shrink my pets!

Phft no...

By the power of lightning, make my pets grow!

I don't play Masterminds. I'd love to shrink their pets though. It would be hilarious if like, in the cartoons, that stupid demon growl got all high-pitched and squeaky when you shrank them.

I wouldn't like to shrink my zombies however when it comes to things like blue caves and CoT maps I would like a Spacial Warp temp to increase the size of the map making the tunnels huge or maybe even a Raise the Roof temp to bring caves and CoT maps to the surface and make them out door maps I can dream. Thematically I wouldn't mind if my pets existed as small orbs of dark necro energy that manifest into my zombies when in combat.

Better solution: get rid of pet collison. Bam. Masterminds have their bulky pets, other players don't get stuck in them.

"It would look bad!" It looks just as bad, if not worse, to have players get shoved around and blocked by some stupid NPC pets.

This has to be one of the more epic left field thread titles ever

No. Pets are pushable by all people. End of line. Not only is it absurd from a visual standpoint, including Robotics and Demon Summoning, it really isn't necessary. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't alter critter collision boxes in real time, anyway.

Now, if I could shrink my Giant Domesticated Rikti Monkey... I might consider it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No, I wouldn't. In Fact, I'd like to combine my bots into one giant bot, Voltron Style.

Yeah I would. It would make those cave maps much more bearable, and would be pretty cool for concept. I wouldn't want it confined to teaming. I'd love to have a bunch of ankle biting demons or toy robots.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

We heard you the first time

grrrr dam forum

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

Yes.