Big changes are here

[Juntao]

The big changes have been announced. Here is what was posted to the SWG forums which you can find by following this link:

<a href=\"http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=7098#M7098\">http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=7098#M7098</a>


Starting off, I'd like to say that there are a lot of questions and opinions in the first part of this topic. I'll be pulling questions and some of the constructive opinions from the boards and getting you some dev answers as soon as I can. For now, I'd like to address the logical conclusion of this Creature Balance and how it is going to effect the Creature Handler Profession.



Players have seen a rise in pet usage over the past few weeks because obviously, having a pet in a Massively Multiplayer game has a fantastic advantage. Players with pets essentially get their own private MOBs (Mobile Object) to fight with them and for them. It's a player's own personal tank and it's a boost to damage and attack, a blocker for attackers and the list of advantages go on. With that being said, that's all fun stuff, so we want to keep it in and keep it fun, but make it balanced. If you are curious, there is an easy way to test how imbalanced this can get. If a player and their pet can do a whole lot of things that a two players CAN'T do, then something is wrong. Otherwise, pets become replacements for multiple players. Go out with your friends who are Creature Handlers or who have really powerful pets and play the differences with them.



Another issue that is being addressed is that Non-Creature Handlers have pets that are of such level and ability that it is a free pass into higher level content. Those two advantages alone are an invitation for every player to have pets. In any MMO, that invitation passes by word-of-mouth like yelling \"fire\" in a crowded theater and it cause a stampede.



These are great advantages to have and a lot of players are leveraging these advantages (a huge number actually). Now, in the rush to claim this glorious, imbalanced prize, players are hitting the Creature Handler Skill tree pretty hard. Players are smart and they talk to each other and what's happened is that players are exploiting the Creature Handler Skill Tree by taking ONLY the left-most two columns to get the pets and that's it. So for the cost of two skill trees, players are getting full pet access. That bargain is too good to be true and it demeans the CH profession because they work through the whole tree without being rewarded much of an advantage.



Let me be clear here: it is not the Creature Handler Profession that is over-powered per se. It is the Creature Handler �dabblers� that are using two specific skill trees (in conjunction with out of balance creatures) to give over-powered boosts to other professions.



The goal of the change to the CH profession is the idea of reserving power to players who _truly_ master being a creature handler and make it so they have to really invest in all the skill boxes while reducing the power of \"dabblers\" and people spending the bare minimum to get the advantages of having powerful pets.



So here are the proposed changes.



To compensate for the lop-sided power-progression (two trees giving you more powerful pets and the other two trees only giving you the ability to train the pets with commands that are of questionable utility since you can just get a fully-trained pet from someone else) the skills have been re-distributed across the skill tree. Also, there used to be six different skillmods which determine whether or not you can tame or call a particular pet. That will be changed and now there will be only one skillmod which will tell players what level pet they can summon.

-- click the reply link to read the rest --

[Juntao]

Additionally:

* Non-creature handlers limited to level 10 pets (currently it is 15).

* Non-creature handlers get 1 active pet max, regardless of type (faction perk, creature, droid or mount).



Lvl + refers to the max level of pet that you can tame. One skillmod to rule them all. You can tame level 10 pets at novice. Get a skill above that and you can tame a level 11 pet. Another beside that and you can tame level 12 pets. Another above that and you get up to level 14 pets, etc. This spreads the power-curve from two skill trees to all of the trees, while pushing more benefit to the highest level skill boxes.



We have removed patrol, Friend and Follow-In-Formation commands because they weren�t used very much and instead we separated trick1 and trick2. Trick 2 is also now cooler than Trick 1



There are only three new behaviors that have been added at this point: useSpecial1, useSpecial2 and useRanged. This way, you can order a creature with a ranged attack to use his ranged attack, or order them to use the special attack on-command. This makes things simpler and easier to use and a lot more fun.



The +1 active pet that master creature handlers get will allow them to call a mount, ride it, and still call a level 50 pet to fight for them. With the additional storage capacity and the ability to transfer pets, this makes skillbox very desirable (which currently, it isn't).



With all of these changes, that leaves an interesting challenge on the table: CHs currently don't take on the full risk of a combat encounter like other combat classes do. CHs don't have to deal with taking damage or fending off monsters since the monster is engaged by the creature like other combat classes have to deal with.




Because of this, one of the concerns is that while this plan does bring CHs down a bit, it doesn't necessarily put them on equal footing with the other combat classes. The big question is why would a player not be a CH if they wanted the most offensive power possible?



Here is what we're going to do to address that: NPCs and creatures will get just a tiny bit smarter, and will realize that when you send a pet to attack them, _you_ are attacking them. This doesn't mean that they will instantly and always ignore your pet and head straight for you, but they won't just completely ignore you, either. And if they kill your pet, they'll definitely be attacking you next.



Also, if you heal a pet that is fighting something else, that other creature will \"see\" it and might choose to respond to that action by attacking you. Probably not a very big chance of that happening, but they won't just completely ignore you as they do now.



On the upside, Creature Handlers can train Mounts. Player mounts have been added and can now ride Bols, Brackasets, Kaadu, Carrion Spats, Dewbacks, and Falumpasets. To get a mount, mounts must be your pet AND trained as a mount. Creature Handlers will be training the mounts and players can either buy them as trained mounts or players with pets can take their pets to a Creature Handler (with the correct skill) to be trained as a mount. Bio Engineers can create mountable pets but can't automatically train them unless they have Creature Handler skills.



Another benefit to all of this is that players will be seeing more types of babies spawning. Before, the number of baby spawns was limited due to balance issues and now we can open that up. In addition to making more types of babies spawn, we're also going to add \"rare\" baby types that spawn very infrequently. We are also increasing the number of stored pets for master-creature handlers.



In summary, the Creature Handler Profession has been changed to bring it into better balance with the rest of the professions, it is simpler to use and more equitable for the players who are Creature Handlers. People who are not Creature Handlers don't get all the benefits of the profes