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Evolving Ranger Pets


Game of Bones.8975

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I enjoyed the GW1 Ranger pets and evolving them to differing roles. Why was that taken away from GW2 Rangers?

Even if there is a straight-line evolution without options, having a juvenile pet forever seems counter-intuitive to the nature of a Ranger.

Pets should have a similar evolution as weapon crafting: Basic, Fine Masterwork, Rare, Exotic, Ascended, and Legendary. Each level could be determined by a certain number of kills by the pet and additional training.

Even if pet damage begins lower than normal at Basic and hits their norm at Exotic it gives the Ranger profession a little additional spice.

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I'm not so sure this is a good idea, if only for the fact that GW1 had the option to make pet-focused builds or ignore the mechanic entirely. We simply lack that option in GW2, so I would imagine balance must be done with pets in mind.

Personally? I would prefer Anet treated pets as more than simply disposable minions. Let me feed it, care for it, give it a personality!

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Hi! Welcome to Guild Wars 2! Did you know you can change the pet's name on the Pet Panel (default K)? Just click the little quill icon next to the title line, and voi la'! your Juvenile Stalker can now be a Hearty Stalker or even a Legendary Stalker! ...or it can just be Meat, it's up to you!

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@Westenev.5289 said:

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:The role pet evolution filled GW is instead in GW2 filled by a wider variety of mechanically useless pets and some OP meta pets.

FIFY...

You're not wrong, but it's not like all the various evolutions in GW were useful. Their uselessness doesn't remove the mechanical distinctions.

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I agree that they probably changed it because of the way pets work in GW2. In GW1 they're basically skins - all pets have the same stats and abilities and the only customisation came from evolving them and using your skills to give them special attacks.

In GW2 all pets are different - 'families' are similar but each one has at least one unique skill, so it's not uncommon for a ranger to swap pets regularly to suit the content they're doing. That makes evolving them a much bigger task because instead of one pet you'd need to evolve at least 2 and potentially as many as 18 (1 per family) or 55 (all of them). Even if they included something like the Zaishen Menagerie to give players an alternative, potentially quicker way to evolve them it would be a lot to do to get a fully playable ranger, and for relatively little benefit since the customisation is already there in the form of choosing which pets to use.

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It would certainly spice up the use of some pets and turn the meta around a bit. Sounds like a good idea. I'd love to have more diversity in builds/classes but to be viable you'll always NEED to stick to meta which destroys the promised diversity of the game. I liked the mechanics and way of "crafting your character" in gw1 and I'd like to see it being brought back maybe.

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@"Westenev.5289" said:

Personally? I would prefer Anet treated pets as more than simply disposable minions. Let me feed it, care for it, give it a personality!

This.

Also let us actually PET the pets, that'd be great. The animation is already in game and the pets could just fart hearts and that's in there too.And/or let us say something nice to them. Not just "do this", "kill that", "rez that" all the time. Just a single line would be enough. Could be culturally different (I always imagine my sylvari ranger calling his pets "my little bud") but doesn't have to, one-for-all is fine too.Maybe it could be added to the F3?Please, please, pretty please... :)

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@"Cynder.2509" said:to be viable you'll always NEED to stick to metaOff topic, but this is simply false. Sticking to meta is only necessary to be accepted by a handfull of players. Viability is much, much greater for all kinds of content and group compositions. As long as you know what you're doing in regards to your build as well as the game mechanics you're up against (no matter the game mode), then diversity in viable setups is a lot greater than pretty much any current MMO.

On topic: I personally prefer horizontal progression (more different ranger pets with different abilities spread across the world) to vertical progression (pet "leveling" for each of my rangers and all of their pets).

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A couple of ways that pet "evolving" or "leveling" could work is that either you can only have 4 "active" pets that get the leveling/evolving to max rank and when changed out for a different pet you have to re level them backup to the max rank again. or each pet that a ranger has charmed has a saved experience bar that allows them to reach max rank.(Ranks: Juvenile, Adult, Elder) The question that i would have is how would you balanced such a change? You could not add stat buffs to a evolving or leveling pet due to the fact that ranger's stats are kinda split between themselves and their pets. So would it only be cosmetic? would renaming it be the simpler option? Maybe instead of buffing its stats or nerfing ranger to compensate such a change you could slightly, i don't know augment the way a key skill works? maybe they could get creative? It is a interesting thought regardless.

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@"Divine Monk.2401" said:A couple of ways that pet "evolving" or "leveling" could work is that either you can only have 4 "active" pets that get the leveling/evolving to max rank and when changed out for a different pet you have to re level them backup to the max rank again. or each pet that a ranger has charmed has a saved experience bar that allows them to reach max rank.(Ranks: Juvenile, Adult, Elder)That would single-handedly make ranger the most grindy class of all to max, by a far margin :( .

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@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Something like: "Come here, old friend!" or "I'll admit. I did miss you." or "Welcome back, friend."?

Rejoice! Already in-game.

You know, one would think that after years of maining a ranger I'd notice... But I honestly don't remember hearing the middle one and I can only recall the other two without the "friend" parts. That's kinda embarrasing... (I do have an excuse, but I still feel lame.) :D

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@"Cynder.2509" said:It would certainly spice up the use of some pets and turn the meta around a bit. Sounds like a good idea. I'd love to have more diversity in builds/classes but to be viable you'll always NEED to stick to meta which destroys the promised diversity of the game. I liked the mechanics and way of "crafting your character" in gw1 and I'd like to see it being brought back maybe.

To be fair the meta is a player creation. There is absolutely nothing in the game to say you must use certain builds in an area and nothing else will work. And a lot of the time it's not nearly as strict as some people make out and a very wide variety of builds will work, just maybe not as fast or as reliably as the meta builds.

But it's also something which happens in almost all games. For example Pokemon has literally thousands of choices but some people will immediately write off the vast majority of those as non-viable and narrow the 'viable' choices down to a select few they consider to be the best...then complain tournaments are boring because everyone uses the same ones. (Then there's the infamous 'Fox only, no items, Final Destination' in Super Smash Bros - a game which I really don't think was intended to be balanced or taken seriously.)

I appreciate why some people do that, as figuring out the best possible way to play can be an interesting goal in it's own right, but it's also frustrating when that gets pushed onto everyone else and creates this impression that everyone is required to use those builds or they won't be able to complete anything.

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Just make them customizable. So you can swap out the archetypes in between pet family members (so feline between feline etc.) and swap out the F2 skills between them.

And bring all pet skills up to date.

Last but not least: give all pets the same precision calculation (why ever they use different formulas) and ficmx the quickness bug. All pets should be affected by quickness and not just a fraction.

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@Westenev.5289 said:

Personally? I would prefer Anet treated pets as more than simply disposable minions. Let me feed it, care for it, give it a personality!

This, I've wanted this kind of thing in gw2 for years.It sucks that I get to play with the Skyscale, Aurine and can buy a Dog to play with but none of my Ranger pets have any personality except what I give them as role play..This is one area of the game i'd love to see fleshed out.

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  • 3 weeks later...

@anninke.7469 said:

@"Westenev.5289" said:

Personally? I would prefer Anet treated pets as more than simply disposable minions. Let me feed it, care for it, give it a personality!

This.

Also let us actually PET the pets, that'd be great. The animation is already in game and the pets could just fart hearts and that's in there too.And/or let us say something nice to them. Not just "do this", "kill that", "rez that" all the time. Just a single line would be enough. Could be culturally different (I always imagine my sylvari ranger calling his pets "my little bud") but doesn't have to, one-for-all is fine too.Maybe it could be added to the F3?Please, please, pretty please... :)

I really agree and I'm begging arenanet with you. I posted a forumpost a while ago about what worldpolishing means to me with 53 views and no reaction.I'd love to see pet's more intelligent and subtle in their A.I. how they follow you or try to run infront. Sometimes my moa runs over 120 MPH and I just have to accept that.

Animation wise I'd like to see more love between rangers and pets, in shout's, and afk animations.

I notice alot of players just standing still in lobbies. It would look a bit more livelier if my pet shows its bored and wants my attention.Heck, I'd love feeding my pet food and utils too, only if animated. but I think the same about using food and utils in common.

In all due respecct, GW2 is clipping. clustering, poorly animated and sometimes just darn ugly. but still is and always will be my favorite game to play.

I beg for more animations (they don't cost to much kb anyway) and I like to sit on my chair while I'm able to drink something from a physical glass instead having to imagine myself I am drinking something or eating something.

Wow. I just saw the trailer. 11 milion players on gw2?! then why does every map seem so lonely...Hence my upcoming post regarding the community and increasing teamplay instead of soloplay.

edit: No intention to go off-topic, I just felt that this topic regards alot of topics in general.

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