Implement pets

[nickjanssen]

With the navmeshes it will be tons easier to have pets walking around with players.

My thoughts:

Suggested items needed: Whistle (to call/spawn the pet. Can be used in battle), Cage (to put the pet in when they go out of range. Clicking on the cage while the pet is next to you will put it inside, but only when the player is not in battle)

Pets should have permadeath, to create a stronger emotional bonding. Pets need to be taken care of using food, and maybe we can even add a happiness level. We can probably draw some inspiration from Tamagotchi.

Ideas welcome!

[eric-ycw]

What should the pets be? Baby skeletons, little cute slimes or such? To obtain them: 1. Drop from bosses, (If you kill the slime boss it'll drop a pet slime/slime egg) 2. Chests, I mean pet eggs in chests.

[bsparks]

I like eggs, also think there should be taming. Also breeding (red + blue slime = purple?).

[eric-ycw]

Wow, breeding would be like Dragon City style.

[LunaSolVT]

Howabout some auto unstuck? Otherwise you jump anywhere there's a platform and having to cage/uncage a pet will be a pain in the rear. Most games do this for players.

I don't think we should force players to feed their pets, however. If players don't need food their pets should not need food. Though, like other games, food should definitely increase some sort of relation to pets (though at a limit, maybe hourly or such).

I think they should be somewhat rare, as well; that way it doesn't make players feel like they can't possibly collect a majority of them. Hence why WoW and TOR both allow an infinite pet inventory (sorry for the double negative). Too many and it's overwhelming (and pets aren't just another sword, if they can be raised and such). Taking from Pokemon as well, a large storage, for the vast numbers they have, even from earlier games.

Which is why I'm not sold on pet taming. Pet taming is a whole other level than your basic spawn/follow AI. But I dunno. Still mulling it over in mah head.

I am curious though, does anyone have any original pet ideas? Unfortunately pets are done to death in MMOs so I don't have any unique ideas at the moment, but if anyone else does, I'd like to hear so we can expand!

In other idea-generation tidbits: Pet Races

• Give each pet some individual movement stats such as turn speed and run speed, and maybe jump distance/height, and create a little obstacle course in which players can "possess" their pets and have fun!

Here we go... Maybe: Pet Persistence

• We have a park in-game, where players can take their pets around to show them off.
• When a player leaves the game, the selected pet in their inventory is given persistence. What this means if that, while their owner is out of the game, this pet becomes an NPC and persists at a random place in the park area, wandering of its own accord and maybe is interactable.
• When their owner logs back in, the NPC is removed. This NPC, however, only persists for up to 24 (maybe 48?) hours after its owner has logged off, to prevent clutter.

I can expand on pet persistence if anyone wants. :)