Influence of Pet in Arcane Legends Over Time

[raw]

Hi Everyone,

So I've been doing some thinking about how the importance of pets in Arcane Legends has changed over time. Just as a background for anyone who doesn't know me, I've been playing since S1 (my first account was a mage whose ign was Merkage and I was in Rage of Mages). In the earlier seasons pets really didn't make a difference. They were "nice to haves" and what really mattered more was your character's gear, and the skill in which you used your character. Pets complimented your character, and were more of a "cherry on top" in both PvE and PvP. At that time I thought of pets sort of like I thought of SuperSmash Brothers characters in that they were all equally as strong, but each one was slightly unique - but that was naive. I used to use Malison on my rogue (then named Merrrrrrrked) and Wrathjaw on my end game mage, and I never once got a complaint. I recall that the pet I dreamed about was Colton and I would've had to do daily quests for months straight just to earn it. When I finally did earn it, I was extremely happy and proud of myself. The months of dedication had finally paid off, and I was able to display my Colton with pride that I had worked hard for this.

Fast forward to season 7, pets have become the polar opposite of what they once were. Players are judged if they do not have the best pets simply because some arcane pets are exponentially better than the average legendary pet. The difference between pets is the same difference in player gear which I have mentioned before. Player pets/gear vary drastically from the average player to the best player, and it is a HUGE problem in AL. I could and should honestly make a graph just to show how (in my opinion) OP some pets are in comparison to others... Instead I will make a list which gives a number signifying it's power on a scale from 0-100. See below for the list which is primarily from a PvP perspective:

Deary - 10 points
Malison - 20 points
Slag/Ripmaw - 25 points
Dovabear - 25 points
Yowie - 25 points
Breeze - 30 points
Blinky - 30 points
Glacian - 30 points
Abaddon 30 points
HJ - 35 points
Singe - 45 poimts
Maridos - 50 points
Samael - 50 points
Nekro - 95 points
Shady and Surge - 100 points


These numbers are completely based on my opinion... but my point is that rather than pets complimenting our characters, they have become the primary factor in overall strength. I get that over time we need to introduce more powerful pets, but it has come to the point where the discrepancy between what the average player can afford (legendary or cheap mythic pets), what the upper class player can afford (cheap arcanes), and what the elite .1% can afford (Nekro/SnS) is huge, and only seems to be growing. Thank you STS for releasing Lemon n Lime. That was a step in the right direction, but it does not address the fundamental issue that you have already created pets which have the potential to do more damage than any player could possibly do (SnS pools being stacked on mobs), and you have created a pet which has the ability to replicate a mage's skill and do it better than the mage itself (nekro shield).

What irks me the most is that when I enter into PvP, or when I enter into a timed run, what ultimately decides who wins are the pets. Skill no longer plays an integral role. This wasn't always the case, and it honestly is driving players away. I can tell you that for a fact.

Here is a quote from the Arcane Legends description on the Google Play Store:

"As you fight enemies to destroy evil or battle in PvP, you will unlock special abilities for your character and find new pets that you can customize to suit your play style... Collect and grow mystical pets that help you on quests."

What I have noticed is that before mythic and legendary pets, the best pets were achievable by farming or doing dailies. (Malison in Rooks Nest, Colton through dailies). Albeit there were no grand locked crates at the time, the excitement of having something to work towards were really exciting and motivating. Any platinum purchases I made were for vanities, elixirs, or gold if I really needed it. The description above mentions "finding new pets" and "collect and grow mystical pets," neither of which are necessarily true. All we find are old dated pets which are eclipsed by the arcane and mythic pets only purchasable through platinum (with the exception of Grim during the Halloween event, and fossil through arena chests - lol).

Anyway I don't want to keep going on and on but the influence of pets in AL over time has been substantial. I for one have stopped PvPing again in end game because CTF and TDM come down to who has better pets, not who has more technique. TDM comes down to who has nekro. Timed runs come down to who has more SnS.

What is your opinion on the importance of pets in AL? Is it too much? Is it too little? What can STG to do bridge the gap between legendary and arcane pets? Do you have any suggestions to address this issue (keeping in mind that if it doesn't boost plat sales - even indirectly - then it wont be implemented)?

Best,

Raw

[gumball3000]

Pets like sns and nekro have abillities stronger than any skill in game.
Even samael is op with his stun and op regen.

I think we should quit dreaming about this game ever becoming balanced. Free to play means you can play all the maps and that you can buy all the items with gold if you choose to.

Sts knows players like to feel op and they do offer that for a premium price. You won't see high payers complayn that they are tired of killing everyone in pvp or that they are finishing the maps too fast.

You won't see those who loot nekro in arena complain because hey they got a few thousand dollars worth pet for free.

[Haligali]

Blinky deserve more than 35 point imho, and where is breeze?

[Jazzi]

Blinky deserve more than 35 point imho, and where is breeze?

^^ This. I aggree with the op about how important pets have become

[ilhanna]

I'm actually quite happy with the pet situation, tbh, even though I don't have any arcane pet (yet). Events have given non-plat players (the majority of endgamers) really useful pets like Blinky, Gyrm, Grimm. Even Yowie, Dova, Frist, Little Bear and Ironbite aren't so shabby either. I also like that Breeze and Shadowlurk are farmable. When you're average-geared, pets are really helpful, its selection becomes really crucial that I think of it as part of tactical knowledge. Maybe because I mainly run pve for farming and achievement, not timed run or pvp, I don't feel handicapped by the lack of super op pets.

Tbh if there is something that needs fixing in the pet system now, I think it's how few of them are worth farming anymore after the advent of new event pets and egg crates. If there are more pets to be farmed, or crafted a la Nekro, I think it will bring new life to the pve community and reinvigorate interest in the game in general.

[Dragoonclaws]

Blinky deserve more than 35 point imho, and where is breeze?

aaaand slag

[Haligali]

aaaand slag

Slag is in same as ripmaw, I disagree a bit, there was many complains about 5 slag teams in pvp after release (it was also available only for plat in that time).

Oh and shade, that pet is a good 60-70 imho at end game clashes.

Sent from my XT1092 using Tapatalk

[Dragoonclaws]

Has 100 points, feels cool.

[Twinisland]

Create something so everyone has same gear in pvp rooms pets are not really that big of a gap compared to the best gears but it'll be nice if they made pets farm able instead of a plat gamble. These will never happen but a man can dream.

[notfaded1]

Also that graph you're putting up there is basically all about PvP (I knew that's what you meant raw)... in PvE Maridos is OP way over Nekro and everyone even singe except maybe... S&S well that's just one big !@#@#$$% and even that's debatable.

If you put this in PvP forum I could understand... but this is General Discussion so I can totally take issue with the ranking... js. I knew what u meant though.

[Iinorex]

Firstly, I agree with you wholeheartedly Raw. Last night we had a short clash where nobody used any pets (and we considered only using deary). It was almost like we were playing a different game. The movements were slow, the combos were different and I can honestly say that I felt like I didn't know how to play that way.

I don't want to get stuck in the details of your scoring system but I want to clarify one thing and I want everyone to consider this. I own Nekro and I will say here that it's a very good and OP pet. It grants protective shield, speed boost, removes movement impairing, it does armor debuff, etc. etc. What's even nicer about Nekro (which a lot of people have yet to enjoy) is that it is a pet that benefits the entire team. So if one player has Nekro, the entire team now becomes OP. I think that you're correct in giving this pet a 95 score. Heck, you can probably even give Nekro a score of 100, along side with SNS.

Let's compare this to SNS now. SNS is also a great pet. One can argue it's better or about equal in strength as Nekro (hence why you scored 95 vs 100). BUT...(big but), people forget that SNS's score should compound. When you have 2 sns per team, the team can activate both Arcane Abilites at the same time. Fights only last 5 seconds or so anyways usually, so it only makes sense to do so. Thus, the score should not be 100 in that case but, rather, 200 because you will have 6 purple pools and 6 green pools. The same is true when there are 5 sns on a team, where you can activate all of those arcane abilities at the same time. Tell me, who can survive 5 SNS arcane abilities activated at the same time? Where is the skill in that? My problem has never been with SNS per se, but it's with the fact that there is no cool down period between pet uses. See most people run when the opposing team has 3+ SNS so they don't really see it. But I try to challenge myself and I can really say this is more than a challenge. I urge the devs to try and survive in 15 purple pools that are stacked...even if nobody is attacking you, can you survive? In essence, the potential score of SNS is really 500.

See, Samael's panic cannot be stacked. If you hit 5 samael AA's simultaneously, only 1 gets used and the other 4 are wasted. If 5 Singe AA's are activated at the same time, you don't get super stats, right? No, you get the stat boost from only 1 AA and the other 4 are wasted. Nekro even goes as far as to give about a 5 second cool down period between uses. This makes the 3rd nekro on a team totally useless and in many instances, the 2nd Nekro is useless as well.

So, I ask why is this the case? Is this a long overlooked bug? I mean, who is crazy enough to stay around and fight 3 or 4 SNS, so I think this bug has been long overlooked.

correct man ..to the point...what should be done is when people 2 sns aa at same time then the pools should overlap like any other pets aa does

[raw]

Firstly, I agree with you wholeheartedly Raw. Last night we had a short clash where nobody used any pets (and we considered only using deary). It was almost like we were playing a different game. The movements were slow, the combos were different and I can honestly say that I felt like I didn't know how to play that way.

I don't want to get stuck in the details of your scoring system but I want to clarify one thing and I want everyone to consider this. I own Nekro and I will say here that it's a very good and OP pet. It grants protective shield, speed boost, removes movement impairing, it does armor debuff, etc. etc. What's even nicer about Nekro (which a lot of people have yet to enjoy) is that it is a pet that benefits the entire team. So if one player has Nekro, the entire team now becomes OP. I think that you're correct in giving this pet a 95 score. Heck, you can probably even give Nekro a score of 100, along side with SNS.

Let's compare this to SNS now. SNS is also a great pet. One can argue it's better or about equal in strength as Nekro (hence why you scored 95 vs 100). BUT...(big but), people forget that SNS's score should compound. When you have 2 sns per team, the team can activate both Arcane Abilites at the same time. Fights only last 5 seconds or so anyways usually, so it only makes sense to do so. Thus, the score should not be 100 in that case but, rather, 200 because you will have 6 purple pools and 6 green pools. The same is true when there are 5 sns on a team, where you can activate all of those arcane abilities at the same time. Tell me, who can survive 5 SNS arcane abilities activated at the same time? Where is the skill in that? My problem has never been with SNS per se, but it's with the fact that there is no cool down period between pet uses. See most people run when the opposing team has 3+ SNS so they don't really see it. But I try to challenge myself and I can really say this is more than a challenge. I urge the devs to try and survive in 15 purple pools that are stacked...even if nobody is attacking you, can you survive? In essence, the potential score of SNS is really 500.

See, Samael's panic cannot be stacked. If you hit 5 samael AA's simultaneously, only 1 gets used and the other 4 are wasted. If 5 Singe AA's are activated at the same time, you don't get super stats, right? No, you get the stat boost from only 1 AA and the other 4 are wasted. Nekro even goes as far as to give about a 5 second cool down period between uses. This makes the 3rd nekro on a team totally useless and in many instances, the 2nd Nekro is useless as well.

So, I ask why is this the case? Is this a long overlooked bug? I mean, who is crazy enough to stay around and fight 3 or 4 SNS, so I think this bug has been long overlooked.

This scoring system was just something I made up on the fly. It's not very accurate and is just meant to display the point that Nekro/SnS are so far beyond every other pet.

I commend you on having a no pet clash. This reminds me of s2 where pets weren't allowed in PvP! But anyway honestly that's amazing, and I'd be 100% willing to pvp that way so do PM me if you have another one of those. I recall about two weeks ago I asked a guild who was using 2 sns and 2 nekro to play legendary pets only, and they laughed and refused. Considering that our team was severly outgeared I didn't see the point in even attempting to clash, so I left. Point being that pets trump everything, and those who are fortunate enough to have these - at no fault of their own - use them to reap extremely large benefits against those who don't.

Candy, you're right I did take into account PvP heavily in my scoring, but I do think that most of these hold true for PvE. Nekro gives speed boosts, and grants insane survivability in harder maps. SnS is essentially in every single timed record if you look closely at the leaderboard.

[Imsofancy]

How is HJ greater then glacian? @.@ very interesting post raw, but what if you did a ranking on pet value in PvE as well, Im curious to see if I have any of those pets with more than 50 points lol.

[Iinorex]

i played a mmorpg before where there were about 20 pets...all looked cool and were awesome and we had to choose one pet at the start of game and play with only that pet

[raw]

How is HJ greater then glacian? @.@ very interesting post raw, but what if you did a ranking on pet value in PvE as well, Im curious to see if I have any of those pets with more than 50 points lol.

Glacian gives no damage % boost to the user. I find this extremely disappointing when this pet used to cost 8m.

[Tatman]

I'd say it's 100 points for Nekro and SnS. Whatever points for all other pets. It's a waste of time to even begin to explain how wrong this is.

[Candylicks]

Candy, you're right I did take into account PvP heavily in my scoring, but I do think that most of these hold true for PvE. Nekro gives speed boosts, and grants insane survivability in harder maps. SnS is essentially in every single timed record if you look closely at the leaderboard.

LOL Why is my name here when I haven't even posted.

All I have to say is put SnS in locked.

End of discussion.

[raw]

LOL Why is my name here when I haven't even posted.

All I have to say is put SnS in locked.

End of discussion.

LOL oh that was faded... my bad =P

[Ardbeg]

Great post from Raw and Shiny nailed it.
It s the stacking of the AAs that needs to be looked at (with the obvious worst case of SNS).
I love how STG designed LNL so that it s AA has to be orchestrated to use it s full potential.

----------------------------------------------
The more powerful a Pet s AA is, the more Skill should it take to use it to the full effect.
----------------------------------------------

Now Nekro doesn t follow this design, but keep in mind that it was adjusted to counter SNS which was a brilliant move by STG.

i would rather see hard to execute combos with pet AAs then just stacking exploits.

[Kakashis]

Yeah, pets change the game substantially. I knew this since Sams banish.