Tiers and Familiars

[Kalesh 0]

The Problems

Heyo, I brought up several of these ideas before to Tristan before tiers were implemented but don't know if it was ever talked about. Sooo, here is my ideas for familiars and the tier system from ages ago.

Healer: First and foremost, the one in need of increasing every tier is the healing familiar, an over-all unloved type of familiar that nobody really picks. They, at the very least, need to upgrade with tiers, and get a buff besides. They function as potions as well, taking a post. In general this type of familiar is unloved and less worthy than some other companions due to the limitations placed on them..

Fighter: Then there is the Damage Familiar. A familiar that at one point was part of the meta to choose since it allowed you to put a debuff or accuracy on your weapon without consequence thanks to the cap. The moment we hit tier two this familiar ceased to be equal to simply getting the accuracy familiar instead and putting that slot on weapons back into damage. Also their enhancement description in the enhancement page is vague and easily fixable, I am outright shocked that nobody has taken the two seconds to make it clear. I'll do it right now, feel free to copy and paste it onto the enhancement xD

Name: Fighter
Effect: On every attack, the familiar runs up and attacks the enemy as well. It grants +1 Damage

Spoopy: The paralysis familiar has literally no point behind it in my mind. Get the damage/accuracy familiar instead and put regular paralysis on your weapon, and you are better off than getting this familiar. 10 roll only? 1 slot of the regular debuff is 9-10.

Treasure Hunter: The luck familiar really doesn't have an problems since it's inherently meant for those who just want a little luck in their lives, and I can't knock that. A passive +1 to the LD can be handy in many situations, from detecting stealth to gathering, to finding dungeons.

Accurate: The accuracy familiar doesn't have any issues since accuracy doesn't scale to begin with.

Basically the familiars are very limited by not going up in tier or having any actual purpose in combat, which I feel is a waste. Familiars could be improved in many ways to allow for more creative scenarios and writing.

Fix Suggestion #1

This suggestion is to simply let our little monsters go up in tier.

Healer: Heals tier*X health
Fighter: Damage tier*X 
Treasure Hunter: LD tier*X
Spoopy: Just make it a 9-10 to begin with, paralysis doesn't have any scaling properties.
Accurate: Nothing to do here

Fix Suggestion #2

My other suggestion is to allow our familiars to unlock 'slots'. This way they are essentially learning skills like we do, and we can train them in what. Example, suppose I have a pet that has Treasure Hunter in their first slot when I caught them. Then upon unlocking their second slot, I could decide to have them increase accuracy as well as the LD increase, or just make them double up on LD slots. 

Now, I already see the issue here so don't bother reiterating what I am about to say: By tier 3-10 we are going to have some monstrous familiars with several slots of damage, accuracy, and zero fun. The only way I'd fix this with this method is to actually change the enhancements available for familiars or make them more distinct from our own, or place caps on the number of certain enhancements we can have on our familiar. Like only accuracy slot, three LD slots, and a few healing slots if one so wishes. Just spitballing, replace the numbers with whatever you want.

Growth Method #1

When a familiar's owner achieves level 25, they grow with us and achieve their own tier two alongside us. This is the most basic and would require the least work and story.

Growth Method #2

This is the method I would vastly prefer, and one I suggested to Tristan those many months ago. A quest where we take our familiar and with them track down an NPC monster trainer. Either we roleplay our pets going through several obstacles or fights, or RPly alongside our pet defeat the trainer and his monsters. Upon death the NPC will drop a certain type of feed that our familiar can eat to advance in power.

A secondary use of this quest could be to turn non-enhanced familiars that players have grown attached with to gain an enhancement, so even if the original purpose is denied, this purpose I feel is one that is worth considering as it provides story with our familiar and less need to rely on RNG for 'that perfect pet'.

In Short

Familiars could use a little love. It would be a bit strange to do with the current system, but why would a player pick a familiar that boosts 1 damage and would cap-out our +3 T2 weapons, essentially losing us 1 damage, when we could get accuracy instead?

I would personally think that the introduction of a familiar skill, and our familiars being treated as a separate weaker entity would be nice, but it would take a bit of work to balance which is reasonable. I do however have ideas for this, and will post them in the below spoiler. This spoiler is not the point of this post, if people really want to discuss it I will post it in a separate ticket happily, but baby steps. At the moment they are just the ramblings of a madman for a pet system.

Spoiler

Now, currently familiars function as either 1 RP fodder or 2 a fourth equipment slot. I feel like this is a bit bare-bones as it only allows people to have happy-cuddle-time familiars unless someone is actually willing to RP out their familiar duncing around in combat. I would suggest that familiars become separate entities which you can train and upgrade to be more powerful in combat and out of combat!

I’m going to say first that I suggest familiars have their own rolls in combat or gathering.

Now, how would this actually work? First, I'd implement a skill under the same category as weapons called "Familiar Mastery" or something along those lines. This would be a skill to dictate how powerful one's familiar can be trained. Rank 1 would unlock Tier 1 Familiar Skills for your familiar. More on that later. And rank 5 (If we don’t stop lower for balance reasons) would be the maximum, where you can train your familiar to their full potential as a monster. Perhaps that maximum size of your familiar can increase gradually with trainted tiers as a cosmetic affect to show their growth. Optionally, of course.

I mentioned familiar skills a moment ago, but what are familiar skills? Well, not everybody with a familiar is going to have the mastery skill, and so not all familiars are going to be able to take part in combat. The ones who do however, will need to be able to support us. For this I suggest that familiars gain their own set of skills that can be ranked up. These could range from damage boosts, to health boosts, to luck and mitigation boosts that affect only the familiar, with the exception of healing and the like. Alternately buff and debuff skills could be slotted. But what would be used to leveled up? I have two theories on that.  But first let me mention that familiars in this thought process aren't going to be equal in strength to the equivalent player, they will be weaker, but they are your companion, and you can mold them as such.

1. The first and most obvious options, is with SP. A player could funnel their accumulated SP into their familiar, and focus on making their pet a more powerful companion instead of becoming stronger themselves, or after they have gained a lot of strength as a hobby or end-game bonus.

2. The option I would suggest however, is a whole new skill currency called "FP". Familiar points, if it wasn't too obvious.
All further statements are made with FP in mind, and not SP.

Now, how would one go about gaining FP? I'd suggest that FP be gained at the end of quests, just like SP, however with a few distinct differences. Firstly, familiars would not get first-time completion bonuses. Instead, familiars gain FP far more rapidly when either 1. Questing without their owner. Or 2. Taking part in a training quest.

A familiar questing without their master? What madness is this!? It's simple, this allows higher leveled players to be able to remotely assist weaker players without resorting to "I can 1-hit kill everything, lul". You roleplay as your familiar in assisting newer players complete their quests using the skills you have trained your familiar in, and gain bonus FP at the end of the quest. Think of it like loaning your familiar out to the needy, and being rewarded for it. This would give incentive to those with familiars to help others out and train their familiar. The player does not gain SP in this instance, and if the player is present the bonus FP is denied.

Training quests could be thought of as Grand Mastery, but for every rank. In order to gain Familiar Mastery rank 1-5, you need to do a quest with your familiar. The quest would reward FP equal to one rank in a familiar skill for that tier, just to get you started.

Now, why not just spam quests and maximize all your familiar's skills immediately? Because you can only raise skills to ranks equal to your Mastery, and there is only a limited number of FP you can obtain per rank. A cap, in other words. Of course I would suggest that they have dramatically fewer skill slots than us, like 3-5. Like one for damage, one for health, and one for accuracy to your familiar… But another player might go mitigation, howl, and LD/Tracking. But suppose you want to respec your familiar, then how about this… a “rebirth” system? Your fully grown familiar can return to their younger state and lose all their FP, but in doing so you can reallocate your Training Quest FP instantly for a head start. Another option is that rebirthed familiars can purchase ONE rank in a ‘unique skill’ tied to your familiar. I say unique skill, but it’s closer to the unique enhancements used by Merchants. So suppose you have a wolf familiar and he has reached maximum FP. You go through a quest to have him reborn to a pup again and from there he gains a fire aura, becoming a flaming wolf whose flames would get stronger and stronger with each rebirth until rank 5 for example. Due to the nature of unique skills however, I think that you should only be able to have one. Or at the very least, only one combat unique, one utility unique, so forth.

As a side note, I think that tier modifiers should be present on familiars simply because they would have limited growth, but would need to keep up with their master somewhat even if just reborn. Also their leveling and HP increases should be tied to their FP, similarly to a player' SP. If the 'buddy system' idea where you send your familiar to help people is accepted, then I'd also suggest that familiars helping in lesser tiers don't get -quite- the same amount of FP. Like 2 instead of 3 because they are stronger than what they are fighting.

I’d be lying if I said I knew any precise values or had a list of every possible Familiar Skill or Unique Familiar Skill, or even the five training quests. This is just a rough draft for a pet system, essentially, instead of a ‘fourth equipment slot’ like our familiars currently are.
 

 

[Rain 0]

I don't have a pet yet cause my LD bonus is meh, but most definitely... yes! ._. growing familiars with you. That's freaking awesome! Also with the tiers.. it makes sense. Healing 15 hp at higher levels is pretty ridiculous...ly underpowered.

[Crimsa 0]

To be honest I had a great upcoming system for Familiars, level curves, it's own way of leveling compared to it's master, skills, and even equipment. I still have the document but I never got the feedback I asked for, while I trust Shark has not forgotten some things within the document remain unchanged, and lack proper completion as I wish to know if I am wasting my time or not. :/

Edited June 11, 2016 by Crimsa

[Kalesh 0]

@CrimsaI would be decently interested in hearing more about that. My mad ramblings aren't that great, just ideas without substance I suppose.

Back on topic though, I feel like it would take all of thirty seconds just to add scaling to several of them, and to correct the enhancement for the damage dealer to actually display their damage. The worst case scenario in my mind is that they actually FORGOT to mention that familiars scale up. What basis do I have for this last part? If we look at Lowenthal's signature it says that his pet gives him +2 damage. Something only possible if he 1. Has a unique pet from an event I don't know about that does more damage than currently attainable pets, or 2. It scales up.

There is the possibility it was an accident but I don't like to assume such things.

[Crimsa 0]

I'm not sure if he actually uses that pet in RP XD, I am fond of reading his roleplays and either have missed it or he hasn't used it x3. (could be from the old system as well.) And Staff are working on tiding up our current systems as it is, (from what I was told when I submitted the system for feedback)  so a familiar system is sadly not going to be an option at this current time to my knowledge. If I am informed differently at anytime I will finish up what I had and submit it as I can legitimately say it's near completion, just been waiting for the thumbs up. XD