Pet Changes

[Aaeeldar]

juhans-DEV

EQ Coder

Joined: Sep 21, 2005
Messages: 61
Offline


After the new pet functionality has been pushed, the following are some of the new pet features you will have!



1) New pet UI! You will be able to assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window!



2) Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking!



3) Toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stant, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold!



4) New pet text based commands! You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off.



5) New pet attack command will switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA's or level. Great for new and low level players! (Old command will still exist as qattack which is what it always should have been).



6) New pet hold functionality! (Ever had your pet not hold properly? Ever have your pet run off and aggro a mob somewhere far away in the zone? Ever have to spam pet back? Well, not anymore!)



7) New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state "pet convergence" )! This is what the players really wanted, now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won't attack or aggro or do anything else! No more pet back, no more of your pet doing anything but what you exactly want it too! Pets not allowed in raids because they might run off, aggro some mobs, and wipe the group? Nah, this ain't happening with the new changes!



Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.



9) Bug fixes for: focus failing to work properly when aggroed in certain situations, PERSISTENT pet states now hold on zoning, on logout, and are will now be 100 percent persistent.



10) Coming soon, new and updated full and complete documentation of all these changes!


http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=144115

[scrat]

That is some pretty amazing pet control changes. It reminds me of taking a dump, actually.

1) We can control when and where we let loose a turd.
2) We can control the precise velocity of said turd when it leaves our body.
3) We can control the outcome, wether we get spashed or not.
4) We can control, with some degree - the shape of said turd.
5) We can even focus the turds by controling what we eat to give varying outcomes of 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Hopefully the new UI won't be huge; still not quite happy with the oversized group UI and the target window after the change.

[Vanlor]

It's about fing time... Maybe I will finally be able to free up two buttons on my hotbar for all the new activated SoD stuff...

Anyway, does anyone know the avg time it takes for something to go to test then to live?

and what is this QA people talk about it going through?

[Maeryn]

Hopefully the new UI won't be huge; still not quite happy with the oversized group UI and the target window after the change.it's kinda huge.

http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/images/files/petimage.jpg

[Xislaben]

I hope new attack works the way he says it will, cause based on how he said he was going to implement it, I think it won't really work the way stated.

[sauruman]

it's kinda huge.



During the discussion on the development of new pet UI, it was stated by dev-Juhans that we can resize the new pet window based on how many buttons we need/buff space needed. So if he told the truth, its amazing in every way. These changes have been getting worked on on and off for the last year or more based on player-dev discussions, so I hope it doesn't take a further year to see em on live servers heh.

[Vanlor]

I hope new attack works the way he says it will, cause based on how he said he was going to implement it, I think it won't really work the way stated.

How do you mean?

[scrat]

juhans-DEV


The list of pet commands currently assignable to the pet buttons are:

Pet Buttons:

"health",

"leader",

"attack",

"qattack",

"follow",

"sit",

"taunt",

"hold",

"spellhold",

"focus",

"feign",

"back off",

"get lost",

"stop",

"target"


There is no reason that in the future we can not add the suspend and unsuspend minion, or other pet AA abilities to this list. Hope this helps!


This was in response to a question I asked - this UI might be golden.

[Maeryn]

This was in response to a question I asked - this UI might be golden.how is having feign in the pet UI golden? is it better to have them in a window you can't map to keystrokes rather than a hotkey bar that you can? the notable changes were what he did to attack and such, although i'll be happy with the UI as long as i can take most of that stuff out of there.

[Siluuael]

I'm pretty sure he said everything is / will be command-lineable too.

[scrat]

how is having feign in the pet UI golden? is it better to have them in a window you can't map to keystrokes rather than a hotkey bar that you can? the notable changes were what he did to attack and such, although i'll be happy with the UI as long as i can take most of that stuff out of there.

For me, it will free up precious hotkeys. Or relocate them to a UI i'll be forced to deal with anyways. I've never gotten into the keystroke mapping feature, and I can't stand shuffling hotbar pages unless it's super generic utility like throne of heroes, summon remains, gate, etc.

[Maeryn]

For me, it will free up precious hotkeys. Or relocate them to a UI i'll be forced to deal with anyways. I've never gotten into the keystroke mapping feature, and I can't stand shuffling hotbar pages unless it's super generic utility like throne of heroes, summon remains, gate, etc.i've just always been a big fan of hotkey bars, i play with all 4 visisble, 3 of which are mapped to hotkeys. it's due in part to lag, mouse clicks are much easier to get missed than key strokes, so i go that route--attack not being clickable while casting is an annoyance, but other than that i have a hotkey bar dedicated solely to pet commands, and it'll probably remain that way after the UI changes as well. i'd still like to know what xislabunny thinks won't work~

[Xislaben]

How do you mean?

Pet will now attack next mob by doubling the hate of the current target and assigning that to new mob. But if initial hate was low enough on first mob, new mob could lose agro.

[Envy of Saryrn]

I don't get time to mess around on the test server so I am seeing these changes as new since the most recent patch.

I have to say that the changes made are wonderful and well thought out. A lot of the new functionality are things that I have wished for repeatedly since I rolled my first necromancer.

Great Job!

[Solarra]

Im still convinced that the command/behavior changes are bad. I hate that hold is a persistent state, in that, even if there are 50 things on the pet, itll come back to me when its target is dead. The window itself is far too large. And does anyone still use pet window for buttons? Its always seemed slow and clunky to me. But... The Magician leaders got what they want, so there we go. Its just unfortunate to re-learn something that hasnt really changed for me in the past nine years.

[solithan]

Im still convinced that the command/behavior changes are bad. I hate that hold is a persistent state, in that, even if there are 50 things on the pet, itll come back to me when its target is dead.

How is that a bad thing? Just uncheck hold if you want him to charge off after the next.

I don't believe they took away any functionality, they mearly improved upon it. You can still do things exactly the way it was before.

I will admit is larger then before which is annoying but not all that awful and there are several pet hotbuttons that would be nice to actually put on the pet, but its a start.

[DeadLikeMe]

The pet's target is practically useless.

1. You can't use it to re-target the mob. I send pet after mob1, then mob2, then mob3 and want to re-target mob1, I have to do it manually which is not easy to do when all mobs are the same and crowded around pet.

2. The health bar of the target doesn't update well. If you have the mob targeted while pet is killing then yes, it's current, but if you switch to another mob, health bar does not update. All of a sudden mob dies out of the blue. It would be helpful to know when mob is going to die in case you want to stop looting other bodies and FD so as not to take the faction hit for example.

I guess it does what it was supposed to do if it's only function is to tell you which mob pet is on, but again, cumbersome if you still have to type /assist Xarn.

[solithan]

Those are some good observations.
I guess it does what it was supposed to do if it's only function is to tell you which mob pet is on
I think this was the only thing it was intended to do. But you should /feedback your suggestions.

[Veneichlung]

The pet hold and focus buttons are a little buggy when you summon another pet after one dies. And as far as the hold button stay in in is concerned just use regular attack instead if qattack

[Drazzminius]

Personally, I like the toggle on the pet hold. Took a few Mobs to figure it out (didn't originally realize it was a toggle, had mistaken it for the old style hold feature). It has actually come in handy doing the Jonas Quests (only three frickin' bones to go, LOL!).

[Zeli]

The pet's target is practically useless.

1. You can't use it to re-target the mob. I send pet after mob1, then mob2, then mob3 and want to re-target mob1, I have to do it manually which is not easy to do when all mobs are the same and crowded around pet.

2. The health bar of the target doesn't update well. If you have the mob targeted while pet is killing then yes, it's current, but if you switch to another mob, health bar does not update. All of a sudden mob dies out of the blue. It would be helpful to know when mob is going to die in case you want to stop looting other bodies and FD so as not to take the faction hit for example.

I guess it does what it was supposed to do if it's only function is to tell you which mob pet is on, but again, cumbersome if you still have to type /assist Xarn.

#2 seems to be "better" lately...anyone else noticing this? I'd really like to be able to click the mob in the pet window, but I bet that the previous posts are correct and it's "working as intended".