I’m sure this question has been asked before, but I feel it bears asking again because I really would like a reasoned answer from A.Net.
There’s a lot of critters out in the world that we can tame; fifteen families with one to five varieties of creature in each (many with a unique ability that ties into their appearance/habitat). That’s fine and well and good, but my question is this:
Why aren’t raptors included in this?
Is it a question of model variety? We have five variations of moa (all ugly as sin, IMO), five variations of drake, five varieties of cat, canine, bear. Incidentally, there are five varieties of raptor in the game, divided roughly by region!
Is it a question of size? You haven’t had any issue scaling down pets in the past; wyvern hatchlings, bears, sharks, and so on.
Is it a question of mechanics? You haven’t seemed too shy about re-using mechanics between pets (bleeds on birds of prey and cats, elemental attacks on drakes and wyverns, poisons on murellows, spiders, marsh drakes, etc) in the past.
Is it a question of feasibility of taming? According to the wiki, ogres have managed. Why couldn’t we? Is it a question of the creature’s intelligence? We can tame cnidarians, sharks, fish, spiders, weird mutant scorpions, and so on, and these creatures all literally lack the necessary neural biochemistry in nature to appreciate companionship.
Is it because they’re dinosaurs? We were promised tameable dinosaurs in HoT and you gave us a bizarre warped turtle creature and a hairy axe-faced lizardhound. Are your notably avian raptors not fantastical enough? We have generic gray wolves, grizzly bears, farm swine, eagles, wild cats, and so on, so why would that be an issue?
Don’t misunderstand, I like the ideas behind ranger pets (and I adore that most pets have a unique ability to their particular model/breed). I just really like dinosaurs. I was quite disappointed with the ‘dinosaurs’ you gave us in HoT when you could have just used already existing assets to add to the list. I’m not gonna pretend I understand the process entire behind making something tame-able for players, but I do know that the visual and audio work for raptors is already done. We have proof positive in ornery screechy lizardbirds trying to kill us in game.
I know it’s been asked before, and I’m sure someone will ask again after me. But this is the only way I have to bring it to developer attention, and maybe get insight from the devs themselves why it is so.
Please, A.Net. I just want to have a raptor buddy. It’s a silly thing in the grand scheme of game design, but it’s something special to a guy who grew up thinking dinosaurs were the coolest thing since sliced cheese (there’s a definite reason during my WoW days I used dinosaur pets almost exclusively). If I can’t, then I’d like to know why.