Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

This is a text wall. Please mind the gap, because its full.

There are a lot of straight complaints about the ranger and their state of effective play within the game realm, but as a designer I am less interested in stating those facts and more interested in looking at better ways to approach or redesign the situation so that the character fits their name better. This is a lot of text and you may not agree with it, you might even call me out and insult me as I have for some reason offended your very base nature, but if you do read it and do respond with either a critique or a counter idea I will do my best to respond and absorb your information.

My biggest issue is aside from general bugs of which there are some across all classes. My issue concerns the systems used to portray the Ranger as representative of nature . A big part of the representation, or at least what I had hoped would be a big part, is that they have companions who work with them to achieve great things and while you can argue numbers do give them a role in combat the feeling of master and pet is very lackluster.

Aside: I’ll paint for you the image as I see it now in the game as the ranger functions. I’m in the kitchen making myself a sandwich, which is of course vegan because I would never harm my fuzzy little friends. Suddenly, Jormag attacks my kitchen. I hold onto a nearby object which for some reason seems to remain attached to the ground as the whole kitchen seems to be on the verge of being blown away by minty fresh breath. My pet, who is very much a lazy roommate that doesn’t pay his rent or clean up dishes, is in the living room watching TV. He looks into the kitchen, throws me a shoe, and resumes watching TV.

Summary: The relationship that is here isn’t really going to offer the player a way of connecting with their pet. That is to say that the skills are controlled by the player and the pet follows the commands but other than that the skills don’t really reflect anything special or interesting that would make the player feel like they are having a visceral/intimate combat moment with their pet. The effects are isolated and paired not combined and synergistic. The player themselves change and develop and become better over time, but the pet themselves do not change or develop to any greater state outside of stats you have that benefit them directly or a couple of skills that have a specific interaction.

Proposal: What I propose is a design direction that promotes more skills that represent collaborative effort between the ranger and their pet of choice and that the pets themselves are given a better form of development that makes them feel more like a partner to respect and less like a tool to be used or some piece of scenery that I abducted and leashed to fight for me.

Breakdown of Example System Replacement:

(I assume you all know this I am just stating it.) Pets currently have a standard attack which they perform, a skill that the player can remotely activate, a command for holding back from attacking, a remote to switch between the two active land or sea based pets that the player has pre selected, and four shouts, which act as extra commands that offer different functionality for the pet.

At the end of all of this I will provide an example for a pet that covers each section of my systems design.

To introduce the changes I would propose to each sub-system that is part of the over arching pet system the first piece I present is what I’m calling Pet Development. I stated earlier that I don’t really feel like the pets develop alongside you, as they are now they are just like plug and play devices and you don’t really have to work to unlock their potential outside of traiting for them.

Pet Development works like this. Any given pet has three stages that they are in during the course of their development. Every ten levels the player earns with a single pet will pass them to the next stage. Since you can gain levels past 80 this doesn’t prevent players from being able to feasibly develop all of their pets. At each stage the pet will get larger , gain permanent stat bonuses, a more powerful passive, and gain access to two specific skills; A Chain Attack skill, and a bonus Combination Attack skill. As far as size reference think regular, veteran, and champion styles although champion would be a bit too big.

To connect and continue from my previous system the Chain Attack skills are designed after the player chain skills that are typically attached to the 1 key on any given weapon and meant to mimic a variety of effects from one attack chain. These are part of the pets internal automatic chain of attacks that they use. To clarify if the pet is in stage two its chain attack will start with the first chain order skill followed by the second chain order skill and back to the first again; stage three will chain through all three attacks and stage one will only have access to the first. The other aim of this would be to improve the uniqueness of each pet by offering different visual and functional effects through the standard attacks.

Combination Attacks are attacks that the player activates that both the player and the pet participate in. While you could use prefab animations the expectation is that these attacks will literally offer the player the visual satisfaction of combined efforts . As I stated before there would be an unlockable combo attack for each stage after the first that you can switch out. The aim would be to balance them to offer different functions rather than having each following stage be more powerful so that much like your own kit variety which you can swap out your pet can also change to meet the challenge.

Pet Passives are a passive bonus that your character benefits from as long as you have that pet active. These develop and become stronger each stage. The intent is that even if the bonus from these passives is Minor it can help give the pet a more unique feel or effect within the premise of working along side of your character.

Pet Combo Typing is the inherent type that any pet has that will influence your standard weapon skills to have varied effects based on your pet’s Combo Typing. Dark, Ethereal, Fire, Ice, Light, Lightning, Poison, Smoke, and Water combo types will have an influence on the types of fields that your skills generate. My reasoning for this is that there is a lack of utility inside the Ranger’s kit all around and it would be nice if on top of every standard combo field that the Ranger can apply that there was a secondary combo field they got as a bonus that allowed them to manipulate some of the utility coming out of those fields.

So to provide and example for all of these things I have stated I present to you subject one the…

Sylvan Hound
__________________________
Combo Typing : Water

Chain Attack Skill 1 (Stage 1)

Nature’s Bite – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy using the power of nature to draw off some of the enemies life energy healing the Sylvan hound for a small amount.

Chain Attack Skill 2 (Stage 2)

Nature’s Tenacity – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy gaining swiftness as nature helps keep the hound from being peeled off the enemy.

Chain Attack Skill 3 (Stage 3)

Nature’s Dominance – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy casting weakness for a short duration on all enemies within a short range.

Pet Passive – Heart of the Forest
Stage 1 Bonus – Grants the player 5% Bonus Toughness from their Vitality
Stage 2 Bonus – Grants the player 5% Bonus Healing Power from their Vitality
Stage 3 Bonus – Grants the Player 5% Bonus Power from their Vitality

Combination Attack 1 (Stage 1)

Bushwack – The player and the Sylvan Hound dash to and knock down an enemy crippling them. The hound gains protection and the player leaps back.

Combination Attack 2 (Stage 2)

Collective Majesty – The player and the Sylvan Hound let out a howl to nature granting boons for each ally present up to a maximum of five for a short duration. Five allies means five boons for five allies, four allies means four boons for four allies and so forth.

Combination Attack 3 (Stage 3)

Protection of the Forest – The Sylvan hound jumps to the player and summons a Ring of Warding around the player and granting allies within the circle Vigor for a short duration.

In closing of this idea, I’m not saying, Do This, I’m saying that I feel like there is a better way to approach the design of this character in terms of the systems used to represent the class in engine that I feel the engine is more than capable of giving the class more.

As always balancing is nice, but sometimes you can’t just tweak numbers and hope that it will turn out for the best sometimes you need to re-approach the cliff from a different side. Riot as a company has taken recently to redesigning champions to see if they could more effectively design and represent what that champion is. This is merely how I would like to imagine the Ranger, but I’m sure everyone has an ideal vision in their head.

I applied for the Game Design position, but I haven’t heard back so this is how I cope with waiting.

If you read the whole thing and are taking the time to respond, I thank you and I hope you enjoyed my idea or at least the message trying to claw its way out under the mass of idea that is crushing it.

If you were selling me this as a DLC, I only have one phrase to say.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

What you wrote sounds not only interesting, but it also gives one hell of a flavor to the current Rangers.

Awesome idea, I love it!
The evolving pets is a bit GW1-ish and there it was actually one of the coolest features a ranger had.

Edit: I just had this in mind after making the post.
It would also be great if pets would be able to “dodge” once in a while, especially bird pets, instead of just mindlessly attacking like a pet rock

Would be awesome. I really love the idea of pets leveling up as you use them more not only to make them stronger and more useful, but also it adds a little more uniqueness to each ranger because you’d be more likely to stick to your chosen pet, rather than being able to change on a whim.

Anet may very well need to re-design the ranger. The pets are nothing but meat to use as sacrifice to the mean monster in front of the ranger. They get hurt and broken, then bring them back and swap them to send even more sacrificial specimens.

I would love it that a ranger’s pet becomes actually a dependable and interesting part of the character.

Love your ideas.
I honestly wish they would just redesign the class at times. Had they given us less variety in pets and focused on making a few good dependable ones, rangers may have been in a better place. Everyone always flocks to the only reliable options anyways, leaving the rest to gather dust.

As the main mechanic that affects all of our builds, it really does need priority in terms of fixing.

I love the positive responses, makes me feel like the seven hours writing it has some pay off. I’m open to negative criticism if anyone has it. Its better to see a hole in my logic or my idea that I haven’t justified or filled than to leave it open for debate after the fact.

Good post Tenchu. We need a little love.

I was thinking through how player’s acquire pets and it kind of bugs me that you just kind of walk up and grab pets… there’s no initial bonding you literally just abduct them and throw them in your sweat-shop F4 Menu.

Having a pursuit quest that allows you to earn or gain access to a specific pet might be a good way to give them more personal value. The player earned them rather than got them just for exploring an area.

You could argue that finding new pets is the incentive for exploring areas, but I feel like that’s kind of a cop-out.

I’m just going to write stuff down concerning ideas that I feel directly relates to that design intent of making Player and Pet interactions more collaborative.

I was also thinking that if there was a system for pet development that you could find a foundation for Legendary Pets.

There’s a lot of neat ideas to build off but consider this: no other peofession has to go hunt down some object in the world to unlock the full potential. So the more work you make it for rangers, the more likely you’ll get in a situation where they’re missing out on their full potential just because they haven’t had the time to do the pet story mission or whatever. This game has plenty of timesinks.

I’ve just really grown into ranger as it is, ya know? I’ve learned to like it. That being said, you have some nice ideas here. Ideas are a framework to build off. These ideas have general support so maybe in the future we’ll see some kind of implementation of this as the devs continue strengthening the core game. But they have a long list of priorities that focus on a changing world—a truly dynamic world. That’s ambitious enough without repeating profession developing work that really, I’m guessing, was finished before the last beta weekend. I believe core mechanics and profession design are close to where ANET wants them and I wouldn’t count on huge chanes any time soon. Pet mechanics are being evaluated all the time—that much we do know, but pet fixes have been coming in painfully slow (seriously, can you guys fix the porcine class yet? Pleeeeease)

Chopps.5047:

…I believe core mechanics and profession design are close to where ANET wants them and I wouldn’t count on huge chanes any time soon…

I’m trying to instill an idea that the system itself is not where it should be. I don’t think that the system where it is can be fixed by pushing numbers that wouldn’t just overall break the class. Even if it took a very long time I personally would want to see that system change for the better. I’ve played every class except the Mesmer and I’ve enjoyed all of them thoroughly I feel like they all have their enjoyable class features. The Ranger as a class was the only one that really irked me.

Chopps.5047:

no other peofession has to go hunt down some object in the world to unlock the full potential.

I feel like in a fully designed representation of a system like the one I pitched if you had a full development system for pets where they grow and change than you would not be as immediately concerned with getting all of them as you would with training along side the pet you feel deserves your attention the most.

If the acquisition quest was something short like one of the story segment missions that are apart of the main plot that last between 10-15 minutes I don’t feel that such a thing would really impact the time economy especially when its the case of only having to perform that action once.

Players spend way more time clanking ore nodes, yanking weeds out of the ground, or in the case of my Norn hitting the tiniest trees in the world with the largest axe in the world and dealing the least amount of environmental damage one could deal with an axe of that size to a tree of that thickness.

I don’t want to argue because you make good points, right? That would be cool for sure, no doubt. How do you reconcile that with the current design of species specific story arcs? And how do you reconcile that with pvp players who don’t like pve and only wvw or spvp? I mean, in the case of spvp, I know you get all the pets immediately. But if the pets grew and changed over time, the enemy wouldn’t be able to spot you, see that you’re running spiders, then think “nope, condition damage, I’m out of here”. In all honesty I think weapons should be easier to recognize. For example, if I see a sceptor / dagger elementalist, I know I have to dodge on the initial blast or else I’ll be in a world of pain.

Or maybe I misunderstood that part and pet skills wouldn’t necessarily change over time?

Anyhow, the big problem is the self imposed constraint that they must treat pve, wvw, and spvp as similarly as possible to prevent players from needing to massively change their style of play when moving from one to the other. From a business perspective, this saves cost and headaches so I think it’s a smart decision. So you have to live within that box with your ideas somehow. Maybe you can articulate them in such a way as to make it work?

I can’t express how much I love the ideas made in the original post. I feel that this would truly make the Ranger a better experience as a whole.

Hmm, instead of a quest for obtaining the pet, how about we battle the pet to gain it? And then we train it to follow commands through constant battle? After about 20 kills, it starts listening to most orders, and after 50 kills, it starts obeying completely. Gives us the mindset that we’re “taming” a wild animal.

Chopps.5047:

I don’t want to argue because you make good points, right? That would be cool for sure, no doubt. How do you reconcile that with the current design of species specific story arcs?

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying here? The story arcs across the races have different time frames, but I recall several that finish after 10-15 minutes. These would be like Ranger specific stories that they find in different areas around the world. I don’t know if that answers your question because I’m not sure what you are asking entirely…

Chopps.5047:

And how do you reconcile that with pvp players who don’t like pve and only wvw or spvp? I mean, in the case of spvp, I know you get all the pets immediately. But if the pets grew and changed over time, the enemy wouldn’t be able to spot you, see that you’re running spiders, then think “nope, condition damage, I’m out of here”.

A player who can’t find the critter they want in WvW still has to find it somewhere in the open world anyway. Many/Most of the story oriented quests that are designed are designed with skip buttons to expedite the process for people who are either uninterested in the story or have already experienced that piece of content.

It was mostly another idea that I felt would represent giving the player a way to become more attached to the pets themselves. As far as a pure answer for WvW players who have no interest in PvE elements the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is a vendor that trains and sells pets for WvW Badges. Not a ludicrous amount mind you.

Chopps.5047:

In all honesty I think weapons should be easier to recognize. For example, if I see a sceptor / dagger elementalist, I know I have to dodge on the initial blast or else I’ll be in a world of pain.

Or maybe I misunderstood that part and pet skills wouldn’t necessarily change over time?

I agree that you should be able to recognize pets for specific things whether it be offensive, defensive, or some odd utility, but what I was trying to show with the Sylvan Hound example was something akin to a Guardian, it has some tanking and healing and offers different capabilities that a guardian might have over the course of its development but its largely up to the player to decide which skills they want to use. Skills that are designed with the intent of giving the feel that their efforts along side the pet are more collaborative.

Chopps.5047:

Anyhow, the big problem is the self imposed constraint that they must treat pve, wvw, and spvp as similarly as possible to prevent players from needing to massively change their style of play when moving from one to the other. From a business perspective, this saves cost and headaches so I think it’s a smart decision. So you have to live within that box with your ideas somehow. Maybe you can articulate them in such a way as to make it work?

I will try to articulate my ideas for the broad necessity of balance concerning the facets of both WvW and sPvP against PvE. Systems design is very specific and what I am doing right now trying to generate more ideas and get feedback is more broad. Although I am trying to express the ideas I have in a specific manner so that they are easy to understand, which is why I present all of the systems broken apart individually, and follow them up with an example that meets all of those needs.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Hmm, instead of a quest for obtaining the pet, how about we battle the pet to gain it? And then we train it to follow commands through constant battle? After about 20 kills, it starts listening to most orders, and after 50 kills, it starts obeying completely. Gives us the mindset that we’re “taming” a wild animal.

While that is a way to approach the system of capturing or asserting dominance over a wild beast I feel like unless you’re inserting a morality scale than you’d probably have better results with a friendly approach than beating up a wild animal.

My reasoning for the story associated link between acquiring pets and developing bonds is that not only do I feel like you could give the story around the pets personality, but it was also clear to me with the living story update and the quest involving Rox that there was a lot of personality between the baby Scavenger and the Charr. More personality I feel sad to admit than I’ve seen anywhere else in the game concerning Rangers.

I salute you! That is exactly the way to think of caracter design. To proper engage the player, even if a class is bad, if its properly engaged it will rage less.

I love the fact that you bond with the pet, n GW1 you trained it and named it. To make it your buddy! Here, I dont even bother to name it,. The pet means nothing to me. It just runs in and die anyway, so i switch pet, it runs in and dies. Then I wait for CD.

Anet, hire this guy.

That is on so many levels so much better then what we have now.

Well done Tenchu

A-Nets Ranger design looks like “kitten… we just have 2 more months time to finish this class… just make some juvenile versions of some animals…”

I always play the animal pet class in mmos (if possible) and I never have felt less for my animal companions in any mmo ever played…

I absolutely love some of these ideas Tenchu. The only flaw I see is difficulty in balancing the class this way. The simple pet system they have now has even failed to do it. As the game stands a pet charges in attacks then gets totally melted regardless of the type of pet used. In every situation except solo content this happens. Pets would need a sever durability boost to make them a viable part of a Ranger build. In order to achieve this you would hear uproar from other classes about how “OP” Ranger pets are. Perhaps a permanent pet system was where anet screwed up from the start with this game engine. Maybe they should look at taking your synergistic ideas and merging them with a series of summon skills. F1-4 summons pets of different field synergies. Then as far as pet skins you could choose a skins for all those spells to share through skin capping. That way running a warthog pet won’t generate hate from group members in a dungeon since pets aren’t stat driven anymore but simply target driven spells. That’d be a drastic change from standard pet classes. This would take some more balancing but as far as wvw goes I don’t see them giving much love to the Ranger side in a standard pet system. Pushing for a more complex pet AI could just make it worse for us.

Chimp.7946:

Anet, hire this guy.

My head might explode, and then I wouldnt be able to design things, although I feel like I am entirely willing to take that risk.

Mardermann.7468:

A-Nets Ranger design looks like “kitten… we just have 2 more months time to finish this class… just make some juvenile versions of some animals…”

The sad part about production is that even if there is a concept you like more or a better solution or system that you want to use you might not have the resources, time, or testing power to make sure that its a worthwhile effort.

My hope is that because Guild Wars 2 follows an iterative development cycle, by which I mean they update it and change it consistently, that there is hope for the systems that are currently used to change and evolve for the better.

My assessment is to point to a system that can use change, not for its current number balance as there are any number of slight tweaks you can make to a cast of characters to bring their effective power level closer, but rather to point out a design that doesn’t provide an experience that you would expect to gain from that kind of system; Companionship, collaboration, personality, and development are all things I would expect from a pet system especially from a game like Guild Wars 2 when you look at how dynamic and interesting all of the other classes are.

This post is going to be followed by another one of mine because I can’t actually fit all of my responses in this one post. Although this is the shorter of the two since I am going to try and keep my posts separated by the individuals I am responding to.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

Pushing for a more complex pet AI could just make it worse for us.

Apart from the AI needing to be improved anyway, not all of the things I’m saying are directly oriented around AI. The standard chain attack is pretty straight forward as its already in the game.

The combination attacks are player controlled and are strictly relative to a specific action which is more of a load on animations as you would need one that is premade that fits the action or a custom animation, which obviously requires an animator.

The passive system influences stats not player or creature interactions, the pet development system is also not part of direct combat, pet combo typing is also a passive influence on the player skills rather than something that would effect pet AI.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

The only flaw I see is difficulty in balancing the class this way.

I’m not just looking for balance, because that is a given, I’m looking to enforce/provide/instill a specific experience that is not here already that is a result of the current systems design. Balance takes time and feedback.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

As the game stands a pet charges in attacks then gets totally melted regardless of the type of pet used. In every situation except solo content this happens. Pets would need a sever durability boost to make them a viable part of a Ranger build.

So there is a good way to approach the balance of pets against PvE encounters where they just get shredded apart, and I really hate that I have to cite Diablo 3’s balance for this, but there was a long standing issue of making the Witch Doctor’s pets more survivable against the increasingly dangerous enemies encountered in later difficulties.

I don’t remember the exact details or numbers, but it was something to the effect that provided pets with a specific kind of orientation towards how they took damage from enemies based on their health. For every certain amount of health that a pet had they could only lose so much of their health from a single hit/attack. Something to the effect of if they had 5,000 health no attack could deal more than 20% of their health; so if they had 5,000 health they could effectively take a minimum of five hits before dropping.

I’m not saying use that exact design, but I feel like that kind of system would help make pets more survivable when dealing with enemies that typically just blow them up. It could even be scaled per the type of pet so that pets you would expect to have a better health % cap per hit ratio would have that. You could even give it a stat name like Resilience or something. I mean I wouldn’t expect the pig to stand up to as many hits as a Bear.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

…Perhaps a permanent pet system was where anet screwed up from the start with this game engine. Maybe they should look at taking your synergistic ideas and merging them with a series of summon skills. F1-4 summons pets of different field synergies…

So an important part of the pet system and the dynamics of a pet/master relationship in a literal sense is presence and the idea that the pet is actually present to see and recognize in the space around the player. If you were to make it more of a straight animation its less of a collaborative effort and more of a particle effect. Kind of like the two greatsword skills which animate a sort of spirit that embodies with the strike.

Which reminds me if you’re going to put two sweet(b?d?ss) particle effects on two of the skills for the greatsword and than at least be consistent so that the other two skills on the greatsword aren’t really unimpressive by contrast.

Quick suggestion/idea.

Maybe think about some kind of combo system. For example, your pet has 2 or 3 basic skills. Your order the use of one of these basic skill. Then, if you use your main weapon skill #2 for example, both you and your pet perform a bonus “combo” skill. Some cool combo skill ideas would be things like :
1) your pet use some kind of leap skill to your target
2) you use Sword’s skilll #2, Hornet Sting (leap backward)
=> 3) your pet launches your opponent to you as you ready a stabbing move; you impale the target dealing heavy damage.

Sorry about my english, i’m not a native speaker. I hope i made it clear.

Great ideas, I really like it!

I especially love the idea of the ‘pursuit quests’ type thing and the potential for Legendary pets. Seriously, the amount of times I have seen Garm and done a little sigh of envy…I want a dire wolf as well ArenaNet T-T

When I first played BWE I thought Anets plans were to allow your pets to level up. I was very disappointed to find out this wasn’t the case.

What I thought was something like this. You tame a juvenile animal and it has a basic skill as you use the pet more it not only changes its name from juvenile to young, mature, adult, veteran, champion etc it also grows in size. I want to be running around with an adult panther and he looks like a beast!

Also I would like you to have a simple talent system giving your pet some extra abilities. So if I want an extra tanky bear then I put some points into rugged skin, or perhaps armoured skin. Even putting some armour on my pet would be nice.

If I get a new pet then I will have to level it up from scratch, I don’t see a problem with this. I would do my dailies with my new pet and dungeon run with my veteran. Who cares if you have a drop in dps levelling up new pets, having a stable of beasts would be worth it.

I love your ideas.
Someone else posted something about a quest to get new pets, I also really like that, I would quote but idk how :c

Tenchu The Wolf.3418:

I was also thinking that if there was a system for pet development that you could find a foundation for Legendary Pets.

This is one of the few things I like about a WoW Hunter over a GW2 Ranger. Hunting down rare pets that have a long respawn rate to ensure they remain rare.

I would spend time hunting these rare’s down, (not all of them mind you, I’m not that sad) but ones that I think looked good combined with my character. Doing this would also see rangers returning to the wild and tracking them down.

The only problem I see with this is the intentional griefing of players killing the rare before a hunter can ‘tame’ it. Rangers could perhaps mark the creature, which claims it at max draw distance so its unkillable until they get into range.

Taitsu.7425:

Quick suggestion/idea.

Maybe think about some kind of combo system. For example, your pet has 2 or 3 basic skills. Your order the use of one of these basic skill. Then, if you use your main weapon skill #2 for example, both you and your pet perform a bonus “combo” skill. Some cool combo skill ideas would be things like :
1) your pet use some kind of leap skill to your target
2) you use Sword’s skilll #2, Hornet Sting (leap backward)
=> 3) your pet launches your opponent to you as you ready a stabbing move; you impale the target dealing heavy damage.

Sorry about my english, i’m not a native speaker. I hope i made it clear.

It fine its a bit hard to interpret your exact idea separate from what I proposed of more combined interactions. The whole idea of Combination Skills is to portray combined efforts between the pet and the player and while you could attach combined skills from a pet to specific skills on the weapon that would be a problem as it would narrow the type of weapons you could use with any given pet. It would also be like… way more complex.

DeviousCupcake.1537:

Great ideas, I really like it!

I especially love the idea of the ‘pursuit quests’ type thing and the potential for Legendary pets. Seriously, the amount of times I have seen Garm and done a little sigh of envy…I want a dire wolf as well ArenaNet T-T

I have six Norns so I’m… VERY familiar with Garm. I also feel like Eir’s relationship with Garm is like Ranger envy for Rangers… sadly.

Thobek.1730:

Also I would like you to have a simple talent system giving your pet some extra abilities. So if I want an extra tanky bear then I put some points into rugged skin, or perhaps armoured skin. Even putting some armour on my pet would be nice.

Hmm I’m not sure a secondary trait tree/talent system would be as helpful since a Pet system overhaul would almost definitely already require that the Ranger’s traits be moved and re-appropriated and I’m sure with enough creative placement that you could modify or reinstall pet specific traits into the trait tree.

Hokie.1045:

I love your ideas.
Someone else posted something about a quest to get new pets, I also really like that, I would quote but idk how :c

Thanks, and its not a difficult idea to conjure, but I feel it would foster a better sense of ownership over pets, which is why I said it. I’m sure its evident in another game. Quest for pets. Its the same as questing for weapons …. just for Rangers.

Thobek.1730:

This is one of the few things I like about a WoW Hunter over a GW2 Ranger. Hunting down rare pets that have a long respawn rate to ensure they remain rare.

I didnt like WoW enough to play it longer than 24 hours.

Thobek.1730:

The only problem I see with this is the intentional griefing of players killing the rare before a hunter can ‘tame’ it. Rangers could perhaps mark the creature, which claims it at max draw distance so its unkillable until they get into range.

I was actually… also thinking of this as a pet quest style system except more akin to the legendary status of weapons. It would be more of a Ranger Ritual so to speak where you acquire a certain number of things you need for the ritual. All of the legendary pets represent a spirit of some sort and the idea would be that the spirit is using your pet as an avatar for manifesting on the physical plane.

This though… is where it is difficult because unless you designed Legendary Pets instead specifically for species, like Canine, Moa, Drake, Feline, et cetera you would need to design 45 different legendary pets, which I feel like would be far too many for a convenient development pipeline… I’m not saying it would be impossible. Coming up with the concepts wouldnt be hard its fulfilling all of the art assets that would be necessary for that.

From all of the feedback I have receive I am going to do an iteration on this idea that involves a more fleshed out explanation for all of the pets. I got a good piece of feedback from the other place I posted and its got me thinking. So hopefully soon I will have another more fleshed out systems design and explanation for the pets within the system itself.

I will definitely respond to more feedback if it comes, but for now thank you all for the positive responses and the constructive criticism.

What if we were allowed to do the priority of pet skill usage ourself?

A → B → C could become A → C → B or even just C → C → C. Just allowing us to set this by ourselves would take away a whole lot of the curretn frustrating randomness and make everything more controlable. No more stupid swiftness cast of Bird pets on every engage. Moa heals or dazes when we need them. Cat burst on demand.

Hell they should even allow us to slot A, B or C into the f2 position or include the f2 into the chain. The interface is already there.

I really like your idea, and my main isn’t a ranger.

Dojo.1867:

What if we were allowed to do the priority of pet skill usage ourself?

A -> B -> C could become A -> C -> B or even just C -> C -> C. Just allowing us to set this by ourselves would take away a whole lot of the curretn frustrating randomness and make everything more controlable. No more stupid swiftness cast of Bird pets on every engage. Moa heals or dazes when we need them. Cat burst on demand.

Hell they should even allow us to slot A, B or C into the f2 position or include the f2 into the chain. The interface is already there.

I would have thought this would have been in at release, considering you have been able to control what skills you do or don’t want your pet to use in WoW since release.

i really enjoyed reading thorugh your wall of text and hope that arenanet gives you a chance to work with them. your proposal for changing the ranger is great i think

what i am missing most is, just like you pointed out, the connection to the pet. this fellow should be my best friend, my guardian, my soulmate and i just didnt ever get this feeling in the game when leveling my two rangers (yes i have two)

I love every idea. Get it fixed ANET.

This way the pet system would improve but at the same time some of us are longing for a way to play without pets. I don’t see rangers being fixed petwise (compared to gw1 ranger) before that too is possible. I don’t want to take advantage of animals irl or ingame.

Achilles.2950:

Firstly and most importantly. Remove pets from being a necessity. There is absolutely no reason why anet should shackle a class with huge potential with such a limited and narrow class option such as a pet. I understand you are trying to flesh out the class and distance it from shortbow thieves, but there are so many things that can be done. I’m not saying delete pets from existence, but give the players some choice. There is no other profession in the game that thinks, kitten I wish I didn’t have these virtues buffing me constantly, or kitten I wish I didn’t have these 3 other elements containing whole new skillbars, but everytime I play Ranger at some point I will just sigh due to the pet being forced upon me. Pets right now are literally an anchor dragging rangers down, and they need to be released.

The aim would be to make the pets a more valued and useful part of the Ranger gameplay and more valued by Ranger players themselves. Look at it from a balance of systems at least how it works currently. If you appropriate a certain amount of damage and functionality to the pet that it can deal in addition to what the Ranger deals on their own how do you give the player a boost to compensate when you take the pet out of the equation?

I would have to ask if the Rangers didnt have pets what would you give them as a primary class ability instead of the pet system that characterizes them as rangers? On top of giving them the option of having a pet to begin with?

Achilles.2950:

Secondly, preparations. For those who didn’t play the first game, preparations were skills that effected your attacks for a certain duration. “Apply Poison” for example would cause poison with each hit for a duration. I know sharpening stone exists, but there is so much potential for different effects such as cripple, chill, burning, aoe, fear…. how awesome would fear causing barrage be, or a fiery barrage? This is an area that needs to be worked on, and also helps build on the wilderness image somewhat portrayed by rangers.

They gave that to thieves I think. :P

Achilles.2950:

That’s just my opinion, agree or disagree at your own pleasure. Yet atm Rangers give off the distinct impression that you ran out of ideas. you need ideas? look at gw1.

Uhh.. I’m not sure if your dialogue is directed at myself or Arena-net or both? There is kind of a jump there.

I’m for near any pet changes.

The ones atm, conceptually, are trash. The only pets I care for are wolves because they need tender loving care to be worthwhile, but when you give it to them… I’ve pulled off a number of stun lock kills as a condi spec…

Every other pet just does raw dmg or you pop just for an F2 spike… anything to switch that up so it isn’t so stale would make my day.

Better responsiveness on the F2s alone would be so nice though, even just that would be a monumental change for the better… I’ve died so many times because of my pet just walking back and forth while I periodically tap the command…
But yeah, GW2 has had a bit of a way of crushing hopes, so I’ll just cross my fingers and turn away from any dreaming on the idea.

Well I’m working on a second iteration and I’m hoping with a more fleshed out full explanation for every single pet that I will be able to sway more to my cause.

I don’t claim that my way is the best way or even right way, but I would rather create a game plan than sit around and twiddle my thumbs. Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship and the more we communicate what we want to the developers the better they can understand what isn’t working. As a designer I can’t know something is off or bad unless its said and I am hoping that even if I can’t figure out the best way to amend the system that I can rally the community to put forth more effort into giving constructive feedback.

If I didn’t post and respond I wouldn’t have made the progress I’m making on my second iteration. Feedback is very important.

Something needs to be done about the ranger’s pets. It is as if it’s just an afterthought on ANet’s part. I’m still leveling and it doesn’t matter the pet, their survivability has been garbage from the start. The other classes can go to hell. If we need our pets to be up and fighting in order for our damage output to be on par with the other classes, then our pets should be very difficult to take down. If we didn’t need our pet’s damage to be on par with other classes, and have the pet’s damage be above and beyond, then sure, keep them easy to take out.

I love the ideas!!

I still miss Anets original idea where we got to customize our pets skills, each one had a pool of i think 7 family attacks and 3 species attacks? (i feel like i have those mixed up but i’m pretty sure i don’t).

Achilles.2950:

And yes of course my words are directed at anet. You have no control over the game, have no part in designing it or will ever have a part in designing it. Apologies if you were confused.

Sounds like a personal challenge to me.

Tenchu what you proposed in the OP is nearly exactly the pet system I wanted to have since playing GW1. Just better! Seeing alpha footage of GW2 I imagined playing a Greatsword wielding Charr and jumping into battle alongside a large fearsome lion. Well I am doing this as far as possible but it just doesn’t feel right at the moment. The connection isn’t there, the synergy should be better… But you know all of this already.

So I hope Anet uses at least some of your ideas to expand on the ranger. In GW1 pets gained levels. So at least let them grow and become noticably bigger and stronger in GW2.

This is amazing and would be a great addition to the ranger profession, but I’m sure it is way over arena nets heads to make these kind of changes to the AI. Can we get an official comment on this?

A quickfix to the whole pet situation is that we really need the option to have an elite signet (like “fuse with nature”) which removes the pet and changes the pet bar with 4 pet-like buffs much like elementalists.

Example: you could choose between – cat (stealth and bleed damage on backstabs) bear (more survivability) bird (faster movement and chance to proc quickness) Drake (aoe damage on proc on standard attacks)

We could get some nice animations on the ranger – like wings in bird etc. to top it off. We could still play the ranger class but not be limited to always having the aggro/wiping pet on our sides

Woah… This is actually well thought out bravo! Although, I have to say I’m fond of the current system too (it’s not bad and this system you’ve came up with can be integrated into it). If you don’t mind, I’d like to make it a bit less of a complete overhaul? (Which is probably nicer for the designers in the end)

Your combo field idea? It’s alright, but a bit unnecessary and exactly which fields would you even change? I guess the pets themselves could provide different flavours of combo field, but still, that’s a little silly as it removes the uniqueness of some pets as field generators (e.g. my personal favourite, the jellies). It also limits somewhat how the exact species feels different from the rest of the family.

The chain could easily be something determined by the pet’s family. So, dogs could claw, bite and finish with a crippling takedown. Drakes could bite, chomp (self healing) and slam (blast finisher). Bears could claw, bite and raging maul (blocking attacks). And so on. This means other players know the gist of what that pet is going to do simply by the silhouette and past experience, similar to how you would recognise a Greatsword Warrior or a Staff Elementalist. That’s just basic design.

The combination can be a nice middle ground that works like the Thief’s dual attack, but with one extra layer (the pet’s species). As for it evolving with your pet, a skill doing that many things or changing that drastically is ridiculous. So, say your pet was a Drake, their combination skill could be to create a combo field and then you follow up on it instantly. The combo field would vary with the species, so Salamander covers itself in fire, Reef spreads mesmer stuff and so on. Your finisher would vary with your weapon (preventing things like longbow forcing itself into melee), so in this instance, the shortbow could fire a spread through the field and the greatsword could crash into the field creating a blast.
Another one, a dog could pounce on a foe pinning them down, then the ranger follows up with a powerful, focused shot with the longbow (think, warrior’s rifle burst skill) or a flurry of blows with the sword. The Hyena calls a second Hyena to pounce with it, the wolf scares away other enemies as it pounces on the victim, etc.

The passive bonus? I like it as is. Varying with species makes each species more unique and it doesn’t provide too much pain for non-rangers (no more than knowing what each thief venom does or the stats provided by different Elementalist attunement trees). Counterplay should be avoided though. I don’t wanna have to remember that getting dodged or blocked by a murrelow user poisons me and so on.
One last suggestion from me. The hyena’s passive causes there to be more hyenas.

I’m pretty excited now, I hope this actually happens! ^.^

This sounds interesting but you can’t balance that when the proposal would basically mean a lvl 80 ranger would not have all his skills when compared to another class.

Do you then balance the game with lvl 80 ranger with vanilla wolf or the +3 wolf? Anyway you do it, you’ll introduce inherent imbalance.

Something like this only works on single player or grindy games where outgearing and outlvling opponents is the norm.

I’m a fan of the concepts herein, CCing and combo skill chains but they should come standard or else there’s no hope in hell in balancing it.

Secondly, combo chains should not be a skill 1 spam either. This class has extremely low skill cap currently, regardless of what a few pet fans like to claim. (Spam 3 traps and circle strafe with auto attack SB = esport material?) The difficulty in navigating this class has more to do with broken mechanics than real depth. To put it into a gaming analogy, the kind of difficulty the class faces now is like someone trying to play Street Fighter, with an unresponsive stick…using his feet; certainly not the kind of difficulty one should need to circumvent and completely different than the difficulty in trying to pull off a 99 hit combo flawlessly against a live opponent.

This idea would work better if F3 were to switch your skill bar between the pet combo move set vs the regular weapon move set.

If should move towards the elementalist in terms of complexity and not towards the warrior.

GW2 pets had a similar system during development, it was scrapped at some point.

Quite frankly I don’t think your idea fits GW2 as it is, class mechanics shouldn’t be that deep and a similar level of class feature complexity should be maintained. As much as I love your concept it’s proven time and time again that simple concepts are better in MMOs.

Rangers and some other classes are in dire need of overall tweaks in almost every area. A jack of all trades never fares well in any MMO and this is the case with rangers, they don’t excel at anything (worthwhile) so the community deems them worthless. People even made me quit for a few months, because at some point they started kicking me from parties for not playing mesmer, warrior or guardian. Now that those same people are bored of playing their characters all of sudden I’m welcome again and having 50 total kills with bows since launch is “impressive”. Ah.. sweet irony.