Pet loyalty

[Novikova]

Pet loyalty wasn't that complex... that or I've been playing a hunter too dang long. Though, I agree - it's gone and should stay gone. I hated having to go tame things for new skills and hoping I had enough points.

[Lisaara]

That's sweet

I suppose the main reason I'm against it would be that... my pets have set personalities. And I'd be all "D:!!!!" if, for example, my Tol'vir kitty Flint suddenly become a smoochy fluffball on me. Lol. But admittedly I don't know much about it. I haven't seen it used often on my server... perhaps I'll test it out on my sacrificial Goblin hunter and see if I like it.

Well I think theres the PetEmote editor, if it works for you, where you can create your own emotes for your kitty specifically by the name you've given it. Plus you can roleplay your pet specifically too by using the pe command.

Example...

Command: /pe looks up at his mistress curiously.
Seen by you: Liam looks up at his mistress curiously.
Seen by those around you: Jessibelle's pet Liam looks up at his mistress curiously.

So there's a lot you can do. :3 I understand you want your pet a specific way, totally. ^^

[Saturo]

I miss it too. It made the pet feel like a special entity, not some mindless killing machine that follows me around. That's for warlocks, not hunters.

[Acherontia]

I liked the system--specifically, that there was "official" mention of a bonding process, and that the pets didn't mindlessly obey you and work for you the same whether you were a jerk who had just snagged one and deliberately didn't feed it, or a player who'd kept the same pet in tip-top shape for a year. Those are extreme examples but are just to explain what I mean.

I DIDN'T like that pets would run away after time--I saw someone tame a Rak'shiri back when that was seriously hard to do (as in, tons of people in Winterspring all the time), and then they were summoned to an RP event where nobody had meat and their newfound buddy ran away

I also know that with 25 slots, getting 5 raid-buff pets and 2 PvP pets, say, to Best Friend would be more than annoying, so it's an outdated system now--but I still miss it.

I like the idea of pets having personalities. I had a complex idea awhile ago, something like this:

* Pets would have one of three personalities (sullen, friendly or stoic) upon taming, changeable with Inscription "Pet Psych Evaluation"
* The pets would emote randomly (few & far between, to avoid spam) a la PetEmote, able to be toggled, or set to off in dungeons/raids/bgs etc.
* The emotes would depend on the pet's personality + status, and would specifically be gender-neutral.

It would let players feel like their pets were individuals "from the start" rather than having to wait until mid-game, learn about PetEmote etc.

I still think the way pets are treated as blank, mindless NPCs is very much untapped potential, even if the old "loyalty" system isn't the way to do it now. A modified system could always work, although so could so many other things

[Comett]

Hehe, I'm glad people see where I'm coming from here. ^_^

I (fortunately) never experienced a pet running away. I think that was because I only used the one pet 99% of the time and I was very specific about feeding him (I remember going to the Night Elf starting area and killing the imp things when I was level 15 or something for my cat, because I didn't know where to buy meat LOL). So I don't really remember how that part worked.

[Vephriel]

[...]that there was "official" mention of a bonding process, and that the pets didn't mindlessly obey you and work for you the same whether you were a jerk who had just snagged one and deliberately didn't feed it, or a player who'd kept the same pet in tip-top shape for a year.

Oh, that's a great observation actually and something that hadn't come to mind when I first posted in this thread.

Though I agree the mechanic is too outdated to bring back now (at least in its original form), that was one of the things I liked about it in the first place. You saw progress if you took care of your pet, and a player couldn't really get away with ignoring it like a soulless weapon slot or they'd have sub-par performance from the pet.

Again, that's all too extreme to have these days, especially with the amount of pets we keep, but it was a neat touch that I certainly enjoyed.

[Alastiel]

I miss Pet Loyalty a lot. Pet Emote doesn't do it for me, I must say, since a lot of the emotes don't appeal to me for different reasons. Either they don't fit a pet's specific personality the way I imagined it, or in other cases they just seem a tad strange to me. I also don't like the idea of thowing out emotes randomly, even in RP. Not that I don't appreciate the work that has been done with PetEmote. It just isn't my cup of tea, so to speak.

Pet Loyalty, on the other hand, was something I had to work on, and I loved that. It could be simplified if implemented again, and the risk of pets running away removed, but I would love to see it back in the game. It was one of those things that made hunter pets and, by extension, the hunter class special. Now when I tame a pet, it sort of seems like mindcontrol more than bonding, and I don't like that. It seems much more natural and believable that the pets would take some time before they actually started to trust you and defend you completely.

[Novikova]

I liked the system

I DIDN'T like that pets would run away after time--I saw someone tame a Rak'shiri back when that was seriously hard to do (as in, tons of people in Winterspring all the time), and then they were summoned to an RP event where nobody had meat and their newfound buddy ran away

No meat OR fish? o_o That seems a bit odd. Yikes. But that's a very sad story.

[Comett]

Pet Loyalty, on the other hand, was something I had to work on, and I loved that. It could be simplified if implemented again, and the risk of pets running away removed, but I would love to see it back in the game. It was one of those things that made hunter pets and, by extension, the hunter class special. Now when I tame a pet, it sort of seems like mindcontrol more than bonding, and I don't like that. It seems much more natural and believable that the pets would take some time before they actually started to trust you and defend you completely.

Exactly. Nicely said, hehe.

[Acherontia]

No meat OR fish? o_o That seems a bit odd. Yikes. But that's a very sad story.

Yeah, I figure that's what they thought--SOMEONE would have fish/meat. But of course, nobody did : /

It was an RP event with a handful of night elves (mostly druids, 2 hunters--her and myself iirc) and a ton of tauren, on an Rp-PvP realm. They were there to sort of Rp some solidarity between the nature-loving members of each race, in Mulgore--and so far from any Alliance vendor, and with mostly Tauren there, I guess she found herself rather stuck for pet chow

[bloodysam]

I think Bringing this back would be a wonderful ideal, Just don't let the pet run away from you if its to Mad because that is probably what gave its down fall. Because as someone else said your pet protects you after it just was mauling your face off? (doesnt make sense) I'm just saying it would be a more tasteful thing to give the hunters other then you tame a pet do mend pet/ feed it and then it does 125% more damage because its happy about eating or getting healed.

[Ellaran]

If Blizzard reinstalled the loyalty and personality component, then people would make even more Pokemon comparisons. We already have enough of that with the Beastmaster ability to tame Exotics and the way Spirit Beasts were originally intended to be (trophies, pretty much). And remember how loyalty also had skill points attached to them as how you trained the pet's special abilities? *shudders* No thank you, way too many bad memories of that nonsense.

Besides, visually, there was nothing indicating that your pet was loyal or disloyal. They did the exact same things either way. A fresh tame would charge headlong at a raging Devilsaur as quickly and earnestly as your pet of four years. I'm not saying I don't feel a bond with my pets. Heck, I love watching them run alongside me and leap into battle, and all their idle animations (though the primates need to stop scratching their asses so much, geez get some medicated cream if it's that bad). But there's no super connection when there's no indication a pet is hurt, tired, happy, angry, etc.

If Blizzard actually takes the time and effort to put in little nuances and such into the pets (idle animations where they look tired and weak after a hard battle, special animatins where they nuzzle you, "I sense danger!" animations), it would be wonderful. Until then, it's more rewarding and easier to RP your pet's loyalty yourself.

[Mustafah]

I think it is a nice way to get attached to your pet, except with the fact it runs away, take that out, and make the whole thing more simple. anyhow, if they do this they add extra things to hunters, and its already a class with alot of features, what do you think they'll add to other classes then?

[Novikova]

No meat OR fish? o_o That seems a bit odd. Yikes. But that's a very sad story.

Yeah, I figure that's what they thought--SOMEONE would have fish/meat. But of course, nobody did : /

It was an RP event with a handful of night elves (mostly druids, 2 hunters--her and myself iirc) and a ton of tauren, on an Rp-PvP realm. They were there to sort of Rp some solidarity between the nature-loving members of each race, in Mulgore--and so far from any Alliance vendor, and with mostly Tauren there, I guess she found herself rather stuck for pet chow

Oof, yeah. I am a terrible packrat and tend to keep a stack of fish or meat or random pet food around because of the horror stories I heard.