Suggestion - Taming - 'Go Home' command

[Deefit]

Hi, I'm relatively new and annoyed by a great many things. Also enjoying a great many other things. In most cases I want to be more experienced in the game before giving opinions, but I see a lot of complaints about taming. This suggestion won't fix them but might add some versatility/survivability for hard-obtained pets.

Introducing the 'Go home' command.

The option to set a Stable as 'Home' for your pet to return to. It's fairly simple, but I'm not sure if it would be in practise. Considering I still see my pet fighting things after respawning from quite far away. I think the world should support it.

Said pet, or pets, when giving the Go Home command, will return to a stables it set as Home.

This could be bound to 'Advanced Creature control'.

- Loyalty should be high to be able to give the command
- The command should be able to be given in combat
- The pet will run through the world and can be attacked during the way
- A pet should be 'taught' the Home command at a stable to recognize the home (fresh tames can't be sent home)

Possible 'levers' to change to balance this command:
- How quick Loyalty runs out while running back (directly affects max distance to stable home - together with pet speed)
- Should Loyalty run out at all while running back? (to avoid further buffing high speed pets)
- Should there be some other cap in distance to the 'home stables then'
- the remembered home command could run out at x amount of time, needing to refresh it.
- Will the pets be given a 'defense AI' or run back blindly
- Pets could drop any bags in panic (horse armor is placed too firmly, imo) to avoid abusing it to prevent being looted
- Pets could get an increase or decrease in speed when running back - depending on balance needed

Considerations:
- Should a pet be able to enter a stable to prevent loyalty running out and things running amuck around it
- should there be special slots reserved/should there be a payment to the stable (extra goldsink) for that slot to the owner?
- Might put a dent in the horse market - though usually horses do seem to be killed pretty fast and will be used to escape rather than being sent home
- any other?

Use case for me would be:
- When taming a new pet, send the old pet home after incapacitating it. With the risk of it dying along the way, but being able to take a new pet home as well.
- When ambushed to both split up with the pet for more targets, but also to perhaps save that time (and perhaps emotional.. tip, never name your ingame pet after your real one ) investment in the pet.
- General quality of life of taming and the time investment of it.

I tried to brainstorm a bit by myself to give an actually worked out idea. But as I said, I'm quite new to the game and might have missed things in description or there might be other things I didn't think about. Please add your thoughts.

 

[bbihah]

I heard someone suggest it elsewhere before but a simple function of any equerry to bring a pet you control back into its inventory would go a long way in the games current state of pets getting stuck in terrain and on nodelines when travelling. Make it region based so you can't use it to bring a pet from a town to another while the pet is safely stashed in a corner somewhere. Make it take time depending on distance and the pet will remain in the world through the entire duration.


I mean the game shouldn't need a feature like that, but i've seen cases where its sorely needed.

 

[Jackdstripper]

The only reason i see this for is stuck pets. They get stuck because of the terrible world mesh. So now you want to have pets traversing the world, at high speed, on autopilot. I would say that there is a very high chance they will get stuck again and you wont even know where they got stuck.

I really don’t see this working unless the world mesh is fixed, in which case you wouldn't need this feature.

Perhaps the better option would be to just be able to stable a stuck pet (you would lose the equipment and anything in it) from anywhere in the world, but only after having set that stable as their “home stable”. This way you cant just get pets in the wild, home priest and stable them remotely. It would be something you can only do with pets you have already brought home at least once. This could also be a domination only perk, as those pets cant be sold or traded. Its not perfect, but it would be something anyways.

 

[Deefit]

None of the above is actually meant for stuck pets. Since if they're stuck they can't move back. I have also noted down 2 usecases.

Bugs are bugs, and they need to be fixed. This is a suggestion for a new command/feature and there's no use discussing or venting frustration about existing bugs that are known. Not sure why you'd take that into this topic.

 

[Eventide]

I think this gets rid of the risk factor of having to actually travel with the pet home. I do agree though there should be a change for people that are using a pet and try to tame another. I think that change though should be that you can put a pet into a reserve slot and it takes much less pet points to have, but is still out visibly but won't attack or do anything. Just follow you around. This way you could use that pet to tame a new one then have it be useless. Once a pet is in that slot it should have a cooldown before it can be taken out unless it's stabled and brought back out. It also wouldn't be able to be a pet with a bag equipped.

 

[ArcaneConsular]

It's cute you think SV could actually add this feature, pets can hardly follow you in a straight line without getting bugged out, let alone travel home by themselves

 

[Deefit]

@ArcaneConsular I am cute (in a very bearded way)... Thank you. Also it's always good to be ambitious. Except a bear flying up straight up in the stratosphere when scaling a rocky mountain, I have not personally experienced the disastrous bugs that are being described even though I mostly always walk around with a pet. Maybe I'm lucky.

Does this mean you would endorse the idea if it was technically possible? Would you be bothered by it being implemented or would you see things differently?