Taming and Animal Care (As they are now) Should be Crafting Skills

[Kaemik]

What's the difference between a character with maxed control and taming skills with a pet and a character with maxed control but no taming skills who bought, traded, or trained the pet on a 2nd account?

The character with just the control skills has 200 more primary points to invest in combat and is an objectively superior fighter. That's the difference.

Having taming be an active skill because it allows you easier access to pets is like having weaponsmithing be an active skill because it allows you easier access to swords. Anything that produces something that is tradable belongs in crafting, not combat.

That being said if these skills are to remain as active skills, make them give active buffs. Don't just make Animal Care raise how fast you train a pet. Make it give a buff to the effective level of pets under your control. Don't just make taming a way to acquire new pets. Make some activated abilities that buff pets and queue off taming skill.

Or remove them from actives and put them in crafting. One or the other. But don't make me create an objectively worse combatant if I want to be a tamer.

 

[Putzin]

Agree 100%

 

[Necromantic]

Well, Profession skills as they are known. I guess to encapsulate more things than just crafting.

It's one of the problems with the split skill trees. How do you categorize things?
You can't put Taming and Animal Care and other not directly "combat" related into the profession tree without it affecting the fighting related skills that they are parent skills to. And then pretty much everyone could get taming.
It's one of the examples that I brought up early on for if they want to split up the tree they need at least 3 of them, with kind of a hybrid one. Categorizing an interdependent tree into two just isn't going to work well.

 

[bbihah]

They'd have to think about how many points they want the entire investment to be, how much the possible minimal investment would be and then decide what other skills people doing those things would be choosing and how to distribute these between combat and profession to be limiting but not too limiting.

I find that most of the points SHOULD land in the combat side of things, because if they land in the profession side of things, you'd have pets become a staple for completely beefed up combat characters.

 

[Necromantic]

To explain what I said earlier a bit more. If they'd move the basic Taming skills into Professions, all the "Action" related Taming skills then would be cheaper as they have less requirements. If they'd add some kind of replacement for that as a parent in Actions then it would be more expensive as people would have to get it in Professions and in Actions.

In theory they could mix them up, so an Action can have children that are Professions and vice versa. But I'm not sure they can handle that.

 

[Kaemik]

I'm seeing this is a deeper problem as lockpicking is also apparently under action skills when all thievery skills belong solidly under profession. There is a simple rule they need to follow when dividing action skills.

"Does having this skill make me better DURING combat?"

If the answer is yes. It needs to be an action skill. If the answer is no, it needs to be a profession skill.

I'll run through some examples.

Swords - Makes you hit harder. Solidly an action skill.

Weaponsmithing - The product can make you better in combat but the product is tradable meaning it doesn't make you better DURING combat than someone who simply traded for the weapon. Are you going to be stopping mid-fight to make a new sword? Didn't think so. Profession skill.

Mining - Same idea as weaponsmithing. Yes having oghmium makes you stronger. But not you're not going to be mining it midfight, and people can buy it from you. Profession skill.

Creature Control - Your ability to COMMAND pets. Without this skill you can't use pets in fights and using pets makes you better DURING a fight. Action Skill.

Athletics - You have more mobility options. Being able to jump to certain areas, swim away from an opponent who can't swim, or run faster all give you an advantage DURING a fight. So it's an appropriately classified action skill.

The ones they got wrong:

Lockpicking - Going to stop to pick a check midfight? Didn't think so. Stuff you find in there is tradeable? Yup. Sure you find chests out in the world but butchers require corpses. Are we moving butchers from profession to action as well? No that would be ridiculous. And so is lockpicking's misclassification as an action skill. Theivery is a profession and all thievery skills belong under profession skills unless you seriously think we're going to be using them effectively midfight.

Taming & Animal Care - Going to be taming new pets and training them up midfight? Didn't think so. Are the trained pets tameable? Yup. If tames were swords creature control would be the "swords" skill and taming would be "weaponsmithing". This is misclassified, it absolutely needs to be a profession skill.

________

Why is this important? Because these misclassification already have me feeling like I need to make two accounts. One to train my pets. One to actually use them. I can save a full 200 action points and since I want to be a mage-tamer all 200 will likely go into magic making my character stronger. Feeling the need to do crap like this is a major reason I quit MO1. And I know I wasn't the only one who had an issue with this. The fact there are 3 misclassified skills already in the game seriously has me wondering if the developers actually learned anything from MO1s failures. They need to fix this before the game goes live.

Misclassification of profession skills as action skills makes anyone who takes them objectively worse at combat because you could take those points and put them into something that would actually help you midfight. Why should I be an objectively worse fighter than a weaponsmith just because I want to be a tamer or a thief?

 

[bbihah]

Its not as cut and dry as is it a combat vs is it a out of combat. There is a power creep that would build from that. But in general it should be a truth though.

 

[Kaemik]

Its not as cut and dry as is it a combat vs is it a out of combat. There is a power creep that would build from that.

Explain. This doesn't seem very logical to me. Because the way I see it certain non-combat professions are arbitrarily getting shafted for no good reason while everyone else is being treated appropriately. I don't see how addressing this problem could possibly lead to any form of power creep.

 

[bbihah]

Explain. This doesn't seem very logical to me.

Example;
Specifically for taming, put too few combat point requirements will like I said before, allow fully fledged fighters to be full tamers on top of having a full crafting profession and more. If you exclude things like animal care and veterinary skill its a between 240-400 action skill point investment depending on min maxing to be able to have a pet. This is already quite low if you ask me. Loads of the pvpers will most likely not bother too much with the profession skills, which just lets fighters have access to the full array of taming without barely trying.

I'm just saying its a process that needs very fine tuning by the devs.
Read my post above, they need to make sure different playstyles are considered when determining how many points the entire "profession" takes.

 

[Kaemik]

Here is the taming tree as it stands in MO2

Domestication (Sec)
--Animal Care(Pri)
--Taming(Pri)
--Creature Control(Pri)
----Advanced Creature Control(Pri)
----Herding(Pri)
--Beast Influence(Pri)
--Beast Mastery(Pri)

So the only primary prerequisite to any domestication skill is Creature control. Creature control, Adv. creature control, herding, beast influence, and beast mastery all govern various properties of your ability to control a pet midfight.

Taming is your ability to tame a pet. Animal care your ability to train it.

So say we have 2 fighters. One spends 500 points to max their in-fight domestication skills. One spends 700 to get the full tree. They both come into the fight with the exact same pet. The 500 point guy bought his as a fighter would buy a sword.

Name a single advantage that the 700 point guy has over the 500 point guy going into this fight.

And when you fail to do that, name to me how the 500 point guy isn't objectively better when he then takes those 200 points and spends them on melee or magic skills to support his pet better.

Taming belongs under profession skills.

 

[bbihah]

You are fine with just 4 or 3(if someone else does the taming) of the action ones as a fighter though.
Taming
Creature control
Advanced creature control
Beast Mastery

Beast influence just lets your pet attack further away from you, Herding lets you have multiple lower level pets, animal care lets you level your pets faster.

If the system is anything like the mo1 system you do not need to max all these. You were fine with varying degrees of points depending on what animals you liked having as pets. If you wanted to just have bears and the like you could do a level 125 bear with 100 CH and around 50-60 CH but you needed beast mastery above 80 to get the best attack.

Meanwhile things like molvas and lykiators took far less and made for the most time of the mo1 life decent enough combat pets on top of being mounts.


You are just doing nothing but proving my point that the skills need to be placed with more thought though?


If beast mastery skill required points in beast influence there you have one way that more points would be required, would be one way to make pet combat require a bigger investment.

But like I said, there are a lot of variables and nothing I want to start digging down into at 7 in the morning.

 

[Necromantic]

Actions are not only combat, just like Professions are not only crafting. I assume they chose those names to make that cleared.

So the only primary prerequisite to any domestication skill is Creature control. Creature control, Adv. creature control, herding, beast influence, and beast mastery all govern various properties of your ability to control a pet midfight.

But yeah, I guess in a previous post I got the order of skills in the tree wrong. So, I agree there could be a way to move it, but then again everyone could easily get Taming, as professions are mostly just a bonus for fighters. For someone who just wants to fight everything added to the profession tree is basically a free thing to get.
Most of the additional taming skills are mostly just for growing them or combat use, but mounts in their basic form would mostly be easily accessible via that without an investment.

We don't even really know how many skill points we'll have in the end, right now those numbers look like placeholders.

 

[Kaemik]

No you're proving my point. So your issue is you don't want a fighter to have a fully viable tame right? How does keeping the skills to essentially CRAFT a tame under actives further that objective at all?

"Oh I can use less points on certain skills"

Sure. I can STILL use less points on those skills under the current system, put those points into melee or whatever, buy a pet and be the very melee fighter with a pet you say you don't want. My option B of making taming a skill relevant to combat addresses that. Your option of "this is fine" does not. If you want taming to take more points make it take more points. More points of COMBAT RELEVANT skills instead of expecting me to be dumb enough to take a crafting skill with action points.

If I can trade for something I would otherwise have to spend combat points I'm going to. Use my PROFESSION to earn the money to buy that stuff, and then have a distinct advantage over anyone wasting action points on non-combat related stuff.

I don't want to do that because I got this game specifically to BE a tamer. But I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot in a competitive PvP game just because there is a specific profession I want to play. And it's ridiculous you seem to expect me to.

 

[Kaemik]

Like how is this flying over anyone's head? There are 200 points in the domestication tree that are entirely optional if you want to be 100% effective at fighting with tames. Not 99.99% effective. 100% effective. 200 points that do literally nothing for me in a fight. They're not a prereq for a better skill. They don't offer me any buffs that matter. They're just there eating up 200 points of my combat build without helping me in combat.

The only reason I even care and am not just like. "Pffft. Whatever. Let idiot newbs take those skills." is that they are tied to the CRAFTING profession I bought the game to do. So make them useful to me on the combat side of put them with the other crafting skills where they belong. That's all I want. I don't want my choices as a CRAFTER to nerf me as a COMBATANT when I was promised 1 account could do both before getting my account.

 

[Necromantic]

You don't craft pets you tame, so it's not crafting to begin with. Which is why the term profession is better anyway.

The fact remains, Taming is mostly a utility skill, that can optionally be used for trade. It's not firstly trade or "profession" (unless you'd argue everything you do to survive is a profession then all of them are). If it was something more clear cut like breeding I'd say, yeah, that's 100% profession. But then again we don't even have breeding as a player skill. In MO1 it was all an automatic NPC process which was completely stupid if you ask me.
If there was a differentiation between utility/action based taming and a trade taming maybe but you can't even clearly differentiate animals in MO that way and the process of taming is the same no matter what you want to use them for.

It's honestly bad no matter which side it's on. On one side it's better for "crafters" on the other it's better for "fighters".

 

[Kaemik]

In terms of arguing semantics, the term craft may not apply. In terms of practical application, taming is crafting.

It's an item with stats you can trade from player to player. There is no meaningful difference between a sword, a set of armor, and a max-level bear or horse in terms of how they are produced and used.

Domination has a difference. Do you want a minotaur? You need a certain dominator level. As far as I remember if you tried to use a dominated creature without the right domination level it wouldn't work. That would be like if you need 80 weapon crafting to wield ohgmium weapons or something. Taming. It's a crafted item for all practical purposes. If have a bear then someone somewhere had to have the skill to tame it, but it didn't have to be me.

I can have 0 taming, 0 creature animal care, and the highest level pet in the game because I paid for it. How's that different from crafting in any meaningful way?

 

[Necromantic]

It's not an item, it never goes to your inventory either. It is a "living" thing in the world. That is a meaningful difference.
Well disregard the Auction House tickets they added later which I never really liked.

Dominate works the exact same in that regard anyway. All it allows you is get additional types of creatures. The only difference is that and that you can't trade them. So yes, it can't be a profession purely based on that.

But Taming is not purely a profession either. You can tame something and use it for combat or just use it to ride around OR you can trade the animal.
It fits both sides, so I'm not arguing it doesn't fit one, I'm arguing it fits both. And it's a problem with the current way things are split up.

I ultimately don't care. Put it in professions and it's most likely going to be easier for me to get. I just see a huge problem with these kind of situations in general.

 

[Kaemik]

If I craft a sword I can use it or sell it too...

And how does the way it's visually represented in the world make one bit of difference? The fact it's tradeable and can be used without the skills it takes to make it are the ONLY important distinctions.

Also saying taming isn't crafting and breeding is has 0 difference between saying gathering herbs in the wild isn't crafting and farming is. It makes zero sense.

Please stop arguing against fixing the fact that the developers arbitrarily screwed my profession or I'll cut and paste all these same inane arguments if they screw yours.

 

[Necromantic]

I never said breeding was crafting even though it is more so than taming - as it creates new entities. I said it was a profession. And the differentiation is not semantics it is meaningful to exactly this problem. It is not a visual representation, they are not items, they are living breathing (in the digital world) things that can die. You actually have to go out in the wild in dangerous situations to get them and sometimes even fight them off or defend against them to get them. And you're comparing them to crafted items.

The problem with your arguments is that they are all about what you want to be the case and your assumptions of where the skill would be and how it would fit your plans. It's all "me", "my profession", "my plans". At least you are honest about it. They never said it would be one side of the other that comes down to your assumptions. Someone on the other side could argue the exact same. What about all the "crafters" that want to get taming as their Action side part, they would be gimped the same way you would be by your argument.
Every single paragraph of that last post proves you don't want a good solution, you want your way. And if you don't get it you'll strike back, oh noes!

As I said before, taming on the profession side would free some of my skill points as well, as I don't really do crafting, aside from cooking in MO for experimentation. But it's not about me and what may be best for me.

 

[Kaemik]

"You actually have to go out in the wild in dangerous situations to get them and sometimes even fight them off or defend against them to get them. "

You mean like ore, alchemy ingredients, fishing, wood etc? Because while they do have some gathering secondary skills under action skills for some reason (Lol? There is no primary prereqs for it so no harm there I guess.) there is not a single primary gathering skill in the game under action skills with the exception of lockpicking, something that also needs to be fixed.

The issue is you seem to think it's a fun rhetorical debate to argue why I should be unfairly punished for playing a certain profession while I'm arguing about something that could severely negatively impact my enjoyment of the entire game.

While it's your right to have an opinion that skills should be divided between action and profession at random if you believe following through on my suggestions would cause a negative balance issue we don't have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in our acceptance of reality.

2+2 = 4
Gravity exists.
Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself.
Moving taming and animal care to professions won't make well-built creature control builds any more powerful.
Not moving it there unfairly nerfs the taming profession.