But first, a disclaimer. Pets are quite the beloved mechanic in most MMOs and Helmet Heroes was no exception, but while a lot of fondness comes from the designs of the monsters and the sheer fun of it, a lot of their design was flawed to the point of legitimately breaking game progression. These are things we want to actively avoid and move away from. Eliatopia has shown many times that it can strive to be in many ways way better than Helmet Heroes (Story, customizability, balance, stability etc). This is something most players either don't understand or refuse for pets, saying that we should either add them as is (GOD no), or that we should make them basically worthless. I say nay to both of these, since they can ultimately be ignored for a concept more balanced and more useful than you'd think.
What do we omit?
Quite simple. Pet orbs are gone, completely. Visually they were clutter, gameplay wise they were a balancing nightmare, and it only seemed good to the uninformed (including me, actually) because HH was a game with problems in it's balance already thanks to books. They allowed for single digit level players to get godly stats via the power of money...we don't want that even without books, it would completely break the game.
This will also make the whole "4 extra pet slots" payvault feature NOT a completely p2w type thing, if you want to add that. I think I've made mistakes in the past by undervaluing the game's position as a source of income, and I feel the need to apologize. I think that without the broken stat boosts, this is a feature of convenience that does not in any way cause balance issues, personally, I think it would sell, I mean, I'd buy it, no guilt in just HAVING more cool pets...so there you go, a suggestion to help the game make more money.
Second? The pet will not use moves without being commanded. I will elaborate later, but this essentially puts an end to afk super pets, which is good.
As for things like love? Yeah, no clue, it's all dependent on you, since even in HH all love meant was shoving apples in your pet's pie hole to not get some of the worst stats in the world. I don't think it was bad, but I don't think it's a necessity either, this one is debatable.
So, what do I mean by "commanding"?
Alright, get this. The pet will follow you around just fine, but attacking is based on commanding the pet with the F, G and H keys (ALSO YOU CAN HEAL WITH ; AND ' lmao). Each key will do a specific move, but all will have one thing in common, the pet will run up to an enemy and perform it. This is a good implementation for many reasons. One, it streamlines the control you have over a pet, making it so that you don't have to switch between "modes" every so often via a menu, besides, of course, withdrawing it. You won't need to worry about accidentally having left a weak pet on "attack mode", for example. Second, afk is dead, and for the better. Really, I find it odd now barely anyone mentioned how useless pets were for anything other than lazy afk-ing, from my experience, they just flailed around randomly and never helped. This is why making us command them is an improvement, it allows for pets to actively help you fight, which is in my opinion far more interesting than a boring stat boost, or botting but legal.
Also in case anyone says it, if someone bots using these, that's not a problem with the pets, that's a reason for them to get banned. I say
Also, since I know some of you are absolutely clamoring in your gamer chairs over this, You will not be able to command a pet that is stronger than you, aka a higher level than you., we are going by pokemon rules where they recognize how much of a weak baby nub you are. They just nod in confusion. This will stop players from sequence breaking.
What else? Ah yes, two things, rideable pets don't have a mount mode, you just press V on em like normal, duh, and also I don't see anything bad with including a controllable pet feature on the payvault. It is already balanced enough, all this will do is provide the player with a fun novelty. Probably make it unable to leave the area in this mode but uhhh ya know.
needless to say, no, you can't mount kill with a pet outside of PVP.
How does a pet prioritize enemies?
PVP made me think about how pets can be implemented. One, yes, players can kill pets and pets can kill players in PVP, but how do we know which one they'll prioritize? Simple, make it controllable ala kingdom hearts or Secret of Mana. Here are the behavioral patterns I came up with:
1)Prioritize Nearest
2)Prioritize Strongest
3)Prioritize Weakest
This not only makes pvp managable, but also bosses with spawning goons like the ooze horror or Lumbercore. I think it's neat.
How do you revive a pet?
PVP also brings a valid question, "how do I revive a pet?". Simply put, if you revived it via healing, it would be completely unbalanced. If you had some kind of "phoenix down" item, it would ALSO be unbalanced, since you could legit just spam it, seeing as items stack. Simply put, Pet stations, uhh vets, they will revive your pet. This is because in HH, pets would get revived by talking to special npcs who healed you...these don't exist anymore, so this is the only fix I have. I do not want, in any way, want to imagine a world where pets can be revived on the fly, it would be completely off the wall bonkers. So just have these in every major city in some way.
The moves?
I think creating around 12 moves which are shared around sometimes is a good way to add variety while also saving up development time. Considering how the animations work in eliatopia, I think this is plausible. Plus, note that it'd be a decent idea to add MP to pets, it'd be so much simpler to balance.
These are the moves I have come up with:
1)Bite: A standard bite attack, enemy lunges forward while doing a bite motion with their jaw. Exclusive to pets with jaws.
2)Stomp: The pet goes up to an enemy, jumps up and does a ground pound, certain pets should have an animation ala mario, depends on body type.
3)Lunge: Alternate version of bite, I recommend retooling the logon's attack patterns and animations for this.
4)Pummel: Pet unleashes a fist barrage at the monster, exclusive to pets with arms. Has endlag.
5)Fireball: Pet opens mouth and unleashes a fireball. Does fire damage, I'd recommend retooling the fireball from cionic. (Uses MP)
6)Great Fire: Pet opens mouth and unleashes a flame streak. Unlike the ball it is a continuous move. Basically just magic breathe/azulong/metal nature factory balls.
7)Nausea: Pet does a pose and unleashes toxins, does poison damage, becomes better per evolution, think of the colossal's attack or those poison mushrooms at the borough. Probably a multihit.
8)Jolt: Plays some kind of animation and emmits an electric spark attack like the tesla crawler, emmits electricity.
9)X-Plow: Pet runs into an enemy, hitting them WHILE running. The attack is based on the pet's element and emmits it's respective rune type damage. Functions similarly to the feral beast's run.
10)Leech: Pet runs up to monster, prepares, and does a long bite. It gains health from doing this. Is it drinking blood? Eating prey? We may never know.
TBA
These are not definitive, they should however give you a good idea of what I'm thinking. Some evolutions might have three moves, some two, maybe even one! Designing these to be shared will be more efficient I think...you know, while still being unique.
Sizes, armors, %?!?!? What is this?!?!
I think something which would be fun is differing sizes for pets. In HH, they were all basically the same size. I don't know how much this take a toll on the dev time, not at all, but I think it would be quite fun. For example, you could have an absolutely tiny pet, something QUITE large (think auroch beetle, maaaybee scrap bot...feral beast???
), and of course pets which are about as tall as humans and eliatopians. Basically, the monsters give me the impression that we can toy around with how pets are sized and proportioned, we could totally have a bunch of really unique pet designs.Armors...I think pet helmets should return, of course, but imagine how, in the same vain as shoes in HH, some pets can wear pants, or the chestplate, or NOTHING at all! That last one is a bit of a gimmick, which is a nice segway into the next topic.
Things like increased drop rates, crits (MAYBE, just a thought), and other attributes...yeah I dunno I think stuff like that should be a feature for some of these. Imagine for example, the nub pet, the extremely cheap one, a squisher type, having the increased drop rates. You would need to defend this lil ball 24/7, I think that'd be interesting.
what eeelsee- oh yeah I think the pet shop should be in shroom borough, since that area is more rural, it would probably have an animal market. Second, it's barren! It needs spice, though this might change by the time pets are added...I mean, cmon, it's ambitious even by default.
PET DESIGNS, WOOO YEAAAHHHHH
Right now, the only decently refined design I got is from months ago, that being the monkey one which was based off Quiwito's concept. Take a look:
This is the most humanoid pet I'd make personally, it's very much supposed to be the most defensive, and possibly able to equip both shoes and pants, alongside a pet helmet. Kone Kong is a direct call to Sun Wukong's Arakanese name. This will be the theme I'll be going with for most pets, since I think regional puns are cool, and can follow the trend of NPCs having very unique names.
It's not properly split into parts for rigging but I mean, it's a decent piece of art for now. Everything else looks too rough, they need some time.
Anyhow, update, I actually DID make a some more, and am still conceptualizing many. But first, note that these will also have descriptions, I will format that later on. For now, here are a few more..
Anefaxia (Stage 1), Israf (Stage 2).
A bit on the messy side, but this is a two stage evolution. It is the luck pet I was talking about. COMPLETELY worthless at attacking, it's attack barely grows, and you must keep it protected at all costs. Feeding it an apple will evolve it on the next evolution, which will give it slightly more health...yes, really, it's mostly aesthetic. It's second evolution is based on that zombie snail virus that literally infects their central nervous system and is visible on their antennae...I'd personally color it blue to differentiate it from other squishers...the jelly part, not the apple.
Fumongu (Stage 1), Kivkawus (Stage 2)
Even messier, but this is a purely poisonous piece of fungus, getting a lot stronger on evolution...and ALSO a lot taller if that idea checks out (watch the poorly drawn fellow).
Give feedback, I'm kinda sleeping, I probably screwed something up. More to be added soon, and possibly a pet section in the eliapedia, which you can get by either buying or killing a pet in pvp.
