[Suggestion] Battle Pets and Companions- Travelling the lonely road

Spottswoode

No, this is not about those freaking vanity pets or an attempt to bring in WoW's god awful Pokemon ripoff.

This is about adding travelling companions and battle pets for those of us who are not sorcerers. Before beginning, I'm aware that the spellcrafting system may allow us non-sorcerers to summon help in the future, this is unrelated and unaffected by that. It's been mentioned many times on these forums that soloing content is a bit of a pain. This suggestion is primarily dedicated to easing that burden.

Those of you travelling in the Deeshan and Shadowfens may have seen this occasionally.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6VtaaDfl1g&feature=youtu.be

Sometimes after killing wasps in the Shadowfens region, you will get a little infant wasp that follows you for a little bit afterwards and will even help you in battle. (It dies after 2 hits, so don't get your hopes up just yet.) There are also numerous instances where npc's follow players, so there is sufficient code bases in both cases to make working on this a reasonably undisruptive request for new gameplay mechanics. There is also enough code base to have a working framework for this discussion.

My proposal is divided into Battle Pets, similar to the wasp above and the sorcerers summons, and Companions, in the same manner as Oblivion and Skyrim.

Battle pets would be summonable pets that aid the player in much the same way that the Sorcerer's summoned daedra. We could borrow WoW's Hunter pet mechanics a bit here and create an npc or station that we could use train them in the same manner as horse feeding. (Limiting their growth in this manner, prevents a massive swarm of VR12 pets in PvP from the start as well as creating an investment for the players.) They would be found as infants or eggs and taken to the Trainer npc to create the initial pet. (This way they could be sold as infants or eggs, also so more exotic pets or faction area pets could be acquired in this manner.) They would level by feeding and can be upgraded in a similiar manner.When they level, they grow in a similar manner as the player but the feeding produces growth to one stat in the same manner as attribute points work for players. They would not be resummonable in the same manner as Sorcerer pets after they are killed, but could be revived with appropriate level soulgems or at an the NPC station used to train them. Pets would be slotted in the same way as horses are, and can be switched out as needed.
Pets would be divided into 4 catergories:

• DPS- Dealing damage and DoT effects
• Debuffing- Snaring, stunning, disorienting, etc.
• Tanking- Taunting enemies.
• Supporting - Weak healing, Increased regneration, etc.

Pets would be summoned with a skill on the hotbar (same as the Sorceror pets, so the Sorcerer could have 3 pets active at once) and dismissed the same way. This should be placed under world skills. The skill would use stamina as a base. They passive perks would boost pet HP, allow shared healing, etc.


Companions would be much the same as current companion NPC's. They would be recruitable by the faction's (Mages Guild, Undaunted, etc.) or hirable. (mercenaries, assassins, etc.) They would be levelled automatically, under the player's level, and have the standard 5 slot bars. The bars cannot be customized, but they can change sets by dialoguing the follower. They stay dead once killed, but you can always hire or recruit another one.


Any thoughts?

Edit: Video of wasp pet added.

AoEnwyr

I think the idea of pets that add buffs to the player are a nice idea, such as increasing crit chance or magicka regen rate. I also like the idea of pets with their own abilities and would even support a method of enhancing the effect of these abilities through a feeding system similar to horses.

I also don't mind the idea of hirelings although I'm not fond of npc's being permanently dead in my ingame universe and where possible try to avoid this option. I would prefer a time limited hiring system where you pay a certain amount of gold to hire the follower for a set amount of time. When the time is up you would be given the option to extend the time for another fee installment or to dismiss them. Of course how the timer was handled would be important, wouldn't want to be relying on them in a big boss fight just to have them swan off back to town half way through.

Kcttocs

I can hire my self out if you need say 10k per hour? ok, 5K but heals are extra LOL

bertenburnyb16_ESO

if they revert the VR nerf ok, but now, that would just be overkill

Carraig

I just had a vision of a zerg train coming at me, all accompanied by their pets. I think I would be able to count them all due to frame freezes. I'm also wondering, how long would it take to have the pets trained in sneaking when we take them to Cyrodiil? I'm quite happy that I'm hardly seeing any position-telling vanity pet in Cyrodiil nowadays.

Jokes aside, the idea is nice. As a former LOTRO Loremaster I'm used to having a pet with me and I always valued my loyal eagle. But I wonder if it is feasible in ESO at this moment. There are still enough other things that need to be fixed, streamlined and changed. And I have to agree with @bertenburnyb16_ESO that it would be overkill in the present set up. But I would definetely put it on my wish list of future additions.