Saturday, April 21, 2012

The New Rare Pet

Long and random spawn timers don't seem like the best option for making that ultra-rare pet that everyone wants but almost no one has. What if, instead, we made them difficult to tame. Most people want these pets because almost no one else has them and its a challenge to get them. But what's the challenge in waiting there forever? Is it difficult? Is it hard to wait for an eternity on a mob that may or may not spawn? No. Is it monotanous and mind-numbingly boring? Yes. There's no challenge here to make me feel rewarded when I finally tame the pet. Am I happy I have the pet? Yes, because it looks awesome. But is there another way?
Blizzard has already taken a few steps in a different direction on various rare pets. King Krush was on a ridiculous freaking timer in a myriad of different spots, just like Aotona and Loque'nahak. But he was also Difficult to Tame even when you were Lucky enough to find him. Hunters called in their friends to help with the tame, using fear wards and haste buffs to speed up the cast and avoid interruptions. What if they applied this kind of tactic to rare pets instead? I hunted Nuramoc for over 3 weeks and never even saw him (Sometimes I would roam back and forth for over 12 hours in the netherstorm). I'd prefer it if he was just ridiculously hard to get and not see. Aww look, there's Madexx, too bad I don't know how to get him. Let's work on strategy and see if there's a way to tame him and not accidently kill him.
Design the rare pets more like a raid boss encounter. If you don't do certain things at the right time, you can't tame them. You enter the magic puzzle sequence and he just sits there for the tame cast, or they have to get to a certain low health point and then tame in instant-cast, or you have to go through a series of trials and tribulations to get that pet to spawn but doing it correctly guarantees they are there every time (Like echeyakee or sian-rotam, but more difficult - people who have tamed raid bosses: Chromaggus, MC). You could give them unique boss-like move mechanics that the pet doesn't retain after taming. What do you think?
Sounds cool but Blizzard would NEVER change the mechanics or spawn timer of an existing rare. People who camped for weeks would feel outraged and cheated.
Sounds like pokemon.
Make rare pets like the old elite demons we had to solo to get our level 60 epic bow.

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