How about have a mini pet give a buff. There could be so many different buffs.

Boosting XP, resource gathering, Credit gains or just plain old stats PVP or Mastery. It's almost endless. Then you might see more people with a pet out. Or give them a slot and let people choose the pet and craft a buff mod for pets.

I second this idea!!!

Also pets could harvest resources if they are nearby!

Pets don't need to be useful. Let them remain exactly what they are.

+1

/5char

How about have a mini pet give a buff. There could be so many different buffs.

Boosting XP, resource gathering, Credit gains or just plain old stats PVP or Mastery. It's almost endless. Then you might see more people with a pet out. Or give them a slot and let people choose the pet and craft a buff mod for pets.

Ok if you were a developer and you were the one doing all the buff adding to thousands of pets, how would you feel? The pets are fine as they are.

I support the idea of doing something fun and interesting with pets.

SWTOR is the first MMO I ever played and when I unlocked my first vanity pet, the first question I asked myself was: What is this weird little thing supposed to do? What is it for? When my girlfriend explained to me that vanity pets serve no other purpose than just being a token vanity item, my immediate impression was that they were wasted potential.

I think a lot more fun and interesting stuff should be done with pets in this game. One option would be having them provide some very minor, non-combat related buffs such as little increases to XP, or faster out-of-combat health regen, or a teeny-tiny percentage increase to loot drops or resource gathering, or perhaps decreasing a trash mob's aggro range, etc.

Another idea for pets that I think would be loads of fun is borrowing from other MMOs like WoW and having some kind of "Battle Pets" optional mini game or some other clever mini-game that features pets. I think it would be a great little addition to the game.

Ok if you were a developer and you were the one doing all the buff adding to thousands of pets, how would you feel? The pets are fine as they are.

Open up whatever they use to look at their database.

Add a row to the database concerning the master data about Pets.

Since buffs already exist in the game, I would imagine they have code for that as well as data representations for those buffs. Skim down the table adding it in.

Save table.

Add code to the game where, when a pet is out, check for known buff and apply.

Test it. Oh wait.....

Yes, it would be a little harder than that. Adding the buff data to the Pets' tooltips comes to mind. To be honest, I can think of better things that need to be looked at. The Taris bonus missions for example. Plus we've been asking for something more for the Pets for years and we're still waiting.

Just another idea, if updating the existing pets is too involved adding new pets in their own class would be cool.

Pets that can be fed for different effects (growing larger or changing combat roles for example) would get people excited.

There's an older mmo, Anarchy Online that had a device similar to a pet. It was called the Wen Wen which floated just off your shoulder. I thought it worked great as it was largely cosmetic but added a few benefits to carrying around.

Minor stat bonuses or slight dps'ing wouldn't be so bad. Personally I don't collect swtor pets anymore because for all their animations they are purely cosmetic.

Why not ? But it would need a LOT of beta testing.

Not really. Buffs are already in this game as well as objects that give buffs. It's just known data in known database tables made into different database tables.

I support the idea of doing something fun and interesting with pets.

 

SWTOR is the first MMO I ever played and when I unlocked my first vanity pet, the first question I asked myself was: What is this weird little thing supposed to do? What is it for? When my girlfriend explained to me that vanity pets serve no other purpose than just being a token vanity item, my immediate impression was that they were wasted potential.

 

I think a lot more fun and interesting stuff should be done with pets in this game. One option would be having them provide some very minor, non-combat related buffs such as little increases to XP, or faster out-of-combat health regen, or a teeny-tiny percentage increase to loot drops or resource gathering, or perhaps decreasing a trash mob's aggro range, etc.

 

Another idea for pets that I think would be loads of fun is borrowing from other MMOs like WoW and having some kind of "Battle Pets" optional mini game or some other clever mini-game that features pets. I think it would be a great little addition to the game.

Yes, I would love for a mini game, pokemon style battling (like what wow has), minor buffs (like what Runescape does), or even something as simple as the pets being more interactive like being able to pet them, make them dance, have them point or be used as a pointer, or make them fetch things (toys not loot, although loot fetching would be nice too). They are just so small, and hard to really see a stand out one that someone might have following them. Unless there is a reason for a player to actually walk around with or use them they'll likely be hidden numbers to know how rare a pet really is since no one will know how many active players got in on that promotion, or got it as a drop off of X, or spent $$$, etc.

Those are just a few ideas and reasons, I think this would help flesh out the more causal side of things to chase in game. I love having little things to do, but pet collecting with nothing but them standing around just doesn't seem like an engaging thing to me.