If someone wants a vanity pet and insists on bring them into a group, then give me the option to turn that #$%@ off. I don't need to see your fluffy hopity wtf-ever clogging up my screen. Same for your choice of dyed gear or transmoged whatever...I require seeing you wearing the gear in its original state.
Vanity pets don't really do much for me either. I mean they are nice I guess but they serve no practical purpose for gameplay so I find them kind of pointless.
I keep seeing this whole thing about transmog though and it makes me laugh. You would think that transmog is some kind of cancerous concept. I just don't understand people. I mean if I am playing a druid and I get a piece of armor that is appropriate stat-wise but looks like rogue armor, why wouldn't I want the option to make it look like something more class appropriate. I believe reputation matter both in real life and in-game. As such the way you chose to present yourself also matters. If you want to turn off the option and see the ugly ass tunic vs the awesome robe I have it mogged to... well those are your eyes suffering not mine, and it is your right as a player to make that choice.
I don't agree, we don't need personalized experiences. lowering the quality of them to increase system performance is understandable, but removing something from the game world to satisfy your individual taste is wrong.
Either include them or don't, but one game for everyone.
I am a grumpy old person - GET OFF OF THE GRASS!!!!!
I see one valid use for vanity pets - to give the developers something to sell in the in-game store. Without a store we don't need them. I like what EQ2 did where you could have pets in your house. But drag them around into battle? That isn't very ...nice ....of you is it? So I am in favor of pets in the house or even outdoors in a housing area.
As to wardrobe (a far more generic term than transmog). I like realism in games. It is not at all natural for a druid to go around looking like a paladin because the player likes plate armour on all her characters.
On both issues IMO the best option may be to allow the player to see any pets or wardrope gear but not to allow other players to see it unless they have clicked the options choices "see vanity pet" and "see cosmetic gear". Choices are good and it doesn''t hurt me if Baldur wants to play a druid and look like something else. Or play a druid in rags and look like a druid in silk.
mugwy44 said: Maybe it’s just me but i am not a fan of vanity pets or everyone having some random illusion or toy to click or flaming balrog mount. I use ESO as an example. (Opinion) for me it just takes away from the game and i feel like there are already enough game titles that offer this saturation.
Everyone that pledges $150+ will have one.
Maybe if it is a random model summon from the zone that will last temporarily or what I dunno but, something they will get around too I'm sure.
dorotea said:I see one valid use for vanity pets - to give the developers something to sell in the in-game store. Without a store we don't need them. I like what EQ2 did where you could have pets in your house. But drag them around into battle? That isn't very ...nice ....of you is it? So I am in favor of pets in the house or even outdoors in a housing area.
I just love collecting them and enjoy the roleplay behind them as well. Vanity pets, mounts, costume systems - all these things work great together to give me more reason to play long-term. Bigger numbers are a meh motivation.
I could theoretically get behind a "pets for your house" type deal, except way too many people on this forum think that housing should be super elitist and restrictive, which is no good in my books.
I hope to play on an RP server but still I have no use for a vanity pet. I hope to be able to toggle them off my screen so I don’t have them cluttering my battle screen. But I can understand people wanting one. My daughter loves vanity pets in games like this.
Tmogs - style matters! I hope the social interaction in towns is rich and varied allowing me to have great costumes when I’m trading, crafting, gambling and socializing in general. But once again I do think players should be able to toggle it off, unless it’s a programming issue.
The plethora of “vanity” items, pets, mounts, and outfits, arose during the advent of free to play gaming. This allowed the micro-transactions that supportedthose games. These would also help support a subscription based game, perhaps with fewer players.
having some degree of available “fluff” obtainable, from the company (in game, or web store) would be useful for the following
1) allows support of the game (ongoing cost, and new development)
2) perhaps attract and keep new players
3) there are RPers who would want to be very discriminating about appearanc, itemization, and pet/mounts
I do think that a group/raid leader should have a toggle to turn vanity stuff off to improve gameplay in serious sessions.
Do keep in mind that EQ was the first graphical MMO when it came out. Computer graphics, and cooling were all quite poor at the time. My original game box had to be opened, with a box fan blowing on the MB and graphics card to prevent the game freezing up. Vanity gear would not have been possible back then. Absolutely avoiding all customization will certainly turn off a lot of today’s gamers. While I’m of EQ beta vintage, I do want this game to succeed for the long haul. We will need more players than just us old farts. If you are truly insistent on playing only the old game, perhaps EQ99 is still for you. They are already promising The game play style of old, with modernization of everything else. i want them to make a game that survives.
It's obvious, and very predictable, that opinions vary on this topic, and the most favored solution seems to be a client-side toggle. Vanity pets don't interest me much personally, but they're not something I cannot live with.
I'm much more reserved when it comes a compromising toggle. I believe it's important that everybody experience the same world as much as their individual hardware setups allow. If, for example, I'm in a pick-up group and one member comments on the pet of another, it would be confusing at first, and immersion breaking seconds later when I remember that I have vanity pets turned off. For the same reason, I have similar, but even stronger, reservations about solving the wardrobe disagreements with user preferences.
I enjoy cosmetics of all kinds and support their inclusion. They are good items for adding content to the game that doesn't have to take balance into consideration. Let me quest or grind for cosmestics and you've added hours upon hours of content I am interested in doing.
Also, like, no one's forcing anyone to use pet illusions if they don't want to. As long as they are lore-appropriate, this is definitely one of the kinds of issues where I think "get over it" is a perfectly acceptable response, should they choose to include pet illusions in the game.
I also agree with Chanus.
I'm all for cosmetic stuff as long as it doesn't effect gameplay or conflict with the lore.
It is a cool idea to have an Option to not display cosmetic pets (certain ones had sounds/animations that were a bit distracting).
If there was a player store that sold cosmetic items that did not give a play advantage I wouldn't bat an eye, as I want VR to be a huge success & this would be a harmless revenue stream IMO, but I feel that would not be something particularly alluring for myself personally unless it were extremely tasteful. However, I am very happy with the inclusion of the Keepsake Vanity Pet pledge reward.
I'm sure VR will make good decisions in regards to how they handle this particular topic moving forward. Whatever happens, I will at least have my Druid fox if all goes well :D
I am not sure how I missed this thread in July. Someone must have distracted me from the forums for a week.
Philosophically, the only real problem I have with vanity pets is when they feel out of place in the world. Like I don't mind someone having a cat or a ferret or whatever, but when your vanity pet is some kind of walking shaman totem, that just starts to feel...well, wrong for Pantheon.
I also get slightly annoyed sometimes in games when I see people running through very dangerous areas with vanity pets out.
I am absolutely in favor of allowing those vanity pets inside housing. My house in EQ2 was absolutely crawling with pets at times because why not. I think I eventually cut back on them just because it got a little silly - but the point there is that the pets were in my house, and not following me around out in the world while I was fighting monsters.
So, I think if Pantheon were going to have vanity pets, I would like it to handle them more as house pets, like EQ2 did. Of course that also means a housing system (which as far as we know would be an expansion feature, not a launch feature), so there's that to consider as well.
No vanity pets. Just no, please. These go along with glittering glowing enormous shoulderpads and steam-powered 'motorcycles'. No, thanks.
Unless they are only in player housing. *Maybe* only in settlements.
Or unless, if you can take it 'adventuring' and you get fireballed, it dies horribly.
mugwy44 said: Maybe it’s just me but i am not a fan of vanity pets or everyone having some random illusion or toy to click or flaming balrog mount. I use ESO as an example. (Opinion) for me it just takes away from the game and i feel like there are already enough game titles that offer this saturation.
Nor am I so hopefully they will have a /hide pet option. Because other people really enjoy that stuff and it's not like it matters, so as long as I don't have to see 15 hundred pets running around, I don't care.
When I am relaxed and fun, I dont mind ogling the armors or seeing the cute and intersesting antics of vanity pets- like staring at a circus.
But if I am watching your cute cat familiar run next to you and your interesting flying pet hover near you and then suddenly we are beset upon by ancient hebefrenic, talmudic golems? then I want to kick those pets out of the way or kill them off because they are in the way of my spatial and environmental awareness and distracting, like the added ribbons and feathers on the ends of asian martial arts weapons. But instead of distracting the monsters, they distract me instead and I am forced to constantly decide if that movement out of the corner of my eye is the golem or that stuipid cat. Don't they distract you, too, owner? and f not, why not.
Arent we all the same and equal? what, are you not observing? are you not as good a player? Are you blind, and yet you do not see? are you not hindered by the same distractions? if we prick you, do you not bleed as we do? if you are poisoned, do you not die as we do? if we wrong you, do you not revenge as we would? if you have all this clutter of vanity pets, are you not distracted as we are? if you are like us in the rest, we will resemble you in that. (taken from Merchant of Venice)
My personal opinion is that the more a game offers the better. Even if I do not personally like it, someone else will and that might be the defining choice to keep them interested vs moving on to another game.
That being said, for things that effect so many others, be it immersion, personal taste, graphics issues or whatever, having options is always good.
I would love to turn off color customization if that becomes a thing because seeing warriors in bright pink or neon green armor just spoils it for me. So allow me to filter the changes so they can still be expressive while I do not have to be effected by it. Also female warriors in Heavy Metal outfits with 98% nudity does not impress me so a filter again would do the trick.
I think the only things that should be hard-wired against are things we can not manipulate through choice. Things like names. If we are in a fantasy setting I really would prefer not to see Ronald McDonald, Trump F'tw, or Eatmy Farts as character names.
As with others, I don't care if vanity pets are in the game, but I will never enable them, display them, have them or use them, personally.
I do care if I have to see or listen to them from others. Even worse, if I have them disabled visually, but I still get to listen to 15 different sets of footsteps all pitter-pattering as they go by.
I have zero interest in having that rendering and/or audio load on my client. In some games (I forget which ones exactly, might have been GW2 or EQ2 or Rift) I ended up having to turn off all audio, just to prevent the vanity pet pathing sounds. Terrible.
Same goes for player mounts and appearance slots. Just let me turn off the visuals (and audio, where appropriate) of them, if desired. Glad to hear Pantheon will have the appearance slots client side toggle, as a precedent.
It was such a welcome relief when EQ2 finally did this for player mounts. No more one of 20 different models appearing and disappearing randomly, or dripping flaming ooze all over the bank. :)
I would also fully support an emote/animation mute, all visuals mute, audio mute, and/or textual mute for all ignored players, unless grouped with them, at which point simply showing movement only would probably be ok. Once I /ignore someone, I have no interest in seeing them /emote something 100 times per minute or similar.
Thinking on it a bit more, as with the vanity pet filters, I would really like to see a/some toggle filter options for all non-combat animations and/or emotes from other players or allies, globally.
vjek said:I would also fully support an emote/animation mute, all visuals mute, audio mute, and/or textual mute for all ignored players, unless grouped with them, at which point simply showing movement only would probably be ok. Once I /ignore someone, I have no interest in seeing them /emote something 100 times per minute or similar.
Thinking on it a bit more, as with the vanity pet filters, I would really like to see a/some toggle filter options for all non-combat animations and/or emotes from other players or allies, globally.
I too support toggles that allow me to turn on/off anything of my choosing.