Right now, there's two clear-cut "best" pets, and the rest end up not being used for anything other than achievements. You either go with the sabretooth or the bear (and then their legendary/great beast counterparts), everything else is too weak or not useful enough in comparison. The bear/cave bear/great scar bear is the tank pet of choice, and the sabretooth/bloodfang is the damage pet of choice, end of story.
Despite their secondary perks, I see no real reason to ever pull out the other animals. Dholes are, without a doubt, the weakest pets in the game. Wolves pale in comparison at all levels to the bears/cats. The leopards/jaguars are too weak in combat strength to even make good use of their stealth attack benefits. The badger is there for kicks and giggles, but wont hold its own in combat against any non-beast enemies.
I really think that the player should have the choice, at least at higher pet levels, to determine what they want to use rather than being forced into the choice by game stats. All three of the great beasts should be more or less equal; they should all have 5 star strength in combat, and each should have some kind of unique perk to offer flavor choices. The bear is obviously a taunting tank pet, the cat has the 5 star speed, give the wolf something similar to be beneficial to the player. Perhaps the wolf could have a stealth attack like the jaguars to benefit a stealthier playstyle?
On a related note, why is the grizzly bear able to be ridden but not the cave bear or great scar bear? IMO all of the bears, just like the two tigers, should be rideable. I also think that the snowblood wolf should be changed to a larger model and made rideable as well, that's a powerful benefit and adds further discrimination between pet choices at "endgame" - why ever use a weaker, less versatile wolf when you could have a better pet that can also be ridden for better mobility around the map? If you have to, rename the snowblood wolf to a dire wolf and just make it large enough to ride.
In addition, I think some of the non-predatorial animals should have the option to be tamed, they can clearly hold up in combat and be ridden. These include the mammoth, tall elk, maybe even the yak. It'd also be nice if we could tame eagles/ravens to use as alternative versions of the owl.
The jaguars & leopard, while weak, have the benefit of being able to take out an enemy without alerting others, thats something none of the other pets can do, but it comes at the cost of them being rather frail. when i do use pets i do tend to gravitate to the bloodfang sabretooth, but other pets have their purposes...
Once again, please consider doing a single player game expansion with added content and gameplay tweaks. Primal is just far too interesting a setting to leave this journey back in time as a one off single outing. This is a great game world you have created with all those researched details.
Lots of us players are loving the period and I believe will happily pay for a well made expansion. You have a winner here, please do not just go all multiplayer focused due to The Division. Do not abandon the single player market. There is plenty of room for both types of game to continue flourishing. I have little interest in online games and I know I am not alone from a few comments here and others on other sites. Plenty of folk still enjoy the single player experience as sales of products such as of the Witcher 3 show just as many others have embraced multiplayer.
Deleted and reposted to fix typo on title.
The whole pet system could have taken a "more realistic" approach. Instead of finding the beast and going "sshhh, don't eat me", the player would have to find a cub of the specific beast and feed, protect, and train it until it's fully grown.
Also the mechanic for reviving your dead pet is just ridiculously convenient. Really lets you be a lazy caveman.
Well game time is a factor as much as I would love the mechanism to be more involved it would take a long time to mature a pet from a cub or kitten to a useful adult which would rather limiit the concept. I do agree the resurrect is a bit cheap almost too convenient. Argueably, it is more fun to at least tame a new beast in game but the resurrect was probably put in there to permit the return of special rarities such as the Bloodfang not readily available to tame again.Originally Posted by Janne252 Go to original post
The day & night cycle is already ridiculously fast. The pet growth rate could be condensed to something like 5 in-game days.Originally Posted by vic_must_play Go to original post
This game has a lot of features that are far too convenient and almost seem as if the designers were afraid of losing players due to "punishing" game mechanics. It's not a hardcode PC game yet it still feels like a walk in a park.
They did make a bit of a mistake by going on about surviving with just a stick and stone as it probably resulted in lots of folks including myself to some degree expecting a harder more survival style game. I would be happy for some of the stuff to be slowed down but they went with the old Far Cry packed to the gills and manic. The background was a big departure but the gameplay did not depart enough. There is a good amount of content but it almost seems in review that it encourages you to rush from objective to objective. The game fails to give you smart reasons and incentives to take your time about it which is something of a shame - I fear it is the old shooter roots showing within a game franchise that is slowly developing rpg elements.
another thing: why is it that when I'm hunting a great beast to tame, like the bloodfang sabretooth or the snowblood wolf, can it kill me or nearly kill me in a single hit, but takes ages to whittle down with my best weapons, but as soon as I tame it the thing becomes a useless kitten against NPC enemies? That same ultra-strong great beast is nothing more than a reskin of it's weaker cousins, getting it's arse handed to it by any udam or izila with an attitude.
I agree 100% with this topic. Once you get the Rare Stripe Wolf, there's no reason to use any other wolfs.
Once you get the Brown Bear, why bother with the Dholes (Bears can scavenge for items as well)?
Why bother with the normal Jaguar when you have the Rare Black Jaguar?
Why use the Brown Bear when you got the Great Scar Bear?
Why summon the Rare White Wolf when you have a Snowblood Wolf that does everything better?
It goes on and on. At any point of the game, you always have 1 beast that's clearly just better than the other ones and as such there's really no need to use the other companions from a balance point of view. They could've been more innovative with their passive abilities.
For instance, every single wolf reveals the same amount of extra terrain on your minimap? That's just lazy game development right there.
Also, that reviving mechanic is just dumb and stupidly easy.
First of all, I always let my companions run out of health because it was easier to then rush to them and give them meat than to rely on their buggy and stubborn AI to come back to your when you call them so you can heal them up before they go down. Not to mention the broken hitboxes that prevent you from interacting with your beast if you're as much as 1cm above or below it.
And if they ran out of health and truly died, I could very easily revive them with the red leaves for practically no cost at all.
Could've at least given that mechanic a cool down at least. God it made the game easy. Summon Cave Bear. Cave Bear dies. Summon Great Scar Bear.
Boom, that's pretty much just 2 Cave Bears I sent in. If they die, I can also summon 2 Sabre Tooths and after that I can summon every single Bear, Wolf, Cave Lion and whatever.
If for some reason that's not easy enough, I'll just spend the ludicrously low amount of 3 red leaves to magically revive my most powerful beast.
Made the game too easy for me.