Streamlining basic content for newer players (Taming edition)

cups

Grandmaster
Hey, everybody. I am going to try to be clear and to the point and not try to draw this out too long. I am writing this post because I disc0rd a lot(imagine that) and I have seen a number of people struggle with this over the last several months. I feel it's time to make a post and get a discussion going.

I believe that the animal taming skill needs to be looked at. It is one of the most fundamental skills that most players will use during their time on UOF. However, because of changing dynamics on the server it is now harder than ever to raise the skill.

Problems:

  • There are less people raising animal taming now than ever before. Most of our players have maxed their animal tamers over the last several years. With less people taming creatures there are less pre-tamed animals in the woods for new tamers to tame. Pre-tamed creatures are more difficult to tame than regular creatures and therefore give the tamer better gains. With few people raising taming there are virtually no pre-tames in the wild anymore

  • Grizzly bears were made red/aggressive some time ago. This was done on the fly without really thinking it through. It was done to prevent people from AFK macroing taming. Grizzly bears take 59.1 skill to tame. The same as great harts. Making them aggressive makes them not worth taming. Most tamers will elect to avoid them. Taking a pivotal creature like the grizzly bear out of the equation just makes taming more tedious.

  • The fast respawn lava lizard in Delucia Pass was removed. I do not know why this was removed but it should not have been. It gave players a spot to tame all the time. The lava lizards were aggressive so it was more difficult to train on them but it was worth the effort. Now days the hell cat and lizard spawns in Del Pass are not frequent enough to keep up with animal tamers. They will run out of stuff to tame and be sitting there waiting for respawns
Proposed Solutions:

  • Make grizzly bears non-aggressive. Make them wild and not have red names. This was an unnecessary change that was done with haste without weighing the negative impacts of taking grizzly bears away as a creature tamers can gain on.

  • Increase the rate of respawns on tamable creatures in Delucia Pass. I don't mean we need to bring back the one static instant respawn, but just an overall faster respawn rate in that dungeon so people raising the skill will never be faced with sitting there doing nothing waiting for a respawn so they can tame it.

  • Consider making animal taming gains faster. I don't mean anything drastic, but just make it slightly easier to raise so that new tamers can get caught up to speed faster.

  • Add more spawns of creatures in the wild for players to gain off of. Whether you add more bear spawns, more great hart spawns, or create brand new creatures that take higher skill to tame(think 70s) I think it would really improve the quality of life to have more stuff to tame out in the wild.

  • Increase the drop rate of animal taming skill scrolls. Before eppy left I brought this topic to his attention and he agreed that something should change to make taming more reasonable in the present era. One of his solutions was to make animal taming skill scrolls more common. It would decrease the value of the scrolls now, but it would help players max their taming at a more reasonable speed.

I'm not against grinds. I think that grinds are good because if the game is too easy then people have no incentive to stick around. I just think that the true grind is leveling the meta pets and talismans. Leveling the relics. Farming the gold to even afford the relics you want to grind on leveling. That's the stuff that keeps players coming back. I just think the tedious act of taming animals should be streamlined a little better so that new players can better compete with veterans in a timely manner. Most guilds don't want brand new players with no metas and 80 animal taming. New players don't have as many people to play with. If we streamlined them so that they could be competing for the same content as established players I think more would stick around.

I said I would be short and to the point and I suppose I have gone on long enough. Undoubtedly there will be people with dissenting opinions and that's fine. I am open to criticism and other peoples ideas. So go ahead and post if you feel like it. I just wanted to get the conversation started. Thanks for listening.
 

Young Star

Grandmaster
All the little changes that were added in the last 2 years to try to make things harder to train taming should be reverted out. It served its purpose at the time but is no longer necessary. I agree with taking out the red grizzlies and putting back the lava lizard in Del. I would start with that and consider the addition of other tamables later. There are plenty of forest animals in the overlands as it is and wouldn't want to create anymore unnecessary drag on the server.
 
Taming is mentioned to be so ,thankfully it's faster than broadswords aka osi rate.This shard believe it or not is decated to the taming skill itsself.Taming should be a grind,especially when you have the strongest agro with a pet.A tamer especially with a elder with all perks Max should be a headache to fully train.If it's to hard o well because it's too easy.
 
I got one question .What's the difference in gold to have a fully 120 tamer vs any mele Slayer temps?Answer gold .I prefer actually fighting something yourself and take the risk.Instead of waiting for a tamer to kill something with my finger over the recall macro.
 

cups

Grandmaster
It has also been brought to my attention that there are now far more frost troll spawns on dagger island than ever before. Those aren't easy monsters by any stretch. Lot of hps, and they hit hard. Reducing their spawn rate would also alleviate some of the headache tamers get trying to raise the skill in what should be relatively safe areas.
 
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