Risk vs. Reward and the different templates

I think losing a spellbook is wayyyy more harsh than bonding status decaying over time. Honestly how often do trained dragons die? A tamer could theoretically get killed while ravaging elder gazers. Get resurrected summon pets back with pet ball and be back to farming right away.

A mage loses 3.5k in gold after having to hunt down and extra spellbook not to mention regs.

I don't think slayers should be bonded. The solution to too much trammel is not more trammel in my opinion.

Pets die about as often as I die, I would say. Sometimes I go down, and my pets live. Sometimes I get swarmed and can't get my pets out, but I am able to escape. And sometimes the entire ship sinks and we're all singing 'ooOOoooOOOooo' together.

Mage penalty being harsher than losing bonding slots? No way. Losing bonding slots on death is insanely harsher than losing a spellbook for so many reasons:

• Bonding slots cost 150k right now, and that's without the greatly heightened demand for them that this change would cause.
• The taming quest takes an hour or two to run. Some people do not want help, so you must bank sit. There is opportunity cost associated with this.
• Bonding dragons takes 3 peculiar meat. Those retail for 30k each right now. Again, with added demand, the price would soar further.
  
• A full wipeout is 3 pet deaths for most tamers. 4 deaths if they are they are using the mare-squad. Multiply the above costs by three/four.
• People that use smaller tames would receive the death penalty in duplicate or triplicate.
• If a pet dies, they pay the death penalty no matter what.

So to re-bond 3 pets, I'm looking at 450k in bonding runs, 240k in p-meat, and several hours of opportunity costs, not to mention how those prices would rise with the increased demand.

Compare to mages:

• A full spellbook is 3500g - 4000g. They can be created with macros and NPC vendor purchased goods, so their supply should be able to scale up to meet the demand.
• If a mage dies, they still have a decent chance to get their spellbook back, as Mages would only lose their spellbook when someone takes it off their corpse. In most cases, this means it must be a death caused by another player. Some PKs don't even loot here.
• Mages can nullify their death penalty with the Sacrifice virtue.

I would hazard a guess and say that even if a bond lasted for 100 deaths, it would still not be on par with the cost of replaced spellbooks.

Don't forget about the cost of peculiar meat (currently 200k-240k for 8 pieces based on current rates).

Removing something like pet bonding that has been implemented in the manner done here (the zookeeper quest and its attendant challenges and costs) should be a total non-starter and a waste of time to even discuss.

I'm not talking about losing the bonding slot, just the pet's bonded status.

Based on current peculiar meat prices, a full wipe would cost 200k-240k. That might achieve your goal of making pet bonding so worthless that it ends up going on unused, but at the cost of a significant loss of faith in a significant portion of the shard's population. I suspect that taking away pet bonding (or nerfing it in the way you propose) would kill the shard, and rightfully so.

^

Ah, ok. That makes it better.

(But yea, still you're looking at 240k with today's prices versus a "maybe" of 3500g. At those prices, bonding would be effectively dead.)

Those are a lot of player driven prices Basoosh. I've got a lot of bonding slots and bonded pets and peculiar meat. I've never paid anything for them. Is it fair for me to argue then that bonding slots and peculiar meat are free?

I got my first bond slots the weekend it came out. 10 players split up 23 tameables and were done in barely hours spent on each person's part. Not to mention the items/gold we gained from doing the quest. Pretty sure I made 150k selling a gold colored chest and walked away with peculiar meat and plat for only investing a couple hours total hunting and run time.

Pets take a lot of work to kill. Players have to intervene to kill them, except in some rare scenarios when you are ass deep in a champ spawn (foolishly) or fighting a boss mob. I don't think it's in any way guaranteed that your pets will die.

Also I don't understand why you've listed the sacrifice virtue as a tool for mages but not for tamers. When I die on my tamer I just sacrifice and go about my business. Worst part is putting my armor back on.

All that said I'm not really interested in seeing bonding become less permanent. I think the obvious answers involve making pets less powerful and/or reducing follower slots.

wait can you explain to me how a pet dying and having his bonding status progress toward termination costs you 240k?

No, it is not fair for you to argue that bonding slots and p-meat are free. If you get a platinum coin, it's current market value is 7000g. Just because you looted it of a headless one does not make it free.

Only one person on the quest gets a strongbox. If you have to bank sit, that person is not you. My opportunity cost was regarding bank-sit events.

Like I said, I would guess that my pets have died about as often as I have overall. My mare has especially taking a beating over the years. There are scenarios where I live and they don't, and vice versa.

I listed Sacrifice because Sacrifice immediately removes the mage death penalty, but does not remove dead dragons. Yes, it could help you get back on your feet and get your dragons out if only you died, but it does not turn back time in all scenarios like it would for mages.






Anyways, moot points now. They weren't talking about removing bonding slots. Crisis averted.

I spoke only abstractly and I'm talking of a reset to 0. Not comparing who's distance to 0 is further or not.

I agree this would be extremely harsh. As we've seen in other discussions, we can't compare the disparity of any class to earn gold as fast as a tamer because it is the benefit of that class. But it is clear that we can include this disparity when we consider actions that could reset the tamer to 0.

But are we going for a true reset to 0 on death or just for the lower classes since they haven't invested as much?

Now that being said, I love the tamer quest and I love bonded creatures, I just am beating a warning drum that we're approaching a saturation and so the cost for pet bonding will be irrelevant anyways as only new tamers are going to be interested in it and eventually they'll all have max bonding slots that they care for.

What if the bonding weren't lost, but lets say your pet cannot be rezzed more than 2 times per hour? The pet 'doesn't seem want to return to you at this time. Try again after 1 hour'

Keep the pet bonding so you don't have to invest in that cost, but there is at least a temporary reset to 0.

The post that started this tangent off read:

"Bonding status for tames should perish/decay with each resurrection"

Bonding a dragon costs 3 p-meat, which sells for 30k ea right now. Bonding a mare takes 2 p-meat. Bonding 2 dragons and a mare, which would be the death toll in a full wipeout, would cost you 8 p-meat (240k).

Well I guess I just don't agree with using 240k as the price to bond a dragon for an academic discussion. Like I said - I never had to pay anything. I have many friends who didn't either. People offer me spots on a daily basis that I don't need. Those are prices that players are charging other players. It's not being paid to an NPC or set by staff. I reject those trade forum prices personally. Yes there are people willing to pay or people that don't know better or feel they have no choice. But that does not mean that its the case for the majority of players. In fact I'd kind of be surprised if you paid 240k for each of your bonded pets.

looks like you keyed in on the word perish and I was assuming decay.

To jupiter's suggestion. Pets arent getting full wiped twice per hour thats a meaningless mechanic imo.

Overall it sounds to me that the tamers here don't want to live in felucca like everyone else.

Their risk and reward are totally out of proportion as a pvm template (comparing crafting professions is faulty because those are house and town professions), but where there is no will there is no way.

You'll be glad to know I'm withdrawing from negotiations.

*recedes into the shadows*

I'm all for weapon bonding as long as the weapons lose modifiers when you die. Pet stat loss will be back, I don't see why dexxers should be left out of it if they get bonding too

Maybe that's the right way to look at it You're thinking about this from the perspective of someone that only has to acquire peculiar meat once for a bonded dragon. The proposals in this thread would require buying peculiar meat every time pets die. So every time your dragons and mare die, you'd have to kill an average of 32 azure dragons to "earn back" enough "free" peculiar meat for another round of bonding. That just makes it seem like even more effort than having to pay 240k, in my opinion.

ADDENDUM: (It's really not the right way to look at it, I'm just illustrating the point.)

My problem with this is I generally pull 1-2 slayers for every boss I spawn, which at best has a 1 in 4 chance for a pec meat drop. As #2 boss killer on UOR I'd say I have the experience to back that as well. I think the entire issue here is bogus personally. My favorite template is the lumberjack, it was my first character here and those who remember my early days will tell you I farmed all kinds of crazy stuff with it (I once even dex'd an azure dragon from start to finish, no joke). I found that the template was not viable for pvm after a while and instead of crying about how bad my favorite template was I made a tamer, I don't think things should have to change simply because people want equality. People come here because it reminds them of old school uo, and tamers were OP in era and when you start trying to add a masked version of item insurance it just makes it feel out of place. I am sure pet statloss will return and I feel like if anything we should just look at a possible increase in the loss these pets take on death

Confused by this. You really average 1-2 slayers per boss? I think I'm averaging about 1/100 slayers per boss. Our numbers seem out of whack.

Easily. Not sure which bosses you're doing but I haven't worked a spawn that has let me down on this average

I would much rather lose a spellbook upon death than 2.5% of my pets skills. And of course, talk of losing bonding status or anything else just further unbalances that comparison.

This is the weirdest argument I've read all week, and let me qualify that by saying I read 457 pages of Tom Brady and Roger Goodell arguing about ball pressure on Tuesday.