Suggestions for Pets/Mounts and Housing

In Development Patch 11.2.7 PTR
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I know that battle/vanity pets came up in the Q&A I think and that there are some technical hurdles when it comes to integrating them into housing, but it sounds like it’s possibly in the works so I wanted to add to it for your consideration since housing is supposed to be an evergreen feature that continues to grow. I think this idea is very ambitious, but it would be incredible.

Being able to put down pets and have them wander around (inside and out) and potentially be something to interact with is awesome. The dream would be to add on to that with options though. Like I have this fish pet and when he’s out he follows behind me in his water bubble and that’s great, but what if we could unlock a pond for him and other aquatic pets to swim around in? Or a duck pond? What if there was a desk with parchment where my quill pet could happily get to work writing stuff down? A fireplace for my fire pet to use as a bed? Places for my tires birds to perch after flying behind me nonstop? Something similar to the “Roomba” toy for cat pets to ride on, but decor options that would stay put.

As for mounts, I am hoping for an outdoor barn and paddock situation where we can put like 5 of our favorite mounts on display with a random option so that when we come home it’s five different favorites. Maybe some mounts could be added indoors as well.

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Something like Magical Saucer as a pillow or rug to ‘display’ our pets could work. Maybe have a UI similar to the new stable pets for Hunters so we can have a selection of pets to display. As for mounts I’ll settle for a ‘stable’ that acts a set parameters they can walk, sleep and eat in.

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Big thing holding it back right now is pathing, figuring out how that would work. Honestly though, would be just fine having them be static/doing their idle animations in a set spot. Sure it’d be nice having them wander around, but also want my wisdom ball to just sit on the table and stay there, too.

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Is there a plan to have a stable or something to display mounts?? That would be amazing :star_struck:

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I think the barn from garrisons was pretty good if I remember correctly. I haven’t gotten the saucer, but I’m hoping the pets would have a bit of freedom inside. I just can’t wait until they implement it however they do it!

Some pets I think would be alright stationary like that, but most of them I think need to be lively, but that’s just my feelings on it.

I don’t think they have really addressed mounts yet, but I swear I saw a house in one of their presentations with a structure attached that housed a gryphon. I thought surely they would mention something when I saw it, but sadly they didn’t. I really hope it’s more than one mount.

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I know they have both Gryphon and Wind Rider roost in game so clearly we might have that option to have one be on it. Or at least I hope so.

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Can certainly understand the want for them to wander, don’t get me wrong, just saying it’s far from a deal breaker for me. Would much rather they let us have them permanently in one spot, the same way hunter pets or warlock minions can be ordered somewhere, that have them not allowed at all until some distant, unspecified date that they finally figure pathing out. Tons of stuff we could still do with stationary ones, from cats on furniture, Hearthy sitting on a shelf, Uuna happily in a garden by a proper grave, floaty books in libraries, etc etc. Definitely want wandering ones too, but sitting still is fine for now, imo, if it’s all they can manage.

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That’s a fair point. I guess I would just worry that it might be even more delayed with a temporary system in place. It would be a toss up on which would take longer.

I’m glad it’s happening and that the system won’t be forgotten after one expansion, but I have this fear that all they will do with it is just churn out decor items after the system comes out and that will be the only “evergreen” part of it. Decor is necessary and needs to keep happening frequently, but expanding on the system itself (things like more biomes, more houses per player, the pets/mounts system, etc.) need to be at the forefront as well. Decor can only carry this project so far.

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Agreed. If pathing takes a bit to figure out considering all of the ways people will make their rooms, then the next best idea is to be able to place our pets. Maybe we can’t place all of them, maybe we have to pick certain types for certain things. A perch for bird type pets, a bed for cats and dogs and other little beasts, a chair for humanoid creatures, a fish tank for fish type animals etc. They don’t have to do much, just breath, blink or have their eyes closed if sleeping, maybe look around if awake. I’d be fine with that, as a start.
Also and this is important for many people, especially the “Crazy Cat People”, we need to be able to pick our pets, but also a good amount of them.
I loved seeing my pets in the garrisons, but it was so random, I often saw pets I forgot I had, lol. I hope we can pick quite a few of them eventually, not just say…2.

As for mounts, would love a place outside for them, or two places. I feel like we’d need things like a stable for some, but then a driveway for others. Again I hope we can pick what we want, and not have them be random like garrison stables.

Also would love for hunters and warlocks to be able to have their pets out, even if it’s just one or two at a time. Have any hunters testing housing tried bringing pets out while working on it? Not the same as pets interacting with the housing, but still curious.

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Maybe there could be a purchaseable “pet corral”, that has the pathing built into it. But I love the idea of even just having one sleeping in a corner somewhere.

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If EQ2 could do it in 2004, there’s no “technical” reason why it can’t be done now.

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The only issue I can see with hunter pets in housing is that houses are supposed to be shared by all of your characters. I don’t know how that would work exactly. Do they only show up when a player logs in on their hunter? Are they there when on alts? What if a player has more than one hunter? Battle pets and mounts are account wide so they would be the same regardless of character.

Some players have asked for alts to act like NPCs in housing so they can be seen even when a player isn’t logged in on them, so if that happens (I would imagine far into the future) maybe something can be done with hunter pets as well.

The menagerie and barn were two of my favorite things in the garrison. The fact that it displayed them randomly each time you returned was actually cool in my opinion because it showed pets/mounts that I hadn’t seen in awhile. It gave them value again since we can’t use them all at once out in the world. Like “oh there’s the first drake mount that random person helped me get a million expansions ago”. That’s actually why I think pets/mounts are so important to housing. It gives the whole collection a “use” outside of pet battles and travel, just like being able to show off achievements like killing Onyxia.

Yeah there are some oddball mounts like motorcycles which are going to look severely out of place in a stable next to living creatures. Not sure how to address that, but yeah I guess picking a handful would be a way to avoid that. Unless they go the extra step and separate the collections out where it’s like “you place a stable down and there’s 5 living mounts displayed” or “you place a steampunky, goblin themed garage down and it displays 5 mechanical mounts”. That could be cool and adds even more customization.

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Good ideas!

For hunter pets in my brain I just assumed they would show up when on said hunter and not on any other alt. I have a lot of hunters, all with different themes, I wouldn’t want to see other hunter’s pets when I’m on a different one. As for our warband as NPCs, I just assumed we’d only see the character and not their hunter pets, but maybe we can open up the stable window and select 1 hunter pet to appear with our npc character when in the home? I don’t know, but I’m personally ok not seeing their pets if they are a NPC walking around or chilling in their bedroom.

I’m sure they have a massive amount of logistics to figure out for pets, npcs, hunter and warlock pets and mounts, even before considering pathing for some of them. I just hope these aren’t things they are “working on” for years and years.

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Hear! Hear! Luckily the one dev did acknowledge pets at the very least, so there’s hope.

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Oh for sure, definitely hopeful for future iterations of the system! Not just pets/mounts, but other racial architecture, a neutral neighborhood, basement levels, other room shapes, lighting and sound customization, etc etc etc!

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I just want to be able to park some mechanical mounts inside my house. Make a nice engi garage for my G-99 Breakneck.

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What would be cool, and I donno if it would be possible, but like when you “place” your pets and or mounts, you then get this little pathing line that you place down and it just follows the pathing line.

I donno if it makes sense, if you can kinda see where I’m at with this idea, but like you place this pathing line and it follows that pathing line. If it would make contact with decor or walls or whatever then the pathing line turns red, you can’t place that line like that at that spot, and only when it would work without interference would it show as green.

Have it move slowly and stop and start and idle animations here and there and you can click em to pet them or even a /feed animation you put down good bowls and it eats sometimes and Stuff…….

The pathing line has to have a closing so like an electric racetrack when we were kids (showing my age here), so like a figure 8, or a circle or whatever pathing as long as it is ultimately in a closed loop, have the pet or mount follow that pathing line you kind of either draw it out or it comes in predetermined loops of various sizes and shapes, and they just kind of move and stand still and idle animations all on this loop so it LOOKS like they’re wandering around but in reality it’s just a closed predetermined loop. But it would still do the job, I’d think, of having our pets and mounts we’ve painstakingly collected to be shown off indoor or out.

I’m an animator amongst other things so this kinda popped in my head when putting together some stuff for one of my cartoons, some pathing, and I thought I’d post it here, maybe it’ll get seen or liked or built upon by someone else with even bigger ideas and we could help Blizz build a sort of system that would be cool and people would be able to have their mounts and pets seen, show em off and stuff. I have some pretty rare pets and mounts that you can never have again, so yeah I’d love to show them off if for no other reason than I love them. Reminds me of back in the day, when everything was fresh and new and exciting and mysterious and guilds were these big impactful entities with identities and reputations, when you only had the people on your shard, so how you treated people mattered. Your reputation mattered. Instead of now where it’s a lot like just sitting in a soulless lobby, no one talks, no one interacts, no one CARES about each other or their own reputations.

Just kind of off the top of the noggin for this much much requested feature.

What do you guys think? Would you be cool with something like that….. at least for now?

Thanks for reading!!!

WAAAGH!!! BLAGTOOF!!!

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Which is why it’s so important that we keep sending our feedback so that this can hopefully happen!

I don’t know how their systems work or how they can execute it, but if possible it would be customizable for different rooms/areas which is a bonus.

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A simple start is probably best. Garrison-like pathing, a spawn start location (in case you have situations where parts of a room are meant to be inaccessible), ability to have them stay in place, and the ability to allow whole-home roaming or the ability to restrict to one room would be a solid start in my opinion.

Even just a “dumb” system where pets spawn at your entryway and can roam your entire house, I’d be happy with if the feature can come out quicker.

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If you remember the original video where they show us the outside and inside of the house, there’s a character sitting and reading and sitting outside on the fountain and waves. Maybe that’s an alt test thing? Or just the cameraman slowly walking through as another player is chillin and doing emotes. But also notice the character was actively reading a book. I don’t recall ever having an emote like that. That’s new!

So much we can read into! They should open housing testing again to keep us too busy to read into things, ya know lol

It’s a problem of pathing, according to everything I’ve read and found. It’s really easy to have them wander around when things are fixed but when the layout possibilities are endless, that’s where we run into issues. But I know they can eventually sort it out. One day we’ll have those options if not for launch. But honestly if it’s something they ultimately can’t do in the end, I can understand why. Definitely not an easy thing to solve.

But yep, it’s like you said, if we keep trying to help solve these things, we could stumble into something or lead to an idea on how to do this or that. I hope it can be sorted. Even if it’s, like, we gotta choose between 1 to 4 of your characters MAX, a couple mounts, a few pets, that’s better than none! I would rather be able to have 1 alt wander around my house than not have the ability at all. Plus I don’t think we wanna overload our house interiors or exteriors with NPCs. It could end up being a strain if someone tries to load in 20 characters in your house each with specific detailed pathing to make sure they don’t collide with decor or walls or even each other. Sure it’ll look like a crazy house party but on the other hand you’ll have like 2 FPS lol

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