If there is a version of the Armored Battle Bear Saddle graphic without the armor, replace the bear pet graphics with it. It is far, far, superior in appearance. Now, usually, the reason for not updating such, besides the artist time, is that higher polygon (I assume that is the correct term) models cause more lag. But if you are giving out the saddle, you've already decided that isn't an issue here. And if there is a version without the armor, then the artist time is already spent. Indeed, it makes more sense to get as much mileage out of the time spent as possible. Heck, maybe even consider replacing all the bears in Norrath, if that doesn't cause issues. Now there could be good reasons not to do this. But as soon as I saw the Armored Battle Bear Saddle, I thought right away that bear pets should look like that, minus the armor.
Ok, as well as no armor, no saddle. But I just thought of a reason this would not work. I assume the mount has no fighting animations. So that is more artist time to create them. Depending on how busy Darkpaw artists are, they might not have time for that. I guess I need to hold off on posting stuff until I think more. Still, I do like the new bear look.
The bear is hardly visible under that armor mountain so maybe it isnt a bear at all. It looks more like a common rough woodlouse with all that armor. The old bear models are there for nostalgic reasons I think and not because they do create less graphic lag. But why not make a new bear pet spell for droods with new graphics.
They upgraded wolves and orcs a few years back and then changed them back due to TLP servers. Your only hope of seeing new bears is if they put them in a new expansion.
If you own the Familiar Key Ring feature, any illusion spells on summoned pets will persist when you zone. So all you need is a petamorph item of the armored bear.
I like the bear. The armor covers too much, you can hardly make out that it is a bear. Also, the mount has a saddle.
I'm not sure if I was initially confused by your wording or your wording was confusing. You want the Ogre Beastlord's Warder Bear or Druid pet Bear to look like the Armored Bear mount without its Saddle and Armor? So a Petamorph is still better just for the Armored Bear sans Armor & Saddle. Changing the default Bear Warder or Bear Pet to that would be altering what the TLP servers would see too, and the dev team have been at pains to change some updated/new NPC model looks in old world zones back to their old model looks (wolves for instance) so I would think they would rather keep the current bear(s) looking the way that they do by default and let you change their appearance if you want that via a Petamorph item. I want an Alligator (VoA Model) Petamorph, since it looks like they'll never let Trolls have the Alligator back.
Druid's little bear should scale in power. Or have different spells at various levels that have more powerful pets. At maybe 10 or 20 level intervals.
Ok, I did not understand you. You are correct, a petamorph item, assuming it is not impossible for players to get (I'm willing to pay Daybreak Cash for it) would be good. However, I'd like the druid swam AA pet as well as the spell mana bear to also have this look. I actually never use the normal druid pet, as he dies in less time than it takes to cast him. In addition, Shaman probably would like their bear form to also be this. If they were to also do something else it improve the regular druid pet, I would want survivability more than dps, as I understand the developers do not want to give out another dps option to have to balance ("druids are not a pet class"). Obviously not the ability to tank, but to at least survive ripostes. Since TLP servers do not use the exact same code as live servers, I don't know why they could not keep the old bear graphics while the live servers use new bears. An example of code differences is, I believe, the Agents of Change. Hopefully not derailing this thread, I'd love to see a write up on exactly what Agents of Change do, all I have is https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Agent_of_Change. And it might be a good idea to bring them to live servers. I'm not expecting any of this to happen. I'm just providing ideas of some things I would like. I know that the very limited developer time we have is, and should be, focused on providing new content for everyone.
I'd love for the team to put AoC on live servers, but since they were designed just for TLP & to deal with a very specific issue they are likely never going to do that as a "Quality of Life" measure and very likely if it were even planned it won't be done until the current server lag issues on live are tackled. As far as the bear/swarms - with zone NPC models swapping graphics is easier - those models are zone-based, the Druid bear pet & the swarm pets & the Bear-form for the Shaman can cross zones - I doubt the code can support being the old bear form in old zones & the new bear form in newer zones so I can't see them changing the default look. As for upgrading the Druid pet bear, that's a legacy spell I guess and if they haven't updated it for all this time I doubt it will get any future updates, though giving it the same kind of upgrades and survivability - through a lot of AA - like the Shaman pet has seems to me to be fair so long as their overall DPS isn't escalated too much, though if you do that you could easily argue for the same thing for Clerics, even if you changed the hammer to something else more fitting as a full-time pet. At least in the case of Clerics they have a longstanding issue around having really bad DPS so they probably have a stronger case for a pet with more dps than even Druids do..
