All familiar items should also be pet illusions

Unless it's already been mentioned, also on my wishlist for pet illusions would be to make them permanent or last the full duration across zoning. Drives me a bit nuts that I have to recast my beastlord's pet illusion every time I log in or zone, same with my mage's pet illusion.

My Vah Beastlord is Chattazure, her companion is Lapis and now she has a blue Arc mender and also a blue mount (a couple of them, actually). It's incredibly jarring to see the orange kitty until I get the metamorph cast.


My gnome mage has a clockwork pet and it's also very odd to see the whatever when she logs in or zones. (no handy picture)

The familiar key ring allows pet illusions to persist across zoning.

If that's an actual advantage of the familiar key ring, I would be more tempted to get it. But that's really pricey to unlock just for that.

If I wanted to play a beastlord, I would have. But I didn't. Player illusions have been part of the game literally forever, why not pets?

Sure, but it is grotesque.

During the development of LoY in 2002 the devs had internal discussions about if it would be a good idea to add armor dyes.and quite a few were, and some still are, against it, because many armor pieces were meant to be showable achievements which other players would recognize by their unique armor color like dark blue (50,50,100) for the Cobalt Breastplate and other Kunark raid drops.

Since then the game has changed that much that those old discussions do look like nonsense today. The totally uncontrolled flood of ornamentations, illusions, familiars, mounts, etc. made all those reservations meaningless. It was a long chain of bad decisions imo. While armor dyes were a controversial but great addition, things had gone way to far for my taste. Every newbie or twink can now run around with unique raid boss weapon ornamentations like The Sword of Ssraeshza Ornamentation which did led to a big item and achievement inflation. This is just one example of hundreds.

That classes can wear and use stuff that does not fit to those classes made it even worse. Why is a paladin able to ride a skeleton mount and having a skeleton familiar ? Or why should a magician have a wolf pet ? Is the paladin a shadow knight and the magician a druid or ranger ? The answer is no. Who made such bad decisions ?? I would fire such people instantly.

It is one thing if players are asking for such things, but a whole different thing to add such suggestions into the game. Someone has to draw the line and make good decisions.by weighing up carefully. I am asking myself if the caretaker of the studios was sometimes in charge of making decissions because the results do sometimes just look like that.

They were but very limited in the beginning. Only a few and often rare illusion clickies got added per expansion for a long time and most were restricted to BRD/ROG/ENC. Alchemy illusion potions got added much later.

Pet illusions are fine to me as long as they do fit to the class and it's theme. A gargoyle would fit to a magician but not a wolf. Not long ago I posted a small list of unique class and race bound pet illusions but the devs already added a few of them as ALL ALL clickies like the original forest fairy as a player instead a high elf enchanter pet illusion, and the skeleton and erudite ghost illusions from the Erudite Heritage Crate which were meant for NEC and SHD.


Here a list that might be uncomplete:

Original:

1. Dark Elf (BRD/ROG)
2. Earth Elemental (ALL)

Kunark:

1. Erudite (BRD/ROG)
2. Halfling (BRD/ROG)
3. High Elf (BRD/ROG)
4. High Elf (ENC)
5. Iksar (BRD/ROG)

Velious:

1. Barbarian (BRD/ROG)
2. Dwarf (BRD/ROG)
3. Gnome (BRD/ROG)
4. Water Elemental (BRD/ENC)

In the marketplace there's a metamorph worg illusion. It looks like a wolf/dog hybrid. It's only 200 Station Cash.

I must be really naughty. Right now, my 4 mages have the Queen Pelzia bixie illusion activated right now. My 4 pets have the bixie drone pet illusion and I have 4 bixie familiars up. It's a bixie swarm, I tell you what.

Pet illusion vs Player illusions are 2 different things and there were no pet illusions from velious or before. I am not sure when pet illusions got their first item but it was long after pop. Back in the early days I was an illusion addict as a bard and had every one in the game but after a while they started making all of them all/all and it just went from something special for my class to meaningless and most of them were store bought items so the meaning of having an illusion as a bard to a special race became pointless so I stopped trying to get them. I do have all the early expansion ones though for every single race / elemental.

It is not your fault. Players just use what they can get into their fingers. It is like allowing a kid to play with fire, knives and scissors. Because of that someone has to draw the line.

I just wanted to show how limited illusions at all were in the beginning. It made them something special and valueable. ALL ALL illusion clickes and the mass and easy disposability of them made everything pretty worthless, streamlined and chaotic. Yeah, I would say that it is a mess now. We pretty much do have an agreement on that.

TLDR: Games tend to add more features as they progress.

Fabulous!

I haven't thought of a downside to this. If the Devs have to add animations for the familiars it should entail some additional cost to cover that unless it would generate enough extra income just from more familiar purchases.

If they would add any animations to the familiar pets, they should start by giving black mamba a kick animation.

It is already there but their legs are invisible tier 4.

Bump! Fantastic idea and so many great ones that should be made pet illusion.

And that ship has long since sailed. Now illusions for players, pets and familiars are going to be useable by everyone for the simple reason that everyone likes them and it would be silly to limit your income stream from selling them and limiting to specific classes/races.

The greed for fast money is already deconstructing the game and the project would benefit from strict concept rules, quality control and leadership. As nearly all players do use multiple classes it does even make less sense to make all familars available to all classes. Quantity over quality is a stodge that is going nowhere.

You mean giving customers what they want and making money so that they can keep the game running and add in new content? You seem to be in the very small minority that think illusion items should be limited in who can use them. Most people are happy that they can be used by more people and that recent familiar items can also be used as a pet illusion.

Familiar and illusion item sales are not needed for financing new content and keeping the game running. The decision makers behind the devs have eroded the game substance by feeding the crowd with whatever nonsense was coming into their minds and without thinking what consequences such behaviour does have after a few years. It for sure has caused way more negative income than those rather unimportant item sales can bring in.

Returning players do not recognize the game anymore after more than ten years. The class concept, it's lore and the roleplay factor got totally messed up by the all/all stodge. It is hardly possible to distinguish the different classes anymore by their look. Everyone can look like everything which is utter nonsense.
"You want to be a rainbow pony, a duck or a bee swarm ? No problem, you can be everything, just not yourself !"
It is definetly leaned to real life where people do identify themselves with something, but rarely with/being themselves: Music categories, styles, hobbies, names... all those are also illusions.