Has KI Opened the Door to the "God" Character?

It's just a thought, but I think that KI may have produced some "monsters" in the creation of this new Advanced Pet System.

I can understand and I can appreciate the new pets and their possibilities, but I am wondering if there should be more of a limit on certain talents(and possibly some derby skills...but I am not going to speak derby here since I don't know enough on those to form a good opinion.)

There are certain pets which, we, as consumers of the game who have bought Gift Cards or bought crown item pets, may now give us a huge advantage over others in the game. Is this really fair? Certain pets that, before the APS(Advanced Pet System) went Live, came with what we now call "talents" or "skills." An example is the Defender Pig with it's 6% (now starting) Global Resistance, or the Dream Ghoul with it's +50 Health and +50 Mana(the ghoul is a minor example as that is nice to have but really doesn't "give" much advantage, really.) Although for the heck of it I trained Val and Esmee's ghouls up the other night until they ran through the 5-6 snacks I allowed them to give their pets, and I did see a rather steady increase in the health and mana, just in that short time they trained them.

But there are other talents out there, such as resistance, pip boosts, accuracy, which could create the feared "God characters." No longer will everyone's stats from the same school with the same gear make and level you "equal" until you duel and find out who is really the best strategist. Now, there is the addition of what extra boosters the pets give....and many of them differ from one pet to another, even with the same pet types.

Some of the pets that give these bonuses are no longer, and may never be, available again. And even if you could get one; in the future you will start with a blank slate when you buy that gift card/pet because it has yet to hatch and will only be a baby. You will not know exactly what to work on for a certain pet. I know it's reasons like this that my friend, Kevin Battleblood, is working on his Petnome Project, and that is with the help of the community, and also is in need of even more help. Read Kevin's latest post to see why this is so important and that even if you post something someone else has already that your post is just as important as the one who did it before you.

My issue with the entire pet system is that there are some pets that will probably never be available again, and those pets are also able to manifest certain skills that would make a wizard in PvP(or even PvE) nearly unstoppable, especially if they know what they are doing. I think some of these pets need to be tuned down a little, like all the pets with Dragonblade that were released over the holidays. Those pets were already special without the added skills. And I am not saying they shouldn't have those skills, but how high do these skills really need to go? I am sort of glad that the sheep pet is basically an extremely rare ornament, because how fair would it be if Friendly's and Olivia's sheep did something that none of our pets could ever hope to do? And what if they came with an especially rare card on top of that?

For PvP Storm may already have an advantage since we are the ONLY ones, now, who can even have Wild Bolt. It has been discovered that anyone other class that had previously held an enhanced Wild Bolt in their treasure cards have now turned into Lightning Elves so KI was on it with leveling the playing field with the Bolt situation that was causing such a problem in PvP. It IS actually fair that we(Storm wizards) have it when you consider the weaknesses of Storm...it really is a spell that no one else ever should have been able to use in PvP because people stopped using their own schools and relied on Bolts to reach the highest ranks, thus taking away any strategy that a real PvP person would enjoy.

But imagine a Storm wizard in PvP with full Grand gear or the best accuracy arena gear(whichever is higher since I have never compared the two,) and a pet that makes their regular Storm attack accuracy better than Life when applied to their own school card attacks, plus the pet gives a rare card that makes them even stronger. KI has just created the "God character"....and it's a "monster."

With pets giving additional accuracy(as well as resistance or pip chance,) and the possibility that you might be able to mate certain stackable characteristics into future generations of pets, it could be possible, for Storm especially, to obtain 100% accuracy(and if it could go above 100...it would also be that,) or at least close to it. And if enhanced Storm spell attacks are used in combination with all this gear and pet as well; we will never miss, unless a Dissipate, or Black Mantle, or Smoke Screen is used. No other school gets the accuracy modifiers we already do with just our regular GM gear. Our GM gear brings our regular 70% accuracy to 85%, comparable to Death and Balance...and getting us closer to Life. Now, if you have a pet that gives you even more...or even better a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th(or even farther down the line) generation pet with stackable manifested accuracy talents....it could be very possible to approach, and even surpass those numbers(if going above 100% were possible in this game.)

Other schools could possibly use this to their advantage too. I do believe some pets give other school specific accuracy boosts. I know I have seen Ice, Fire, Myth, Balance, Death accuracy modifiers in pets(as I have at least one pet from each that gives all of these. I don't know if there is one for Life(I only checked my main account so it's possible I might have one on another account that gives this....though I doubt that this would exist. Actually, all a Life wizard needs is a pet that give a global accuracy boost and work on that and see how far it gets you, though I have doubts you will reach 10%, but I could be very wrong about that too...maybe you can. I would believe that after seeing pictures. But, really, that already 90% Life has is high enough. Even I, as a Storm Wizard, do not think it's fair for any school's accuracy to be higher than Life. Equal to Life; sure...why not? It's no longer a game when you can virtually guarantee a result.

I always thought it was the intention of MMOs to NOT give such advantages to the very, very few, and I thought that most of them tried their best to keep a pretty even playing field so that everyone could at least have the chance to excel if they applied themselves, and without out the use of such rare, and mostly purchased items.

Has anyone out there ever read or watched .Hack//SIGN or any of the other .Hack anime? In those shows and graphic novels there is always someone within the game with an extremely special and rare item which unbalances the game.

By the way, for those that don't know .Hack//, it is based on a game called The World, which is a MMO, which all the characters in the book/shows are playing. I recommend it to any gamers out there as you will really be able to appreciate the thoughts and feelings that those characters have who are playing characters in a game....just like we are. They also develope the same sort of relationships/friendships with each other and the feeling of community, much like W101.

The difference with .Hack// and reality is that in .Hack// the ones with these items didn't chose it to happen. In fact they are just regular people who were trying to escape reality a bit and be in a different world(called an MMO.) In fact the first character introduced in .HACK//SIGN was a loner with a serious health issue occurring and they were actually physically stuck within the game. They really just wanted to be left alone but they were given this gift(a hack) that made everyone want to come after them because it didn't belong in the game, it was a hack(not created by them) and gave the character access to areas that gave him special privileges, even though he really didn't want the attention that was received because of these privileges. He was only trying to escape and be left alone, and was also trying to figure out who he was since he had sort of lost his own personal identity on being stuck within the game.

Now, in reality, one with these additional abilities could also be making the game unbalanced, but to the point where they might start believing themselves unbeatable. Not that anyone is truly unbeatable. All it takes is one slip up. But when the chances are increased so far in someone's favor because of an item it really creates a huge imbalance...not to mention the ego trip that the one with the item would suffer, making them almost unbearable to be around.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts on that. I do think we all have some serious potential in our pets. The problem is no one knows what it could be right now, for sure, unless the pet already had a bit of a headstart....such as with old crown and gift card pets with resistance(Defender Pig for example,) pets with extra pip chance(possibly other than the level 48 pets,) accuracy, the crown ghoul and spider that use to give health and mana from the get go. By the way has everyone noticed that the pets in the shops, now, that use to have these bonuses, are now clean slates since they have yet to hatch? But I think we should all try to contribute to Kevin's Petnome project, even if you only fill it out one time; it will help everyone when it is finally able to be put together into something that we all can read and obtain information from.

The only thing that I can say stinks on training pets right now is that we could seriously mess up our pets to the point where they are useless house decorations. I have a suggestion I wish KI could hear:

How about having an XP buy back for pets? Some of these pets we have and are trying to obtain and train might be impossible to near impossible for us to get again. AND if we train them and the pet is forever ruined because we were trying to figure out what it could do; well, that is a HUGE loss in my book. I don't plan, nor do I care to, have multiples of any one pet, so usually the one I have is the ONLY one I have...and I really don't want to mess them up :-/
But if there was at least a way I could wipe my pet's XP back down to zero and start over if I messed up(and even if this is only do-able with Crowns,) I might feel a little better about experimenting with my pets.

I have other news but will post it later on. I wanted to keep this post only about this topic.

See ya in the Spiral!