About throwing pals and talent trees

[kenawyn]

Hi all,
I have been reading some posts about the change where Pals can no longer be thrown into battle and here are my 2 cents.

First let me state my stance on the subject:
A feature of tactically deploying your Pal is both fun and useful.
But I don't see why this should only be associated with the balls.
If the whole change was done because of Nintendo being an ass about it then let them have their balls and introduce the same feature in another fun way.

Let's assume that we will be moving forward with summoning our pals close to our side, which is perfectly fine by me.
So, how about adding some new gadgets to the game that come with various tactical options, including throwing/moving your pals around?
For example we could have an item called the "AEtheric Glove", which could have the ability to "aetherilize" and move/throw pals around.
AEtherilize - is just code word for saying pick them up as a swirly misty energy bubble and make them throw-able.

How would the glove work?
I think the best way to use the glove is like a weapon that also has some secondary active abilities (see below). To make it more tactical, the glove should have a max range for pickup and throw.

Here is the most basic use-case for the glove:
- while the glove is equipped, pointing the cross-hair at a friendly pal in range will change the reticle to a pickup icon
- activating the gloves while we can pick up a pal will pick it up placing it in an aetheric bubble, which will hover around the player following them around
- a pal placed into an aetheric bubble is invulnerable, but the bubble can be popped with enough damage, which will release the picked up pal
- the player can throw the bubble by using the gloves again, in which case the bubble will be yeeted towards the target with great speed and the pal will be released when it hits the ground (basically reintroducing the old functionality)
Alternative option: instead of double tap, use hold and release to pick up and throw the pal (whichever works best).

Throwing the pal at a hostile target (indicated by the change of the reticle) should deploy the pal based on their combat-type
- a tank and bruiser pal would be placed close to the target trying to draw aggro
- an assassin pal will be placed behind it
- a caster/ranged pal would be placed a little bit further away from it

The glove should also have various active abilities, which could be either tied to a variant of the glove or unlocked from a talent tree (see below).
Here are some suggested active abilities with cooldown:
- recall, activating this ability will recall your pal(s) to your side
- lets assume we will have the talent trees (see below) and there is one that allows multiple pals to be summoned we need a mass deploy or mass yeet ability, which can throw/move all friendly summoned pals instead of just one (since this is a stronger ability, it needs to have a cooldown)
- emergency AEtherelize, activating this ability will aetherelize (phase out) your pal(s) for a short time avoiding AoEs or other damaging abilities. The goal is to have more tactical options
- reflective shield, activating this ability will place a shield around your pal(s) and hitting this shield with a pal spell will reflect it back at the caster
- deploy healing mist, activating this ability will create a green mist around your pal(s) which will heal it over time
- empowering tether, activating and holding this ability will create a tether between the player and one targeted pal and while this tether is active the pal will be empowered (gains temp HP, gains damage up, gains defense, gains cool-down reduction), to make this more difficult the player must keep the tether locked onto the pal which might be difficult in the heat of combat
... etc
There should be various recipes scattered around the world to unlock the different gloves.

Now, here is a second radical idea.
How about adding talent trees to the game so instead of simply spending points to decide our stat focus we could unlock various traits, which would further specialize our character. Think of them like class abilities and based on what talent tree we progress our character it would change the game-play significantly.

Here are some recommended starter talent trees (later DLCs could add more if needed):
Combat Tree
This tree would focus on giving the player more power by unlocking various combat maneuvers, movement abilities and giving additional damage and weapon effects for player based weaponry.
Ultimate Ability: new active ability for player weapons (for example a large charge-up continuous beam with an explosive blast for the lazor or something cool like that)

Pal Tactician tree
This tree would focus on commanding and augmenting pals to be better at fighting by empowering their abilities, shortening their cool-downs, enabling the use of various pal support gadgets and allowing multiple pals to fight for you at the same time (+1/2)
Ultimate Ability: pal combo, your active pals will execute a combo ability together unleashing a unique and hopefully very damaging ability (spell type, effect and damage depends on the pals participating in the combo)

Dungeoneer tree
This tree would focus on getting better drops in dungeons and chests, granting bonuses fighting wild pals and bosses and granting various group-wide buffs for raids. Additionally it will also unlock the use of various dungeoneering items: like the heart-finder globe (a small hovering object always pointing towards the dungeon exit) and the escape figurine (which is a consumable that triggers on fatal damage and saves the player from death, removing aggro and creating a decoy that attracts the mobs attention)
Ultimate Ability: mark ability (long cooldown) marked target takes more damage and all item drop chances are greatly increased if the target is slain while under the mark effect

Mayor or base(d) manager tree
This tree would focus on augmenting buildings, production, yields, trading and general base management, it would also expand your base size to allow building bigger bases
Ultimate Ability: merchants guild, unique stand that allows you to spawn various merchants that unlocks better items the longer you trade with it. There is a gacha merchant as well that can give you rare scamatics :) if you are lucky.

Basically
- go dungeoneering if you want to farm stuff and enjoy exploration
- go combat if you want to PVP or be effective on your own
- go pal tactician if you want to mostly rely on your pals fighting and want better tools to command them
- or go mayor if you want to build a spectacular base/city and still want to get some of the good stuff that normally would require heavy dungeoneering and exploring

What do you think?

[Beautiful Bastard]

Pal throwing better

[Kit Fulvas]

how about we "Bayblade" it and have a curved spinning top for summoning pals at a distance?

And when capturing pals, you throw the tops, and when they hit a pal the top hits the ground, and the Pal morphs into an enegry ball atop (to keep the capture animations and not mess it up *too* much)

[Celator]

They should just make the balls shoot out a beam and the pal appears where it hits. Simple and pretty close to what the game already has.

[Kit Fulvas]

Originally posted by Celator:

They should just make the balls shoot out a beam and the pal appears where it hits. Simple and pretty close to what the game already has.

Nintendo would prolly still claim its infringing if its via beam from a ball as thats how the Pokemon trainers retrieve their pokemon.

Those Red beams that makes em disappear.

[Celator]

Originally posted by Kit Fulvas:

Originally posted by Celator:

They should just make the balls shoot out a beam and the pal appears where it hits. Simple and pretty close to what the game already has.

Nintendo would prolly still claim its infringing if its via beam from a ball as thats how the Pokemon trainers retrieve their pokemon.

Those Red beams that makes em disappear.

If it's how they are recalled then that's different from how they're sent out. The patent is very specifically about how things are summoned.