Pondering summoning pals

[phantomwarriorcm]

I rather liked the old system of summoning pals. it was extremely fluid and with a surprising amount of depth. i found myself getting through a lot of fights by using the throw mechanic to position my pal, dodging, then recalling them when something nasty was about to smack them up side the head. it felt a little cheesy, but it was fun, and really had potential if they kept working with the system...
Now the combat feels a bit more stiff due to throwing being removed...
As we all suspect, this is likely due to a certain company deciding not to share (despite the fact that there's a good argument against trying to patent mechanics, and the fact that such mechanics have already showed up in several mods already- Gta, Several minecraft mods. and probably a few official games that I'm unaware of.)

Now I'm hoping, that this is just a temporary situation to allow for the lawsuit to play out and for pal world to end up on top due to the absurdity of it... but that dosn't mean we cant come up with a solution in the mean time. As I'm sure the developers are trying to sort out a way to make summoning pals smooth and interesting again.

after all... some of the most creative solutions, come from restrictions. so. with that in mind, here's a little proposal that id like to float to the Pal world team, just as potential food for thought.

what about tieing summoning pals to our weapons?
the first thought that came to mind was summoning pals through a gun like weapon. after all, palworld is known for its guns, and the legal shenanigans are about throwing a ball.
doing this allows for aiming and ranged summoning while still working around that technicality.

expanding on that idea, and this is just me spit balling here with the main premise above, you could have it where, base line, you summon your pals beside you, but by working through the game, perhaps as a special reward for certain bosses or something, you could create weapons that you are able to essentially use as an exstention of pal spheres and have different properties in how they fire.

Guns are pretty straight forward and reliable, a boomerang could lead to interesting positioning, bows could lead to long ranged arched shots, and maybe even some melee weapons like swords would have the pal appear beside you as you and attacking, having it literally fight by your side. maybe a whip would cause the pal to pop up right behind your target due to the sweeping motion of such weapons being a kind of mid range melee. and since one of the bosses has a dedicated weapon, that... im not entirely sure what it does, (a pretty spear?) it wouldn't be to hard to slot the idea into what is already there story wise.

if you wanted you could even have a system where these weapons are affected by the pals they are capable of summoning, like switching elements, though for balancing reasons, they should probably loose that once the pal is summoned and be weaker attack wise when compared to more standard weapons. maybe the shot that summons the pal, could even cause extra damage, depending on the pal being used, depending on how offensive the devs would want this system to be.

this is just an idea that popped into my head, and felt like sharing. hope its helpful or at least interesting. I'm sure pal world is already plotting something to address these issues :P but i thought it would be fun to bounce ideas around. Heres looking forward to whatever they come up with, and seeing where this game goes!

[bumrum]

like the idea... would be nice if the player started with a basic gun that allowed remote summoning and capture instead with its upgrades gaining more tactical uses, from status effect nova's or explosions on sphere impact to useful features such as homing capture shots with an alt mode that deals very little damage with a stun chance.

this would also allow them to preempt a certain n from saying they are using the pkmn trainer throwing pose while giving us neat mechanics too.

on the subject of modifying pal tech that could be a neat system alowing the player to modify pal spheres to do things other then just catch pals. from makeshift grenades, to status effects on hit, hell an auto butcher sphere would also be neat... granted that one would need to bust on use.

[Vugen]

Or change it so the sphere is a card and not a ball like thing if thats why nintendo is crying or let us pre set the sphere to summon the pal either close, medium, or far away from us. But not letting me spawn my pal where i want is really ruining my gamestyle.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Vugen:

Or change it so the sphere is a card and not a ball like thing if thats why nintendo is crying or let us pre set the sphere to summon the pal either close, medium, or far away from us. But not letting me spawn my pal where i want is really ruining my gamestyle.

The mechanics is what's patented, not the design.
A card, a ball, a bullet, etc... all of them violate the overly broad patent.
----

And okay, so you can't hide behind cover and throw out sacrificial lambs to fight.
Try new strategies.
Once summoned, they'll zoom in on the target.

Heck, even when I was on a cliff, trying to attack something below, I just turned 90 degrees left at the cliff edge, summoned, and my Pal dropped down below to fight for me.

...Or summoning a Pal to serve as a decoy while I run for my life. Don't even have to turn around to throw, just summon on the run, and they'll fall behind and fight.
"Pals, you must stay behind to protect me. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

Besides, mounts are so much nicer now, since they're right there for you. Instant mounting.

[Midnight]

The way I would do it, is with a KEY item that you can craft relatively early game that you can upgrade throughout that increases the distance that you can launch it.
Note that tapping would still side summon, but holding the button would use the items below

Example:
Sling (IE the piece of leather with a spot in the middle for a rock, that you spin around then release one end to launch it)
Tech level 5, cost 1-2
Recipe: leather, cloth
Short launch distance and speed

Slingshot (IE the "Y" shaped thing everyone always thinks about when you say slingshot)
Tech level: +2 after you unlock ingots, cost 2-3
Recipe: leather, cloth, wood, ingots
Medium launch distance and speed, two chargeable (so that you can do a short range shot if needed)

Wrist rocket (has a second part that rests on the arm, allowing you to pull back harder)
Tech level: +2 after pal metal, cost 3-4
Recipe: leather, high quality cloth, pal metal ingots, polymer
High launch distance and speed, three chargeable levels

Wrist mounted launcher
Tech level: +2 after plasteel, cost 3-4
Recipe: Circuit boards, plasteel ingots, electric organs, carbon fiber
Maximum launch distance and speed, four charge levels with the fourth adding an attack boost to the attacking pal for X amount of seconds and with a cooldown of X+50 seconds

[Dindunuphen]

Vote with your play time and your wallet. Palworld wants to bend the knee like a bunch of cowards. Don't play their game. They're not the only creature collector. They're just the only good 3D creature collector. Give China 3-12 months. We'll have a brand new creature collector to play in no time flat. Pocketpair don't want to fight. Don't waste your time on weaklings.

[TasteOfSunlight]

Originally posted by Eyeownnothing:

Vote with your play time and your wallet. Palworld wants to bend the knee like a bunch of cowards. Don't play their game. They're not the only creature collector. They're just the only good 3D creature collector. Give China 3-12 months. We'll have a brand new creature collector to play in no time flat. Pocketpair don't want to fight. Don't waste your time on weaklings.

Nintendo?

They HAVE to bend the knee rn bro or they get destroyed

[Dindunuphen]

Originally posted by TasteOfSunlight:

Originally posted by Eyeownnothing:

Vote with your play time and your wallet. Palworld wants to bend the knee like a bunch of cowards. Don't play their game. They're not the only creature collector. They're just the only good 3D creature collector. Give China 3-12 months. We'll have a brand new creature collector to play in no time flat. Pocketpair don't want to fight. Don't waste your time on weaklings.

Nintendo?

They HAVE to bend the knee rn bro or they get destroyed

Removing the video game mechanic is the clear and obvious sign that Palworld devs are bending the knee. Gonna be so funny watching people like you defend them after they remove the other mechanics too and make the game even worse with another big update to cover up them bending the knee.

[Udyrfrykte.ttv]

Originally posted by phantomwarriorcm:

I rather liked the old system of summoning pals
...
a boomerang could lead to interesting positioning

I had a similar thought in another thread, I called it a Pal-erang (a tech-boomerang). You would toss it to the desired location where it then spins in the air while the contained Pal is out and then when you call it back it sucks up your Pal and flies back to your hand. Higher tier Pal-erangs can have one or more mods that can be attached with different effects, some quick examples I thought of:
> offensive mod causes the Pal-erang to do an AoE matching the element of the Pal it is releasing
> healing mod that builds up a healing charge based on how long the Pal-erang is left hovering after deployment, used on the Pal when called back OR fires a healing beam to the deployed Pal after building up max charge
> mod that puts a stasis field around hostile targets that prevents them from acting/moving but protects them from dropping below 1hp for several seconds

Instead of the Pal being stored within the Pal-erang, it functions like a scanner/teleporter so when a target is brought low enough the player releases the Pal-erang in Scan mode (or switches if it is already deployed). It then flies rapidly around the target, getting a full 360 degree scan before teleporting the target at a molecular level back to the Player's Sanctuary. The Player has already interacted with a more familiar side of the Sanctuary: the Palbox! Down the later tech tree, the Player can unlock an upgrade to the Palbox to explore The Sanctuary, which is a realm between the digital and real created with the same technology as the Towers that allows them to be bigger on the inside, and this is where your stored Pals go to heal, relax, and for H.I.F.R.T (High Intensity Friendship Re-evaluation Therapy) on first admittance which is why they can be brought back as Pals. Summoning a Pal reverses the process, identifying the desired Pal thanks to the full genetic scan and then teleporting them back to the Pal-erang like a 3d printer.

That's my original game mechanic IP btw, Nintendo Pocketpair is welcome to it