Beast Master will contain several phases and several mini-games that will be available to all players, regardless of profession or level, through a third expertise tree.  Initially, players will have to spend an expertise point on the "Incubation" skill, which will give them the ability to set up an Incubator unit in their home or player structure to create their own unique pet. After the Incubator unit is established players can head out into the wild, find a creature, and extract a sample of its DNA core.  Once a player has this DNA core material and loads it into their Incubator, they can begin the process of creating their unique pet.  By fiddling with a series of settings in the new incubation interface and choosing some optional enhancements, the player is able to customize their pet.  Players can make the pet better able to do damage, more defensive, etc.  Over a period of time, using this interface, players will acquire more ways to customize their pet through multiple sessions.  Once the final session occurs, the player has an option to turn their creation into an egg.  These eggs can be hatched for use by the player, or traded to others it if they so desire.  Once the pet has been hatched however, it cannot be traded, so it becomes the player's to raise.

After the pet hatches, it will go through various growth stages as it gains experience with the player.  Each stage will cause it to grow and learn more abilities.  Through adventuring, players will learn new abilities from wild creatures that they can then teach to their pet, for example, the nasty special attacks of the Dune Kimos.  Players will, however, need to ensure their pet stays happy, or it may start being disobedient or wander off.  Based on the pet type, it may have a favorite toy, favorite food or a favorite planet.

In addition, we are working to ensure that the pets currently in the inventories of our veteran players will retain their appearances and names. However, the details on how pre-existing pets will be able to be used in combat are still be ironed out, so we encourage you to give us your thoughts and feedback on how you would like to see this system work.

Will there be variations in the eggs of one certain species? Like for example, would one egg somehow be able to have more potential and therefore be higher priced or more rare, or will all the eggs of a certain species be the same?
There will be quite a bit of customization applied during incubation that will alter combat statistics and learning potential for abilities. After that the pet master will need to train their own creature with abilities they have learned during their time as a beast master.

AzareeNoise wrote:

Also, what happens to old pets still in um, I am forgetting the term..deed form? I have more then a few of these placed through out our city used as protectors of our civic buildings and as decoration. What will happen to these pets?

You will be able to have use for your old pets again but I can't give any more details on it right now as we're still deciding on how to proceed on that.

Jaxston wrote:

Quick question regarding DNA...I still have some from pre NGE in storage...will it be any good, as in useable?

The legacy DNA samples will not be updated to the new system.

SWG-Swede wrote:

The housing purge will begin in chapter 6 but will only become highly visible a month later. Basically all houses not used for 1+ years will be flagged as abandoned soon and then if their owner does nothing to them for a month, they will be coming down. The method and content related to the houses being packed up will be a surprise though.

ty. is there going be any rare pets or are they all gona be easy to get? maybe some experimentation or something. idk either way i'm looking foward to this chapter
Yes, there will be rare pets. I am not going to tell you how rare, or how to get them. At least not right now. But there is a plan for this.

ace426 wrote:

Will Beast Master be limited to combat professions only - or will Crafters and Entertainers also be able to become Beast Masters?

All professions will have the opportunity. It just depends on if you want to spend the expertise points for it.

shadyfish wrote:

will we be able to turn our pets into mounts?

We haven't ironed it out yet, but we are attempting to do this.

Awaker wrote:

You say the big pets will come-in smaller sizes, can we assume then that the there are more large pet possibilities then just the Rancor (which was the only instance where I heard of the possibility of before)?

I'd really like to keep the pets with as minimal impact of size on the world.  Screen shake, Kimos parked ontop of the shuttle blocking the ticket taker, people hiding inside the rancor, yes I remember all these things too well.  The hatchlings will be small enough you should feel that the pet is getting larger as it grows it to its mature size.  Definately no house sized pets.

Shad-O wrote:

There will be quite a bit of customization applied during incubation that will alter combat statistics and learning potential for abilities. After that the pet master will need to train their own creature with abilities they have learned during their time as a beast master.

Will my Elder Creature Handler still have these old abilities learned from having spent hours, days and weeks learning them pre NGE? Or will I start from scratch? Will my old pets still have their old trained abilities?

Legacy CH skills will not carry over to the new system.

I asked for a BM forum earlier today.  I'm not sure when it will be added, though.

I'm not sure on combat mounts.

The maximum pets you can have out at a time is one.

The last thing I heard is that your pet will level with you, so I believe the cap is 90.  I made a bogus experience list for testing and it has all 90 levels in it, while I was testing out pet creation.

Can it be looked into whether a separate "pet toolbar" could be added, similar to other MMO's with pets?  A smaller toolbar with 6 or 8 slots that would only hold pet commands, appearing above your main toolbar.  Having to command by chat, or macro'd chat fired from our current toolbar, is a bit kludgy.

There will be a pet bar.  None of the old chat commands are planned to be moved over to the new system.

Thanks Loche, please give great consideration to this, as I do not want to loose my old pets for nothing.

Technically you are not losing them. You still get to keep them, we are just making them work under the new system. You will have to raise them just like all others. What I am looking into, and I cannot promise I will get in, is a way to make your pre-NGE pet into a house decoration. Similiar to how the old BE deeds were dropped to decorate the house.

from what i understand you should be able to drop the dna strand and it will have hte appearance of the pet you took it from. if you get to the egg then thats what will be displayed if you drop it

Currently that is not true. Right now the DNA looks like a container that is storing the DNA, keeping it viable, if you will. It really doesnt make much sense to harvest some DNA, then drop it on your floor and it looks like a rancor. As of this moment, I dont think we have a system planned out to allow you to take a pet you have, post incubation, and turn it into a house decoration. The idea I am running with, and will hopefully have time to implement, is to allow pre-NGE pets to be converted into a decoration, or into DNA core. If you turn them into a DNA core, you will still end up with Fluffly the rancor, only he will be reborn under the new system.

HanseSOE wrote:

I seem to remember an issue during the SWG Beta where Pets became a problem, becasue it became almost pointless to play without one, just like it used to be pointless to not have a Doc buff or Entertainer buffs - you couldnt compete without any of those.  CH got some major adjustrments then...I hope you guys/gals are not planning on repeating history...

Some quick questions:

Does each Critter have a cap of how high a CL it can achieve?  I ask this because it would be a bit odd to see a CL 90 Kreetle?

Will differnt Critter classes have certain special abilites that make them more ideal for differnt professions?  Lile maybe Cats might be Stealthy and good for Spies, while insects might go well with Commandos, or something like that.

Will any professions be given "anti-critter" abilities?  I don't play a Jedi, but it does seem reasonable that a Jedi Mind Trick might be useful against animals.  "Confuse" attacks that cause the critter to turn on its master - will anyone have such an ability available?

Will each Iconic Profession have access to the same exact skills in the Tree, or will there be slightly differnt versions so that if 1 professions is overpowered with BM that adjusting their Tree wont affect the other professions (wasn't that part of the problem with the old skill system in maintaining balance?)

Since Droids are being considdered an exclusion - you can only have a droid or a critter out at one time - why would anyone have a max CL60 Droid out when they could have a CL90 critter...will anything be adjusted to revitalize the Droid Pet option?

Will Animal Mounts be given any special advantages as a counterbalance to vehicles; a vehicle might be faster, but you can attack while on a Mount..anything like that?

Most important question - are there other "combat oriented" external (open to everyone) expertese trees being considdered down the road?  A simple yes or no will be fine.

We currently do not have a level cap on any of the creatures (aside from 90).  We're not in a finalized state, though.

I am not working on beast abilities.  I do know there is some customization involved, but I don't know if it's on a pet type basis.

No anti-beast abilities are planned, as far as I know.

The expertise is expensive, but we'll look at class balance during testing and iterations of changes on the beasts.

Droids are excluded and I don't have definite information on revisiting them, but I highly doubt they'll be ignored.

I do not believe we are touching mounts at all, except to give you the ability to make new mounts.

I'm not aware of any other expertise trees being considered.

Thanks for your questions!

If that IS the case, then my next question, would of course be: Just how many Points would it take to reach "Full Master" Beast Master?

I peeked at Tunso's expertise chart and spoke with him to find out how many points it would be to be a fully effective Beast Master.  He's set up the expertise to require near to or exactly at 45 points.  Anything less than 45 and you're not fully effective.

Of course, the beasts you train will be competitive, as you level.

How come these other components don't have a valid quality marking on them?

When a buyer looks for a harvestor they see a BER number and know that a BER13 is not as good as a BER14. When they buy a ship they know that one with a mass of 150200 is better than one with a mass of 148980 (assuming equal HP). And when I buy Bespin Port I get a clear notice of how long it will last and how much of a benifit I'll get.

But when I go to buy Droid Storage Modules, Control Units, and Micro Sensor Suites - I really have no idea if they where made with top resources and expirimented to 99% or if they were built at a public crafting station with recycled resources. Only one of the items has a quality rating and it isn't altogether acurate - is it 4.00 or 4.99?

Add to this that many of the droid engineers I talk to insist that quality doesn't matter on those parts and it is near impossible for anyone to know exactly what they are getting when they plop down 25-100k for a crate of items.

I got a 996 CD copper that makes a 14.985 crafting station - I exerimented with some parts I bought (for too much considering what I got) and when I added the MSS I ended up with a 13.58 station actually loosing 2 point.

The Quality Stats need to be on the items like they are on other items - I honestly believe that highly efective station aren't hard to make - I think people just don't know how important the Sub Comps are.

While I was building the Incubator Station I made some tweaks to those old components, removed the second line which did nothing and added examine functionality to them.  The examine functionality will only apply for post patch 6 components though.  I like the idea of changing the value from an int 4.0 to a float value 4.99 and will add it in as I continue work on the incubators.

Also added some new advanced components, the stats on everything down to the base component will matter in how good an incubator you can make!  There is also an additional rating on the station to give you some choice.

On why no multiple pets by Blixtev

In this case its a balance issue.

Okay I may have to recast my vote for mutated rancor after playing with one.

CohibaMonCal wrote:

Fro  memory of what I read there is no cap (other than 90) on a pets level but you will have to work to get it up to that level.
Correct. They will start at level 1 and will need to gain xp to level with the players level as their cap.

We have a hotfix in 5.5 I believe that helps melee creature AI not get stuck in that state where they sit there and let you beat on them.  We will be looking at some of animation oddities we have seen in our early testing of the new beasts.  Some of the little guys, especially the hatchlings look like they move very fast.

paryycco77 wrote:

Thanks for the clarification. Here are my 2 questions:
1.) How many can you have in your datapad at once?

2.) Are Kashyyykian and Mustafarian Creatures part of this? For instance, could you have a Tulrus, Blistmok, Xandank, and the Tanray?

1)Still tossing numbers around, there is a large investment in one beast from not only the incubation minigame, but the leveling process, and the happiness/loyalty game, finding and learning all the various pet abilities,  then throw in really rare unique appearances only derived from mutations.  I hope folks grow attached to these guys that they only really want to have a few in their datapad.  I mean once your pet becomes your BFF , it doesnt leave lots of room for others or he might get sad =(

2)Yes there are a few "exotic" creatures in the mix however most of them come from a mutation in the incubation phase from smilar family creature DNA base pairs.

(pet deeds) The value on some of those will skyrocket as not all of those older models will be harvestable for Beast DNA.  We are making good progress on the conversion from old pet PCD to in house deed object for those who just wish to display their old pets in their house and or sell them them.  The inhouse deed object can be converted into a DNA strand to make a new beast of that appearance type.

One of the BM expertise boxes is the ability to turn eggs into mounts assuming the creature inside the egg can be a mount.  This is determined mainly by if we have art of that creature with a saddle on its back.

Those old pet deeds stay the same, IF you want to you can pick it up and from your backpack and convert it into a DNA strand and use it to incubate a creature.  Those old deeds can be sold/traded etc.

The point at which pets become untradeable is when you hatch them from the egg.

Hanse added the ability today to turn off pet leveling if you want to.  So if you get that ultra cute hatchling and want to keep them that size you can just turn off their leveling.

If you have too many old pets in your pad you will need to turn them into pet deeds and get them out of your datapads.  The deeds look just like the pet did and are their size but just sit in your house looking cool/unique.

You dont have to spend expertise to use mounts, only to make eggs into mounts.

Icons, Incubator, Enzymes, Mutated Creatures, Storyteller Props, Storyteller tokens, Storyteller particles, New Color Palletes, New Incubator interface, BM expertise Tree art is where we chose to spend our time this chapter.  Thats a pretty full art budget.  The worst offender of time is the mutated guys, they take lots of time and we asked for as many as we could get.

Sounds like a ton of art for a chapter update to me.  People just tend to forget that even little things like icons eat up time.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=278377