Welcome to the Wizard101 Message Boards

Thistle Yggdrasil on Apr 11, 2019 wrote:

The thing about Pets is, the name and the context set them up for something specific. Namely, a "pet" is another living creature that you care about, something to get emotionally attached to- and in Wizard101, where you are a wizard (or witch), that also brings to mind the concept of the Witch's Familiar- the black cat, the owl, the toad, that a wizard or witch will keep around to assist them with magic, that may even have intelligence of their own. And heck, we even know that, in the lore, that's exactly what they are- Merle Ambrose's Pet, Gamma, is a prominently-featured, fully-voiced character in the game.

And that's how I initially played the game- when I joined, the friend that introduced me to Wizard101 gifted me a Sister Cheesiwitz egg as a welcoming gift, and I absolutely fell in love with Phoebe. In my eyes, were the mechanics different, I probably would've taken Phoebe all the way from Wizard City to Dragonspyre and beyond- and I still WANT to do that.

However, the pet hatching mechanic takes it in a very different direction. This mechanic instead dehumanizes the pets in question- a pet hatcher isn't going to look at a pet as a single thing to bond over that's going to help them, and isn't going to look at them as anything more than just one in a thousand- with nine-hundred and ninety-nine of those thousand being either stepping stones to get to the final pet, or failures and rejects. In addition, what are the most desired traits on a pet? They're not the traits where the pet gets to cast spells in combat of their own accord, and they're not the traits where the pet boosts their own stats- they're the ones that boost the stats of the wizard. (Although, the second one, where the pet boosts their own stats, isn't much better.)

These two properties mean one thing, when taken together- during the hatching process, the pet is treated as basically cattle (and no, I'm not talking about Mooshu), until they get to the final, perfect pet... which is then just treated as a piece of equipment, the same way that the wizard treats his hat or his athame. The wizard gets the final pet to Epic, slots the appropriate Gem into their collar, and then basically forgets that the pet even exists as anything other than something that follows them around sometimes and plays an animation when they cast a certain spell.

And in my eyes... if the pet were just another hat or athame or ring, that'd be fine. It's perfectly fine to treat an athame as an inanimate piece of equipment, because it is an inanimate piece of equipment. But a pet shouldn't be treated like that- they are living, breathing beings, and oftentimes are simply miniature versions of beings that elsewhere in the Spiral are characters in their own right- and heck, even the ones that don't show up in-game elsewhere tend to be that way. Just look at the Cheesiwitz family- the lore about them has them being a family of cheesemakers. The Cheesiwitzes have jobs outside of assisting the player.

Of course, I'm not exactly one to complain about things without suggesting ways to improve the game, and Halston's Laboratory is all about finding ways to improve the game, so... how would I improve the game, then?

First, I would enable some way to "stitch" a pet to another pet- basically, give one pet, the stats and abilities of another pet, the same way we can stitch hats, robes, boots, and wands together to get the looks of one hat but the stats of another. This solves the problem of if a wizard gets attached to a pet (say, me and Phoebe), but then realizes that they need to hatch for a better pet, or if a wizard really, really wants a floating sword and shield to follow them around but already has a maxed-out pet that isn't a sword and shield. Granted, it should probably be re-flavored in some other way as, for example, some novel new way to train a pet.

As an alternative to that, I would enable some way to change the stats and abilities of an *already-existing* pet, without hatching in the first place. Other than my "stitching pets" idea, I have no idea how that would look.

Second, on top of that, I would nerf the "simply boost the stats of the wizards" options, and buff the May-cast spells options- because the May-cast spells immediately snap everyone's attention to the pet. Suddenly, King Harry the miniature Forest Lord isn't just a fuzzy accessory, he's an ally in his own right, come to fight alongside the wizard- or at the very least, distribute some much-needed heals and/or blades.