Dog Tweaks needed

[Maxsa]

First let me say I love the dogs addition. I am really enjoying raising my pup and teaching it to hunt. However there are some things that need tweaked.

1. The stamina for them is much to low and burns out way too fast. I have my dog up to level 14 and he eats stamina like biscuits when fetching. I got to the point where I don't put him in the blind with me anymore.
It doesn't seem to spook the geese if he is out anyway.
Either the amount of stamina needs increased or the amount used needs decreased. I can't imagine trying to train this dog from 20 to 50 like this.
Also a store item {Puppy Treats} that increase stamina regen would be nice provided we can use gm$ to buy them. that is why we do the mission to gain GM$ to buy things like bear and hog bait as well as bandages and rations.

2. Either the dog needs to bring the bird back into the blind for harvesting at our feet or we need to be able to harvest the bird through the blind where the dog drops it. It is no different then before we got the dogs where we have to exit the blind to harvest them. Keep this in mind if we let them just pile up on the ground for awhile then exit. If you are doing a competition where you average your first 5 for a score and you have more then 5 dead you could harvest a smaller bird then you wanted.

3. I would like to see a dog stamina bar on the screen and the dogs stats anytime the dog is out with you hunting. Not just when you hit the v key. A small window could be place in any one of the 4 corners of the screen giving the amount of stamina left, the dogs level and the percentage to next level.

4. And the last thing is the ability to hot key the dog commands. not a hot key to open the dog options window. I would like to be able to assign a key to fetch or any other dog function and bypass that damn dog options window.

I really do like what has been done so far with the dogs but i feel they could be even better.

[Alex308]

Right on mate, I completely agree with all four of your points, especially 1 and 2.
Let's wait and see...

[drphilphil]

I think the one with the hotkey is in the last update!

[Maxsa]

The last update only allows you to remap the v key to bring up the command window to another key. Not the actual commands being hot keyed.

[K4n4y]

1. Stamina is a pain indeed, got my dog at level 16 in game and can barely use it each day, saw some players with level 20 dogs in game that still have stamina at level 2 ... wondering when this skill will go up so i can execute more than 50 orders each day with my dog before being at 0% starting from between 125 to 150% ....

The fact that i often have to ask her to enter the blind because I exited it and she done the same use some precious stamina for nothing, or when she gets stuck somewhere and i have to give 3 or more orders before she finally can find her way and so on ... overall the stamina goes out too fast plus you have to give a lot of unnecessary orders due to the limited functionalities and brains for the dogs in game, i don't know how being at level 3 to 6 for stamina will improve things but i doubt we will be able to use our dog each day to hunt ... Of course you can buy more than one dog and switch them ...

Stamina magic potion in the store : big nope , it's a pure pay to win thing, i spoke about it in another thread http://forum.thehunter.com/viewtopic.ph ... 13#p698313 :

Spoiler:

To start with I don't know if it was the normal progression on the beta server, i also noticed at some point that the dog earned a level at almost each command and i wondered if like in many closed alpha/beta tests i participated in the leveling system was boosted to not spend 6 months testing it full capabilities, leveling up 10 times faster than on live servers and if it was the case then maybe the stamina also decreased ten times faster than it should ... Who knows.

While i understand that they need to introduce such system to limit a too fast progression of the skills i am waiting to see how the stamina will work, if you are lucky in a geese hunt the poor dog will not even be able to get 1/10 of what you shoot before getting tired, this rendering it completely useless if after 5 geese shot on the first flock he needs to get a nap for the rest of my hunt ...

Especially since it needs to be ordered for each bird he needs to retrieve, if i down 6 geese in a single flock i need to give him 6 times the order to bring them back instead of something less fastidious like give the order once and do this task unless ordered something else ...

As for things you buy to give him more stamina .. not really happy with this, the dog can't magically recover stamina each time you give him something to eat anyways, it will be pure non sense if each time his stamina decrease you can just buy something to restore it, maybe a snack usable only once per hunt but not restoring the full stamina , only 30 to 50 % of what he lost, but as an infinite source of stamina for those who are willing to invest a lot in this new sort of consumables no thanks.
It's not supposed to be a fantasy game, i don't want to invest real money into some kind of magic potions restoring stamina to avoid a potential game bad mechanic design if a dog is not able to retrieve more than a negligible percentage of what i shoot down until i reach an insane skill level with it after many months of training.

I don't know how dogs get tired in real life retrieving birds, of course retrieving a duck is probably less fastidious than retrieving a goose that weights way more than the ducks and pheasants but are dogs tired after a dozen of ducks shot in one hour in real life ??

The question you have to ask yourselves is :
Imagine if they added a stamina system to the players avatars making them not able to run non-stop like they can do now, will you be happy if it was possible to bypass this and buy some cereal bars and get stamina boosts allowing you to run again and again ??
Those who don't care and can afford to invest a lot probably won't mind it but it will clearly be a pay to win unfair advantage...

All this is part of what I am waiting to see on videos or MP servers so for now I'm just speculating while waiting ..

Funny to see that our avatars can run forever and a dog gets tired so fast :p

2. Not needed for me , the current system is fine how it is from my point of view.
What I'd like however is set a mark on the ground in a short perimeter around the blind maybe something i can plant on the ground similar to decoys but this will just be a small mark for the dog and when he brings animals he will drop all birds on the spot i selected if i am inside the blind, if i am outside it he will bring the birds to me directly like now or having the option to choose will be nice too but probably too complex compared to this system, this will also put less strain on the dog path finding and avoid many odd things they do in the swamp areas for example as i will be easier to calculate the path to a constant point on the map instead of a moving player that needs to be recalculated each 1/10 of seconds.
Dog could also drop them in a certain pattern on the mark so the ragdolls don't pile up and start to become an issue around the blind for the dog, like we see now with dogs not able to enter back on the blinds blocked by a simple bird dead body, the selected spot could be useful for this.

3. Will be useful since we can't use the V button when we are prone too, would like to know if my dog is still at 0% without having the to go from prone to crouch and hold a button for this, like for many other things a simple keybind command with toggle on/off mode possible will do the job.

More than this i would like to know how much of my dog stamina was restored without having to go in game to know it, right now we all use the dog intensively but after a while it will become evident due to stamina being so short that the dog will be really useful for a single intensive hunt each 24 hours or so only, what I'd like to see directly on my dog profile page is how much stamina he have, like we can do for bait barrels and see how much food remains and how much attraction they have, like this i will know if it is worth it to get him out for a hunt.

Oh and i want to know the exact amount of stamina too , right now it works by steps, 0,90,125,150,200%
If the dog is between 0 to 89% it will show 90% and after one or 2 orders only it will be at 0% again , i would like to either have the exact amount of stamina or more steps for the %, like 0,20,40,60,80,100 etc etc until 200 , this will do too, seeing a dog at 90% that return to 0% after one or 2 commands only is silly.

4. i already suggested after seeing the dog preview and i think it became clear to most players now : http://forum.thehunter.com/viewtopic.php?f=227&t=65779


Edit: many typos corrected, clicked submit before preview first, probably some remaining :p

[Hammerark]

The hot keys are essential for me, I want that feature more than any other