I've got an idea - lets make summoned monsters less useless!

[GMilici07]

Okay, so the uselessness of summoned creatures really boggles my mind. They suck so so bad, and I really try as hard as I can to make a use of them.. but, they just suck SO bad.

Right now I have a 14 cleric, and decided to pick up fiendish troll. It looks cool, regenerates health, and doesn't seem to do terrible damage. But there are a few, no, a ton, of problems I run into when using it. Here are some off the top of my head:

They can't follow you through cave entrances/doors within a dungeon. This is stupid. That means that it is useless as soon as you encounter any sort of entryway you need to take. They just stay behind at the entrance like a dunce.

Sometimes they are too large to fit through certain areas, such as hallways, walkways, or even thresholds. Wow, cool, so useful!

If you have to jump down from any sort of height, into anywhere else, guess what? They can't follow you! Wow, so glad I just spent mana on summoning one! I guess I could summon another when I reach the bottom, but oh jeez... it's locked out for 5 minutes.

They run off and attack other mobs, behind you, to the side of you, wherever they **** well please, and get owned. I mean, sure it's a troll, he probably has the intellect of a raddish, but please...

So overall, they seem to be pretty much useless, and do nothing but cause me to get annoyed.

So what can we do about this? Here's a simple fix.. Give them a **** action bar! Yeah, you know, like hirelings have? That way we tell them to defend us, or be aggressive, and more importantly, we can teleport them to us when we go through an unreachable area. Doesn't seem like that hard of a fix, so whaddya say turbine?

EDIT: In the rare chance that a turbine developer reads this, in no way do I have anything against you or this game. I love playing it! It's just this one little things that really irks me

[Brennie]

City of Heroes dealt with pets by having them "teleport" next to you if you managed to leave them too far behind (often because they'd get stuck on some kind of in-game geometry). This could be done DDO for summons too.

The timer on summons also sucks. Non extendable static time limits set at 1 minute/lowest possible caster level. Level 1 summon lasts 1 whole minute. Whoppedee do! I remember back in the day when my cleric would load up level 1 summon just for lack of spell slots, and let that little doggie go grab some aggro. Why not? Now i wouldn't even bother. City of Heroes deals with the problem of "Too many pets" by destroying old pets when summoning new ones. That seems like a much better idea than crazy-long-cooldown timers and static durations!

[Bogenbroom]

I would love to see some summoned monster love. The hireling bar would be good for some situations, but not other. Great for a Troll, not so good for a scorpion... if you get me... intelligent (or even responsive to human commands) creatures. That isn't to say that all creatures should have some sort of unstuck type mech.

What I would *REALLY* love to see is summoned monsters be randomized like in pnp. Well, at least 1st ed, which is all I know. Even if it was jsut 3 or 4 options for each level, that would be glee-inducing.

[Phidius]

If you ask me, a hireling cleric with DVs is FAR more "game-breaking" than a summoned pet with a control bar.

However, this would infringe on a source of income for Turbine, so I doubt we'll ever see it.

If you can come up with a way to give summoned pets a control bar that either

1) increases the income generated in the DDO Store, or
2) hurts the players

then you're likely to get control bars with your pets.

[Dylos_Moon]

If you ask me, a hireling cleric with DVs is FAR more "game-breaking" than a summoned pet with a control bar.

However, this would infringe on a source of income for Turbine, so I doubt we'll ever see it.

If you can come up with a way to give summoned pets a control bar that either

1) increases the income generated in the DDO Store, or
2) hurts the players

then you're likely to get control bars with your pets.

1) The store can sell "Unique" summons, i.e. air elemental clickies or something.
2) Said Air Elemental Clickies still knockback players despite being friendly (they are just being playful )

[Phidius]

1) The store can sell "Unique" summons, i.e. air elemental clickies or something.
2) Said Air Elemental Clickies still knockback players despite being friendly (they are just being playful )

Ah, so only the "Unique" summons would have a control bar, but in-game summons would not? That could work.

No need for the "friendly knockback", as that would mean the "unique" summons would stay on the shelves of the DDO store. We only needed to satisfy one condition, not both

A way to hurt the players, however, would be for the summoned creature to randomly take one bound item out of the summoner's inventory (equiped items take precedence) when the creature leaves.