There has already been interest in having an auto-collect treasure option, but how about making the auto-collect pet-based? …so if you have an active pet, it will automatically collect dropped treasure for you; otherwise the character would have to collect it themselves.
Taking the idea of pet expansion further, how about making pets scale in lethality the longer they live? This would work by making it so a pet would attract a rank (similar to older Command & Conquer games) after remaining alive for a certain length of time, then, as they progress further, a higher ranking and incremental increase in lethality …and so on. This, to me, would give a player an interest in keeping their pet alive, and the ranking could be reset each time the game is restarted in order to prevent the pet from becoming ridiculously over-powered. I am also aware that many things, including disciplines, already affect pet stats.
I suggested the ability for pets to loot some time ago. I also suggested the ability to auto loot. It’s mainly aether crystals that bug me though, as I hate running through aether fire to pick 'em up
Personally I think it would ruin the “grim” atmosphere they’ve tried so hard to create to have a dog running around grabbing your loot like in Torchlight.
@Duck_King: know the feeling - playing chicken with aetherfire areas is not popular with me, either.
@Marcus: depends on how it is implemented. - Personally, I would implement such in a way that avoided the pet running around collecting it. - The loot ending up automatically in the character’s pack would be part and parcel of having a pet able to collect things, plus there is no reason why it could not be filtered, so the pet collection process could be used to only grab items of blue or better for example, to ensure that elite items, blueprints, etc. are not missed, and thus ensuring that the player would still have to collect anything else they wanted.
Taking things further, what about completely random pet extras? For example, a pet Briarthorn could suddenly (and very rarely) become a Blazing Briarthorn, or a Skeleton could suddenly gate in another Skeleton or two. - These pet anomalies would:
not be detailed in the pet description
would be powerful / lethal
would only happen very rarely
would only happen with at least x number of points (or even full points) in the required summoning devotion (eg: over 8 points in Briarthorn)
would require that the player was at least at or over a certain level
This, to me, in line with having pet ranks, would be part of “returning the fervour” - breaking the usual sterility associated with summoned critters and demonstrating what a true zealot is capable of!!