Why is everyone suddenly bringing up topics we already disscused months ago?

Yes. Here'a a quote from Nick's announcement:

"The requests are, of course, many and varied; however, one of the frequently requested features for the game has been pets.

We've been exploring some ideas that combine elements of a pet-like feature to increase the variety and type of play available to players. We're calling this project 'Battle Sprites'."

"The requests are, of course, many and varied; however, one of the frequently requested features for the game has been pets."

Ugh. The only reason why there were more pet topics than other topics is because the people who made them were typically delinquents that didn't understand they could post in one of the already made pet threads. There were millions of threads I'm sure, but most of them got commented on negatively. It would seem however, that OOO just looks at topic titles, thus spammers win over the organized.

Does anyone think that OOO supporting spammers by bringing their suggestions into the game hasn't influenced the community? If so, you ought to direct your attention to the AA thread spam. I mean look at this one;

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/46279

Instead of commenting on one of the millions of other troll threads, the guy made his own with a two-word OP because he knows that OOO won't even read it. Anyone who takes the time to look at it though will realize that it's a big long 5 pages of people saying "OP needs to l2p". Again though, OOO won't read that, and the implementation of pets confirms it. Let's just hope they don't make the same mistake with AA thread spam.

If Battle Sprites are like Nick said then they are closer to spell/skill then pets...

But whatever, we'll see... it may have changed

Since most of us can't afford the pets from nonna, this is probably the best we are gonna get

prepare to be disappoint

Lol, this is intended TO BE PETS, like Zeddy said. I don't know what more you could possibly want [without being overly ambitious and unseemly].

They [potentially and probably] did their homework on this too, first by reading the suggestions forum, then by asking players in game their thoughts by surveying them, and finally by introducing pocket-pets, which acted as a prototype of the players' reactions to pets.

The one thing that they haven't done [provided that I am correct in that they research what we want and listen to it like they claim to], and the one thing that they almost always trip up on, would be making sure it fits with the game, doesn't make things too easy, and maintains the existing balance of the current armor system. And that's unsettling part.

I'm thinking that pets are going to take up one of the dash keys. So you can have a pet ability, or just go in with a default dash.

Out of curiosity, who would have perfected pets that were completely separate from gate-gameplay that were more like real pets? Like chao? You don't run through levels in SA2B with your chao killing things for you, but you can still use them competitively outside of the regular levels. That's fun/not messing up other parts of the game. Could have had like, knightbots, built one like bosco and then had it fight other peoples bots.

@Klipik

Well, they aren't really pets, they're just abilities that happen to look like pets. But thats just in terms of combat. They seem, to me, to have the other side of pet-ness to them- the joy of owning a virtual soul-less being cooler than, but resembling a dog that you don't have to feed.

So yeah, I'd say they fulfill the term "pets". The actual abilities that they give WILL deepen gameplay, as would adding anything non-game breaking, including early-2000s MMORPG battle mechanics. Even if it doesn't add much, like the shield bash.

Shield bash isn't so useful, and usually gets me killed if anything, but it still adds SOMETHING that deepens the content, even if it isn't much.

Sprites are abilities in disguise, and thank God they're not more than that. Pets are a terrible gameplay mechanic, especially in a game like Spiral Knights.

I was referring to the hotkey abilities, not the pets. :P

I'm not sure that pokemon are pets in the sense that we're talking about... where a pet is an independent object that attacks alongside you with little to no prompt from the player. Pokemon capitalizes on the idea of pets, that is, our need and want for soul-less animal companionship, but maintains traditional RPG mechanics.