The future and direction of pet battling in WOW

[3wd]

Think of it this way... if a Mythic 9/10 BRF guild said, "This raid is far too easy, it's not a challenge," I think most players would have to disagree with their assessment. For that small elite group, maybe that raid really is too easy. For everyone else, it's still a challenge, even on easier modes.

Comparing the pet battling content to raid content is not fair, those are 2 entirely different things.

The time and efforts putting in to pet collection, understand the details, breed, fight could be valued the same as the so called "skills" of PVE - like understanding the fight, your class, preparation ect.

But these 2 content are hardly the same, the hardest part in raid is to gather 25-40 people doing the same thing at the same time. That's the most difficult part, while pet battling, like other contents, you can solely control the progress by yourself only.

There is nothing really hard or elite skills required in this game, especially for mostly scripted content like Pet battle.

Its about time sink in most cases.

Even with the more complicated changes I suggested, it doesn't make pet battle suddenly become a rocket science and most people don't know what to do with it.

It just mean that you will need to spend more time to understand the mechanic, figure out the most efficient way to defeat it, or in some cases, you will need to spend more time on preparation (like the last tourney, you need to gather more playable pets).

If there are proper rewards to justify the efforts, people will do it and feel satisfied.

See garrison as an example, and see the last Pandaren tourney, which the reward wasn't that great but still a very successful content design.

There are many ways to help out the new players to get into this content.

Ever think about those green quality stones? Who will ever use those junks now for any vet players?

Hey, if the real purpose is to help out the new players, give them 3 stones (lvl to 25) to use on wild pets only and only limit them to normal or green quality pets.

This alone will help them to get into the game much faster and it will be much better than nuke away and water down the whole content.

[Peanutty]

Think of it this way... if a Mythic 9/10 BRF guild said, "This raid is far too easy, it's not a challenge," I think most players would have to disagree with their assessment. For that small elite group, maybe that raid really is too easy. For everyone else, it's still a challenge, even on easier modes.

Comparing the pet battling content to raid content is not fair, those are 2 entirely different things.

My comparison wasn't to say that something like the Celestial Tournament is the same thing as Mythic raiding. My point was more that the amount of players both interested and capable of completing content at that level isn't very high, and Blizzard will tend to put their programming efforts into content that appeals to a greater audience. I didn't state that clearly in my post.

[Peanutty]

For those same reasons I don't like PVP at all, as I can't predict my opponent's moves and it's very stressful and not at all enjoyable to me.

Ofc you cant predict it at first but with time going by you can - your opponent has a crow out? you can be sure he will do darkness and nocturnal strike. He has 3 Nexus Drake? Hope you got something to change the weather etc. Its like in life - by experience you learn - ofc you will loose some but over time you'll also win some.

The unpredictability is still there, even if you know the opposing pet's moves, due to the fact that your opponent can choose which of the moves they want to use - I ran a Darkness team and often delayed Nocturnal Strike, to trick my opponent to blowing a shield type move, for example. Whereas with PVE pet battles, even if you're telegraphing that you're about to block, or double damage hit, the AI doesn't try to compensate for it. And even though I didn't like it, yes I did learn how to PVP ok enough to eek out 250 wins. But boy it felt like the worst kind of grind.

[Melfice]

I guess I must be in the minority because I like the predictability of PVE encounters. I find it very relaxing to go on auto pilot, fly around to the the Pandaria tamers, and complete my round of dailies. For those same reasons I don't like PVP at all, as I can't predict my opponent's moves and it's very stressful and not at all enjoyable to me.

The "challenge" for me is to simply collect as many pets as I can. Optimizing levels, rarity and breeds makes it easier to continue to collect more. It's a vicious cycle.

Your statement is true and wrong at the same time. In PvP you can guess your opponent's moves and counter then. That's what makes it a lot of fun! It's not always 100%, but a good PvPer will see moves coming and or protect their own. There is a lot of more to Pet Battle PvP, and that's what makes it a lot of fun.

I'm not sure how Pet Battle PvP can be stressful to me, but each their own I guess

[Awq]

I am really happy with the changes to the Garrison.

I personally found the difficulty of the garrison to be absurd. I kept wondering what Blizzard decision making process could have been. It simply made no sense to me.
The garrison content seems made around 1 thing: accessibility. The main exception to this rule was the menagerie.

I heard complains. People had difficulty unlocking it. And once they unlocked it, the quests could still be too difficult.
It had content comparable to the Celestial Tournament (some fights harder imo), which is pet battle end game. It arguably was the most difficult and least accessible content of the whole Garrison.
Previous pet content generally had requirements that made sense. One either had to complete a long quest chain to unlock the master trainers or one needed a certain amount of lvl 25 pets. This isn't the case for the Garrison.

The menagerie blueprints are available to everyone! If anything, the quests are still too difficult. I would have preferred it if the quest were similar to the Outland quests in difficulty, or that the difficulty changed to your pet's level (one could have lvl 2's vs lvl 2's).

I like the exp change. 'Bird day', for example, was simply too efficient compared to all other methods of leveling.

I however quite dislike the level stones. And while I understand their purpose, I wonder if they won't be harmful in the long run.

2. Harder content with better reward - if Garrison quest can give player's gears, then very hard pet quests should do the same.

But we already have this.
We get rewards like: Stunted Direhorn, Trunks, Yu'La and friends, Stormwing and exp hat from pet content.
The goal of gear is to improve a persons performance. Obtaining (new) pets does effectively the same thing in pet battles.

Along the way, I also stepped into PvP, and in my opionon, THIS is where it's at. PvP is the part that is meant to keep us interested and involved

I agree. I recommend PvP for people who want challenging/interactive pet content.

[Beast_mast0r]

Pet battles are just following the main trend in WoW -> dumbing down.

I think adding the ability to "breed" pets would be interesting though.

There should a reason for pet gender to exist. right? ...

[Steamanubis]

Pet battles are just following the main trend in WoW -> dumbing down.

I think adding the ability to "breed" pets would be interesting though.

There should a reason for pet gender to exist. right? ...

If WoW was really dumbing down, the legendary quests/raids would be way easier than they are now. Plus, the whole "pass the Proving Grounds to do Heroic dungeons" wouldn't be a thing. Blizzard would've taken out heroic dungeons and made them as easy as possible to go through.

[3wd]

Pet battles are just following the main trend in WoW -> dumbing down.

I think adding the ability to "breed" pets would be interesting though.

There should a reason for pet gender to exist. right? ...

If WoW was really dumbing down, the legendary quests/raids would be way easier than they are now. Plus, the whole "pass the Proving Grounds to do Heroic dungeons" wouldn't be a thing. Blizzard would've taken out heroic dungeons and made them as easy as possible to go through.

The legendary quests is nothing more than just a time sink.

There isn't much to test on the player's skill level at all.

Remember that time when we were 60's? Being a priest or hunter to finishing our class specific weapon quest?

Those are legendary quests, current ones are jokes.

Look, I understand the decision from a marketing point of view, they are here to make business.

And I am not asking to raise the bar to an insane level for everyone, actually just the opposite, I suggest they give more benefits for the new beginners whose joining late to this content.

But at the same time, keep the high end content open and improving it.

How? while you will increase the difficulties of the fight, be sure to increase the rewards (other than just the pets itself, maybe even players gears, mounts (hey how a bout a pet which can be transform to a mount also?) ect),

I am very sure when the rewards will be reasonable enough, many players will rush in to join this part of the content.

And back to the increasing difficulties part, its not just about increasing damage and HP of the PVE fights, what about new skills, new settings, new formats, make the fight less predictable, and that will help a lots.

[Skavenged]

I think I've had a good idea.

Replace the existing quest with a choice of an Easy, Normal, Heroic, Mythic quest. Using a sub-25 pet automatically puts you at Normal and provides some decent XP. Heck maybe you can even endlessly repeat the battle for good XP upon completing Heroic and/or Mythic.

Best of all worlds. Levelers get their leveling fix. Casuals get their bag/stones. Abnegators ("I like the predictability") can play on Normal and have a predictable encounter. Those seeking a challenge can do heroic/mythic.

I think that would be a great idea. Content scaled to the level of the player. Much the same as they do with raiding. Greater challenge = greater reward. Although I wouldn't make it a pet quality issue. I'd make it more of a predictability issue. The higher the challenge, the less predictable the fight.

[Buruan]

If WoW was really dumbing down, the legendary quests/raids would be way easier than they are now. Plus, the whole "pass the Proving Grounds to do Heroic dungeons" wouldn't be a thing. Blizzard would've taken out heroic dungeons and made them as easy as possible to go through.

I dont want to cry any vanilla tears here, but the game now is a trivialized at *lot* compared to Vanilla / BC / WOTLK.
You had 40 man raids that you needed to gear up for months to even get into one of these raids.
I dont powerlevel, I didn't run 5 mans, I really didn't do much but unlock my garrison, and within a week of WOD release I was "LFR" ready.

Back then you had multiple skills, gearsets, rotations raid roles etc that you needed to fulfill, now its Heal / Tank or Kill.
I am not saying this is a bad development, it opens the content up to more people and I think its the right approach.

But there is a clear direction over the last years to make content more trivial. It started after Vanilla when hardly anyone was able to even step foot into the original Naxxaramas.

As far as pet battles go :
I dont mind the XP nerf, I do mind the difficulty nerf. The new pet visitor requires no strategy, i just use whatever lvl 25 team I have loaded and have not had a problem to beat the teams.

What I would like to see is either of :
- An option to chose between a team of Rare / Epic / Legendary opponents for the dailies with different rewards. This way the newcomers can work on the easier teams and the collector/battler crowd can still have their challenge.
- A result based return, depending on the remaining pets health (maybe by %) you get a Bronze / Silver / Gold reward.. Similar to invasions. Again this will give everyone the chance to beat it, but if you apply the best strategies you get better rewards.

[Myon]

If I were to be honest, I never felt PvE pet battles were 'hard' anyway. Some of the pre-nerf menagerie battles could be 'difficult' yes, but once they were solved you can just run the same comp over and over to beat them 100% of the time.

Most of the challenge was in assembling a large enough stable of pets to field the appropriate teams for PvE encounters (a howlbomb team, etc), the actual fights themselves are terribly easy due to the AI being scripted. Raids in vanilla were the same way too, most of the 'challenge' was more in the tedium and logistics of managing a 40 man raid, farming resistance gear, etc, it was all just busywork - in terms of actual execution and mechanics raids have only gotten harder since vanilla.

The new traveling tamer is actually more of a challenge in my opinion due to the random nature of their skill choices, even if they might be using nondescript common pets. If you want a challenge there's always the PvP queue too, that will never cease to be difficult because it's actual humans you're up against.

[3wd]

The new traveling tamer is actually more of a challenge in my opinion due to the random nature of their skill choices, even if they might be using nondescript common pets.

That's what I am talking about,

reduce the scripted nature of the fights, whether its PVE or PVP.

How?

Lets start with PVE, more pets with larger random skills pool and their orders of using the skills will be much more random.

In the early stage of the garrison PVE fights, we actually see this change : the PVE pet is not using a 100% preset skill order, but the logic was amended to : base on the opponents HP and decide to use skill 1 or 2, or sometime its just random.

This alone will make the fight more interesting.

When you will increase the skill pool from 3-6, there will be more combinations, now it could be more interesting for the PVE fight, and basically one boss fight could become 10-15 more versions.

PVE content is much more easier to fix than the PVP content, because there is no limit and boundaries to design any boss with uber skills and unbalanced stats.

PVP on the other hand, its a different story. It will be really hard to fix it, because it will require a huge efforts to balance a lot of different skills and even the race traits (some would argue the most undead pet always will have an advantage in PVP consider the extra round basically defeat the advantage of going first, plus the fact that 80-90% of the undead pet are having very slow speed, which means more stats spent on power and HP).

At this stage, I do not expect they want to spend the efforts to fix pet PVP, the glory days of pet PVP is gone, without hit rate, people will tend to use more cookie cutter builds than ever.

I get it, hence I am not asking much. I am asking for the easy way out, the PVE content that they can have most control.

Just throw us a piece of bone.

Please.

[Luciandk]

Have you looked at the Critters of Draenor pet tamer? Her pet ability setup will vary each time you fight her daily team. So you cant counter it perfectly.

[Taleranor]

Have you looked at the Critters of Draenor pet tamer? Her pet ability setup will vary each time you fight her daily team. So you cant counter it perfectly.

But you can beat her with a minimum of effort as long as you have a respectable number of max level pets... one or two from each family, tops. I'm finding myself able to almost solo her with such powerhouses as Eternal Strider or Yellow Moth. All I needed was a second pet to finish off the last of hers and it got my pocket lint for the day.

[Luciandk]

Have you looked at the Critters of Draenor pet tamer? Her pet ability setup will vary each time you fight her daily team. So you cant counter it perfectly.

But you can beat her with a minimum of effort as long as you have a respectable number of max level pets... one or two from each family, tops. I'm finding myself able to almost solo her with such powerhouses as Eternal Strider or Yellow Moth. All I needed was a second pet to finish off the last of hers and it got my pocket lint for the day.

My point still stands. That she is unique from the other masters, due to not have pets with fixed abilities. So it does show they are trying new things.

[Myon]

Can you imagine if they came out with Pandaria or Draenor level tamers using that randomized system? Or god forbid tamers in a Celestial Tournament-esque scenario.

Personally I'm excited to see if they'll take this concept further, but I can already see the cries of "It's too hard now!" because going from scripted to unscripted (less scripted, at least) is a huge paradigm shift for non-PvP pet battles.

[Drudatz]

Have you looked at the Critters of Draenor pet tamer? Her pet ability setup will vary each time you fight her daily team. So you cant counter it perfectly.

Really? have you even tried here? I allways beat here first try with a random team I still have left over from last fight I did....

[Luciandk]

Have you looked at the Critters of Draenor pet tamer? Her pet ability setup will vary each time you fight her daily team. So you cant counter it perfectly.

Really? have you even tried here? I allways beat here first try with a random team I still have left over from last fight I did....

They are quite easy to beat. But I think you misunderstood what I meant. Due to her team's abilities not being static, you cant tailor your pet team to 100% being a counter to it.

Again, her pets are patetically easy, but it again wasnt my point. I see her as an example of blizzard trying different tactics in giving Pve battlers a challenge, and as already stated. Having variable pet abilities would make epic or legendary tamers alot more challenging if you had to consider 6 possible abilities on each pet, instead of just 3.

Would really not suprise me to see a more difficult trainer having variable pet abilties to ramp up the difficulty.

But a safeguard would have to be added against 'rerolling' an epic/legendary tamer's pets till you got a favorable combo. If you could beat them on first attempt, youd get the best reward, for example. Reduced each time you loose or forfeit.

[Oakenar]

Lo folks, yes I quite agree the changes are..at best, unpleasant for the older collectors.

A 25 level stone...clearly aimed at breaking people in, im surprised they did not give 3.

And sadly, obviously, this is a way to actually make their "level" stones, useful. Where before they were, only vaguely useful.

So a little testing from my army of alts.
5 hordie alts at 91, all camped at the various draenia world daily daily chappies. Hatted..Sausage & Buffed up.

8k A fight.

Ok that's not as good as we had before, but it IS a way around it, if you have the alts, or at least, willing to travel daily.

[Skavenged]

Personally, I think the level 25 stone is one of the best plans that blizz has come up with to make it easier to break into pet battles. By far, the most daunting task for me was getting my first level 25. Once they have one, the whole pet game becomes much easier. I've been helping several friends out. I just have them use the stone on a MPD, and then I get a cat and power level it for them. Takes 15 minutes out of my day, but with the cat and the dragonling, they immediately become self-sufficient in leveling their other pets