Battle Pets Representation on New WOW Community Council?

[Uduwudu]

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xu-fu pets site has a strategy to beat all the family battlers easily. some because of bad rng might take a couple of times but all are pretty easy to do

Hi,

Thx, and I use it religiously, and it was excellent help, specially with the use of a few different battle pets that you had never thought of, for example.

I'm OK with the procedure, but found it un-necessary, when you consider there is nothing else in the game like it, and you can get the pet on a drop from the boss, (or never like the crab!!!), or string it out forever, so you feel satisfied in the end. Somehow, 12 weeks to complete the whole thing was not very attractive to me, and it took me 6 months just to do the 2 pets alone, although to get the 2nd one I had to time it right (with other characters) so I made sure that the right masters were there to do the fight ... another issue if tomorrow you can't be there!

Again, Blizzard has not shown that their code folks are playing and know the game. The newer folks don't care or know some of the early details ... you could reasonably safe take a road in the game ... and this is not quite true anymore, although I got all my 61's to Valdrakken, easily enough except for that one spot with the murlocs, but by that time I could already fly a few feet to go over them.

The other thing that kinda bothers me, is that it used to be that the tougher the fight, the better the reward, and that haas been forgotten, and in fact, many times, you get zilch ... so you go on all those Dragonbane or other events, and you die 5 times, waste 200+gold and only got 74 gold for it ... time out ... both you and I are not in the game to fail!!!!

And there are other things that are, just wrong ... so in the old days you took your fishing to 300, and then 375, then in the next expansion you took it to 100, and the same for the next expansion, and then you come to the Dragon stuff, and your fishing is 75, and half the stuff you pick is junk that gives you a few copper ... that is just plain wrong, and bizarre. And also really poor coding by folks that don't care, or by folks that were told to do so, regardless ... the past is gone and dead, and today we don't do that, kind of thing.

Again, when it comes to these "council" things, it has been to nerf things, and not improve anything. So your Nexus Whelpling is gonna take a 10% reduction, which YOU WILL NOT BE TOLD ABOUT!, and the Anubisath weather control will be nerf'd 10%, and resisted 10% more by some pets in their battles, and it won't stop there.

When someone is looking for "something", they will find both GOOD and BAD ... and depending on their leadership, they will change whatever they want, and I sincerely doubt that Blizzard will implement anything, until after Microsoft, since there will likely be another turnover of code folks, from people that also do some Microsoft games. Even Furor won't be safe, despite his knowledge and investment in the game since the first days ... (he was on Veeshan in EQ leading "Fires of Heaven", for a long time one of the strongest and best known guilds in all of EQ.) ... and the other folks that also came from EQ whose knowledge was what helped define and create WoW. Allakhazam (sp.), the Bard from Mithanial Marr, and many others that helped define this game, but they were not so vengeful, and silly, as to hurt and nerf the players ... they helped create a strong game. And they had the databases and information to show their thoughts ... the guy on Mithanial Marr was incredible with his information, and one gentleman on our guild in Veeshan (Keeper of Life) was a database specialist in SF and he had over 400 pages of information on how to play an Enchanter, and no one could PvP him, or beat him ... this kind of information is too good to waste ... but it can be bad if all you want is to nerf people so no one can beat this pet, or that master for a while, until you get one or more pets that do better.

I believe, that with places like Warcraft Pets, there is enough information and details for any "council" to look at ... and the fact they are trying to get "players" is almost a joke. In my book, I think they already know what they want to do, and they are waiting to spring it, and then dissolve the council! What else is knew? Gee ... the Cable company I was with did this many times ... create a group that did magnificently, only to kill it 10 years down the line and replace it with the "process that gets nothing done! Wow ... when you have the money to burn ... why not?

And you know that Blizzard is a cash cow!

More milk plz!

[Uduwudu]

It's possible the devs will listen to both - those for battling and those against. Those for battling might offer up some ideas for new features, systems, etc. Those against it could shed some light on why there's the aversion and how things could be changed to lessen the dislike.
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HI,

(Didn't realize how old this was ... goodness!!!)

In general, I think the main issue is the big "fight" between the regular players and the pvp players. This was a massive issue in a game I Beta'd from the start, only to have a vociferous bunch, demand changes due to their pvp, and within a month kill the game. I had predicted it, since at the time, pvp was big, but was confined to the war games, like Doom and Quake, still, and had not ventured into the online massive player games yet. EQ did not bother a whole lot of the pvp thing in the early days, per se, and kept the stats and abilities the same, but this changed with WoW a few years into it, as they started making pvp available to all players, however there were many small changes done to spells and abilities to prevent what they considered a "lack of balance" within the game and player base ... in other words, one or two characters were always stronger than all the others.

There are some things I would like to see better defined in the pet battle things ...

1. The speed fixed, so a pet can not have 500 speed, like some do ... and you can barely get into a good number with a rabbit or mouse, or a SS breed.

2. Likewise, the speed defining who goes first, since it is clear that in many cases the pets ALTERNATE whose turn it is to go first, and this is visible in SQUIRT when all the pets take turns, regardless of stats. It is thought that this can be bad since one pet is faster and will always go first, but what the heck, why don't you use a pet that has better defense? Because "defense" is a limited option all around.

3. The early definitions of the pets, fire, earth, air, water, elemental and such need to be cleaned up ... since they are no longer clear of efficient. It used to be that you could take an Aquatic and wash out the fires in that zone, but today, a pet might be listed as this or that, and its abilities are mixed. I can see how this evolution is needed but the design that was originally defined was let go for the big boom characters, that we all use for the master fights. But taking a fire elemental to go after some pet they originally dominated? Not happening, specially now that Elemental pets have become highly inefficient against the majority of the fights.

4. A quick show on Wowhead (let's say) of the Dragonflight Pet Battles, will list 10 to 15 pets over and over ... and that's about it. Considering how many pets there are in the game, all it says is that the developers that did pet battles, didn't know anything and they just copied a, b, and c ... and ignored the rest. Oh, excuse me, they gave the pet a new color and "design" which was just a different pelt! It shows a serious lack of design and knowledge of anything that is related to pet battles. I call it "left over" code folks that likely won't be around next year when their contract runs out.

5. Eliminate pet battles in pvp ... so that one thing is available on the right that is not available in the left. And likewise something else can also be done in reverse. I liked the old days, when Alliance had Paladins, and Horde had Shammies ... and when they went against each other, it was more fun, since the shammie had enough totems to diminish a lot of the stuff that the pally had, and the pally also had some bits to do the shammie over. That made the game more interesting, and in the manner of pvp, even more challenging, because you had to know how to play them. Nowadays, this is kinda of a joke ... since the gear disparity in the number of players within a contested zone has pretty much killed the fairness of the game altogether. Pet battles should be about "knowledge" of the pets ... not how much gear or the number of pets you have!

6. Lastly, jumping ahead one of your notes ... if Blizzard wanted to do this seriously, some folks from here would have been taken a long time ago. The question is, who you want ... someone that has some history in the games, and could show a comparative style of information that will always throw off the design ideas of the developers, since, they will immediately say ... it doesn't apply. And immediately the chance/show is gone.

I do not quite mistrust a lot of the designers and their ideas ... my main concern is their implementation without proper testing to ensure it is right and OK, only to find out they have to disable this or that, and then have to do another maintenance tomorrow to fix it ... the kind of thing that takes 2 steps forward and then one backwards, and then requires more time fixing, when it should have been addressed previously. If this was a restaurant or a service industry, you would be out of business pretty quick for the lousy offerings, and the continual assumptions that their code is perfect and make no mistakes.

My old roomie, is a massive programmer and he used to be against the end user to a degree, until he came across the million dollar customers ... then it's a different story, and you have to listen and pay attention so you don't lose them to someone else! END OF STORY on that one, because its where you $150K comes from! Blizzard, and many of these games, have been cash cows for too long, and I think that Blizzard needs to suffer a huge loss like EQ did when they really screwed up the game trying to fight the addon "ShowEQ" (for example), which only helped them fall apart in the next year altogether and helped WoW grow bigger and bigger. The only problem is when one of those losses takes place ... you will never gain return to the glory days of the game, and Blizzard is playing a dangerous game, with these "new" this and that ... and one day it won't sell, and that will be the main road sign that it is going downhill. Cheap coding, and high school programmers, and lack of loyalty and appreciation for a lot of people that meant a lot to the growth of their game!

[Paladance]

In general, I think the main issue is the big "fight" between the regular players and the pvp players. This was a massive issue in a game I Beta'd from the start, only to have a vociferous bunch, demand changes due to their pvp, and within a month kill the game. I had predicted it, since at the time, pvp was big, but was confined to the war games, like Doom and Quake, still, and had not ventured into the online massive player games yet. EQ did not bother a whole lot of the pvp thing in the early days, per se, and kept the stats and abilities the same, but this changed with WoW a few years into it, as they started making pvp available to all players, however there were many small changes done to spells and abilities to prevent what they considered a "lack of balance" within the game and player base ... in other words, one or two characters were always stronger than all the others.

I find it doubtful that someone who PvP-s in the bulk of the game will automatically be drawn to the pet battle version.
But I supposed it's not a problem anymore now the PvP pet battles are almost completely killed

1. The speed fixed, so a pet can not have 500 speed, like some do ... and you can barely get into a good number with a rabbit or mouse, or a SS breed.

Do you mean the NPC pets? The maximum speed possible in one's roster is 390, other than the flying racial.

2. Likewise, the speed defining who goes first, since it is clear that in many cases the pets ALTERNATE whose turn it is to go first, and this is visible in SQUIRT when all the pets take turns, regardless of stats. It is thought that this can be bad since one pet is faster and will always go first, but what the heck, why don't you use a pet that has better defense? Because "defense" is a limited option all around.

The pets alternate for Squirt because the first pet uses Weakness, which reduces your speed by 50%. I agree the actual speed ties, which do result in random appearance and losing ALL bonuses, are not satisfactory though. The defense can be tied to either Power or Speed depending on the approach. Health as a dump stat (with the exception of Wish, explosions, #Sunny Day#, and a handful of racials) could be alleviated by adding more specifically health-based ablities -- as long as it doesn't make the even more menacing to face.

3. The early definitions of the pets, fire, earth, air, water, elemental and such need to be cleaned up ... since they are no longer clear of efficient. It used to be that you could take an Aquatic and wash out the fires in that zone, but today, a pet might be listed as this or that, and its abilities are mixed. I can see how this evolution is needed but the design that was originally defined was let go for the big boom characters, that we all use for the master fights. But taking a fire elemental to go after some pet they originally dominated? Not happening, specially now that Elemental pets have become highly inefficient against the majority of the fights.

There are some really terrible elementals, and some really good ones too, and I clearly see they could be split into a new family. The problem is, you would need to modify weak/strong dependencies, and that would break all past content. As for the coverage, do you really want to remove all the family X achievements? Because that's what it would amount to. Tell me an example of a mech below 2000 HP an elemental would struggle against, other than these ridiculously fast ones with the entire movesets being questionable – and not because of the type!

4. A quick show on Wowhead (let's say) of the Dragonflight Pet Battles, will list 10 to 15 pets over and over ... and that's about it. Considering how many pets there are in the game, all it says is that the developers that did pet battles, didn't know anything and they just copied a, b, and c ... and ignored the rest. Oh, excuse me, they gave the pet a new color and "design" which was just a different pelt! It shows a serious lack of design and knowledge of anything that is related to pet battles. I call it "left over" code folks that likely won't be around next year when their contract runs out.

I clearly feel that, lol. Even if we discard movesets purely for the flavour, it seems like there is zero communication. It's kind of impressive that some pets are fully cooldown locked for more than a round, or they have DoT-s/multi-hits alongside Sandstorm

5. Eliminate pet battles in pvp ... so that one thing is available on the right that is not available in the left. And likewise something else can also be done in reverse. I liked the old days, when Alliance had Paladins, and Horde had Shammies ... and when they went against each other, it was more fun, since the shammie had enough totems to diminish a lot of the stuff that the pally had, and the pally also had some bits to do the shammie over. That made the game more interesting, and in the manner of pvp, even more challenging, because you had to know how to play them. Nowadays, this is kinda of a joke ... since the gear disparity in the number of players within a contested zone has pretty much killed the fairness of the game altogether. Pet battles should be about "knowledge" of the pets ... not how much gear or the number of pets you have!

Sorry but I don't completely understand how the first sentence and the last one go together. It is not you can use roster size to influence the PvP, every patch there's a handful ones. Among 1500+ ones, maybe 15 make it regularly at a time. That's way less than in PvE, even though we're trying

I do not quite mistrust a lot of the designers and their ideas ... my main concern is their implementation without proper testing to ensure it is right and OK, only to find out they have to disable this or that, and then have to do another maintenance tomorrow to fix it ... the kind of thing that takes 2 steps forward and then one backwards, and then requires more time fixing, when it should have been addressed previously.

Oh yes. This is what makes me inclined to do one big update rather than to do it incrementally, but that makes it much more difficult to test. Compare the reception of Dragonflight talent revamp with the talent tweaks during any given patch.

Now as for the Council, I will admit I haven't looked at it closely, but the last threads seem to be about a PTR issue which was amended, and then a request for merging the PvP queue. There are barely any replies overall, both there and in the Pet Battle section of the forums –- and any actual community chat is next to impossible due to either legalese or moderation issues. Despite what one could think about the prestige, being a mod is NOT resting on the bed on flowers while pixies crown you with a wreath. A big server had people leaving because they couldn't wait 30 more minutes for the mod team to dedicate space for a specific kind of interaction amidst the fears of slippery slope.