Need a Sudden Death mechanic?

[Alfonzzo]

It typically wins in around 50-75 turns, which is not infinite. It's a control strategy.

I know exactly what I'm doing with it? Sure I do.

AGAIN, THIS IS A LEGAL (and finite) STRATEGY.

NOWHERE AM I PURPORTING TO FORCE THE OPPONENT TO CONCEDE.

duh... pretty sure there's no "force opponent to concede" button. And no one's claiming you're breaking the rules. You are fielding a very annoying team that deserves to get nerfed as much as anything right now.

Just like you can choose to roll w/ demolish or corpse consume/val'kyr, you can choose to run w/ a stall team. I'm all for playing to win within the constraints of the game - broken as they are, but don't take offense when people point out the fine line you're walking on.

[Shinii]

personally anything over 30-40 rounds should end with both players winning or both players losing.


seriously if it takes 50 turns because you both are playing life gain teams and then you QQ about than i have no mercy

you bring it upon yourself as much as your opponent does. I know this is a bit rude but in the time wasted to do 30 plus rounds you can pvp battle multiple times

[Lolfixheal]

While I'm still pretty new to PvP pet battles I gotta say theres no need for sudden death mechanics. And who here has autorithy to define what a stall team is? Every pet is different, personally I hate using all these flower pets because its just not my playstyle, but some people find good syngery and thats the idea. Synery and strategy wins many games. Its not the 3 pets on your screen thats able to stall, if anything it can only be the player behind the keyboard. Again, hate the game not the player.

Blizzard knows the problem, that some player deliberately push in their move at last 1-2 seconds at each round, thats a player who is stalling - regardless of his composition. Blizzard has allready cut down the time and put in some active speed-up decision making mechanic, I can't remember what exactly now hehe. In any aspect of the game, gaming experience can be severly reduced by 'fucking idiots, yolo kids, trolls, scammers and hackers', and its no exception in pet battles. Some people on this planet gets a kick off others misery and we can only implement so much failsafe against them because in the right of equality - they also pay for the game and have the right to play it within said EULA, TOS and what not.

If you, as a player, think some of the pets have too strong abilties, theres too much synergy in some strategies then you're always welcome to plea or write something up in the suggestion forum on the official site. We have all seen, though it comes rare, that Blizzard listens to uproar community and series of QQ threads. They do go in and fix where they believe its necessary. Murkalot+Kovok being last examples, Direhorns in the past.

You can also look witin. Do you have 5min to spare only and you're in a rush and you get frustrated because you meet a team like the discussed one?? Well, dont queue up then. Its the same with 5man, LFR and anything where YOU can't set the pace. "Are we there yet!" mentality lies with the source, not the opponent or your teamplayers. And as someone else was saying in the thread, you are always welcome to forfeit a battle before you really begin. Its a simple matter of detecting your opponents strategy and team synergy. I forfeit against others, had one guy forfeit against me yesterday when I was going 50/50 win ratio only. Perhaps he deemed his tactic less optimal than mine, fair and square - theres other players out there.

The most satisfying thing you probably could, would be finding the ultimate counter team. Then upon victory you will find that fuzzy feeling inside your stomach and you also force your opponent to think in new directions.

[Wurmsteeth]

Well said Lolfixheal. For my two copper I agree 100%.

[Kpb321]

I will say that I did try out this team hoping to use it for No Time to Heal but it seems like it is counting the val deaths even when she rezes as I never got past 1 win so it won't work for that. I did notice that it is ridiculously easy to counter the team with a single pet. Xu-fu completely destroys the team with no way to avoid Prowl/Feed and not where near enough burst to burn him down either.

[Tuatha]

"Are we there yet!" mentality lies with the source, not the opponent or your teamplayers.

/thread

[Slog]

I lost a pet fight a couple days ago on turn 162. It was one of those fights where I wished there was at least a "good game" button to click after the fight. It came down to the very last turn, each of us with one pet left and enough life to maybe take a single hit. His lived, I lost.

I suppose in the 10 minutes it took to finish this fight I could have seen a few more matches against Valk's, Murkalots, and Imps, but this was more entertaining.

[Voidsinger]

I lost a pet fight a couple days ago on turn 162. It was one of those fights where I wished there was at least a "good game" button to click after the fight. It came down to the very last turn, each of us with one pet left and enough life to maybe take a single hit. His lived, I lost.

I suppose in the 10 minutes it took to finish this fight I could have seen a few more matches against Valk's, Murkalots, and Imps, but this was more entertaining.

Reminds me of a fight I won recently. I had Valk, Murkalot and Blossoming Ancient (my 'get 10 wins quick' team) and ran up against Anub, Valk and Crawdad. Eventually the only two pets remaining were my Ancient and his Crawdad. Then came a long series of moves where I have to balance Sunshine uptime versus his Wish. Ultimately, I think I saw he just started hitting and I did the same, eventually my Ancient got the final hit in. Then again, I had a few negronis in me so I wasn't gonna let go easy and I assume my opponent through 'Blah, I'll go do something else' and basically gave up. Technically, this could have gone on forever.

I think Sudden Death after X turns makes sense - or at least some sort of damage % increase in later turns.

[CoCXan]

I don't think the use of healing/CC/avoid mechanics results in "stalled" games but adds to the flavor and stragetic part of the pet battles.

And what the "fun and fast" tidbit really translates to is a very personal choice. Everytime I beat the darkmoon trainer daily with my mechanical panadaren dragonling/crab/carry pet combo (which usually needs more than 35 rounds) I'm having fun - maybe this is not the fastest way to do it, however fast enough for me to still use it to have a reliable win and full XP for one carry pet.

In Pet PvP this is similar to 2v2 arena. A double DD team may find it annoying to deal with healer/tank combo and would like to ban all "stalling teams" from arena, because this should be fun and fast and not something that last for more than 90 seconds.

Also, I don't think the number of rounds should be the defining part. There should be a limit to time elapsed for both a single turn and the full match. I would prefer something like the chess clock or something like the (not so well received) "The crown choose you" debuff.

What would be realistic? Would I accept 30 rounds games? If yes let's hypothesize a round may last up to 40 seconds each, 28-30 for decision making (or stalling/trolling) and 10-12 seconds for the animations, so this would result in 20 minute games for 30 rounds.

Therefor, let's set the round clock to 30 seconds and the game clock for each side to 10 minutes. Just like with chess you have a total of 10 minutes decision making for your full game, the clock would start to tickle down each round start and as soon as you have choose an action it is stopped again. The round clock would be still necessary to counter the trolls/stalling masters who just go AFK after accepting a PvP battle and hope you forfeit.

This way you know a game won't last longer than (10 min + your decision time). And like with chess the winner is either determined within the game time or one sides game time is up, which results in an immediate lost.

[Hootstwo]

10 minutes for a pet battle? ... If a pet battle lasts longer than 5 minutes something is going wrong IMO.

[Shura]

It's curious to see how people that was asking for nerfs to teams with Murkalot or Kovok, are those who now defend classical teams with infinite healing. What's the difference between these teams and those that have been nerfed so far?

Teams that used Kovok generally had a heavy reliance on dots/swap. Pets with sandstorm, minefield or force swaps could counter these strategies.

The teams with Murkalot were based on dots/swaps or big hits with divine intervention. Similar teams to the above, plus a deflect / feign death, or decoys too, could also be useful .

But both pets were nerfed, because needed VERY SPECIFIC TEAMS to neutralize.

Is the SAME CASE of teams with crawdad/anubis/ancient in different combinations. One pet with darkness is needed or the chances are null.

In the times of the boom of Murkalot, I only saw a couple of teams with Kovok or Murkalot. Now half of the teams I face are combos with anubis/crawdad/ancient.

Comparison to the arena pvp has no place here. Double dps teams trust (and have real opportunities) that successfully executing their cds/ccs can beat a team with healer. In pvp pets this does not happen, if you don't have the proper counter you cannot win unless the opponent do it badly wrong. The margin for error in 3 skills to use, with very fitted values ​​does not allow it. However in pvp, even with the existance of more uber combos respect to others, the chance of winning is always there.

I'm not a fan of the nerfs. You can always find a team to counter the current FoTM. But that's not the philosophy that Blizzard has followed in the case of battle pets. The line to follow is: "If a pet dominates the metagame should be nerfed to prevent that." Happened to Direhorns, Murkalots, Kovoks, and somehow should happen to the crawdad and blossoming ancients (remember that this is also a pay pet, why no one complains about it?).

[Astraldr0p]

I lost a pet fight a couple days ago on turn 162. It was one of those fights where I wished there was at least a "good game" button to click after the fight. It came down to the very last turn, each of us with one pet left and enough life to maybe take a single hit. His lived, I lost.

I suppose in the 10 minutes it took to finish this fight I could have seen a few more matches against Valk's, Murkalots, and Imps, but this was more entertaining.

Reminds me of a fight I won recently. I had Valk, Murkalot and Blossoming Ancient (my 'get 10 wins quick' team) and ran up against Anub, Valk and Crawdad. Eventually the only two pets remaining were my Ancient and his Crawdad. Then came a long series of moves where I have to balance Sunshine uptime versus his Wish. Ultimately, I think I saw he just started hitting and I did the same, eventually my Ancient got the final hit in. Then again, I had a few negronis in me so I wasn't gonna let go easy and I assume my opponent through 'Blah, I'll go do something else' and basically gave up. Technically, this could have gone on forever.

I think Sudden Death after X turns makes sense - or at least some sort of damage % increase in later turns.

This.

I wouldn't think that there was a need for a sudden death mechanic until my Ruby Droplet/Death Addler Hatchling/Singing Sunflower came across a heal-heavy team (I forgot) but it was 350 rounds and it lasted for 30 mins. I was ready to give up and only won when the other person did.

I don't blame the fact that it was the team he chose to play with. I just thought it was stupid that when it came down to the person's Singing Sunflower and my Ruby Droplet that the Singing Sunflower was just cast photosynthesis over and over while I cast my tiny dmg dealers.

If a sudden death mechanic exists in regular PVP, it should happen in pet pvp too. I'm also sure it wouldn't be on a low timer too - If it goes somewhere on a 150 round range then at least it would give the control teams enough time to be able to do their strategy as the player intended

I personally don't look at it as a nerf to healer teams. I dont even think that it's about that. I just think that it's a way to let players know that the match has gone far enough and it should end soon.

[Poofah]

It's curious to see how people that was asking for nerfs to teams with Murkalot or Kovok, are those who now defend classical teams with infinite healing. What's the difference between these teams and those that have been nerfed so far?

Is the SAME CASE of teams with crawdad/anubis/ancient in different combinations. One pet with darkness is needed or the chances are null.

Crawdad and Ancient have overpowered healing, but their power/damage is very low. Kovok/Murk/Bomb was overpowered because it decimated your whole team in roughly 5 turns, and RI is a priority move that grants double speed, so there was virtually no way to counter it. Crawdad/Ancient can keep themselves alive versus many opponents, but they put no offensive pressure on you, so you have tons of time to set up and execute a kill. Darkness is definitely not the only way to do this: ancient/crawdad are vulnerable to weather change, roots, stuns, and just plain high single-target damage output.

There's lots of pets out there that obliterate ancient/crawdad -- generally a pet with 325+ power and a moveset dedicated to offense, or offense with a bit of utility (e.g. Purple Puffer, Lil Deathwing, Onyxian Whelpling, Infinite Whelpling). In the current metagame, we tend not to play those -- instead we play stuff like Valk, Death Adder Hatchling, and other low-damage high-utility pets that ancient/crawdad eat for lunch. That's just the nature of a rock/paper/scissors balancing scheme.

[3wd]

It's curious to see how people that was asking for nerfs to teams with Murkalot or Kovok, are those who now defend classical teams with infinite healing. What's the difference between these teams and those that have been nerfed so far?

Teams that used Kovok generally had a heavy reliance on dots/swap. Pets with sandstorm, minefield or force swaps could counter these strategies.

The teams with Murkalot were based on dots/swaps or big hits with divine intervention. Similar teams to the above, plus a deflect / feign death, or decoys too, could also be useful .

But both pets were nerfed, because needed VERY SPECIFIC TEAMS to neutralize.

Is the SAME CASE of teams with crawdad/anubis/ancient in different combinations. One pet with darkness is needed or the chances are null.

In the times of the boom of Murkalot, I only saw a couple of teams with Kovok or Murkalot. Now half of the teams I face are combos with anubis/crawdad/ancient.

Comparison to the arena pvp has no place here. Double dps teams trust (and have real opportunities) that successfully executing their cds/ccs can beat a team with healer. In pvp pets this does not happen, if you don't have the proper counter you cannot win unless the opponent do it badly wrong. The margin for error in 3 skills to use, with very fitted values ​​does not allow it. However in pvp, even with the existance of more uber combos respect to others, the chance of winning is always there.

I'm not a fan of the nerfs. You can always find a team to counter the current FoTM. But that's not the philosophy that Blizzard has followed in the case of battle pets. The line to follow is: "If a pet dominates the metagame should be nerfed to prevent that." Happened to Direhorns, Murkalots, Kovoks, and somehow should happen to the crawdad and blossoming ancients (remember that this is also a pay pet, why no one complains about it?).

You are missing the boat here.

Yes a crawdad or the sunflower is very strong on healing but they are much easier to counter, take a crawdad as an example, use call darkness will nerf the healing by half, using a fly pet will kill him faster than he can heal, sunflower also is very weak on attack and its move set is very predictable and can be easily killed with most weather changing pets.

On the other hand, the OPed Kovok and Murk is a completely different story. There aren't many way to fully counter these moves as they are so imbalanced and unfair. You do not need to think, no need to plan but just press the button 1-2-3 and you will see the result.

Its not easy to play an effective healing heavy team as there will be many pet switch taking place, and that takes much more skills than playing a Murk or Kovok.

[Hootstwo]

Bwhahahahahahaha, just had a stall team opponent concede after 52 minutes of pet battling! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

(No, I was NOT running a stall team, but my PP emperor crab could withstand anything that the sunflower/jade tenticle/ancient could throw at me, my other two pets were glass canons which went down to the chipping of the sunlight).

I don't give in to your stall tactics, I make you waste your time even more than you make me waste mine!


GLEEEEEEEEEEEe

[Adezero]

Usually when I see a sunflower/crawdad team I just go afk. If they're going to run a waste-of-time team i'm going to make them take 5+ minutes to win

Honestly, I think they should double wish's cooldown.

[Badpathing]

This is a silly argument (regarding the stall team stuff above). He gets to play how he likes. You don't like it? Concede, or build a team to break his. Move on.

Just because YOU don't like long games, and would rather finish faster, does not mean the way HE plays is wrong. Pretty common to see this sort of attitude these days, sadly.

[Badpathing]

On a side note, I once went about 45 minutes on a single battle with a guy who had a P/P Emp crab left; and so did I. We could not kill each other so it became a battle of "who will concede first". I ended up quitting because I got hungry.

[Digem]

On a side note, I once went about 45 minutes on a single battle with a guy who had a P/P Emp crab left; and so did I. We could not kill each other so it became a battle of "who will concede first". I ended up quitting because I got hungry.

this is what people are talking about it isn't wrong but who wants to battle for 45 minutes?
boss fights don't even last close to this long why should one pet battle?
and it doesn't need a sudden death mechanic per se but after a certain amount of rounds ,30 to 50 I would say, have healing go down 5% or so a round and damage go up 5% or so.
this would speed up an already long battle.
one would still have 30 to 50 rounds to do their "strategy" this idea really isn't infringing on it.

[Badpathing]

On a side note, I once went about 45 minutes on a single battle with a guy who had a P/P Emp crab left; and so did I. We could not kill each other so it became a battle of "who will concede first". I ended up quitting because I got hungry.

this is what people are talking about it isn't wrong but who wants to battle for 45 minutes?
boss fights don't even last close to this long why should one pet battle?
and it doesn't need a sudden death mechanic per se but after a certain amount of rounds ,30 to 50 I would say, have healing go down 5% or so a round and damage go up 5% or so.
this would speed up an already long battle.
one would still have 30 to 50 rounds to do their "strategy" this idea really isn't infringing on it.

No, this is not 'what people are talking about'. My example has NOTHING to do with a stall team. It was a humorous example of two people playing the way they want to play. I decided to give up, and actually respected the other guy for hanging in. I imagined him sitting there thinking the same thing I was and it made me laugh.

I wanted to battle for 45 minutes, and so did that guy apparently. That is how we chose to play the game and that has nothing to do with how you choose to play the game.

And for the record, I am not really for or against a sudden death mechanic, but I am certainly against people harassing players in this thread for their style of play.