I come here expecting to be in the overwhelming minority, but hey ho, forums are to give Blizz feedback right? ^^
I honestly think the Family Brawler achievements were the best thing to happen to pvp pet battles that I can think of. I’d love it if parts 2 and 3 were added to each one, requiring perhaps 25 and 50 wins.
It just broke up the monotony of every single team you queue into being top tier tryhard teams. I didn’t even “rush through” the brawler achievements but I honestly wish I still had some to work towards. Not only do I feel it made the opponents I queued against more refreshingly diverse for me, but also that it gave me a sense of progression and accomplishment. I know I could “just queue a 3x beast team just for the shiggles” but to me it just wouldn’t be the same without that sense of working towards a target.
I look forward to hearing all the way’s I’m wrong below
No saying you are wrong from me; that achievement actually brought me into PvP Pet Battles way more, because it “freshened the system up”, and made it less likely to run into the same boring repetitive combos
Not unpopular at all. Almost everyone agrees. Rosqo will cavil at Family teams being The Wrong Way To Do It, and he’s right, but then lots of achievements in WoW are based on doing something the Wrong Way, or the Hard Way.
I agree with every word you say, except extending it with new achievements to 25 and 50 wins. I think that would be pushing it for the sake of pushing it. I’d prefer to see other partitionings instead of Families introduced, like “pets beginning with the letter D” or “wild pets from Outland”, or “pets whose species-ID ends with a ‘4’” or in fact any random partition that keeps breaking up the meta and makes us think outside the established combos.
For myself, Brawler was the only time I actually looked forward to, and enjoyed, pet PvP since … probably since I got my Direhorn. That long ago. Especially Beasts. Beasts are great - so many amazing choices!
And you’re also right that the fun of queueing a constrained team goes away when it’s just for yourself. We need the challenge of an external framework to get the full impact.
So I do understand what people enjoyed about creating different teams with specific restrictions and using uncommon pets. I do this all the time with many types of restriction such as pets costing less than 50g off the ah or only wild caught. It’s fun and you find interesting pets that you otherwise wouldn’t.
Where I feel its not so good is its legacy. So many family brawler teams just get stomped now especially weaker families. I don’t enjoy playing these opponents and I’m sure the players running family brawler don’t either.
There have been suggestions about this achievement way before it was introduced. First time I had seen one, the memories of annoying triple undead everywhere were still very strong and common. You can guess what my reaction was.
When it finally became a reality, I felt just “meh, whatever” and completed it in two months, with the influx of people still augmented by novelty. And a couple of times per day, that horrible thing was happening: strong or resistant families being matched against the endangered or weak ones. 4 per 5 times it meant an instant forfeit.
Which is something nobody should want – there is no display of the skills after all.
On the other hand, you could also be matched against the seemingly stronger and win without a mercy surrender – which feels awesome, but I can’t tell it used to happen very often.
I can see a point that a good player can prepare for many kinds of enemies and find a way around the limitations. In this particular case, I think critters and mechanicals are a bit disadvantaged, though.
Now to come back to the surface, I think while the initial influx of players was significant, I don’t think there is as much difference nowadays. It’s still very likely to meet the same opponent a couple of times. Thanks to the videos, I don’t even have to fight to see it’s still “humble newbies vs meta grinders vs content creators”.
I am left with more questions than answers.
Should the PvP scene be bombarded with achievements and such to maintain the shape? Should there be more pets and team synergies which are better suited to handle specific situations? What is the role of content creators in shaping the queue environment? When will Remte give up writing walls of text?
Have a good one.
PS I agree with the interest being raised overall, just think it’s not enough.
![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
