Now that only one level 25 stone is available per account has this quest been nerfed too far? It has had a wider impact on the queue as obviously far less players now need to complete quests each event as they can only do one.
Is this an intended action to reduce players pet pvping? The queues during the Critter week used to be ‘fun’ where lesser used teams would be used but now its the same as any other week.
What are peoples thoughts on this change? What motivation would Acti-Blizz have to do this?
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Maybe an unpopular opinion - but I dont care very much.
Out of all the critter weeks we have had Iv participated in perhaps 1/5 on average. I level new/useful pets with stones - not XP. And I only level those that might have some serious use in battle - most pets dont. Alot of pets are dups or even worse nerfed (B/B for instance) clones of their better blueprint.
I expect to be in a minority of 1 on this issue tho.
Weird reply to the post as its not really on topic. I don’t mention anything about the xp from the Critter week.
TLDR of my post is the weekly quest becoming account wide reducing the number of players participating in PVP during the week.
I just finished the quest on one character and picked it up on another. What you on about?
Edit: Ok so apparently it’s nerfed to 1 quest for each faction I think. Cant imagine the purpose of this tbf. Lets see if the same happens to all other weekly quests
Oh I missed the last one, didnt knew something had changed.
But apparently its not all un-botched. 2 of my 120’s cant get the quest 
I agree and have withdrawn my previous post, just went back on the character to pick the quest up and its not there. Hadn’t interacted with the quest giver or anything and it’s no longer available
OK, here’s what I observed.
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At no point could I see the quest on any character below 120.
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I took the quest on a 120 Horde, completed it and turned it in.
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I then took the quest again on a 120 Alliance alt.
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I completed the quest from the Alliance alt - did the five battles - on a Horde alt level 111. On that Horde alt the quest did not appear at all. It was not in my quest log at any time. I think I saw the “4/5” message appear very briefly as I completed one battle, but I’m not sure.
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I then turned it in on the Alliance alt that took the quest.
At this point, I have done the quest twice, and have two purple stones.
- I then went to the Chronicler Toopa, the questgiver, on another Alliance 120. I saw the yellow exclam abone his head, but when I interacted, he game me just a dialog box “Adventure Waits, young one” but with no quest.
Well with there being two quest givers it could be registered slightly differently.
Much like you I saw the quest above the turtles head but when interacting with him it wasn’t there.
This is a clear shift to reduce the participation in PVP Pet Battles during the Critter event in my opinion. Previously this type of quest was accessible to any character that could play in that expansions content.
Perhaps. But I have level 120 horde and alliance. I did the quest on this 120 (Exris) and it was unavailable on my 120 horde.
I logged in/out. Reset everything. Tried the other quest giver - no dice.
[quote=“Rosqo-silvermoon, post:9, topic:41042”]
This is a clear shift to reduce the participation in PVP Pet Battles during the Critter event in my opinion. [/quote]
Who knows. And as I said earlier - it barely matters. Most of us have seceral 120’s. I have more 110-117 (I think) that I cant even be bothered to level to 120.
2 or 3 chars on both factions at 120 gives you 10 or so stones a day and maybe 20+ charms.
They are account bound. Hord them on a banking alt with a few bags and you cann level up as many pets as you like when a new achievment drops and you need particular movesets/breeds.
I learned my lesson in Legion Raiding with leashes. I came very close to running out of [pet species] stones then - have been hoarding them since.
A few extra 25 level stones whilst nice - once 6/weekly - is not significant.
Exris the point of the post isn’t that there is less level 25 stones available. It’s that there are less players pvping during the week because there are less quests which give them the reason to pvp.
Here’s an example: a player has 5 x 120 alliance toons they used to able to do 5 quest which is 25 battles. Now they can do 1 quest that is 5 battles.
Does that make it clearer as to why its an active choice by Blizzard to reduce the participation in the PVP queue during Critter week?
No clearer as I understood your point all along.
The case I was making was that a level 25 stone (or multiples) is a weak incentive to all but the most casual of pet battlers/collectors.
The ones unable to rip through the Drenor tamers with a carry pet. The ones that dont world quest every day in BfA and Legion (minor source there) to horde stones. The only characters I give 2 hoots about are all Mages who can teleport/spam the quests easily. And the underleveled characters are just parked in Dalaran to fly to a Legion stone giver (today is “The Maw” which gives 5 stones per char).
And I know you uderstood all that - and had before I took the time to write it down.
When you are I queue for PvP those players are not in our shard. We dont face them unless there is utterly noone else in the queue. And I dont want to face them with my lightning AOE teams - or my utter sod of a Darkness team - or my heal forever Sunlight team (even I want that one banned).
Way back when I started pet battling it was not too terrible to begin with. It encouraged players to collect/level and battle. There were no stones to collect then. Just a few pet treats.
If activity is dying out (and I believe you do have a point) Im suggesting it’s not the stones reward thats doing it. And forcing Timmy-10-pets into battle against me or you would be counterproductive in the long run.
That would be like me walking into an Arena with my guild against titanforged Mythic geared people. Id be slaughtered. And Id soon mark that content down as “not fun”.
Interestingly if there were more Timmy 10 pets in the queue they would face more Timmy 10 pets than Chad Meta Spam.
If you think that currently there will always be a handful or Chad’s in the queue by flooding it with Timmys they have less chance to meet Chad.
What theyve done is left the same number of Chad’s but reduced the volume of Timmys.
Its the equivalent of one or two people walking down a dark alley with a dozen muggers on it, you’re gonna get robbed.
I might be one of few people who like doing Pvp Pet battle just for fun. It’s more interesting than Pve Pet battle and doing the same World quest over and over again drives me tired. It’s a pity that there are barely any rewards for Pvp and that weekly makes it a win-win for me; fun and a reward at the same time.
I’m a bit sad that this weekly can be done only once now and I wish they’d reverse it, so that every 120er can do it.
As I was saying in another thread. There is either bad programming in matchmaking, or nobody does the pvp pet battles anymore. Except for 5 hardcore dudes with imba setups.
Trying family brawler achievement is immensely frustrating. I met the same guy over 20 times in like 2 hours.
So Rosqo is right.
I feel a bit sorry for anyone trying to run teams handicapped by the Brawler Achievement during this BFA version of Critter week.
I remember when there were dozens of obviously new players in the queue while the event was on all earning stones on their characters because why not its better than nothing and they were playing other people who played as infrequently as them. Now it’s about 50/50 as to if you end up facing a full tier comp or not. It shouldn’t be this way during the event who cares if people end up getting a bunch of extra stones from these it wasn’t a problem when there were less pets available to level.
I’d love to know what was behind the choice to limit the quest to once an event because from what I have seen and heard it has had nothing but a negative impact on the queue and accessibility of PVP during Critter week.
Quite.
Nobody, that’s who.
Doing PvP for a purple stone during pet week is far, far beyond a mug’s game.
Every 3 minutes with Sir Galveston gets you a guaranteed jump of one pet to 25 during pet week. 100%. Every time. That’s 20 pets levelled from level one - per hour.
What kind of radioactive idiocy would it take to jump into the queue, then have to beat five likely-meta PvP teams at about three minutes each (and likely lose at least five, on average, in the process), waiting a minute or two per battle, for the same reward? Call it 10 battles @ 5 minutes per battle. including wait times.
So ~50 minutes to level one pet - maybe!; there’s no guarantee.
Or 60 minutes to level 20 pets, 100% guaranteed.
They would have to hand out a stack of 20 Purple stones for the quest if they wanted to get something like parity with PvE rewards.
Grainne I think you miss the point of this post.
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I’m not saying do pvp for stones to level up pets.
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People would do the quest for the purple stone. They are convenient kinda like every time I want a drink I don’t get a 2 litre bottle from the shop despite it being the best value, I get a smaller expensive bottle as I pay for the convenience.
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More Critter event quests = more players in the queue. They would end up facing less of the meta regulars because they would make up a lesser proportion of queue.
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Very interesting point that its soo easy to level via pve that you don’t feel a 25 stone is reward enough for 5 wins
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The Devs have made the queue soo much harder for newer players with this change when it feels unwarranted.
I don’t actually think I could disagree with this more xD
In my eyes the comparison is:
-Engaging, thought provoking gameplay that I’d be doing anyway, but now have a nice little extra bonus to boot, all I have to do is swap characters after 5 wins.
vs
-A grind for a realistically meaningless goal that is literally as boring as farming herbs for 1000g per hour… “oh boy can’t wait to get all those strider and mouse clones up to 25 so they can gather dust too”
“Engaging, thought provoking gameplay that I’d be doing anyway”. I envy you, being able to enjoy it. However, the stats on achievements and the state of the queue demonstrate that you are in a tiny, tiny minority.
I can absolutely understand that for that one-in-a-thousand player it is annoying that your reward run is cut short - and I agree, it shouldn’t be.
But for the other 999 people who are just looking to speed up a future grind, it is a terrible investment of time.
Grainne the 25 stones are a quality of life item for convenience not designed at leveling up pets en mass.
In regards to the pvp quest they are the incentives to complete it. Players will complete the quest for this item. Removing the option to complete it from other characters reduces the amount of people who will be pvping. It’s such a strange change.