Pet Battlers long in the tooth

Gameplay Pet Battles
1

Random PvP Pet Battle seems quite stilted now.
Im my experience Veteran players who choose random pvp battles are:

i) …generally too invested in their ego to ever play anything other than cycle thru a number of Overpowered ‘I Win’ teams.
ii) …or up and comming players who stand on the shoulders of others and simply use the same teams then reproduce strategies associated with that team to help secure victory.

Thus from my point of view (a player with 1270+ PvP Wins) theres little or no incentive to Queue for random pvp battles anymore.

I cba earning 5000 Random wins for the Ach, thats not something a reasonable person will want to waste their actual life doing it is in essence a life-sink.

The x3 Pet Class battles were a start to solving the problem defined above but I’ve earned the Family Brawler Ach now as well (in fact theres only 3 Pet Battle ach left for me to do). So I have a problem.

However to mix sh*t up…

I want a Battle Mode that allows me to enter random pvp battle with a random selection of pets

i) Either from a large(ish) predefined collection of pets
-or-
ii) From my collection generally

Players enters battle getting 30 to 45 secs to choose attacks/abilities
Then battle begins in earnest

The option to know in advance broadly what pets you are entering battle against could be defined in testing. Also the scope of how many pets go in to the ‘pre-defined’ group can also be thrashed out during testing.
I would urge a selection of at least 100-200 unique pets to keep things exciting. This grouping is obviously something that can be adjusted over time to suit player preference.

Sure one could load ones predefined selection of pets with the OP pets we have all come to appreciate, but at least theres an element of chance that you never get to see the pets you would want to use and the chances of getting all three pets of the correct breed also influences the imminant battle.

Like all choices in game this mode is optional.

I have over 1100 unique pets. I dont want to just look at them in my journal what is the point of that?
I’d rather ‘use them in anger’ as the saying goes see how the perform.
But under the present circumstances…
where teams of a set of a rediculously effective pets dominate
-and-
the likelihood of meeting these teams is …high then you’d be on a hiding to nothing.

As a final word theres another element of my thought above which is really the driver of my post.

Open your pet journal and hover your mouse over the battle button and read what it says…

“Find Battle: Matches you against a player of similar skill in a pet battle”.

Like i say the core problem I feel in why battles for me are boring is because I only ever face a handful of opponants who seem to use the same team or a catchment of teams in rotation.
So its not that I lose. I have no problem with losing battles if i feel the battle is fair and it was a true battle of wits and experience.

But and as an example, look at how it got a few years back when ppl only used the same 3 pets - Unborn Valk, Anub Idol and Magical Crawdad - the Unholy Trinity! Or Howl Bomb teams…
Ruthlessly effective pets, but dull as watching cowsh*t drying to play against!

Hence why Pandaren Water spirit got nerfed
Why Unborn Valk got nerfed
Why Howl fades after one tick of damage is taken…
Something had to be done!

But it was half measures the the water table has leveled again and needs to change.

Whatever the pets in use are today if the result is the same as the above the incentive to play is gone…

2

This is the eternal PvP discussion. We keep coming back to it. We’re just all at different points along the path.

I started during the Reign of Graves and the Evul Undead, and especially since I didn’t have Graves and wasn’t going to put myself through that, I resented it. I blamed the players for using the boring, overpowered teams.

Eventually, I passed from Anger to Acceptance I suppose, stopped blaming the people and started blaming the game for its imbalances. At which point I pretty much stopped. You can battle other teams, but you can’t fight City Hall.

I am still pretty much at that point. The question is: what would improve it?

Let me first take issue with your division of players into two camps, though. Just watch Rosqo and Disco on YT and then tell me that they fit into either of your two camps. And they’re not the only ones. From chatting with others on the Discord I know there are many people who genuinely enjoy PvP battling. (Well, when I say “many”, I mean “more than a handful of those who actually do it”, since the International PvP Battler’s Convention could be held in the average garage, with room to spare.)

But otherwise I agree with your framing of the problem.

And, like you, I REALLY ENJOYED Family Brawler. I mean, I want to emphasise that I don’t mean it was grudgingly better than the usual trudge. I mean I looked forward to it, held off doing it during Pet Week so it wouldn’t be over so quick and easily, held back from playing too many in a row so I could save some for later.

So there is hope for it.

The question is how best to unlock that hope.

Rewards are a thing; we can all get behind rewards in some form, but which form to take to encourage people without forcing in conscripts who will sabotage the thing is complicated, so let’s not get distracted now.

The question then is: what match-up modifications would make it interesting?

Rosqo and I have gone back and forth on this across these forums, WCP, the Discord. (And may again now, though there’s nothing left that we haven’t already discussed at this point. :slight_smile: )

The difference is between balance and restricted choice.

In very broad terms,

  • one view is that if Blizzard balanced pets better, it would fix things
  • the other view is that we need to be given a restricted list of pets to form teams with on any given occasion.

I favour the restricted list view. From your suggestion of “random pvp battle with a random selection of pets” you are somewhere in that vicinity as well.

Brawler worked by giving us that restricted list of pets. The restriction chosen wasn’t great - it worked against the mesh of the game - but it gave us a taste of how that could feel. And it felt good!

There are questions about how those restrictions should operate. I think entirely random pets would be terrible, since team building and synergy and strategy choice is such a large part of the satisfaction. I think whatever method should NOT incentivise people to remove pets from their rosters to leave only the strongest pets. All of that would ned to be considered.

But until some more interesting format is applied, I doubt I’ll be doing much more PvP either.

3

Wow a balanced informed and considered response to, as you say, an aging topic! I’ve screenshot it for posterity to say I have actually see one! :slight_smile:

So we see things in broadly similar terms. I play for my own satisfaction and I don’t particularly follow social media with regards to how the rest of the community discuss pet battles.
I dont have a problem with it at all, theres just not enuff time in the day.

That said I can appriciate that there are noted Luminaries in this area of the game prominant in the community. Never heard of any of them. Like I say I play for my own interest. That doesnt however mean i cant see where the problems lie within this part of the game.

I take on your point about ‘balance’ and the problem with pets like Graves.
I’m not sure that is really the a big an issue as it is -particularly if you take away the ability for ppl to bring such pets to the fight with grim certainty.

I feel the ‘problems with balance’ is also a perennial argument that discussion defaults to when a conversation threat begins to lose steam…

It’s like Invoking ‘Hitler’ to attempt to win an argument. Gets tedious for all concerned.

I get that pets like Anub Idol, Ikky, all Zandalari Compi’s, Iron Starlette, Graves exist in the game. Their applicaiton is not just limited to PvP contexts.

There are otherwise near insurmountable pve encounters that these pets certainly lighten to load on -and give success to more casual players in Pet Battling. I think generally thats OK, gives all player a bite at the apple.
It’s inclusive etc. And where a player thinks that defaulting to certain pets too frequently is too easy, then that person has the choice to not use pets like Ikky for ‘easy’ wins.

I love Ikky, I mean he is the final word in some cases.
But like I said I have dozens if not a couple of hundred pets (all L25) in my collection that i have never used in anger!
Why? Because on surface evaluation they could be viewed as ‘journal filler’ or deeply situational. I believe this to be true.

But given an oppertunity where they get ‘let out of the box’ on a more level playing field they might shine!
If only for one battle! Wouldnt that be a glorious and fun thing! :slight_smile:

Also If we see a situation where as you amusingly point out the entire top end community of global pet battlers could be housed in a single room (I paraphrase).
What should we do?

What drives the community to polarise like this? That would seem obvious!
New players getting face rolled by Veterans with Stronk Pet Teams is deeply discouraging.

I think its fair to speculate tho that where you have a situation (Game Mode) where all commers have less control over the teams they can bring to battle It might prove less daunting to others to get involved and expand the community more generally while keeping the older players entertained at the same time.

Sh*t… wouldnt it be worth a shot to find out?

4

Yeah, pvp pet battles are lame. All you need to do and can do is enter with an AoE team because that’s the most effective strategy wether you like it or not.

5

I disagree there.

Working with an ever-changing available list of pets that can be used would make it much more difficult for players starting.

At the moment, I could rattle off half a dozen teams, with instructions, that will bring an acceptable overall win rate even if the user is a complete beginner who has no idea what’s going on. These well known and simple teams provide a solid starting boost for beginners. Using one of them gives anyone a chance against even an experiemced player.

If people starting a battle were faced with, say 30 pets from which they had to make their selection, then understanding how to put synergies together and how to calculate during a battle would completely overwhelm beginners. Skill and experience would be much more important even than now.

6

Or just introduce PvP pet fatigue. Using the same pet several times in a row would give it fatigue stats until it’s not used in pvp battles several times.
And it would apply to all pets of the same kind so people couldn’t have 10 twilight clutch-sisters and switch cages :stuck_out_tongue:
I think that would be fair and would make people play different teams at least even if people would switch between several scumbag teams

7

With respect, I’m not sure you have understood my point here.
With a large enuff sub group of pets, for arguments sake say 200, where you have no direct control which 3 are selected at a given time and you have 30 secs to select yout attacks prior to the battle…

Thats approximately 1,313,400 combinations of 3 pets.

You’re going to need a rather large pad of paper and stack of pencils to provide notes for predefined teams in that lot :slight_smile:

Which is rather the point of my forum post! The mode I suggested means you have NO Effective control of which three pets you get to use beyond an initial addtion of them to you ‘sub-group’.

So with the best will in the world the chances of any of your teams turning up is pretty remote! :slight_smile:

Sh*t. if ye wanted to go total war! You could just open the mode up to the players entire journal.
And if you think that would be exploitable by ppl tossing out pets to keep only the choicest OP ones, thats also suggests that pet collectors (which we all fundamentally are) would be willing to toss exclusive bound ‘one time get’ only pets permentantly to preserve the purity of some Uber Battle team.
Clearly noone would be silly to try it :slight_smile:

I’d also challenge your assumption that beginners would be discouraged once it becomes clear that even the best players in the game have to make do with a grab bag of pets they have only indirectly chosen.
It would demonstrate their true skills as it will force them to adapt to a fluid situation developing in real time.

Rather than spending months on forums theory-crafting the sh*t out of teams in advance

I’d go up against anyone in the world under those circumstances with the full intention of taking them to the cleaners no mater the collection or how many wins they have under their belt! :slight_smile:

…It’s called Guile!

8

The random selection of pets idea comes up every couple of months. I get that it would be perceived as a leveller between two players but it’s very much a dice roll where RNG not skill determines the outcome.

Rolling a random team won’t often result in 2 balanced comps. You’re going to be hoping that you get lucky with the roll and get the better team thus the win. You would have a more balanced match up running a counter team into the last meta comp you faced in the queue.

You’re right in there are different types of player in the queue but also the meta will react to what people are playing(one toxic player can cause a reaction so everyone play tier comps).
So the first type of players (these make the meta toxic for everyone including themselves) run tier 1 pets non stop no exceptions, maybe they will swap out an Imp for a Hermit Crab when you start beating them.
There’s second group that genuinely try to play alot of their collection and steer clear of top tier pets unless the people who only run tier 1 start queuing. Sometimes these players get frustrated and go all out tier stuff if you beat them too much which usually sucks if you don’t have a similar team.
The third type of players are casual players who either run trash or a team that was good in like MoP. I feel bad playing these especially brawler achievement teams because I don’t enjoy beating them and I expect they won’t ever battle again once they complete it (this achievement was poorly implemented and its legacy damages pet battles)

The way forward is and always will be balancing pets and abilities. There’s a large group of pets that are all around the same level at the moment just below the pets or abilities causing the most issues. There just needs to be targeted nerfs to stuff like Twilight Meteorite, Jar of Smelly Liquid, Hermit Crab, RI, backline healing and damage. That would be a start to solving the issues but because it hasn’t been properly balanced for years it’s a likely to need more adjustments going forward.

Once balance is in a better place then add rewards people will want and that would benefit the long term health of PVP not damage it like the Family Brawler debacle.

2 Likes
9

I mostly agree with rosqo here. i wouldn’t mind to have additional game modes for pet battle pvp but in the state that it currently is in I doubt new modes would help. they most likely would suffer more or less from the same issues we’re facing now (for years).
what has to be done first is
-balancing obviously overpowered pets/abilities,
-fix A LOT of bugs (also tooltips as i think some of them might be intentional but not displayed right) and
-do something against the problems with the current “matchmaking” (there is none) -> possibly open battlegroups to the whole region, not just a set amount of servers, so we can battle a far wider variety of players and teams
-also make pvp more rewarding as there currently (besides the stunted direhorn) is no real point in doing them apart from farming salt

1 Like
10

Round CLXXIII

You think Balance Will Fix It? Balance can ride to the rescue and save the day?

Exactly what balance changes need to be made to the over 1100 pets we have?

How, exactly, do you balance a Twilight Fiendling with a Hermit Crab? What base stat redistributions do you make? What ability swaps do you make? How do you balance an Iron Starlette with a Marsh Fiddler, while balancing all of the above with an Infernal Pyreclaw?

How are you going to do all that without upsetting PvE?

Saying “Balance” is just a way to avoid thinking about what exact numbers need to be changed.

11

balancing might not be right word for over 1100. but there aren’t over a thousand pets that people are mad about, are there? also there is for the most part a clear difference between the pool of pets that is overused in pvp and the ones in pve (iron starlette really doesn’t need to be balanced for pvp), so it wouldn’t even take so much thought to come up with stat squishes or ability swaps that would improve the pvp meta.

it would take an incredibly big change to a mechanic with pvp balancing in mind to also upset “pve players”. they would just find a new cooky-cutter strategy that takes the place of the old one.

also balancing wasn’t the only point mentioned above, so no, it won’t save the day on its own

p.s. talking about balancing the hermit crab -> look at the glimmershell scuttler

12

I doubt that any hardcoded restriction to one’s queueing process could exist. Maybe “no triples!”, but nothing more, and not feasible either with duplicate species.
While I admit that rewards need to be placed carefully, lest people feel compelled to chase them endlessly – I wouldn’t mind if they made the weekly quest a bit more engaging.
Keeping it as simple as possible, and piggybacking on the “cooldown” concept, I’d reshape it a bit:

Defeat players through Find Battle with at least 15 different level 25 pets.

Yes, the win count is not important there!
A seasoned player would need to win only 5 battles. Someone sentimental towards a particular pet (or making a spotlight broadcast) would need to win at least 7. More than 10 should not happen to anyone but sworn combo (ab)users.

Now for something different, I sincerely believe that most of the players in fact can deduce where the line between pruning and necessary changes lies. But there are many, many things to be fixed – some perhaps really minor ones – I don’t think each particular one would be gamechanging and that is okay. I still think that should happen for consistency, though.
Yet, it is easy to think about fixes when considering one or two specific demands but all of them applied together might end up in something unexpected such as the patch 7.0 or even 6.0 when speaking about the performance of the PvE bosses. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

So you’re not saying “balance pets”? You’re saying “balance some pets”?

Should be easy enough.

List the pets you want balanced, and the stat and ability changes you want made, and we’ll all take a look!

14

Courtesy of the RAND() function.

Your PvP pets for this week are:

Abyssius Magic Lamp
Alpine Chipmunk Mechanical Scorpid
Ash’ana Mechanopeep
Auburn Ringtail Mei Li Sparkler
Autumnal Sproutling Oily Slimeling
Beetle Panther Cub
Chrominius Puddle Terror
Creepy Crate Purple Puffer
Death Talon Whelpguard Pygmy Cow
Draenei Micro Defender Qiraji Guardling
Eldritch Manafiend Rabid Nut Varmint 5000
Forest Spiderling River Calf
Frostshell Pincher Ruby Sapling
Golden Civet Kitten Shimmering Wyrmling
Grove Viper Sidewinder
Gulp Froglet Swamplighter Firefly
Hare Teldrassil Sproutling
Infinite Hatchling Tiny Harvester
Ji-Kun Hatchling Winter Rageling
Legs Wood Frog

I certainly don’t insist that it should be flat randomness. Duplicate movesets should perhaps be discriminated against, and maybe some family balance added - at the moment, with the dominance of Beasts and Critters, a flat random selection will leave families like Magic and Dragonkin with an unsatisfying proportion.

16

Where has this naivety come from that every single pet must be at the same power level as each other no one here has suggested this at any point. Some pets are supposed to be bad and solely for fun like Pocket Cannons or Elekk Plushies so suggesting that they would need to be the same power as all other pets is a non starter.
Where the balancing issues lie is at the top of the meta where the pets are left too strong for far too long and create a stale situation for PVP. There is no reason not to routinely balance these overpowered pets to a more reasonable level as it ruins PVP for everyone when left so long unchecked. There shouldn’t be abilities that are harder hitting versions of what is already in game or be pets that base stats are outside the accepted range.

Grainne you mentioned that you would like 5 pets or abilities that require balancing?

Twilight Meteorite/Money Meteor (added in 8.2) - reduce the baseline 50 damage down to 33 aligned with similar abilities.

Hermit Crab/Slimy Darkhunter (added in 8.2) - adjust baseline stats to the regular levels that are accepted within pet battles, i don’t care what to but 1400hp, 284 power & 349 speed and 1664hp, 261 power & 314 speed respectively is broken af.

Jar of Smelly Liquid - reduce the baseline damage from 15 to 10 aligned with similar abilities

Fel-Afflicted Skyfin - Change is breed to B/B this still might need further attention as the dot & swap on a Flier is OP.

Backline Hots - Reduce all heal over time affects on the backline by 50%.

I think there would be more that requires looking at potentially things like undead racial being changed to 50% stats, Emperor Crab, Powerball, miss chance under weather, Traps, HP increase from Sunlight, adding CDs to Dazzling Dance & Immolation but you asked for 5 and because this hasn’t been done gradually it’s really difficult to understand the impact of major changes to the top of the meta.

Your list of pets would result in people running Sunny Day teams and Backline/Heal comps for that rotation sounds a barrel of laughs.

17

Nope. I never said anything about 5. I listed 5 examples - and not the 5 you used - but I could have listed 500. My basic argument here is not against balancing per se; I first want to pin down exactly what people who want balancing mean. Exactly. No evasions, no generalisations. No “etcetras”. Which pets. Which abilities.

I know that’s a tough ask of battlers in general, but I also know that you’re more than capable.

I say that people proposing balancing should list, exactly, all the changes they want made to stats and abilities. And then be done with it.

If you want 5 pets nerfed, list the 5 pets and the actions. If you want 50, list 50.

FWIW, I think I agree with the specific changes you listed. I’m not sure they’re exact, and I’d have to get out a spreadsheet to check, but I do in general agree with you. (Especially about the Hermit Crab, which was spitting in the face of anyone who supported pet battles.)

But after that, you’re looking beyond to the Undead racial, and after that, to what else?

I believe that a Balance policy will do to pets what it has done to our classes:

  1. Force continual change, which will wreck the integrity of the game and
  2. Force the devs into a corner where everything is the same, and flavourless.
18

I said that because these changes have not been done as and when they have presented as an issue its very difficult to say what needs to be changed past the glaring issues. I say every time that there is a large amount of pets that are in a very good place and all around the same power level just a group that are too strong.
Grainne as far as I am aware you don’t actively PVP so it is difficult for me to continue to discuss this with you without you having the knowledge of current Meta dynamics.

19

Well, if I am unworthy, you don’t have to discuss it with me, any more than a chess master needs an opponent on the other side of the board to analyse a position.

You want “balance”, but all you list is a short set of changes (which I generally agree with) and then “there may be some (unspecified) more”.

It’s that “(unspecified) more” that worries me. After you lop the top off the current meta, you will be left with … another meta! and then you will want to lop the top off that, and you will find underneath … oh my God! another meta! … and when you get the shears out and start pruning the top …

It will never end.

And eventually, it will start affecting the 99% as well.

20

I am afraid that this banter will confuse the OP too much. I don’t think any of you actually expects that poor soul to keep up with the long-time snowfight that is an in-joke/meme at this point? :stuck_out_tongue:

I will not deny that I feel ignored aswell (that other post was rendered irrelevant by accidental irony), but as I am nobody in that particular matter, gotta pay the piper. :slight_smile:

21

The forums are equal-opportunity confusers. :slight_smile: The OP took his shot, and I’m sure is well able to handle it! (Or can run away in panic! :smiley: )

When I was first introduced to online discussions, long before there was a WWW, I was told “Lurk for three months before posting, to understand the frequently debated points. If you don’t think you need to lurk for three months, you may be right; lurk for six months instead.” It was good advice, and still applies today :rofl:

The Meta is an eternal problem. I don’t think The Meta is especially bad now, compared to say 6.2 or 7.3, but as Rosqo says, I’m not playing enough to judge. And I’m not playing because The Meta Is A Problem!

The question is how to tame The Meta.

Rosqo thinks that Balance is the hope. I think that Balance is a bottomless pit, and only Restricted Sets can save us.

As I said before:

At least the OP has been exposed to the arguments :slight_smile: