Sorry, Remte. You’re right; I did skip over that.
This is a variant of the “pet fatigue” or “pet cooldown” approach.
I like the idea, but don’t see how to make it work in the context of a weekly cycle of 5 or 10 battle wins.
The specific instruction to use 15 pets in wins in any given week would just lead to people running the same 5 teams, comprised of the T1 pets, until one team won, and was then put on ice until next week. It pretty much guaranteed we see the same 15-20 pets all the time.
My view - and I’ll get panned for it.
So we PvP to either get the weekly reward - or to eek our way up to 5k wins (I just checked - 4400 for me. It’ll happen this year).
I PvP when Iv done my dailies and I cant face doing something else more involved. Sometimes 0 a week. Sometimes 200+
Every 7 or 8 battles we get a charm or a training stone. A tiny little extra return that we bank on our pet alt.
I run some very OP teams. I run some very meh teams… that I just like.
I would be prepared to queue in PvP in hard mode if that were to be made a battle option. Keep my pets. Keep my teams. But nerf their level down to level 22 for the duration of the fight. And the reward? Instead of a 15% chance of a stone/charm… make it 90% or so.
Perhaps Id get sick of it being too competitive for me after a week or 2. It would certainly force me to run OP teams more frequently seeing as they are so handicapped. And those teams would be copied more by other players… as long as they had the pets.
Pets like Baa’l (murder the innocent) wouldnt be very much affected by the nerf, but all my other pets would. And that moveset along with explode is only really useful in PvE. No human would be stupid enough to fall for it.
Anyway - thats my thinking. Make it harder, by my method or another one, make it optional, and make it worth it.
Otherwise there will be no change that wont be seen as shafting someone.
I don’t see why anybody would pan you for that. I think we all agree that rewards for PvP have fallen unreasonably, insanely, inexcusably far behind rewards for PvE - even further behind than they are in the main game.
Rewards have to be a part of the solution.
I suppose the biggest challenge with this is that only people who actually like doing pet battles would do this mode described. So although you can run full tier comps with the handicap there would be players who still run the full tier comps but without any disadvantage. If you think that it would be pretty likely to win against them you’d be wrong as they would probably be using the same teams.
I dont think it would be likely to win against other (non-nerfd) top tier teams. It would be very unlikely.
But if you do that you dont get additional rewards. You fall behind in other ways.
Perhaps even change the rewards. How about a 1/1000 chance for a game token? Or boost pack? Or throw the idea of level 22 right in the drain and work out a new risk/reward system.
Iv been battleling for a long time now. More than most - but not as long as a few. I see bad players using top ranked teams all the time that havent a clue what to do when things get hairy all the time. I see the same team sometimes put forward again and again… for what they think will be easy wins.
Let then have those wins while we chase something better. Make them either step up or they can stay the Layton Orient of the pet league.
Them being garbage shouldnt make us so.
I like the idea, but don’t see how to make it work in the context of a weekly cycle of 5 or 10 battle wins.
The specific instruction to use 15 pets in wins in any given week would just lead to people running the same 5 teams, comprised of the T1 pets, until one team won, and was then put on ice until next week. It pretty much guaranteed we see the same 15-20 pets all the time.
I did not want it to look like set in stone already. The numbers and frequency may be different, like the Very Best for example, but tried to prevent that wall of text from coming. 
I had a similar reaction when the Brawler concept was first mentioned. Nothing but undead stallers and Nexus Whelplings! 
I can see that some families were carried away like this but not to the point of exhaustion.
@Exris
I don’t honestly know what to say about this other than you or the others did. I was confused by your details a little (a number squish in itself does not seem like an extra difficulty to me) but see they’re not the point there. My only concern about this is that I would not envy anyone making sure the both modes enjoyable while just a single one remains currently behind.
EDIT: So there is a clear need to ensure these omnipresent teams or variants of those won’t appear in the second mode. I can see two routes: technical, hardcoded prevention of this or making the player think they don’t want to do that. Would you root for one of them (or another one)?
It’s fair to say that the numbers and frequencies might need tuning, but tuned to what? I’ve bounced around some ideas before, but can’t settle on something that feels satisfying.
Let’s say that every use of a pet in a winning team - or would it be any team, win or lose? that feels very harsh - triggers a 10-match CD. OK, so now you need to rotate 10 teams. That’s probably not nearly enough; we’re still in the regular meta.
Try a 100-match CD. I find that much more interesting, but it means you need 300 pets just to enter. Is that acceptable? It surely is for us, but as an entry barrier? A 100-match CD that expires every week? we’re really just back to a 10-match CD.
A 50-match CD? That leaves us needing a pool of 150 pets. Probably the best compromise I can come up with. Enough to force decent variation without getting into the weeds.
What if the CD is time, not matches? Set it at a month CD on a pet. So every month, you are limited to 1/3 of your species count. That would work for me, but would it be satisfying for people who are playing regularly or grinding towards a goal?
Hey to everyone, seems like we have one more go at the how to make pet PVP good - I participated a couple of previous times, too.
I skimmed through the thread and I see all the usual stuff mentioned. My opinion on the options above:
(a) balancing all pets is not going to work, ever - we can talk in detail as to why I think that, for now I’ll just save space, it’s too long and “balancing 1000 pets is hard” is just a secondary part of it,
(b) putting pets onto cooldown relies on tuning the cooldown “correctly” - if it is too short, like a week, people just fire up all the OP teams and then wait for next week, and if it is too long, people run out of pets; worse, the entire design might be flawed in that it tries to create good fights by making people play a lot with pets they consider to be trash - this is the whole point to the cooldown, but the effect might be too unpleasant in practice,
(c ) limiting pets that you can PVP with for the week / some other period relies on tuning the number of pets in the rotation “just right” - have too many and we see OP combos dominating again every week, have too few and people don’t have pets to fight with or the fights are uninteresting and the choices are obvious (imagine doing the same for 1v1 PVP and ending up with a week where guardian druids fight prot palas - stupid boring, and another week where the current rogue FOTM fights ele shaman - stupid boring again, with nobody picking shaman because they don’t want to just lose out of the gate).
I think this covers all the main directions.
I had a new thought which I haven’t seen mentioned, I hope it will at least be of interest - or might even work:
Let’s (a) add ratings for matchmaking, and (b) add picks, a-la MOBAs. You queue and you get an opponent and then you both start picking your teams sharing the same pick screen. One of you picks the first pet, then the other picks his own pet (different from what was already picked by anyone, no mirrors and no duplicates, likely a counter to what’s already picked or what would be picked next), this proceeds in a hard-set sequence that tries to be fair (my take: pick A - pick B - pick B - pick A - pick A - pick B, this gives A an advantage of picking whatever pet he wants first and gives B an advantage of picking something without the possibility of a counter with his last choice), then you fight, done. Maybe there should be some bans, too, likely something generic - eg, each player can ban a family (then it would go: pick A - pick B - ban B - ban A - … or something like this).
Why this can work? First, because this counters OP teams on the pick phase. You start building an OP team - fine, I’ll build my own OP team and I will try to make it resilient to yours. We PVP right on the pick screen. Second, because this rewards skill - more experienced win. Third, because this rewards having more pets - people with more varied rosters win. Fourth, because this does not punish new players - ratings make sure you are fighting people who have about as many pets / as much skill as you do.
As an additional thought, they can make PVP be not 3v3 but rather 4v4 or 5v5 - this will not only make the pick phase more important, it will immediately devalue current OP teams because they are all 3v3 and strictly inferior to OP teams that consist of 4 or 5 pets which we currently don’t know of.
What do you think?
First, I should say that Restricted Set choices don’t have to be purely random. Blizzard could internally make a list of Tier pets, Weather pets, Healer pets, whatever, and make sure that a restricted set for a week contained only so much, but not more, of each.
Now, you have added Picks. Sorry, I should have mentioned that. I’m not sure that unrestricted picks would be satisfying.
If A wants a more varied match, and doesn’t pick the most OP pet in the game at the time, what stops B from doing so?
So
A picks Tier 1
B picks Tier 1
B picks Tier 1
A picks Tier 1
A picks Tier 1
B picks Tier 1
this seems, logically, the way every pick should go.
The alternative is:
A picks Marsh Fiddler
B picks Tier 1
B picks Tier 1
A picks Tier 1
A picks Tier 1
B picks Tier 1
and A has been heavily penalised for his first pick. Since it’s a non-iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, A has no reason to signal co-operation in advance. If anything, I think it would intensify the meta.
I don’t think ratings would make a difference here. Of course, the current problem is that there aren’t enough players to support multiple levels of queue even if we had ratings.
Oh, one more thing.
I think the one change in PvP battles that would gather unanimous support, though weak, would be No Duplicate Species. A stronger version of that, that I think would get almost all support, would be No Duplicate Abilities in a team.
Pets counter each other, no?
A picks tier 1, but he picks a specific pet, so the list of tier 1 pets that makes sense to pick for B gets reduced. The idea is not to pick Marsh Fiddler, the idea is that you are free to pick whatever, but with counters this is far from a guarantee that you will succeed, the first pick will totally get countered.
This needs test runs, but in general, if the current list of pets is such that it is possible to stay in tier 1 pets with picks that get countered, then one of the possible attempts at a solution is to raise the number of pets for the match to 4v4 or 5v5.
I agree that the number of players is too small to have ratings working. I think, however, this can be solved by them making a phone game out of pet battles - or adding pet battles to the mobile client. There will be a temporary surge in the number of players and if other parts of the system are fine, it will all start working and we will have enough people on the ratings ladder to make ratings smooth it all out, too.
Ah. But I want to pick Marsh Fiddler! I want to break out of the Top-50 rut that surrounds the Tier 1 set.
So we want different things. That’s OK, so long as we understand our objectives.
And ofc, different people have different ideas of the Tiers. One person might call only 5 pets T1, while someone else would expand that to 15 or 20, so language is fuzzy here. If you call 16 pets T1, then ofc it’s easy to stay within that.
I still think it would lead to fewer species represented.
If pet battles becomes a phone game, I am most definitely out. O-U-T out.
BTW, why? Because of monetization? The reason I ask is that while I would also be very cautious of phone games made by Blizzard, a lot of phone games are actually pretty great on that front these days - especially those who bank on having premium, it essentially works as a sub. That is, things have been improving a lot.
I’ve tried phone games. All sorts of people have bombarded me from all angles trying to get me interested in various phone games. Some are really quite detailed and ingenious. I can even admire them, but I can’t bring myself to care. Phone games don’t do it for me. To while away 15 minutes waiting … eh, maybe, if I have nothing else but a phone, and I have to wait in a distracting environment where reading on my phone isn’t an option.
So I’m never going to pet battle on a phone. Not gonna happen. (And, BTW, without Derangement’s, or Pet Tracker, or Rematch? Gimme a break.)
But, you might say, how would that affect me if I continued to play on PC? Well, if it’s PvE, then levelling on a phone has a vast speed advantage if you can instantly “be at” a tamer, or “look for” a wild pet. That makes PC feel bad. If it’s PvP only, the effect on me would be less, and since I barely PvP as it is, I might continue; I’m not sure what knock-on effects they might introduce to make it more mobile-friendly. It would depend.
This will still result in the over use of overpowered pets. Every tryhard will pick Fel-Afflicted Skyfin, Tcs and Hermit Crabs all the time. I already pick teams to counter these pets lol its boring to face these pets all the time for a couple of years non stop. The same bad players running the easiest teams all the time no innovation or regular mix up of the best pets.
The problem is the meta not being changed regularly. When we discuss balancing it always refers to the meta not every single pet.
If the meta was mixed up every patch along with new pvp content then I feel alot more people would engage. The meta could be mixed up by nerfing whatever the top pets were at the time or buffing a few weaker abilities rake is an example of a contender to be buffed.
Ratings would be good if the meta balance was better but at the moment some pets are on a completely different level to most it would be run x comp or lose kinda stuff.
I don’t think the 4 or 5 pet teams would be viable at all. Some games are long enough already if the opponent runs healing specs.
Agreed. And they’re not always the bad ones.
I think that would be more accurately said as: When you discuss balancing you are referring to the top - how many? 10? 20? 50? - PvP pets, not every single pet.
When I use the word balancing, I mean the balancing of all pets. So this difference in definition has caused misunderstandings, though I did finally understand what you meant after a few rounds.
Now, a genuine difference of opinion in values: I am not interested in balancing the top 5, or 10 or 20, pets. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing. I think it would be even gooder if the devs refrained from introducing deliberately overbudgeted abilities and species. /sigh But that’s how they do, when they want to stir things up in a controlled way.
Anyway, as I was saying: I am not interested in balancing the top 5, or 10 or 20, pets. Just … not. It would not get me invested again. I don’t think it would bring many other people in either, but my guess is as bad as yours on that.
I’ve been looking for a meta stats that I think Leo posted? or Ct0? It must be in the old forums somewhere, but I can’t find it. Anyway, it had the same general shape as the one I accumulated in 6.2, so I’ll use my numbers, since the individual pets aren’t important for this point.
Top 5 pets account for 25% of all pets used.
Top 10 pets account for 38% of all pets used.
Top 20 pets account for 50% of all pets used.
Top 50 pets account for 68% of all pets used.
And of the other 1000 pets, about 200 account for 32% of all pets used.
And 800 didn’t appear at all. (Granted, given moveset dupes, you could say that’s only really 400, but still.)
The Top 20 included:
Iron Starlette
Chrominius
Anubisath Idol
Valk
Lil’ Bling
and just missed
EPW
Rabbit
Fel Flame
all pets that, if “balanced” (=nerfed), would have a big impact on PvE.
And then balancing, of whatever number of pets, runs into the problem of True Power vs. Ease of Use, and Familiarity. Ion claimed in one of the Q&As that the devs were faced with many calls to nerf Class X or buff Spec Y, based on community perception, when they knew from their own internal perfect sims and internal testing with their in-house top-class test players, that these specs were already balanced.
Original Graves, and AoE pets in general, are a good example of this in petworld. AOE pets are incredibly easy to play. Drop in a Pyreclaw, and doze until it dies. That won’t be the best possible play, but it will be good enough to do pretty well, and it takes no thought. Bone Serpent was so easy to play as well. So are devs supposed to balance around best play, or nod-as-you-go play, or observed frequency? It’s the same problem. This also relates to the PvE pets.
There are a lot of gremlins hiding behind that innocuous word “balance”.
Anyway, as I say, I don’t want to see the same 20 pets, just with a more even frequency; to be interesting to me, it would have to be a much wider range.
So it’s good that we know we’re not just differing on the means of change, but also on the direction.
The post was on WCP called The August EU Meta dated 31st August 2017.
Its a bit more diverse than yours but had the pet event right in the middle. Daniel mentioned that the BS at the time was around a similar level to what you faced.
I would say immediately the overbudget abilities such as Twilight Meteorite, Jar of Smelly Liquid etc and also the broken statline of Hermit Crab, Slimy Darkhunter etc could be fixed without any problems. These pets simply break the game and cause significant issues.
Other changes would need to be incremental because the developers have let problems stack up for years without being proactive and making changes to abilities as they become issues.
I’d likely look at the weather effects reduce the hp buff from Sunlight from 50% to 25%. Remove the miss chances from Darkness and Sandstorm that is an hangover from the original game design. Buff Mudslide to root on its cast.
Racials would be tweaked too Undead would be a stat reduction not damage. Magic I would drop to 30% per hit or keep at 35% but change to damage in one turn.
I’d remove the second part of Photosynthesis from pets on the backline.
Add cool downs to Nature’s Ward, Dazzling Dance, Immolation, Renewing Mists, Lucky Dance, Shell Sheild and similar abilities.
Allow trap to be dispelled or cleansed defensively and not activate on expiry if it runs the full duration.
Forced swaps would have a speed reduction modifier to always go second.
Powerball speed resets on swapping out.
Remove the speed increase from Righteous Inspiration.
I would also bring into line alot of abilities that are essentially the same but for whatever reason slightly different Shell Armor and Ironskin, Hunting Party and Falcasour Swarm and Banana Barrage and Egg Barrage to name a few.
I still don’t think that all these changes would fix the issues that are currently in the meta but it would be a start in the right direction. Because lots of issues have just stacked up for so long it would have to be a matter of seeing how it played out for a patch then revisiting what’s still not right.
Alas as I feared, the topic of ‘Balance’ has highjacked and dominated the conversation.
God, thats just what Hitler would have done!
topic closed
You mentioned pets being nerfed and the meta being balanced in your OP.
Your idea of RNG pets was not discussed because people would prefer that their decisions made a difference than a roll of a dice.
You’ve opened this subject to the public forum but want to now to close it because people disagree with you? Is this why you the reference a dictator?
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