I did read the blue post about the reason for reducing pet experience gained from BfA trainers. But it makes no sense.
Game developers are obviously worried, that players would abuse the fact, that they can now repeat every trainer as many times as they want.
BfA trainer before the nerf gave 2393 xp (with Safari Hat) using level 1 carry pet.
Any Legion trainer gives 3988 xp (with Safari Hat) using level 1 carry pet.
Several Legion trainers are repeatable (for example Tiffany Nelson, Nightwatcher Merayl, Trapper Jarrun and some more). They are not up every day, but on average there is a repeatable trainer up every second day or so.
Knowing this, fighting BfA trainers repeatedly for pet experience would be huge waste of time even before the nerf.
So, unless there is another reason for it, the nerf is a complete nonsense.
The solution for this is very simple: when there is a World Quest active for a particular trainer, don’t make it repeatable and keep normal pet experience. When there is no World Quest, make it repeatable without any pet experience (for achievement hunters or for practising).
With Blizzard, any reasoning in favor of reducing what players can do or the rewards for it is weighted much more than reasoning in favor of increasing the same.
The main reason why is that we pay a monthly sub and so the devs have a big incentive to try and prolong everything.
They reduced the exp rewards because they -removed- the restrictions on that you only can engage bfa trainers with world quests up. To allow people more freedom in finishing family fighter.
Like I said, I did read the blue post. I know we can now engage BfA trainers all the time. I just don’t understand, why they reduced the experience gained.
No sane person would abuse BfA trainers for powerleveling. Sane person would abuse one of many repeatable trainers in Legion for almost double pet experience.
Not sure, i only resubbed yesterday so haven’t really had chance to check everything out.
I know wild battles seem unaffected at least, as i was messing around at mistfall village earlier and that was still fine. I’m going to try knock off a few more pet achieves i’m missing in the next few days, so i’ll post if i find anything else.
I used to level pets during the pet battle week, using the BfA pet battle world quests.
But now that will probably take 40-50 fights to get a pet from 1 to 25, so that is out of the question.
So what is the best way to level the pets now, when the BfA tamer xp has been nerfed completely into the ground?
BTW, I suspect this is not simple. Simple to think about, maybe; but there could be more moving parts to implement it.
As I understand it, the XP given to a pet or pets completing a battle is calculated by one core routine, that takes various things as inputs: levels, buffs, the XP multiplier of the tamer, and applies the calculated XP gain to the pet or pets that have earned it.
And this exact same routine works in every pet battle in the game.
Now, they could of course fork or modify this routine specifically for BfA battles. Create a version that rewards XP only if the player is holding the associated World Quest or something. Then go back and modify all the other battles in the game to set this new input. But I suspect they didn’t want to open up a subsystem that is already working perfectly, and make corresponding changes all over the place. (I can complain about bugs elsewhere in battles, but this one is solid as a rock.)
Since some Legion WQ are repeatable, maybe allowing us to repeat BfA tamers with XP when their WQ are up, but not battle them at other times might have been an alternative solution. But they did get a lot of flak about people waiting for quests back in Legion …
I’m not sure they got the ideal answer, but I have no problem with it. Tamer battles have been over-rewarding us since Mists, and we have plenty of sources of pet XP.
I do agree that we have planty of sources of pet experience. The main source being mindless repeating of the same Legion trainer (or Squirt in garrison) over and over again.
When they first introduced the Family Familiar achievement, players complained that it took too much time to complete. So after some time they came up with a solution and made all trainers needed for the achievement repeatable. They are not all up the whole time like BfA trainers, but when they are up, you can do them as many times you want. And you will get full pet XP every time. Since then, it is exploited by players (and gold farmers) to power level pets to level 25. And this is obviously fine and not a problem for Blizzard.
Now they make a new version for the same achievement but suddenly they think it is a problem to give pet XP for every battle, even if it is only 60% of Legion amount. I simply can’t comprehend that.
I am so angry about this change, because I am not a person who could repeat the same pet battle endlessly for hours. I would die from boredom.
I like to level my pets slowly just by doing world quests and daily quests. I like the process of finding out what startegy is best, which pets are best for any particular trainer and how to beat it as fast as possible with lowest possible carry pet.
If you always fight with carry pet in your team, then there is no such thing as perfect strategy. There is always room for improovement, there is a purpose for new pets. There is fun in pet battles, it is like solving a puzzle. It is rewarding after you first make it with carry pet and it is rewarding again when you find a better way to do it.
It is all gone now for BfA trainers. For no reason I could understand.
I don’t know anymore than any of you, but I’ve got an idea.
The different experience during a WQ period could be possible if they duplicated the tamers and phased them out. (Sort of like Erris and Kura are done to have one of five teams.) There could be a couple of problems, such as making sure both versions grant credit for the achievement, selecting proper target for the WQ, aswell as possible weirdness happening during the reset, but that does not look like something which can’t be overcome.
Why are you so focused on Squirt? There are 15 repeatable trainers in Legion (14 with full pet experience). At least half of them you can beat with level 1 carry pet and on average you will have one of those trainers up every second day or so.
And often they are similary fast as Squirt - for example Odrogg or Aulier you can do under 90 seconds. Those two were up sofar during this pet battle bonus week, which means you can level 20 pets from level 1 to level 25 in one hour. You don’t need to wait for Squirt.
I mentioned Squirt first, and then the others. You’re right that Squirt is no longer the be-all and end-all though. I just caught Odrogg and levelled a dozen or so of my latest acquisitions.
You are also right that it is boring. Repeating Squirt is boring. Repeating Odrogg was boring. Fast and effective, though.
I went through the mill of levelling nearly all of my - I think it was about 600 then - pets back in Mists, with wild battles and just the Pandaria tamers, and while it was a long grind, it felt better than standing in one place making the same moves over and over. I imagine a lot of people use that botting addon for it now. I still get a hit of nostalgia when I decide to one-off level a new pet, and fly the Pandaria route again.
I’m sorry you lost BfA as a source of pet XP. You must be still in the phase of enjoying thinking about what’s happening in each battle. I had forgotten about that. Perhaps the devs did too.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")