I go through phases when I just want to collect, and others where i want level.
During pandaria i went around every single day and leveled pretty much my entire roster. Since then… the only way to level is to do the those and the WoD battles flying all over (which ive also done tons of) and then do world quests (which reward stones, but pretty much nothing for non 25 pets that participated in the battle).
Can we change this? Or bring a new way to level? I just dont like how every expac comes out, adds a ton of pets to collect… that just sit there and never get leveled cause they are in a queue of 600+ other lvl 1s. Especially if youre not going to do more pet dungeons etc.
No one wants to do Squirt any more. Please come up with something new for WWI
I do think it’s odd they’ve stated for literally every other part of the game, “We don’t want to make players feel like they need to do past content,” yet here we are with Squirt.
The problem came about because Legion tamers were random, and people complained due to the achievement for Family Familiar. So in BFA they made all the Family Family tamers up 24/7 and repeatable. However, because everything in the game needs a ‘punishment’, they dropped pet xp gains down to (basically) nothing.
I do think it’s time for them to punt the idea of this punishment to the moon where it belongs, and just let people level their pets against whoever they want. They have xp scaling in place, so it’s not like we’ll be getting full xp against a tamer like Setimothes. We have over 1700 unique pets, not to mention duplicates. People need a way to level through those kinds of numbers.
If we have to make a concession, I’d much rather have pet xp than character xp from the battles. Would I prefer both? Yes. I like to passively level my alts through battles. However, it makes way more sense to get xp for your PETS from PET battles than your character.
Since Legion, I have levelled pets almost entirely with Legion Tamers.
Yes, they’re not available 24/7/365, but there is one of the good ones up in Dala an average of 3 days a week, and Snail Fight seems pretty common as a bonus. And then ofc there is also Squirt every two weeks, when you want to schedule some hours in advance to clear a queue.
If you’re not using the Legion Family Tamers to level, you’re missing out!
I usually get around to leveling a new pet within the next few days. That way not a huge and intimidating backlog. With the Pandaria and WoD pet trainer circuit it just takes a few battles and if you use the Safari Hat and Pet Treats two fights will get you from level 1 to 24.
Dragonflight, Shadowlands, and BfA WQs drop various battle stones that can speed up leveling bigtime. They also drop polished pet charms and now even WoD and Legion’s pet charms are the polished ones. 35 of those buy a stone that’ll insta-level a pet to 25.
Compared with the initial early slogs to level a pet when pet battling was first introduced, we have it easy now.
True, but clearly you’ve been leveling over a long period of time. Someone getting into this recently has a ridiculous amount of leveling to do.
I got into pet battles around the time the 1k achievement was introduced, and I didn’t have a garrison because I LOATHED WoD pathfinder and hated not being able to fly. So I leveled mostly through Legion, and as someone who tracks this consistently it’s really obnoxious to wait for the Legion tamers to be up. Like Bredda was up ~ three times this past week, but her fight is horrible for leveling if you don’t have specific pets, and before those pets came out it was just BAD, not to mention Merayl. Durian couldn’t be used because at the time he wasn’t repeatable, so it was mostly Odrogg and a couple of Dalaran ones that were decent.
That said, even with the 1k being the new big goal when I started, it was a tedious process. We want people to get into pet battles and ENJOY doing it at their leisure, not punish them for not keeping up with leveling pets that have been growing in number for over a decade. I don’t understand the boomer mentality of, ‘you kids have it so good these days, stop complaining.’ We need to stop supporting barriers to entry that just further spiral this section of the game into obsolescence. Not everything needs a punishment factor. Just let people have fun.
To be as brief as possible, been there done that.
Ive dont all the leveling methods etc etc.
As Amayita said, why do we have to do old content to effectively level. Also, why must i level 1 pet every day or every other day. Why is there no way for me to actually grind out pet levels when i feel like it, and not be punished when i dont feel like leveling. Doing it daily is chores. I dont want to do chores.
No question at all. I can’t imagine what it’d be like starting from scratch now.
Admit my post was a suggestion to OP, who has 1,500 unique pets and hundreds of them still level 1. Don’t necessarily need to spend hours a day, just level them as you get them, it’s not that hard.
Pet collecting and battling was another brilliant addition to game from Blizzard’s point of view, remember that they want us to spend as much time as possible on our activities as then we’ll need to renew for another month. But just like any WoW playstyle, you need to work at it.
As demonstrated by Amayita’s real-world response (unsubbing the game), the wise player understands that wishing for enjoyment over engagement is merely wishing. Blizzard has ample counter-incentive to make things like leveling pets as time-consuming as they can get away with, with enjoyment considered an acceptable casualty.
We can imagine faster, more efficient, or more enjoyable ways to accomplish many things in WoW, but as long as the balance of business incentives favors grinding, grinding is what we will get.
For all of that, however, it costs nothing to ask. At points in the past, Blizzard has relented for undocumented reasons, and if the request is timed right, it may have some effect.
… “as time consuming as they can get away with”… this is entirely my point. As i mentioned, i put in the grinding in Pandaria, and in WoD. Since Legion i got tired of grinding out levels on pets ill never use on a daily basis and changed to a more ‘when i feel like it’ since i have lots of alts to do all the other aspects of the game.
Whats my point? My point is im saying its past the point they can get away with. It makes me not want to level pets at all. Thus coming here as bring it up. But instead of support and sharing idea of how to solve this outdated problem… you want to shill for blizz by saying “its their business model”… this is why we cant have nice things.
Long as we’re getting personal here, I’ll just admit that I get tired of people going on and on about things that must be changed because they just don’t like to do it the way most everybody else is doing it.
Then because I hate wading through threads where two people argue with each other for weeks, will just drop the subject.
Except their not facts. Not everyone plays the game the same way. Youre just trying to be a jerk cause you cant see beyond the way YOU play. And defending outdated content saying its their business model without any consideration of new paths is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT shilling.
I did all the grinding back in the day. Im tired of it. Id like something new.
Tell me, how much does blizz pay you for shilling? Whats the dollar amount that caused you to be so closed minded to the idea of change at the chance of improvement?
I appreciate honestly. And i can get where youre coming from. I was on board with pet battles from day one. I was their target audience for it, and its gotten to the point where its tedious instead of fun. So i thought id mention something.
As you can see, i dont post often, so i dont think i fall into the “things must be changed cause i want it!” category. Just thought it would something id bring up as im at risk of abandoning this facet of the game, even though id rather not. And pointing out the painpoints is all i can do to help bring light to it.
This whole thread appears to be complaining about leveling while not even looking at the right resources to level efficiently. Flying around is terribly inefficient whether it be the Pandaria loop or the Tanaan Jungle loop. Hell even Squirt isn’t as fast some of the Legion trainers. Squirt also doesn’t provide any character EXP anymore so it doesn’t allow you to double dip and boost an alt while you are clearing up your queue. The Legion trainers are by far the quickest way to level coming from someone who has levelled over 3500 pets.
Rematch with TD Scripts, plus Ultra Squirt where you bind the action key makes it a very easy process
There really isn’t enough of a playerbase into PetBattles to incentivize Blizzard into making substantial changes–not like there is for faster leveling, easier gearing methods, accessibility to dungeons/raids to name a few.
Leveling pets is a chore, it will always be a chore no matter what changes Blizzard makes unless they create a fight where a level 1 pet maxes on one fight. Always a lot of pets to collect then level up. Having “Squirts” in current content will keep you out of older content, but it is still the same grind–same walk, different park.
Or simply maxes their level automagically when you acquire them.
Hunter pets used to require leveling to match the hunter’s level. Now they just level up to match the hunter and keep doing that as the hunter levels up. So there’s indirect precedent.
A good compromise for Blizzard would be to have a “level bracket” based on player level when the pet is acquired, but never able to acquire a pet a max, say 23 like when we catch a pet in the wild.
By level bracket system something like if the player is level 1-10 the pet’s max level to be acquired would be somewhere around 7 and scale from there.
I’ve got a certain amount of sympathy, but I started collecting pets during MOP and keeping up with leveling isn’t that much of a problem.
I started parking alts at various tamers a long time ago. I have an Alliance alt at the garrison to take care of Ashlei. Another outside Gnomer for Environeer Bert. Others are stationed at the tamers in SMV, Uldum, Icecrown and Deadwind pass. And of course Crysa and Anthea (because they drop pets) And once a month at the DMF.
Combine that with all the leveling stones that drop and are available by quests, you have a lot more options that you think.
Flying around is dumb and takes too much time. Once I set up an alt army, it;s stuff I can do at breakfast every morning.
Ohhh I remember those long days of getting a new Hunter pet and having to level it up…don’t forget if you didn’t feed it …it ran away after awhile…never had that happen to me …
With an army of alts you can amass a ton of leveling stones really easy …myself right now sitting on my bank alt she has about 2,500+ different breed leveling stones and different breed rare stones…that’s not counting over 45,000 or so Pet Charms I have right now too.
Like you I have been busy …usually new alts get leveled up by doing pet battles mostly now.