View the original post here. Opening up for player feedback on topic of updates to Pet Battling system & materials shared in post. OP From WoW Community Council.
Hey all!
Wanted to share my feedback on my favorite system in the game. It’s the longest-lasting evergreen system, yet it remains virtually untouched since its introduction in 2012 - with over ten years of dormancy, I think it’s important to talk about updates!
Who are you to talk about pets and battling them?
Calm down there buster! My experience with pet battling includes owning over 1,700 pets pre-TWW; placing me top 1,000 US pet collectors and top 50 for Area-52. I have collected many of the hardest pets to get in the game, I contribute to WoWHead on guides and posts, and (yes) I battle pets. The fact is - I have spent a gross amount of time with the pet system in WoW. I am not ashamed - and if I keep saying that I can sleep easy at night.
Okay, who cares?
You should care! Pet battling in WoW is a core example of what makes the game great. Here’s why I think this:
It’s a completely optional system, not connected to player gearing or strength progression.
It connects a player to the world. As much as we now look to the skies with advanced flying; pet collecting has players looking down - noticing the small critters and wildlife in an area.
It provides another reward structure outside of gear, gold, and reputation.
It’s just good, wholesome, casual fun. Oftentimes it is legitimately challenging and is like a puzzle the player must figure out. Even if you don’t battle, many of the pets are just entertaining and… fun! The art and animation teams really show their strength in the pets they make!
It aids in creating player identity. Many role-players in WoW just want a small degree of escapism when playing video games. This can be as simple as being a “duck wrangler” or cat/dog owner - which is entirely possible through the pet system!
((It probably makes Blizzard money, like, the store has a bunch of pets and they all cost quite a bit. I assume Blizzard likes money, money is good, yeah? Let’s make money, badda-bing-badda-boom … stock price go to moon, everyone happy? ROI??))
Okay fine, what now?
Well, here are a few upgrades that I think would help!
Create “double battles.” I mean, it was pretty awesome for Pokémon. Yoink? Maybe some exclusive trainers in the world insist on using two pets at a time!
Make more “un-cageable” pets. A crazy amount (like 70%+) of the current pets in the game can be bought on the AH. This is fine and all, but maybe more pets where people have to earn the pet is cool too. It creates more diversification between people who grind out pets vs buy them. Also - it creates a kinda’ cool backstory for having one!
“Shiny” pets, or pets that are not unique pet entries by collection standards but just reskins of the same pet that are hyper-rare alternatives to what exists. Also, skins may need-not be rare; but something as simple as buying a costume for a dog, or giving “Ikky” a general’s outfit… as it deserves! /salute
More advanced feedback on the system can be found here. I’ve tried to keep my suggestions separate from the great ones shown there. The article by Anshlun is really well written and every item has me saying “OMG that’s awesome”. Check it out!
Do you realize you’ve been talking to yourself? Like, you’re asking this question…"
What are you talking about? Stick to the script, come on.
Sorry, any last thoughts?
No worries, and yes! Pet collecting & battling is a new player-friendly, well-designed, long-lasting optional progression system that entertains players across the game from role-players in Goldshire to CE raiders outside a green whirling portal. It is the most expansive “evergreen” system WoW has - and the team has shown to care about these going forward. Yet, it remains virtually untouched since its induction in 2012 (MoP). I really hope some love is given to this system in The War Within!
Okay now go read the article I mentioned above here. I swear it’s worth it, it has images! We love images.
These already kinda exist in the form of rare-spawn color variants for some wild pets. The spawn rates can be relatively low, so they’re something you usually need to go out of your way to find. I do enjoy the hunt for these elusive pets, except when it’s a rarespawn ON TOP of having a rare color big oof (glares at Deepridger)
List of wild pets that come in more than one skin: https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/filter/?all=AltSkins,Y,Wild,Y#
There are also a handful of non-wild pets that can come in more than one appearance, but I’m a hard advocate against non-wild pets coming in multiple looks. With non-wild pets there’s too much RNG and less player agency to make collecting alternate skins fun IMO.
List of non-wild pets that come in more than one skin: https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/filter/?all=AltSkins,Y,Wild,N#
With how development seems more focused on more + faster patches, I’d be ok with just the next installment of Raiding With Leashes and Family Familiar at the very least. I believe the latter is already in the works for TWW though.
Side note: The Wowhead feedback article you linked is actually written by Flip_Method, an avid battler and collector, but shared on Wowhead by Anshlun (thanks to DragonsAfterDark for pointing this out)
P.S. up front. I saw that Wowhead article posted again, and wanted to respond to it. But I entirely skipped over your suggestions, which was rude. I’m sorry. Here are my comments on your suggestions.
Create “double battles.”
I don’t have any idea how this would work. I looked it up as it exists in Pokémon, since I know nothing about that. I find it hard to get my head around how that would play out in WoW, but I can see it might be interesting,
Make more “un-cageable” pets.
I agree with this, though I would perhaps reformulate it a bit. In every expansion and major patch, I make a beeline to collect the new wild pets. I really, really enjoyed collecting the wild pets back in Mists, and I still really really enjoy capturing wild pets as they are introduced. The devs introduce far too many pets as rewards for things completely unrelated to pet battling, which provide no pet battle gameplay at all.
“Shiny” pets.
Quintessence has already covered this, and I agree.
I can’t let a suggestion thread pass without adding my own most desired feature: an evergreen tamer who offers a different, and randomised, battle each day. The tamer would use the same three 25 Rare or Epic versions of existing species all day, but in each battle would change the order and moveset used. The next day, the tamer uses three different species.
I would like the same time constraints that are used in PvP to be used here, as a way to introduce players to the mechanism, but that is not essential.
I wrote a response to that on the EU forums last August. I copy it here:
There is a new article on Wowhead, which contains a wish-list for pet battles.
The article is very well put together, with very nice illustrations. However, I disagree strongly with some of the actual suggestions. I don’t have the time to write up and illustrate an equivalent response, but I can make brief comments on each of the suggestions.
I list the suggestions from the article below, with my omments.
“More Frequent Balance Changes”
Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Not that!!!
The underlying general problem is a hard one. “Balance” cannot be attained in pet battles, given the base of species, abilities, and breeds that we have. If you don’t believe it, pick 10 random species and try to balance them by changing their movesets and base stats.
The devs recognise this, and don’t intend to try to make pet battling, and specifically PvP, into a competitive game (Hazelnutty pre-BfA interview with Muffinus 2018) so balancing tightly is not important.
This brings me back to arguments I used to have with Rosqo. I agreed with him that frequent balance changes would disrupt the stultifying PvP meta, but it would destroy PvE, since strategies would be broken with every change, and few people keep up with pet mechanics enough to cope.
Even more important, we get to know our pets - at least the ones we use often - and what their abilities can do. I don’t want to have to keep re-acquainting myself with them, and finding my favourites don’t work as they used to.
As it is, the devs make a few changes for the most broken imbalances (but WHAT was that Sandstorm buff supposed to do??) once per expansion, and that’s about the right cadence.
I believe frequent changes would degrade the whole game past playing. I’d, sadly, be out, I’m sure.
“Adding Gear Slots for Each Pet”
“Stat-Up Use item”
These are two of the genre of “Power-Up” ideas. Putting aside the extra complications of building and managing such an extra system, it adds unpredictability and difficulty to pets themselves in PvP. It also completely destroys balance and consistency in regular PvE strats.
“Elective Mode - Remove the either-or Pick for Abilities”
The distribution of abilities to slots is part of the balancing of pets. The Teroclaw Hatchling and the Bone Serpent are two examples of OP pets the devs nerfed by rearranging the slots. If we could rearrange the abilities so that we weren’t forced to choose between two good options, some pets would go from “good” to “God” in 2.3 seconds. Others would not benefit much. It would increase the power differences wildly, and add further problems for what balance there is.
“Pet Battler Society Reputation - Fame”
I’m not entirely clear on the details of this one, so I take it as a suggestion for a general direction to add a seasonal earning system similar to Conquest/Valor, encompassing PvE and PvP.
Personally, I don’t like “seasons”; they are just a mechanism to inject extra FOMO into the game. And, of course, once the devs introduce such a system, they have to keep it up in future. But putting that aside, I’m not sure what seasons would add to pet battling and collecting.
“Passive Leveling from The Stable, and Summoned Companion Leveling”
This doesn’t affect me personally, but it does mess up the curve for people starting. People who are starting, or who don’t even battle at all, get free levelling. It is vastly easier to level now than it has ever been, and the devs gave a huge buff to XP just recentlu. I don’t think we need free levelling.
“Pet/Trainer Auras”
Glows, shines, and other cosmetic effects would be nice, but I’m not personally chasing it too hard.
“Faster and more Dynamic Battle Animations”
Several people have asked specifically to have battle animations significantly shortened or even removed altogether to make battles faster. I’ve never felt that this was necessary. I enjoy being in a battle - well done, original devs! - and I’m never in a rush to get out of it.
Making the animations more flashy, adding more sounds, booming announcer voices, would probably actually militate against making them faster. I don’t particularly want changes in this area, but whether changes would be good or bad would depend on the changes themselves.
“More Music in the Battles”
NOOOOOOOO!! I love the pet battle music! If the devs want to add options for alternative music, I have no objection, of course.
“Let Color Variants Feel More Exciting”
Highlighting variants does seem like a nice idea.
“Show Skins/Color Variants on the AH”
There aren’t many cageable pets with variants, but adding a display on ths auction line would be nice and wouldn’t hurt anything. However, since we can already view the variant, and since different variants aren’t stacked, it’s just a matter of convenience.
“Make Parts of the Add-on Rematch Part of the Default UI”
I don’t really have a comment on this. I love Rematch, ofc. and consider it essential. The devs did a UI revamp recently. Maybe they will follow it up by a pet UI change.
“Experience as a Secondary Way to Increase Rarity”
People suggested this since the start of pet battles. In older days, Blue stones were very rare, and an alternative way to increase the Rarity would have been very valuable. Nowadays, with Blue stones so cheap, I don’t see a strong reason to add rarity levelling as well.
"Ground Mounts set as a “background”
I have no feeling about this. I wouldn’t use it, but I don’t object to the option.
“Allow Flying/Underwater Captures”
I love this suggestion, especially if the new captures include many, many new wild pets to be captured. Underwater, at least - I’m not sure how practical flying battles would be.
“Incentives for Same-Type Teams”
The idea to add a buff when using a Family team sounds plausible, but I can;t think what it should be. The examples given are tiny, like +3% damage or +1% Speed, and I don’t see that they would make any difference. OTOH, if you crank them up too far, they become a mandatory meta. I’d have to see a concrete set of suggestions to give any useful comment.
“Rebalance the Racials”
My standard question to anyone suggesting a rebalancing is: what exactly do you suggest? The nerf to the Undead racial was successful, and removed the family as an outlier. Maybe Aquatics and Crickets could use a small buff? But again, we’d have to kick specific numbers around the community in discussion to get a clear view.
“Battle Tower or Tournament”
This is like an extension of the dungeons, with RNG tamers. IF we had a pleasant environment, which the dungeons after the CT definitely did not, I wouldn’t hate it, but the specified targets seem uninteresting
Like every seasoned battler, I have teams saved for every battle in the game - multiple teams, in many cases. Face me with Mari or Cymre and I don’t even have to think. It’s not interesting.
The no-heal condition, together with an unknown gauntlet of opponents, is an addition, but I’m not sure it’s a good one here. First, we can ofc do the logout->bandage->login sequence. I’ve never been sure whether Blizzard added that deliberately, or whether it’s a bug, but either way it nullifies the no-heal constraint. But then, suppose that loophole is closed, what is the effect? Personally, I have three of most of the most used pets, but it is certainly a disadvantage for people who prefer to keep just one.
“Raid-style Battle or Multiplayer”
Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Not that!!!
I understand that the idea sounds cool. It does to me as well. But do you really want to PuG a party to do a pet battle? and then give instructions to the members, and find halfway through that someone doesn’t have the Microbot yoiu need?
LF3M FOR PET GROUP. WILL INSPECT FOR PETSCORE. S/S FIMP REQ!!!
“Questlines or Dailies from Pets”
OK, that’s a pretty safe suggestion. I liked the Little Scales questline, and would welcome more.
“Glimmerogg Snail Racing Pets Showcase”
It was an interesting idea here, and, again, I would like to see more of it.
“A New Celestial Tournament or New Contenders”
The Celestial Tournament was the high point of pet battling, AFAIAC. Beautiful, especially since I was approaching it with a starter roster of pets. An eternal perfect Sunday afternoon. Ahhh, good times. I was so nervous.
But I don’t see adding more contenders as a thing to do to this grand old institution. I would certainly enjoy a new tournament, in a similarly glorious ambiance, but that’s what the dungeons were, minus the pleasant environment.
“Better Weeklies”
Well, yes. The random minor challenges for the Trading post, like beat the Reach legendaries with a team of two Dragonkin, are pleasant, and challenges like “Defeat the celestial battle with pets from BFA and Dragonflight only” also sound interesting. Blizzard would have to keep coming up with new ones, though.
“New Cages”
I have no comment on this.I have no objection, but would not use it.
“Incentives to Battle Trainers”
I’m not especially keen on the suggestions. Limiting the number of characters on which we can do dailies doesn’t seem like it will make anyone happy. Pseudo-Teleports to tamers might be popular with some people who are farming them, but to me it removes the situatedness of the tamers. I don’t visit Nishi often these days, but I always enjoy the journey when I do. It also takes from the value of the battle.
“New Pet Incentivized Battles”
This is a variant of an idea that has been kicking around doever for PvP. Essentially, put a CD on pets so that after you use one in a tournament or PvP battle, you can’t use it again for some period. It sounds good in the abstract. but I remember a thread where a couple of us kicked around possible CDs to be used in PvP, and we could not arrive at a satisfying answer. Similarly, I think, it would be hard to find a satisfying CD system for dungeons or tournaments. But if someone laid out some specifics I’d be open to look at it.
“Recapture Wild Pets for Additional Rewards”
I see the idea, but find it unconvincing. I would also fear the case where a quest sends everyone to some area to capture a Rare of a pet found in a small area.
“Lore Book”
Nice idea, if they can space someone who can write engaging stories and verse. The Frostwolf Ghostpup always gets me.
“PvP Queue Button Highlight”
I think the current placing for the button is fine.
“PvP Communication”
As ao option, I have no objection. I wouldn’t bother using it myself.
“PvP Queue Failsafe”
Falling back to an existing PvE battle, but being held to the team you queued for PvP with sounds … interesting. It’s not impossible, but I don’t see it working. If we had an “AI” opponent, then sure.
“Weekly of “Kill 30 Opposing Pets in PvP” instead of “Win 10 Matches””
I think this was my idea originally, though it’s obvious enough that anyone might think of it. I started plugging it in Legion. It would help new PvP players, who can easily get creamed a dozen times without scoring one win. That’s discouraging. Every pet they kill along the way would at least move them a bit forward.
“Customize Battle Animations”
I have no opinion on this, but no objection as an option.
“Battlefield Standard”
This has been kicking around a long time. It has been suggested as a reward for some number of PvP wins.
“Pick/Ban System for PvP Matches/Ranked PvP matches”
This runs into the General PvP Problem, which has been much discussed.
“Pet Battle Mobile App”
For PvP, I don’t mind, though I’d hate to have to do PvP without Derangement’s and other addons, but I strongly object for PvE, where eliminating travel time would make it mandatory.
“Ladder Tracking”
This runs into the General PvP Problem, which has been much discussed.
Quintessence and Gráinne have added many fine points to the topic and are both valued member of the Pet community. There isn’t much I can add to what they stated that I didn’t write and make graphics for in the origional wowhead article that Ashlun was so kind to copyedit and post.
When it comes to the topic of “shinies” which I prefer to call “variants” as in wow they have alternate models or things like eyepatches in addition to or instead of being a different color. I made a youtube video on my thoughts on the subject: https://youtu.be/5_sbYA17CE8
I think the larger topic is getting the powers that be to perceive Pets and associated content as more than a maintence mode side game. From many reports we know Blizz tracks data on what players engauge with and then invest resources more into those aspects. If we use Pet dungeons as an examaple which probably have a very low heat map index, it seems like players are not interested in pets. But thats a misnomer, as it the rewards structure that keeps players from repeat enguaging. You run the pet dungeon a few weeks, collect all the pets and never need to go back for any reason. So there is no reason for players to farm it in mass all season. This is true for most pet content. One and done. Which is nice and why most people enjoy the system. But it makes the player enguagment numbers probably look terrible.
So I think Elfyr’s Orgional Title for this thread is very on point. Untouched since 2012, their inception. The PVP weekly still rewards a chance at MoP crafting mats and the Ui for a battle is the oldest ui that we are using on a day to day basis. I agree with Every Op said. It’s a great system that could be one of wow’s great assets, if it were worked on or updated in any way.
I would find this insanely unfun. It only “works” (I use that loosely as there are people like me who despise them) in Pokemon because GameFreak develops Pokemon, Movesets, etc. specifically for Double Battles. The game is not balanced around singles. Their official eSport format is doubles, and as such, all tuning and balancing is meant for Doubles.
Considering they can’t even get tuning/balancing right in WoW pet battles for Singles, Doubles would be catastrophically bad and a waste of development time, IMO.
I actually disagree with this. Especially with RNG pets. We lost one of the biggest pet battle contributors because the final nail in the coffin (according to their posts) was the fact they did Hallow’s End on all of their toons every single day and never got Arfus.
Whereas, if Arfus had been made cageable, they could have bought it, or one of us could have gifted it to them.
Making pets uncageable takes away from the “community” in Pet Battles. I truthfully believ every single pet that isn’t a wild pet should be made cageable to encourage community building through trading, buying, and selling.
And you might say “What about achievement rewards?” - Nope, those too. There are tens/hundreds of thousands of players who do not use pets, and would gladly sell or even gift the achievement pets to friends or the AH.
A good example of this are the Honor 400 pets. Most PvPers do not care about pets and would 1000% sell them. Whereas, most pet battlers gave up on ever getting them and just added them to the “never” list.
Quin pointed this out, these already exist, they just aren’t really advertised.
Re: DragonsAfterDark, the Pet Battle creator that quit, their sub JUST ran out and they don’t plan to return, AFAIK. They posted a reply on twitter that I wanted to post here for visibility:
Also, my notes on the wowhead article as well, I agree with Grainne on everything except those quoted:
This would be great, if they can do it right.
The only real balance changes they’ve made in the past is dismantling combinations players came up with that made monotonous things (like farming RNG pet drops) easier. I do not like those types of things.
Instead of dismantling the strategy, they are more than capable of building fights that the strategies can’t beat. They proved this with the Black Claw/Flock thing, as the patch before they removed it, all of the pet battles introduced were not beatable with it.
If it’s PURELY cosmetic, sure. If it gives any form of battle advantage, no. That would create the same issue as Gear Slots.
I do believe epic pets should never occur - unless they are limited to specific pets and those pets ONLY come in epic, and can’t be used in PvP. Same with Legendary.
However, more ways to upgrade from Grey - White - Green - Blue would be great.
I know some pet collecting games like this allow you to “Fuse” two of the same pet to increase the rarity of the first one. And I know of others that allow you to farm EXP at max level to increase rarity.
Building on these, I’ve always wondered why we don’t have dailies/weeklies from an NPC to catch specific wild pets, (which don’t enter our pet journal, as they’d be considered quest items, to prevent the NPC from taking our actual pets), for rewards like pet stones and charms.
They spent a lot of time on the pet catching system, but most people barely use it once they catch everything.
I would prefer it not focus on PvP, as I believe the vast majority of players would.
Something like:
“Defeat 10 Pet Battle Tamers around the World, or participate in 20 PvP Pet Battles.”
That way there’s options. The reward also needs to be looked at. A single +25 level stone is such a poor reward for the amount of effort required.
And finally a few statements:
Why are we not getting new Raiding with Leashes? The last one we got was in Patch 8.1.5, which was OVER FIVE YEARS AGO.
These are not hard to make. You literally just tie (mostly recolored) pets to existing raid bosses and add a meta achievement. This is the simplest way to give pet battlers more content and it’s going ignored.
There’s also obvious meta rewards for certain expansions, such as Ruby Roo for WoD.
I fully believe they need to give Pet Battlers rewards that actually have a use. I love pets, but let’s be honest - most players don’t really look at what pet someone has out.
For instance, I believe some "Collect X Unique Pets’ achievements should reward us with a mount. Something much more flashy than a pet that is often overlooked by people. Mounts that are thematic, like for instance, the Storm Crow mount people have coveted since it was added in the datafiles almost a decade ago - it would make sense as one of the first pet battle collecting rewards is a pet version of it.
A lot of people also want a mount that shows off their active battle team, and I don’t think it’d be that hard to create. Yes, there’d be clipping issues for some pets, but I think we could live with that.
A lot of people also want an ability to summon all 3 of your active battle team at once. The fact there isn’t one yet is really weird.
The ability to Track Critters should also be a Pet Battle Reward, as sometimes we have to kill critters to force spawn battle pets, and Track Critters would help find those critters immensely.
Bring Back Pet Dungeons.
The reasoning we got for why they stopped is lack of participation, but a simple look at wowhead shows Pet Dungeons had as much engagement as Heroic Raids, and way more engagement than Mythic Raids, and yet Mythic Raids are still being developed.
This is a classic case of Blizzard treating Pet Battle players as second class and saying that their part of the game “doesn’t matter as much” - even when it has more engagement.
Stop adding Pet Charm sinks.
Listen. I understand some people do WQs and mission tables every day have have hundreds of thousands of charms.
However, by adding pets that cost 5,000 charms, 10,000 charms, etc. all you’re doing is punishing the 99% because of the 1%, and allowing the 1% to profit off the 99% by selling said pets to them. Regular WoW Goldsinks do not punish the 99%, because they are entirely cosmetic, and not something as integral to that part of the game like a pet in a collector’s collection. They also prevent the 1% from profiting from the 99% by making everything BoP.
I fully believe (I know this is controversial) - EVERY expansion should start a new pet charm currency. Make Polished Pet Charms the “catch all” that is used for old expansion vendors.
For instance, if WW came out and they introduced “Deep Pet Charm” or something. All WW Pet Charm stuff would use Deep Pet Charms.
But once Midnight arrived, Deep Pet Charms would be removed and you would be given Polished Pet Charms in return, and all WW vendors/etc. would use Polished Pet Charms.
Then Midnight would introduce the next Pet Charm, and so on.
This prevents stockpilers from ruining collecting for the vast majority - while keeping intact the ability for the stockpilers to buy anything they were originally saving up for.
It would also stop people from stockpiling charms the expansion before to immediately buy everything on launch day.
I am of the pessimistic belief that any major systems update for pet battles is not really in the cards given Blizzard’s apparent priorities. Therefore, I’ll offer my wishlist of what I deem reasonable/feasible (not that I consider the feedback given in this thread thus far to be unreasonable.)
Interface improvements.
A) Saved teams.
I am aware that there are addons for this feature, but it would be nice to have it baseline, regardless of how limited it may be.
B) Toggleable auto-summoning
I would like the ability to toggle the auto-summoning that occurs when moving a pet into the first battle slot.
C) Summoning all 3 pets
As Maizou had said, I am surprised that this isn’t a thing. If visual clutter is a concern, then perhaps have it be tied to a toy earned from pet battling (preferably with a reasonable cooldown/duration.)
Pet release cadence
A) Adding more wild pets in old zones
Kind of like how the Unborn Val’kyr was added to Northrend zones back in 5.3 (I think?), I’d like to see some new, possibly rare, pets added to old zones to find and catch. This would provide access to several currently uncollectable models in tandem with my following point.
B) New RWL tier
I can’t really add more than what has already been said.
Balancing and quality control
A) More frequent balance updates
I am of the belief that frequent updates do create chaotic environments, but also prevent staleness (is that even a word?) and alleviates problematic metas. At most, I would ask for a pass (not necessarily sweeping changes) every numbered patch (x.1, x.2, etc.) I for one could not have imagined dealing with a Murkalot or Graves meta for an entire expansion. I am also rather done with the current trend of weather nukes competing with aoe shenanigans.
B) Quality control of released pets
While I certainly would like to see more varied movesets on new pets, I primarily want to talk about DF’s shocking number of pets that were released unfinished. Sorry to everyone who has heard me bellyache about this before, and those who may have to now.
a) Crystalline Mini-Monster- Uses the Draenor ravagers’ moveset.
b) Violet Violence- Is in the Beast family despite clearly being an elemental.
c) Doomrubble- Uses the Wretched Servant’s moveset.
d) Jeepers- Uses Reek’s moveset, although they are both Old God spawn, so it does still fit.
e) Killbot 9000- Uses the Microbot XD’s moveset. They are both Mechagon constructs, so it does somewhat fit.
f) N’Ruby- Is in the Magic family despite being an undead spider. Also uses the Nerubian Swarmer’s moveset, but it still fits rather well.
g) Obsidian Warwhelp- Uses the Timeless Mechanical Dragonling’s moveset.
Loving this feedback! There’s far too much for me to respond to so I’ll pick out a few things. But overall let’s keep the conversation going, I think this feedback is helpful for an eventual update to the Pet Battling system
Apologies for accrediting the Wowhead article to the wrong person, I have edited the OP on the WoW Community Council page to reflect this.
I found out late that there are other reskins of pets in the game, and mentioned it in the comment but not in the OP on the WCC post. It’s great those are there but I think we all agree that some notification to the player that a rare variant is before them, or captured would be cool. Like a little star, a “variant” tag (as the article suggests), or a cool background to the pet card. (But also, more rare pet variants would be dope - or some in costumes! I’m thinking of inspiration from Pikachu - surfing/in pyjamas/etc. etc.).
I still think that having some pets where players have to earn the pet legitimately is a good thing. I understand that RNG is a cruel mistress, but it’s kinda’ a cornerstone of MMORPG games to do the thing and eventually get it. I think with Arfus the issue wasn’t necessarily it was untradable it was that it was so immensely rare on a time-gated event - failure meant losing far time than losing out on any other pet. However, I think the point that pets could be a free-market-type of more relaxed openly tradable collection/minigame is also something people may like currently. Maybe the balance is pretty good right now?
I agree with Gráinne that we don’t need more frequent balance changes, it’s a fun puzzle-solving system as is right now. I also think adding gear slots & Stat-up items aren’t necessarily needed. Also a “Raid-style Battle or Multiplayer” could work… but I wouldn’t really want to team up with people I think… maybe optional - maybe like the design philosophy of delves in a way.
You all have changed some of my opinions on some of these changes - keep it up! happy to hear more as it comes! It’s really my goal on the WCC this year to get pet-battling feedback heard.
Overall I think we can all agree that some updates need to happen - and even if it was just 5% of what people suggested - say new UI, fancier pet cards, reskins, and maybe a new pet family - we’d probably be super happy
(Sorry for any typos, wanted to respond before I go to bed tonight) <3
I like the idea of costumes the user can apply at will, but with each new model we also see more work being placed on the designers to make sure the hat fits on right, or the ninja swords and banadana aren’t 10% the size they are supposed to be for 6 years before they get fixed. “Young Mutant Wartortle” was broken like that for that amount of time. Which Is why in my origional article I mentioned the idea of Auras similar to weapon enhancments in the transmogs. A visual spell that would be applied over the pet and would work for all pets, not just the “perky pug”.
If the intent is for a variant to just be the same pet with a surboard on it etc. that tech allready exists. We have many pets in that category currently who not only are different in color but different in sprite as well. Would it be cooler if the difference was larger and wildly more noticable like wearing pajamas though? Heck yeah!
The balance is irregular. Some good/perfect examples and some not. So it’s not fair to say the system is perfect when it seems that the decision of what pet is cagable and what pet isn’t seems to be on a whim by whatever person happens to be working that day over the last decade.
I think a perfect example of a non-cagable design for me is Trashy from Conjuror Margoss. This is a pet you have to engauge with the system, grind it out and recieve to accomplishment of obtainiong the pet. There is nothing preventing you the player from getting the pet other than time investment.
An example of a Cageble pet I dont agree with them being cageable is almost every pet from the pet dungeons. Want to have all the Pets from pet dungeons? Buy a wow token and then buy them all on the auction house. Takes seconds you never had to play the game, enguage with pets or any player. Completly devaules the accomplishment of getting the pet.
When it comes to Arfus and other time limited pets coming down to rng. Some solutions could be making them tradeable only after the event. or at least tradebale to others in your party /tradable during the first 4 hours of getting the drop / (other system of trading) during the event. Some people could get multiple during the event due to luck, end up deleting them from thier bags, while others quit the game over not obtaining one.
I disagree, Balance changes barely come ever if at all. Right now 2 weather moves dominate, all other weather moves pale in comparison. If an ability is severly undertuned or overtuned at the end of an expansion, then you cannot expect a fix, or even someone to look at it for 2 years. Some pets stay mechanically broken for years ((timeless mechanical dragonling’s time bomb or Blinky’s Mana Flare)) because nobody seems to be ever doing passes on moves to make sure they are balanced or even working properly. I propose the idea that if at Dragonflight’s launch till it’s completion not a single class had any change to it’s play at all. Would the players enjoy this?
Would 6 moves changing per year really be so terrible to PVE? Are stratedgies being updated semi regularly a bad thing? I never fear change. It allows me to play the game with a fresh perspective and grants me an opportunity to find new ways of accomplishing my goal.
This is often listed as an unpopular idea as stat squish. Yes people don’t like taking all the existing strats out and making new ones. but is doing that once every 12 or 16 years such a crime? It is one more thing to manage sure. So are Hero Talents. Learning new things in the game every once in a while is what keeps it fun. Some choices for these items might be VERY easy to get older items. Perhaps the item that is best for your pet in slot 1 is some old classic recipe food that sells for 1 copper on the AH. Thematically pets love your old food scraps. Or maybe that ring from 4 seasons ago you “dont use anymore”.
Yes, I agree. But it would have to be a roundtable discussion I think. Do players enjoy multiplayer and group play? Sure. Should there be a way to opt out and it take longer to grind or be more diffucult solo? Should it require team play like a raid or should it be more like a world boss and just spawn+require enough people to show up for the task, or maybe it works like the soup event and has you going out to do different tasks, maybe its like the Strangelthorn fishing contest and it has player competing for who can capture the most pets in a certain zone, perhaps iit works like the delves and uses the airlock tech+difficultly level scaling? I think Multiplayer could work it just has to be an open discussion of the best way to implement it with later gathering data from some alpha and playtest groups.
I’d settle for a non m.o.p action bar!
War within or Midnight would be perfect for this if following the style of many other games. Normally when following a type balance wheel it can be hard to fit in a new type without disrupting strong vs. weak cycles. What most games that have low dev count and resource time do is introduce two additional types that are strong vs. weak only to each other. In our case it would be a perfect time to introduce Light or Life Type and Dark or Void type. Take some of the existing pets to be reclassified if Light/Void suits them better and make almost all the new pets from the current expansions be of the newer types. Breathes a fresh air into the game while being pretty low on the amount of dev time it takes to implement.
Yes, The real goal of my origonal post was to get people talking. Small conversations are the building blocks on which change can happen. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world love pets and battle pets they just want “more” from them.
Nah it’d be fine of course, I moreso meant that it wouldn’t be a “dealbreaker” if no balancing happened in the World Soul Saga. Meaning I’d be okay with sticking with AOE & Clone Dance for awhile as new stuff was added. But yeah a minor buff to some weather & racials would be welcome eventually if done in small waves. I think my main concern is a massive sweeping overhaul of abilities and racials that completely turns things upside down - maybe for the better! But the grass isn’t always greener…
We need a passive way to level pets. There far to many in the game now, why can’t your current active pet companion gain exp out in the world while you do activities?
Glad to see pet battle updates getting some attention.
Take everything that I have to say with a grain of salt since I haven’t seriously pet battled since BFA. Before that I PvP pet battled regularly.
Thanks Flip Method for such a great guide! Here’s my opinion on some of your points.
More Frequent Balance Changes
Yes please. There have always been OP pets and move sets. In the early days of pet battles these were fixed much more frequently, usually patch to patch, sometimes mid-patch. The Flayer Youngling (Reflect), Clockwork Gnome, later the Direhorn, Unborn Val’kyr, DAH, Graves, and many more were nerfed. There’s always gonna be some powerful pets, but when the community agrees that pets are OP they used to change them. I wish we could go back to that (sandstorm and darkness I’m looking at you). Like mentioned above, fixing a move or moving around some slots on a couple of pets isn’t gonna throw PvE off by too much.
Stat-Up Use item
My initial reaction is no, that’ll lead to some OP pets. After further thought that might be a good way to counter some meta combos. I’m 50/50 on this one.
Elective Mode - Remove the either-or Pick for Abilities
This would lead to some really crazy combos, I think this would lead to too many powerful pets.
Pet Battler Society Reputation - Fame
More rewards and things to work on can’t be bad for pet battles. Right now there’s not a lot of motivation to queue for PvP. Put some cool pets behind the currency for PvP. It would get people to queue. Some PvE folks might find this idea repulsive, but some may may never know how fun PvP is until they try it. I avoided BGs until there was an achieve I was working on that “made” me do some BGs. Turns out I loved em’.
Ground Mounts set as a “background”
I’m more into gameplay than cosmetics, but I thought this was a really neat idea. Show off your cool mounts while battling!
Rebalance the Racials
I think aquatic is the only one that really needs work. Critters have been a staple of my PvP experience due to their ability to not get stunned, which has been a really useful thing in many metas. One idea for critters in line with the suggestions for new races I think that splitting critters up into critters and insects could work. It always sort of bothered me that beetles and squirrels were in the same category. Insects could keep the current critter racial and critters could have increased chance to… crit. (I can’t be the first person to have thought of that)
PvP Communication
Again my initial reaction was NO! after seeing so many toxic players change their pet names to insult you. But as long as you could toggle it off I don’t see a problem here. Might add an extra layer of fun and head games. “You sure want to cast Immolation right now? Pretty sure my Spirit Crab has a shield…” (crab doesn’t actually have shield)
PvP Queue Failsafe
Great idea! A good AI opponent is the next best thing to a real player.
Weekly of “Kill 30 Opposing Pets in PvP” instead of “Win 10 Matches”
I’ve seen this suggestion many times, it would help with new players feeling that they accomplished something even without winning.
Pick/Ban System for PvP Matches/Ranked PvP matches
I like this for the long term, but initially let’s keep it simple to just get some players back in the queue.
Ladder Tracking
Make it like HS with a “casual” and “ranked” PvP queue. But first we’d have to get a lot more players back into PvP battles.
While I’m here I’ll throw in a few ideas:
Make the battlegroup/queue system more transparent. Maybe if we knew how it worked then those of us who like to PvP battle could all make characters on a specific realm or even transfer to that realm/battlegroup if that’s what it took to get more PvP battles.
“Unfix” Flurry. After so many years of Flurry taking down shields and decoys it just feels wrong not working like that anymore. Make the other triple attack moves work like Flurry used to. It makes sense.
I probably had so many more ideas back in my heyday but that’s all I can think of for now.
Funny thing, I got three PvP battles in while writing this. My current strategy (when not facing sandstorm teams) is to play with weak teams so that I don’t scare people off. I won one and lost two haha.
I realize this thread is 27 days old, but I’ve been reading the OP, and I’ve had some thoughts.
But I should include the disclaimer, I am a new pet battler. Yes, I consider myself an official Pet Battler. I quested my Safari Hat, so I think that accomplishment earns me the title.
Safari, so good.
But I am still new. My collection isn’t 1/10 the size of most everyone else here, so there’s a good chance that anything I say is because of my lack of knowledge of the big picture.
So here goes!
One thing I would like to have is a second trap. I realize I’m new, but I can’t be the only one who is out to get a specific pet, but then I see another rare pet in the backline, in a good breed, so that I actually have to decide whether I want the pet I originally set out to get, or decide to nab the backline pet instead.
I’d also like to see a quest line done for us so that we can get a more reliable trap. Sometimes, I get so frustrated with my fourth toss of the cage. I think Pet Battlers should have access to a more reliable cage, something with a better chance of landing.
And if they use both my suggestions, what they could do is make the first trap a more reliable one, and the second trap about as reliable as our current traps are now.
First round forfeit amnesty. The penalty you get for forfeiting a pet battle in the wild is fair. But what I would like to see is the penalty waived if you decide to quit in the first round. When I’m out looking for a specific breed, and I see that the pet I engaged with is not the breed I need, I’d like to be able to just get out of the match and go keep looking for the breed I want. So, if I decide to quit in the first round, I can leave the match without penalty. And if I decide to quit any time after that, then I deal with the penalty.
What about an abort function to stop abilities that function for more than one round? Like suppose you want to stop Swarm or Flock after one or two rounds, instead of going for all three? Or Mana Surge?
One suggestion on this webpage that I really don’t like, but I can’t find it right now. Someone suggesting that there should be a way to disable the opponent’s pets’ innate pet family abilities.
Like disable the resurrect ability of Undead pets, or the Magic pets’ ability to take no more than 35% of their total health from a single hit. I don’t like this idea. At all. I think a pet’s family innate is sacrosanct and if you want to beat an opponent, you have to deal with their pet family innate.
If you would have been able to defeat an opponent except for the Mechanical pet’s ability to rebuild itself, then you didn’t win.
I have no problem with the devs tinkering with a pet family’s innate ability if they think that an ability is imbalanced, but I don’t think anyone should ever be able to disable it.
I have sometimes wanted to trap two, or even all three, of the opposing pets. But not often enough that I care much about it.
Number of times you need to cast trap
(Incidentally, you already have a trap that is more reliable than the one you start with. The Pristine Trap is awarded for Pro Pet Crew. )
I don’t find the trap reliability a problem. It usually takes 3-4 attempts to trap a capture. That feels about right to me. You, in doing the hunt, should have chosen two tanky pets and a capturer, and should have chosen them appropriate for the level and type. If you have, tanking 3-4 extra rounds is not a provlem. (Or you opt for some fancy but faster approach, and trust your mental arithmetic and your luck!)
You need to allow for surviving just 3-4 extra rounds, and that feels fair when you want to gain a new pet out of the battle.
First round forfeit amnesty
Again, I understand the impulse, but I have never found it enough of a problem to be motivated to ask for a a change. Somewhat like the trap probability, it is just another thing you have to prepare for. When I am hunting something scarce that appears only in the backline, I will start each battle with a sacrificial team of random pets, and let them take the HP hit - then bring in my real team when I know I have found what I want to capture.
“Stop” button for multi-round abilities.
I’m against this. Shattered Defenses abilities are very strong. Giving them a compensating weakness feels exactly right. This would be even more cogent in PvP.
A way to disable the opponent’s pets’ innate pet family abilities.
I agree with you that sounds like a terrible idea.
In writing my response, I happened to mention that as a new player, my perspective is going to be shaped by my inability to grasp the big picture.
In reading your responses, I can’t help but feel that your perspective is also shaped by certain elements of the status quo, to wit:
According to the OP, 70% of all pets are cageable. In my mind, that’s a travesty. We’re not playing Pokemon. We’re playing WoW which happens to include pet battles. I think when players decide they need certain pets, their first thought should be going out into the world and getting it, not seeing if it’s available in the AH.
If it were up to me, 90% of the pets should be capturable and uncageable. 10% should be drops. New pet that you want? Play the game.
Of course, that may be because I recently learned how to use scrying stones in Nazjatar. And when a guildie of my Horde Priest told me that they drop from rares, I quickly saw that pets are more frequent than scrying stones. I think I got three new ones today in Nazjatar by killing rares.
I’d rather pet acquisition be more of something I have control over. When I get a new pet, I’d rather have it be because I chose to go out and get it. Not because RNG decided to be nice to me. Because I also went to Pandaria and found a P/P Kun Lai Runt and an H/P Tolai Hare, which is exactly what I wanted.
Also, when I was doing my Snowfeather Hatchling’s Daily quest – Will these falcosaurs never stop giving me quests? Although this time he gave me a purple stone. I discovered I can solo the Emerald Dream. I had to kill Krosus. So, if I can solo a Legion Raid, why can’t I get my Emerald Dream Whelps?
Sure enough, Wowhead had the information. Just kill Xavius and the Emerald Dream Whelplings just pop right up, free to capture. And that raid was the creepiest thing I’'ve ever seen in WoW. That is the stuff of nightmares.
This is why I think believe in First Round Amnesty. I don’t have many bandages, and the CD on pet heals is too long. And actually buying bandages is UGH! I need my charms for blue stones. I’d just like to be able to drop the encounter immediately, without incurring the penalty, so I can keep looking.
What I find distressing in your response is that you’re actively shooting down ideas that wouldn’t hurt you. What do you care if we’re able to trap two pets instead of one, even if you never use it?
Speaking of ideas that need to be shot down, the idea that we need a new pet currency for every expansion is about the worst idea I’ve ever seen. How many currencies does WoW have already? And you really want the players to be similarly swamped with different varieties of pet charms?
We don’t need a new currency. We need to stop making pets purchasable. Put them out in the environment. Make the environment accessible only after a certain quest line has been completed. What if Pet Tamers did a Family Battler type thing and awarded a pet when you managed to defeat their team with a pet team from every family?
In fact, it’s just over 50%. On a spreadsheet download from Xu-Fu’s I get
Tradable
902
Not Tradable
893
Well, even 50% is not great. In Mists, when pet battling was introduced, the ratio was 243 Tradable to 378 Not, or about 60% Not Tradable. The ratio has been going the wrong way ever since. The devs are too fond of using pets and mounts as bait to get people to do things.
But most of the tradable pets are not hard to get. Maybe 10%-20% are pretty hard to get/RNG.
But yeah, I’d prefer to see more wild pets.
What did I shoot down, other than the suggestion that we be able to nullify opponent family effects? And I really think that is a bad idea, since what then is the point of having them at all?
And, when it comes to some area of the game, almost everything either helps or hurts the experience of almost everbody. My favorite example is the idea of removing animations in a pet battle, ehich comes up every so often. That would make every pet battle much, much faster - maybe remove three-quarters of the current time taken. Great, yes? Errr, no. Because I like the experience of the battle itself.
Similarly, I enjoy the hunt for new wild pets. It’s about the only area of pet battling that I actively enjoy now. And I get to enjoy it only a couple of times per expansion. And while various suggestions for making it faster might appeal to some, they would leave me less to enjoy.
I understand, but you also have to consider the devs’ reasons for it.
Battlers collect excess Charms over the course of an expansion. People play differnt amounts, on different numbers of alts, with different focuses. Some battlers collect A LOT of excess Charms. I have about 36.000, I think, plus a lifetime supply of all colors of Stones, enough to be a storage problem (which was greatly alleviated by the devs’ recent increase of stack size, for which I am thankful.)
The devs made only one change of pet currency, and as far as we know, there isn’t another one scheduled for the next expansion.
At that time, they were trying to reduce stockpiles of Charms so that people had to engage with the new expansion’s content before buying everything out.
To make a painful story short, that currency change was not well received, and they have shown no signs of repeating it.
I think you have grasped a lot of the overall picture. If anything, it seems to me that your perspective is influenced by your determination to squeeze two or three years’ worth of peogress in pets into a few months. And you have made stellar progress in a very short time. I would not, though, be in such a great hurry to complete the content, because I promise that it is much more fun to be making progress than to sit at the top of the hill with no more progress to make.
Is that really the impression I give? Because I feel like I want to do this slowly but it’s coming at me even if I’m not ready.
What I mean is, as I mentioned earlier. I went out to Pandaria today, and I caught a Kun-Lai Runt and a Tolai Hare. I’d been reading about strats and I decided these would be good pets to have. I also heard about Dream Whelplings, and how they’re a good substitute for Emerald Proto-Whelps, and both are sometimes good pets to have on the backline to clean up the backup pets after the boss pet gets killed, because they mitigate damage with their Emerald Presence and have insane self-heals.
But today, my annoying Direbeak Hatchling gave me a quest that required to go into the Emerald Dream and take out a boss mob.
So, I went in and discovered I can solo a Legion raid.
Then I went to Nazjatar to see if I could find some of those scrying stones, and instead, I got three pets do drop from rares. (Does every single rare in that zone drop pets?)
And while this might sound blasphemous to you, I winced every single time I got a pet. Because I have to look it up on the list of valuable pets that I think you linked, to see if it’s something I’ll need. (And in fact, none of them are, so there just junk pets taking up space in my roster that I’ll never level until I’m bored out of my skull and have nothing else to do.)
This is just lazy of the Devs. They could have put these pets at the end of a quest, and it doesn’t have to be an elaborate quest. They could even include it as a reward for an already existing quest.
I get more satisfaction out of going to Pandaria to catch a pet in the wild, a pet that I’ve actually read about and determined I should have one for me collection, then random drops from rares in Nazjatar.
I’d rather have one pet that I went out and caught than ten random junk pets from rares in Nazjatar. We’re supposed to play the game, not play the auction house or pray for RNG to have mercy on our souls and grant us pets, whether they’re actually useful or just junk pets.
Interesting! I need to look at the data myself, since those data include promotional pets and otherwise “removed from game” pets I didn’t include them in my mental guess-timate of 70%. I should’ve said “The pets people normally engage with can just be bought/sold about 70% of the time.” or something.
Thanks for the correction though, you’re right to say there are actually al ton of untradable pets!
Which would make sense. Pets that people can buy in the Auction House would obviously be overrepresented in strats, since they’re much easier to acquire. You’d expect them to be overrepresented.
I imagine this came about when less dedicated pet collectors (or those who recognize the gold to be made from them) complained, consequently, more pets were made tradeable.
And even if they’re not made tradeable, there could be available substitutes. For instance, no pet is stronger against flying pets than Nexus Whelpling. But recently, I noticed that Stormbourne Whelpling has the same devastating combo.
Which sucks. It’s not like Nexus Whelpling is that hard to acquire. I got three P/P versions in less than an hour.
I don’t object to a certain number of pets being cageable. But I still believe the overwhelming bulk of them should be available only to those willing to go out and hunt them down or quest for them. And also, they should be the best pets. The best pets should be worked for, not purchased.
I liked the Little Scales questline, and would welcome more.
I was so nervous. 
