So I am a long time pet battle enthusiast. I may not have done all the actual battle achievements but I do have fun with pet battles every day and have gone out to get some very rare and hard to get pets. I have also managed to level probably around 1000 to max level and quality.
I say all that to qualify myself a bit before I lay down my thoughts on what is to come and what I think could be done better for pet battling.
I know the devs don’t want to put a ton of time and effort into PB when it is essentially a mini game meant to increase revenue. My hot take is I don’t mind pets being in the in game shop, if they are at a reasonable price. I would like to see more bundles to make picking up a handful cheaper for the average player (seriously, I’d be willing to pay some decent money for a bundle with all the murky pets going back). As a side note on pets being too expensive, I dont mind farming for things. It is a big part of the game after all, but some things were made next to impossible to get because of the amount, or sheer rarity of the currency, like the miscellaneous mechanica from undermine, throughout that entire patch I only found 3, you need 38 for battle pets and another 75 for mounts, and there are so many more examples. I hate to see pets getting tied to physical purchases for big ticket items, like many of the events we have seen. Small events are more interesting, partnering with mountain dew is fine in my opinion. It is easier and safer to justify buying a 12 pk of soda than it is to buy a 300 dollar keyboard I don’t need.
That leads to fomo. A lot of players will buy things for fear of missing out. A tried and true marketing strategy and I don’t hate it. At the same time one of the philosophies of the trading post could be useful. Make more of the old promo pets available on the trading post. Stuff from blizzcon, various promos, and the TCG have been unattainable for years to decades. It has been long enough, players should be able to get some. Put all the various delux edition pets from classic- pandaria or something in the trading post in November.
What about the content. The PB dungeons were cool, but they can be incredibly difficult. I still havent managed to beat BRD. My biggest issue with that content is after many pet abilities were revamped a few expansions back, the dungeons werent tuned to be playable anymore. Many guides at the time even said “beat this now because you never will again.” Don’t you think that is a bit of an issue? What is the point of something like PB if there is no new content for it? How will people engage if there is nothing to engage with? I understand stopping the dungeons at a certain point, but there has been nothing new to do for a long time, we didn’t even any pet battles in the new zones. Not a single tiny voidling? Not one?
Dungeon content leads to my next issue. On a whim last expansion, I started using a pet battle add-on. I immediately wondered how I ever got along without 1 specific feature it offered that we really need in the base UI. The ability to set multiple teams up. I have a few teams that are my normal go to, but it is a pain to set them up constantly. In dragonflight there were regular dailies I would do where I had to switch teams up because my standard wouldn’t take down any particular fight. With that add-on I could set up a team that could take down a given boss, name that team for that fight and just click on it when I needed it. It made life easier.
On the topic of making life easier, bandages = pointless waste of time. Imagine how aggravating it is for someone like me who is going to run 8 characters through 2-4 world quests to farm up charms just to have to wait 8 minutes between each battle for no reason. Assuming I win. Honestly just make pets heal after every battle outside dungeons.
Which leads me to my last point (someone buy me a segway because I earned it terribly). The fights are inconsistent. There is one pet battle i refuse to do. Even when it is worth 20 badges. Is the fight hard? meh, not exceedingly, it depends on what abilities the fight uses. It is one thing for random pets in the world to randomize their abilities, whole other story when it is the trainers. It is increadibly frustrating to come across a fight where I can win 5 times in a row, then lose 6 times straight just because of the trainer pets randomizing their abilities. You cant plan to counter one set just for another set of abilities to come up, you can hard counter the first pet, but the last pet has a different set of abilities and can wipe your entire team. You don’t know until you’ve wasted several minutes getting to that last pet, on your next try to want to counter that last pet, but the first decimates your team. Even the guides cant recommend a team to consistently take down some of these fights. So many fights are designed in a way that you can either completely cheese the fight, or you just absolutely stand no chance. There is no middle ground and there needs to be. I am not someone who lacks for options on pets, as I said above, i probably have over 1k at max level.
My tldr here would be make pets more easily obtained, make fights more consistent, and release some new content with a more user friendly UI.
Oh and lastly, stop making overly cute battle pets, if you want them make them none combat. Personally, and i know a lot of my friends/guildies agree, the puppy dogs, the super cute stuff, it is childish, it isnt fun, they usually look terrible, and it is kinda emersion breaking to see.