How to Improve Battle Pets

I was sitting around, thinking and I wondered what could make pet battles and battle pets better. And so I ask you all: if you could make any changes and/or additions to battle pets and pet battles, what would they be?

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I like the idea of giving every pet a unique passive ability. As a Pokemon fan I can tell you some of the coolest stuff in that game has to do with every pet having a special mechanic that no other does, and I’m not talking movesets. For example, the ability to absorb one hit free of damage on a pet when you swap them in would make them very good to have on your bench as a counter to single big attack moves, or having one enrage for double damage at less than 30 percent HP would create interesting attacking decisions for the opponent.

I know we have class typings but those seem a little unbalanced to me, mechanical and undead are just so powerful with the res mechanic, I’d be totally cool to scrap those for a new system.

Oh and they should add Charizard to the game.

pet battles don’t need any zany new features

they need tuning and content

I’m a bit of a pet battles nerd the last few years and I’ve completed all the PvE content and its hugely enjoyable.
But I feel like I’m kept waiting until the next pet dungeon comes out.

Pet PvP is really fun and has loads of potential, but the Find Battle system is old and broken. Adjustments to the meta take months and months when they could be hotfixed overnight (e.g. hermit crab stats). The Find Battle system needs reworking, the matchmaking is terrible and on my “battlegroup” I have almost no opponents while other groupings are active and competitive.

Find Battle should have a mobile app, I would pay my sub just for that.

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That’s The. Best. Idea. Ever! :astonished:

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it has been suggested many, many times.

PvE Pet Battles desperately needs a basic AI pass.

Like take the team that worked on Zephrys in Hearthstone and have them work on WoW pet battles for a bit.

As it currently stands, I don’t think there is an AI. At all. Like, a little bit of basic reactive smarts (don’t fire a huge attack into an actively dodging pet, maybe proactively swap pets occasionally when it’s really beneficial, etc), and a little more randomness, too.

As it is, pve is crippled by the fact that the opponent is so dumb, the only way to make challenging content is to make ridiculously overpowered pets, which then leads to the problems we’ve had in the last couple years where the same handful of pets (using the same strategy ad nauseum) are used to defeat all the content.

It’s the epitome of “the content doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be new” philosophy that is plaguing lots of entertainment right now (that quote is paraphrased from a Netflix exec, btw).

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This especially. It’s the same couple of pets that players use in nearly every BFA pet battle. And as you say, there seems to be virtually no AI involved. Even a minimal amount of AI would make pet battles so much better.

Is AI even the correct term? I mean, old chess games function better than this, right?

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Stuff off the top of my head:

  • Add the ability to view breed as a base function of the Pet Journal (without needing an addon).
  • Give collectors a better way to view caged battle pets on the AH (atm it only shows the default skin of a battle pet).
  • Balance and tune the pet family passives a bit. A few are almost always stronger in both PVE and PVP, making pets of other pet families less desirable. OR add/create encounters where those “weaker” passives are actually the most favorable.
  • Balance the number of pets in each family. Last I checked, Dragonkin was the least represented overall, especially Dragonkin with a unique moveset. This would be somewhat dependent on the previous point, and adding more Dragonkin would only change things if there are either more situations that make its passive desirable or the passive is changed to be as desirable as others.
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You’re right, it’s probably far simpler than “AI”. Simple “if-then” programming, really. Something more than “do 3, 2, 2, 1, 2 every time” or “pick random 1-3.”