Is pet battling really dead?

Gameplay Pet Battles
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Serious question. I feel genuinely alone and in pain because of the terrible movesets (especially the newer and upcoming pets), lack of balancing, and lack of communication from the developers, yet the fanbase seems to be ignorant about all of these issues. I do not want pet battling to be in such a sorry state anymore. I want to feel excited seeing new pets again, especially for leveling up and battling, but because the new movesets are painfully mediocre if not insultingly bad, I feel nothing but apathy. I seriously hope I am not alone. There must be others who care about pet battling as much as I do.

Thankfully, I am an aspiring battle pet designer. I redesigned almost all of the battle pets in the game and added countless more, a feat only achievable by adding countless new abilities and balance changes.

As of the time of writing this, the newest battle pet I added is literally the creeper from Minecraft. Sounds unoriginal, but instead of porting the model from the game, the design would resemble a bog beast with the “skeleton” of the Outland ravager.

Notch stated the creeper being made of vegetation and in real life, peat moss combusts to release spores, so the moveset is only fitting.

Moss Creeper: Spores/Spore Shower, Spore Cloud/Creeping Fungus, Spore Shrooms/Disperse

The same moveset is shared with the spores and Fungal Behemoth (Brackenspore model) as a side of trivia.

I doubt anybody would ever read this, but if you did, I am glad because I am venting my frustration over the sad state of pet battling and my voice being unheard, but oh well.

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You’re overlooking the fact that World of Warcraft is not a pet battling game. Since pets battles were added to WoW twelve years ago it has become a popular addition – I know I wouldn’t still be here without it – but we’re still just a relatively small part of the subscriber base.

Blizzard’s target demographic is the players that are into dungeons and raids and PvP, and a steady supply of new content. Keeping them happy (and subscribing) is its goal. That’s what the designers and coders have to prioritize and of course then pet stuff suffers. Right now, for example, we can assume they’re frantically working overtime to make The War Within happen. Maybe after it launches, and all the inevitable glitches fixed, we may see some activity with pets. We can hope.

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Like Chrummie, I wouldn’t have visited WoW at all if it weren’t for pet battling, and God knows I wouldn’t be here without it. Some of the content, like Jumping Jellies, or other silly games of skill that have nothing to do with the lore of the game, are absolutely insipid.

But so says the Pet Battler, who is also engaging in a silly side game that has nothing to do with the lore.

As Chrummie points out, the game has to accommodate those who pay for it. Could WoW survive if they stopped making pet content? Probably. Could WoW survive if they removed raiding and grouping? Definitely not.

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I continue to enjoy the pet battle aspect of the game. I’m a raider, but I enjoy my pet collection and devising PvP teams (I do wish I’d run into more than 3 opponents on a typical day during Pet Battle week).

However, I guess that I’m not expert enough to understand what you mean by terrible movesets and lack of balancing. What does that even mean?? What makes those things good or bad?? I’m seriously asking, 'cause I seriously don’t know what you mean, which makes me one of the ignorant players you reference–but I’m happy to be educated.

I would like to see them add some additional challenges like they did with the Celetrial Tournament and the pet dungeon challenges.

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I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve seen Masters’ Theses in Comp. Sci. that are simpler than an adequate answer to that question.

As a raider, you are used to running sims for talent builds and stats and armor pieces to optimize functionality, This is equally mathematical.

The basic constituents are:

Base Stats
Breed (Breed stats)
Abilities (Type, Power, Duration, Probability, … )
Moveset (Available combinations of Abilities)

Then run brute-force searches / alpha-beta pruning on all combinations.

Some Abilities are simply more powerful than others. For example, the abilities Call Darkness and Sandstorm are obscenely overpowered this expansion, following an inexplicable buff the devs gave them. (Also arguably Call Lightning, though that’s a more complicated discussion.)

Some combinations of Abilities are more powerful than others. One key factor is self-synergy - when 1 pet can use two abilities, the first oif which buffs the second. Take for example Darkness Birds like Crow that have both Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike available, so they can use the (now obscenely OP) Darkness to set up Nocturnal Strike.

But Birds also have a weakness, in that they lose their Speed racial and tend not to last long. That keeps them balanced. They will rarely live to deliver a second Call Darkness.

However, Bone Serpent used to be able to slot both Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike as well, and had the advantage of its Undead round to hold on that bit longer to get another bite of the cherry. That made the Darkness->Nocturnal Strike combo too powerful here. After enough complaints, Blizzard moved the abilities in the Bone Serpent’s moveset so that you could choose to use either Call Darkness or Nocturnal Strike, but not both. This nerfed Bone Serpent nicely; it is still a very strong pet, but not blatantly overpowered.

Mostly, the devs avoid adding any experimental or stand-out Abilities or Movesets to the game, so as not to upset whatever tattered balance there is. Mostly.

Mostly they add the same Abilites in much the same general pattern of movesets. This allows them to add pets pretty safely without meeting revolting peasants with pitchforks. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s more boring for us, but safer for them!

If you actually want to get an intuition for this, there is nothing better than working through some examples. First, warm up your spreadsheet. Now, take a few straight-damage pets like Anomalus, Nexus Whelpling, Ikky, Kun-Lai Runt (Beast moveset), Kun-Lai Runt (Freeze moveset), Timeless Mechanical Dragonling … add any you are interested in. Now work out their expected Damage Per Round.

That’s simple enough. Tedious, but simple.

Now consider interactions with avoidance and defensive movesets like Dodges and Shields, and Swaps. That’s where it gets complicated, because now it’s not only the raw DPR that you are considering, but also the timing of the cooldowns to make counters.

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TYVM for taking time to define the lingo. I understand what you are saying, and I’ve also noticed that they tend to have many many similar patterns of (what I now understand when you say) “movesets”.

I guess I’m still confused why the original post was so upset with “balance”?? Most everything has seemed pretty balanced to me with all pets having strengths and weaknesses. Seems you can always find a group of pets to thwart any other given group of pets, and I don’t expect all pets to be equally balanced. Seems natural that you should be able to get some stronger pets; although, I would expect this to be correlated with more effort expended to obtain them.

But thanks again for giving me such good context for the terminology.

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“Balance” is a genuine problem, but maybe not the same problem as seen from all points of view, and maybe not as big as it appears from some of those points of view.

Balance is complained about almost exclusively in the PvP context, and is not commonly discussed objectively, matematically, with minimax methods.

The actual game design problem is that a few species are VASTLY overrepresented in the PvP queue. As a rule of thumb, in any given meta, the top 5 pets will occupy about 25% of slots used, and the top 20 will account for a bit over half of all pets you meet.

This makes the queue, and the PvP game, too monotonous. Hence the slow and empty queues.

Many people ascribe this to balance - to a few overpowered pets you can’t get away from. And there some truth in that. But you will find that those are not just the overpowered pets, but the overpowered pets that are easy to use, and that brings in an element of subjectivity. People copy people. They copy the teams and the pets that beat them. And this determinant of the meta also needs disruption.

As you do more with pets, both PvE and PvP, you will notice how this affects you, and form your own opinions on ths subject.

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Moveset refers to the abilities any given pet has. Obviously, some movesets make for very formidable opponents.

A buddy of mine told me about this, so I checked it out. In reading Wowhead, I see that Teroclaw Hatchling, still a powerful pet, once had its Nature’s Ward and Dodge abilities in different slots. This meant that it could not only avoid attacks, but had a continuous heal-over-time that needed to be refreshed only once every five rounds.

I haven’t been on WoW long enough to have played with Teroclaw Hatchling in its original state, but Nature’s Ward plus Dodge and you have a flying pet that was almost impossible to knock out of the Flying pet’s speed advantage, much less kill it. Although a well-timed Mana Storm/Mana Surge might do the job.

(If you look up Teroclaw Hatchling on Wowhead, you’ll see in the comments section that complaints about this nerf are the highest ranking comments. And if you look down further in the comments, you’ll see people describing pet bosses that could actually be soloed with this pet.)

I’m not sure why balance is such an overpowering concern. No one ever claimed that battle pets were balanced. Some are simply useful, others not. 90% of the pets you collect will probably never be used beyond leveling.

But I suppose it’s referring to PvP teams that are practically invincible, such as a Sandstorm Team or three Singing Sunflowers.

If you feel like you’re not “expert enough,” (Hey, join the club!) you should hang out here more and ask questions. This is a pretty helpful bunch. There’s maybe one or two obnoxious personalities, but virtually everyone here is cool. I’ve start numerous threads, and most of my questions get answered here.