I think you need to ask yourself: What does a level 80 have to do to even start pet battling, or a level 50? Where do they go, how do they engage with the system? They’ve probably collected a few pets by then but they’re all level 1, and anything they’ve undoubtedly ran into (on purpose or not) are level 25.
They won’t engage with this, they can’t, and they just move on and keep playing the main gameplay loop. Fix that first, honestly. Pet battles are ‘fine’ but you have to solve the primary issue which is getting someone to do it in the first place lol.
I completely agree that pet battles need to be easier to get into. There shouldn’t be an intro quest hidden in the starting cities to unlock it; it should be available from the start. Midnight would actually be a great time to have some pets in the new zones available at lower levels, perhaps a variety of older but visually appealing pets in Silvermoon proper, as city pets are usually low level.
However, the current form of pet battle content is a problem, as it promotes one-and-done play, which is against Blizzard’s current design philosophy. They should keep pet trainers and wild pets as intro one-and-done play for casual pet battlers and collectors, but there is a lot of low hanging fruit here they can use to increase long term engagement.
I mean yeah, basically. I unfortunately don’t engage with it because I just don’t wanna go out of my way to go farm EXP. I should be able to just casually grind common quality pets in any zone for EXP and learning the ropes easily. Instead I get bent over by level 25’s lol. So I just don’t engage.
I would probably engage with Pet Battles more if they weren’t so insanely slow. The lag on inputs and long, unskippable animations are what turns me off of them more than anything else.
It has the bones of a good system it just needs to be more snappy.
In Warlords, there was an easily obtainable stone in your garrison to instantly level a pet to 25. There was also a wild albatross in the garrison that was level 25 and easy to catch.
There needs to be a way for players NOW to get a reasonable team together. Yes, you can take lvl 1’s and follow the trainer quests and spend forever to level them up in zones you otherwise never go to (and don’t know to go to for pet leveling anyway). You can also buy level 25 pets on the AH for only tons of gold. Neither of these things is new-battler friendly.
That blue post was a mess. First of all the awkward use of the word “iterate”. Like it was word of the day or something. Second it was so vague it was useless.
I’ve been putting off finishing the last 2 pet dungeons and several of the family battler achievements. Guess what I’m going to do before xpac’s end You’ve inspired me
You’re going to have to explain that comment, because Kaivax didn’t say anything was being done to change what we all already figured out through the alpha testing and a random streamer’s comment.
According to the actual post, if you look at the last bullet point “All parts of the pet battle system that were implemented in previous expansions should continue to operate as they have before”. The area specifically being iterated is the Pet PvP Combat option, the weekly quest that nearly no one takes. So, instead of spending more resources on Pet Battle PvP, they are exploring new options.
I wonder if they could borrow a bit from pokemon or other pet collecting games. Add some gyms lol, and an elite 4 version. Combat could be sped up and reworked a bit.
Like pet collecting is a popular concept still with things like pokemon, digimon, and palworld. You can make it work.
“We’re experimenting with some alternate methods to obtain pets in Midnight, and we expect to iterate on that, based on your feedback. Please let us know whether you’re an experienced pet battler or engaging with the system for the first time when you leave feedback.”
The above is from the Blizzard post.
Okay, feedback, would love to: how?
I took it to mean the old zones and old content was staying the same but going forward pet battles are basically dead. He did say “some” new pets will have battle abilities. For 13 years ALL new pets have.
There’s nothing that indicates only the pvp combat portion is being removed.
Here is where they specifically zone in on the Pet Battle PvP, which also encompases the daily:
Meaning we can still queue up for Pet Battles, and still challenge friends. But this would also include the weekly quest to win 5 PvP Pet Battles, so the system will undergo some re-iterations. We’ll see more of what that looks like as we move through Alpha.
Essentially, everything from before will still be in Midnight moving forward, including new ways to obtain pets.
He explicitly states that what was implemented in previous expansions will stay the same. Nothing about future ones. \
We already know they didn’t implement pet battles in Karesh. I wondered about it but have been too busy to give it too much thought. I still had collection and battle achievments to do in the earlier TWW zones so wasn’t thinking about Karesh yet. Guess I won’t have to now.
This is honeslty a terrible statment by that dev. Very vague, poorly communicated. We shouldn’t need a code to decipher what he’s saying. And the awkward use of the word “iterate” irks me. If I were his boss I’d make him rewrite this completely.
You’ve inspired me