It wouldn’t be too much work to make Delves into Pet Dungeons, I imagine.
Just put pet bosses in the place of bosses and you have a Pet Dungeon. Complete with a Treasure Room but with Pet Charms instead of gold, and various pet goodies, maybe even a new pet.
Everything gets bleak after a bit of routine. The delves are a mixed bag to me, because of the memories of Torghast. And the pet dungeons didn’t have that much replayability factor either imo, were it not for the rewards – similar to the awkwardness of legendary questlines requiring you to kill the raid bosses multiple times.
If the reward and story themselves can’t carry the content then what does it is other people, whether for fun or… some other gains. You can’t have that there.
Maybe it’s just that different kind of content is suited for a different stage of progress. And I don’t know anymore how to reflect that. Because there’s not enough for the new players, and not enough for the old players. Anything more in the middle just muddies the waters further.
But I am not jaded yet. Let’s say that there’s that really interesting creature, whether related to an existing pet or your future companion, and they were your sidekick, with similarly themed abilities and a training stone given every time they level up.
Anything to break the existing pattern, really.
As mistake-riddled as the experimental modes were, they showed us that people are willing to get out of the comfort zone if you sell it well enough. Do that a little bit better with pets and maybe we can finally escape the side-eyes we have been getting from others for Way. Too. Long.
Now that I think about it, Delves would be good places to just put Pet Bosses. Let the players who want the charms or new pet or whatever the prize is to do it. Since it’s a solo dungeon, it’s not like you’d be holding up the rest of the party to do the pet battle.
As for the old pet dungeons, I feel like getting people back to them would be so incredibly easy. Just add a new pet to acquire. If there was another pet to be purchased through Celestial Coins, each and every single one of you would be back playing the Celestial Tournament every week, even if it was for the gimpest pet in existence. Even if it was like the old Troglofrogs before the fix.
You could make a whole achievement out of it. Beat the list of pet tamers with a Troglofrog in your line-up.