Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Discuss pet battles, strategy and theorycrafting.
User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:956
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:
Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Gráinne » February 11th, 2019, 6:01 pm

what could the devs do with the dungeon format to make it live longer and be more engaging?

Rewards:

We've had random pet drops in WC, and deterministic currency rewards in DM and Gnomer. I certainly vastly prefer the deterministic currency rewards.

Wailing Caverns: 4 pets. Duration: indeterminate.
Deadmines: 4 pets. Duration: 6 weeks.
Gnomeregan: 4 pets and a schematic. Duration: 7 weeks.

They seem to have settled on 4 pets as the total reward from a dungeon.

Compare with the great Celestial Tournament. That also rewarded 4 pets, over 10 weeks, but those four were iconic, and felt weightier. The CT pets were also not cageable, which added to their value to a battler. I think dungeon pets earned deterministically should not be cageable, and random drops should. Perhaps in each dungeon one should be random but cageable, with ~10%-20% drop rate, and all others earned by currency?

Considering how many random filler pets drop from unrelated content like Islands, I feel they certainly have room to increase the number of pets rewarded from relevant battling content. I'd go out to 8-10 pets and 10-12 weeks.
How could they achieve this? A chance at random extra currency? An extra currency unit if you do a trick-shot of some kind like with a Family?

Environment:

I loved the environment of the Celestial Tournament. It felt like a perfect lazy summer Sunday afternoon. No rush. All the tamers visible, and you could choose which to visit first. The tamers were old friends; we had a connection with them.

Dungeons, not so much.

There is nothing in "moving through the dungeon" that appeals to me, and I have no idea how they could make it appealing.

Most dungeons were designed as dank, unfriendly, threatening places. Not where I want to do pet battles. I associate pet battles with flying freely in the sunlight around Outland or Hyjal, not cooped and herded through some underground hole. Not many dungeons offer any opportunity for a pleasant, airy environment. We have no comfort, no freedom, no familiar faces - no faces at all, really. So I don't know how they can improve - by my taste - on this.

Difficulty:

Difficulty is hard. :) Hard for the devs, I mean.

I found every dungeon quite fun - once, when I went in blind. After that, it was just a grind. Strats, accumulated at Xu-Fu's, spoil any challenge or sense of progression even for beginners who don't look at what their pets actually do. Levelling pets is so fast and easy now that anyone can gear up to smash a dungeon in days. It's hard to counter that effect. Any ideas?

Affixes have been suggested many times as a way to vary the experience and create a potential Mythic difficulty.

How would you design the next pet dungeon?

User avatar
Icculusx
Posts:1
Joined:September 20th, 2013
Pet Score:11795
Realm:Gul'dan-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Icculusx » February 12th, 2019, 12:07 pm

the devs use an algorithm to determine how engaged their content is.
They can take an old dungeon with no work and drop some NPCs into it to get some people to visit it and pump those zones numbers up, that is the goal.

Of course we would all rather completely new zones, but content is content.
I would be happy with one of these rehashed dungeons every few weeks ;)

but to give a suggestion to your question i have an answer that will please "almost" everyone.
the box at the end of Gnomeregan that you get after you got all the pets has a nice chunk of Coins in it.

they should provide us a huge time sink to use those coins and make them valuable again.
I would suggest the never to be obtained (blizzcon/collectors edition etc) type pets to have a vendor selling them for 5000? 100000? coins..

at least it is a carrot to chase.

User avatar
Lolfixheal
Posts:229
Joined:November 9th, 2008
Pet Score:11928
Realm:Bronze Dragonflight-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Lolfixheal » February 12th, 2019, 12:53 pm

All content in WoW is designed on locking players into active on-going subscription so they keep getting their revenue. That is why we see weekly based stuff, events. Daily grinds for vendor rewards. Stuff going over many with time-gate such as pet dungeons.

I'm torn between Gnomeregan being boring as it was so easy, but at the same time such content doesn't speak to me, so honestly I want it over with quickly, so therefor I'm glad it was easy.

They could keep their darn subgate, but cut amount of fights, and make them harder if that results in same %time spent. It is really outdragging just going through the same boring scenario like a tunnel really week in, out. I agree with your sentiments regarding Celestial Tournament, that was more interesting, also challenging and didn't have the boring element of walking through an old classic dungeon. What story are they trying to tell/sell anyway with these pet dungeons? There is a shady character who is up to no good? starting to make trouble in the neighbourhood? ok I'll stop.

Dungeons don't work for me, it is boring, they would have to make RNG events happen, have story telling or quests, or options. Not this open-mouth-chew repetetiveness.

I have already suggested a more oldschool Celestial Tournament to Blizzard. To match this expansions theme, it would be the Isle of Loas. A little remote island (shrouded by magic!) where the Avatars of the Loas themselves have battled each other for near-eternity to prove themselves the better Loa. Imagine an arena styled enviroment, palm trees, not thick jungle, peaceful animals, beachshore and in the middle this stone foundation of an arena. Around the edges do you see all 11-12-13-14-15 Loas (lost track lol), each represented as big Avatars, with their symbol carved into the stone.. each naturally a tamer.. and each.. naturally with a unique mini Loa of themselves. Similar to CT in a way.

However the fights should be quite harder, some RNG elements to it (different order of attacks possible etc). Defeating them weekly should give a currency which you can spend on the Loa pets, but you can only buy the Loa-pet if you defeated the respective tamer. One tamer defeated gives 1 currency, and you don't have to do all weekly, you can go partially, perhaps due to the fact you're not strong enough, or missing a key pet for the fight still. Should be accessible for both newer players and veteran, so some of these tamers would naturally be abit easier, some abit harder. How much a pet is going to cost, Blizzard can decide vs their subgate ideas. Defeating all the tamers weekly could give a small + % bonus currency as well just for "job well done".

The possibility for achievements are good as well. You would want to have a challenge-mode without healing as per usual rewarding a pet or a shirt, tabard, title, mount? Could be nice with something else than a pet for once, I wouldn't mind. Individual achievements for all Loa tamers defeated, one for all. One for getting all the mini Loa pets collected (long task, few months i rekcon! if we assume ~ 1 pet a week best case scenario*). And why not toss in hard achievements like family Loa battler, that should end up being the toughest challenge yet and like I said, reward a cool mount after alot of time+work tossed into it?

Of course with an isle, would be nice with a introduction questchain you would have to do to attune yourself, possible you might have had to show the Loas your worth by completing one or more existing BFA pet achievements (such as all the regular tamers). That would pan into a story of how the Loas have been watching your pet battling skills, and they want to invite you to their secret Isle of the Loas, to see if you're up to the task, but not after the questchain showing your worth, not everyone just casually gets an invite. Or the story could be build on you championing 1 Loa at a time, having to humilate the other Loas by defeating them in the name of the Loa you chose to champion, thus unlocking their Mini-Loa pet for purchase later on. All these Loas with time to spend, and bickering among themselves, not being able to decide who is the better Loa. YOU are their champion, a tool they use after seeing your battle prowness to act as their champion to mock the other Loas for bragging rights.

The vendors would naturally be tortollans, being both old, wise, travellers, neutral and somehow found this mystified Island with an accidental scroll cast, and now they are stuck there, can't find way back home, so they have parked their behinds watching the Loas battle against each other for centuries to no avail, a long stalemate. I imagine one or two umbrellas, some chairs, refreshments, the usual. While we're at it, lets toss in a single rare spawn around the Island as well, first one to click gets reward (Kodo style). Just something for the downtime in between battles or the random run-in "wait, whats that!?".

In this big arena, you will see the mini Loa pets often run in and start fighting each other, 1v1, 3v3, 2v2, cross, FFA, just to fill up the arena with spectacle with RNG showcasing. Really sell that idea of the Loas trying to defeat each other in pet battling. Adds to the vibe and scenery as well, instead of one big arena with nothing going on inside of it, dull sight.

Only your fantasy sets limitations here... this is just me spitballing ideas.

* each tamer could give 1 Loa coin, a pet would cost 15, with 13? Loas, the weekly quest could give you a +3 if you do all. Something along those lines.

- awesome setting
- cool questchain
- good story
- loveable characters
- cool unique pets
- replayability
- achievements
- rare stuff
- long lasting (few months)

Compared to a boring 6 week cookie-cutter fest of Gnomeregan over and over, this kind of content I'm so wet for. I can see myself one evening or night just alt-tabbing whilst chillaxing on the Island, perhaps I'm camping the rare, perhaps I'm looking up new strategy for that Loa tamer that I still can't beat, or taking a break between some of the many achievements.

User avatar
Gilneas
Top Rater
Posts:613
Joined:May 11th, 2008
Pet Score:10095
Realm:Kargath-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Gilneas » February 12th, 2019, 8:31 pm

I don’t think they need to make any changes to the pet dungeon format. They’ve hit upon a good formula at this point. Especially in terms of the time it takes to get through it all for the primary rewards. It shouldn’t be and doesn’t need to be open ended. Taking 6-8 weeks and then only needing to do it again if you feel like it for pure enjoyment of the activity is more than fine.

User avatar
Kiotay
Top Rater
Posts:7
Joined:February 1st, 2019
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Kiotay » February 13th, 2019, 8:47 am

One issue with the Pet Dungeon format is the account-wide weekly lockout. Since you physically have to go there why not let it be requeueable for sacks of pet currency (20-40 per run). Combined with the aforementioned unobtainable rewards at ridiculous amounts and you have a grind that many would partake in.

Just a thought,
Kiotay

User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:956
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Gráinne » February 13th, 2019, 7:37 pm

Icculusx, I don't think there is any environment at all specifically created for pet battles. Everywhere we battle is some place already created for something else. CT re-used the Celestial square in Timeless. PvP re-uses spots in zones. The nearest I can think to any space created for pet battles is the floating platform for the Dalaran pet battle. That seems fine to me, by the way; I'm not sure how creating new spaces when there already so many to choose from is necessary.

I would like an opportunity to earn unobtainable pets, but it would have to be at a staggering investment of time or consistency, and that could feel like a cruel grind.

Lolfixheal, my alternative to dungeons would be a monthly quest. A dozen sinister tamers are Up To No Good! Each has designed its own mini-pet champion. Breanni has discovered the location of one of them. You go there, and battle the first champion. The battles should be hard - legendary pets with Epic or very solid Blue backups. The backup pets change every day. Having defeated the first, he gives you the location of the next, and each one in turn, until you have defeated all 12, and then you can choose to capture one of their own pets for your collection. It spreads out the effort, gives you plenty of time, and occupies a year to collect all 12. I still like that idea. :)

However, the devs have chosen Dungeons, so I'm limiting my thoughts to that format.

Kiotay, the thought of infinitely repeatable dungeons scares me shellless. :D Maybe if they did an M+ analogue, with affixes and increasing difficulty ... but I'd hate to feel obliged to grind WC 10 times a day. :o

User avatar
Kiotay
Top Rater
Posts:7
Joined:February 1st, 2019
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Kiotay » February 14th, 2019, 2:02 pm

Even with bad layout like Wailing Caverns I'd do it to speed up collection process. Besides... unless they start doing seasonal rewards (which would be cool) there is no reason to feel like you have to complete it in a week or even a month. Pet rewards are long term goals which I'm fine with. Not so fine with seeing no progress or only weekly progress. Kind of like Artifact Power... I'll get it eventually but I'm not grinding it out. However, if I'd rather run it ten times on one lazy Sunday instead of every week for two and a half months... I should be able to.

User avatar
Talmar
MVP
Posts:298
Joined:November 12th, 2010
Pet Score:13625
Realm:Kirin Tor-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Talmar » February 15th, 2019, 9:39 am

I'd love to see a "What a long strange pet trip it's been" kind of achievement. Add a new holiday themed pet battle to each holiday. Require the achievement to have all of them completed with a max level team of every family type similar to all the family battle achievements.

Have some kind of outstanding, super rare, totally unique pet reward for it.

Instead of plowing through some massive 144'ish pet battles like we get with pet tamers in new xpacs we'd have to do 10 battles each holiday. It's spread out over a year. Complete each individual holiday achievement could award cosmetic items for our pets.

You could even add a vendor to this with a special holiday pet currency, a holiday pet charm if you will. The overall achievement gives you the pet, rare, free of charge. However, there could be a vendor with really really special items that cost 8 Holiday Pet Charms (current number of Holidays I'm my memory serves). Off the top of my head:

1 box of family ultra battle stones (raise one of every pet family to max level)
1 toy - turn your corgi into a mount

just some thoughts

User avatar
Rosqo
Posts:276
Joined:April 26th, 2017
Pet Score:9646
Realm:Silvermoon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Rosqo » February 16th, 2019, 2:44 pm

It's been disappointing that the dungeons are all the same boring format with the same bosses. The things that I'd like to be introduced to the new content would be:
- means to obtain the random or wild pets within the content
- boss rotation within the content. Either via different routes(potentially rewarding different things to reduce the easier route being chosen), different bosses each week similar to CT or bonus bosses unique to each instance.
- a tie in with the reward pets to challenges for pvp content, win 100 games with all of the pets rewarded etc
- remove the first time normal mode second time challenge mode components.

I would certainly like there to be more content in PVP though as I feel it would take players much longer to complete. The rewards just need to be there as an incentive. Literally loads of people have done the poorly implemented Brawler that only rewarded a tabard. Put half a dozen pets and a mount behind about 1k worth of wins and the queue would be nuts. Probably wanna fix a lot of the balance issues or it will end up fewer opposition pets than a pve dungeon! ;)

User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:956
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Gráinne » February 17th, 2019, 5:23 am

1. I'm not sure what you mean by "obtain the random or wild pets within the content". You mean having different wild pets within the dungeon? I did like the Dream Whelplings at Cenarius. They could have mutated or infected or Borgified pets - Undead versions or Mechanical versions of regular pets that had ventured inside. That's a nice idea.

2. I'm not sure that boss rotation in the sense of changing the sequence along a path would help. Certainly, having the bosses vary week by week, or bonus bosses, would be a plus!

3. This comes back to the old "rewards for PvP" issue, rather than the design of the dungeons themselves.

4. I don't get this. It makes perfect sense to me that people should do it once on Normal before Challenge mode. Yes, if you already have a thousand Blue 25s, you're going to blow away the Normal mode (and the Challenge mode), but, shocking as it may sound, there are still people who are just starting their rosters, and going through on Normal gives them a sense for what it's going to take.

User avatar
Uduwudu
Posts:496
Joined:June 30th, 2016
Pet Score:11571
Realm:Draka-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Uduwudu » February 18th, 2019, 9:23 am

Gráinne wrote:
February 11th, 2019, 6:01 pm
what could the devs do with the dungeon format to make it live longer and be more engaging?
...
Affixes have been suggested many times as a way to vary the experience and create a potential Mythic difficulty.

How would you design the next pet dungeon?
I'm opposed to the setup with Heroic and Mythic, as it separates players and creates rewards for many folks that don't even do Pet Battles. As an example, a couple of Mythic Island Expeditions, we had a pet drop in all 3 of them, and all of the pets went to the "winner" of the roll ... and yours truly that had over 900 pets, and an avid Pet Battler (which the guild knew about and saw my ranking!) ... got hung out to dry ... I'm tired of that BS and I quit that guild an hour later after this happening 3 times.

I'm not sure that I am asking for the drops to be PREFERRED to the player with more pets, or an "active" pet battler (a ranking of which would be very easy to put together! How many pet battles this past week? I average over 36 of them per week!) ... but I do not like the drop setup as a "random" bullpucky that ends up in the hands of the wrong person ... and it feels like the old days in raids, when a cloth drop that 3 squishies needed, and the dps person that won it would not pass it around, and instead go sell it for .... whatever ... until they made those drops soulbound, and even then ... the disparity and the hurt of the drops going to the wrong person/class was ridiculous, and I'm glad to see that in the past year+ this has been addressed, but things like Pets and many other items in the game, are still being unfairly dumped in the wrong hands.

I was against the dungeon thing for pets from the start, because I was pretty sure that they were going to give us crap for pets that were useless, and the only reason why they have not scrapped the Celestial Tournament, is probably because that was one of the first really explosive expansions that the pet battles were actually OK ... and you HAD TO GO GET ALL THE PETS to be able to do the fights anyway ... heck we do that now by looking at Wowhead or WarcraftPets, so what's the big deal?

Since then, almost every single Pet Battle has given us a bunch of nothings, and pets with just an insane and ridiculous set of numbers, that you wouldn't even give to your granma when she was learning to play for fun, or worse ... give it to your 5 year old that just discovered the game and loves it! (Don't forget the trade out ... good grades you can play more ... bad grades and you play less!)

And the majority of the programmers in this game, are not, and will not, bother considering a suggestion from here or anywhere else ... why? Easy ... I'm a writer ... I follow my "inner vision" that has a story and I keep following it ... and last night got stuck in this spot ... no worries ... reset tomorrow night and that spot resolves itself ... and you do not need the "outside" to resolve something that happens "inside". Same with many programmers, and how a lot of games are designed ... with one exception and it was visible in the early EQ game ... they ended up hitting a brick wall with a game engine that forced them to do it this way ... and they could never get out of that, or find a satisfactory way to make "those levels" invisible, so it would stop intimidating players!

At that point, you see how good a programmer is ... and Blizzard has relied on different folks for a long time, and tomorrow the same three that we saw at the Con, are no longer there ... and the "process" and "design" will change again ... and the old stuff completely left behind and dropped ... because the new guy has new ideas!

For the "pet dungeons" to improve and be better designed, you need new people ... not old folks that are simply copying code and using the same thing, because they are not allowed to give you another Xu-Fu ... and I have to tell you that I have NEVER NEVER NEVER ... seen or found ANYONE that had that pet in use on a daily battle ... heck, I haven't even use Lil' Rags for anything except cooking ... it's cooler and "safer" than that fire on the ground ... don't you agree?

User avatar
Rosqo
Posts:276
Joined:April 26th, 2017
Pet Score:9646
Realm:Silvermoon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Rosqo » February 18th, 2019, 12:16 pm

Not sure if your response is on topic or not Uduwudu seems like a bit of a tangent. Lil Rag is fairly common in PVP.

Grainne like the Deviate Hatchlings or whatever they are etc. The random pets appear in the back of a lot of fights. At least there would be more of a reason to go in there and get them. Maybe they have a interaction with the dungeon of some kind.

I just feel that the dungeons should have content for all of the community not just pve. It's not very engaging completing these dungeons when everything is predetermined.

The most recent dungeons are the current end game content for pve effectively right? Should someone with about 10 level 25s be able to complete it? No. The 'normal mode' aspect is just a boring exercise in box ticking.

User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:956
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Gráinne » February 19th, 2019, 6:37 am

Ah right. Now I see what you mean about the Deviate Hatchlings and such. It might be interesting to make them capturable, if the devs would make the battle difficult enough that capturing would be a challenge. If you have enough pets that you can gamble on losing the battle to try to capture, you can go for it: or start again. Nice idea!

"Predetermined" is a hard problem. The devs made BfA tamers vary their scripts, but at the same time made them easier, to allow for the use of levelling pets. I think that latter was a mistake. I understand the impulse to make the game more newcomer-friendly, but it did completely spoil the randomisation effect. I'm with you on this; however, "hardcore" pet battlers are in a very small minority.

I don't share your view of current dungeons being "end-game" in the same way as current M+ and raids are "end-game" in WoW overall. I see the pet battles game as a different game that doesn't have (much) progression by expansion. You don't need current-expansion pets for anything the way you need BfA gear to survive at 120. It's a different model, and I prefer it to the main game model. So, as I see it, the Celestial Tournament is still the pinnacle of the end-game for pets, and it is entirely reasonable to provide a learning curve with some rewards for people in the BfA dungeons. (Though it would be nice to see a new pinnacle on the horizon ...)

User avatar
Uduwudu
Posts:496
Joined:June 30th, 2016
Pet Score:11571
Realm:Draka-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Uduwudu » February 20th, 2019, 10:30 pm

Gráinne wrote:
February 19th, 2019, 6:37 am
...
I don't share your view of current dungeons being "end-game" in the same way as current M+ and raids are "end-game" in WoW overall. I see the pet battles game as a different game that doesn't have (much) progression by expansion. You don't need current-expansion pets for anything the way you need BfA gear to survive at 120. It's a different model, and I prefer it to the main game model. So, as I see it, the Celestial Tournament is still the pinnacle of the end-game for pets, and it is entirely reasonable to provide a learning curve with some rewards for people in the BfA dungeons. (Though it would be nice to see a new pinnacle on the horizon ...)
Which is really my point, although I used historic examples to show how the game was, and how things have "changed" to become the same in many ways.

CT is, probably the best "end-game" event for Pet Battles, and just about all 4 pets are worth having, and very usable. The only concern, is that only hard core Pet Battlers have these, since you really have to go on a hunt to get about 30 or 40 pets, before you can really do the CT properly ... and the procedure that is available shows you how important some things are.

The Expeditions, even on Mythic, are not "end-game" and the listing of pets that can drop in any Expedition, and cost anywhere from 3/4/5K to a lot more each, are nowhere near the efficiency of the top 5 or 10 pets that you have/use or ... for that matter ... look at the top 20 here at WarcraftPets ... none listed! Which should tell you how good the "design" really is or isn't.

I'm not prepared to say that the pets and abilities are a problem .., my issue is that the "design" and "continuation" is an almost impossible thing to do, since you don't want many pets that just clean house and sweep all the floors ... and then the whole Pet Battle thing kinda falls apart ... but I really do not see the big deal of ONE PET, being good enough to enter the Top 20 list, ONCE PER YEAR (so to speak) and be an award for doing a Gnomer, or Wailing Caverns or the other place ... where the drops are ridiculous and not worth the hassle ...

All I'm saying (above) is that the creation of these battles, has not improved anything, except give you something different to do, which in the end, feels frustrating ... just like entering Mythic 5 or 6 or 7 and all you get is a 340 piece ... you would be very upset at that ... and probably not bother again!

User avatar
Nagini
Top Rater
Posts:150
Joined:January 27th, 2013
Pet Score:9683
Realm:Kael'thas-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Nagini » February 21st, 2019, 6:41 am

First of all, I do really like the pet battle dungeon content. It's a neat idea, the rewards are fine now (static over RNG any day, although i see the need/appeal of a mix sometimes). The difficulty is fine, with 800+ pets in my library I don't expect a challenge I can't beat, especially considering how many other players it would shut out.

My main issue with the current pet battle dungeons is: Where's the fun? The shady figure made it seem like there would be a plot, to the locations or reasons or otherwise, but it feels very lacklustre, and the npc's/battles in them seem thematically correct for the locations but kind of bland. There is some whimsicalness and some pop culture references, but if we wanted to kill dungeons full of rodents, slimes and roaches we wouldn't be pet battling in the first place. There are so many cute things blizzard could do with this concept that I'm a little disappointed they picked random critters as mobs and ugly locations to boot. Why not a pet cemetery full of undead type pets that came to life? The stormwind library (or karazhan, or w/e) full of magical books that spew out creatures or attack you outright? There are two new 'pet shops' in both capitals; fill them with all cat/dog related fights and we'd be golden.
It's clear from the unique abilties and fun fights in the pet battle trainers (That bee fight in drustvar where they use a sting attack then die and the NPC laments that that happens every time? LOL!) that there's plenty of this kind of stuff floating around at blizzard to use. It's not gonna stop them from being tedious the 10th run, but between cute pets, funny fights and interesting locations it might make it feel like less of grind and put a smile on our faces.

User avatar
Cendir
Posts:57
Joined:January 7th, 2013
Pet Score:8166
Realm:Alexstrasza-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Cendir » February 23rd, 2019, 3:41 pm

At some point it all just becomes too much. Having done the first 2 pet dungeons, I've not done this one or the CT - just the amount of work I'd need to do to start, kills it for me. And that sucks, because I actually do want the pets, as I am a collector.

User avatar
Nagini
Top Rater
Posts:150
Joined:January 27th, 2013
Pet Score:9683
Realm:Kael'thas-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Nagini » February 25th, 2019, 4:50 am

Seperate idea;
Instead of making a dungeon where we can use our own pets, would it add to the challenge to get a set of pets given to us?
Like make one week a 'no restrictions' week, where people can use whatever pet they want to beat a fight, then the next week you only need 3 of any 25 pet to start the fight, but the pets you fight with are assigned, randomly selected from the pool of teams that have at least an X amount of victories in week 1 (this to avoid you getting too many teams that only managed to beat the fight with lucky RNG). There could also be a limit, i.e. no teams with more than >1000 victories, to avoid people only getting variations on the "meta".
Even starting pet trainers would be able to complete it like this since it wouldn't require a massive library of pets on the individual trainer's part, and it would let you A) see different strategies other people might use and B) pushes you to get a better understanding of pet use and different kinds of team synergy. Anyone can think of what to do if you get a 3x nexus whelp setup, but some of the strats you see in for example family battler are super creative. If you lose, your team gets randomized again so you can try again with a new team. The reward should be appropriate though considering it's harder than doing it yourself.

User avatar
Uduwudu
Posts:496
Joined:June 30th, 2016
Pet Score:11571
Realm:Draka-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Uduwudu » February 25th, 2019, 10:10 am

Cendir wrote:
February 23rd, 2019, 3:41 pm
At some point it all just becomes too much. Having done the first 2 pet dungeons, I've not done this one or the CT - just the amount of work I'd need to do to start, kills it for me. And that sucks, because I actually do want the pets, as I am a collector.
CT has the best design and different fights of all the "dungeons". And the variations are very good, and you end up learning that you could use Mr. Bigglesworth and other pets in other fights. In this sense, CT is excellent. But I do not see that in the other locations, and the rewards for a poor stat roach, mouse or cat, just isn't worth the hassle. At least, all 4 pets in CT are worth having, and you can find a place for them ... but I'm not sure that I will even be starting two of these dungeons, after seeing the list of pets possible ... embarrassing, is my thought about those "rewards".

User avatar
Rosqo
Posts:276
Joined:April 26th, 2017
Pet Score:9646
Realm:Silvermoon-eu
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Rosqo » February 25th, 2019, 12:16 pm

Uduwudu wrote:
February 25th, 2019, 10:10 am
At least, all 4 pets in CT are worth having, and you can find a place for them ... but I'm not sure that I will even be starting two of these dungeons, after seeing the list of pets possible ... embarrassing, is my thought about those "rewards".
This is questionable I would say none of the pets from CT stand out, Yula is probably the best of the bunch. These pets are about in line with the other pet dungeon rewards such as Everliving Spore, Foe Reaper or Leper Rat.

User avatar
Uduwudu
Posts:496
Joined:June 30th, 2016
Pet Score:11571
Realm:Draka-us
Contact:

Re: Now that Gnomeregan is over ...

Post by Uduwudu » February 26th, 2019, 8:50 am

Kiotay wrote:
February 14th, 2019, 2:02 pm
Even with bad layout like Wailing Caverns I'd do it to speed up collection process.
...
Strange comment if you don't mind my saying so.

The layout is much more in touch with the old days, than the simple layouts that most dungeons and raids have these days ... you forget that in the days of Crossroads and Wailing Caverns, the layouts were huge all around, to the point where Molten Core, took 2 full days of about 8 hours each on a raid with 40 people. Check out the level 60 places, and how huge they were and there were two major parts for it. There is no place like those nowadays ... everything is the three minute orgasm! ... and then we have a complaint about the lousy drops!

The layout in WC is fine ... the problem is that we have gotten so lazy that we don't like to do "dungeons" unless they take only 5 minutes ... over and out ... and I'm off to my next ... in those days, even WC with a very good group at level 20, would still take a good couple of hours or more to get it done ... so today, you can smash it in 30 minutes, and go have 2 tokes outside while the other move ahead, and it's a complaint.
Rosqo wrote:
February 25th, 2019, 12:16 pm
Uduwudu wrote:
February 25th, 2019, 10:10 am
At least, all 4 pets in CT are worth having, and you can find a place for them ... but I'm not sure that I will even be starting two of these dungeons, after seeing the list of pets possible ... embarrassing, is my thought about those "rewards".
This is questionable I would say none of the pets from CT stand out, Yula is probably the best of the bunch. These pets are about in line with the other pet dungeon rewards such as Everliving Spore, Foe Reaper or Leper Rat.
I'm not sure of that Rosqo ... you might want to take a look at the WarcraftPets Top 20 and you will find only Xu-Fu listed in there. While it is possible that the list is not "updated" as much as we think it should, or could, I do not find/see a single pet listed from any of those other dungeons, anywhere at all ... and I do not see what battles you are using the lesser pets to win ... as many fights. The incorrect breeds are enough to fail many fights, let alone the bad stats on many pets, that are merely a poor exercise on a spreadsheet/database by a programmer that I like to joke has obviously NEVER EVER done a pet battle in this game ... is one of my favorite jokes.

Reminds me of some folks that used to work our mail server, and kept it reasonably this and that, but they could not fix the spam issues ... you know why? They never used it. They all were doing their email in Unix because they didn't like this or that on the mail server! And fixing it? ... heck, if the fools want to use that crap let them, was the main theme! I'm not totally convinced that it has changed much today, and that many programmers are still playing that "superior" thinking and game to all the players ... btw, that's how EQ was broken up ... the good guys that could program that were playing, just about all came to WoW and their names are all over in many NPC's and such.

Sooner or later something similar will happen here, if the content is nothing but rehash and poor design, and on top of that ... a copy of the same map/location, just with different colors! :lol:

Post Reply