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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2015 14:28:55 GMT -5
I've spoken with a few people about the current challenges and have gotten quite a few suggestions on what I should do or change. The Iron Man challenge is pretty much untouchable (until Blizz forces our hand), so I'm going to run with some of the suggestions from others as well as a few ideas of my own for introducing new challenges. This is the first of three new challenges I will be adding to the site over the next little while.
Basically this challenge is similar to our current challenges except you're going to be leveling only by pet battling. So nothing too crazy or outlandish... but I did want to run the rules by all of you as I consider you guys to be the experts here.
Think I'd be calling it the Pet Battler Challenge but I'm not 100% sold on that name... I think we can come up with something more creative.
Pet Battling Rules I have so far: 1. Do Not Die! - the most important rule of the challenge. Break this rule and your character will get moved to the Honoured Dead section. Although... to be honest, I don't envision a lot of people dying to this.
2. Allowed 5 kills / level to allow folks the ability to kill things if they are in a tight spot. Yellow-flagged if over limit.
3. No Questing, this includes the pet battle dailies, except for a minimal number of quests (similar to Blood Thirsty, only allowed a minimal number of quests). Red flagged if over.
4. No Potions or Flasks used. We also check for Healthstones used if you are not a Warlock. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED. 4a. No Elixirs (except those that count as elixirs for quests). Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
5. No parties / grouping. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
6. No dungeons or raids. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED. 6a. No battlegrounds or arenas. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
7. No primary professions allowed. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED. 7a. No secondary professions allowed Except First Aid. Break this rule and your character is Yellow.
8. No Talents, specializations or glyphs allowed. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
9. Pet Battling is OKAY. In fact, this should the only method that gains you XP.
10. No non-class gear enchantments allowed. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
11. Tabards are allowed except for the following. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED. - Argent Crusader's Tabard - allows you to teleport to Argent Tournament. - Baradin's Wardens Tabard - allows you to teleport to Baradin's Hold Alliance Camp. - Hellscream's Reach Tabard - allows you to teleport to Baradin's Hold Horde Camp.
12. No character boosting allowed. Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
13. No food or other external, non-class buffs are allowed. Class abilities, racials and personal buffs are okay.
14. No Refer-a-Friend or other XP-boosting activites, gear or buffs (Darkmoon Faire, Herilooms, Garrison potion, etc). Break this rule and your character is RED FLAGGED.
15. No combat or leveling guide add-ons. We'll be honest here... we can't track this, so this one is on you. This is a personal challenge, so if you feel you want to use them, that's your decision.
16. The heirloom mount *should not* be used before level 20, since your character wouldn't normally have access to riding if they were a brand new character on a new battle.net account. Again, we can't track this, so this one is on you.
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Post by iarnaig on Jun 26, 2015 17:44:25 GMT -5
Sounds like the rules are basically: same as usual but no kills of anything, only exp allowed is pet battles (and pet battle dailies), right? Would be awesome if pets weren't accountwide and the rules included having to capture and use the character's own pets (plus maybe freshly-bought vendor pets), but that'd be completely untrackable, plus a complete pain in the rear for people like me who already have 600+ regular pets lol... Cool as it sounds it'd actually put me off doing it for the annoyance of having to find a way to keep my iron pets separate, so I won't actually go with that one after all. Would be kinda fun to say you have to do battling in the wild, but then the not being allowed to kill anything means you're kinda forced to only do it in safe areas anyway... if you're not allowed to kill in self-defence, it's going to get awkward fast if you actually tried to be adventurous. Not sure how long I'd hold interest in sitting in town battling lvl 1 rats, I guess as you get to higher lvl you can venture into grey lvl zones... hmm. I'd be inclined to say a larger number of allowed kills would let it be more interesting, so people actually troubled to go looking for more interesting pets rather than just sitting in a safe spot; as it is, the idea of just sitting in town isn't that appealing to me, and I do actually like pet battles...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2015 19:34:10 GMT -5
Yeah... you're right... I wouldn't want this challenge to be a "sit in Stormwind" type of challenge, right?
So maybe allow a certain number of kills (minimal) to allow some killing out in the wild in case it's needed...?
Maybe remove the pet battling quests? hmmm....
I envision this challenge to not be so much dangerous as it is more of a timed challenge, but if there's no danger.... meh.
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Post by iarnaig on Jun 26, 2015 19:50:35 GMT -5
I was going to say bonus marks (say, an additional points score in an extra column) should be awarded for lvl appropriate progress towards www.wowhead.com/achievement=6560/world-pet-mauler but it's accountwide, so won't show up All the interesting pet achievements seem to be accountwide, else you could just add a secondary goal of working on them, that'd easily add a fun lvl but can't be done as it stands. Perhaps exploration achievements could be a secondary goal instead; an exploring the world while battling around it deal? With exemptions for opposite faction towns lol, no point risking death to guards, most the exploration achievements name the subzones so an incomplete one missing only enemy towns could be good enough for a bonus mark. At least if some kills are allowed then I'd get out there and have a go at upgrading a few wild pets my main never got rare quality yet, but yeah, would need to be allowed to kill stuff to actually reach said pets alive, most the ones I need are not in convenient locations
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Xaya
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Post by Xaya on Jun 26, 2015 21:05:14 GMT -5
I'm not an expert on pet battles, but Crystaltear got to 90 mostly doing 'pvp' pet battles in SW. I don't know if they still give xp, but pet battles against other players should not be allowed
Xayaforsi lvl 100 pandaren hunter (alive) Wyrmrest Accord Xayalock lvl 22 gnome warlock (alive) Wyrmrest Accord
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 7:40:50 GMT -5
yeah, I'm going to be checking out the XP thing... I'm not sure if a person could actually sit in Stormwind and battle rats all day and still get reasonable XP... thought they had to go to a level appropriate zone or something.
I'm not sure if I can differentiate pvp pet battles, but I'll ask Blizzard if I can get my new stat request amended to include them.
I've updated the rules... allowing 5 kills / level, only minimal questing (which does NOT ignore the account-wide or daily quests).
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Post by iarnaig on Jun 27, 2015 8:52:02 GMT -5
It's lvl appropriate... for the pets. I was getting exp in Duskwood and Loch Modan on a lvl 75 one time, just by using a team of appropriate lvl pets; if you boost the pets with a lvl 25 then you gain no exp, but if your team of pets is within 3-4 lvls, you as player get exp too, go figure. Hope you can get this challenge worked out in time for the first pet battle exp weekend (bonus exp for pets this time, not players... at least, I think players aren't included!), whenever that may be; I'll be delighted to have a shot at a challenge while levelling some pets One thought, I see the rules don't make mention of sending stuff from other characters now anyway but the old rules did and I still go by them: for this challenge making gold will be near impossible if you can't either kill or quest more than absolutely essential, so I'd imagine sending gold from an alt for learning riding/flying should be ok?
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Post by fiveiron on Jun 27, 2015 15:21:38 GMT -5
To be clear, I would not attempt this challenge, so I wouldn't care much either way. My confused thoughts on the matter are merely feedback. Keep in mind that I intend no disrespect by providing honest opinions. I'm not sure if a person could actually sit in Stormwind and battle rats all day and still get reasonable XP. Like Iarnaig said, yes. Keep capturing, leveling, and abandoning level 1 rats. Never leave SW. Heck, you could even never leave the cathedral square. Exp scales with player level like any other challenging pet battle by pet levels vs opponent. Supremely boring but doable. Iarnaig also brought up a good point, money. If no kills and no quests are allowed, or even minimal kills and minimal quests, then there's no gold to buy even vendor gear, or pay for flight points. If never leaving SW, this isn't really an issue as you could do it naked. It makes sense to me to allow pet trainer quests, and even the dailies, because you'd at least have to travel to them to get it. This would also allow some trickle of gold to pay for a flight to get there, after you've scouted to the flight point. Exploring to the locations itself would require either flight or at least not being naked for the most part. However, if you can't track pet dailies and pet trainer quests separately, then the metric fails and it's a pain to restrict either one like blood thirsty. A requirement for no kills/quests rules out the expansion races. If I'm not mistaken (it's been awhile since I pet battled at all), pet battles consume rest exp. For this reason alone, Pandarens have a lasting benefit especially if it was a timed challenge. This would work with /played time, not calendar time. One person staying in SW battling continuously without rest could beat a calendar-time race easily. I don't think stats can even reveal /played time. The concept of a time-based challenge makes little sense to me otherwise, as it could be gamed. My head is spinning with circular logic. I'm unclear on the intent of restrictions and metrics, so it makes it hard to suggest lessened restrictions without breaking other metrics. It seems to me that simply lifting the pet battle restriction is a doable solution, without adding restrictions on kills or quests. Just because battle pets and achievements are account-wide, it lacks individual accountability in a massive way regardless of other rules you want to throw in with it. However, if you keep the restrictions on quests and kills, I could see the removal of ALL Iron-related rules: potions, armor quality, grouping, specification, talents, enhancements, items and money from other characters, and whatever. If you're only *doing* pet battles, the benefit of all these things is mostly irrelevant, and acquisition of stuff other than a Safari Hat is unorthodox. As such, not every Challenge needs to be an extension of the Ironman Challenge. Some challenges can be completely separate. You can wear whatever you like to the pie-eating challenge, and be super powerful for no good effective purpose while you're at it, as far as I'm concerned. EDIT: Except, of course, for gear and abilities which provide benefits to pie-eating: Heirlooms, Whee! or Grim Visage buffs, and other +experience% bonuses. (Sidebar: One of my non-iron alts has heirlooms and both Grim Visage from Halloween and Whee! from DMF currently while running around doing Midsummer quests, and the difference is noticeable. No, he doesn't get out much. It's an alt.)I am clear on one thing, an ill-advised name for it: The Pokemon Challenge. I don't advise because I wouldn't want to tangle with trademark lawyers over it. Blizzard has avoided trademark infringement this whole time with pet battles, even if the fan base commonly breaks it derisively. That said, the name even sounds derisive. Maybe that's because I don't perceive a challenge in it for me.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 17:37:23 GMT -5
This is getting ridiculous, pet challenge ..really?
and all these rules lol just stay in a city or go around to trainers
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 17:59:31 GMT -5
The feedback you've provided is great and is exactly why I posted here. Yeah, the intent was to be aimed towards going out and leveling while pet-battling, not really so much sitting around in SW battling rats. Blizzard will eventually be adding a couple of new stats for me that I would track to see if the character is the one doing the pet battling vs. someone else on the account, but yeah... folks that had a lot of pets already do have an advantage... I wouldn't put this on the same level as Iron Man leveling by any means, it's just another challenge that folks can do when they're bored. I agree, I originally thought of just doing away with all the Iron-related rules, but if we were going to try and encourage folks to level by battling wild pets vs. SW ones, I thought adding the potions, gear, etc rules would add a little more oomph. I can totally see this as a sit-in-SW challenge but I don't think even I would attempt to try it. LOL. I wonder how many people would be offended by that name?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 18:05:23 GMT -5
and all these rules lol just stay in a city or go around to trainers I agree, it defeats the purpose of the challenge. I sort of wanted this to be a leveling by wild pet battles mixed with some Iron-rules to make it deadly but I'm not sure if that can be accomplished.
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Post by fiveiron on Jun 28, 2015 13:26:25 GMT -5
I sort of wanted this to be a leveling by wild pet battles mixed with some Iron-rules to make it deadly but I'm not sure if that can be accomplished. I think it is possible for a player to do this honestly, but it's just that you currently cannot statistically confirm they are facing the intended challenge. Now that I understand its intent better, I'd name it Wildman Pet Challenge or something. I'm picturing a mythic figure of a wild unkempt mountain man loner with a small horde of tiny companions, but can't recall the reference by name or culture. Maybe it wasn't a 'real' mythic legend, but just something from the old D&D Monster Manual or w/e. Since you're on speaking terms with Blizzard to get the heirs equipped stat implemented, this got me thinking for the first time of statistics and/or options which would improve the Challenges. (afterthought: I admit this could be a whole separate thread, as a wish list or brainstorm for what would help us from Blizzard. I'm keeping it here for relevance to pet battles only, and have editorially postponed inclusion of a radically off-topic idea.) Something like an "average pet battle opponent level" or "highest pet battle opponent level" stat (assuming it's newly character-specific) would help out this Pet Battle challenge some, but either way I think it could be gamed. One much bigger idea is to allow players an option to un-share everything: collections & achievements, either granularly or as a whole. A choice could be inserted into the first-load screen of each of the collections, and if sharing is declined would then become a button to "share account mounts now" or "share account pets now" while still allowing you to collect and use items in the window below. The initial offer to share would not have a confirmation box, but the later option to start sharing would need a confirmation box to avoid stray click doom. For pets, you probably still face the same cap of 3 pet of any one type. It'd still be included in the same account wide collection, just with other parts of it unavailable. You would have to have another toon with shared access abandon one, then the unshared toon could tame/buy their own of that type without sharing to access other pets. The tricky part here is whether other sharing accounts then have access to play the unshared toon's pets, or if the blockage is two-way. The permanent acceptance of shared account collections would be an easy yes-no statistic or flag. If you could also un-share collections, it'd be a separate stat, and both could be counted numerically. You could even make it a minor Achievement called "I don't need you guys" or "Goin' it alone" or whatever. This is a sticky issue from a programming perspective, because if they stopped tracking who earned what at some time, then it's difficult for them to go back on that unless all pre-existing toons are automatically set to share without the option to go back, but new toons will be tracked separately if they've chosen to. For this reason, I could imagine Collections could be either declined or unshared, but Accomplishments could be inseparable by now.
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Post by fiveiron on Jun 28, 2015 13:50:59 GMT -5
I know! The Minion Challenge.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2015 1:22:38 GMT -5
So far Blizz has said that the Pet Battles Won stat hasn't been included and has not been assigned to a developer for review or anything, so waiting for this kind of stat may take a while... possibly as long as the next expansion, if they choose to do it.
I wish I was on speaking terms with them enough to propose the changes you're bringing up here... I would like that option for sure but I'm pretty sure I know what they're going to say: "We just spent all that time working on code to make them account-wide.." I don't think there would be enough of us to warrant the work.. but I'm just one dude and definitely NOT a Blizzard developer... I can bring it up on the battle.net developer forums if you want and see what folks say.
I'm going to test out the pet battle one when I get a little more time and see what I can do with it but if I can't verify a participant is actually doing the intended challenge I'm not sure how viable it really is. Going on the honour system is all fine and dandy but there will ALWAYS be someone that is not that honourable... and that's not fair to all of you that follow the rules that can't really be enforced.
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Post by Broken Fox on Aug 6, 2015 18:03:07 GMT -5
How exactly are pet battles tracked these days? I've fought 2 pet battles but under achievements/statistics all I see is
Vanity pets owned --
Pet Battles won at max level --
PvP Pet Battles won at max level --
PvP pet battles won through Find Battle with a full team of level 25 pets. --
Celestial Tournament wins --
Only (account wide) Pet Battle achievements I have are Trainer Extraordinaire (100 pet battle points) and Taming the Wild (Defeat a master pet tamer)
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