MoP Pet Battle System is Complete Overkill?

#1 - April 26, 2012, 7:18 a.m.

Am I the only one who thinks that all this development for a silly pet battle system is complete overkill? There is a pet encyclopedia? Hundreds of attacks developed for pets? Have you even seen how many modules were developed for this system? If not, why not hover over to WoWHead or MMOC and spend the next hour looking at it. And for what? Vanity? Just pure vanity? They just took the framework of Pokemon and added it to their game. Is anyone proud of Blizzard? Can anyone honestly say that?

I am absolutely appalled. Blizzard, here's my honest opinion on this before I give you my constructive criticism. It's garbage.

You took over probably 1000 hours of development for this. You didn't need to go that far for the pet system. It could've been something as simple as giving every pet 1 attack and assigning RNG for its attack power when it duels another player's pet. You didn't stop to think about using that time to develop what is broken. You could've taken 15 minutes to read the Suggestions board on one of your affiliated fansites and read any of the original content ideas. You could've looked at your old WotLK box and remembered that aerial mount combat idea that was advertised and promised but never made it to the final release (because, according to Tom Chilton, it wasn't good enough and required more development). You could've taken that idea and developed it. You didn't.

You could've worked on character models. You could've worked on more battlegrounds, dungeons, raids, and arenas. You could've added more achievements specific to those four areas. What about what is broken? What people keep complaining about but you keep ignoring? Arena rating system? Cap? Please take just a few minutes of your time to look at the arena forum. What about hurrying up with the battletag system? What's taking so long? Was the pet battle system a higher priority?

Pet collectors will be the only WoW players mutually interested in this. This whole pet battle system is a paradigm of its own. There is an encyclopedia of pets to collect and catch. If you aren't already way into this, where is the motivation to start? Just weeks after the expansion, I bet you someone will say that the fighting system promotes bloodsport. There is no good thing about this for the average player.

Now that you've added it, it's going to be continually updated, continually wasting hours, and continually voiding the biggest issues with this game. Just like you said "so many people wanted transmogrification", you will say "so many people wanted to battle pets", when in reality, so few people said anything about either of those things.

It would be great if you polled us with a simple question like this: "Should we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this silly vanity idea?" before taking the initiative to do it. Please do that next time, I guarantee my soul the results will shock you. ;)

EDIT: There are too many people calling me a troll because I'm on a level 1, and for that reason, I will give you my main, so you can make pre-determined judgement about my opinion because of my character rather than because of my opinion.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dawnbringer/Samman/simple

Zarhym

Community Manager

#169 - May 5, 2012, 2:13 a.m.

04/26/2012 12:18 AMPosted by Dntgnkme
And for what? Vanity? Just pure vanity?

For fun. We're adding something new to the game we think a large number of players will enjoy given its accessibility.

04/26/2012 12:18 AMPosted by Dntgnkme
You could've worked on character models. You could've worked on more battlegrounds, dungeons, raids, and arenas.

By and large you're not talking at all about the same developers/artists/programmers. The development team isn't just a pool of people, all with the exact same skill sets. That's too big an assumption on your part with regard to what could've been created in the absence of pet battles, not to mention whether or not the payoff would actually be better if development resources were dedicated to other projects.

04/26/2012 12:18 AMPosted by Dntgnkme
Pet collectors will be the only WoW players mutually interested in this.

We'll see. That's a bold claim.

04/26/2012 12:18 AMPosted by Dntgnkme
Now that you've added it, it's going to be continually updated, continually wasting hours, and continually voiding the biggest issues with this game.

You're entitled to your opinion and we're listening, but you don't decide for the general WoW population what are the biggest issues with the game, nor are you attuned to our production schedule and how resources are distributed to various projects within the design department. Bold claims AND big assumptions.

04/26/2012 12:18 AMPosted by Dntgnkme
It would be great if you polled us with a simple question like this: "Should we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this silly vanity idea?" before taking the initiative to do it. Please do that next time, I guarantee my soul the results will shock you. ;)

We absolutely want to make the best game possible and want people to love it. The means to that end, however, isn't design by democracy. Aside from finding and fixing bugs, there's a reason why we have beta tests. We can't just write a list of feature descriptions down on paper, put them up for a vote, and expect to obtain the best actionable development ideas (yes, even if we framed the questions to be just a little more fair than your example).

We create. You play. You provide feedback. We iterate.

P.S. You're going off of bits and pieces of information datamined from the beta. The system isn't even live yet and we have a lot more information coming to explain how we want it to work.