DeGei’s Battle Center: Forward Thinking – Professional Training
Every week, DeGei brings a fresh analysis on the upcoming Pet Battle System. In depth looks at possible features, pet interactions, and how you can prepare now. Welcome, this, is Battle Center.
Expect to see this image along with the “Foward Thinking” Tag used again in the future. This will be the sign I am not so much drawing conclusions as brainstorming. I am going to present today a feature and use I would like to see for the upcoming Pet Battle System. Again, this is in no way based on anything from Blizzard directly. This is drawing from previous examples and even other games.
The inspiration I am drawing from today is the new and improved Darkmoon Faire. At the faire, we have a set of monthly quests for each profession, granting 5 skill points. This is a nice boost, only available for a limited time, but fairly easy to obtain. My idea combines this nice boost, with a little more challenge.
For starters, we know there will be “masters” spread around Azeroth who can be challenged to learn new pet abilities. We don’t know anything beyond that, what restrictions they will have, will their pets be max level or scalable, etc. Now, what if Blizzard added other “masters” of sorts, not ones who grant pet abilities, but ones who are experts of other professions, and, for a lore reason, use those skills to train pets. Tying pets to professions in a simple, yet fun way.
The concept would be a Profession Master for each Primary and Secondary Profession scattered around Azeroth. Each would only be able to challenged once a week, similar to the Wintergrasp and Tol Barad Victory quests, the difference being, if you lose, that master may not be challenged again. If you were to win, no other master may be challenged until the reset. A defeated master would offer a relatively simple quest offering 5 skill points.
These masters would not be pushovers. Each would have three maxed level pets with rounded ability choices. However, each would be based on their profession. Examples would include the Herbalism master using plantlike pets, the Enchanting master using magical pets, and so forth. This would set them up with some form of weakness and predictability. This would mean alts would gain an advantage as they can just borrow the same team as the main and beat the master as well, as pets are planned to be shared. This would be negated by the fact that most players level different professions on alts, meaning a different team would probably be needed.
It brings a new incentive to level pets, a way to speed the profession leveling process through lower levels, and challenging “bosses” for the pet battle system. I was going to post ideas for these masters, including names, victory and defeat quotes, and teams, but I rather leave that to you, the reader. Post your ideas in the comments, have some fun with it. I’ll post some of mine later in the week.
If you have any requests for topics drop me an email and I will do my best to give it a shot. It may be a few months before we hear anything more about the pet battling officially. Thanks for reading.
DeGei can be followed on Twitter @DeGeiDragon . His main is Zeluminati, a Draenei Prot Warrior with more experience at retro content than current. Also, she is getting pretty good at pet hunting. Feel free to email [email protected] with any questions or topics you would like to see covered.
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