The Queue: Ready for anything!

It’s funny, we’re doing so much stuff behind the scenes for Midnight that I’ve neglected a whole lot of other stuff around here. I think we need to just slap on the sunglasses and YOLO. I figure if you’re ready for nothing then technically you’re just as ready for anything. Right?

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we vibe the answers.

It’s a gray, rainy day, which is actually one of my favorite kinds of days, as long as I can stay inside and cuddle up.

So, the way they’re changing pet battles is in a “going forward…” sense, not in a retroactive one. Though I wouldn’t count on every single doodad and trainer being there forever and ever — especially if they redo older zones again — for now everything that’s currently in the game will still be there. The major thing that’s changing in pet battling for Midnight is that all the new wild pets just take a click to collect. It generates an item in your bag, you use the item, and get a pet in your collection. You don’t have to go 3v3 and make sure you bring your Turnip and all that to catch them.

These new pets also aren’t battlers — they don’t have stats and can’t be slotted into a team. Think the Argent Page.

We also aren’t exactly sure how these pets spawn just yet. I’d say there will likely be a few that take a while, but it’s likely there will be some of certain varieties just kinda hanging out. After all, the entire companion pet system mostly started off as just little animals hanging out in the wild to make the various places around the world seem more lively — hopping frogs at rivers, rats in the cities, bunnies in the countryside.

Honestly, they were screwed from the beginning when they had hundreds of pets to collect, and added a stat-based leveling system with rarities. An increased level cap is fine when you have one character and a couple alts to contend with, but even if they only increased the level cap by one (1) level for pet battling, it would be a monstrous task to deal with, even just for the good pets you want to actively battle with, let alone the entire rest of your stable.

The massive, massive number of pets is the entire problem, and also the entire appeal. Even something like the first few iterations of Hunter pets, where you had to go train a pet to learn leveled up abilities and then you could transfer those abilities to your pets would be an issue for progression because there are so many damn pets, and that would arguably be even less fun than taming new wild pets for the appearances.

I feel like the best (and perhaps only) way forward for pet battling is to fork it completely into a mobile game. They could do something like a cross-progression “pet of the season” where every couple of months you could earn a new pet in WoW via your linked battle.net. I’m not sure how popular that would be for people who play WoW who haven’t already bought in to the pet battling system, but I’d guess that it would probably capture an audience the other way around. People would play a cute monster battling and collection game who don’t necessarily care to maintain all the other aspects of WoW that are necessary for pet battling — including a PC.

The titles I purchased: Squeakross: Home Squeak Home  |  Monstrum  |  The House of Da Vinci  |  Strange Antiquities  |  Train Valley 2  |  Abiotic Factor

I’ve been playing Squeakross on and off since I got it. I like having lightweight puzzle games like that I can plink away at in my spare time, and not only is Squeakross a well-done and cute puzzle game, the decor gameplay loop is also fun, and they keep giving me links to cute rat pics and charities in my in-game “email.” Well worth it. Train Valley is also going to scratch that particular puzzle itch pretty well, I think, when I get around to it.

I played through Strange Antiquities to an end over the weekend, and it was pretty fun. I do love the way the stories play themselves out in these games, and I need to go back and redo it for a new ending, but I don’t see a new game+ option, and I don’t really want to have to re-identify all the items, so it may be on the shelf for a little bit.

I also started in on Abiotic Factor and I’m honestly not sure yet whether I like it or not. It has a vibe similar to a Half Life, with the art style and some of the aspects of the lore and how it plays, but I was expecting more of a survival play aspect, and I haven’t figured out yet how to make, like, water. I have a feeling there’s a specific trigger I’m missing, which goes more toward RPG mechanics than survival, so I’m just kind of annoyed.