Mythron's Best Friend - a proposal on Battle Pets

[zanestheargent]

Much like the Mechs, Battle Pets is one of those concepts that could be super duper nice in theory but needs some major updates. I’ll be slowly working here on individual cards but the core precepts of this proposal are: making away with some of their undercost idea by giving them a better AI and making usage of the new techs of the UI in their favor.

The revised AI
The new Battle Bet AI shouldn’t only consider physical distance between units, but threat range as a whole - every unit they can move into and attack should be eligible based on the parameters below. As for mobility and direction, a simple switch should do one of the most crucial things to keep ranged battle pets sensible: if you’re ranged, you move AWAY instead of towards your intended target.

A smart boy

0. Priority Alterators (Taunts, targetting spells)
1. Enemy General, if they can kill them
2. The highest Attack Minion they can kill
3. Enemy General, if that won’t kill the Pet
4. Minions they won’t be able to kill
5. Enemy General, it that would kill the pet

The UI and drawing lists
A previous issue we had with Battle Pet related cards is how there was little space to notify exactly what cards it could pull in days they had specific lists instead of an all-encompassing full-random pull. With things like the increased text size limit and the tech to show previews of related cards we see in Sentinel and Build cards, those smaller, more concise pools could be making a comeback.

Example: Mantella revised

I’ll be along the week tackle faction by faction, giving a look both at the creatures and their related cards. Ideas, suggestions, any quip on the theme is welcome. =w=/

Lyonar:

Fighting Spirit

Slo

Fiz

[alplod]

Aside from ranged pets, I think your suggestions are too complicated.

The pet’s behavior is easy to predict now, so it’s easy to play them or against them.

[boronian]

I agree with @alplod that the AI needs to be easy understandable and your suggestions are not. I could see a change in that regard that ranged battle pets always run away as far as possible from the nearest target.

[cold52]

personally i wouldnt mind battlepets acting different to specific minions, maybe atleast avoid attacking thunderhorn. :v

[halcyon98]

I think the mechanic Battle Pets are quite intuitive, and would rather have them stay that way. But building upon what you suggested, it would be nice to have Battle Pets whose effect make them attack the enemy General first or something along those lines.

[zanestheargent]

I generally go along the idea of “complex to write down, but simple when in play”. This complex line is just a logical breakdown of “a Battle Pet will attempt its best to finish the game or protect its General while still trying to stay alive if possible”. A player who isn’t looking at what exactly is the ‘mind of their own’ a BP has will just see the beastie doing generally what you expect a player to do - if you had no hand, would you rather see your Ubo flying all the way and pecking at that INFINILIION/2 Heartseeker in the corner or the 0/whatever structure it is set besides, generally speaking? I agree with you folks that current rules for them are pretty simple and easy to understand, but i don’t think a slightly more complex ruleset can be oh so hard if you can roughly abstract them into “this is what a player going conservatively would do”.

And speaking of you and that, @halcyon98, i openly say i’ll partially steal your FETCH spell as a sample spell for once i’m doodling new cards after i review the current ones. =w=

[zanestheargent]

Adding Lyonar ideas on the main post, both playing in altering BP AI and carving a slightly more unique niche for Fiz as a self-repairing battering ram a la Gro, but kept in a Lyonar fashion about it instead of just a beefed up Healing Mystic.