Scythemantis wrote:
I think the relative difference between two pets should have a cut-off point with some sort of ranking system. That is, individual levels shouldn't count but should place the opponent into a reasonable range of difficulties.
An opponent with between half and twice your total stats, for instance, would be considered rank one and be equal in power to your pet. A difference between 2x and 3x overall stats would be a rank higher and somewhat more difficult, continuing on until a certain limit, let's say rank eight. A pet with eight times your total stats or more would be the most difficult possible opponent, but whether its actual stats are exactly eight times or eight hundred times your own would still place it in that same level of relative difficulty.
Your hard-earned stats and levels would still be valuable, since the higher they are, the more opponents you're a challenge to - but you wouldn't automatically wipe everyone out in the first turn.
That's not as easy as it sounds. Neopian War Council, the site that puts together guild wars and such, has had a "league calculator" for a while, but they run into lots of difficulties. We've also been trying to put one together at IDB, but balancing the three main stats is next to impossible. For instance, which of these pets is stronger: 300 Strength, 300 HP, 300 Defense (normally trained pet) vs. 200 Strength, 500 HP, 15 Defense (lab trained pet)?
neobeth wrote:
I would like to see them come up with a free training token, good for 1 course at the school of your choice. These would be random events so everybody would benefit. You dont train , no problem sell to somebody who does. They could put these in rotation instead of those almost worthless petpet lab pieces.
They already have these, sort of. There are tons of items that can be used to instantly up a stat, like training neggs and some Kayla's Potionery potions. I assume training tokens would be similarly priced to those. If they weren't, they would throw off the market completely.