I hope the holidays are treating everyone well! Technically, I'm still "on break" until the week after New Years, but I still find some time to log on now and then to do the Tamer dailies and level some pets.
Unfortunately, my leveling progress has slowed dramatically, but not just because of the holidays. I'm running out of goals that encourage and drive me to continue leveling.
Actually, that's not entirely true. A better statement would be 'I'm running out of ENGAGING goals that encourage and drive me to continue leveling my pets.'
I still have two goals left on my plate, level pets and upgrade all pets. On their own, though, these tasks are just grinds. There's no excitement behind it since it's just routine and repeat. Nothing new or unexpected usually occurs.
Side note: My other goals don't necessarily involve leveling any pets, as they're mainly collect X non-wild pet. So those are kind of unrelated.
I currently have all the wild pets in rare quality, and all the colors that I desire/are available to me. Breeds aren't something that I want to dive into, since that's a whole new level of obsession. I'm nit-picky as it is; trying to capture specific breeds, in rare quality, of a specific skin... I think that would burn me out.
Prior to completing most of my goals, my driving motivation to level was to capture rare quality pets. It doesn't sound all that exciting, but the rush of FINALLY finding the right one was there. That feeling made the activity enjoyable, and stumbling across what you're looking for every now and then broke the routine and monotony of it all. At the same time I was leveling pets left and right. It was efficient and a stimulating experience at the same time.
All the tasks prior to completion gave me the same sense of motivation to move forward, not just hunting for rares. Finding specific colors, capturing pets in general, etc. But now I'm left with just grinding levels and possibly finding Battle-Stones.
The latter of the two does provide some motivation to complete something PLUS level pets, but unless I have a specific family-type in mind and a place to potentially farm it (while earning pet experience), situations don't always pop up where I can feel determined to do it.
I can't exactly make farming Battle-Stones my "go-to" driving force because... well, it's not entirely possible to "farm" stones. Nevermind the huge RNG factor, there are also only limited spawns for certain pet family-types. This makes it extremely difficult to work on a certain family. I could simply hope for general stones, but for me, it doesn't feel as satisfying if I don't have a specific goal/target in mind.
Simply grinding levels has started to become tedious and boring for me. Am I just burnt out? What can I do do now? Is there any type of engaging task I can do to help inspire myself to keep grinding levels? I'm at a complete loss, yet too stubborn to let it go and leave it as "oh well".
Perks N Peeves by Quintessence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I'm not even CLOSE to accomplishing what you have, but I understand how you feel. While I still have plenty of rares yet to collect and level, it feels like I've already hit all the milestones. I appreciate that Blizzard seems dedicated to adding new collectible pets each expansion. At the same time I can't help but want for some new mechanic to the whole thing to keep it fresh. The fact that breed id's exist suggests to me that further depth has already been allotted for, so there's that. Someone mentioned to me the desire to be able to form tag-teams with other players, which I thought was a fascinating idea.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a helpful suggestion for you, but now I guess I'm kind of waiting for Blizzard to make the next move.
-Syl
@Syl: I'm pretty much waiting for 5.2 as well. The "epic" pet battles seem interesting and will hopefully bring a new and stimulating goal for me.
DeleteI have to admit, I'm finding the appeal of pvp more fun. never knowing what pet you'll fight has given all my pets some importance-as long as they're rare. Hope on a flight plan queue up, waiting for a hearth cooldown queue up. I personally cant wait for leveling xp with pet battles. Between yellow mob xp, monk bonus whee! and heirloom, who knows how much xp that will bring.
ReplyDeletemy main point though do more pvp if you can.
@Tadedra: I'm not big on PVP, the player or pet version. It doesn't motivate me to level any pets and I don't feel any excitement doing it. :\
DeleteI can see why some people enjoy it, though. Unfortunately I guess I'm just not one of those people. >_<
like real pvp, it' best done with only level 25 rare pets-top level in epic gear- (In a way that's what I was afraid of because that makes Battle Stones for vendor/quest pets that aren't rare a necessity) but the variety of pets is used so much more. Picking about 6 - 9 pets for a rotation of pvp makes life interesting. You can't focus on what is strong against Beast, critter, aquatic or flying. Sure there other family compositions out there but they are usually easily defeated.
DeleteUnlike pvp though, it's still turn base and you don't get that ganking feeling, not even in defeat for me. Unless the other person truly dominates your team, which is completely luck because how are they going to know you have an Elemental, Beast, Magic group, you will always have a chance. It's turn base so you can be a bit more strategic without the stress, hurry hurry hurry, now now now.
Now depending on when you pet pvp, you can get a feeling of the teams you are playing. this is why I suggest have 2 - 3 Teams where you can rotate players. Maybe you had a bad match up. there is a possibility that you will get that match up again. Maybe change 1 pet or swapping to a different team comp will be an option.
I personally don't like pvp either. My reflexes aren't good and the battle grounds without organization makes me nauseous and stressed. So, I get where you're coming from so please believe me that this feels completely different.