So, hi. Apparently, I failed to be on-line for 25 hours straight (which is completely possible as I have to fly on Monday and am trying to get my 4 RL pets prepared for 11 days without me as well as figuring out how to get stuff to/from people who I need to get it to/from before I go), and as a result I missed out on battling Jaxon (even though I have received him as a challenger). I wouldn't need an alternative, but if I receive someone as a challenger, it should be safe to say that I can fight him. Now, I mean, I guess that's fine, but there's also apparently an achievement related to this that I also missed out on. I quit this site for a good 3 or 4 years (our internet service was behind the times, and you all updated the graphics/site...so it just didn't work for me); so I have no illusions of having all the achievements, but I feel that some relatively responsible person should be able to get all of the plot achievements. It's the 31st. I'm here. I can't do all of the final plot step. I don't like this.

The thing is, battling is always optional, other than usually a super easy opponent that literally anyone can beat. The community battles? Also optional. It sucks if you missed out on achievements (but it's not subeta's fault if you couldn't be online for a full day during a plot) or if you don't battle (it's not subeta's fault you choose not to train) but it's not mandatory.

I could maybe get behind some form of non-battling support but it would have to be limited and/or not eligible for more than the bottom 2-3 prizes available for battlers.

I'm really getting tired of people wanting everyone to be able to get every single item ever in existence. Not everything should be easy to get.

The group boss was alright. I managed to get a few hits in with my Tier 4 pet (wasted a few Negating Pylonics to get some two-strike fights in ;)) yesterday and everything. However, I do have some cool ideas for different versions of "end bosses" that could be used next time around (sorry in advance if any of these have happened already, I haven't been able to play actively for 2 years because my old computer stopped being able to handle the site properly and I've only just come back in something akin to full force) :

1. A 1-on-1 "final boss" which scales in difficulty with your pet. Whatever your pet's stats, it'll still be challenging, and when you beat it, it disappears from your challengers list. What items it drops depends on your pet's tier and there will be a special achievement or prize that you can only get if you beat it with your strongest pet (and maybe a booby prize that's a cheesy knock-off of the aforementioned special prize if you go and beat it with your weakest pet).

2. Tier-specific enemy waves. In this case, there would be different waves of mooks of varying strength and limited number, sort of like the gelatines...but with the twist that only pets on the appropriate tier(s) would be able to fight them. The number of these critters could be based on how many active players' strongest pets are in that strength range, so that there's enough beat-down to go around and little excess baggage.

For instance, say that this mook army has five divisions, each having stats that are about mid-range for opponents in the Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, and Extremely Hard categories respectively. The Easy mooks would only be available to fight with Tier 1-2 pets, Medium with Tier 3-4 pets...all the way to the Extremely Hard mooks which would require a Tier 9+ or 10+ pet to fight. The in-story excuse could be that they need "everyone positioned where they'll be most effective," hence the limitation, and there would be special prizes for everyone who has beaten at least 10 mooks on their strongest pet's level (which will vary with level).

I have no idea if the second one is doable, but I think that both ideas would be a lot of fun if they could be pulled off just right.

The thing is, from what I'm guessing, you'll get all the PLOT prizes if you got all the achievements, including 1HP of damage against Jaxon.

The grinding against Jaxon seems like a whole OTHER bunch of prizes. So you'll get all the plot prizes, but not all the battle prizes.

Similar to the other unlockable challengers. Chairy, you beat. That was part of the plot. But the other five, with their EXP and their 5 win loot, that was all optional. We'll see how it all pays out in the end when we get our plot prizes, but because staff keeps saying that battling was OPTIONAL, one would assume you can get ALL plot prizes if you got all the achievements and steps.

Battlers get extra because we put in extra work for this particular event. Sometimes, other people get extra because they put in extra work for other things, like the before mentioned costume contests, Epicon games, BOTB participation, etc. Different players get different advantages depending on what they decide to focus on.

i'll agree to do away with battling steps/boss fights if that means we never have to have another one of those awful HA contests. because i dont like HA dressup activities, so no one else should get to enjoy it 👍

the thing is, not everyone does ANYTHING. not everyone battles, not everyone makes HAs, not everyone likes flash games, or drawing, or writing, or whatever else a plot could be based on. the plots lately have been varied between all the different interest groups, which i like. not everyone is going to love every plot, but that's how it has to be so that everyone loves some plot.

I really like Idea 1 you had. That would make the plot seem more personal and that you yourself helped solve it. I think that is fantastic. I do not however know if logistically that would work. It would probably have to be limited to an achievement to get the good prize, otherwise I could get 30 items between all my pets and that doesn't seem fair. However if it was an achievement I'm not sure how they would be able to scale the prize accordingly. Maybe just have him fightable once per account, get your prize, then he is gone for good.

I do however really really hate idea 2. Neopets probably ruined this one for me. During an old plot they had different tiered challengers and it depended on your stats as to what baddies you could fight, like you're suggesting. Sounds great in theory, but my battle pet was a lab pet with obscene strength and decent hps but no defense or levels. I was put in the higher tier and couldn't beat anyone. I couldn't fight the weaker guys which were actually more suited to my playstyle at the time. Same would be a problem here. There is a wide range of stats available for each tier so a lower tier 8 pet would be at a huge disadvantage over a high tier 8 pet.

Alright, first off, I love your user name. Animorphs reference by any chance?

Now, on topic, I did say in my previous post that the boss should disappear after the first time you defeat it--with the real prize and achievement only gained if you beat it with your strongest pet and a booby prize for beating it with your weakest. I definitely wouldn't like to see a scenario where I could theoretically get 25 boss battle prizes (either 25 of the same one or a Tier 4, two Tier 3's, a Tier 2, and a ton of Tier 1's in my case) just because I have that many pets and the free time to spare either.

As for idea 2, that's why I said that the mooks' stats should be middle of the road for that challenge level, so that everyone does stand something of a fighting chance. It could be tweaked so that there are maybe three or four different mooks on each level with different stat configurations (Jack-of-All-Stats, Mighty Glacier, Glass Cannon, etc.) in order to accommodate different stat configurations and specialties as well. Maybe a little complicated to pull off properly if enough important factors were taken into consideration...but if done just right it could be epic.

Yes my name is from Animorphs :)

I missed the part where you said that it would be once per account, sorry. I really like the idea of an account uber boss and hope that someday something can be worked out and this made a real thing.

As for idea 2 though I still don't like it. Even making them middle of the road for the tier, you'd still have just-over-the-tier-stats that couldn't beat the boss and high-end-of-tier-stats that could maybe eek out a win on the next level guy. Both of those pets are screwed out of prizes since they are locked into their tier specific opponents only. Having multiple difficulties per tier I guess could work but that would likely be way way too much work for too little gain to ever actually be feasible.

Also I would not like that my tier 12 pet couldn't also battle against tier 2 opponents to get the loot. If plot points became a thing with these guys depending on how many you could beat, I would also likely be screwed as it would be doubtful I could get very many wins on a tier 12 opponent since they scale so much. A lower tier pet could just keep bashing away on their enemies and have the real possibility of getting more points then me.

I just do not like the idea of being locked into tier specific pets. Neo tried that and it backfired on them in a really big way. There's a reason they never tried that again.

I'll also vote killing all plots ever as long as that means no more top tier prize books/collectables. Having to shell out 50m+ to get one more piece of a collection absolutely 100% kills any enjoyability for any plot that's ever existed.

That said, the only reason I haven't enjoyed any boss battles that've happened this year is because they've literally been 24 hours of non-stop battling. Not everyone has time for that, regardless of how strong their pet is, and the typical lag doesn't help either. It gives me the three time impression (as I'm very confident I won't get the top prize for Jaxon either, since I chose to sleep inb4 his insta no-freeze blessing came into play) that if you literally cannot sit down and battle for the next 24 hours without working/sleeping/moving/peeing... then there's really no point of it.

I would really appreciate if staff would revisit this concept and come up with something that makes it feel otherwise. Like best I recall the minotaur had two versions, if you fought one you couldn't fight the other (I'm not talking about how the two parts were handled here)? What was wrong with that?

When a boss is announced, say there were will be TWO lasting x hours, and if you fight one you cannot fight the other. Then the top x scores from both bosses = the people who get the top prizes... then you only have to miss existing for 12 hours vs. 24 and knowing that there are literally users not sleeping/moving and therefore I should waste my time elsewhere because I cannot do that. That has nothing to do with battle/site dedication (yeah I have a capped pet and 6 or so tier 11s I'd like to think I'm at least 80% dedicated) (I've also given a shameful amount of my money to the site so we're not even going to debate my dedication to subeta as a whole) and everything to do with life. Sorry but I can't call out from work and lose $200 in pay so I can maybe win a prize that may or may not be worth it. I'm also too damn old for all nighters.

I think the mature step would be to find ways to make long scale events more manageable to people who don't have a great deal of time to sit and do one thing for 24 hours because that is frankly, ridiculous. Judging by how many users only play subeta 10 minutes a day, and how badly subeta seems to want users to come back and play... I feel like coming back to stuff that requires SUCH an insane amount of dedication is why subeta has a small handful of super users and such a large amount of casual to super casual players.

your my Hero ❤️

When it comes to prizes, I expect battling steps to have completely separate ones (aka not related to plot points, as most opponents were clearly labeled as optional and it wouldnt be exactly fair to pit casual users with t2 pets against seasoned ones with t12 pets for plot points). The advantage of beating the guys is the loot / exp they drop, which, if it's a boss, gets awarded following a damage tier criteria.

So yeah I still expect the boss' prizes to be separate from plot points, even if defeating the guy was necessary for plot advancing! However,

This was/is my major issue with collective fights lately.

I was too tired to fight the day the boss was released, so I got a bit of battling done on the next day's morning. Then I check out for the battle chat to see how are things going / what happened overnight and get to watch everyone dead tired, pulling an all-nighter to reach almost 24h of straight battling, desperately trying to get around their day's duties while still trying to get some more losses in.

That's not fun, imo. At least not on the userbase side of it. It adds another reason to the pile of why I shouldn't get very invested on training my pet past a certain point: I know I would be very annoyed if I had put lots of effort into getting a top pet and couldn't participate because hey, I can't put my job / other duties aside to play all day. Plus, let's be honest, I like my sleep and there's already too much irl to take it away from me.

Bottom line, if I'm gonna have to pay for the loot I missed anyway, then why even bother trying to train?!

In this specific case I've got to mention it also wasn't any fun to watch people kill themselves even further because the game's rules changed in the middle of the battle and they couldn't deal the same level of damage anymore. But that's besides the point of this thread.

Basically everything else said.

I feel like we should just nominate Andrea official user spokesperson and be done with it.

i REALLY like your idea. i generally enjoy boss fights (jaxon/jackass being the exception) and in the past have profitted well from said boss fights, but i'd like it a lot more if it was segmented with rules in place.

like ok i get it's cute for lore purposes to be like OH THERE'S A BIG SCARY MONSTER, EVERYONE BAND TOGETHER TO DEFEAT IT but dont act like every single one of us doesnt immediately go "ok boss fight, time to git gud" so why not just lay things on the table from the start. be like "the first incarnation will be available from X to Y subeta time, and the second incarnation will be available from S to T subeta time and your damage total will only count for one so CHOOOOOSE WIIIIIISELY"

then we'd get less of this business where you fight for 24 straight hours, where the boss goes through different "phases" of the BAs realizing "oh shit he's going down too quickly, better give him an anti-freeze blessing that activates 99% of the time on the first round," then going back at the 11th hour and cleaving the boss's blocks into fractions of what they were prior, meaning your successes all depend on what time you decided to start fighting.

like i absolutely understand (and agree with) not wanting to lower the barriers of entry so low that a 15 minute/day player can get the top tier of prizes alongside someone who's been clicking 'n dying for the past 8 hours, but this 24 hour business is really... not the best. for anybody. saying this as someone who's benefitted from the 24 hour method for the past two (hopefully three, now) boss fights.

something's gotta change.

wow rude telling me to stop bitching, i never said i wanted every item. I just said an alternative to being forced to battle a really tough boss as the ending would be nice. people who managed to fight jaxon deserve better prizes yes, but i still took part in this plot and i would like to take part in the final piece. so don't be so rude jeez

Did you fight once and lost? Then, you took part in the final piece, that's it

That's literally it.

You aren't forced to battle. It's optional. If you don't battle, fine. You just get to sit on the sidelines and wait for the next plot step advance. Whether that takes a day or two--depends if there's double rounds--it's no different than waiting each day between steps. I think it's perfectly fair as it is.

I apologize for being downright nasty, I typically don't get that way. But I've been biting my tongue the last few months when users complain about it being difficult to train when it isn't.

You should be our 3rd battle admin. I couldn't stay up late when he was first released cause I had class the next day. Then Jaxon goes and pulls an anti-freeze blessing the next morning when I get up, as well as blocking enough so I can only damage 16 icons to his 220k? Not cool. :/

I think there needs to be a limit to these boss fights per year as well. Gelatin War, I expect that. Two was fine. Three has been enough for the year.

And I've been told battling apparently is what's overwhelming the servers, and it makes sense, considering it lagged horribly towards the last 10mil HPs. Something needs to be done about that issue too, cause the one with the best Internet connection is most likely gonna be able to get more battles in, compared to those who lag with 2 minutes in-between each battle.

I think I fought Jaxon about 6 times and lost every time but that's okay - no way I'd ever be able to last more than one hit with the stats he has. Not big on the battling and only do it when I absolutely have to m only 1 of my pets has more or less decent stats and believe me they are not that great. Still expect to get the achievement and maybe some little prize.

I don't like battling. I do have a T11 pet. I didn't fight too many battles, but with the lag, it sure felt like I battled forever.

That said, I still have no major complaints. Would I like an alternative? Sure. Is it necessary, I don't think so. We have plenty of events that highlight other things. I don't see why we can't have some events that only highlight battle. This plot had lots of things in it. I appreciated the short plot steps because morostide is always so busy with other things.

I did find it a little tough to battle Jaxon, trying to get the last few items I needed from Totting and the patch, and all the lag. So I didn't battle as much as I wanted to. But that was my choice.