I think it's a well designed challenger, but not perfect. Many impossible challengers have certain weapons that are much better against them than the others, although I agree that they must have overlooked that particular godly while designing the challenger. The MC alternative (Ornamented hooked swords) was nowhere near a substitute.

Keith always has lots of stuff to do, so I don't expect him to deal with battle design. That's the battle department's job. (What are they up to anyways?)

Whatever you do, don't say Beetlejuice!

@ mrcool while i think keith does an amazing job running the site, I think you're absolutely right. I'm not sure he really knows the finer points of battling as it is now :S (and some other things like restocking and whatnot but that's for a different forum I spose :P). Though from the SS thing it didn't sound like keith was against moving the cap, only removing it, which in the end I think I'd rather have an army of capped pets than one insane mega pet, it's a bit more sporting and better for the future of subeta and the growth of the battle community IMO.

That all being said, I also agree there needs to be some alternatives to weapons and more thought put into new weapon icon typings. I think making some really second rate godly alternatives, which are by no means god-like but by all means have the viable icon typings and are available en masse and at less than 300-3000m would also be nice. People would have more money to spend on training/boosting and there would become more competition at the top, which is always nice.

[edit] and I took so long to post that, the man himself already posted twice >.<

hind sight is 20/20 of course, but the current system still has incredible potential

i for one am still a proponent of a phantom cap and that's all i've gotta say about that

Phantom cap?

basically the idea that BAs keep tooling opponents only up to a certain "cap" (22k, 25k, 30k, where ever they want to decide to draw the line), but allow users to keep training indefinitely. that way, if someone wants to retain some challenge in their battles, they can train up to that "cap" and stop. but if overachievers want to train forever, let them.

the one big issue that would bring up is with plot bosses, but those already need to be rethought, so i don't think that alone is enough of an argument against phantom capping.

Hmm, I could be on board with that idea.

phantom cap is where your effective stats are capped at a certain multiplier but your actual stat values can be infinite, like the effective health cap being 7500 for most 7-10% heal weapons (though sort of not the same because you could have over 7.5k health healed from pquill and whatnot), like what neopets has. but it also means that everyone ends up with the exact same build because they have all of there effective stats at the exact same number and it really is kind of pointless.

and I think the majority of the frustration with the cap right now is that we were told back in september that the stat cap would be raised before the new year and now we're completely in the dark. I think even just an update with a light explanation about why it hasn't happened yet would quench most people's thirst.

I think the reason's pretty well explained about the cap, and if anyone supports it or not is up to them. I don't really, but I understand why it can be necessary and I can deal with it. I believe the biggest disappointment is that the cap adjustment didn't come by the end of the year as they mentioned (and extended quite a few times), so people find creative ways to vent. If designing challengers is still a concern, maybe carefully raise it slowly (22 to 25k for example)?

but that's the crux of the argument. i feel like the people who are arguing against a solid cap aren't the same people complaining that there's "nothing to do" (except for maybe train the pet(s) they want to train, they definitely can't do that).

phantom cap is based on the idea that content won't be added in past a certain difficulty level; how does that make it "impossible" to keep adding? not to mention, what is the danger in having a small minority of overachievers quickly defeating a hard opponent? outside of a competitive setting (read: boss battles), that doesn't take away from the experience of other battlers. beating a new opponent as soon as it comes out doesn't take away from my experience of working toward that same win.

if it's a matter of wanting certain loot to maintain a level of rarity, we already have a solution for that: achievement prizes.

the danger with having an end game is exactly that: your game has a finish line. what happens when people cross it?

anyone who wants to see a phantom cap doesnt give the first fish about not having anything else to battle after that, TRAINING is where the fun is. Whether the cap gets raised or not I don't have anything to battle (and don't want to battle at all, I'm way over the fact that no opponent in the history of ever has taken more than a couple days to max out) BUT I could train into oblivion, and how would it impact anyone ever ? since a phantom cap MEANS THAT as in it's PART OF THE CONTRACT that no opponent will ever need more than 22K stats to defeat (and 50 billion in weapons, but who's counting)

This is my first and last post about this and only because I feel some people have no clue what the phantom cap that was originally suggested is. It sucks when "some people" include the guy who runs the site on occasion

Oh and conversely to my last post, if you look at stat capped pets, a majority of them just have shit tons of exp and boosters hoarded, some nearly enough to cap a new pet, which means that when the cap is raised they will hit it and be end game again asap. I think that's mostly because the cap raise was alluded to, else those boosters and xp would have gone to capping another pet in a lot of cases.

it does in a way discourage new battlers in the community. As it stands now, even if they can't catch up in weapons because 1-2 godlies sell per year at most, they can at least catch up in stats and have a fighting chance to be near the top.

then i guess we're at an impasse on this one. still, i ask that you don't dismiss the concept entirely. even if PC doesn't work for subeta today, maybe it'll work for subeta down the line. that all said, i'm interested to see what all is in the pipeline for 2015. can we get any official word on whether or not there will be CSC challengers this year as long as you're on the thread? or is that the BA's department

admittedly true. i'd be lying if i said i didn't benefit from the cap.

@ Satyr And that fact is 99% of my support behind the stat cap, I think the battle community has seen a pretty huge surge with all the battle stuff going on in '14 and I really like to see the community grow. Anything that helps that has to be pretty good imo, even if not ideal.

[edit] on top of just the awesomeness of new community, think also that more player focus on battling means more staff focus on battling, means more battle updates-think pvp which would be a great capped end-game that doesn't require much updating once in place, and of course would hopefully bring in even more people.