I came to this realization a few months ago and I've basically stopped training because of it. :x

The obvious rebuttal is "well, battling is its own reward," and for a long time it was. But like others have said, battling doesn't offer a lot of variation in terms of build, and I've reached the point where it's too monotonous to continue.

That's mostly a personal issue, but I do think there's something innately flawed about battling on Subeta, and the stat cap is more of a symptom.

...not that I have any clue how to fix it. /rambling

I know there's been also some other people mentioning that the newcomers would be discouraged from battling if there's no cap. I just think that point is not really convincing in favor of the cap, because there are better reasons instead like the other ones you said. You've mentioned quite a few reasons, and I appreciate your time to explain them so we can see the what ifs in different situations.

Will the cost of stats go up without a cap? Certainly in the short term. But when the rush is over and people spend their savings, most people will rely on fixed income again and the boosters should stabilize in a price range again. Why price range? Because people go on a shopping spree that temporarily cause the price to go up. The final price range might be slightly higher or even eventually at the same price depending on supply changes (such as if there are CS boosters).

About the loot, if it's valuable you'll try to get them from auxiliary pets too. And they are usually worth several million, so why not go for another. Quite a few people who wish to focus solely on one pet already have a high tier secondary (many are T12 or capped), simply because there's not that much to do on the main pet while capped. I have a secondary (almost capped but whatever no hurry), and am working on a tertiary. It's nowhere as exciting in sentiment as the primary though, although my way in dealing with it is that I'm probably going to change my primary because I'm pretty bored and I want to have some of that feel and motivation when I did my first pet compared to "It's just another pet" and "I'm done this one". But it still isn't a true alternative than working on a primary without a cap.

You said the primary point I was going to say and better than I would have.

I guess for another point to add about a cap raise/phantom cap while opponents stay capped at 22K would be that if a user wishes for a challenge, then there are several means that could be done without having to stop training. For example, there could be trying to beat challengers with self-made weapon restrictions (I've done this quite a bit in the past when bored and doing BQs). Another could be taking on a challenger past the 10th win (for example, I got around the lack of an impossible difficulty challenger during Epicon 2013 by taking Daghraan to win 40, at which point, he became about MaFa difficulty, so the same can very much be done for other challengers).

I think a good third point would be that this could actually help those who don't have god weapons or don't wish to use god weapons to beat a challenger they couldn't otherwise beat a reasonable number of times with their currently capped pet.

I'm a bit nervous that the BAs haven't told us exactly what the impending cap raise is going to be, since it seems like it must be more complicated than "cap is now 25k" or "phantom cap for errybody". I know Cran said they're still waiting on something, and until it's finalized things might change/all of the code might get deleted/whatever, but I'd still really like to know what it is before it happens. If the revamped BQs are any indication, the BAs don't have their pulse on the battle community quite like they used to (sorry guys :/), and Keith obviously never has. If there are any logical/mathematical issues, I'd like to see them ironed out before the increase (or whatever) goes live and Pandora's box gets opened.

Of course whatever the cap change looks like, some people will just be unhappy, like there are some people that just want BQs to go back to how they were. But the new BQs are SO, SO much better now that the community input has been taken into account. Basically I just want the same thing to happen with the cap change. And because of the nature of the cap it is necessary for the community input phase to happen before it goes live. Otherwise it will be too late and five people will have already boosted the new cap (or whatever) ten minutes after the raise gets announced.

I came to this realization a few months ago and I've basically stopped training because of it. :x

The obvious rebuttal is "well, battling is its own reward," and for a long time it was. But like others have said, battling doesn't offer a lot of variation in terms of build, and I've reached the point where it's too monotonous to continue.

That's mostly a personal issue, but I do think there's something innately flawed about battling on Subeta, and the stat cap is more of a symptom.

...not that I have any clue how to fix it. /rambling

14 pages later, much angst and dick waving from all sides, and the real issue has been hit.

I will say for me, battling is its own reward. Along with making an army and once or twice a year enjoying by biggest pet. The day to day things I do on here come down to a combination of; routine, something to do with my hands that I don't really need to think about while doing other things and being able to do it with my brain turned off at the end of long stressful days. None of that is going to make me recommend this place to other people or make it stand out from many other sites I could of joined.

I'm so terrified it's going to be something related to minion battling. D:

plz no

Imagine, every 100 tiers from minion battling, you get a single token, with 500 tokens, you can unlock 1 pets cap ;) jk

I like minion battling so I guess a capped pet army will be easy lol.

In any case it sounds like there is stuff planned, which is good (until we figure out what that stuff actually is of course). Seriously hope that one thing doesn't take until soon to happen.

This is one of the options we're considering. I am just fearing my house being burned down when we make a choice like this, but I agree that we need to do it sooner rather than later.

I'm kind of confused about why this is an issue if the cap is going to be raised? I can certainly understand if it was decided it was going to stay, then all that EXP would go to waste. But...why if the cap is raised? If people spent months doing their quests for that pet then why shouldn't they be able to keep it and instead be punished for working on their pet o.O? I mean if there's a raised cap then some people may hit it instantly but they'll have still put in the same amount of work as anyone who has to EXP boost later. It's kind of the staff's fault for not disabling EXP from the beginning so it seems really harsh to force someone to transfer it to a new pet when the cap is going to go up and that EXP could be used - especially when some of it has likely come from opponents that can't be rebattled to gain that EXP back again.

As a side note though: I wasn't sold on the revamp at first but really approve of the new BQ now. Good job to whoever was involved on sorting those out.

People that would be discouraged from training are the same people that already don't want to.

I've read everything and thought about what everyone has said and I actually see no reason to raise the cap and soon. If the level cap is added too late people would just get bored and leave as they have already heard that one is coming and how long has it been?

The issue with a phantom cap can still be talked about but I definitely believe there would be nothing wrong with raising the cap at least.

I'm no where near the cap, I don't ever even plan to reach it. I don't think you should use that whole "Will wait until more people reach the cap" as a reason not to. It's also a stupid reason not to.

There's so much support for a raise and I'm just really confused as to why it hasn't been done yet?

Edit:

And everything that said.

Edit 2:

Okay, the stats wasn't actually the problem that ever put me off from training and battling. The problem is that the battle system to me was/is confusing as hell. I've been a member for over 4 years and battled and trained for maybe about two and I still don't understand it. I've read guides and they can be informative but the whole thing just gets even more confusing. Another was the price of weapons you'll eventually need. Why get into battling when weapons will cost so much?

I don't get you son

I goofed and missed a word. (Should be "I actually see no reason not to raise the cap". )

Ma bad.

Shit, I let myself get distracted with Pokemon Ruby and I come back to find this hit nearly 15 pages? Fuck that was a lengthy read.

Some things that stood out to me: Everything has said. you still confuse the shit outta me, but I think I understand your stance. I agree about the importance of newbies, but veterans cannot be neglected either. Both need to co-exist.

Most importantly:

THIS. SO. FUCKING. HARD. I don't know what the true flaw is, and shit if I even tried to make a guess. Forget other pet sites, I don't give a flying shit 'bout them.

What is inherently wrong with our system?

I think the problem with battling on subeta, is that the long term point of this much effort isn't a stable dependable reality.

Like, yes we have two battle related things that happen every year and that's cool but it's the exact same things with the exact same loot and if you beat Gelly Wizard or Nightlady two years ago frankly you really don't care or you don't have anything to actually keep going for. Yeah there's Rouland with his achievement loot, or the Gelly war if you have/had 24 hours to dedicate but otherwise there's nothing.

Yes there's also spontaneous cash shop challengers that're sometimes time sensitive and sometimes have cool loot but once you buy them you can beat them whenever-- they're not going anywhere, and if you aren't up to their challenge then you probably didn't bother to buy them in the first place.

What makes grinding and stuff fun with Pokemon (if you're into it, I'm not myself) is types and abilities and moves and IVs and EVs and offensive and defensive attacks and speed means something. If you play the game like most people/kids/me then all you really have to focus on is what type beats what type, but if people want to take it to the next level they can and neither of us effect each others game play.

In stuff like Flight Rising, there's a purpose to battle daily. You fight to win food and other stuff (or so I've been told, I don't play so I'm going by word of mouth).

On subeta, you blindly BQ and train and boost every day because you... you either A) like it or B) Because you haven't become aware yet that the battle related plots on subeta are sooo few and far between than it's ridiculously more time/money effective to just not bother and buy the things you need because even if you DO stick with training and boosting and BQing there's a very good chance that you STILL won't be able to win the things you want so you'll have not only trained a pet for no reason but then you'll have to buy the stuff anyways.

The cap.. doesn't do anything but make this worse because you pretty much have to train cookie-cutter style and buy all of your weapons at a high cost because basically anything useful these days is attached to an achievement. If the cap was a lot higher than the challenger cap, or a phantom cap, then at least people would know they can train forever and eventually beat everything regardless of what their weapons are.

So the other problem is that there's nothing that happens often enough to warrant keeping people's interest in continuous training. Every single time, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. there's a plot there's 50% of the posts and comments saying something to the effect of "I wish I'd been training but it's so boring" or "Wow wish I'd have trained my pet oh well I'll just buy the loot". There always seems to be in influx of new trainers/battlers after plots.. then 6 months go by and nothing battle related happens outside of new CS challengers and most people just fall off the grid.

What needs to happen, is every few months-- something battle related happens. It doesn't matter how big or how bad, something. The Gellys need new loot so both newer battlers and older battlers feel cause for excitement, and the Battlepalooza needs to happen at another point in time (like if the Gellys attack in Autumn, do a battlepalooza in spring) then a plot with battling in the summer and switch around the morostide challengers in October. Bring some back, change the loot on others, maybe toss in a few new ones. If the battle system looses it's stasis and there's enough NEW ON THE FLY THIS WEEK ONLY GET IT WHILE YOU CAN FOLKS BECAUSE WE MIGHT NEVER BRING IT BACK AGAIN then there's more reason to keep training and buying weapons.

IF all you ever have are beans and rice, then it's really easy to get burned out.

I do agree that bringing old guys into BQs was fun, however we can't win new/old loot from them so if anything it's cool to be able to say hey I finally beat this guy but it doesn't really count in terms of motivating people to stick to it.

PS: I haven't had coffee yet so hopefully that's coherent.

I can agree almost entirely with this part, the rest not so much, but this part is more important anyhow :P Though I would argue we've been retaining new battlers fairly well over the last year for sure. The rest hits the nail right on the head. Unfortunately the battle community is growing but most people like you said "I cbf setting alerts for the gym while I'm playing dress-up and building a tc for mah pet" (bit of exaggeration :P), so we're a (vocal) minority. Which means that we get a tiny sliver of attention, which is plain fricken obvious. Not that other things tend to get done faster of course XD just that there tends to be far more updates, at least we all know battlers aren't the only one's who know how long soonâ„¢ is. What we need is not only "big" things to do every few months, but things to do on the daily. Something to make someone think, hey I could go battle today and get something for it (aside from >30 mins of BQs and clicking the train button).

You battle on FR because there is nothing else to do to get money LAUGHTER

Staff has been waiting for this "thing" to happen before they raise the cap for several months / a year+, and there's no way it's happening soon if programmers are busy messing with wtf features like minion battling in the meantime.

What's next, Human Avatar battling ?

I was trying to avoid bringing that into the conversation, but this really does explain why Pokemon remains ever popular. The system is always being changed to try and balance out issues, whether it's introducing a new type or ability, etc..

I know a pet 'typing' system is not a realm of possibility for Subeta--I'd honestly think it'd be cool to implement if PvP ever comes back--but we need something to definitely increase interest in battling. Like...introduce NPCs and their pets for us to battle? Idfk

Every so often it rains Xotl and Matlal is laughing in the background.

The battle on FR is purely to grind for food or holiday currencies, it's boring as hell - You literally 'scratch, scratch, scratch, eliminate, scratch eliminate' until your brain falls out. Or your hand falls off, whichever comes first