The Hustler has been acting extra shifty lately. Maybe you should investigate...
In a completely unrelated note, an important weapons shipment mysteriously "went missing" this afternoon. We managed to salvage a few Fanciful Boxes that were overlooked in the theft, and will be holding those for future battle event prizes. Unfortunately, everything else appears to be long gone.
You seem to be pretty responsive, just curious why y’all decided not to do a buy limit on these? (Ie 24hr limit etc) Amongst other things, I think it’s a bit weird that some users bought 4 boxes and others could not get one.
No disrespect meant, but just because something has 'always been that way' does not mean it should stay that way. Subeta needs to adapt to its users, not the other way around. The fact that it's refusing to adapt by keeping outdated systems and making very minimal effort to update them is exactly why people are frustrated. The battle system clearly needs changes made, and people have made amazing suggestions about how to do that. Now it's on the staff to actually give us practical reasons as to why these things can't happen, decide that's not what they want (and tell us), or actually step up themselves and make the changes.
I've been on hiatus, so I've not had a chance to see what suggestions have been made. I don't see the harm in users creating their own guides since staff cannot create official stuff. Subeta has always been a niche site that way.
To say users don't want to learn is insulting, at best. When it's this many people it's clearly something else wrong. Also don't say it's a lot of talk; people absolutely have made suggestions here on how to improve the system, they have 'stepped up' (as you say) and made the suggestions. From the battle admins/mods taking the time to make an official guide (since, apparently, all things battle are their job) to suggesting that a simplified system be part of the recode if possible to a more even spread of enemies/rebalancing of the enemies and so much more in between. Suggestions have been made that would be well within the realm of possibility to implement from what we, the average user, know. If something can't be implemented then I get it, but we should be told as such and given valid reasons why not dismissed and ignored. Relying on users to do all the work of making guides because something is so complicated it's hard to do without one is a sign of a really big problem.
Again, people say it's complex but don't say what exactly is complex. Someone below did explain parts they didn't understand, and I pointed them to the battle guide that answered their questions they asked, but they are uninterested. i can lead you to the water but cannot make you drink it. The battle system we have is the one we are just stuck with and make due with it. It really does suck. I've no idea on how to make it better personally.
Also you know what would make battling infinitely more accessible? Just having a list of stats for weapons and enemies included under their pictures, so that I don't have to go through 6 steps just to try to guess how to take on mid-level opponents
As a casual observer who barely knows anything about battling, I just have to say that the complete lack of advance notice or any transparency for the timing of restocks kinda stinks! I had a lot of sP kicking around that it would have been fun to sink into this. Maybe people were keeping track of restocks in forum ping groups? I'm not in any groups or really active on the forums, so, bummer lol
I think the issue is most people find the current system far too complex. As someone who has been on and off interested in battling, I have also found it to be far too complex and I've been on this site for 14 years. I am starting to see that if you were not interested in it early on then there are serious roadblocks to getting involved.
It's not fair to basically gatekeep a whole feature of the site when people are clearly interested it in but cannot participate. Its too many users to say that people simply don't want to learn
Want to clarify that just because I said "no hard feelings" on my part earlier, doesnt mean I dont understand people being frustrated. Battlers are some of the most loyal players, putting ample amounts of time into playing and building their pets stats. Hope their frustrations are heard, and there is a good solution to this issue, because clearly it is important to the majority of users and reading it explained through their comments, it should definitely be fixed.
It's complicated, as Purge said. Changing the system would require a lot. It took time for the Tiers system to be accepted and some simply refused to accept it at all and left. The system we have isn't perfect, but I think there's ways to make it still work with some fixes here and there. It's just figuring out what needs fixing! I think if the BAs and staff in general really want to take feedback on making changes to make battling as it is more accessible, then I would hope they make a thread asking for them. Or heck, anyone could make a thread suggesting ideas. It's a lot of talk, talk, talk, but who is going to step up and suggest the changes they want to see?
I'm finally through reading all the comments.
NOW I AM PISSED so much to the quoted below "Weapons unlike other items on site don't lose their value"
Tainted Keeper Skull Staff as well as Gelatine Concoction isn't worth 125 mio only!
Most probably none of the listed are - unless they are recurring battle event challenger loot, probably. Multiply by 6 at least!
And THUNDERBALL ?!?! !!!! That should have gone into the Godly Box! I am one of the 20 people on site, that earned one!
It would be awesome if some could be released in multiple shops. A few in crystal shop for a massive amount, a few in recycle shop.....
Im a little biased since I am short on sP at the moment :p
this idea of having to leave things as they are to cater to the few who enjoy it, instead of making it more accessible for the many who are interested, is annoying. but i get it. subeta doesn't have very many dedicated players anymore so i guess it's not worth the risk of pissing off some of their best customers.
For anyone checking in on Fanciful Boxes, they're done restocking and there won't be any more going out through the Hustler.
Off topic, but why do I constantly read here, that getting into battling is near to impossible? When I took refuge from Neo here, I wanted to start training my pet from start on and build up my armory and AP. There were a few around with pets, that were close to being capped. And Godlies had just gotten out via a Restock War, which had been accessible to EVERYONE; nothing to do with battling. Not different from now, except that we couldn't rake XP with BQs and only had a handful of regular challengers to earn XP. Who is better off? Now or then?
My pet grew fast, but was JUST not strong enough and also lacked the ideal weapons (not such a variety of strong weapons as now!) to win the top prizes from battle events, even though I tried for days - missed the Sandreaver, which is on my WL, because it's so pretty! But it's not 9.000.000.000 pretty!!!
[/quote]I've spent a lot of money on plushies that later (just a matter of a couple of weeks sometimes) became almost worthless. It happens to everyone... except for weapons.[/quote] NOPE! High rarity (weapons) were indeed super rare and immensely expensive - now they are at 13k to 69k
I have an example at hand: I fought like hell for days to beat special challenger Maleria 10 times and earn Maleria's Cursed Arm Bangle, a top tier weapon - later on I bought a 2nd one for a bargain offer of 280 mio, which was quite a lot back then. And then it was made a regular challenger loot worth nothing on SS!!!! Eventually they chose to make weapon loot an achievement prize. Maybe good for stabilizing the market a bit, but unfair for the battlers.
The old loot weapons could well be brought back together with the challengers every few years, to give newer battlers a way to earn these old weapons.
Antique shop weapons should be a price guide for other not much older Godlies, if the site chooses to make them buyable somehow!
Also, as I mentioned this morning, after the first we were PROMISED another Crystal Shop restock of Godlies and I have waited for 10 years or so for it to finally happen again.
Has there been a second restock of the Fanciful Boxes today? I came in a few times, but didn't see one.
Well, last box stocked and I missed it while other people were grabbing their second one.
There's no field to say why a subscription got canceled, but if y'all want some data? I was thinking maaaaybe still spending five bucks down from the fifteen I was doing per month, but right now I'm not even sure about that. I want to support Subeta, I do, but this was just too much.
-- I get that you are trying to help, but I don't think it's just about people not understanding how battling works. Everyone saying this has been on the site for at least 14 years. The defenses of this system are not coming from those who have spent their time over the past 10 years because those people can never achieve what was achieved in the distant past. I appreciate guides and whatnot; that's super great of you all. I just think the problems are deeper than that. And if resources are the problem, then maybe the site should invest time in things that would attract new users and/or get current users excited, like plots and smaller challengers. I would not have cared about this release if it had not been billed as an event, which it is not, or if the response from specific people had not been defensive. It is impossible to not see that this would upset folks, and that does not require the kinds of dismissive replies people have been getting. Subeta has always had some great users, and it is a fantastic place, but there are some clear divisions based on when users started. That's probably unavoidable, but maybe we don't need a news post that throws that in our faces either.
I'll head over and look at y'alls guides. I get battling, but after 11 years of training (I don't have unlimited free time), my battle pet is still pretty small.
Love it when I step away for 10 minutes and completely miss the restock (: very fun mechanics (:
These are loot boxes, but it's not the first time Subeta has done loot boxes, and they were usually for CSC. Monthly collections used to be loot boxes, as were chance machines. Thankfully they stepped back from that though, until now. This price? 120 million is worth a lot more than 250 CSC, and don't even get me started on 9 billion. I thought the Antique Shops were beyond ridiculous (there's no reason that five years after a plot the prizes can't be had for a reasonable price, the people who had them for those five years already had all that time to enjoy them exclusively or sell them for huge profits).
In Magic The Gathering there's a thing called the Reserved List that are cards Wizards of the Coast promised to never reprint again because collectors lost their crap the last time they were. Because of this, those cards have gone up to ridiculous prices but there are now game pieces that most players are priced out of getting, leaving them unable to play some formats (there's a whole proxy thing, but that's a story for another time because this can't be done here). There is actual anger and resentment in the Magic community over the Reserved List, and looking through the comments it looks like the same thing is happening here. People just want to be able to reasonably get the pieces to play the game.
I'm probably one of the more casual players here and have taken breaks without battling or questing so I don't think I've even had 9 billion sP cumulatively over my 14 years here, but there is only so much time I can give to the site daily without completely burning out on it (questing is VERY repetitive). I do have over a billion sP though that I'd love to spend on good weapons that would help me battle.
i have some more thoughts on the weapons thing and "preserving rarity" or whatever--
battling is one of those things that LITERALLY has no effect on other players except for imaginary ones where the hypothetical idea of someone having a rare weapon will somehow devalue it even though it's used to fight npcs and not other players so it's not even like someone who's earned a strong weapon is going to have an advantage over others. as others have pointed out calling these weapons "status symbols" is silly because the weapons sit in your armory and not in your wardrobe to be worn (usually) so it's not even like you can flex about having this epic cool powerful weapon like an mmorpg where you can stand around town with your shiny particle-emitting sword you got from clearing the mythic savage gelatin lich king extreme on hard mode. once a good weapon is in someone's armory and becomes a daily driver in their battle quest set or whatever, it usually stays there for good and when/if it gets outgrown can be handed down to the next pet in line that's being worked on.
to me, raising battler pets is all about personal progression, making number go up to fight stronger and stronger opponents and reaping the rewards and satisfaction for doing so. sure, i can't beat any of the really tough opponents yet but i know eventually i'll get there so long as i keep training and doing battle quests. prodigy's not going anywhere and i'm in no hurry. the battle shop as it stands right now feels a little anemic and more often than not i usually end up converting my higher tokens into easy tokens to buy stat potions for lack of anything else to put them into once i buy the parts to make the crafted mech items. the impossible tokens only have two items to buy. making a cool new weapon have only five copies exist on the entire site and cost billions of sP (for a chance!) seems needlessly precious over something that sounds like it should have just been a custom wearable instead of a weapon if all you wanted was a cool exclusive wearable to only go to yourself and a small handful of people. idk.
i just don't buy the argument about artificial scarcity for the sake of artificial scarcity because someone, somewhere, might be upset that another person could have obtained a weapon that affects literally only the person owning the weapon and the data table that their pet is currently fighting because again, it's not like players are fighting each other's pets. the battle coliseum is and has always been (to my knowledge) pure PvE content so keeping things exclusive is just weird and backwards to me and it's not going to collapse the economy or the battle ecosystem or whatever if someone gets a weapon or scroll that was last obtainable ten or more years ago if their pet has gained the necessary tier requirement to equip them to fight the same data tables you can because you were training your pets since subeta's inception and they weren't.
There's no reason there can't be different things for different people on the site. I have no interest in developing characters for my pets beyond the handful that have treasure chest collections, nor am I interested in developing pet profiles for any of them. I do enjoy battling and doing HAs. Telling other people how they should be doing Subeta is as gatekeepery as this forced scarcity of godly weapons.
I suppose gema we will have to agree to disagree. I do not think suggesting an overhaul just because some people don't understand, or don't want to understand it, is fair to those of us who do battle and enjoy it, imperfections and all. I don't understand the CW system and its problems, but I will not suggest a system overhaul on it when I know nothing about it. That would be unfair of me to expect a system to be changed to meet my needs and tell everyone else to adapt. At the end of day, it sucks that staff can't provide official stuff regarding battling, and I can't speak for anyone else, but I will gladly take on the burden of providing a guide for people to use because battling is something I care about deeply and want to share it with others.
a lot of your questions are answered in the battle guide on the forum, and the things that aren't answered yet will be as i revise the guide, but I cannot make you understand something you clearly do not want to learn about. And sorry about the pinging, I did not know you didn't like to be pinged.
Wait, are they really doing that? I tried to do a quick scroll to the most controversial comments/the ones that call staff out the most/ect but there's so many now it's hard to keep up but also I didn't see that at all. I want to know if they are doing that, though, because that's really messed up.
Wow, are you guys going to delete comments you don't like and use site guidelines as an excuse? At least be honest about your intentions and assume what you are doing. I'm sorry I ever came here.
I wish the comments section worked more like forums. Because in my forum signature, I politely request not to be pinged. So I am extending that request here. Please don't ping me.
And I can't help with guides when I understand nothing about battling. I mentioned prior, I don't know if Subeta elements are strong or weak against each other. I have no idea whatsoever how icon damage is calculated. I really don't understand item modification. I don't understand why Scroll X is best or what Weapon Y is the best investment--and I have no idea what items are best to use on each turn. Are potions and throwing vials worthwhile? No clue. I just do what I'm told because I have no understanding. And I don't think pruning the word count in user-made guides would help because things are just that complex. Overall, the whole system needs to be redone. I like what one user suggested prior--if recoding all of battling isn't possible, then with the site recode, is it possible to make a "battle lite" new feature with the new website? Short of those, Subeta really should have an on-site tutorial for players to access. Players shouldn't have to rely on other players to explain battling. I am sure many players are fine going to the forums for help. However, I am equally sure there are as many players who are shy, introverted, neuro divergent, have a social phobia or anxiety, or anything similar, that makes accessing forums and talking to other players a chore. Plus, even navigating the forums can be harder than expected, with players not sure what thread or even what subforum to go to for what information. And again, it really shouldn't be on the players to teach the players how Subeta's mechanics work--Subeta should also offer tools for players to learn how to use their site. (And if it seems overwhelming to the staff to make their own guide because of so much information, nuances, and complexities--then yes, you realize things should be simplified.)
A tutorial and more lower leveled opponents can easily go hand in hand. Here's a low leveled opponent that freezes. There's a commentary as the players battle that opponent about what its doing and how freezing works and how players can freeze their opponents too. Here's a low leveled opponent who steals, and this is the tutorial in a commentary form that goes along with it. Here's an opponent from each element to show strengths and weaknesses, if there are any. Here is an easy opponent with defensive weapons and side notes with how they work. (Also would be important to keep the interface clean and fresh and easy to read without a lot of scroll. Simple, after all.) Here's an opponent with modded weapons and text about where a player can go to mod his or her weapons. Training too could be explained. Like the first time a player accesses the battling page, something like "these are your pets' stats, you can increase them through X and Y and Z on the site. Once your pet has some additional stats, THEN you are set to begin battling." Or Subeta could make a video tutorial(s) that people could watch--then they would know where to click and where to go, as stationary text and images in a forum don't always communicate effectively to visual or kinesthetic learners.
Been here nearly 12 years never understood how battling works. Trained pets up but it takes days and CSC to get a few levels and all the battle things have like 20k hp/str etc. No idea how it works.
dont have anything to add regarding battling bc i dont do that(yall are rightfully upset tho) but rly bummed cuz i too thought this would be a plot thing 😞
Shoulda put them in the cash shop for 100k csc instead
I just get endless "new subeta" pages and its asking me to long in and put security things in that done exist.
That's why we need your guys help in making the guides better. So they can become less wordy and more concise to the point, and address confusing aspects or anything not covered that needs to be covered.
"As for everything else not-training, we have plenty of guides on the battle forum. We all try to maintain up-to-date info, but also help with building armories and suggestions on pet builds. Unfortunately, if you're looking for official stuff that's accessible on a Subeta page, you're not going to have as much luck, it really is on us in the forums. Majority of our work is testing stuff out and compiling information. Our BAs don't tell us everything, most of it is us figuring stuff out for ourselves. That's the fun of it, experimenting and exploring."
I mean, for some people, it probably is fun. However, for some people possibly even many people, it can be confusing and overwhelming. If you come from a background of RPGs, where your used to grinding against opponents for EXP and then leveling up--well, Subeta isn't very intuitive as the order is reversed.
And as you pointed out, a lot of the information is stuff users put together. There's really no concise, on-site tutorial players can go to have the basics explained to them in an easy-to-grasp manner. And even the player tutorials are long--because battling on Subeta is complex and hard to explain. Hence my repetition at simplification.
in order to avoid sounding like an insanely angry person, the only thing i'll say right now is that i loved reading some of the admins posts! :) they weren't snarky and condescending at all! ;)
(but also where the hell were you people saying battling sucks when i was complaining about battling before, geeze)
said:
Does this mean that normal battlers will never be able to earn a new godly through regular battling or a plot anymore?
as someone who has (relatively) recently been finding joy in making number go up in my digital pets i personally believe it is "epic" and "poggers" that the best way to get stronger weapons is by traveling back in time ten years to participate in events or spend comical amounts of sP acquired with my infinite free time left on this planet earth instead of earning weapons through battling, that could potentially upset a hypothetical amount of people somehow because the idea that someone that's willing to invest in their pets' stats should get decent weapon loot as a reward for beating the difficult opponent (or spending hard-earned battle tokens in the battle shop) is patently absurd
it gives me a rush to look at a list of recommended weapons and scrolls for pets and seeing they're unobtainable from some old event but i might have a chance of getting it if i spend billions of sP on a lootbox now. i think that's very cool and very accessible and it rules
This comment section is intense. I can only be relieved (for myself) that I don't do battles or pet stuff to relate to this frustration.
You all are really great…really, really great. I wouldn’t have been able to get this far without the forums and user guides. From my personal experience, the piece that’s missing is the action on our end at different steps, which feels like the piece that Subeta should provide. Like, here’s information about freezing, now go battle this opponent and experience what we’re talking about…and while you’re there, take note of this and that. Does that make sense? If there was some sort of on-ramp to each of the components of battling that gave users info, but allowed us to still feel like we were figuring it out, then the information would be easier to retain. I’d love to be able to have something like…go try out these weapons and notice xyz about how they are able to block/freeze/attack…something that gave me the building blocks of understanding while simultaneously seeing it in action. Because I think a lot of people use the battle forums just for set advice because it can be so difficult to understand how to build your own set. I don’t know if any of that made sense, but I want you to know that I appreciate what you all are doing and have been doing for the rest of us!
And this comment section is why I steer away from every internet community, including those in subeta. Just like high school...
also to make things more funny ... I keep getting gateway timeout errors when trying to view the news comments, so if anything .... wait for it .... the news posts are being gatekept. :'D (is it too soon? :'D)
please, please, please, if you do not understand something, come talk to us on battle chat. By not telling us what is confusing or unclear, we can't make our guides better and accessible because a lot of us are seasoned and have forgotten what it was like being newbies ourselves. It's easy to say overhaul the system, but you can't overhaul something if there's no answers as to what needs to be changed. A lot of the work is dependent on us as users to provide the information as Subeta does not have the staff or anything to create official pages. The guides are a community effort.
Count me in with the folks who thought this was a new plot and got punked. :'D LOL
Anyway, just my 0.02 cents here, too. I used to be more into battling years ago. Got my battle pet to tier 11. I enjoyed battling, but I eventually gave it up, and I didn't really understand why at the time, but this news post solidifies it. I totally agree with 's
..and now I know why. ... Battling felt like an endless money sink where the more I advanced in tiers, the scarier that sink became and the perceived gains I got diminished.
Also. This may be controversial BUT--
I enjoyed battling more in lower tiers when I had access to more weapons, because then I could battle with strategy. I know it probably sounds daft, you probably have the same sort of strategy in higher tiers .. know which icons are blocked, what icons the enemy's weapons do, what effects are disabled (stealing, healing etc). And yet, I felt limited in the higher tiers, because I wasn't able to use strategy, because the pool of weapons was out of my grasp. Did I want to sink 100mil+++ sp into one specialised weapon so I could maybe stand a chance at one particular battle opponent? Mm, no, thanks, because that's too much. I mean, sure I could have gotten one or two weapons, but I didn't want to half-ass that. I didn't just want one weapon that did one specialised icon when I knew I wanted strategy and have more weapons available to me so I can actually strategise. So I quit. I didn't want to be shoehorned into using the same budget tier 11 choices I was using over and over again, because guess what? It got boring. [shrug]
To all you lovely people who don't understand battling: we got you. Come down to the Battle Chat thread and ask us. We love explaining things and we were all new to it once. It's really not as scary as you think, I promise.
In response to this entire mess we're also brainstorming ways to make our unofficial guides even more newbie friendly, so anyone saying exactly which parts they don't understand would be super helpful!
Still reading: why would you make something with a specific function that it's hard to complete the upper levels of your battle system without, a "status symbol"? Why would you continue to roll out features for a system that you admit is broken, at an extremely high value, just because it's legacy, and alienate other users? There's some circular logic going on here and the admission that no one is interested in being fair, is revealing.
Two cents after reading a good portion of this discussion which is legit interesting: I've been on the site for years, I battle for the item rewards, and don't understand it at all despite reading the (very well-written!) guides over and over. It's extremely confusing and like I said I've read it over multiple times and it just has not gotten through. I would be heavily favor of a complete overhaul and it seems silly to me to make it so expensive and elite when everything else on the site is really accessible.
I've been trying to support Subeta and so many of the changes lately have been REALLY promising, like non-unique pet names and seeing tangible progress on the recode, but being treated this way by staff is just... hard to swallow. It hurts. It hurts because I love this game and I have invested over 12 years of my life here. I have had a subscription almost since release because I genuinely love Subeta and I want to support it. I know the site needs money to survive and make the changes that have been desperately needed for so long. I've been defending Subeta, which is something I never thought I'd do again after so many bad years. I really thought things were looking up.
But staff haven't changed and it hurts to see that. Communication has been poor for over a decade. Users have gotten snarkly, condescending, and downright rude replies from staff for years. Not in every single interaction, but often enough that its not even a surprise. I don't know if I can keep brushing it off anymore. Staff members making snarky Facebook status-esque comments aimed at me because I dared to try and explain why I feel the way I do hurts. Why are staff allowed to do this, to be so condescending and treat the players this way?
I know very well that "the customer is always right" is complete garbage but jesus christ, are you guys even reading these comments? Do you even care that so many loyal, dedicated users are upset? That even more of us are thinking of leaving a site we obviously, genuinely love? We're telling you we want to be able to battle and every response completely ignores all the problems we bring up that are preventing us from being able to use an entire feature of the website in favor of being passive aggressive.
Not even battlers are happy as a whole! No one is happy with this! We're trying to give you feedback about why we are unhappy. Many people have either directly given or heavily implied suggestions of different things that would help. Why doesn't this matter to staff who are supposedly trying to keep Subeta alive?!
Just to add my grain of salt, not sure if I like this token shop-esque way of restocking the fanciful boxes. Some people already bought 3+ and I'm still trying to get my first one :/
Me, showing up less than 24 hours after this update: "wut"
Adding my 2 cents, for what it's worth after reading through 300+ comments. :P Old user here (almost 15 years). Playing daily, leveling up main pet constantly via training center. I really tried to get into battling in the early years, but I gave up after several years, because I felt I could never "catch up". At first I would plough through hours and hours of doing hundreds of battles with an "ok" battle pet and weapon set, but I could never make it to the highest plot level or challenger. Always missing out on the best prizes, even when working really hard for it, made me decide I'd never get "up there" for the top tiers, so I only do a few battles with releases or plots. I do still buy challengers with CSC, but mostly if they give a pretty wearable as loot... It's not that I minimize the effort / money the "elite battlers" (not saying that in a negative way) have put into their pets or weapons. I'm just sharing my personal feeling that only the best players will keep getting the best weapons during battle plots, and there's no point for me in really trying anymore. So on the one hand, it's a nice thought of giving people the sP (non-battling) option for getting an amazing weapon, on the other hand, 9 billion for a chance box... yeah, no. If playing daily for 15 years didn't get me that amount, I'll never get there. So I'll just keep doing the battles in plots as much as I can, but I'll never again spend hours on doing battles in hopes for a top tier prize, because I just have to face it: I'll never get it.
Adding as a side note / a bit off topic : This feels more like a collective "lets get all our frustrations out now we have the chance that subeta might listen to us"-comment section, not just about battling/weapons. I too have many frustrations about subeta that have been boiling up for years (too many things around the site that aren't working properly for years, too many old promises not being kept for years, etc.). Plus no more decent plots like in the early years. I miss the community feeling we had back then, when it was fun to do the plots and the challenges (battle of the bands, the game wars, ...). Now most things feel like a chore, even the questaton (where is the main prize for that, by the way...). :/ I just want Subeta to be fun again.
I'll never say no to more battle opponents! Gimme more guys to beat up! xD At the current moment, for any battle opponents, it is always recommended you start training before battling. If you go in with a pet that is completely untrained, yes, you will not get far. I usually would say get your pet to 100 points in each 4 stats before battling. And that is easy to do with auto-training in a week's time. Also smaller opponents drop those basic stat booster eggs for Tiers 1-3 to use, so those do help with gaining stats early.
Battling is beyond weapons, scrolls, and winning against opponents. The main gist of it is always going to be training stats up.
As for everything else not-training, we have plenty of guides on the battle forum. We all try to maintain up-to-date info, but also help with building armories and suggestions on pet builds. Unfortunately, if you're looking for official stuff that's accessible on a Subeta page, you're not going to have as much luck, it really is on us in the forums. Majority of our work is testing stuff out and compiling information. Our BAs don't tell us everything, most of it is us figuring stuff out for ourselves. That's the fun of it, experimenting and exploring.
Battling is not for everyone. And that's okay! CWs and wearables ain't my interest for example. We do want more people to join into battling though and keep trying at it, and we try our best as a community to welcome in anyone and answer questions or problems. I'm not sure if this post of mine is any more helpful, but maybe it does a little?
Can I ask if it will be possible for low/mid tier battlers get the box prize in the future? Or is that reserved for high tier players and difficult/impossible battles?