First of all, I apologise in advance for any grammatical mistakes or poor vocabulary, English isn't my first language and it showsss.

I usually don't want to talk about this specific topic because it's always a bit controversial, but here's my two cents anyways.

I hate the battling gatekeeping. Battling is, and has been, one of my favorite parts of the site for a lot of years. However, I'm not that good at it. My pet is "only" tier 11 with still a long road ahead. But I like it anyways, it's fun to come up with weapon combos, and finding out each challenger's gimmick. However, there's a certain point in which progressing and becoming better gets so much harder. Good weapons are very hard to come by! Why? Well:

1. New weapons: There's this trend, and as far as I remember, it wasn't always like this. Challengers and achievements award weapons which are useful if you're a lower tier than what you're required to get it in the first place. A t10 challenger awarding a t7 weapon. A t12 challenger awarding a t10 weapon. Which fine, I appreciate new items, specially if they have something interesting or a unique combination but, I kinda needed that... before. Like what's the point? It would feel a lot more rewarding to win something you'll actually use for defeating the challenger in the appropiate difficulty. I have a fond memory of the omen islands plot, the one with jake steele. The final boss had a unique prize distribution. The top prize was not only given to the people who dealt the most damage in total, but to the top 10 pets in EACH TIER. Man I worked my ass off, and finally, I won a Malhuili at tier 9, my first very good weapon. I was ecstatic. I felt rewarded and motivated to keep training, and had so much fun battling with my new toy (which is a scalable t9 weapon, A+ execution). The old Hydragellos damage caps also offer something to works towards, which also reward experienced battlers as they get there in much less time and effort than the average pet. And then you have the supreme hydragellos, a challenger made for t13 pets. And the prize for beating that thing FIVE times is a new t11 weapon. What. Why don't the stompers have that? Wouldn't that be more fitting? Oh wait, the stompers have a t10 shield. And the wizards a t9 weapon. Idk, wouldn't you prefer a new powerful ass t13 weapon for this feat? Why are they so afraid of making new godlies? Which brings me to the second point...

2. Old weapons: This one is a bit more common of a complaint. They just don't exist or barely have any market. The fanciful boxes tried to fix that and now you get the lesser box once for defeating a supreme hydra 5 times. 20 years have passed, the userbase is a lot more stale, I think it's time to bring them godlies back. Idk if you guys are aware of what happened on neopets these last few months, but basically, they made a lot of VERY rare, unobtainable items (including powerful weapons) available again for everyone to get. Of course the (small but very voicy) "elite" complained, but it literally gave life back to the site. People are happy when they get rewarded something they want with effort, specially if there was literally no way to obtain it before.

This is a game after all, it's supposed to be fun and engaging. Using the same set for months while you slowly train for your pet to reach the next tier so you can use new weapons and finally defeat a challenger only to win a weapon you'd rather have used before that... is boring. Really boring.

I know some of you strongly believe that "it's supposed to be hard to get", "it's always been like this", "I worked hard for my [godly released +14 years ago]", and probably nothing will change but this is something that's been on my mind for quite some time, and wanted to know how the rest feels.

Thanks for reading!

There is always alternative to use when you need in the higher tiers, and those are usually cheap or earn able from challengers Like you have the ocean currents scrolls for inf use scroll that is dirt cheap right now until you can earn a better scroll with other challengers challengers loots not giving out weapons at their certain tiers is also acceptable since you don't always happen to need them to beat the challengers that your loots come from Basically, if you only have one battle pet, aiming the final weapons that your armory need is very easy, with a few in the millionaire center and a few from challengers loots There are a few high end weapons that you do need and come by defeating those high end challengers. And if you don't have some of the weapons needed, there is always an option to lend from others and I believe others are willing to help. weapons are giving out as loots in this way that can help your first battle pet only when you are in the high end tiers and then the others are used when you decide to raise another battle pet, which makes raising another pets much easier imo. Last but not least, I do agree your second point though, those god weapons should be released to users rather than selling at 9b price and even in a limited number, especially since they are releasing more and more hard challengers even to a capped pet. But I don't know if others will complain abt it.:P

My battle pet is a tier 8 and between the fact that I'd have to be hounding the training center like no one's business, the only alternative I really have for it is pouring real life money into it... which... I'm not going to do. Maybe once upon a time but.

Now, it's a pathetic battle pet compared to some of the titans on here and I just simply don't bother. I would put the pet up for adoption for someone who could benefit from having a tier 8 but that pet was a "Hey, look after this since I'm leaving Subeta and may eventually come back" from a friend I've completely lost contact with. That pet is kind of special. Anyways, I digress.

I don't like one hit battle over things. If I wanted that, I'd play Dark Souls. Now, admittedly, I don't mind it when I'm doing the one hit... y'know?

The big issue with battling is that recent changes (including the change to how Hydragellos is being handled) have increased the difficulty for lower tier pets to "catch up" to higher tier ones, especially when it comes to things like weapons.

The Hydragellos core, an item used in two "endgame" T11 weapon combos, is now locked behind a boss that requires a T13 pet to defeat. Players used to be able to acquire it at (and even before in some cases with extreme perserverance!) the tier in which it was useful. Fanciful boxes, another method by which players can actually gain access to retired or limited time endgame weapons, are also now locked behind a T13 opponent when previously that was not the case. The gulf between T11 and T13 is HUGE.

When I talk about the accessibility of battling, I'm not saying it as if nobody can train their pets, I'm saying it in the sense that it is getting harder and harder for people who aren't already at the upper echelons of battling to reach that. Saying "oh players can borrow weapons from other players" isn't a meaningful engagement of the critique that there's not an opportunity for players to earn these weapons when they could actually use them for themselves.

I do find it interesting that following the revamp in 2023, Purge said that opponent difficulty shouldn't shift /too/ much and that an opponent going from difficult but winnable to impossible would result in the opponent's difficulty being reexamine and changed, but that philosophy seemed to take the back burner when it comes to how Hydra was statted.

Battling feels very unrewarding and un-fun, for sure. I understand that it's meant to be a long-term goal and sP sink–and they keep strong weapons rare to avoid devaluing them–but it all feels so... outdated. It's all comes down to either having the stats, the weapons, or both. I'm glad the community is generous, but I don't want to borrow weapons to gain the same weapons. Or buy weapons I can later earn, because I'd rather buy stat boosters for that amount.

I'll acknowledge that maybe battling is not for me, because it feels like you have to be a very specific kind of player to like and commit to it. And that's not me and, I feel, a lot of other players.

I don't want to get sucked into the discourse of this. I have a lot of opinions but I'll only voice the one.

The battle COMMUNITY itself has improved INFINITELY. I see people who I avoided before, now being wonderful members of their community. They feel like people that are incredibly approachable. Just genuinely from the bottom of my heart, I am so proud of the shift that battlers have made, and I can see their passion and care for this system, and I appreciate them.

The way that staff has been handing battling however... Reminds me a lot of the way things used to be. It feels like they're still operating on a concept from over a decade ago. It is not a good system and I hope that they have the ability to improve it in the future. IMHO the more that staff continue with the current path, the more people they discourage from starting or continuing to be in this community. And that would in fact, be a damn shame.

Please don't ping me / etc.

I agree everything feels outdated. Having "long term goals" right now isn't viable for this site. Keith is working hard on rewriting Subeta, and that should come with a new mindset too, of how items are made available and how to keep users interested in playing the game.

See what I mean by gatekeeping?

I'd like to hop on to something Feral said - the way the battle community as a whole has adjusted over the last few years is so refreshing to see. Pretty much everyone has become so much more approachable and friendly and helpful and I really appreciate how much they're trying to help and welcome new folks in.

That said, it does feel a lot like the official side of things is going backwards. My main battle pet is t12 and nearly at t13 and there are challengers I should be able to defeat that I cannot because...weapons. The weapons I need for some of them are prizes for defeating them, the weapons I need to even try to hit the core this year (realistically because I'm not caoped) are out of my range. I have gotten cores. I have both of the end game core combo weapons. They're modded. It's nowwhere near enough. And it's not just the Supreme Hydragellos, it's the new CS challenger that I had the pleasure of paying to unlock...the stats outside of its health are astronomical. It's as hard or harder than the Supreme. Why? What is the point? It doesn't even give a weapon. It feels like all of the changes to weapons that were made have added levels of difficulty that didn't need to exist, and it just makes folks trying to get in on the ground floor discouraged. I've been on the site since before weapons had tiers. I didn't take training seriously for a long time (my bad) because it wasn't always necessary, but even with some dedicated training and trying to understand the systems, there's a ton I'm just not even capable of despite my stats saying I should be. Something needs to be done about how challengers are calibrated and also how weapons are accessed, especially lower tier weapons.

I wanted to start off by saying that it’s been made clear that we can’t have the version of the Hydragellos we’ve had for the past few Gelly Wars. Last time it literally broke the site. So it was either this version of the Hydragellos or none at all. It can’t be both ways and this was the compromise. Maybe that can change in the future with Kumos, but I think ragging on staff for doing their best with the resources they have isn’t fair to them; they would have given us the global Hydragellos if they could.

To your points, ,

1. There’s no problem with the Hydragellos giving out a T11 weapon because weapons in that tier are designed to be used by T11-T13 pets. If you look at the differences between T11 and T12 weapons themselves, they are pretty small. I haven’t liked the general trend of other opponents giving out weapons that are less than their tier, but that has been happening since before I started battling. has seemed to try to remedy it lately and recent weapons have more closely matched the difficulty of the opponent, but that might be a coincidence. I can also guarantee you that top ten per tier prizes aren’t going to be a good idea in the future without limits in place because hardcore battlers have prepared for that scenario and will outcompete the more casual battlers.

2. You don’t need the old godlies to be able to battle, that is a myth :P I don’t play Neopets much anymore, but I do know they’ve been giving out godlies for what amounts to mindless grinding for days on end to maintain their player base. I can’t think of a worse way to give out weapons. I’m trying to earn the points myself and don’t have the motivation to log in each day because it’s boring me to tears :(

To what said, I don’t think Alpponz is a good example of a typical cash shop challenger. tries to release one for each tier over the course of the year. 12 different months = 12 different tiers. This is actually the first time we’ve had a CS challenger specifically for T13 pets. As you can see https://subeta.net/forums.php/gotopost/62495679">over here, challenger counts are pretty evenly distributed so there are challengers for everybody no matter your tier.

I get that having two new T13 challengers in the span of one week may be scaring people into thinking battling is getting harder, but I promise it isn’t. made a ton of weapons more useful during the revamp last year. I know because I’ve been testing them with my pets at every tier, especially while trying to edit the Gelly War guide. He also added hundreds of egg stat boosters to the easier challengers’ loot so newer players can get a jumpstart on their pets’ stats.

Maybe it is hard for me to see more casual perspectives because I’m very active in battling, but from my viewpoint I just don’t see how they’re trying to make things harder for anyone. It’s true that battling isn’t quick and requires patience, but I feel like it’s always given back whatever you put into it. Especially if you remember to do Battle Quests everyday; the amount of stats you can gain from it in a year is quite generous :P

The problem isn't so much the t13 pet winning a t11 weapon, the problem is the t11 pet not being able to use a t11 weapon until they hit t13 which may take literal years.

I never said you need the old godlies to win. I know you don't need them, I know we can use more affordable weapons. I still don't understand why they don't make them available again though. No one needs old godlies but people want them anyways. Because it's fun getting more weapons, it adds variety, keeps things moving. Most things in subeta have been feeling stale for a few years now. Battling is arguably one of the site's best features and what should encourage new people to stay and play the game. Also regarding neo, no, you can literally get a top tier weapon in neo doing 20 battles a day for a week and a half, and that's like... less than the daily battle quests here. And, if we're talking about mindless grinding and being boring to tears, let's say using the same "affordable" weapons for years while you do 30 daily quests and train to get a weapon you'd rather have used two tiers before ain't fun either :P

Haven't really read through this thread, but just gonna spitball whatever in response. I finally have my desktop back after dealing with the hurricane the last week, so I'm just so grateful to be back. ;-;

Be careful though. consider Neo's approach to destroying the r99s market on there, and look what happened: your non-r99s inflated to fucking insane levels to compensate. Where there is a will, there is a way for people to try and gatekeep or inflate everything to be unreasonable. If everything is handed to us on a silver platter, who is going to stay and play? Goals need to be within reason: too short, no one wants to play. Too long, then no one wants to play. It's a matter of finding that just right.

But honestly? A lot of good weapons are available without needing to win a fight against a certain opponent. Natasha and Ornamented Hook swords and the Ether are staples of any set, and are in the MC at set prices. Shinwas Temple Shard is a Crystal shop item. Phoenix Quill is also in the MC. There are some in the Antique shop at fixed but high prices, but saving up is not that hard around here. Before you know it, you will have a reliable set of weapons in no time to slowly start earning more. And as I always say, your weapons are only as good as the pet that can wield them; neglect training, and you're not going to see much progress.

I am still a proponent of making new godlies that are on equal footing with the OG ones though. To make up for the fact that obtaining an OG godly is pretty much impossible. How many OG godlies have to bite the dust to a cheater before enough is enough? There's got to be a way to balance the amount of new weapons going out so they can be statted to be as good as an OG godly. But the topic of the OG godlies is not my place to speak because for as long as I've been a battler, I wasn't there before tiers were introduced (well I was there, but wasn't into battling til after tiers were introduced).

now, as far as accessibility with battling is concerned? I can lead you to the water, but I can't make you drink it. People have written guides for years. People lend out stuff all the time. The community is nothing but encouraging and ready to help answer questions. We want more people to join the ranks and dedicate time to the site like we have. But if you're not willing to meet us halfway, then I don't know what more to tell you other than maybe battling just isn't for you. shrug

First of all hope you're safe from the hurricane, sorry you had to deal with that

Yes I know, it was chaotic. And the non-r99s inflated because they are collection items. And even with that in mind, non-r99 enter the market way more constantly than r99s and retired r101s, and there are features like the attic or events like the faerie festival for a shot at rare items. I liked neo's insane move, certainly made the site more active, which is exactly what they needed. Which is the key point in every decision: what's the objective? Bring new people? Make people interested in the feature? Keep the handful of users with a godly happy? It's impossible to keep everyone satisfied obviously, but change is necessary.

Cause i believe the heyday of pet sites is gone, and we're just here waiting to die. I keep saying if we could have a plot again, then it'd stir up activity for sure. But, it is the way it is as it's been since Covid. Hate it, but I suppose as long as the thing I love doesn't change, I'm here til it dies.

I think there is a disadvantage to the way increasing pet stats is set up, and it’s worth a discussion.

Currently, the primary ways to increase stats are daily tasks that quickly become tedious: Battle Quests for exp and the Training Center. When playing a game starts to feel like chore (dailies) we are not going to do it. It’s not fun. What if you can only log in twice a week? That’s a huge disadvantage.

Something that Subeta has failed at over the years (Been around since I was a child in ‘06), is adapting to allow users to play the game. What if a user cannot play everyday to increase their stats, but has 6 hours they want to binge the game on a Saturday? Well the current content does not support that.

Easy fix for this would be to allow users to actually be rewarded for grinding/binging Subeta.

Do something like this: -increase the exp you get from an opponent beyond 10 wins ten times. No, I’m serious. — Easy: from 10 to 100 exp — Medium: from 20 to 200 exp — Hard: from 30 to 300 exp — Very Hard: from 40 to 400 exp — Extremely Hard: from 60 to 600 exp — Impossible: from 100 to 1,000 exp This would allow users to easily be incentivized to battle beyond 10 wins and increase stats at a pace that doesn’t take literal years. Currently, a new opponent comes out, we beat it up for 10 minutes and we don’t touch it again. What a waste of resources for Subeta! Entice your players to continuously engage with the content!

-Create a drop table with varying rarities. is right, there needs to be better access to weapons for lower tiers. I’ve discovered this with my pet

That was a lot. I wouldn’t read all of that, my bad. shrug

do keep in mind something like that new sword, while not finished being statted, is not exactly something I see becoming a staple. A high tier does not make a sword great. Look at Corrupted Shadow Sword; still a disappointment for what was supposed to be an ice godly. And currently whatever is being done with the Gelatin Sword sucks, because it's a primarily fire blocker, but there's so many other fire blockers that do things better. So trust me, you're not missing anything.

I prefer scalers personally. Weapons that grow with your pet. Things like RIWoD has good longevity for a few tiers.

Ooooh Loot is such a cool project, congrats and thanks for sharing! And yes, agreed with everything, specially with the point of how much effort it takes for a challenger to be drawn, coded and released, just to fight it a few times and then forget about it until next reset

I can't speak to anything above tier 7 because that's where my pet is (after years of casual training and battling). I can say that it's fun to get lower-tier opponents/weapons, it is fun to get new loot whether or not it's a seriously good weapon, but it would also be really fun if we could earn great battle incentives thru actual battling! That is a big incentive to participate without having a mega-powerful pet. And that stuff comes pretty few and far between, but I guess most things on Subeta do there days. There always seems like something is being held back when releasing new opponents, new weapons etc to preserve a sense of challenge in service of a difficulty tier I realistically may never reach.

I do kinda like battling and I've been thinking of adding a new pet to battle with, but that's also difficult. Many parts of the system seemed designed to have a single pet launch to T13 and that's it, you simply can't earn XP faster with multiple pets- so it's a huge slog to level up a second pet before I hit the level cap, which I may never do. So much of the system is designed to hobble you and it's discouraging to interact with it. Ex: with the change to making weapon drops tied to achievements instead of wins now.
And I agree with the sentiment that borrowing weapons from others doesn't seem like a solution, because it feels like a way to get around the rules instead of play with them. You prevent us from sending battle pets between accounts, so why rely on that for weapons as well? At the end of the day I feel it should just be fun at every tier of battling.

I agree with this sentiment. Battling has always had a sense of "in a few years you'll have a much stronger pet!" We've also seen this site decline steadily over the past few years, which is a real bummer. I wouldn't mind more short-term & fun battle content. Of course this comes down to reworking the system and/or adding more frequent content, which I don't really expect since the site is basically on a skeleton crew and we have to be grateful for anything we get.

I really don't want to rag on staff for still putting out gelly opponents, I appreciate that now I finally have a pet that can beat more than T1 opponents I can finally partially participate. I like the existence of really hard battle opponents even though I may simply never be able to approach battling them myself. I just want to point out that this solution was basically "none at all" for the vast majority of people anyway, so putting it like that still kinda seems like lose-lose, even though the circumstances are totally understandable.

My pet is T13 and my main are Natasha and Cronus Blade, 2 accessible weapons and I have other godly weapons from plots and other events/achievements and with these 2 I managed to beat 90% of the opponents, when I need a different strategy with a weapon I don't have, I'm borrowing from other users.

Battling is an investment but you can be an average battler like me and still win T12-13 opponents, I lost 50+ for the new Hydrogellos, but I won 6 times, it's a little bit of strategy, a little bit of luck, help from other battlers too.

Build a good set, 2 attacks, soma tablets, recycle blaster, healer, freezer, shield, spam shrieks and chain freeze, get a good defensive and healing scroll.. it is possible, you just need to change your state of mind about battling and try new things, always try new weapons, experiment with strategies and... enjoy it as much as you can :)

I'm not saying that everything is perfect, of course there are MANY flaws in the battling system, for me stealing should be nerfed somehow, more godly weapons should be released,

One thing I wonder, it's 2024, many users left and their weapons are stuck in their account, does the team know how many godly weapons are there in inactive accounts??

I'd love if the Free Shop, next time, just did like. 3 copies of each OG Godly. You don't know which box it's in. It may not even get picked by someone. Yeah it shits all over those who spent 9bil for a box, unless you're gonna bring those boxes back (which I hate) or make it so we can earn the boxes (why was there no achievement tier of 10 wins for Hydra and you get a Godly box?? Come on, missed opportunity!).

I'll add that the regular hustler should have the chance to give a godly or a box too. Same rate as the AoN, which is stupidly low but higher than zero. Yesterday I saw that the was added to the fanciful box. A weapon that scales from tier 1 to tier 9, given originally to pets in those tiers, is now random loot from a box locked behind an achievement for defeating a t13 challenger five times. Feels like somebody wished on a monkey's paw to bring it back