So I thought I'd make this with the very high chance of having it shot down for various reasons. @ kbbob thought i'd ping you to see just how bad this idea is/why. If you're a battle or have battler friends please ping them, i wanna see why this is wrong. Is it the coding? Is it just not possible? What are the flaws? and yes i know 2 might already exist, but still.

1.Have a create a battle challenger contest where the person who wins gets to describe the challenger and the stats it has. A site artist creates it and battle admins add the stats along with if its wind, poison, water, fire, etc. When it comes out the person who won gets a copy of the item used to summon it and it gets put into the MC, idk-shrugs- 2.Create challengers who have either multiple powers like fire and wind or water, ice and wind, etc. and/or a challenger that as you beat it the powers it has changes. So if you beat it once on fire first time, then it changes to wind second beat, electric and fire third beat, etc. 3.Most importantly though, What do you as battlers what to see thats new/inventive about new battle challengers? What would you like to see with old ones?

Thank you for your time reading this:)

i'm not exactly a battler but I think I get your concept on the contest of creating a challenger. There have been many user contests before such as CW contests, wardrobe contests, item creation, etc. But this would be new. My two cents on this are: it's a good idea but not very developed. I feel like you should do a better sketch on that and how would it happen. What exactly would be the contest for? Just describing a battle challenger in your head? That sound a bit vague for me though. And how would you exactly "win" the contest? Also, if there was the option to add an image, wouldn't the "sketch" of an opponent kinda influence on how you imagine it? Having a contest on a battle opponent concept is a bit useless since I believe staff doesn't lack on creativity for that. If it had a bit of a better purpose, then yes.

Also, as for the circulating opponent icons, i'm not sure about how the coding would work. The Battle Coliseum has been said to be on the queue for a revamp after the Wardrobe - the Wardrobe revamp kinda actually already happened so we're counting on that next. I've read many times that coding on battles is kinda limited for some purposes though so don't count on that. The best they could do would be add an opponent with a random weapon pool/weapon set kinda like the Panzer Hydra but with/without the escalating difficulty - like an Elemental Hydra. It would each battle pick up a certain set of weapons that deal certain icons/icon combos. If the difficulty scaled up, then the icon range would get wider and wider.

As for the new battle challengers, I've been writing some stuff on that for a bit and I wanted to see challengers with more interactivity. (i'm on a rush rn so I'll try to write more on this later)

I think there is a bcsuggest ping group but idk how active it is

I would think this is possible since I'm pretty sure opponents now have custom code and we have an opponent - the troll - which seems to have more complicated coding than this would entail.

As for a contest, I'd think only something like backstory and design would be somethting users could create. I don't think the average user would know how to design a balanced opponent and the average user would probably create something pretty low tier (which would be boring imo)

Apart from more gimmicks from the opponents themselves, I'd love to see more ways to find a new opponent. Growing seeds, true zapper gone wrong, baking so badly at Fantine's that your food becomes sentient. Maybe challengers from games like Leviathan Harpooning, Gravedigger, Mazes & Mahars, etc. A lot can be done

I don't know about the ideas in the OP, but I agree with in that I would love to see some more variety in how to unlock challengers. Right now it's pretty much CS opponents (and every now and then a MC opponent), which can be good for sP sinks I guess. But having some new ways to get them would be fun, and it could get people to visit different areas of the site that they haven't used in forever or didn't even know existed.

I would like to add that it would be nice if these new unlockables found around the site were ever done, they should all be scaling opponents as well. It's all fine and dandy to have new things to unlock, but not when only a small percentage of the site can interact with them. (Hi CS challengers)

This could perhaps work as a bonus to get more people into battling, if they truly scale all the way through easy-impossible. I know if I was only a few training sessions away from potentially beating whatever level comes next, I'd do it. And with 5 or so pets at various HPs, there should be enough to get people interested and not feeling left out.

Thanks guys! :D

@ THESOVEREIGN @ smilesnz @ Lypsyl @ Rocketlauncher @ DrJeff @ METROID @ Jess

One thing off the top of my head are neutral blessings and curses. It doesn't have to come from the challenger. It could come from a third invisible player like a "weather" effect, and the weapons that generate these neutral blessings and curses can be breakable.

For example, a blessing that prevents everyone from being taking damage for several turns, or heals everyone. Or a curse that prevents everyone from using weapons and-or scrolls, or deals damage to everyone. Maybe even random freezes that stop everyone every other turn. Who knows?

The old challengers could include some of the features that the newer challengers have, such as curses and boosting. However, I believe it's better not to change them until they reset.

I hate super complex features on the BC. I think that in general the more complex the design in the BC, in general the worse it is from a pure game design standpoint. I think with the exception of tainted keeper skull staff, all custom coding on all weapons and challengers has been a completely wasted effort.

I think it is almost impossible to actually make a challenger "interesting" when you compare it to a game outside of subeta, because the weapons that we have access to are so amorphous, interchangeable, and bland. I'll bet that most people that regularly battle would need to go look up the icons that Blackmoon's Staff attacks with. I'd bet that most people that own a blackmoons staff would need to think hard about what type of icons it attacks with. I know that I don't know what my Sword of the Seven Seas attacks with, because it almost never matters. Even some of the rarest and what should be the most iconic weapons in the game, most people probably don't even know what they really do.

Additionally since there is absolutely no incentive to battle beyond 10 wins, there is a very narrow time frame between when you can first struggle your way to a win, and when you can auto-pilot the wins through brute force.

It really doesn't matter that much how many layers of complexity and custom code you put on a challenger, because there is probalby either an optimal weapon combo that counters it, or you can just over train it and beat it with whatever you have laying around a week or 2 later. Ultimately though if the opponent does magma icons, you use a magma blocker, if the challenger uses a freeze, you use a freeze blocker. The mechanics of the battle themselves are extremely prescriptive, and I think what people find interesting about challengers is more the back story and surrounding lore and loot than the battles themselves. If you come up with some super complex feature, there will either be a counter strategy or just pure training to counter it. And I would argue that is never "interesting" if you compare it to anything outside of subeta.

I think if I were to try to make a very interesting opponent. I would make an opponent whose weapons deal no icons by themselves, but generate massive 1 turn curses that forcast what icon types they will be doing the next turn in massive numbers, forcing you to actively try to block them. [edit] just remembered curses can't be blocked [/edit]

If I was BA for a week I would instead focus on establishing an identity for each icon type, and rebalancing weapons around that. Make it so that Light and dark icons are relatively rare, but that there are no light or dark blockers on the site. Make earth and fire icons extremely common and available in over the top quantities on challengers, but make common defenses for them. Make ice icons rare, but every single weapon that deals ice has a chance to freeze. Make Magma weapons rare, but every one has a chance at parched. Make physical icons extremely common, especially on cheap junk weapons that shouldn't have special powers (something like dark battle star, instead of dealing dark icons just have it do physical, since its supposed the be junk, not something that hs unique interesting dark icons.). Then give all challengers a scroll that blocks at least one physical icon give give defense on challengers inherint value. Instead of making high end weapons amorphous sets of 3-4 attacking icons, make them iconic. Make SoSS 30 water icons and 12-15 physical icons. Make wrath of K a 52-65 icon fire breathing beast (that will be somewhat commonly blocked). Give every single challenger a scroll that blocks 100x icons of 1-2 icon types, like tide should have a scroll that blocks 100 water and 100 fire, ect.

Challengers are generally just benchmarks and will never be inherently interesting. It's the stuff surrounding them that should be worked on.

If icons had identies, even just making an interesting looking challenger with a new set of icons/defenses would be an interesting experience without the need for complex custom coding. The complexity would be the subtleties of the surrounding structure.

@ muerte, did you wanna weigh in on this?

I'm sorry, I have nothing to add to this right now :(

If the icon identity would be reworked someday, I'd be interested to see perks for them.

It could be something like this on top of suggestions by made earlier: (These are all chances, by the way)

Physical - Boost Str Earth - Boost Def Wind - Boost Speed, Otherwise Natural Blessing for Challengers

Fire - Boil Curse Magma - Parched Blessing

Ice - Freeze Water - Heal

Dark - Disable scroll Light - Disable 1 weapon

Associating blessings/curses with icons was probably contradictory to my point, many of the icons should just be plain representations of damage/damage blocked. The goal should be simplicity.

We have 9 different icon types, you really don't need that many from a functional standpoint if they all do the same thing. Neo only had 7 and that was probably too much once they made the anagram swords.

But if you just don't make any weapons that lock light or dark, then all of a sudden an opponent that deals light or dark damage is inherently interesting just for existing. (light/dark as the unblockable icons might e a little odd considering we proabably have more of those blockers than anything else though)

On the opposite end of that spectrum, you could make opponents that deal tons of earth/fire icons and give actual fire/earth 100% blockers back.

About No. 2: Each challenger has its own ID (and with that their beginning stats and initial weapon set), therefore they can't be changed easily. The current way around that is to unlock new challengers or enable-disable them like the Ice King challenger. A few challengers, such as Crithbolcan could end up using different icon types when you blast their item generating weapon early in the battle.

About custom coded weapons: Not sure if changed, traditionally challengers can not use custom coded weapons outside their default stats, although if they were allowed to it could make some battles interesting, for example the weapons having different stats when their hp is less than half.

Back to 3: Another way to make new challengers different, I think they should have higher strength and defense, but weaker weapons that you actually steal and use (instead of being so overpowered that the only option is to blow up in your pet's face when using it).

About icon reworking proposal, it's a very interesting take on making battle challengers different. I admit I can't envision what it will end up to be, because it's going to need more details and case studies. His post, while not exhaustive, is an excellent starting point to think about. The biggest challenge however, is migrating everything simultaneously, or have a second BC while it's being worked on (because we don't want the BC to be temporarily closed for a long time like the weapons revamp), and that's not a quick and easy job to do.

Another first..maybe make an animated battle challenger? They did it with a nostalgic pet:P

They actually had an animated battle challenger long ago. It was the old prodigy art. That was before the major revamp in 2011. I don't know if they still have the image here or not.

Edit: I found it!

i dont think so? But could be wrong. Wow that looks umm...dated a lilcx

The growing challengers have been the most interesting to me - like forj, meatslab, and the hydra thing. I would love to see more of those. I also like forj and meatslab being kinda expensive CSC ones but with that price come some real good prizes and a real challenge. Forj is fun because it is so gimmicky with defense that only allows water to work.

I wouldn't want things to become too complicated though. Right now I think it's annoying enough to have a bunch of different custom coded weapons and it's hard to keep track of what does what. I'd love to see a database on site that has all of that information already for us.

The Troll and Cinthialocks are examples of challengers who have custom code I believe.

Yes, they updated many of the challenger images when another artist took over drawing them several years ago. Many of the revamped images were for the old easy to very hard difficult challengers.

Thanks for the info I wonder if that also means that their weapons can be custom coded to change during a battle. That would be interesting if they do.