I'm increasingly becoming frustrated that I have to play a relatively unrelated game in order to raise my pets. This is a pretty ridiculous and pointless aspect of the game. Pets are nice. They're fun in some way I suppose. Some of them certainly up the "cute" factor of the game. They have some minor benefits that appear to be worth far less than the time spent cultivating them. People like them though, and that's certainly a good enough reason to keep them around I suppose.
However, if the idea behind the games is to improve pets, that's one thing. It makes sense in an "I have nothing better to do with my life than shoot a pig out of a cannon." sort of way. However, these pet games take up precious questing time and cost energy to play. Pet snacks, on the other hand, accomplish the same goal without all that mindless tedium. In order to obtain pet snacks a player must invest time and resources. For some bizarre reason, the developers have decided that the only time anyone can use pet snacks is in conjunction with the aforementioned mindless tedium. Which is, well, tedious. It also means that a player must either pay in gold, resources (to craft), or earn pet snacks in combat IN ADDITION TO using energy and wasting time that could be used leveling to gain the benefits of pet snacks. Essentially, players are forced pay for the use of pet snacks not one, not two, but three ways in order to gain the benefits of pet snacks.
Congratulations Gamer! You've either just beaten a boss, spent 15 hours collecting resources, or spent gold it took you 30 minutes to earn and received this handy dandy PET SNACK! Now you can stop trying to beat that final boss in Krockotopia and go waste 3 more minutes and spend 2 pet energy to give your pet a +1 to his will and 2 whole XP!
Seriously... Keep the games for pet enthusiasts, PVPers, and people who enjoy them and by all means, let players keep the added benefits the games provide. Please, even if you absolutely must require energy to use pet snacks, let people feed their pets without having to spend endless hours pushing arrow keys. It makes absolutely no sense that someone can feed their pet a piece of equipment any time, anywhere, yet be restricted to feeding their pets actual food at the Ninja Dance-Off.
