Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-72.77.162.76-20140211142826

Well, it's close enough to the end of the event (10 hours remaining) to give a final recap of this event. This new format does have promise, but there are things that definitely need to change.

BUGS

I never encountered not being able to scan a boss. Mobage pushed a fix for that, so I'm not going to include it here. The most notable issue is that when you click on "View Team" from the event screen you can't scroll through the players on your team. It only shows the first 11 players. If you click on the last player in position 11 to view their team, you can swipe left and right to view all members of the team.

From the same screen above, if you view a players team, the avatar at the top is your avatar, not theirs. When I first saw this I thought "wow, someone else also has a Viking shooting an AK-47 while riding a unicorn farting rainbows!" Then I realized it was my avatar.

I also noticed on occasion when I was seeded a boss, it showed 0 damage. If I then attempted to attack the boss, on the battle screen where it has the remaining power at the top of the screen, it would drop to reflect actual damage done to the boss. I don't know if it was because I was seeded before the other player actually dealt the damage, and between the time I clicked on the boss and then selected the number of cubes the damage was actual dealt by the other player. It could just be a timing issue.

EVENT DYNAMICS

First off, the team selection criteria needs to be modified, and based on the TFL blog post they are looking into it. I've seen multiple reports of level 1 players being assigned to a team which shouldn't be happening. You are supposed to be a level 2 before you can join. The other issue is having dead accounts assigned to your team. I have no doubt that there are stale accounts that were created for the sole purpose of getting friend rewards. Those accounts needed to be level 8 before they counted.

Based on this, why not increase the minimum level to join any raid campaign of this style to level 10? It would take maybe an hour of time for a new player to reach this level. Not only does it give the new player a chance to increase their deck power by getting more R3 cards, but the rewards for getting to level 10 would also provide them with medals that they could use to possible get and R4 card. This would cut the number of stale accounts being assigned to teams. I would also go as far as to say you have to be a minimum of level 10, AND have logged in within the past 7-14 days. This would keep the decks up to date and eliminate players who have decided to stop playing (a la GOC) or players who have been banned (a la ItsMe).

Would this reduce the pool of available players to assign to teams. Yes, it would. In that case, reduce the maximum number of players on a given team. There would be more chance of players contributing to team successes this way.

There has already been a discussion about removing leeches from a winning team. If, at the end of the day's event you have a score of 0, you receive no winning team rewards and are removed from the team and replaced by a contributing player from the losing team, AND their daily win counter does NOT increase. Why NOT? Because however slim the odds, a leech could win the first day and not contribute, then be assigned to a different team who wins on day 2 and so on, making it possible for them to get 6 wins while doing nothing. Your win count should only increase IF you participate.

What about those who chip in 1 cube and get 50 points? Entirely possible. There is an option that only players with a certain percentage of total points get the rewards at the end of the day. Should they get credited with a win for the day? Probably, since they did contribute, but I don't think they should share in the daily rewards (ie: BC, rubies, diamonds).

BOSS POWER CREEP

Let's be honest. To say the power creep in this episode was excessive is an understatement. Especially give the number of players on a given team who actually did anything. Sure, there was the "SD Card is full" error that stopped players from being able to help out, but the biggest issue was the lack of help on teams. I can't count how many of my bosses escaped because nobody helped increase the multiplier. This goes back to the previous comments about team selection.

My guess was that in a perfect world where all team members contributed something to the battle, the multipliers would go up fast enough to make it easier to defeat the bosses and there would have been lots of synthetic energon to help. That didn't happen. My suggestion is to keep the synthetic energon from scanning, but remove the multiplier when attacking the boss. Combine that with the boss HP levels from the OLD raid events and I think you'd have a winning combination.

Day 1 would have higher level decks being able to 1 cube the bosses. All lower level players (low end T2 through T4) would be able to scan, throw in a cube to get first attack and MVP, and others would finish. As the event progresses, it will require more team work to defeat the boss. The current method for assigning points based on damage dealt is a good idea, I believe that should stay, so even if a boss does escape you still are rewarded.

Due to the near impossibility of actually defeating a boss without huge cube investment, a lot of them are escaping. Yes, you get points, but you miss out on the kill rewards (like rubies) which makes it very difficult to do anything on the space bridge. For example, I have around 800 rubies and 60 diamonds. Both useless. If I could kill some bosses I'd keep investing time in doing so in order to try and finish my half X5 cards, but at this point it's nearly mathematically impossible without spending a LOT of money. Which leads me to my next point.

SPACE BRIDGE / CARD PRICES

Ok, it has been discussed that the paid spacebridge needs to return to having guaranteed raid cards for the first tier just like it used to be. I got stung by the "possibility" of getting a raid card because I just assumed it was the same. $3.00 for an R3 Ravage. Boo. Others went to the next step only to realize it still wasn't giving a guaranteed raid card. With the last update it appears that Loop 1 Tier 1 gives a guaranteed raid card. But note that Tier 2 DOES NOT GUARANTEE a raid card. It would be nice if we knew what we could get. Mobage used to have a screen that showed all Loops and all Tiers and whether you got a guaranteed card or not. We need that back.

The other option is to pony up a LOT of money to buy raid cards in RAW packs. No thanks. I'm not a FTP (free to play) player of this game. I have spent money. The majority of the time it was buying the first Loop of the space bridge trying to get raid cards. Other times it was to buy chains to get a decent R5 card. The only RAW pack I purchased was Megatron during the Christmas sale. I did the math and realized that based on my typical T2 finish, he would stay in my deck for a while (in fact he's still in there). I felt that $60 was a decent price for a card that would last more than 1 event.

Let's look at the prices for this event:

Orion Pax/Armada Starscream: 18,900 MobaCoin - full or 9,900 for half a card. Wow. $99for a half card, and $185 for a full card. Yes, they are 15x, but that only lasts for this event. $200!  Yes, there are players that will spend it. Maybe the 0.5% of top players. Mobage, you want to keep the R6 cards "special", this will do it.

Scoops/Skywarp: 8,500 MobaCoin - $85 for a full card. Still too pricey in my opinion.

Look at the number of players who spent their stash getting Unicron, only to have him slapped into the dirt by these R6 cards. As the game progresses, reward cards go up in power. The $185 you spend today could be useless in 2 weeks. I would say, drop the price of the Scoops/Skywarp RAW packs to $50.

When it comes to the R6 RAW packs, prices should be higher, but not $200 style. If you want to make them even more attractive, have a sliding scale for their raid multipliers. For instance, this event the card has a 15X bonus. Next event, the bonus drops to 5X, the event after that it's a 3X, the event after that it drops to 2X, and finally, no bonus. Knowing that the card won't be kicked out of someone's deck next week is a good incentive for purchasing it. Spread your, say $150 investment over a minimum of 4 weeks due to the raid multiplier and the economics of it start to look a little better.

RUBY REWARDS / DIAMONDS / CHIPS / SPACE BRIDGE

If the boss HP levels are going to stay like this in future events, there needs to be more options in the space bridge for redeeming rubies. I can't even get half the required rubies to make a pull, imagine how T3 and T4 players feel. They're chipping in for 100k in damage on a billion plus boss. What's their ruby reward look like? Maybe 1 if the boss does get killed. We need to have the lower priced space bridge options returned.

R4 x3, R4 x5, R5 x3, R5 x5

Prices would have to depend on how hard it is to get rubies. If we had the old raid format, I'd say prices would be 150, 500, 2000, 4000 respectively. If the boss HP levels are kept as they are now, that drops to 75, 250, 1000, 2000. Raid cards would also be possible on the gold episode medals as well (with whatever the current percentage is now).

I understand the need to provide paying players with something unique (in this case diamonds). The required amount of diamonds needs to be adjusted just like rubies. Imagine you pump money into the spacebridge on the first day looking for raid cards and are rewarded with enough diamonds to get an MTM R6. Three or four days later, Mobage reduces the number of diamonds required to get those cards, or boosts diamond rewards for using the space bridge. Anybody who paid up to that point basically gets screwed. What's the message here? From a player perspective it's "don't buy on the first day, because Mobage will lower prices or increase rewards". Price everything appropriately from the start and stand firm. You will make more money with lower prices that appeal to more than just the 1% of players in the game. Just look at the price of the 500 BC pack - $85.00. How many do you think Mobage will sell at this point compared to if it was priced at $35.00.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think I've babbled enough about this episode. Do I like the format of it. More or less. Would I play it again if nothing changed? No. The bottom line is that as it is, the event is too costly when it comes to resources, too expensive to buy raid cards, and it's near impossible to get enough rubies to do a pull on the SB.

Don't look at this from a T1 player perspective, look at it from the MAJORITY of players who are T2-T4. I don't think T3 or T4 players could get enough rubies to do half a pull on the space bridge, let alone a full pull.

Again, any positive input is welcome. 