I noticed they have bigger boosts, but they make no sense. The best is still the 3 cube battle especially when you take into the fact that you won't win 100%. Seems like the purpose is to get you to buy an energon bridge then do 2 battles at 15 cubes each, prob lose at least one, then spend more gold.

 

Also, wouldn't the game theory aspect of the metagame lead one to never paying as the optimal solution? If you think about it, I know that next week there will be a better bot, so I shouldn't pay this week. However, it becomes recursive since I know next week that there will be a better bot the following week, soooooo I shouldn't pay. In the end, I'm never better off paying because I always know that the following week there will be something better. Look at how quickly BW Megs has become just another bot. Rewind anyone, etc.

I understand they are going after the whales, but how is this any different then essentially being a drug dealer? There's no monetary reward for this game, its just about the thrill of winning or the joy of getting characters you like. Either way, its just releasing endorphin. That South Park episode on this stuff was so true. I wouldn't be shocked if at some point these types of games are illegal.

 

I've had several people quit on me during PvP, but I'm not sure if they were rage quits or not. I still got my rewards, so yay, free loot.

 

I timed out of one battle this morning before the countdown even got close to zero. Most likely, it's happening to other folks as well.

 

I don't disagree. To be honest they pulled the "next bot tier" faster than I would have expected. I wonder if that speaks to the game doing poorly...

But I agree, they seem to be cutting their own throat some that stuff if coming out so fast it is all devalued.

I haven't even gotten Bruticus built and Defensor is the new shiny. By the time I get defensor built the next big thing will surpass him.

Unless they slow down some or throw something into the mix to make your 2nd or third tier/rarity bots more useful (whatever tier that is), I don't see this ending well.

Let's be honest, this is always DeNA's model. Try to convince the long term players to spend to stay on top and convince the new players to spend on an event to get a good jumpstart and have a chance to compete.

 

I'm going to make a prediction that when the next rarity comes out (wouldn't be surprised if it's in 2 or so weeks), half of the current players will quit.

 

The new bot tier is so expensive resource wise that you pretty much have to spend gold to upgrade. I guess getting a Hotspot would be good but I'm probably not going to bother trying for Defensor. Keep in mind you also probably have to spend gold to speed recruit. It's an absurd amount of money for this especially when you know devastator computron abominus piranicon are all waiting.

And I'm still not sure the real value of the combiner. With constant events you will be using them with event bots not your best support bots and I think 4 high bots are better than 3. The cynic in me thinks the developers know this and that over long term not spending all the resources on them would be more optimal. However, they design this to entice you to build them so you will drain your resources so you'll need to spend gold.

 

No way this game lasts 3 months at this pace. I mean it's only been since Feb and every free bot in the game is close to worthless along with a lot of the early event bots, ie menasor.

 

Also the new daily campaign bot is good I guess but it's really just a more expensive tier 4 bot. There's no way I'm getting the thousands of power tokens I'd need to keep up.

 

The daily Bot Spinister isn't actually active yet, right? I see his cores, and his profile thing to click if you have the resources, but daily battles aren't showing up.

 

That's the million dollar question isn't it? If the trajectory is the same pace as we've seen so far - I agree. No way most current players stay and things
end well.

But (and I'm not a DeNA appologist) the real question is if that is the trajectory... Did they speed things up due to the glitches? Did they always plan to do the first rank upgrade quickly, but then take a longer time before we see level 6 (or 7)? A year from launch was the plan always to be at level 8 bots?

(I don't know, are there any longtime SBT players here that can provide context from that?)

This one I wonder if they just didn't think it through and we'll see modification or reversal. While I'm sure that some people like me had built up ridiculous stores (for the time) of power tokens to the tune of 300+, it feels like the Elites went too far the other way. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if they lower it later with no refunds to players who burned through tokens just to clear some out.

Ultimately DeNA wants us to be poor on the key elements (of which power tokens are one) and we weren't. But there is poor and there's underwater. Unless they find a better balance it's just going to bite them in the butt.

 

Well Legends is still going on, right? Or is that game effectively dead now?

 

Out of curiosity, who on earth is the new player that joins now and says "cool, it will only cost several hundred bucks and I can compete"? They have to be dealing with a continually shrinking user base. I suppose they have modeled this to show they make more money by doing these games for a short time period rather than keeping a larger user base for longer. How long does an app game really last, less than a year? So they need to maximize their revenue, but I don't get dropping money on this and we are talking significant money when there is no reward. I would have thought the goal is to get you to do smaller purchases so you don't realize how much you have spent. Apparently there is a subset who must be running up credit card debt on these games. That would be really interesting to know, what percent of these big spenders are really running up massive debt. Again you can't win any money it's purely an expense.

 

Did you guys already forget this is the same group of developers, the same office branch in canada, that ran GI Joe Battleground into the ground? They had that last month of a major cash grab then announced instead of a new promised game update that the game was closing instead? They pulled the same crap with GI Joe, every week new units came out that made the previous weeks units obsolete, until people started pulling their spending and requesting refunds off google/apple, then came that last month of cash grab bridges, and then the announcement came that the game was ending. This is heading the same way.

 

I don't play but from what I gathered it seemed like everything was a "Best of..." replay of a previous event these days - and that most were taking that as the beginning of the end and expecting they pull the plug any day.

Supposedly the pulled the GI Joe game with little or no notice and did some purchase specials right up to the very end - so a lot of people don't have a lot of faith that they won't try the same elsewhere.


You know, if they were smart (and by smart I mean evil) they would introduce one constructicon per event over 6 events (without showing devestator's stats) and make people chase them every event until they had them all...

 

Once you have the character he's yours. I would recommend leveling up your strongest bots, that's what's going to help you to advance the best. At the lower levels, First Strike is usually the best ability that you can use. The tactic at that stage is go first, do as much damage as possible and repeat.

Well the power creep on this game certainly isn't as bad as it is in Legends. I've completely given up on Legends at this point. I haven't even logged into it in weeks. And while there is a little bit of power creep here, it is usually mitigated by something else. I mean, look at the combiners. The biggest creep on those is health. That's the big advantage. Defensor has the highest health, but his max attack is 41 damage to one enemy. There are plenty of other previous event bots doing more damage. Also, look at the difference between Superion and Bruticus. Bruticus actually does less damage than Superion, but that's offset by the 40% evade. So yeah, the events do produce the new shiny, but so far, the shinies are generally pretty comparable. Now, if next week they come out with a Rhinox that's 1120 Hp with 50+ damage, then yeah, that's some serious power creep. And things might reach that point eventually, but at least it's not like Legends where every other event has a new Optimus and Megatron that outclasses the previous Optimus and Megatron. I mean the most recent ones in BT are the SR Combiner Wars ones and they are still at a level where they can hold their own against most other bots that have come out since. And they came out with those like, two months ago.

 

That is true... I knew the closing part, but now that you mention it, they did escalate the ranks very quickly in Battleground similar to here (and this is about when I bailed on Battleground).

And sadly Battleground had a lot more interesting meta-game and mechanics than this game does. Hopefully we aren't seeing GI Joe Battleground part two...

 

It's a shame that DeNA is obsessed with the business model that is clearly broken. They are desperately trying to cater to an ever decreasing pool of big spenders to the point where they've pretty much pissed off everyone else, including the low- and mid- spenders.

I can't say this as fact because they are not going to show us their books, but I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't do better to restructure their whole business plan. Rather than focus only on a handful of people who will spend hundreds of dollars week in and week out to win, I think they should broaden their target market. Right now, they pretty much write-off the potential of players who might spend $5 or $10 during an event. If you are willing to spend any amount of money, these guys should be grateful and reward you with something at least reasonably useful. But right now, it seems the 1st few levels of the spacebridge are unlikely to give you anything better than an Uncommon. Useless to anyone who's been playing more than a week or so. That's a great way to assure yourself of an unhappy customer experience.

Transformers is a huge property with hundreds of thousands of fans. I am sure there would be far more people willing to drop a little cash than they get now, if only they knew they'd get something for that money. Lose the "random draws" and guarantee the Event Rares and SuperRares for reasonable amounts - Like $5-$10. I bet they'd get hundreds, if not thousands of takers. Week after week, that should generate quite a bit of cash.

 

Defensor's highest isn't 41, that's his lowest. He also has the highest HP of any bot and more than 2x the comparable non combiner elite bots. He also grants team armor 11 (the equivalent of 2 bots giving team armor 6).

While he might not be the most offensively powerful bot, he's a defensive powerhouse.

But I think the biggest issue is JRX's other point. By the time you actually get to run him there will have been like 5-10 other new shiny top end bots. While they might not be that much more powerful than him - even being a little stronger, the resource costs make it prohibitively expensive to level all the rewards in a timely fashion.

Assuming next week is another stronghold I'll be focusing on getting tons of money and tokens from that to try and level 2 Spinister as 2 Spinister + 2 Inferno = 86/8 Napalm damage in a single round and 4 100+ hp bots...

 

But seriously who has hundreds of dollars to spend on this? At least if I play poker, fantasy, or straight up gamble, I have a chance to win money. I can't win anything here. I have a good job and all, and I can't afford hundreds a week on this.

And that was a good point up above, eventually they shut this game down and you lose everything. It's even more obvious to me they've designed a system guaranteed to fail because the only optimal strategy is to not pay. The way they shut down the other game sounds like you could sue them for fraud almost.