I agree that the gulf between the spenders and the free players is widening to the point that I'm not sure how fun the game could be for a free player any more, unless they play very casually.

But I don't understand the logic in the rest of your argument.

Evening out Jazz and Mixmaster makes the game fairer between factions. It doesn't give someone an unfair advantage, it fixes an existing one... which is always welcome whether you spend money in the game or not.

Otherwise, I agree with you. The divide between free and paid play seems mismanaged, and the developers don't seem like they really give a crap what the players think about how "unfair" certain elements of gameplay and design seem.

 

Maybe my opinion on the evening out of the characters is biased, because I like the advantage that mixmaster gives me, but seeing as I don't have a autobot team, I wouldn't know that jazz is incapable of doing what mixmaster does, I'm just saying a pay to play game isn't fair to start with, if one has $1,000 to pay to play and another has $100, it's obvious the player with $1,000 is going to get ahead anyway, regardless of what his characters can do, so why address that, if they themselves designed it to be that way, when nothing can be done if one player can outspend the other.

And my argument is not designated at anyone who plays the game, it's about the developers anyway, why not just bring jazz up to speed rather than underpower mixmaster, underpowering just seems to me like a drawback for those who have that player, more power is what we all want from our characters, not less, if so why keep upgrading them.

 

I like collecting characters and upgrading them and my base. Obviously I'm never going to compete at higher levels, and the further I go, the longer things are going to take. But I have several other games I play, in addition to a job, etc, so I get what I can out of it.

 

I spend money on this game because I love the game and wish to support it. Having said that, the gulf is getting wider even now. It will be the same alliances who walk out with a 4 star Rodimus and also walked out with a 4 star Swoop and Magnus. While I'm always happy to add a free new Magnus, Rodimus, and Swoop, I get that people are upset because at higher levels, they're not as viable. I suggested perhaps making 3 star characters the main prize as they will be viable post 40 while not being quite as powerful as the 4 stars. Then they could make the 4 stars available to the elite players

 

I agree.

It's kind of ridiculous that so much of both the free and paid play advantages are left up to chance, but when it comes to this type of event it's absolutely the top paying players that get the best prize.

For example you might be a paying player and I might play free, but when we both open a premium crystal from an event prize, you might get a 2* dupe, and I might get a 4* Optimus.

Now as a paying player, you can always just go buy more crystals to increase your odds of getting something better. But that doesn't take away my chance of scoring something good.

So I don't understand why these events don't work the same way. The prize tiers should be for a different number of "Rodimus Crystals," where the top 5 tiers get 5 chances at a high * version. The next tier gets 3, The next 2, and the last gets 1 crystal.

Obviously, the developers make more money with the way it already is, but I think the event structure really goes against good freemium design... at least one that keep the community around for a long time.

 

I really wonder how much money people are paying for these events. If the plan is just to release these characters early for the events and offer them as crystals later on, maybe it would be cheaper to just buy character crystals when they become available even if they're not guaranteed.

 

We just did an alliance position battle for a 4 star bot event two weeks ago. Guess Spaceape has decided this is the new norm now for alliance battles.

 

Its bullshit to downgrade swoop on the outpost. I fought hard to get my 3*.

Phone is still buggy but works and i installed bluestacks on pc last nite.
Very cool! But cant play all weekend on a mouse or zoom easily on higher zones.
I will use it for farming. Phone will have to hobble through wars and events

Still juiced i picked autobots...lol

Hope they fix magnus glitch. He gets the red x on targets half the time.....annoying

3* jumpstream from saved crystal tho, nice! No jetfire dupe

I need to step up my war game. We are battling to hit cybertronian and i have been sucky this week two days in a row

 

I think the Magnus thing is he has to have his guns drawn to use his ability. They played up the aspect of "two hand draw" for the brief narrative and worked it into the character. Pretty stupid way to work it in.

Basically he can't use his ability until he comes up to a building and begins to attack. I understand the balancing though. Flyers and other long range powers are pretty dominant in this game. having someone who can't use their power until they're in the thick of things is a different type of balance. Luckily he's pretty tanky so he can survive it.

 

So is this game still a crappy pay to win?

 

Are people going to try as hard for Rodimus and nemesis on this one? The ability seems to buff other bots so not as good as strafe. And ultra Magnus and galvatron are not as good as strafe. Strafe is getting nerfed.

Not sure if worth it to spend money to try to get leaderboard now

 

It does seem to be rapidly heading towards the Mobage greed model. I can only imagine how many thousands of dollars ppl plunk down on these alliance position battle events.

 

Dude haha thank you for the magnus info!

Im not as hype for roddy as magnus or swoop but still am in a way. Thats just character wise.
Kup springer blurr blades hound
I thought rodimus would come later but still hyped for event
Im going for 12k....

 

OK. Let's try to do some of the math on this... (and bear with me because this is sloppy, involves guess work, and doesn't account for every play style contingency. If you can do better, please share!)

There's two ways to do well in the weekend events as a top alliance team member

1. Fight in the top zone available for 100 points per battle. Pay money to skip the character cool downs.

2. Fight in a much lower zone with the least amount of characters possible for half the event points per battle, but less Cybercoins would be required to erase cool downs. To make up for the point differential, you've got to buy more fuel cells and play twice the # of battles.

Well, in the last event the top 5 teams were all into the 1.2 Million Event Point range. If every single battle was at the highest zone, that would mean each of the top 5 alliances fought 12000 battles that weekend, or 300 battles per member! If they instead played with just 2 characters per battle in Zone 5 - 7 you're looking at closer to 600 battles per member.

Now that it's been a few weeks since the last big event, I think you can expect the top 5 teams to be breaking 2 Million event points this weekend.

So what does it take to win all those event points???

Well, it takes 200 minutes to get a fully charged set of fuel cells, right? So with the event lasting 3 days everyone is looking at a total of 1080 fuel cells to use. And if you played every single time your fuel cells recharged, you could participate in 216 battles. Each full set of fuel cells would snag you up 1000 points if you play top zones, and 500 if you played lesser ones. That's a potential 21,600 battle points per player, and 864,000 points per alliance over the whole weekend. This assumes you're waking up to play in the middle of the night, never losing, and always playing the top zone!

So it's clear there is no possible way to place in the top 5 teams without spending money (although, I have to admit I'm surprised that an extremely dedicated free play team could have potentially ranked highly in tier 2 without spending money).

Anyway, if you're fighting in the top zone, you're likely to only able to do that with 1 or 2 teams the whole time. That means you need to use Cybercoins to skip all the cool downs. To skip a 40 min cool down (or higher) for a full squad of high level characters, I'm guessing would be around 200 Cybercoins(?) ...per battle. So if you skipped every cool down, you could potentially use more than 43,000 Cybercoins throughout the weekend, and that's ignoring having to upgrade your fuel cell cache.

So, again, (and forgive me, I'm kind of "thinking out loud" here), let's say the top 5 Teams hit 2 Million Event Points this weekend, right? Each player would need 50,000 points (by winning 500 of the most grueling battles). That's more than double what's possible with regular fuel cell refills. So, to make up the difference you'd have to buy somewhere around... 1,420 extra fuel cells. How many come in an upgrade pack? 100?

So to play like a beast and guarantee a place in the top 5 teams, each player (on average) could potentially need to buy 14 Fuel Cell packs and 43,000 Cybercoins. The Cybercoins would cost $160 and the Fuel Cells (I'm guessing at $20 per 100 as part of a bundle) would cost another $280. Multiply that cost by 40 players, and...

Total cost to guarantee a 4* character for your alliance? $17,600.00

5 alliances will spend that much and 2 or 3 others will be chasing them late into the weekend. So the developer could potentially bring in as much as $140,800 from the top tier teams (and wannabes) alone. I'd imagine the rest of the player base probably spends at least another $60,000 - $100,000 combined on things like fuel cells, Cybercoins, and character crystals to level up right before, and during the event.

Now, my math is obviously flawed, and so many different things vary. Like you might have one player who eats a much larger cost and plays nonstop, meaning many other teammates don't have to play nearly as much. And I doubt very many players actually have to skip every cool down, or refill their fuel cells every time they run dry.

But I think this is a good guess as to what it costs.

So to answer your question... it would probably take every player on an alliance at least 500 premium crystals each to eventually "guarantee" they all get a particularly highly rated 4* character (it might even take many more than that). That's like $800 worth of crystals per 40 players for $32,000.00.

If you had to have that 4* character, it's probably cheaper to spend the money during the event.

 

Holy shite. When u put it like that it is NOT worth it to get these characters. That's $600 AUD for each member to pay if everyone was equal

Separate to the money u have to play non stop

Thx for the math splenetic very interesting. I think the reality is the top 10 players in each alliance do most of the work and spending with the rest coat tail hanging to some degree.

So if you are a top 10 member it is likely that you have spent over $2k for these events per event.

I guess a sucker is born every minute ...

 

Yes, thanks for running through the rough math. But if you factor in character specific crystals, the odds become much better. If UM crystals become available at some point, and I'm sure they will be, at 10 crystals for $20, if you were to spend the same amount ($400), that would be 20 bundles and 200 UM crystals. I would think you could get a 4* in under 20 bundles, and possibly other 3/4*s. So in the end, you're paying for the guarantee, bragging rights, and earlier access.

 

I agree. If you wait it out for character specific crystals, your odds are much, much higher. Still, to guarantee that 40 players on the same team pull a 4*? I really wonder what the odds would be.

 

That's really good math but that's not how we do it at all  

Different alliances also do it differently. For instance, Primus, which has 4 fully fledged alliances, switch all four of their alliances in and out of PrimusV to attempt to get as many points as possible. That also means a lot of guys are spending money to help other people get 4*, knowing that they won't be earning a spot themselves.

The non-super alliances (alliances which were original, and not created solely for the event) retained most of their original members, as we only succeed when we, as a team, get stronger. We also don't like working our trainees so that only we benefit.

Also, a guaranteed 4* is better than rolling the dice, any day.

 

Hmmm. I wonder what I'm not seeing.

You could pass over the cool down costs by just playing zone 1 over and over (what is that, like 40 event points?), but you'd need each player to win like 1200 battles, which just doesn't seem feasible even if you were constantly spending on fuel cells... which are also pricier than Cybercoins.

I feel like the only other way to do it would be some kind of play "hack." But if that were the case, you've got to imagine that the method would have leaked out already.

Hmm... well, congrats on having the answer to this mystery!

 

At the end of the day, we are all regular people, not millionaires. We don't have countless thousands to spend, and we're not able to convince all 40 members to spend money either.
Here's the leaderboard for Cy-Ops (now TF Psy-Ops) last event.



There's a unique, legitimate way we approach these leaderboard events. Again, I can only speak for my alliance, and not the other Top 5. I know Primus was switching out like crazy that last hour to try to surge past 5th place.