Paidmium? No local multiplayer? Pass… (maybe I'll take it when it's free). Anyway, thanks for testing.
You don't need to buy iaps to complete the game. Iaps are for those who would like to take a shortcut, but you can complete the game the ordinary way without buying anything. At the end of league you get enough money to upgrade your ship or buy a new one. You also get $5.000 the first time you enter the Single Player mode and another $5.000 after you enter Multiplayer. We didn't want to force anyone to buy anything so rest assured that the game is balanced as a Premium title - personally I completed the game several times during tests without buying any inap, so I know what I'm talking about. This is exactly the same situation as in the case of FLASHOUT 3D - you don't need to pay to play or to win or to complete the game. So really no worries. As for local multiplayer - right now only online multiplayer is available and you can play with your friends if you invite them via Game Center however we might bring the local multiplayer feature in the future as well. Just like in the case of FLASHOUT 3D we plan to feed the game with many exciting updates. The next update should be out within a few days. Cheers!
Maybe you can complete the game without IAPs but it certainly doesn't seem like it'll be fun to do so. Having to pay coins for powerups that typically are found on tracks in comparable games is bad enough but paying for respawns is downright insulting. The fun of these games is finding weapons and powerups DURING gameplay. And if you crash, trying to get back into the race without having to spend time thinking about whether you want to use precious coins on respawning. The last one-on-one race is impossible to win -- at least in my experience without buying numerous boost powerups. I spent 750 coins on three boosts and still lost. And the I have to pay AGAIN to try to get past it. Coins drain quickly. And sure, if you get past that final race you get 4,000 coins so you can finally make some upgrades to your machine (which at least the first round of upgrades, seem negligible in respect to how much better yor car is). The game becomes a thought process on what you should or shouldn't use your coins on -- and many times wasting them if you don't win. A racing game should be about the fun of actually racing and out manouvering your opponents, and finding weapons and powerups in the case of this type of game. Money management is not fun. So I'd say before you buy this game, think about what you enjoy more having fun racing or having to plan out your budget to win. There's plenty of other racing games out there that are way more on the former side than the latter. Getting through the game without IAPs? Maybe, but I'm not sure how much fun you'll have doing it. This is just poorly designed where everything revolves around coins. Powerups and, even more so, respawns, shouldn't cost money. It just should be part of the gameplay. Maybe others may find some enjoyment out of it. But I find it more annoying than enjoyable.
Game Impressions I'd like to add my voice in warning to those that abhor freemium mechanics in premium games: with both purchaseable power-ups before every race, and expediated respawns during races with a currency that can be purchased for real money, there is doubtlessly a strong slant towards IAP here. The game does seem playable without any cash investments, and it is fun and visually appealing. But even I, who normally have no issues with freemium mechanics as long as there is a balance of developer profits and player fun/access to content, find this model a tad disingenius and offensive. If those same boost and respawn mechanics apply to multiplayer, this is essentially unplayable for anyone looking for a competitive environment (unless she restricts herself to playing strictly with friends with a no boost/expediated respawn agreement).
Just for grins, I decided to play multiplayer. It couldn't find anyone for me to play with so I chose Ghost, which I'm speculating is racing against ghosts of other players. And guess what? Both the expedited respawns and boosts are also included there for in game cash. Basically they turned the things that make futuristic racers fun -- powerups and weapons -- into all consumable items that need to be purchased before each race. And then to stay competitive use in-game cash to expedite respawning. It's just ugly. I could see things like starting with a low grade weapon and having to pay to permanently upgrade it to bigger and better weapons. But making ammo consumable is just atrocious. Same for powerups. Those should be random throughout each track. But no, again, consumable. Oh and to add more insult to injury, right on the same place where you can select powerups, they have the IAPs for currency in your face. Don't tell me that this wasn't designed to strongly encourage IAPs. This will likely be freemium within weeks and will make Ridge Racer's change to freemium look like gold compared to this.
When a race starts, you begin with no weapons nor items whatsoever. But your computer opponents have the luxury to start with complete arsenals of items and weapons. There are no useful weapons nor items on the race track that to you can collect to attack the enemy nor to defend yourself and here comes the big catch: as soon as you race pass one of your computer opponents then they immediately begin to fire their weapons on you nonstop. Since they get to begin with a huge arsenal, there will be no ending to their firing. So what can you do about this? Oh right, I forgot to mention that you can purchase weapons and items for some in-game currency after you enter the race and just before the race starts (this this takes shape of an annoying pop-up window). Having fun yet? Well it gets even better. One your ship gets blown away (and trust me it will get blown away), you will have to wait five seconds for a respawn, unless you pay some of the in-game currency for a respawn (there will be a window popping up when you get blown up and trust me you will be tempted to touch that button so you don't have to wait five seconds). Did I miss anything? Yeah. If you are filthy filthy rich then you can get lots of in-game currency for some real cash.
Just tried to pass that first one-on-one boss race. I bought 4 boosts (4 x 500 = 2,000 coins for a race in which, only if I win, I get 4,000.) Of course, if I lose, I have to pay all over again so it may cost me more to win the race than it will pay me back in rewards. And so I bought the four boosts. Bam. The game crashes. Go back in and sure enough I just spent 2,000 coins for absolutely nothing. Unless the dev does some serious revamping, stay away. I know I'm done unless it is changed.
As always all feedback is most welcome and we will take it into consideration in future updates. Yes, you can buy weapons before each race, but let me explain where this idea came from - in many console and other games you can buy ammo before a race or a fight and you get prize money and money during races. We think this is a fun model because it brings a bit of strategy to the game as you need to decide if you prefer to buy weapons, or upgrade your ship or buy a new one. This is something that was present even in games on Amiga, so let's not demonize it, because in our case the goal was to make it part of the gameplay model, not the monetization model. Right now if a game features iaps most players think (and sadly in most cases it is true), that this is a "pay to win" model, but in our case it isn't. Really. We just wanted to make the game a bit challenging, because many players asked us to do so after we released FLASHOUT 3D. Nevertheless during races you collect virtual money which you can spend on weapons before races. You can also collect weapons and bonuses on the track. And of course you get money for completing a league. The money you get this way should be more than enough to complete the game. As said before this is not a pay to win game, iaps are just an extra if someone wants to take a shortcut, we didnt build the gameplay and the balance around iaps. Without iaps the game would've looked exactly the same. Anyway we collect all the info and we want it to be a pleasant experience, so of course you can expect that future updates will make this experience better and we will get rid of many problems. Just like in the case of FLASHOUT 3D, we will do our best to make you all happy so you can expect some changes in this model. The update 1.2 which already improves some things should be out very soon (within a few days - it's already waiting for review by Apple) and in update 1.3 (which we plan to send next week) we will address most of the other issues, so hopefully you will find it better after these 2 updates and you will see that we are really listening to the feedback of the community. Cheers!
^this I was just about to hop in and rant about all this. But I realized some users already pointed out these horrible flaws. In every single race I wondered myself why the heck every opponent starts with a huge boost. I bought 3 boosts and couldn't even catch up with them lol. Same with weapons, they don't have to pick them up cause they already have them. The worst is the 5 sec penalty after a crash were I have to pay cash for respawning. I have barely any cash left to upgrade my hover let alone to buy a new one. The insane difficulty early on is another story. Oh man...
Actually from what I'm reading here (I haven't played the game, I have an iPod Touch 4) this pretty much the textbook definition of pay-to-win... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pay-to-win Buy more money => Buy more items that give you an advantage during a race => win
It's fine if you can buy and equip different weapons and decide which one you want to use in a race. But this is pure CONSUMABLE purchases. Lose the race and those coins are gone. You cannot deny that the more ammo, boosts, armor, etc that you have to buy EVERY single race does not make a difference in whether you win or lose. That first boss race. He goes boosting away and is long gone. Even with numerous boost purchases, you can lose lots of coins. If I bought four boosts at the beginning of that race and lost, and had to do it more times, I would easily lose more in game cash than what I win. I'm sorry. But this is one of the most appalling racing structures I've seen. You have no idea what the opponents have so it's spend away. Consumables are the worst in game content you can have. And in a racing game where it's all or nothing, it's even worse. And if it isn't a monetization scheme why are the IAPs right there along side the consumables? This game positively angers me. These are not "shortcuts" they're necessary to win. I don't see without a complete restructuring of the game how it can be fixed. And for God's sake, if nothing else, the expedited revive system HAS to be removed. It's unfair and is just there to get more in-game cash from you (which you will likely run out of if you continue to revive instantly then need to spend money to get more). Talk it up all you want as it being more "strategic" and not necessary. It's just downright offensive. Weapons should be available to upgrade for in game cash - not have to pay to use every single race. And I'm sorry but shields and whatever "energy" is are the main things I see on the track. I have not once seen ammo or other powerups. I leave others to decide whether to give in to this crap, but I personally would like Jujubee to refund my money. Why should I have to fight with Apple when it's the devs that made this pile of s***.
Wow it sounds like they really ruined this game! This is part of a new trend where premium games have IAP's. One or the other please not both.
How to make the multiplayer experience better Right now the multiplayer experience of the game is suffering because, well quite frankly, no one is playing it. Hopefully there will be more people trying to play multiplayer as the game gets more popular. But until then you must realize that letting players to choose a race track will not work because all players will simply choose different tracks and get frustrated when they see that nobody else is in that room (and then they quit the game) What is more important for the players is that they get to compete with other players, and this is more important to you too. So among the choices of race tracks that the player has, there should be an option saying "any track" or "quick game", which collects all players making that choice into one single room and then chooses a race track by random. This way, the room will get full more quickly. This option should also say how many players have currently made that choice and are waiting for the game to start. This way other players will be more tempted to make this choice too. Quite frankly if it was up to me then no one would get to choose a specific race track, and only have the above mentioned option. This way the pool of players is always used to fill multiplayer rooms as quickly as possible. This gives the experience of a rich community where multiplayer games are always available, without delay nor the frustration of empty rooms. Instead of choosing a race track, maybe players can be allowed to vote and the most popular vote is chosen for that room in particular. But I think by experience that even such a simple feature will take time to develop, and right now it is more important to make sure that multiplayer rooms get filled quickly. Such a "voting" feature should therefore be left for a future update. Because right now the multiplayer experience risks to die in its tracks before it has a chance to flourish. But of course the unfairness of having computer opponents in the multiplayer games which begin the race with a huge arsenal of weapons also makes the multiplayer experience to suffer because more people refuse to give it a chance.
Suggestion But I think it is very important that we in this thread keep a tone of good taste and manners (I am not saying that this hasn't been done so far). For me it is obvious that Mike and his team are willing to go the long road to listen to our comments and bring change to the game. Paying attention to potential future updates and giving the game a second chance is also important. Perhaps they manage to iron out these shortcomings and then if we spread the word about the game then maybe it will have big community after all. I think that in the current "freemium culture" that is spreading over the iOS gaming community, game developers that are willing to listen and abide by their communities' suggestions is perhaps the best thing that we have...
Thanks again to Touch Arcade for providing a forum for people to look at before purchasing. I love racing games, but I'm passing on this. I think I'll fire up F-Zero instead.
Well, I haven't played far in the game to comment on all the inapps as others here, but for what it is worth, the graphics, controls, and gameplay are quite good, which doesn't show from the comments here.
I have said the graphics and gameplay are good. It's the structure of the game that is deeply flawed in favor of you quickly draining coins you earn that is an obstacle to being able to truly enjoy the game. I spent all of my coins in attempts to just beat the first boss in the first cup and could not win even with 2,000 in coins spent on boosts. I couldn't even get in sight of him! And that's just the first cup! You can't even win the "very easy" single races without shelling out a lot of coins for boosts and consumable weapon ammo. And that's the biggest thing here -- everything is consumable. It's not like buying a new better weapon, it's spending coins every single race and losing it all when you don't win. And having to pay to speed up a respawn? Insane. This game could be fantastic but I absolutely cannot recommend anyone buying it unless these issues are addressed.
To be fair, I haven't played it yet and shouldn't judge. But the response here does not inspire confidence. Have you played? As a WipE'out" fan I WANT to believe
