Ugh. Read words. Every story about the delay mentions the need to balance the in-game systems. So there we go. They said they are delaying in order to balance the IAP stuff. You claimed the IAP is perfect and doesn't need to be touched. You claim you never need to buy a single thing and never spend a cent. They say they need to balance it. If your claim is that it is perfect and doesn't need to change and their claim is that it needs to change, then the only direction it can chance, in your opinion, is to make spending money a requirement. Your concept of balanced is "I don't have to spend money." Their concept of balance MIGHT be different. This is why I was asking what your opinion on their statement was - based on your opinion that purchasing IAP is not needed and their opinion that they need to rebalance the game, do you think they are balancing the game to make purchasing an IAP a requirement? And let it be known, I spend money on IAP all the time, I love free games that let me drop a few dollars if it deserves it and I just bought a friend a $15 iTunes gift card with the words "For Simpsons Tapped Out donuts" written on it. I am pro IAP and can't wait to give Popcap $5 for their free game.
Sweet, looking forward to trying this out. As Appletini mentioned, I had assumed the main focus of the soft launch was server stability. After all, they've got to be anticipating Angry Birds numbers when this hits the states.
That interview (which I quoted from in my previous post) quite clearly states that the primary reason for the soft launch was to ensure the servers were stable so that players wouldn't be adversely affected. They also said they were taking the monetisation into account quite seriously in order to make sure they weren't over or undervaluing their otherwise free product, yes. The very first thing Allen Murray says in the interview is this: "With Plants vs. Zombies 2 we're taking advantage of a lot of newer technologies. If you're connected to the internet, you can save your progress and share accounts across multiple devices — and we need to make sure those systems, along with our ability to stream that content to players, works." Server stability issues, first and foremost. Sigh. No, I didn't. Please quote any place I said that "the IAP is perfect and doesn't need to be touched". What I did was explain how the IAP currently works, and how it relates to the game's content. You appear to be making a fundamental misstep in your logic here: just because IAP is not necessary does not automatically mean that nobody will buy it. I've been able to succeed without paying a cent in many games people erroneously claim you "need" IAP to beat, but that doesn't mean the developers need to rebalance those games to prevent that, or that because I'm not buying IAP, nobody else is either. You also seem to be working from the mistaken assumption that when Popcap say they're working to make sure the game is balanced such that it operates in the best interest of both the players and the developers, that means any position the game is in right this minute must by definition change before it is released. That's faulty logic. You haven't yet established that it "needs to change" – and the developers certainly haven't said any such thing – so no, that's not my opinion. Please stop misrepresenting my position and setting up strawmen. There's absolutely nothing stopping Popcap from coming to the conclusion that the way the game is set up now is exactly how they want it for the worldwide release, but you seem to be having tremendous difficulty with that concept. If you believe they intend to "balance" the game by actively forcing players towards spending money on IAP, I believe you'll discover you're wrong very shortly. For one thing, if the IAP/game balance was going to change that drastically, we would be seeing it live for feedback purposes before the game is released worldwide, and thus far there's no indication that this will be the case. A company like Popcap doesn't spend a month and a half deliberately testing their game in a very limited environment only to disregard all of that and make a snap decision that invalidates or actually inverts everything they've been doing for that period of time. As I said, the app store IAP best-seller lists already show that people are already quite willing to buy a whole range of the optional IAP, so we're not looking at a situation where Popcap desperately need to rebalance the whole game in order to deliberately push people towards the monetisation options. My opinion on your hypothetical is wholly irrelevant, unless you think Popcap are going to act on my specific feedback. I've told you from extensive first-hand experience exactly how the game and its IAP work at the moment in terms of the existing balance; you can either accept that direct experience or reject it. From what I've gathered from your posts, however, you haven't played PvZ2 at all, so I have no idea why you're so arguing with so much vitriol from a position of ignorance. If you don't believe what I'm telling you, the easiest way to resolve that is simply to grab the game and try it yourself. If you then have issues such as Sabaki had, let me know and I'll help you out.
Thanks Appletini, I appreciate your posts on this thread and admire you attempt to explain how the beta testing, especially involving IAP'S, is going. Sadly though, to many people have made up their minds one way or another when it comes to "freemium" or IAP'S. The reality is that the App Store is littered with many apps that "do them right" and/or "do them wrong" but that's an entirely different argument. . Personally, if done fairly and/or properly, I have no problem with and sometimes even prefer how they are handled. Also, as a user I have the choice to purchase IAP'S or not. Sadly, in part because more and more people are unwilling to pay more that 99 cents and even then complain about it, games are going to go the "fremium" model. Hopefully they balance it out faily
Come on, PvZ2, a FB flash game? Would Popcap be willing to cheapen the title like that? If that day ever comes though, it's time to fire up the original game and feed the Wisdom Tree a little love.
The Facebook game is a tower defense, I think, kind of? Like they come from all sides or maybe on paths, something like that... I don't know. I don't have a computer so I've never played it. Anyone else done it?
Looking forward to checking this out and hope the statements on balance IAPs are true, in which case I'd probably throw some money at the dev anyway for their effort. It may be buried somewhere in the thread, but what's the installed size? Thinking that sub-50 MB download must explode. But then again, games like the recent PoP: Shadow & Flame show that good looking games can still come in small packages.
The game will download high-res assets if necessary when you start it up for the first time: it is listed as taking up 228 MB on my iPad.
So how do I go about transferring my current game save from this New Zealand version to the latest version about to be released on my App Store. Will ifunbox work?
I hope once it comes out people can post their impressions on what changed. If it got worse then I may not update at all (I actually don't know how to switch the save files except copy and paste which may or may not work). I hope the game isn't super harder or anything. I think it was perfect where it was.
