I don't think they'll be wanting your "advice". http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2013/may/14/puzzle-and-dragons-gungho-revenues
Don't their financial results prove you're wrong? That's not how it contributes to encouraging you to spend money. Things like "Reroll to get a good starting monster" are psychological mechanisms to foster a sense of commitment.
Buying gems gives you more rolls of the Rare Egg Machine. Those rolls can be Gods and strong monsters to beat dungeons with. They do events on an almost monthly basis. Each event gives you free stone (around 7-8 depending on length.) so you get a free roll a month. Then you have your login bonuses. Not as often but enough for a roll every month or so. Here's the thing. You got the short stick with your early rolls. You may not like the idea of rerolling but the reality is that there are some REALLY GOOD leaders available. I abandoned a rank 100+ account right around the Egyptian gods were released. An account I had been playing for months and had spent about $30 on. With Horus, it took me about 3 weeks to catch up with my old account. The game is incredibly enjoyable and keeps me hooked thanks to that solid foundation of a good first roll. Also, save your stones and only roll during godfests. Otherwise you're just burning your free stone supply on really low odds. EDIT: seriously, you're rank 18 and have only 3 rare egg rolls (that I could tell). Spend an afternoon rerolling for one of the dozen or so good gods and you'll blow past where you are in a day. Keep track of the special weekly dungeons and look up a guide or two. This game has a surprising amount of depth and aimlessly going through it will lead you nowhere.
Since when does financial success = quality? By that measure, I guess every mainstream product and form of entertainment that pulls in a cash load is above criticism? I'm not saying that the game isn't making money, I'm just saying that their system is such that it forces a player to pay to make up for these faults, and that there are numerous other games out there that have also met with great success without having to stoop to this sort of strategy. If people buy into that, that's fine. But you can't expect me to stay silent and not point out these things just because the game makes money.
As I said to the other individual, no, I don't think that their financial success means that the game is without fault. I'm sure you can look around yourself and find lots of things that, despite the amount of money they make, could still use some obvious improvements, if not an entire makeover. Rerolling to get a good starter monster fosters a sense of commitment? Maybe for some, but I struggle to see how. It makes me feel like the monster is more expendable. If a game wants to foster a sense of commitment, I feel like you could easily look at something like the Pokemon series and see differently. I didn't feel connected and invested in my team because I rolled a thousand different dice to get them, I feel connected with them because the game made it clear that we could overcome any obstacle if we tried hard enough. It might take some grinding, a bit of luck, and some smart thinking, but I certainly never felt that I should suddenly abandon my team and my monsters because the game had given me poor odds. Mostly because it never did. It was balanced well.
I probably WILL reroll and start the game over, and hopefully I won't have to do it too many times to get the right beasts in my pocket and decent odds. It just bums me out a bit that it's necessary.
No, it's not necessary. I kept what I got with the first roll (level 1 three-star Tyran, I think) and just went from there. Making friends with GungHo's Amaterasu Ohkami helped a lot but in the end, you get enough free stones that you wind up with a good team.
I've got some slots open - so go right ahead! I delete people who go several days without playing though
You said it was poorly designed. But it's well designed to meet their objectives. Their objectives aren't the same as your objectives. That's why they have made a fortune from it and you haven't. If it were easy to design a game that attracts lots of players who will spend lots of money, everyone would do it. You could even use the profits to fund the development of the money-losing game you like better.
What is your deal? I feel like you're being terribly defensive. Is no one allowed to criticize the game unless they've amassed a fortune for themselves? Do you apply this kind of logic to all forms of entertainment? As in, would you be as defensive if I said that I think Nickel Back has bad lyrics and writes poor music? Would I have to form a huge mainstream rock band to say so? How about the Twilight books? Made tons of money, but I think it's terribly written and expresses a shallow and trashy love story? If the answer is yes, then I'm at a complete loss of what to say. I guess we should let any product that is financially successful go without comment or criticism from here on. If the answer is no, then I'd like to point out that, yes, you are right in that the system does serve the need of the developer to make money. Plenty of systems do that, but that does NOT make them automatically good for game play. I'm an aspiring game designer myself (though any knowledge I've collected from books, lectures, or interactions or even my own pet projects clearly wouldn't interest you since I'm no millionaire), and I feel like the biggest thing I've learned is that the game should always encourage you and give you that positive buzz. I am NOT saying this game doesn't do that, but I am saying that I feel like it says something about your game when the common advice is to restart until you get a good monster. I understand that this does not Destroy the game, because I actually DO like this game. I just think that there was a big missed opportunity there.
If you said you think this game has inferior gameplay and is no fun, I wouldn't disagree at all. Those are matters of personal taste. If you say it's poorly designed, I do disagree. It's very well designed---the designers had a set of goals and they achieved them admirably. If they didn't make a game that's fun for you, well, maybe that isn't what they were aiming for. I feel you totally fail to understand why this is in the game and what purpose it serves, and so long as you are unable to understand it, there's no way to discuss it. It's more brilliant than stupid.
Hi guys! I've just started playing. My rank is around 7 right now. I have a quick question. What are the tactics? Tips & tricks? Any pieces of advice for a rookie? Should I have every kind of monster in my team and constantly fuse each or focus on, for example, fire and water monsters?
But the game IS fun for me. I just don't like how they go about trying to collect their money for it or how they distract from the natural challenges with a far less comfortable meta challenge (don't spend money)! As a separate example, let's look at games like FarmVille. Would you say FarmVille had quality game design? Tons of people played and it made quite a lot of money. Regardless, I think their payment system is awful. The two resource meters that pretend to be about resource management, but ultimately comes down to one in-game currency and one IAP currency, is incredibly popular and successful. Forcing people to adhere to "energy crystals" to show how many actions they can perform before the game holds out a hand and says to pay or come back tommorow after just a few minutes of play... These systems are NOT proper "Free To Play" systems, yet they still make cash and still run rampant. Does that make the of quality? No. They are just payment buttons that have been "gamified" and thrown in next to some avatars. Similarly, "Pay To Progress" is ALSO not a proper "Free to play" model. This game is by NO means the worst offender, but it does suffer from it. Yes, it's possible to play without ever paying, but at what cost? Waiting for monthly events (which would mean 12 opportunities a year) and restarting your game over several times to a dozen? Or just slogging through at a slow pace with mediocre monsters and a ton of grinding? I'm sure the hardcore players don't mind doing all of that, but what does it say about that system they made if so many of the dedicated players would rather do all of that than pay the devs? I would have put a lot more money into the game if, rather than paying several dollars for ONE random monster, I got a group. Or if I at least got to decide what type of monster I wanted to roll for (water, fire, etc). Hell, I would like the game more AND I'd pay more if the monsters were just earned, and I paid for things like double exp on fusions for x amount of time, or double the gold I earn in dungeons for x amount of time. These are things that everyone can use ALL the time, and they are services you pay for to help push you along, rather than feeling like you're paying for stones to use the machine over and over again hoping for a specific monster to get passed your latest dungeon or waiting weeks for the next chance. That's the sort of thing that subtley encourages a player to put down a game. Before you get too carried away with those statements, again: I DO like the game. I DO think it is fun. But I also found parts of it disappointing, and reasonably so.
I can see where he's coming from in that it takes several days in between stones you get sent and it takes 5 for a single spin... If you have rotten luck like me, at least.
Because the rare egg machine has not given me anything resembling a good team. At rank 63, and with all the stones I've gotten since day one, the best I've got is Undine, two Cupids, Sylph, Mandrake, and a Highlander. That's probably about 60 stones' worth. The rest is those lil dragons and magic knights. None of them are really game-changers. Godfest yields no gods. Only a couple monsters came out level 30. Up to this point the generic monsters you get as drops have actually been more useful. So no, there is no guarantee that you'll get a good team.
Basically if you want a super-team in a short amount of time, then yeah, you'll have to pay. But if you treat this as a casual game, playing 20-30 minutes a day, you'll get enough free stones over time via dungeon clearing, login bonuses, and giveaways to get a good team. I've been playing like this since November and have 4 gods, an abundance of healers, and more rippers than I know what to do with.
Who said anything about a super team? I'm just talking about something better than the ogres, chimeras, and devils that you get regularly as drops. I'm not whining, just saying that the random number generator has decided that I would be playing on hard mode, with no gods allowed. And of course it becomes harder to clear dungeons once the difficulty jacks up, and fewer people want to add you because you don't have anything rare as your leader. Then it just becomes a grind, and the free stones amount to no more than a chance at another level 4 Drall.
