I like that idea with the DareDevil board, may try it out later on.. As for the insufficient coins to unlock everything, I think the only reason I been up to date on the themed characters/boards is because I got lucky and got 300k coins from a chest. Also, I don't have the double coin doubler, but I'm really addicted to this game. Eventually, I'll probably have to stop buying all the temp items, cuz this hoard of coins won't last me forever.
Eggs are generated randomly, so you can miss one without it being a problem. For example, if you don't feel like picking the ones on the archways - good luck!
And that right there IS the problem I'm talking about. If you're talking about an endless runner AND 60 minute sessions as though there is anything remotely rational in doing so, the design is biased in favor of only the "insane". I am also calling BS on the notion this is anything even very good players can expect (to paraphrase the weight loss supplement commericals, fine print "clearly" says "results not typical") I've had this game since late November, a good 3+ months. It has had more game time than every other endless runner I've ever played put together and then multiplied by a factor of 5 (and then probably multiplied by another factor of 5). I have the coin doubler, I'm in the top 20 of my many GC friends, I'm in the top 25% for world rankings. Yet, in more endless runner gaming than any other endless runner I've ever played or am likely to play, I've managed to afford one of the 95K limited characters, none of the limited boards, and have no upgrades maxed yet. So, fine, if you are in the outer limits for skill in the game and have the intense concentration powers of a trapdoor spider waiting for its prey, sure, these limited edition things probably don't seem like such a big deal, but all you have to do is look at GC scores, view the rate at which games played is racked up by your GC friends, etc., to know that such a player isn't anywhere near normal or even exceptional, they're flat out an outlier to be thrown out of the data pool. It's a runner, if it takes a merely decently skilled player (e.g. just makes the cut off for the top 40% of the GC scores) more than 3-4 hours to get one of the limited edition characters, one of the limited edition boards, and still have 100K coins left over for other unlocks, upgrades, and power ups, the balance has been designed strictly to favor IAP, and that is *exactly* what this game is doing. A very small percentage of the player base has the skill and dedication to earn them legitimately, the other 99% of the players either fork out as much money to play a AAA tier MMO for a month, or simply skip the limited content. I'm skipping it is all I'm saying because I'm not paying that sort of money and I'm not putting that much effort into any endless runner even if it's the best there is because, at the end of the day, it's still just an endless runner - something I enjoy for killing 10 minutes on the couch at the end of the day. EDIT: Just to put this in perspective, even assuming your skill level and dedication, it takes around 45 hours of subway surfing *just* to get the built in characters, upgrades, and boards. That's not a totally insane amount of time to play a game in the abstract, but it is a totally insane amount of time to play one endless(ly repetetive) runner when you have so many other choices of what to do with your game time. That's the amount of "content" you get from a top end PC or console game with an actual story line and sense of progression to keep you plugging away at it. If that's the base amount of time with your outlier earning rate, that means us mere mortals are looking at putting in a few hundred hours minimum just to finish the base content if we wanted it, let alone tackling the limited stuff (and woe unto you if you don't have the coin doubler). Again, it's about strongly encouraging the IAP, and with the game typically floating around in the top 25 grossing even though it's "free", I guess it's working.
@C.Hannum This game is not that hard, and I am not an "expert" player or "insane". I would love to compare my scores on the Game Center, but I play Subway Surfers on my Android Tablet. My highest score is 1,889,550 but I've only gotten that high once, my next highest game was like 980,000. I gave you advice on how to get more coins, two words JET PACK. The Jet Pack provides an amazing amount of coins and removes 100% of the risk in the game. Seriously, I would say that on any run where I pick up 2-3 Jet Packs, probably 80% of my coins that run were from the Jet Packs. I can not stress enough how important it is to max out the Jet Pack as fast as you can. It is the only power-up that will not only quickly pay for itself, but also turn you a nice profit later on. The Magnet is a decent 2nd choice power up to level, but most of those coins it grabs could have easily been picked up by you anyway. The only situations where the Magnet really shines is when there are lines of coins in more than 1 lane at the same time. Other than that, the Magnet just allows you to shift focus from actively trying to grab coins, to being more concerned about not running into things. The Jump Boots are a mixed blessing. Unless you learn how to use them, they may end up causing you more trouble than help. The first thing you need to learn is how to end your jumps early by swiping down in the air, in fact I often use that technique even when I am not using Jump Boots, so really practice jumping and down swiping until you feel that you have complete control over all of your jumps before you start spending coins on upgrading the Jump Boots. The one feature of the Jump Boots that I absolutely love is that they can pick up power-ups that you jump over. It makes getting the power-ups that are directly behind a train car much easier to get. They also increase your speed slightly, which can allow Magnets pick up a few more coins. Finally, unless you really care about going for high scores, there isn't really any reason to put and coins into the Double Score power-up. In fact, I routinely skip the Double Score during my runs if it would require any risk to grab it. It's simply not that important to me. The only other bonus I recommend purchasing is the Dare Devil Board. Normally if I get a Jet Pack as my first power-up I am going so slowly that my Jet Pack ends after only around 400 coins (with coin doubler) but if I active a Dare Devil Board right before I grab the Jet Pack I can get around 600 coins from that same Jet Pack. Also, the hover board timer is frozen during a Jet Pack, so not only do I get the speed increase from the Dare Devil Board, but when I land I still have a full hover board and hopefully hit another Jet Pack or a Magnet before it ends. I can tell by your other comments that no matter what I say you will continue to disagree and I am fine with that, but perhaps other players will be able to get some use out of these tips.
This isn't a matter of disagreeing, your tips are fine; your perception about your results, however, is undeniably bunk. Not arguably bunk, undeniably bunk: you somehow think having a high score of nearly 2 million is pedestrian, it's not, it puts you in the top 3% of all players, and your next highest, is still top 10% territory. You are, in spite of your perceptions, a very good player, and if you have the patience to play in 60 minutes stretches, you're a very good player with my metaphorical trapdoor spider concentration powers. The very fact that this game has been sitting in the top 20 grossing for nearly 6 months says just how off the wall your perceptions are relative to the gaming masses. If just anybody could rack up an average of 75K coins an hour, this would not be the case.
No, Super Sneakers do not affect your speed at all. They only allow you to make bigger and higher jumps.
I play this game everyday, 2 - 3 runs a day with a coin doubler. I average 1000 - 2000 coins per run. Basically I'm not one of the best runners out there (except that one and only time I managed 4 million points). Yet I still manage to unlock both limited edition items with days to spare and playing at a regular pace. Yes, I agree some prices need to be tweaked. Prices that are pretty steep even for a dedicated player. But considering how other endless runners and many freemium games for that matter can have up to three different currencies, Subway Surfers is not as bloodthirsty as you make it sound.
Let's throw some actual data out there since neither of you have made any accurate time statements (completely going to call out TRB4 on his highly exaggerated claim of 50K-100K an hour as that is not possible in any universe I know of). At home doing my laundry, figured, wth, let's actually measure this. Got comfortable, started the stop watch, and then did a "speed run" to 10,000 coins. So, my highest score is, again, nowhere near your guys, it's 315,584, but that still puts me comfortably in the top 20% of players, well above average. Jetpack is L5 (one shy of max), coin magnet is L4 (two shy of max). It took me over 37 minutes to collect 10K coins. It took 20 runs, with an average of just over 500 coins per run. I did not use any hoverboards because that makes no sense when "grinding" for coins. Since coin earning is more a factor of time put in rather than skill, on the outside, I estimate the ceiling for earning coins is not much more than 20,000 per hour for the best of the best even with maxed upgrades and not using hoverboards. There is simply no way TRB4 can earn his 50K-100K coins an hour as that would mean he was traveling an average of four and a half times faster than me, because that's the only part of coin gathering that changes significantly, your avatar's velocity. It also means that in the best case scenario it takes around a solid 8 hours of play just to earn the coins for the limited character and board. That works out to a dedicated average of 15 minutes each and every day for "perfect" players to earn these limited edition trophies without opening their wallets. /end objective part Now, people's perception will vary, and obviously, TRB4 and Eoghann might think that 8 hours spread out over a month is perfectly reasonable. Coming from my perspective on endless runners, that's still a ridiculous time requirement.
@C.Hannum Your high score is 315,584? And that is in the top 20%? Wow, I guess I am some kind of super player. Honestly I average around 400,000 points per run, I am not sure at what point a player reaches "Maximum velocity", but I can guarantee you that you start earning coins very quickly the faster you go, and IMHO the game only just starts speeding up around the 200,000 point mark. Perhaps that is why I am able to earn at a much quicker rate than you, my avatar is moving faster than yours. Also, using a Mega Head Start is counter-productive to coin earning, as it starts you further into a run, but at the same slow speed that you start off running at. When I get home I will get out my stop watch and log my time to 10K coins, depending on my luck/skill it should take around 4-7 runs. A bad run for me is anything under 1000 coins, an average run is around 1500 coins, and a good run is anything over 2000 coins. My all time best was slightly over 5000 coins in a single run. However, as you have stated my results may not be typical. Edit: Just for clarification, I am using the Coin Doubler IAP. So divide those numbers by 2 if you don't have the Coin Doubler. Also, if you don't have the Coin Doubler, I will time myself getting to 20K coins.
I honestly can't think of a better way to say this without sounding rude Mr. Hannum, but I think this boils down to a matter of skill; thus the feeling of a bar set too high. Your 500 coin average hints to that. I'm willing to prove it by playing 37 minutes just like you did and post my coin earnings. Just state your terms. As I recall you have coin doubler but didn't use hover boards, yet I assume all other power ups are fair game?
Go ahead since skill has relatively little to do with earning over time, which is why I posted that bit of data. People are terrible at recalling how well or bad they do at something without it being previously qualified accurately. I'm fairly certain you won't do much better than me. I threw out a ridiculous figure of playing an hour a day, which prompted TRB4 to throw out his ridiculous figure of earning 50K-100K an hour, you threw out reasonable but irrelevant figure of 1000 coins per run, so I threw out a quantified measure of earning over time which is not terribly affected by skill, so have at it, I'd be amused to be proved wrong or right, but based on my own data, I'm figuring you're going to come back and realize you've grossly underestimated the amount of time it takes you to earn that 1000 coins Terms are same as me: coin doubler in effect, no powerups other than the basics (jetpack, coin magnet, 2X score, super sneakers at whatever levels you have them at). Only coins picked up count (i.e. daily rewards or mystery boxes were not counted).
Sounds good. I appreciate you making the effort to back up your claims with actual data, figured I'd do the same to put that to rest.
But an average of 4.5X times my own speeds? Nope, not happening. As I said in the above post, we all tend to exaggerate either positively or negatively based on our own biases, and I am quite certain you have just been exaggerating positively while I exaggerated negatively. Objectively, I don't believe anyone could possibly come anywhere near your claimed figure of 50K-100K per hour (I did have the coin doubler btw).
I'll play for 37 minutes as well, and I'll even take a screen shot of my score screen after each run. I have every single limited item that has been released so far and I haven't spent any money on IAP other than the coin doubler.
Man I'm exhausted. Haha Ok here we go: A screenshot of my initial coins: I opened up notepad to write down how many runs and how many coins per run I was obtaining. Stopped the watch at 00:23:01. I made 8 runs with their respective scores. Why did I stop at :23? Because doing the math I had calculated I had already obtained more than the 10,000 you had. And I wanted to proceed with my second experiment. Results of first round: 1 - 1554 2 - 816 3 - 300 4 - 4562 5 - 110 6 - 154 7 - 1286 8 - 2806 That's a total of 11,588. So now I have a total of 29,110 (including a few mystery boxes picked up along the way, one containing 250 coins, the other 300 and the rest were items): Despite surpassing it, I was still not satisfied with the result. So I decided to play 37 minutes straight, no pausing to write anything down. Soon as I planted my face against a train, I would hit Play again. Here's a screenshot of my second to last score, to prove I'm not making values up. The coins remained consistent between 1000 - 5000 when I played without interruption (except for that run in the last screenshot). And here is my final booty after 37 minutes straight: I swear that smug look on Tricky is purely coincidental! That's 23,565 earned in 37 minutes. As I was saying earlier, it's a matter of skill. Because the better you are, the longer you last, the faster you go and the more coins you collect. With a 500 coin average you are going much to slow to make any significant progress I'm afraid. Granted, some items are definitely overpriced in my opinion. Which is why I've been lobbying for a price review on some of them. Like the Prince K (almost 1,000,000 coins!) and the 280,000 hover board. Even for a dedicated player that's incredibly steep.
I just finished my experiment as well. I didn't think to take a screen shot of my starting coins, but I can figure it out. Here is the results of my first run, this run took 05:38 So if we subtract 4506 from my current 17717 we know that my starting amount was 13211. My second run took 05:06 My third run took 04:12 At this point I am at 10150 coins earned in 3 runs in 14:56. I continued doing runs until I hit the 37 minute mark, well I quit at the 35 minute mark because I didn't want to go over. Run 4 02:34 Run 5 04:28 Run 6 04:32 Run 7 04:53 And my final one, Run 8 04:04 So, in total I earned 21146 coins during only 8 runs in a period of about 35:30. Some FACTS: I averaged 2643 coins per run My average run time was 04:26 I averaged 596 coins per minute If I continue to play at that rate, I would earn around 35760 an hour. So I guess I was over estimating a bit when I said 50-100K, but I am still earning coins about twice as fast as you are. So I hope that this has given you the proof you needed.
I just tested and played 1 game (fresh file, zero upgrades, but i have the doubler), ran for 3'56 and got 1470 coins. Not bad to average a little over 360 coins per minute on a fresh save i guess, but compared to the upgrade costs, its horrible. Sure i can upgrade the first few quite fast, but the numbers get so high it's still the most grindy freemium endless runner for me, out of the good titles at least. Also, for endless runners, for the ones i really get addicted to, i only play about 15 to 20 minutes per session before i move on to another game, to get back to it later on. So having said that, it shows that i will suck at this game if i dont put too much time in it. Over 20 minutes for an endless game is a bore for me, that i have to mix it up with other endless games. I am addicted to runner titles, but i dont stick to one game in over 20 minute periods coz it does get boring. I always play about 3 or 4 endless titles side by side, or play a different game between each endless title. Lo and behold, i have maxed out very other game except Subway Surfers, which for me, is proof enough that this is grindier than the other titles, if not the grindiest (i know these arent really words but you know what i mean ). Doesnt help that i have to start from scratch more than a couple times too, and having to work about 12 to 14 hours a day isnt helping either. Reason why i deleted this game is that i have reset this game so many times on each of my devices, and i deleted it a couple times too because of the crashing issues i had on the 4S, and the ipad3. Without a solid way to transfer my game between devices, it was moot to keep maxing everything. So far, no issues on my ipad mini which is weird. On the 4S i was able to max almost every upgrade, but have only unlocked 2 characters, and a couple boards. For the total time i spent on Subway Surfers, i never even got close to completing everything. Definitely a good game, but too grindy, more so than similar titles, and worse for those without doublers.
If you play better, you gain Coins faster for two reasons: 1. The coin "curves" have to be obtained by jumping. The faster you go, the longer you jump and the more coins you get. At first, each "curve" gives you 7 coins. At maximum velocity (around 7500 meters or so), each "curve" gives you 14 coins (assuming no sneakers). With "Daredevil" at maximum velocity, each "curve" gives you 15 coins (assuming sneakers). Look at coin counter when you collect the coins to see what I mean. The coins on the ground remain the same though. 2. You run faster, and therefore, can collect more coins and powerups. Coins and powerups appear based on distance, not time. I don't think it needs to be proven with statistics. I can get around 40,000 ~ 50,000 coins per hour (without double coin IAP). Though, that's with optimal usage of powerups and one death every 20 minutes. Coins aren't hard to obtain at all if you know how things work in this game. (Hint: If you think the keyword for gaining Coins quickly is "jetpack", you are wrong. There are certain places in the game where obtaining coins is ridiculously easy, but until the prices are decreased or other ways to gain coins are added, I don't think I will publicly announce it in case it gets nerfs. I agree jetpack is the best thing to upgrade though.) ___ Though, however, I do agree that items are a little bit expensive. If any devs are reading this, I think a one-time prize of 50,000 coins for collecting all trophies should help aid this a little bit. Not only that, it also gives them an actual purpose and gives the players something to aim for. Also, is there any chance of max score increase for Game Center? 50 million is way too low. If I actually try I believe I can get 9 digit scores with little problem (provided that I buy 500 hoverboards before attempting the run). It's just time-consuming and I have better things to do.
No, that's brilliant, and interesting that if you can last that long it does make that significant of a difference. So, first off, thanks to those who took the time to actually test this in more or less standardized conditions You guys, with your way outside the curve endurance have placed the ceiling around 35K/hour, which, though exceeding my own estimate, is plausible if runs were going consistently about 2X the length of mine (impressive ). Of course, it also still doesn't in any support that this game hasn't designed its earning structure combined with the limited edition characters to strongly push IAP, which was my main issue. It's taking players of your caliber over four hours to earn the limited stuff if you want it - just barely within the limits of what can be called reasonably casual commitment for a runner (play 5-10 minutes every day). Someone of my caliber 8.5 hours, it's reaching the very outer limits of what I consider any sort of casual commitment (15-20 minutes every day, and well outside of my personal threshold for runner commitment, which is why I've never come close to getting them after Elf Tricky). And, bad as I might be compared to you and the others who have posted here, I am better than 83% of the player base. It's a safe bet that your average Subway Surfer player cannot earn both the limited character and board on any given 35 day cycle with anything that could be called a reasonable amount of playing, and probable they can't do better than the board even with what, for them, is a heroic amount of effort* * My average runs were ~2 min, was nabbing about 17K/hour. Your guys' much better runs were ~4 min, and were nabbing about 35K/hour. If you're only managing ~1 min runs, your earnings probably arent much better than 8K/hour, which puts just the limited character around 12 hours of running to earn. Frankly, if I really did want it that bad, just paying for the IAP coins makes more sense at that point which is obviously what a lot of people are doing.
