It's interesting that the "commentary" in the fights is all random quotes from Transformers: The Movie - usually said by completely out-of-character people. Optimus Prime telling Megatron "Oh, how it pains me to DO this!" before shooting him just seems odd. I'm enjoying the 'transforming' gimmick more than I thought I would, it makes it feel a little more than just a reskin of the original Battle Tactics. Although I find it hard to give up Team First Strike despite their relatively low attack strength.
Ok figured out the Power Token is for lvl 11 on ur character. I just got my OP to LVL 10 and it shows one power token needed to level him again....which I don't have. Anyone else finding anything but cyber and trans metal? I can't get anything but, even though I've had matches where those other, more rare resources can be won.....even when I quad-kill a team.....
I gotta say, this game has a pretty well done implementation of currencies and ranking up. Granted there are resources, that I've yet to spend money to try to get, that are blocking my path from unlocking certain characters (or will soon), or quicker progression. But so far, despite a couple of live battle blow-outs (where as soon as u see ur opponent u just laugh at how bad ur gonna get ur @$$ kicked), it's been solid enough. Makes one wonder what those PvP guys at the top of the leaderboard payed though....doesn't it? Min $5IAP with the one most needed at $40... :/........:/
If it follows the same progression that Super Battle Tactics did, you'll eventually need ridiculous resources to get them. Getting 15-60 Hunter / Scout / Soldier / Support cores for EACH Rare will take forever, to say nothing of the 5+ Cores exclusive to each Tier 4 Character. But much like in Super Battle Tactics, the in-app purchases are expensive and rather rare in what they offer. The "Guaranteed 1 Rare" purchase - is it only a single drop box? With the way it's described it sounds like you could end up with just 30,000 Coins and not a Rare at all! The "3 Uncommon Units" - Uncommons are available in bulk in the Rookie and Guard PvE tiers, and only seem to need Cybermetal and Transmetal. Spending 1,000 (which translates to over $20 even at the "best" dollar-to-gold ratio) for three of them and the hopes of a rare? No thanks. The "Superior Drops" probably will ONLY give you Hunter / Scout / Soldier / Support / Exclusive cores, but how many players are going to understand that? That might actually be the best in-app purchase right now, but without knowing the quantity given, people will steer clear.
Yeah the "main event" match-ups, whether live or against an AI version of the player, are way out of balance. I got lucky to advance to rookie 4 but then the first live match-up I get is this crap. WTH
Come to think of it, I got matched against a lower level character....that dude spent some serious cash, because all 4 of those characters are exclusives that take more than just cyber and Trans metal.....dang, that's what I hate about F2P. I would pay $50 to have a game that had much higher drop rates and more level XP gains and upgrades.. Oh well, nothing is what it used to be anyway.
This is one of the problems with these online collectable games imo. Hacking is even more rampant because everyone is busy focused on beating each other for the best robots. The main draw of this game is focused on competition. I feel like they should have spent more work on a solo campaign instead of making everyone want the best robots right off the bat. However if it's not even hacking then now you're faced with pay-to-win players. There's was even a recent Kotaku article about how they spent $20 and ended up with all resources. This game is definitely out for your wallet.
The actual combat system COULD work, but no aspect of the game is really balanced to accommodate it. Even robots in the same rarity tier have ridiculous power variance. Consider Powerglide, a common Autobot. He starts with a 21 Damage First Strike ability from the very beginning, which increases to 23. If you make a team of ALL Powerglide and use Respin All liberally, you're probably going first, and at over 20 damage a shot you don't really care if they use Jammer. So you bring your Powerglide force, defeat a couple 'bots against an overpowered CPU team that bests you eventually, and if you're lucky you earn some Rare / Super Rare resources from those kills. Repeat. (Repairs to the Powerglide team only take about 5-6 minutes even at max level.) They need to fix the "Clone Wars" before every other team becomes four of the same character, and they need to make it so you don't keep getting +3 Energy every time you fail an Advancement Series and restart it. Otherwise that just encourages staying at lower ranks - you'll get more chances to earn coins and basic resources than if you play the game as it was intended.
I've been murdered by a team of 4 Powerglides. Didn't even have a chance. I'm 3/4 of the way to having 4 myself so I can try that out, haha.
I saved up 100 gold and bought two of the 50 gold boxes. I got nothing but normal transmetal and cyberbucks (or whatever they're called). It wasn't even enough to level someone up to 10. This game is a pretty serious cash grab, haha. I don't know yet if this is a wall, but it feels like it could be. The resources needed look to get pretty steep. Maybe I'll get enough to earn a single Exclusive character, but in the meantime, my team is getting obliterated by teams with 3-4 Exclusives. Not fun when there's no chance to win.
I agree with all the points here. The pay to win, and the fact that a stupid oversight of letting a team of the 4 same players be possible sounds to me like a truncated testing period. It's a situation of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", which is unfortunate. To get a good player, DeNA wants (literally) $40-$50 from a player....and that's for one damn character....stupid. Small rant: The whole change in philosophy as of late to make every damn F2P monetized around a lottery system is really starting to piss me off. If someone said to me tomorrow, "want to help build a mobile platform of games without timers, multiple dumbass currencies, and a fabulous lottery system that says "sucker!" to the player trying to support a dev....", well actually that wouldn't ever happen because all successful games are backed by D-bag companies such as (insert name and give middle finger here). Hmmmm....at least for the purposes of progression, it really helps to be able to fight the bot teams. Maybe if they limited multiples of the same character to bot fights and not live, at least we have a way to progress at a reasonable pace (for a change!)
The thing is, the Powerglide / First Strike cheese is easily stoppable. Just make "Respin All" a skill that you earn at a much later point than you already do. Powerglide works because you get SIXTEEN tries (including the opening numbers) to spin at least one 23 Point First Strike. Take that out and Powerglide's relatively low attack damage becomes a liability. He could still use to lose at least five health because nobody should be the fastest AND healthiest bot at any given tier. (And let's not talk about Whirl. Save up thirty Exclusive Cores and you too can have an Autobot with a First Strike of 39. Heck, get four! Who needs "Tactics" when you've got up to *156* points of damage coming before your enemy can even think of trying to fight back?)
Haha as I was looking at the exclusives, I jumped over to the space bridge just to check out the packs again, and it refreshed. There's now a 350 coin pack for a guaranteed exclusive and then rare to super rare resources and upgrade tokens (can we just dub them Bot Coins? lol). So instead of their high and mighty minimum $40 buy-in, they're willing to take $10 instead, a week after launch. I love Tformers and this one isn't too offensive, In fact it's actually quite fun besides the typical grind for resources with the stupid IAP buy for those rich dumb@$$'s that are willing to feed the greed model. And I agree, the Powerglide team can be easily beaten. I do use it for bot fights though. STILL only 14 exclusive cores and trying to get to 30 just cuz I want Whirl (not for above reason....he's a Wrecker and crazy as can be!) and Roadbuster (also a Wrecker....will be awesome to have them both and eventually Springer, and Drift....not a Wrecker, but I just like the OG Drift instead of the new iterations). Of course, that'll be another 20 and RB might be useless at that level....IDK
Roadbuster, sadly, is useless pretty much right out of the gate. He has adequate stats (61 Health and hits for up to 33 Damage at Max Level), but he has nothing special going for him whatsoever. No First Strike, no Special attacks, not even a Passive skill in either form. I think he exists solely for when people buy that 350 Gold Rare Pack. He's one of the six Exclusive Rares that are possible from that, and they could easily make the odds 50% Roadbuster, 10% any of the others ... To my knowledge, they never "fixed" any of the problems with Super Battle Tactics, so the game will like remain Team First Strike VS Team Multi-Strike at higher levels.
Ok glad to know to pass on him. I've got 28 exclusive cores, so now just 2 short of Whirl. The grind is ridiculous though, and the bot battles produce cores enough, but hardly ever exclusive cores.
Convenient specs for the Exclusive Bots can be found on the forums at http://forums.dena.com/showthread.php/7443-Robot-Stats-%28Exclusives-Combiners%29 - it's easier than looking at each individual bot/form to see the numbers. There are several 'Bots to avoid at all costs. Starscream, for instance, is inferior to Astrotrain in every way despite needing twice as many Exclusive Cores. And Sunspot stats/skills, after needing 90 Exclusive Cores AND 7 Cores unique to him, is someone's poor idea of a joke ...
And now there's a Google Spreadsheet in progress with 'Bot stats at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uXzIljOQ4h8SmbvTvHXLAivu6ySalsUSmRQba1jrnlQ/edit#gid=0 It's still missing a number of them (from Guard 4 through Elite 5), but it's a good example of what happens when you release a game where you have absolutely no concern with having the later Transformers you unlock be stronger than the earlier ones.
I feel like the point of these is to get collectors to shell out more cash to grab all of the robots. "Bragging rights" in a way when you have one I suppose.
I have 2 slots on my squad. The Superion tourney started about 10 hrs ago and I've got dead weight with 2 "teammates".....WreckersAlpha. I put up 52k points and our team ended with 57k end of last tourney, so I need serious players. PM if interested.
