darkSpyro

Pointless to make the two Core figures be a special element though if they can't open the mystery gates. Might as well make them Life and Undead, at least then they'd have elemental advantages in areas they can reach themselves.

I get the distinct impression that making the elemental gates Trap Master-only was a late dev decision. I think Toys for Bob didn't intend that at first, and Activision pushed for it later on in development as a money grab.

As a point of evidence, notice how in every game the first story level has gates that match the characters in the starter pack. Well so does this game, except that one of those gates, the Life gate, can't actually be opened because Food Fight isn't a Trap Master. Its still a Life Gate though, so I bet it was originally intended for Food Fight to open the Life Gate and Snap Shot to open the Water Gate in the first level, just like in every past Skylanders game.

And thus they also intended for the core Light and Dark element figures to be able to open the mystery gates, which would make sense and make them more worthwhile. But somewhere late in development they changed their mind and made the gates Trap Master only, as a way to entice more people to buy Trap Masters, which kind of screwed up the system of the first level's gates matching the Starter Pack and screwed up the core Light and Dark figures having special value beyond the coolness of the characters themselves. That's my theory anyway.

Quote: Zauron

The two "core" figures seem to be pointless since only Trap Masters can open gates in this game, and the primary reason to get these special element characters would be to open the special mystery gates (after all there's no zones they'd be stronger in and no PvP, thus no other advantage to their special element besides Gate opening).

Why even offer non-Trap Master light and dark figures if they can't do anything special at all? Or do you think the Mystery Gates will be an exception and allow the Core Light and Dark characters to open them even though they aren't Trap Masters?

Quote: ninja9351

Let's think.

100% of villain areas are open
Approx. 83% villains are capturable
60% of elemental gate are openable
100% of Traptainium is shatterable.

So the game is Approx. 85.75% accessable on day 1.

Wait, sorry I missed something, why aren't 100% of villians capturable at launch? What's missing?

there are three light and three dark villains that can be defeated and sent to the vault, but can't be used till we get the new element traps

Oh so there will be Light and Dark Traps too? Sorry I overlooked that part somehow, I guess my attention was too drawn to the characters themselves to catch the fact that there are Light and Dark traps too. So that means there are 11 Trap elements in total - Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Life, Undead, Magic, Tech, Light, Dark, and Kaos.

correct

Quote: newkill

The game is already a "demo" with the Life and Magic areas not accessible at launch. You should wait until all figures are available to buy the game I guess instead of enjoying it right now like the rest of people.

More than 80% of the game is accessible so this can't really be called a demo.

I wouldn't call the game a demo at all, and I'm quite happy playing through the majority of it with just the starter pack, and I'm having fun.

It's just the look of it I'm talking about. Having great big question marks pop up every now and then reminds me of when I bought Playstation All Stars. I owned the full game, then they released an update to introduce the new DLC skins; the issue being that it wasn't a little ad off to the side or under an "extras" menu, there were big yellow padlocks on almost every page, reminding me I don't own the extra skins/maps/extras. Before, it looked like a polished game, now it looks like I've just downloaded a demo.

Granted, Trap Team doesn't do anything nearly as bad as All Stars, but each time I run into a question mark in-game, or get my poster out to look at it, it's more than a little disheartening to see it and get the same feeling. (Minor complaint though, in the grand scheme of things. TT is still awesome fun.)

Quote: Zauron

Pointless to make the two Core figures be a special element though if they can't open the mystery gates. Might as well make them Life and Undead, at least then they'd have elemental advantages in areas they can reach themselves.

I get the distinct impression that making the elemental gates Trap Master-only was a late dev decision. I think Toys for Bob didn't intend that at first, and Activision pushed for it later on in development as a money grab.

As a point of evidence, notice how in every game the first story level has gates that match the characters in the starter pack. Well so does this game, except that one of those gates, the Life gate, can't actually be opened because Food Fight isn't a Trap Master. Its still a Life Gate though, so I bet it was originally intended for Food Fight to open the Life Gate and Snap Shot to open the Water Gate in the first level, just like in every past Skylanders game.

And thus they also intended for the core Light and Dark element figures to be able to open the mystery gates, which would make sense and make them more worthwhile. But somewhere late in development they changed their mind and made the gates Trap Master only, as a way to entice more people to buy Trap Masters, which kind of screwed up the system of the first level's gates matching the Starter Pack and screwed up the core Light and Dark figures having special value beyond the coolness of the characters themselves. That's my theory anyway.

That theory actually makes a lot of sense... I wonder if that was the case. Oh, that money-grubbing Activision >.>

@Zauron:
That seems very likely. Perhaps only Trap Masters could trap villains at first, as well.

Isn't Kaos of the dark element? Can we confirm that the Kaos trap doesn't also trap dark villains, or are they hiding behind the gates?

Also, how creepy is it that he can even be trapped? Isn't he a Portal Master like us?? Don't you dare put me in a trap! Unless there's a Chipotle inside...

Even needing one Master per element, I'll still be spending less than Swap Force; this time around I'm only getting 9 extra "gimmick" figures, and a couple reposes for wow pows (that awesome pop fizz sculpt). Swap Force was a brilliant marketing idea, because not only did you need one swapper per element to open dual gates when playing alone, but also all 8 movement types, and then surely a couple extras (because who would realistically want exactly those swaplanders from the two aligning sets of 8, not to mention only a few actually had a great top AND bottom). I ended up getting 12 Swappers, along with some very well designed cores and a couple fantastic wow pow reposes. Minis are only cute, and the traps will probably go on sale first because of how many dozens the stores will be stuck with (which is ok with the retailers; how much do we think those pieces of clear plastic cost them?).

@Charlio:
This really bothers me also, and is the main reason I will be waiting until I can pay as close to half price for this go-round as possible. It also seems very counter-intuitive to the whole collection aspect of Skylanders; we all cringe when we see a blatant, unmendable hole in the organization of the set.

you can't trap the dark villains in the kaos trap

Quote: min8or

you can't trap the dark villains in the kaos trap

So you've trapped a dark villain already and tried to use the Kaos trap on it?

yeh, there are three dark and three light villains that get sent to the vault, i tried moving all of them to the kaos trap with no luck