darkSpyro

Just gathering some user research on the Tag Team feature in Skylanders: Trap Team.

• Did you like Trap Team’s “Tag Team” gameplay element between Skylanders and Villains?
  
• What was your favorite part about it?
  
• What did you dislike about it?
  
• What would you have changed?
  
• Would you like to see a “Tag Team” type of gameplay element in a future Skylander game?
  

The Tag Team element was very exciting, in my opinion! Truly**innovative, seamless, and a blast to experience. The kids here enjoyed it immensely.

Favorite parts are the huge variety of entertaining personalities, how long the meter runs once evolved, how powerful the villains are, and how damage comes off of the meter instead of a health bar.

Two things I would change: 1) The ability to trap villains in a physical toy that can be played with. All the kids here gravitated towards the traps that looked like little people, such as the upside down, totem, and yawner, so that they could play with them irl. 2) provide something that revealed who was in the trap so that they didnt have to be placed on the portal to find out, like a reader with a digital name display.

I would absolutely enjoy Tag Teaming as villains in future versions of the game!

1) It was pretty awesome. Timesaver even if you had to use more than one villain in a level,and the Traptanium Kaos boss battle element made it feel important and powerful.
2)The elemental shockwaves from the final boss phase. Nothing says controlling magic like being able to summon every element with the press of a button(or switching traps and 'landers).
3)It tended to glitch the sound out. Not exactly an intended feature,but it took some of the fun out of it after you spammed it one too many times and lost SFX.
4)More tag-in lines for Skylanders. Trap Masters only felt a bit forced.
5)If we get a similar mechanic of switching between skylanders and other characters,heck yeah.

I'll answer each question in Bifrost's style:

1) Sort of. It had good qualities and bad qualities.

2) The best part was pairing a villain who could cover for a weakness the Skylander had. You could pair Stealth Elf with Dr. Krankcase and weaken enemies with Krankcase's sludge pistol until enemies close in, at which point you could unleash Stealth Elf. You could pair Threatpack with Wham-Shell and let Threatpack get rid of dangerous enemies that necessitate mobility, then let Wham-Shell mop up the rest. You could pair Wallop with Golden Queen and have Golden Queen petrify enemies and then have Wallop smash them with his hammers, without fear of reprisal.

They were a game-changing dynamic that made battles easier to adapt to. And it really helped with dead time in boss fights, like when Wolfgang jumps in the background and the "laser light" portion of the boss fight starts. In Swap Force, we had to run around frantically to avoid Mesmeralda's little dummies who charged around onstage all while we couldn't make any kind of headway, and we couldn't call in a villain to take the hits for our Skylanders back then. But they helped big time in situations like that in Trap Team.

3) Maybe I'm just saying this because I'm an old-school Skylanders gamer, but one thing I did not like was that it de-incentivized mobile Skylanders. Sure it's convenient being able to call in Threatpack at the press of a button, but now I have almost no reason to call in some of the Skylanders that used to be my aces in the hole, like Flashwing or Star Strike. In other words, the tag in/out feature didn't just redefine how dynamic the gameplay was, but it redefined which Skylanders were the best too. High damage ones are the more important ones to get since Threatpack, Tussle Sprout or Buzzer Beak can take care of mobility now. It also cheapened the arena challenges where your health is reduced to 1 at the start. Calling in villains made it easier to clear than ever before.

4) The villain timer gauge should start full in the arena challenges (or the stages of them) where your health is reduced to 1 and gradually decrease back down. It wouldn't be so easy that way. And I know there are going to be people who will tell me: "Don't use villains in those challenges then."--and I don't--but that's just my answer, as long as someone asked.

5) Not really. Don't get me wrong, the villains were a great addition to the gameplay of Skylanders Trap Team, but I'd rather the game go back to its roots and be more of a traditional Skylanders game.

It was fanfippingtasic.