darkSpyro

Since I seem to keep coming across the "Skylanders is dead topic" I've been thinking about where the series has gone wrong.

I think the biggest one that jumps out at me was not doing a tv series right away. I think this series would have hit the trifecta for Saturday-morning-cartoon-nostalgia with figures, videogames, AND a cartoon. This would have given the series even more longevity and boosted sales for reposes.

I think ramping up the gate-locked content with Swap force, then Trap team was to the detriment of the series as well. As major, long time fan of the series (I had all 32 of the original cast) the gate-locked content and price creep has definitely affected my purchasing habits. Some of you may remember the first skylanders actually retailed for $7.99 (or was it actually $6.99? I can't remember now but I do know they increased the price on all the figures after only 3 weeks right off the bat) and 3 packs were 19.99. And not only did each one unlock an elemental gate, but they also had their own challenge levels that could be played to make every other skylander a little bit better. Now it's 14.99 per character and none of the old ones will unlock anything.

Skylanders should have gone for variety. Super Chargers had some great elements to it, it just wasn't put together very well. It felt very disjointed, abruptly switching between play styles. But the Spell punk library is the best bit of skylanders gaming I've experienced in a long time. I think skylanders would have done very well trying a game perhaps as a 2-d platformer (rendered in 3-d of course) like those portions of the spell punk library. I also think they should try an online cooperative RPG like diablo or PSO. Maybe a Mario Party style game?

Finally, it seems like they've dumbed down the games a bit since the first ones. This one might just be a bias of mine, and I'd like to confirm it at some point by playing through all of the old games. I remember that it really struck me in Trap Team. It seemed like the whole game was a 3-d adventure with a lot of ridiculously easy puzzles and very few enemy encounters. SA and Giants (iirc) struck a much better balance between the action and adventure and it seems the series has trended towards the latter and stupid puzzles.

Anywho, I've been wanting to throw these thoughts out there.

What do y'all think have been the missteps for the Skylanders series (if any)?

I definitely agree on the cartoon series! They really should have had that right between the Giants and Swap Force games. I don't get why they put it out when interest has dwindled down to what it is now, I know what they were hoping would happen but still...

Also, I do remember figures for SSA being $7.99.

Annual releases was the biggest mistake for me. Lowers quality, too much figures, didn't worked.

Also, forcing too much paywalls. Activision was the one behind that, not VV/TfB.

To a lower extend, Spyro bring in the game. That's the reason of 70% of the hate this series gets.

It's very different on what the higher ups did wrong and what the devs did wrong.

The devs? Inconsistency between games, pushing each other's gimmicks out, balancing hijinks, in general; not talking enough. Also discussing enough with fans, but if they read DarkSpyro, it's already a bit much to ask with some stuff we say here. Maybe throw in some childish writing at times and lack of patching, but that might be related to schedule and demands.

But Acti? Let's start at their piss poor marketing strategy of "reintroduce to a new audience every time"! Because kids will have heard about Skylanders already, and parents can look things up, but let's just push dumb excuses to handhold players, take forever to release information, force devs to hide stupid info that goes nowhere("glumshanks is important in TT"),only talk to the fans when it's convenient and for their spinoffs, market far too little and kill it by their own lack of action. Heck, Lightseekers has one guy and they have already tweeted three times over the Skylanders PR, their Instagram also being very well managed. Oh yeah, and everyone loves Stealth Elf and Gill Grunt, let's put her in nearly every starter pack and make a new Gill Grunt for every single game(until imagiantors). Surely people won't get sick of it.

Or their yearly release schedule? Poison as it is with any other franchise that attempts this. Every year, there's less time, more demand, less quality control. Devs can't polish what they should, and ever since TT we had more and more obvious cut content that would've added so much to the game in a few extra months. Tight release schedule also means that any time put into the game is time strayed from making the gimmick, and the game suffering means people won't buy the gimmick. Did Acti get this? No, they just added another dev team that then introduces attempts at one upping each other and eats up schedule even more to adapt characters and whatnot. Smart.

Or the figures? Who needs a release schedule? Surely, the fans are too stupid to know when figures come out if we give a date and it's not on every single store, so let's just silently release everything. All 50+ figures including crystals/traps/vehiles/variants. Let's also make most of these required with paywalls and make the game's focus into those paywalls. Imaginators came too late with the low bar of entry for 100% and extra content you wouldn't care unless you had the figures already.

New game every year for 5 years

Started prioritizing money over love of the game, and most of all quality of the games

Game REQUIRES you to spend money on the figures to play the game. My favorite analogy is the Smash Bros. Analogy. Smash bros is $40, comes with 49 characters (less than a dollar per character), and has a few OPTIONAL characters for ~$4 each. Skylanders Imaginators is $80, comes with 2 characters ($40 per character), and a creation crystal, which you can make your own skylander (which honestly shouldn't require you to pay to make your own character, that's like having to pay to make a stage in stage builder for Smash). And you only have three elements now, out of the 8 required to 100% the game in the smallest sense. So now you need to go out and spend $50 to buy one skylander of each element, and you're already at $130 for a low quality game. All it is is a scam to get children to see a character they like, and beg their parents to buy it until they actually do, unless your parents just buy you whatever you want because you're a greedy ***** and have no concept of what money is or how to spend it, but oh that's what Activision wants. Honestly, they should have the game come with what it comes with already, at the classic $60 price tag, but when you open up the game, you're already able to play as all the characters, and the figures are optional and give your guy a wow-pow or something.

Ok I'm done.

You actually only have 2 elements, Senseis only for realms. However, Imaginators is a good example of well planned paywall - in main game, only shrines, which don't count towards chapter stars, and outside, realms which have collectibles related to that element already; and for every weapon and Sensei item you'd be buying them for the 100% already. Its issue is that the base game is far too short and far too expensive, which an extra year could solve easily.

Isn't Lightseekers doing "figures are extras"? I think it still has mandatory toys for minigames but I don't recall the FAQ too well.

The thing thats killing this series is that the price became so high and that they kinda force you to buy a load of high priced toys, i know many people (including me) who have been chased away from this series because of this.

Let's just say, while I always act super positive, I'm not happy with a bunch of things this series has done.

Prices: Starter pack already destroys wallets, but then there are sooo many characters you can buy if you got all that cha-ching. I'm sure a lot of parents have set fire to their money because it's the same as throwing it at figures that cost less to produce than you actually pay for. I can barely handle it myself, and that makes me extra broke. I'd like to buy more but I just can't, and I'm always torn between what character to get. I know you don't have to get every figure, but I'm the kind of person that feels they need to.

Quality: Figure and game quality has gone up and down. The figures up to Trap Team were all great looking, they weren't too flimsy, and the majority had some neat paint jobs. Cut to SC, plastic used for 80% of the figures feels cheaper and the mixed materials that have been painted over look and feel bad. Imaginators looks improved, but some of them still use cheap materials and are hollow. Wrong colors for some characters and some feel pretty fragile. As for gameplay, a lot of the level styles and ideas feel reused too much. There's a bunch that are just fillers too, especially in the newer renditions of the series. But in all honesty, this has been happening since the start as they try to make it more lengthy.

Sales: Annual release making you use all the cash every September/October. Also results in the games feeling watered down. Also the sales of the Skylanders. Buying every figure is what they really want you to do, but they don't even release certain figures around all of the world. Hurrah for the eBay and Amazon prices!

I feel like I'm being super salty, but that's probably because I am. All of this never made me actually leave the series though, surprisingly.

For me, not enough content for the huge roster of characters they kept rolling out. Trap Team was the worst. Sooooo many characters in a game that had so little content and that's not even counting the traps.

The original game had 32 characters and I hoped when investing in them that over the coming years there would be more and more chapters for them to play and there has been, but there's also been an enormous roster of new characters. More characters than the length of game warrants.

Then on top of that they actually just reposed some characters and (insert expletive) not only brought them, but started to ask for more of them. I've never understood why some of you want another pose of the character you've already bought when there's stuff all content to use the original character with in the first place.

annualization is the biggest misstep
forcing us to buy the new guys every year while making previous toys more & more worthless
lack of reset option for Creation Crystals
Superchargers was WAY too focused on vehicles
royally FUBAR'd toy releases
too many trap molds causing massive overstock and confusion
balancing on both Skylanders and AI is all over the place to the point it's severely unbalanced
Academy released at lowering interest point rather than the height of the franchise's popularity
removing path switching in Imaginators after finally implementing it in Superchargers
obnoxious paywalls ( you have magic Skylanders? well if it's not from this new game they can't access this magic gate..yeah, eff you too Activision )
microtransactions ( not as bad when 1st introduced in Superchargers as you could use Gearbits...but in Imaginators they're bs )
cutscenes doubling as load screens...ffs just put in a load screen and let us skip cutscenes immediately during level replays
classic NPCs almost non-existant in Imaginators ( I couldn't care less about Mags & Flynn gets annoying but I want more Tessa & Cali )

Maybe yearly releases did not help but I still think the series needed a game every year to stay relevant against the growing competition.

Stealth releases for figures and waves. Customers should know well in advance when figures will be released and where they can buy them. None of these hunting and guessing games. And all waves should be released before Christmas.

As unpopular as it may sound I don't think the high amounf of figures released with each game is the main responsible of the failure. You are not forced to buy them all. Sure, if you are one of those people who like to get all stars and finish 100% the game or hardcore collector I can uderstand it, but that's not the average consumer.

When kids see that the game is asking them for anther figure to enter a certain area they may ask their parents to get them, but this is were the self control and capacaity to say "no" should kick in. Just because there are skylanders in the shelves or because is the game is asking to get them, doesn't mean you have to, the same way you don't buy everything you see advertised in internet and tv. You could argue that you are missing certain content if you do so, and that stills true, but instead of hurting your wallet, you should accept this and move on. Plus, the extra content is not that much honestly, I mean, the areas that trapmasters unlocked in TT where no bigger than my bedroom and you only got a hat as a reward.

I only own 55 skylanders and I have never feel the urge to buy them all. I knew I'm missing a certain content of the game, but the main storyline and side modes can be mostly enjoy with whatever figure (except for the racing of SC which forced you to get, at least, one sea and sky vehicle). I even plat all the games with just a bunch of figures.

I've always seen the figures released as the different options which are placed upon us to enjoy the game in different ways and not as "you have to get them all, yes or yes".

On the other hand, though, but I felt was a mistake was the correlation between "amount of figures - content of the game". SOmetimes I had the feeling that I didn't have the opportunity to exhaust my new skylanders within all the content that the game offered, and I was left feeling that I could have enjoy them more. In this sense, one of the things i believe should've been improved was the replayibility value: a good online pvp-co op or random generated dungeons would have been a good solution.

I understand most of you will disagree with this, but please be respectful in your answers, I didn't ment to hurt anyone.

not finishing their later games that depend on game patches. to many figure releases and idiotic paywalls, like locking final upgrades in adventure packs, that was the worst... and stealth releases for figures and waves, that made it a guessing game when you want to buy figures releases from wave 3-5.

I think the annual development cycle has clearly taken a toll and it's really evident with imaginators.

1.) Same old portal
2.) No one knew a portal owners pack would be released like 6 weeks after the game came out (that one made me REALLY bitter).
3.) Boom Bloom's symbol (not to mention nightfall's fiasco)

Game and items clearly weren't ready by the time the ship date rolled around.

My list that would help save skylanders....
Pvp
Bank system
More dragons (was the backbone of all elements)
Better distribution across all store fronts not just TRU
Stat cards and stickers
Saturday morning cartoon (Netflix is great, but you get a broader audience if it was on Saturday morning)
Monitor your Facebook page and help new portal masters
OFFICIAL Announcement on releases and what to look for in the release
Official list of figures that have been produced so there's no speculation like superchargers burn cycle varaint which was only sold out of dana point (or close to dana point) California on eBay ..leaving speculation
Better co-op
More ideas on using old skylanders in new games
Colored bases on figures..? they already spent thousands of dollars on marketing to parents on how to differentiate the figures of different games with the colored bases why did they stop now?

Quote: Slamzilla

I think the annual development cycle has clearly taken a toll and it's really evident with imaginators.

1.) Same old portal
2.) No one knew a portal owners pack would be released like 6 weeks after the game came out (that one made me REALLY bitter).
3.) Boom Bloom's symbol (not to mention nightfall's fiasco)

Game and items clearly weren't ready by the time the ship date rolled around.

The game itself. I mean...

• Lots of stock songs.
  
• Bugs that could easily be solved.
  
• Academy's Library clearly using Spell Punk Library's assets.

I do legitimately hope they decide to continue the series, even if VV doesn't handle the games anymore. Give TFB more time to make the games so in the end we have a more polished game with more content. I believe that the developers put the most effort into the characters and making them unique and enjoyable to play as, and as much as I applaud them for that, you still need to take the time to develop the game you play as them in.

But yeah there were a LOT of mistakes the series has made over these last few years, especially their lack of marketing.

Not lots of stock songs, ALL stock songs or existing tracks. Either they ran out of budget for the character creator and had to cut corners, or the higher ups pulled the money on purpose and got surprised it came out unpolished as hell - more than usual. Buzz's model in WiiU isn't something you let pass in comfy development time.

Two words: Silent releases.

Why does Activision outright refuse to give any solid release dates whatsoever? Even if they do (which has been about twice so far), the dates aren't even right! Why is it so hard to just put the dates on the website or something? It takes about 5 minutes to type a release schedule like amiibo or Lego Dimensions; in fact, I could do one right now and it would be infinitely better than Activision's ever done:

October 16th:
Wave 1 & 2 (timed Toys R Us exclusive)
(put pictures of figures here)

Chain Reaction, Buckshot, Flarewolf, Bad Juju, Pit Boss, and Enchanted Elven Forest:
December 4th, 2016

Wave 3 Combo Packs:
Late December 2016

Wave 4 Senseis: March 2017

Wave 5 Senseis: May 2017

...was that so hard?

- Killing cards/stickers.
- No new portal.
- Not bringing back PvP.
- Previous Skylanders are meh in this.
- Some NPCs are real lame.

2 days reason
There getting too expensive
No pvp

Annual releases hurt, as well as jacking up the prices, making previous gimmicks or magic items worthless, making older skylanders weaker, taking out features such as heroic challenges and pvp, Superchargers was kinda trash, etc.

--More gameplay to account for large number of toys
--Expansion packs that are more than 1 level (Should be a minimum of 3 with a boss at the end)
--Less expensive toys
--Randomized dungeon for post-game (like Torchlight...this would've been great for Imaginators given the number of unlockables)
--More Arena variations with adjustable difficulty level
--Online co-op with friends (if PVP is too hard to balance)
--Damage boost for older characters so they don't get left behind
--No levels where you have to awkwardly control a robot/jet/etc. I have a crapload of Skylanders, let me use them as much as possible in-game
--Heroic Challenges (or some kind of bonus missions for each character)
--Keep going with the Create-Your-Own skylander gimmick, but improve upon it (full-bodied ninjas, swashbucklers with legs) because this is the funnest one they've had yet. Maybe include a level editor?

I think the increased paywalls, the "hunt", and scalpers turned the casual players off really quick. Most parents don't have the time, passion, or patience to hunt down the figures like we do.

VV ****ed it up, that's the truth. The VV circlejerk won't admit that VV killed skylanders

Quote: skylandersspyro

VV ****ed it up, that's the truth. The VV circlejerk won't admit that VV killed skylanders

They wouldn't have if they were given time to put **** on their game that isn't a gimmick.

Pretty much everything can be traced back to Acti or the Skylanders marketing team.

Quote: skylandersspyro

VV ****ed it up, that's the truth. The VV circlejerk won't admit that VV killed skylanders

I felt that Swap Force was a solid entry in the series, with a suitably innovative new gimmick. But I think Superchargers was a doomed idea from the start; it just strayed too far from the core concept of what a Skylanders game 'should' be, in my opinion.

I think that may be why Activision cancelled the 2017 instalment of the series - maybe the planned gimmick just wasn't strong enough as a concept (whoever was developing it). Even Imaginators seems rushed, from what I've played of it so far. I'm farming the Undead sensei zone at the moment, and I can't help wincing every time the crates start groaning. Recycled assets much?

I think the sheer weight of having to build in backwards compatibility for all of the existing figures became too much of a burden, which started cutting in on development time for the actual games. The series was just becoming far too top-heavy.

Well of course you'll see repetitive things in a level you're farming. It's not lazyness if they reuse assets at this point, since that's content they can at least put into the game instead of cutting off due to budget/time.

Also, a VV dev already explained it's not that big of a deal to transfer the characters, they have a conversion tool for it already. Issue is developing the gimmicks and the game around them; so much got scrapped in SC in the pre-driver theme period.

I don't see the point of spending so much time programming all the old characters if they're gonna be complete trash. Waste of time for everyone. It's not like the kids who buy the new games even have Spyro's Adventure or Giants figures anyway. Backwards compatibility was a good idea in the first couple of games, but now it does nothing but ruin the game.

Trap Team killed it a lot for me.

Quote: JohnnySmasher42

I don't see the point of spending so much time programming all the old characters if they're gonna be complete trash. Waste of time for everyone. It's not like the kids who buy the new games even have Spyro's Adventure or Giants figures anyway. Backwards compatibility was a good idea in the first couple of games, but now it does nothing but ruin the game.

"Spending so much time" when I JUST said the VV devs said they have a conversion tool so it's hardly a time waster.

Quote: Darkling183

--Superchargers was a doomed idea from the start; it just strayed too far from the core concept of what a Skylanders game 'should' be, in my opinion.

Speaking of Superchargers: The gimmick was doomed from the start? I'm not sure how I feel about that considering I remember reading the forums back in the days of Giants, and Swap Force, where a decent chunk of us were predicting and hoping for Vehicles to be added to Skylanders in some way. Back when we were predicting the next gimmick, or possibly just brainstorming ideas for toys.

I also remember everyone thinking about exchangeable weapons, and that's what everyone assumed Trap Team was at the first leaks. Considers all the traptanium weapons. As well as, post-SSF, we wanted more change-able parts on our skylanders [Arms, Legs, Heads. Anything more than just swapper's Top & Bottom Halves]. And that's essentially what we got with the creation tools in Imaginator's Creation Crystals. What with the Sets of Parts that match together to create theme'd characters.

My point being that I think Super Chargers could of worked, seeing as fan wanted vehicles at one point, once appon a time. It was just executed poorly...

Quote: Bifrost

Well of course you'll see repetitive things in a level you're farming. It's not lazyness if they reuse assets at this point, since that's content they can at least put into the game instead of cutting off due to budget/time.

Well, actually my issue is that they're just plain old wooden crates, so they really shouldn't be groaning at all. It just pulls me out of the story, that's all.


Quote: SoulfulWolf

Speaking of Superchargers: The gimmick was doomed from the start? I'm not sure how I feel about that considering I remember reading the forums back in the days of Giants, and Swap Force, where a decent chunk of us were predicting and hoping for Vehicles to be added to Skylanders in some way. Back when we were predicting the next gimmick, or possibly just brainstorming ideas for toys.

I think my problem with Superchargers was that the gimmick was external to the Skylanders themselves (though admittedly this problem was introduced in Trap Team). With Giants and Swap Force, you paid for a new gimmick that was intrinsic to the new figures you were buying. With Trap Team and beyond, the gimmick became something completely external to the Skylander figures themselves.

I think they made two mis-steps, and they are kind of integrated. First of all, their release strategy. They don't have the ability to pre-order or gave pretty much any form of release date beyond the initial release. People couldn't plan, they had to hunt. Hunting can be fun at times, but it just gets old after a while when you have to do it for pretty much every Wave after 1.

Secondly, they got too greedy too fast. The first game had a nice selection of figures, but they should have gone with 8 new figures and 8 reposes every game - and mix the reposes up, don't just keep doing the same ones. And do a variant for each of the new guys. The variants would give some collecting fodder to the collectors, but be just something extra for parents to get if they wanted. The reposes would allow new players to somewhat "catch up", but again just be extra stuff for parents to consider but not need. The main thing is they could focus on making the new 8 as good as the could be - focusing balance with old figures instead of just plain outclassing them every time. And the release of the figures should be spread through the year, come out with 3 new and 3 repose on release, then 1 of each a month for 5 months. And have the dates announced well in advance. Ship them in cases of 8-10 regular and 2-4 variant of a single figure, reposes have no variants.

The thing is Activision saw this money, and went nuts after SSA. They could have kept people coming back, but so many people walked away because it just seemed like too much. And new players looked at it like "wow that is too expensive to try out".

Quote: defpally

The thing is Activision saw this money, and went nuts after SSA. They could have kept people coming back, but so many people walked away because it just seemed like too much. And new players looked at it like "wow that is too expensive to try out".

I think this is exactly the problem. After experimenting with the genre with SSA and Giants, Activision decided that Skylanders was a bulletproof franchise that could survive any possible amount of exploitation -- and they were completely wrong.

I think that what most of the Skylanders fans appreciated was the creativity and diversity invested in the main characters in the series - and that went out the window with traps and vehicles and other gimmicks that were unrelated to the core idea of characters that made a difference to the core gameplay of each instalment.

Quote: Buuzer

Quote: wreckingballbob

Trap Team killed it a lot for me.

Trap Team saved the franchise at time.

Those dropping sales said other wise.

Well the sales wouldn't be good with paywalls+30 "useless" figures for 100%. If it was Imaginators-like where the paywalls are only for the characters' items and everyone else had the same content, we'd probably have seen much better reception.

Everything to be honest

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Quote: Buuzer

Quote: wreckingballbob

Trap Team killed it a lot for me.

Trap Team saved the franchise at time.

Those dropping sales said other wise.

Wouldn't sales drop as a result of the previous game/s? People who don't come onto forum like this - which would be the majority of their target market - wouldn't know if the game was good or sucked until after they actually purchased it. Or by dropping sales do you mean the actual game sold well but characters and traps didn't move because people weren't so engaged by the game?

Not all of them. Iirc some in Imaginators and SC are outright unskippable and can't be paused forever.

Quote: Drawdler

Quote:

cutscenes doubling as load screens...ffs just put in a load screen and let us skip cutscenes immediately during level replays

Err, you know you can skip these cutscenes while they're loading? In SF and I believe SC you can even pause the load screen cutscenes if you really don't wanna watch them. Objectively, these are nothing but a good thing.

it tends to get extremely annoying having to sit through even part of the same cutscene every time you go to replay a level, hence my considering the use of cutscenes as load screens a misstep...yes, you can skip EVENTUALLY but it can still take a minute before you're able to and I'd rather have a basic loading screen than have to listen to the same dialogue every single time I redo a level to find stuff I missed or try for the time dare.

Quote: Drawdler

Unskippable dialogue boxes are another story, but they've been an issue since the first game

I remember you could skip them in SSA, or am I wrong?

SSA you can skip levels/CGI or speed up regular cutscenes. After that it's either full skip or unskippable.