darkSpyro

are they planing to make a free version for battlegrounds cuase i think 7 bucks is a bit pricy.

Nope. It's worth 7. It's a pretty fleshed out game that they plan to keep updating.

I agree with Punch that it's worth it, but if you're patient then you should be able to get it on sale at some point down the road.

I could see on sale for a limited time. I wouldn't hold out for free tho

It's only 7$? The damn starter pack is like 50$! LOL

i could see where the other $43 dollars are. $30 for the figures, and divide the rest between the portal and hidden chest.
heck you get a profit for buying the starter.

Quote: sponge56

are they planing to make a free version for battlegrounds cuase i think 7 bucks is a bit pricy.

I purchased Battlegrounds on Ebay to get RDT but sadly the game download code is not applicable in my country. US/Canada/Mexico/Australia and New Zealand are listed in the instructions. If you still have not bought it you can have my code if you want it?

Edit: code is now gone.

Quote:

I purchased Battlegrounds on Ebay to get RDT but sadly the game download code is not applicable in my country. US/Canada/Mexico/Australia and New Zealand are listed in the instructions. If you still have not bought it you can have my code if you want it?

I have not heard anything from the OP so the first person who replies to this post gets the download code. Applicable in the above mentioned countries only.

Edit: code is now gone.

Are you european like me? Because in that case it wouldnt work for me neither right? I could try anyways lol

Quote: sponge56

are they planing to make a free version for battlegrounds cuase i think 7 bucks is a bit pricy.

Unlike Lost Islands, Battlegrounds isn't based around buying extras to get through the game quicker - it is a proper game. Making it free would defeat the purpose.

But, that said, stick around - Cloud Patrol has been free twice since it's release, the same could be said for Battlegrounds at some point.

Quote: bionicle2809

Unlike Lost Islands, Battlegrounds isn't based around buying extras to get through the game quicker - it is a proper game. Making it free would defeat the purpose.

Are we playing the same game, here? The $6.99 Battlegrounds App IS the "Freemium" version, it just has a price tag to it.

Sure it's playable, but numerous features will be "locked" for awhile, your XP and Coin gains will always be artificially restricted, and you'll NEVER be able to switch out Skylanders mid-battle. If you want the "fully functional" version, you buy the Starter Pack and Portal.

At the same time, though, they obviously want more people to get portals and interact with the figures than they want people to spend money on the game - otherwise they'd have $4.99 in-game purchases to allow you to unlock the XP boosts, Coin boosts, Platinum Treasure Chest Item Unlocks and Mid-Battle Switch Without Portal. They could have easily milked the extra $19.96 from players who wanted the full game experience but could never get a portal.

Of course, once you HAVE all those enhancements, you have little left to work towards and you might lose interest in the game before you beat the first boss.

Quote: Peridot Weapon

Quote: bionicle2809

Unlike Lost Islands, Battlegrounds isn't based around buying extras to get through the game quicker - it is a proper game. Making it free would defeat the purpose.

Are we playing the same game, here? The $6.99 Battlegrounds App IS the "Freemium" version, it just has a price tag to it.

Sure it's playable, but numerous features will be "locked" for awhile, your XP and Coin gains will always be artificially restricted, and you'll NEVER be able to switch out Skylanders mid-battle. If you want the "fully functional" version, you buy the Starter Pack and Portal.

At the same time, though, they obviously want more people to get portals and interact with the figures than they want people to spend money on the game - otherwise they'd have $4.99 in-game purchases to allow you to unlock the XP boosts, Coin boosts, Platinum Treasure Chest Item Unlocks and Mid-Battle Switch Without Portal. They could have easily milked the extra $19.96 from players who wanted the full game experience but could never get a portal.

Of course, once you HAVE all those enhancements, you have little left to work towards and you might lose interest in the game before you beat the first boss.

No, you can complete the whole game in a reasonable time. The 'freemium' idea suggests that the game specifically slows you down and paying more money means you can play it at the right speed. The benefit of the gems in Battlegrounds is not to make the game the speed of any other game - it's not even to increase the speed you complete it at - it's just to increase the speed that you buy the items that you don't actually need in the first place.

I completed the whole game (or, what we have so far) using just a medic Whirlwind and a Drobot; within a few days of buying it. If I did buy any extra gems, it wouldn't have helped me in any way since I didn't need to use them.

Likewise, you never need to spend a single dollar in Lost Islands - and if you do, you're just speeding up how soon you'll get bored with the game. But both games function under the same principle that you'll have a "better" game experience if you buy gems and, in the case of Battlegrounds, the physical Starter Kit.

Battlegrounds DOES slow down your XP growth by a factor of four and (before the patch) your coin gains by a factor of TEN if you're playing without the portal. You can't get much more freemium than that (other than the before mentioned curious fact that it won't let you BUY those powers without the portal ... yet.)

Even if you can play just fine without them, it's going to advertise the Bluetooth Portal of Power, and your lack of Treasure Chest and Light of the Champions Gem every chance it gets. (And, of course, the portal doesn't boost your gem acquisition at all, in the hopes that you'll spend even more money on the game even AFTER you buy the portal.)


I fully expect they'll have the usual "get 50% more gems for your purchase" in all three games around the holiday season, and wouldn't be at all surprised to see Battlegrounds drop to $3.99 as a "one-day only New Year Special."

What I DON'T get is why they don't make the games give you free GEMS if you register your characters through Activate. As that can only be done once, it would give one more incentive for people to buy the physical figures - and in the end, the in-app purchases isn't their goal. Using them to encourage more figure sales is the ultimate objective.

Yes, you don't need to spend a single penny to complete Lost Islands - but the idea is that you do spend more money so that you can complete it at the speed any normal game would be completed. Battlegrounds is created with the idea in mind that you will not buy any of the premium items. It's not like, a few levels in, the game faces you against enemies that are 5 levels higher than you - bit if you did use items to get the EXP and gold bonus it would become to the point where it was too easy to defeat some of the harder enemies - not that it's a hard game at all.

If you were faced against level 20 enemies when you were only level 15, then that would be the instentive to by the extra gems or the starter pack for the treasure chest - but you're not. You can complete the game at a reasonable pace (the point of a freemium game is that you physically cannot complete the game at a reasonable pace without spending money) therefore, Battlegrounds is not freemium. You can choose to buy extras to complete it at a quicker than reasonable pace but the game doesn't slow you down to the point that you will have to actually leave it for days and take months, if not years, to complete it like a lot of freemium games do.

In the past, you've been able to buy online games that come with codes that give you a few days of double XP. What you're saying is that because you can get something optional that lets you progress through a game faster than the reasonable length of time to complete a video game, then it is freemium - despite spending £40 to buy the game in the first place.

Lost Islands does not have a reasonable game time - it's the kind of game that physically takes months to complete without buying extra items. Not hours, like every other video game, months. Battlegrounds can be completed in a few hours without buying items. And if you buy items? A few less hours. That's it. Not the considerably drastic time difference from months to hours, if you were to skip everything in Lost Islands by paying for it - that is what makes Lost Islands freemium and Battlegrounds not.

I'm waiting for the miracle that the starter pack goes on sale, heck if I spent $75 on the starter pack for wii on release that was $35 on Black Friday, I definitely not buying battlegrounds starter full price. Waiting to buy the starter before getting the game so I gonna have to wait a while to finally play it.

Am i the only one here that thinks lost islands is extremely boring?

Quote: SparCrux1101

Am i the only one here that thinks lost islands is extremely boring?

It's not exciting but it's not for everyone. Theres a big market for this kind of game but not everyone enjoys it. I myself always get bored with these kinds of games but I'm a hardcore skyro so I'm checking it all the time still

Quote: Ojetes

Are you european like me? Because in that case it wouldnt work for me neither right? I could try anyways lol

I am from Sweden. My best guess is that only the countries listed in the instructions will work.

Edit: code is now gone.

Quote: bionicle2809

Lost Islands does not have a reasonable game time - it's the kind of game that physically takes months to complete without buying extra items. Not hours, like every other video game, months.

Then you're playing it wrong.
I'm one island away from having all the islands unlocked.
The amount of TIME that's passed since I started playing the game is about six weeks.
The amount of time I've been actively interacting with the game has been about ten hours.
Seems reasonable to me.

Quote: Peridot Weapon

Quote: bionicle2809

Lost Islands does not have a reasonable game time - it's the kind of game that physically takes months to complete without buying extra items. Not hours, like every other video game, months.

Then you're playing it wrong.
I'm one island away from having all the islands unlocked.
The amount of TIME that's passed since I started playing the game is about six weeks.
The amount of time I've been actively interacting with the game has been about ten hours.
Seems reasonable to me.

That's the point. There's been periods of time where you've had to wait 24 hours, or pay up, to gain access to the other islands. You might have only played the game for 10 hours, but because the game is in real time and forces you to wait for 24 hour intervals at some points, then the completion time is equivalent to the time you have played it and been forced to wait to continue.

Battlegrounds, however, you can sit down and complete it in one go in a few hours. You never have to wait 24 hours to be able to progress further, the limit to the amount of time it takes you to complete Battlegrounds is how long you play it in goes - not the time limit that is forced upon you.

Quote: ThePunchPopFizz

Quote: SparCrux1101

Am i the only one here that thinks lost islands is extremely boring?

It's not exciting but it's not for everyone. Theres a big market for this kind of game but not everyone enjoys it. I myself always get bored with these kinds of games but I'm a hardcore skyro so I'm checking it all the time still

But i find games like dragonvale really fun, i just think they did a crappy job making it, is all.

Quote: bionicle2809

Battlegrounds, however, you can sit down and complete it in one go in a few hours. You never have to wait 24 hours to be able to progress further, the limit to the amount of time it takes you to complete Battlegrounds is how long you play it in goes - not the time limit that is forced upon you.

You're playing Stage 3 of Battlegrounds right now, then? If not, you haven't completed it - and that "wait to be able to progress further" has been a LOT longer than 24 hours.

Maybe I'm viewing it from a Glass-Half-Empty perspective. But the Light of the Champions Gem isn't a 4x Experience Boost. The game just gives you a 75% Experience Penalty (and a 90% Gold Penalty) if you only buy the "light" version - the app by itself. And to pull that in a game that you already paid a $7 entry fee on is a pretty big slap in the face.

Let's just agree to disagree on this one and call it a day.

Quote: Peridot Weapon

Quote: bionicle2809

Battlegrounds, however, you can sit down and complete it in one go in a few hours. You never have to wait 24 hours to be able to progress further, the limit to the amount of time it takes you to complete Battlegrounds is how long you play it in goes - not the time limit that is forced upon you.

You're playing Stage 3 of Battlegrounds right now, then? If not, you haven't completed it - and that "wait to be able to progress further" has been a LOT longer than 24 hours.

Maybe I'm viewing it from a Glass-Half-Empty perspective. But the Light of the Champions Gem isn't a 4x Experience Boost. The game just gives you a 75% Experience Penalty (and a 90% Gold Penalty) if you only buy the "light" version - the app by itself. And to pull that in a game that you already paid a $7 entry fee on is a pretty big slap in the face.

Let's just agree to disagree on this one and call it a day.

You have a point on the Exp junk, but saying waiting for Stage 3 to be programmed and updated into the game is making you wait to play the game is a little unfair. Additional content shouldn't be as bad as making you pay real money for ingame money to play quicker.

Quote: Peridot Weapon

Quote: bionicle2809

Battlegrounds, however, you can sit down and complete it in one go in a few hours. You never have to wait 24 hours to be able to progress further, the limit to the amount of time it takes you to complete Battlegrounds is how long you play it in goes - not the time limit that is forced upon you.

You're playing Stage 3 of Battlegrounds right now, then? If not, you haven't completed it - and that "wait to be able to progress further" has been a LOT longer than 24 hours.

Maybe I'm viewing it from a Glass-Half-Empty perspective. But the Light of the Champions Gem isn't a 4x Experience Boost. The game just gives you a 75% Experience Penalty (and a 90% Gold Penalty) if you only buy the "light" version - the app by itself. And to pull that in a game that you already paid a $7 entry fee on is a pretty big slap in the face.

Let's just agree to disagree on this one and call it a day.

Before we'd do, I'd like to say one thing. There's a difference in being forced to wait for something that is already in the game and being forced to wait for something that will be added to the physical game file at some point in the game.

...Ironic really, because Skylanders pretty much focuses on being forced to wait for new characters that are already in the code.

^ ^ Yup. That was hands down agreeable.