darkSpyro

I just got back from TRU with a big bunch of W4 Skylanders and was shocked to see how many were so powerful with no upgrades. Echo's siren scream does 111 damage at the start. That's insane! Also, Batspin's Bat ball soul gem ticks over 230 damage! I'm not kidding!

Granted, some classic Skylanders, such as Spyro, are crazy strong now. His flame balls do 75 damage and his fire slam wow-pow does 320 damage from the slam alone, with 75 from the flame balls.

This guy makes a good point in this video. My exact thoughts.

Fair criticism...one of the first videos to call out what those with only one trap have seen all along. I guess you can spin it as "replayability". Trap master gated decision was imo short sited...and shall I say..."lazy"? As the number of parents and consumers start to fade away, disgusted that their home is now overrun with an army of plastics...they will need to make a decision: do they try and keep those folks in the franchise as long as possible and manage this so additional costs are minimal in the new game...or do they bleed them dry until there's nothing but a barren carcass?

my favorite quote was

"When has there been anything wrong with jet vac!?"

Now just the new characters,everyone is getting overpowered with the occasional nerf. It's pretty much power creep - the damage numbers get higher,enemy health gets higher,player health gets higher,and it's a cicle of rising the numbers until they do a big balance change. You can't throw the blame on red bases like TFB is repeating VV's mistakes, but they're doing a similar issue differently of trying to keep the new guys relevant. Both attempts were too extreme; Swap Force made everyone else too weak,Trap Team made everyone too strong all at once. Until either finds a perfect damage ratio it'll have to keep changing, like whenever a fighting game gets updated with a new character.

Nice vid

I've been playing a bunch of old skylanders and I haven't really found any major imbalance with the new characters. Alot of SA. characters are amazing in trap team. E.g wrecking balls and roll attack does140 damage to multiple enemies before upgrades.The cores I find pretty much in the same league as all cores, I think they actually did a good job balancing them.

We all know trap masters were designed terribly(elemental gates etc) instead of ruining gates they should've made something extra that was locked liked SF did with the swap challenges. I think that's the problem , we feel like we had something taken away with trap masters, not added.

I'm certain sky 5 will make up for it though it might be VV's last chance to shine if they don't land a 7th game.

The numbers don't matter at all. Every Skylander in Trap Team hits for huge numbers, and every enemy has a much larger health pool. This was just how they decided to balance the game this time around. Trying to do nightmare mode on the final 20 waves of Kaos Doom Challenges makes almost every Skylander feel weak.

My criticism is that the melee attackers have been rendered very useless unless you want to make the game painstaking and unnecessarily long on hard or nightmare difficulty. You need ranged attackers with quick attacks (Drobot) or decent power. The low power ranged guys like Smolderdash, Bat Spin, Jet Vac, and High Five even have a tough time in Nightmare Mode. And forget about ever playing nightmare mode with the likes of Prism Break, Sprocket, Stump Smash, Chop Chop, Voodood, Krypt King, Ninjini, Eye Brawl, Wham Shell, Wrecking Ball, Scratch, and some other of my dear characters from Spyros Adventure that I'm probably forgetting.

Quote: GhostRoaster

Fair criticism...one of the first videos to call out what those with only one trap has seen all along. I guess you can spin it as "replayability". Trap master gated decision was imo short sited...and shall I say..."lazy"? As the number of parents and consumers start to fade away, disguested that their home is now overrun with an army of plastics...they will need to make a decision: do they try and keep those folks in the franchise as long as possible and manage this so additional costs are minimal in the new game...or do they bleed them dry until there's nothing but a barren carcass?

It's not a fair criticism at all because nothing has changed. In SSA you needed to buy figures to unlock elemental gates and heroic challenges. In Giants you still needed to buy all the new figures along with the old to unlock the heroic challenges. In Swap Force you only needed a few swappers to unlock the challenge zones. In Trap Team you needed to buy some trap masters to unlock the gates. What's changed? You no longer need every single Skylander to power up your characters. Your stat sheet is no longer completely dependent on whether or not you bought every Skylander. The only benefit of buying new characters is you do slightly more damage in elemental zones, which only occur in story mode. You need to buy fewer new Skylanders and spend less money now to unlock all the content than you did in SSA or Giants. But we're supposed to think that Skylanders is now in a worse state? Please....

Quote: mastermc54

My criticism is that the melee attackers have been rendered very useless unless you want to make the game painstaking and unnecessarily long on hard or nightmare difficulty. You need ranged attackers with quick attacks (Drobot) or decent power. The low power ranged guys like Smolderdash, Bat Spin, Jet Vac, and High Five even have a tough time in Nightmare Mode. And forget about ever playing nightmare mode with the likes of Prism Break, Sprocket, Stump Smash, Chop Chop, Voodood, Krypt King, Ninjini, Eye Brawl, Wham Shell, Wrecking Ball, Scratch, and some other of my dear characters from Spyros Adventure that I'm probably forgetting.

Now this is something I agree with. Some of the melee characters are difficult to use on nightmare mode because you can't kill anything without yourself being killed. This has been a problem all along, though. Melee characters all need a shield mechanic like Doom Stone.

I said it a few times already - melee characters weren't nerfed by the damage mechanics,by the enemy AI instead. They turn and attack instantly while in previous games they take their time and don't attack until you're in line of sight. I saw some gameplay,and only Blackout's Warp Speed and characters whose combos make them lunge foward can get through the turning mechanics,and only temporarily since the time to attack means you'll get one hit through before they reply.

Quote: GhostRoaster

Fair criticism...one of the first videos to call out what those with only one trap has seen all along. I guess you can spin it as "replayability". Trap master gated decision was imo short sited...and shall I say..."lazy"? As the number of parents and consumers start to fade away, disguested that their home is now overrun with an army of plastics...they will need to make a decision: do they try and keep those folks in the franchise as long as possible and manage this so additional costs are minimal in the new game...or do they bleed them dry until there's nothing but a barren carcass?

they bleed them dry until there's nothing but a barren carcass... remember guitar hero?..

You guys really like pushing the discussion to the Activision is greedy subject. Game balance doesn't have THAT much to do with sell all the toys,especially since we don't actually know their damage values until they're out. Unless they advertised them as 'OMG STRONGER THAN CURRENT SKYLANDERS' and it was actually the case(Krypt King and Drobot should change places then), it's best to treat it separately.

The Minis and reposes are the only ones who isn't overpowered.

Quote: Friendzie

But we're supposed to think that Skylanders is now in a worse state? Please....

You can think anyway you want. He made numerous mentions about how the previous franchise entries honored previous purchases and didn't punish you. The use of two skylanders to open dual elemental gates was an important point. So yeah, in his opinion, and many others...this is the first franchise where going BEYOND one character per element was needed to open a gate. I will concede however that they introduced a different mechanic in Swap Force altogether that mimics the Trap Team only gates....and that's the Swap Zone challenges that required Swappers with specific abilities. Try and get three stars without doing Swap Force challenges....can't be done. So, his analysis was incomplete by not mentioning that important fact. But his criticism isn't apocalyptic...but just that ... fair criticism of some of the design decisions. Come to think about it this has been going on for two games now...he must be a Vicarious loyalist

I didn't get a sense he felt it was in a "worse" state, simply expressing concerns over some of the decision decisions that appear more restrictive and/or "punishes you" more than in the past.