darkSpyro

Hey, not sure if such an topic existed before but...

In SSA and SG there was quite a time consuming, yet interesting idea of upgrading our figures by doing the Heroic Challenges. Also, in SG the new mechanics of Quests. You need to spend some time to complete them on each and every single character (if you're a maniac) but I feel like it somehow makes the game longer and more entertaining. It also made you bit closer to the specific characters and their abilities. You have mastered them in some way.

Anyway I've heard that SSF has changed this and there is no Heroic Challenges. Is that true? And is there any other replacement? If not, how does the upgraded stats we've made by completing Heroic Challenges is being applied to the figures or does it actually turned to be a complete waste of time?

I know there are bonus missions for swappers but they just give you some extra hats, etc. Afterall, most of Skylanders are just plain, normal ones.

Thanks for answers.

Well, Quests have returned, and they now give you health instead of bronze, silver, and gold top hats.
It is true that Heroics are gone, and I haven't found a replacement, and believe that it became a waste of time. However, you can place Legendary Treasures on Pedestals, which increase your stats.
There are Bonus Missions and Swap Zones. The Swap Zones are what you mentioned. I'm not sure what the Bonus Missions do.

Thanks for answer and... That's really disappointing. Why would they actually drop the idea of Heroic Challenges, completly whipping up the entire progress, people were making through the previous two years?! Only because different developer took care of production...

It's very sad they dropped HCs, yes they were time consuming but they gave you a chance to upgrade your individual figures if you wanted. Now aside from health levels, there is not much that distinguishes your version of a character than someone else's.

Bonus Missions are similar to Heroic Challenges in a way. Completing one gives you a charm that provides you with a stat bonus, but unlike heroic challenges the stat bonus affects all of your skylanders. Therefore you only need to complete each bonus mission once. Also survival arenas also give out charms too. Once you have gotten all the charms the only way to increase skylanders' stats are to use legendary treasures as mentioned or complete quests for the extra health bonuses.

Bonus Missions kind of have a similar feel, design-wise, to the Heroics, but I wouldn't say that they can serve as a replacement. The main point of Heroics was increasing the individuality of each toy: working with a toy would make it more powerful and give you a better Skylander than that of someone who didn't. Bonus Missions, Charms and Legendary Treasures and so on are purely an in-game thing that have nothing to do with customizing each figure. Just stuff that's done in games without toys all the time.

I really agree with Zylek... imo we didn't even need more Heroics, keep it at 50, though a new batch of 50 more Heroics would have been nice for the new guys so that we don't get tired of the Heroics that we did before all over again. Those 50 would count as "complete" on a figure that had done 50 Heroics- you wouldn't need to repeat them, but if you want to do Heroics on a new Skylander, you have new Heroics you can do instead of just ones recycled from SA/Giants. And those Heroics would be unlocked through the main Story... Pretty much the way Bonus Missions/SWAP Zone Challenges are now, but with an actual impact on your figures. Aren't there already something like 40 Heroics worth if you combine the SWAP Zone Challenges and Bonus Missions into a list?
I just miss there being more point to the toys, it's not interesting when the only real choices on them are upgrade path and hats(and in SF case, swapping). Maybe I wouldn't moan so much if Portal Masters were mentioned more, just...

I will say Quests feel kind of similar- they can take a while to complete like some task, and they now do make your Skylander stronger- but it's just not the same, I mean, it's only a Health boost... Still, that's a TINY not-a-step-backwards, and I also think that the idea of having a system similar to Heroics that could actually benefit your Skylander by playing story chapters interesting. They need to expand on that.

Quote: Arc of Archives

Bonus Missions kind of have a similar feel, design-wise, to the Heroics, but I wouldn't say that they can serve as a replacement. The main point of Heroics was increasing the individuality of each toy: working with a toy would make it more powerful and give you a better Skylander than that of someone who didn't. Bonus Missions, Charms and Legendary Treasures and so on are purely an in-game thing that have nothing to do with customizing each figure. Just stuff that's done in games without toys all the time.

I really agree with Zylek... imo we didn't even need more Heroics, keep it at 50, though a new batch of 50 more Heroics would have been nice for the new guys so that we don't get tired of the Heroics that we did before all over again. Those 50 would count as "complete" on a figure that had done 50 Heroics- you wouldn't need to repeat them, but if you want to do Heroics on a new Skylander, you have new Heroics you can do instead of just ones recycled from SA/Giants. And those Heroics would be unlocked through the main Story... Pretty much the way Bonus Missions/SWAP Zone Challenges are now, but with an actual impact on your figures. Aren't there already something like 40 Heroics worth if you combine the SWAP Zone Challenges and Bonus Missions into a list?
I just miss there being more point to the toys, it's not interesting when the only real choices on them are upgrade path and hats(and in SF case, swapping). Maybe I wouldn't moan so much if Portal Masters were mentioned more, just...

I will say Quests feel kind of similar- they can take a while to complete like some task, and they now do make your Skylander stronger- but it's just not the same, I mean, it's only a Health boost... Still, that's a TINY not-a-step-backwards, and I also think that the idea of having a system similar to Heroics that could actually benefit your Skylander by playing story chapters interesting. They need to expand on that.

I agree. Heroics didn't scale, but I liked the idea of doing "work" to personalize your skylander. I'm not a big fan of "one stat to rule them all" approach SF took, and I think they went too heavy on making everything about the stars. It honestly looked like to me they didn't solicit older players on their approach, as imo they took something that needed to be tweaked and threw the baby out with the bath water. Based on the answers given to our questions pre-launch I honestly don't think they "got" what we were trying to say, but I sure hope they do now. I do think if they could swing back in the other direction and keep the best parts of both they would do much better.

Also, very bad idea to nerf existing skylanders and now provide an upgrade path to make them "whole". They've basically ruined it for those who spent eons to get their landers where they are fully upgraded only to find out not only are they nerfed, but relatively speaking won't be made whole on the upgrades. I'm honestly shocked at this. These two simple things along with bugs related to achievements for collections is practically begging their customers not to bother buying merchandise.