Ok, here goes nothing. After all the opinions flying around about this game, I had to try it for myself before I posted an over-aggressive, uninformed opinion. I sat down with this game for a late night after I got the kids to sleep last night. Much to my surprise, I ended up having a complete blast with it. First of all, I want to talk about the potions. I feel like the TAPlays video accidentally generated more outrage about the potions than was necessary. The funny thing is, Brad wasn't even that low on health when he used a potion and didn't really need it at the time so the whole misunderstanding could have been avoided. It gave the impression that you could only USE a potion every 8 (now 4) hours. The reality is that you can have a max of 3 potions and when you use them, one is restored every 4 hours. Big difference. Just because there are potions in this game does not mean they work the same as potions in other ARPGs. You regenerate health in this game. That is important. That means that you only need to make it through each battle alive and then you can regenerate back to full. It's not like some other ARPGs where you don't regenerate health and the only way to get health back is to use a potion. IAP DISCLAIMER: I don't buy IAP as a general rule. The only IAP I've EVER purchased is the 99 cent one to disable ads in Endless Alphabet because my 22 month old daughter loves that app so much. That was well worth it. Some of the IAP that can expand your experience is very low priced. An extra character slot is 10 gems. More inventory space is 10 gems. I could see plopping down $1.99 for the cheapest gem pack to unlock a few of these cheapies, especially since I'd like to try each class without having to delete a character. That being said, 1250 gems for some chest armor or 750 gems for a sword seems ludicrous to me. So far, it feels like the IAP gear will just make you overpowered. I have been able to continally progress without any problem and the challenge level is right where I would like it to be. I feel like if I bought some of the IAP equipment, I would be twinking myself and making the game too easy. If I do run into a hard part, I have no problem grinding a bit. I remember grinding for hours in FF2 (FF4) to beat those 3 damn sisters when I was a kid. I had no problems with it then, I have no problems with it now. Now, the gameplay. Personally, I find the environments and the monster models to be very well done. The world looks great. The maps, although mostly linear, do have some offshoot areas to explore and side quests to do which made exploring the world fun and I really took my time with it and explored everything. Like I said before, if I did a tough side quest and got low on health I could rest for a bit and my health would regenerate to full without having to use a potion. Long story short, the game itself is much better than I expected it to be. I have no doubt that I will be able to get enjoyment out of this game for quite some time without ever spending a penny. Like I said, I probably will buy $1.99 in gems to get the extra character slots so I can try all the classes, but that is a small price to pay for a quality ARPG. If you decide to stay away from this game because of the IAP, I completely understand. However, you guys need to make a decision. Don't come on here and poo-poo on the game and the IAP if you haven't even played the game. If you want to post your opinion, actually play the game so you know what the hell you're talking about and then post it. Don't post saying how you can't believe they charge for potions when you don't really know how potions work in THIS game. Ya, the only reason you could beat Diablo in D2 was because you suck and you brought 80 potions with you and spammed the potion button. Well, this isn't Diablo so forget what you think you know, try this game for yourself and form your own EDUCATED opinion. I'm interested to see how they tweak the IAP going forward. Some of it seems way more expensive than it should be relative to other stuff. It's a fun game. I like it. If you don't, that's totally cool.
Arshin, you can stop sending me dozens of Nazi-PMs with your fake accounts. PMs are deleted unread and you're on ignore anyway. Believe me, I am way too old to feel abused by you.
Heeeeeey! What's that supposed to mean, my level?!? But yeah, I don't even know what he's saying, so... it's useless anyway. I can't even see his messages and posts when he's on ignore. But he's too stewpid to comprehend.
I'm not asking people to abandon the forums that are already established. As community manager, it's my job to find the forums, see what people are saying about the game, and then report back to the devs so they can tweak the game according to the community's requests (within reason, of course). The DH4 community email address was set up for people who want a direct way to communicate with someone from Gameloft, something that isn't available for all games.
This really seems like DH 3.1. All these posts...what a waste of time...this exact discussion was already beaten to death with DH 3 and its just a re-mix of DH3. GL doesnt care, why waste your breadth?
They will care, because it has an incredible number of 1-star reviews that complain about the IAP. The other half is either fools or Gameloft employees.
No, they wont. It was exactly the same situation with DH3. Not a surprise, since its plays and looks very similar. The IAP may be *slightly* more intrusive, but that is only true superficially/optically -- its basically the same IAP model as DH3. Nor do the reviews seem any different.
Lol..good o' DH3. I remember there was a small group of us that really enjoyed it for what it is..and we all swapped tips and gifted each other daily for the premium currency. From what it sounds like to me, this is basically the same DH3 model, but with a story and levels instead of arena? Sounds good to me since I loved DH3 gameplay mechanics. I'm trying to beat some big games on my ipod touch so I can load this one up. =P
@ blackbear219: Like you, I rarely feel compelled to use IAPs. I have no issue grinding. Be aware that you can get 1 free gem in the game for each advertisement video you watch. I used this practice to acquire 10 gems to upgrade my bag slot, however, it only unlocked 2 additional slots. I have found several choke points where one can easily be overwhelmed by numerous enemies, as well as some enemies whose special attacks cannot be avoided. While I find I don't rely heavily on potions, I have found several choke points where I had to use them. Depending on what level you are and what area you are in, 3 potions in 4 hours of continuos play is very unrealistic. Further in the game, there are encounters where standard in game equipment and tons of grinding will not suffice. With that, looking at the IAPs, I have found several several gem purchasable items that would cost upwards of $20. Most are ridiculously overpriced. The biggest problems are the timers and the fact that every aspect of the game incorporates IAPs, including accessing most skills. One story floating around pertaining to the timer on the potions is the fact that the developer didn't want to make the game too easy. This completely contradicts the whole IAP system in the game as purchasable items are overpowered. While the core gameplay and graphics are very well, GL has obviously pushed beyond acceptable boundaries for Fermium and IAPs.
@CMMC4: Ask your devs if they can add an option in the "HUD customisation menu" to remove the topbar that shows your gold and the "Store" link? Even with the space on an iPad2, it is just in the way. During play, I do not care how much gold I have (can check that in the character view screen if I really want, same goes for the store). Have to add some praise here: The "customise HUD" option is very well done, congratulations. That is something I miss in many games. New question: Is there any ingame way to get gems (e.g. loot, special rewards), or are those IAP-only? And I almost forgot to post an answer to your earlier post: Only good thing here is the message about the coming fix. Other than that: Excuse me, are you deliberately trying to insult my intelligence? 1: The reason for the 8 hour timer was too low difficulty if done different? For starters, do you realise what this says about your game design team? There are so many ways to tweak difficulty (even your DH2 did a better job than this), that a potion timer is just a bailout for a design failure. 2: If that was indeed the reason, why is it suddenly possible to lower the time to 2 or 4 hours, without major rebalancing? Sorry, but you are quite obviously contradicting yourself. Oh, and just for the record and some more contradiction to your statement, I should mention the - seriously unbalancing - IAP equipment you offer, where you apparently have no such concerns. 3: Internet connection to avoid cheating: Not very believable, say 0/10. Just encrypt the savegame data and things are jolly good. For someone who almost always plays offline and knows several other games that solve this with encryption, your answer is less than satisfying (to put it mildly). In the future, kindly assume that you - well, at least sometimes - talk to educated adults here.
Yeah, I got into DH3 for a while, but never quite finished. Still, I had level 50 and 70ish characters, so I was one of those people. This is indeed *highly* similar -- probably too similar, but that said, if you enjoyed DH3 its worth a try for sure. The IAP seem slightly more obtrusive, but the difference is possibly just optics, the core IAP model is basically the same. I am not too sure about gifting yet. I did get a minor rune from someone. Minor's can be combined up to better runes, so they will always be useful. Gems can be had for watching 20 second videos that load very quick on wifi. So getting the 10 gems to respec or unlock a bigger inventory is no problem, but that wont work for unlocking skills or gear.
Ridiculous. People see pay walls where there's merely lazy design. The fact is that this is far more a sequel to DH3 than DH2. Although there is a narrative with some pretty good voice acting tying the otherwise stand alone levels together, the mechanics are still purely set in format of grind/repeat levels until you've got enough gear and skills to get past the next level. If you don't want to do that, fine, cough up a few bucks for some gems and move on, but crying wolf about pay walls and the like doesn't help your case. You may or may not like this sort of design, but it's little different than how premium games like this work, they just don't have the "cheat" option built in, but they still throw speed bumps in and expect you to grind, which is the problem: If a developer makes a game with no difficulty spikes, people bitch the game is too easy and/or too short. If a developer makes a game with difficulty spikes, people bitch the game is too grindy and/or too hard. If a developer than gives people the option to skip the spike for fee and offsets this choice with free/cheap price of entry, people then bitch about paywalls and imbalanced game play.
While I appreciate and applaud your effort, honestly, it seems like a waste of time. I completely avoided DH3 and didn't partake in any of the discussion, reviews, etc, but I do recall the outcry and frustration people expressed by the Freemium model it switched over to. Now, with DH4, GL has taken that Freemium model and expanded it further. Its as though all the concerns when DH3 was released were completely ignored. Unfortunately, this has an all to familiar D3 feel to it. There was allot of frustration and forums were set up to response to gamers concerns. What ended up transpiring was a forum that was highly censored and people feeling brushed off. Many, like myself, finally lost interest out of frustration and never played the game again. Hopefully, GL takes better care and a better approach to the concerns so many are expressing.
Have you think that they may have balanced the game so you'll be able to complete it without using potion. (Ok, require Grinding, but it could be worse)
No. And I'm generally not downloading this, or anything like it. My "reply" was just to call out your over-dramatically implied intentions.
Guess I'm glad this isn't playable on a 3GS and that the Android version is still not out. I get the benefit of all the beta testers here. LOL. I hate IAPs in general, but realize that they aren't going away. That said there's still games where they just don't make sense. I get RPGs that have IAP to let you get further quickly if you don't grind. But things I've read about this game make it sound like even grinding won't help much to get past the harder parts of the game. You'll probably need that weapon only available via IAP because you won't find it in the game. You can't upgrade weapons enough to even compete with those items. And the timers, no matter how long, are unexceptable for potions. Even RR3's timers don't stop you from playing a race in a different cup while you wait. Here it sounds like you either die, wait or pay up if you are in a battle that you're going to lose. These are all based on what I've read here and in reviews. But I trust the opinions of members of this forum. Whenever it hits Android, I'll make my own judgement, but I'm not liking what I'm hearing.
Has anyone else noticed that the timer went from 4 Hours to 8 hours? It was at 4 hours last night and this morning to get my 3rd potion it says 8.... I understand IAP being pay to win, but if you're gonna make it pay to play just charge us 6 bucks for the game and be done with it.
Yes I did, and so far it is quite manageable without using potions at all. And grinding is part of the fun with this kind of game, or at least can be when the game does it right. I originally asked for the reason why there is a potion timer at all, but did not state implicitly something like "instead of another solution, e.g. limiting the max. number of potions you can have at the same time, as in DH2" . As answer to my question I consider DMMC4's answer woefully inadequate; well, that's just my opinion, so feel free to ignore it And if your statement is correct, it actually lessens the need for a potion timer: If I do not need them, I don't care for the timer and it is unneccessary: then why do it in the first place?
They did for me. I was trying to save for a second car, but couldn't win any more races without spending cash on upgrades, then I barely won enough money from the events to cover my expenses. Wasted hours.
