How do you play the game now?

[Beastre]

With the latest update, I’ve found less incentive to actually play the game anymore. You get more gold, gems, and materials from waiting out missions than you do from running nodes. And most of my playable nodes are taken up by transformers away on missions or upgrading, anyway. Skywarps are usually replaced by more busy transformers so at any given time, there are only one or two nodes that are runnable. Now I just check in every four hours to harvest coins or restart missions when they finish. And when I occasionally DO run a node, the yield before doubling is usually < 500 coins. Am I missing something glaringly obvious here or is there just no reason to run nodes anymore? BTW, Rovio, this also means there is NO reason to watch the ads anymore! I guess that’s a positive, at least!

Topic

[WeeNaoise]

I don’t play the game at all any more because it doesn’t load.

[werehamsta]

I play mostly the way you described now. I only launch 12/24 hour missions (speeded up with pigs when I think I’ll be able to clear them today) in order to maximize crystal output. I still can play enough nodes to enjoy the game, though (see below). I usually earn enough parts to fill the silo completely between upgrades. I also try to set a Rarerium-bringing mission to end just before a bot finishes its upgrade. This way I can start a next upgrade (the silo has 5 Rareriums now), finish it immediately with crystals, then close the mission adding another Rarerium to the silo (more than one if lucky), and then immediately start a new upgrade with an opposite kind of a bird/pig. Having 5+1 Rareriums allows me to make a 14 level update with gems and still have enough materials to start at least a 12 level upgrade regular way (all my bots are no less than 11 level, so 15+11 combos are not an option anymore). 5+3 amount allows for no less than 15+13 combo respectively. In the end, I expect to cover the major part of *longer* upgrades with crystals while mostly serving time on *shorter* ones, significantly lowering the total amount of time necessary to complete all upgrades that was calculated in some other thread.

When starting a full set of 3×3 bot missions, I usually have about 2 or 3 new events being filled with mission-active birds (of course, as I clear available nodes, *some* of newer events will employ them as well). My estimation is that, while the engine does not *prevent* those to participate in events, there’s no conspiracy to actually *enforce* those birds to claim more nodes than statistically expected. I suppose, if Rovio simply increased a maximum amount of playable nodes from 6 to 9, it would allow to play more or less the same amount of events at a session that it was before introducing Mission Portals.

[Catrine]

So true and getting level ups is harder having to collect everything

[DeputyBrans]

I foolishly gave the game one more chance once they finally put out the update to fix the last update. It’s worse than I expected. I tried to upgrade a character, he needed like 60 parts! It was more parts than I’ve even collected altogether so far in my gameplay.

Every update has made the game worse and worse, and Rovio obviously doesn’t care about our feedback. I made my account so I could share feedback about how seriously bad things have gotten with this game, and they deleted my first post (and have ignored my requests for an explanation). Then they removed the thread about boycotting the video ads until things are improved.

I was as big a fan of anyone of the first angry birds games. The games were fun, the ads weren’t too intrusive, and there was no pay-to-win. With each successive game, and each successive update on each game, they’ve made it harder and harder to have any fun at all. After the mess that was Angry Birds Epic, I just stopped playing Rovio completely for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised when I decided to give Transformers a chance. The early version was simple, clean, and fun, with minimal ads that actually rewarded you for watching. Sure, you still had to pay for gems if you wanted to play continuously, but I felt like you could advance far and fast without that.

Each update since then has been a slap in the face, and the latest is just unacceptable. The slot machine disguised as a crafting system, the apparent removal of gem farming, and especially the absolute crippling of the character leveling up are all signs of a company that has moved beyond a need to be profitable into the territory of straight up hatred of their own customers. I mean, I haven’t done the math, but I saw someone on another thread say it will take months to level up characters now.

So, to answer your question, I don’t play the game now. I’ve uninstalled it, and I won’t play this or any other Rovio game until I hear news of a major “mea culpa” and change of heart at the company.

[Anonymous]

Y’all crazy. I consistently get an average of 4,000ish coins by playing nodes. Lots of materials too (you can now get up to three per node that way). If you play all available nodes before starting missions, that’s seven or eight nodes in 30ish minutes. That will generally yield something like 200 pigs, 30,000 coins and 15ish materials. Then, while the eggbots are rebuiling all the nodes, you run missions with TFs that aren’t already in pending nodes, and you can usually play another seven or eight nodes while the missions are running before the nodes start to get bogged down with TFs that are upgrading or on missions. That’s another 200 pigs, 30,000 coins and 15 materials.

Tips:
– Use the Photoblast or Glassor energonicons. These are very destructive, and will get you plenty of coins/pigs/materials almost by themselves. If you don’t want to use up the relatively rare materials required to get these, use Stormblast instead.
– Pay coins to change your partner until you get a good one. Doing that usually pays for itself and more.

For the record, the only money I’ve ever spent on this game is the cost to get the app in the first place. I refuse to pay for crystals. I do have to watch a lot of ads, but it’s not like I’m actually paying attention…

[Red7827]

I find 3-Force energonicon very useful for me. It’s basically like borrowing Bludgeon for nodes except they can help you pretty much anytime and deal even more damage.