Post by Forum Administrator on Jul 17, 2020 0:21:26 GMT -8
Soccer Spirits Reborn Major Patch Review 2020™ For New, Existing & Returning Players
(Completed 22nd August 2020, Updated 27th August 2020)
This game review will be focused on two main directions:
It's highly recommended for new & returning players to read this game review to help you decide on whether if this game is worth starting or returning to.
And if by any chance that you decided to start/return to the game after reading this game review, do share your experiences in the replies below to tell us how accurate our game review was.
This Soccer Spirits REBORN game review will be valid till year 2021.
With all due fairness, we have given the game >1 month of time, since the reborn update (15th July 2020) to fix the respective bugs and resource conversion errors and all other stuff before writing this review.
So, let's see what Soccer Spirits have in store for us, 1 month after the Soccer Spirits Major Reborn Update.
General Review
From a New Player's Perspectives, we will be reviewing:
For Existing & Returning Players, we will be discussing the:
Final word
The decision to remake Soccer Spirits, on its 6th Anniversary, was officially announced on 30th January 2020.
www.facebook.com/notes/soccer-spirits/january-2020-developers-note-part-2/2664792313597411/
However, the major update was not released in May as planned (as mentioned in the video below); the official release date was first announced to be on 29th June 2020, by the developers on 8th June 2020.
In this video, Yongbeom Bang, the Bigball co-CEO, famous for initiating the idea of & leading the failed development of Soccer Spirits 3D spin-off, comes out and explain why reborn update was delayed and not released in May, together with the 6th Anniversary.
He goes on to account the blame of the reborn major patch delay on a 'big incident', to 3rd party programming providers whom they outsourced their jobs to. Great story. TL:DR, it's anyone's fault but theirs.
Regardless, this led to the first flop of this Reborn major update which was not felt until July 2020, where Bigball decided that, for accounts to qualify for new players rewards, they have to be created after 29th June 2020.
First Flop, by the developers, before the SS Reborn Update:
[/font][/ul]The reason being, the new players' rewards, are of a value so great that if you started your account during the 6th anniversary and before 29th June 2020, most veteran players will advise you to restart a new account to take advantage of them because the new players' rewards are bigger than your ~2 months of gameplay time.
So basically, this group of new players had to face the dilemma of losing their ~2 months progress and restarting a new account
OR
miss out on the great new players' rewards that is right ahead of them.[/spoiler]
We decided to bring this up because this affected a small but significant group of new players that spoke to us.
Hence, we decided to make known their pain and losses, due to the mistakes made by the negligent developers, leading up to the major patch delay.
Unfortunately, some of these new players have decided to quit the game while some restarted new accounts.
This is sad. The question is, why was there no strict supervision, close follow-ups with the 3rd party programming outsources, leading to such a screw-up? Why is there such negligence? Who is to be accountable for the revenue & player-base loss?
Bigball developers are still their usual self, enjoying the complacency oozing out of their lazy bones and not taking things seriously; maybe the game is actually doing much better than we think they are.
Game Visuals / Artwork
With the reborn update, Soccer Spirits has adopted a new, modern and sleekier user interface (UI) as compared to before.
The whole interface feels smoother than before, with pulchritudinous animations and spectacular in-game effects.
However, as a consequence of that, the game now is more resource-intensive, uses up more phone memory and tend to have game freezes, screen freezes, frame freezes.
These game freezes are highly undesirable and is definitely something that the developers would want to resolve.
Other issues with the user interface (UI) include buttons/toggles being too small and the loss of many other quality-of-life features that existed in the past versions of Soccer Spirits but were not included in the reborn version.
Screengrab (below): People are uncomfortable with the buttons being the size of a rice grain.
Artwork
In service for the past 6 years, Soccer Spirits has been known for its outstanding 2D artwork that mesmerizes.
However, it's a pity that card evolution has been removed, with the reborn patch, which means that we will get to see less great artwork per card.
In addition, the general artwork quality has been deteriorating over the years, especially in the past 2 years, hence, hopefully, the developers can put in more efforts in their artwork selection because Soccer Spirits artwork has been one of the its main attractions for its player-base.
Events/Bugs
After the reborn patch, we could see a lot of returning players and new players joining the game, resulting in a close to four-fold increase of Soccer Spirits player base.
However, unlike most other games where developers plan grand opening events to retain returning players or new players that join, developers of Soccer Spirits were busy spending their time to deal with the multitude of game bugs and resource conversion issues post reborn.
Low or little efforts were expended for designing great events to retain new players.
In-game events after the reborn major patch were lacklustre, with poor, unexciting rewards.
We will show some illustrations of a specific example below:
Possibly, most of the efforts with regards to events design were planned for releasing the reborn major patch together with the celebration of the 6th Soccer Spirits Anniversary.
The negligence of the Bigball developers (as mentioned in the prologue) resulted in a major disconnect between the 6th Soccer Spirits Anniversary Events and the release of the reborn major patch, and the impacts are far-reaching.
During this 1 month after the reborn patch release, clearly, there was insufficient attention paid to making great in-game events to retain players and as a result, sad to say, many players left and the consequences are irreversible.
This is not the first time which Soccer Spirits do not follow up major patches with great events. To be fair, our past major patch reviews (Dec' 2016) have mentioned and taught this to the developers but they continued to make the same mistakes over and over again.
Link: soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/573/december-major-review-soccer-spirits
It feels disheartening, disappointing, and sad to see a great game, ruined by the incompetence of these Bigball developers.
Game Bugs
Like many other games, release of a major patch entails the following of many possible bugs, especially one as large as this reborn patch.
And to be honest, veteran Soccer Spirits players are a very forgiving bunch of people, especially to these incorrigible Bigball developers but even so,
We will leave out the minor bugs that have occurred. Instead we will focus our attention to major bugs that have brought great inconvenience to players.
Not that we can do anything about it but knowing these bugs should at least prepare you mentally, before starting this game, if you ever encounter them in-game after.
At the time of writing, it has been >1 month now and the fact that these Bigball developers have yet to fix these bugs, is amazing.
We are sick of saying that the Bigball developers are incompetent but they really are. The irony is that, these Bigball developers think otherwise; they think that they are some genius and even when reality, revenues and figures stand in front of them and tells them otherwise, they are capable of blaming everyone and everything else except themselves. As mentioned earlier, to the Bigball developers, it's anyone's fault but theirs.
We are not surprised because such people are everywhere in this world. And in the real world, the boss will tell you, enough said, start packing up and adios.
*Update: A Brief Review of the Infinite Loading Bug planned to be fixed on 26th August 2020
Overall, the release of Soccer Spirits Reborn was very ill-prepared and rushed.
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This was totally unnecessary because this game has a previous working version and there was really no need to rush and release the REBORN version.
Bigball had ample time to test the REBORN version for bugs, prepare for events, resolve most bugs and to do a much better job before its official release.
From our perspectives, Soccer Spirits Reborn should have been released in December 2020 instead, with Galaxy Live and Club Match restored and everything done in an orderly manner.
This rushed release, with bad preparations, resulted in the extremely low retention rates of new & returning players which is disappointing for the current player base, that hoped for a more lively game as the game servers' population are dying.
Not only that the developers were disappointed, not only that the current player base is very disappointed, it also left a bad taste in new players joining the game and returning veteran players that have hoped to see something that is not this bad.
Most of our players' expectations are not very high tbh (in fact, reasonable) but it is impressive that the Bigball developers still managed to disappoint us once again, with their worst performance ever.
For existing and returning players, continue reading below, for a more comprehensive review, to uncover greater details of the changes in this REBORN version, that the Bigball developers doesn't want you to know.
[Review] From a New Player's Perspectives
For new players who are deciding if you wish to start this game, this review will give you a detailed understanding of what the game is all about and what to expect in the upcoming days ahead of you.
Starting Off The Game
Now, new players starting off the game can expect up to starting with 8~12 legends or more, from a combination of reroll, guaranteed legends from login rewards, quests and free 11x event draws daily for 14 days.
Soccer Spirits has never been more generous to new players than now, since its inception date.
For new players, below in the spoiler, are the two guides that you will need to succeed in this game.
Game Content
There are 4 main game content currently:
PvP mode:
Colosseum of Despair (CoD) & Colosseum of Trials (CoT)
Event Match (5* Challenge Mode)
These game content are not something new, because they have been in the previous versions of Soccer Spirits, for many years.
Galaxy live is basically a game content where you can compete in live, manual pvp mode against the top whales in this game.
Expect nothing less than going up against fully maxed teams, all players equipped with maxed club suits and LUQs, maxed superboost and eveything else.
The main reason why many people do not enjoy Galaxy Live is because of the fact that it's time consuming and also because they are not able to compete against whale teams.
It's the same with club matches when you are up against top clubs with the same maxed, whale teams, except that it is like arena mode where it's manual and non-live but club defense buffs make it harder to win and more tedious to play.
Game Progression
During the first week of play, you are most likely going to explore the game, clear story mode and obtain all the possible quest rewards and login rewards.
In the 2nd week of play, you would have finished claiming all the new player's login rewards, free 11x event draws, cleared story mode and started figuring out your team for PvP and also trying the colosseums (despair/trials).
By the 3rd week & 4th week, this is where the game would have stagnated for most players because your income stream of player cards would have dropped drastically. The cards that you have right now are going to be your cards for the next few months, with little changes, if you do not spend.
Your goal will be to farm the free resources to max the cards that you have obtained up to the 4th week of play, through spirial matches, exp matches, special training token matches etc. (Trial of Star/Space-Time Continuum) and also through scout/dispatches/managers actives.
The speed that you can expect to max your cards through these free sources:
The limiting factor is the superboost level which results in the above duration required, where you can special train and level up your cards much faster.
How to expand your pool of cards?
For F2P players, or non-spenders, there are really not much ways to expand your pool of cards FAST except through the endless repetition of CoD, CoT, PvP, event matches and dailies for crystals, for months.
You should only spend your crystals on pickup OR custom draws and ONLY for legends, because this game is a.k.a Legend Spirits.
Hence, there are only 2 specific times when your player pool will increase:
For new players, custom draw to pick up important legends that you miss, is the recommended way to go.
This will be the same for F2P, casual spenders or whales.
Summary
Game progression will stagnate for F2P players by the 3rd~4th week of play.
Further progression will require endless repetition of CoD, CoT, PvP, event match and dailies, in addition to space-time continuum matches and trial of star matches.
The sharp drop of progression relative to the 1st 2 weeks of play will cause many new players to either not know how to continue playing or to feel that they do not want to continue playing.
This has been proven by the sharp drop of player base by more than 50%, just nice ~4 weeks after the reborn patch, across all servers.
Most of the players that have stayed on, are mostly casual spenders or whales that could continue their unstoppable progression through countless draws, to build their teams. Other new players that have stayed on, also include players who are still trying to see how far their team can go in the current PvP league which is set to end this week (5th week).
After which, we might see another wave of new & returning players leaving the game because of the progress stagnation and the whole process of endless repetition do not appeal to them.
Is this game F2P friendly or P2W friendly?
Soccer Spirits has never been as generous to the new players as now.
But as mentioned earlier, game progression start to stagnate for F2P players by the ~3rd & 4th week of play.
If you do not spend, your progression is very much slowed and it will take months to see significant growth in your player pool.
And sometimes, you are just missing that one or two legends that can help you move up a certain level and you just cannot get those legends without spending.
It can be frustrating and there is nothing you can do about it if you do not spend.
So the question is, can you compete with P2W players without spending a dime in this game?
For F2P players, you have to be ready to do endless repetition of all the game content for at least 1 year, to be able to compete on a decent level with P2W players.
Is this game P2W friendly?
P2W friendly means different things to different people.
I've made friends in this game, who are used to spending 10,000$ USD on games monthly and they will talk about how they have played other games that made them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and how Soccer Spirits is a so much more affordable gacha game compared to those other games that they have played.
Reviewing the in-game paid packages, a new player would have to spend ~250$ USD to max a legend that they own and ~1000$ USD for 10 LUQ pick tickets to make up for one year progress of LUQ crafting.
Based on these 2 packages alone, the P2W new player should be ready to spend ~250$ USD monthly (~150$ on legend spirials package and $99.99 on LUQ pick package).
Hence, is spending ~250$ USD monthly P2W friendly for you? If it is, Soccer Spirits is P2W friendly.
For the casual spender, who wants to increase your progress speed while spending as little as possible, you should either spend on the monthly membership package or save up for the 99.99$ LUQ pick package but it will still take a few months for you to be able to pickup a legend.
Is this game worth your time & $$$ as a new player?
With the game as it is right now, despite the generosity towards new players from the developers, the gap between a starting new player and the point where you start to have fun crafting PvP teams and enjoying the game is still enormous from our perspectives.
First, you need to have like, at least ~50% of the card pool, with most cards maxed level, maxed special training and maxed superboost with ~10 LUQs.
And to reach such a level, you would at least need ~6 months to 1 year of gameplay, without spending.
With spending, you might be able to shorten it to 3~6 months.
But due to the poor game balancing of players, endgame PvP teams are mostly of the same variety and types, mainly just legends-filled cookie cutter teams which dominates PvP with little place for PvP theorycrafting that you would have desired.
And of course with the declining player base over the years, one of the major concern of veteran players, which prevent them from further investing $$$ into this game, is the fear that Soccer Spirits might go under (close shop) at any point in time.
Hence, we do not want to be the ones to tell you that this game is worth investing your $$$ and end up getting the blame when the game closes down.
As in the official announcement, Bigball's intention of remaking Soccer Spirits falls on a few aspects:
First and foremost, we would like to point out the huge improvements to new players' rewards post reborn major patch.
This game has never been more generous to new players than now.
However, precisely because the new players' rewards are too good, this made many current & returning veteran players feel that they are not being included nor rewarded for their continued dedication & support for Soccer Spirits, especially players who continued supporting the game during the past few years when it was on a decline.
In addition, this presented a dilemma to these players, which we will discuss later, that is not only going to impact the players themselves but will also impact the long term survival of Soccer Spirits.
If you are under such circumstances, this review will present some advice and recommendations below for your consideration below.
Simplifying the game (Currencies)
The idea of simplifying the currencies sounded great from many angles, to many people.
Bigball developers even came up with a complete table and lots of information, before the reborn patch, to make the currencies conversion sound as fair as possible.
Everything sounded great, till the day that it actually happened BECAUSE, it never happened, the conversion didn't take place for all currencies. Many people had either resources missing, unconverted or just gone, vanished.
Could you be one of them? The details will be discussed below.
Comparsion of the grind before & after
Hearing from many players that came to us, the grind for casual players was not reduced but in fact increased. Details below.
Casual player becoming competitive post reborn? Did that happen?
Another blatant lie by Bigball in January that only sheeps will believe.
We will take a deeper look at the truth of what entails, for casual players, post reborn.
Improving the draw system while reducing in-game content rewards
The draw system was indeed improved in terms of the drop rate of legends.
Below, we will discuss the current paywall for P2W players, the status of the gap between F2P and P2W, through the discussion and comparison of game content rewards, before and after reborn.
Game Balancing
Bigball once again promised better game balancing post-reborn. Do you believe it?
A review of the game balancing post reborn will be discussed below, including the removal of chains and the current PvP meta.
Future of Soccer Spirits - Final Look at Bigball Amazing Plan
Lastly, we will look at Bigball's plans to strip the game apart, and build things back together again, so as to put Soccer Spirits back on track.
Will Soccer Spirits finally be on track? What are they on track towards? Continue reading till the end to find out.
Below will be the extensive review of the REBORN version of Soccer Spirits, for current or returning players, with pre-existing knowledge of the game before REBORN.
Before reborn, as we all know, drawing legends is very hard, especially for casual and non-spending players. Some of us might draw one legend every year, some even lesser. The only free legend that we get, is the rank 30 legend and that is it. A huge proportion of the Soccer Spirits player-base, most middle-class players, would have accumulated only around 4~6 legends, through years and years of hard work, grinding PvE, PvP content.
Out of a sudden, Bigball decided that new players are going to get a similar amount of legends, huge amount of resources to help them start the game but what about existing middle-class players that have supported the game wholeheartedly, and dedicated their time to the game over the past few years when the game is down and out? They get nothing. NOTHING. Only new players, with accounts made after 29th June 2020, get those wonderful rewards.
This inconsiderate decision made by the Bigball developers, once again shown how foolish they are.
They are afraid that the whales/top players will get stronger and the new players will never catch up if the new players' rewards were distributed to every player. This is pure foolishness. Ask any whale or top player and they will tell you that, the new players' rewards gives a minimal impact to their progress/team and it is just like a small bonus to them. But to the middle-class players, these new players' rewards will help the accounts that they have cultivated for years greatly, to catch up with the endgame players greatly but unfortunately, they are not included to get these rewards.
What happens now is, these middle-class players with 4~6 legends, which makes up a significant % of the Soccer Spirits population, have to choose between retaining their old account that is no longer as competitive or to give up the account that they have cultivated for years, for a new account, just to stay competitive. It's heartbreaking every time when we give advice to long-time SS players to restart a new account because we feel their pain, to give up their accounts for many years.
As a rule of thumb, existing/returning players should consider restarting a new account if:
If you meet ANY of the above 3 conditions, unfortunately, you do have to consider restarting a new account.
This rule of thumb is fairly conservative because we have seen quite a number of new players, starting with 10~15 legends and with the new players rewards, they are also getting 760+ legend spirials to max their legendary GK and striker to superboost level 5.
Hence, PvP will become unplayable for you, because everyone is starting with those kind of maxed legend GK and striker and if you do not have the corresponding team strength, it's very hard to compete.
That being said, we also understand your pain of giving up an account with a huge player pool of SR cards, invested to a certain extent but remember, the game that we are playing is also known as, LEGEND spirits.
The pros of restarting a new account is that you will instantly increase your account strength in terms of legends, while the con is that your account strength in terms of SR cards will be likely to decrease. Certain SR cards can be important for clearing Colosseum of Trials and without those cards being invested, you will need to re-farm those cards again through drawing.
This is exactly why, the decision to restart a new account is such a dilemma.
Impacts
The impacts of this bad decision to only reward new players are multi-pronged.
Just because the developers were unwilling to part with some in-game virtual currency for all its player-base, but instead giving huge rewards to ONLY new players, this has left many existing mid-game players, feeling left out, neglected and most importantly, greatly underappreciated by the developers.
Again, this is something that we have taught the developers in previous game reviews but history still repeats itself.
Quoting what was written in the Dec' 2016 Soccer Spirits Major Patch Review: soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/573/december-major-review-soccer-spirits
The question is, how much are the developers willing to give, to keep the momentum going, to grow the game?
The more you are willing to give, the more you can take back eventually
But if you are not willing to give, there will be eventually nothing left for you to take back.
We will go straight to the point here, below are the various resources conversion errors that have been confirmed that they were not properly converted or not converted at all but were 'announced' to be fixed for most players after subsequent maintenance checks.
The reason that returning players need to know this, stem from the fact that based on our friend list, it states that players that have yet to login post-reborn, their game data has yet to be migrated from the previous version of Soccer Spirits. Hence, we have no ways to ascertain that if the Bigball developers did fix resource conversion errors for those accounts that have yet to migrate over to the REBORN version.
Given the Bigball developers' half-assed, half-hearted attitudes, in the manner that they have carried this conversion, we are truly concerned and worried for everyone.
All these resources are fruits of your hard work, and we understand that. Therefore, you deserve to get every single refund that belongs to your account, from the game developers.
In other games, this would have been things that players do not need to worry about and it will all be done nicely for them. But for Soccer Spirits, these scummy, cunning developers DID NOT carry out what they promised, with no whatsoever dedication to their work; they have no integrity, only half-assed attitude, which is exactly why the trust between the playerbase and the Bigball developers has been eroded over the years, due to many issues (such as bait & switch tactics, lies after lies), which we shall not elaborate here. This resource conversion fiasco further erodes the trust & faith between the players and the Bigball developers if there is any left, in the first place.
If there is anything Bigball developers needs to know, from this fiasco, it is that
Bigball Lies & Non-existent Customer Support
Besides the resources listed above, there are also some other resources that Bigball developers claimed to have converted or fixed but didn't.
In the very first bug megathread started by the community managers, after the REBORN major patch maintenance, there were dozens of SS players that provided feedback that they didn't receive their friendship points refund.
Link: old.reddit.com/r/soccerspirits/comments/hsmvn5/reborn_update_feedback_suggestions_bugs_megathread/
Screens:
Few weeks later, the developers made an official announcement through the game's community manager that friendship point refunds have already been done, tripled checked, during the REBORN maintenance and they are not going to check them anymore.
After the official announcements, we have a clubmate who tried to contact support for her friendship point refunds, with full details given but there was no response from customer support for close to ~2 weeks now.
6* desty refund during 12/8/20 maintenance
Bigball developers made an error once again, sending 20 spirit cores for 6* desty refund to every player, regardless of the correct amount.
This 20 spirit cores were retrieved BUT the correct refund that every player was entitled to, was not resent.
Bigball is always the fastest to defend their own interests, but when it comes to the interests of the individual SS players, they couldn't care less.
They were quick to retrieve the 6* desty refund error (20 spirit cores) but did not bother to resend the correct 6* desty refund for everyone.
We had clubmates who tried to send customer support ticket but it has been almost a week now and there is still no response.
TL:DR
It's Bigball fault that the resource conversion was done POORLY, causing so much inconvenience for everyone.
Even the SS community manager came out and admitted that it's Bigball fault that the resource conversion was not done right, in the first place. Otherwise, all these subsequent troubles wouldn't have happened.
Question: Why put up a table saying that you are going to convert all those resources IF you do not plan to do it seriously? What kind of half-assed attitude is this?
Our advice to Bigball, stop lying to your players. If you said that you are going to do something, please do it fully as promised. Otherwise, don't make empty promises.
Because if you don't, things are only going to get worse. Soccer Spirits already had the worst start that you can get from the launch of any game, due to the poor performance of the Bigball developers.
Before Reborn
BB Developers: We are going to remake Soccer Spirits so that you can play casual, much lesser chores to do, much lesser grind and yet you can stay competitive.
Sheeps: Hooray!
Post-Reborn
Sheeps: Somehow this doesn't feel right. The grind, the chores that I need to do, seem to have increased and the whole thing doesn't feel fun anymore.
BB Developers: The game has less grind now! You can play casual and still stay competitive!
Sheeps: Hooray! (but something doesn't feel right)
Weeks passed...
Sheep A: feels frustrated playing Soccer Spirits.... something is not right... this is not fun....
Sheep B: don't doubt the BB developers... the grind is less now, we have less chores to do now!
Sheep A: Hooray!
Don't laugh, because that's really what's happening right now. Many players do feel increasingly bored and frustrated but yet does not know how to express themselves; they cannot figure out why they are feeling that way despite BB developers telling them everything is better now.
It is because your freedom of choice has been taken away partially.
We will give you an in-real-life example in the spoiler below.
Before REBORN, you can choose to spend your ST on many different things that are OPTIONAL; swirlies, spirit stone matches, exp matches, penguins, gold matches, boss minions, story mode, elementals, evolution material matches and doing either of these matches, will result in progression in your team, directly or indirectly.
Sheeps were complaining that this is too complicated, too many choices!!!
Hence, Bigball decided to redesign the game for the sheeps.
After REBORN, it's very simple now; a full set of limited matches are laid out for the sheeps to do and sheeps are just supposed to do ALL of them; do ALL, no choices or any decision making involved.
There are no options, no choices, no freedom. That's the life of a sheep.
The Truth: Most people are already sheeps in real life. These people come into the game, deep down in their hearts, they do not want to continue as sheeps in-game; they want to be free, they want to be something more, they want to be able to express intelligence in their in-game choices and participate in intelligent decision making and feel intelligent. However, they still complain like sheeps, like how they usually are.
And the joke is, Bigball developers actually took them seriously and allowed the sheeps to dictate the directions of the game development.
Now, all these freedom of choices has been taken away. Some sheeps know that this is a result of their requests and they keep quiet but they do not like the game anymore. Quietly, they quit the game, leaving Bigball developers frustrated as to why their sheeps are dying and leaving the game, despite them redesigning the game to please the sheeps.
But of course, there are also sheeps that love to continue as sheeps in-game, sheeps that enjoy these brainless repetitive chores and they will defend this redesign of the game. They do not have enough of their life as sheep in real life and they want more of that in game. We respect that, we respect their choices, and we respect these sheeps. They are true-blue sheeps.
Enough of the sheep talk, let's go back to comparing the grind, before & after REBORN quantitatively.
Before REBORN,
The only limited matches that most players might do everyday, are the 2X fairy match, 3X spirit stone matches and 3X GOLD matches, presuming that you are done with penguins, swirlies, elementals.
And most people actually use skip tickets for these matches. It's done in, let's say ~3 minutes?
From time to time, maybe some people will login to dump their ST, using auto mode, on guerilla gold matches, during event X2 gold. But it's optional.
In nature, matches before REBORN are more OPTIONAL than compulsory.
After REBORN,
The gameplay has become highly restrictive.
It gives people the feeling that you are supposed to do ALL the limited matches that Bigball developers have laid out for you.
In nature, matches after REBORN feels more COMPULSORY than optional.
And there are not enough skip tickets to go around.
But the Bigball developers tell you that, the grind is less now, casual players can play with less grind and yet stay competitive.
Which leads to players (sheeps) being confused because developers to them, are in a power of position and sheeps do not question the people of authority.
But the truth is, everyday, you need like 1+ hour of time to finish all these limited matches as compared to maybe few minutes that you would spend before REBORN, to finish the limited matches, with skip tickets.
Hence, the existing & returning player-base continues to play with confusion in their mind and frustration in their heart.
Highly Restrictive Gameplay (Clover)
Beside gameplay decisions of which matches to do being removed, the use of clover (bonus drop) has also become highly restrictive.
After REBORN, the clover system has been changed to become a limited gauge (check at the space-time continuum screen), dependent on its level; meaning you can only use it on a restricted amount of matches.
Most existing & returning players should have your new clover system (fatigue system) at level 7 (140 / 140).
Before REBORN, developers promised that the new clover system will give 210 / 210 at level 7 but turns out otherwise. Oh well.
Again, we would like to tell to the Bigball developers:
Before REBORN, you could use the clover system to gain a bonus drop in any of the matches that you desire.
After REBORN, you might still have the false impression that your freedom to use clover still exist but the truth is that, you will find out that you are supposed to just use your clover on the limited space-time continuum matches that the developers have laid out for you.
After doing them, your clovers have mostly run out and you have none to use it on anything else.
Soccer Spirits REBORN presents a highly restrictive form of gameplay, with not reduced grind BUT reduced gameplay decision-making.
To put it plainly, it's redesigned for a bunch of people (sheeps) that cannot make gameplay decisions so you just do ALL the matches that the developers have laid out for you; the same goes for the clover system; you don't need to think, just use them all on the limited matches in space-time continuum.
*Update to Clover System 26/08/2020 Patch Notes
The Fun Factor
Fun and freedom are usually proportional for most people whereas time required and fun are inversely proportional.
Grind/Farming in soccer spirits has become highly restrictive and the amount of time required to finish the grind has increased, thus, the fun factor is very much reduced.
And because the grind is perceived to be more COMPULSORY than optional post-reborn, there is an additional feeling of being forced to do something that is not fun.
All these adds up to the frustrations that players are feeling right now, after REBORN.
The two words that we are going to scrutinize here is "casual" & "competitive".
Casual
Is compulsory farming/grinding for 1+ hour everyday considered 'casual' to you? This is not yet inclusive of time required for PvP, CoD, CoT and event match. We still have Galaxy Live and Club matches incoming.
Does this sound 'casual' to you, my dear?
Competitive
It takes approximately ~2 months to max a legend now from playing 'casually', as explained above.
For these casual players to play competitive, they will need approximately ~22 months of playing to max one team of 11 PvP legends because afterall, this game is a.k.a Legend Spirits.
So, does Bigball developers mean that,
What we feel that Bigball actually means is,
Players Can Stay Competitive, Playing Casually, w/ Spending Post-Reborn
Because if you do not spend, your game progress will be like a tortoise.
Otherwise, Bigball doesn't even consider you their sheeps, you are considered as their tortoise.
The game rewards have been changed drastically before & after REBORN.
Here, we shall provide screens of the rewards before REBORN and you can compare it yourself.
For example, given that 1 DS = 10 crystals, based on Bigball developers' conversion, you can calculate for yourself the amount of game rewards' reduction post REBORN.
Colosseum of Despair Rewards - Before REBORN:
Colosseum of Trials Rewards (CoT) - Before REBORN
CoT rewards are significantly reduced post REBORN.
PvP Rewards - Before REBORN
PvP rewards are significantly reduced post REBORN.
Of course, there were also game rewards from other removed content such as Colosseum of Infinity which gives 2000+ crystals bi-weekly.
The Fun Factor
Overall, the general sentiments from the player base is that the game rewards post REBORN are not as good as before.
Fun and rewards are usually proportional. Players are less motivated to play, due to the reduced game rewards.
People are not excited to spend their precious time for minuscule rewards because it's not fun when the game rewards are unappealing.
As most people would feel, this is probably the ONLY positive takeaway from the REBORN major patch.
Before REBORN, players are supposed to draw a legend, and then try to max the legend through other resources, such as littres, yowus etc.
And because legends are hard to draw, players are likely to have farmed resources faster than obtaining legends and have the resources required to max a legend up to full superb-ed, readily available when they draw them.
After REBORN, it's a totally opposite scenario. Players draw legends faster than farming resources. Players are always trying to play a catch-up game now, in terms of maxing their legends.
The reality of requiring multiple months or even years to max the numerous legends that they have drawn, is definitely an uncomfortable feeling, that is daunting on some players right now.
Before REBORN, every time someone draw a legend (red ball), it's an euphoria feeling.
After REBORN, every time someone draw a legend (purple ball), it's still an happy feeling but of course less exciting.
Regardless, the fact that the draw rates of legends are improved is something worth celebrating for all soccer spirits players.
Just one last thing that we would like to mention is that, the visuals/images of SR balls and legend balls are so fugly now.
Previously, SR ball (black) and legend ball (red) share the same visuals but of different colors. Those were impressive-looking.
Now, SR ball (red) shares the same visuals with R (4*) and N (3*) balls. It's just so UGLY now.
Question: Why change the visuals/design of the balls from draws?
Moral of the story:
We have said this many times to the developers. But they do not listen.
You wasted your time, resources, and efforts for something WORSE than before.
Why not put these time, resources to better use, to do something more meaningful for SS players, such as doing their resource conversion properly?
Less RNG Paywall for P2W
Before REBORN, one could spend 10,000+ crystals and not draw any legends.
And even with the boosted rates for specific legends, one could spend tons of crystals but not draw the legend that they desired.
After REBORN, you are guaranteed to draw the specific legend that you want, with either custom or pickup draws.
However, you are not encouraged to draw for duplicates to superboost your legends because of two reasons:
Unless you are a mega-whale and wishes to enjoy the max prowess of a new legend 2 months ahead of other players, then you should draw to superboost your legends to max as fast as possible
As mentioned earlier,
But however, this is on the presumption that both F2P and P2W players play the game consistently.
Because P2W players might not be able to withstand doing the endless repetitive, brainless chores ahead of them for months.
Then again, the reduced in-game content rewards made it harder for F2P players to catch up anyway.
Now for the review that everyone is waiting for -> Soccer Spirits REBORN Game Balancing Review
Let's start off by touching on player chains, something that existing & returning players would miss a lot; some people might wonder, where have the chains gone to?
Player chains are non-existent now, post REBORN.
Chains were something more than just a game mechanics because it connects the story-lore of the players with game strategy and it is something that touches the players' heart.
For example, affection chains between Milky and Vonchi, Nemesis chain between Vitos and Duke because of their common affection towards Valkyrie Beth.
All these connections with the story-lore made game strategy in Soccer Spirits more than just a mundane interaction between skills, spirit stones etc.
Story-lore aside, the huge amount of player chains between 5* / SR cards in mono / dual element teams has also provided them with a sizable power-up to be able to go head-to-head with those overpowered mono-legend teams.
Veteran players in the community, are always asking Bigball to expand the story-lore and build the fascinating story-lore that we have, into the game.
But Bigball developers doesn't listen to their community. Instead, they decided to do WHATEVER that they WANT to, with their game, as usual.
Their decision to remove chains, have moved Soccer Spirits in a regressive direction, towards something more mundane and boring.
So what happens now post REBORN?
APU, teamwork, superbs are also integrated into the new superboost system.
With the total integration of player chains into the new superboost system, individual card power increases significantly.
Mono legend teams that were already dominating the PvP meta before REBORN, gets a greater boost of team power +++.
Mono / dual elements teams that were already struggling before REBORN, gets a reduction in team power ---.
We need to look at this with arbitrary numbers, to understand the magnitude of the impact on game balancing
Coupled with the tons of legend and legend-related resources that Bigball developers are throwing at ONLY new players, it is no doubt that we are only going to see MORE and MORE mono-legendary teams in PvP in the future.
So yes, the game balance now is skewed sharply towards legends; mono legend teams are the strongest because legends were already strong before REBORN and Bigball developers made them even stronger post-REBORN.
The Reality Change
Game balance is not just an interaction between the cards but also a reflection of players' mentality.
In reality, existing & returning players might suddenly feel that the teams that they are going up against suddenly became much stronger and they are not able to deal with it.
These players are confused. What has happened? Why has everyone's teams gotten so much stronger suddenly?
The reason being,
Previously, before REBORN, whales were not very motivated to APU+30 their teams because legend drop rates are very low.
Hence, before REBORN, you were mostly going up against FSPU+160 legend teams with little player chains and low APU.
Translated to superboost level, previously, you were mostly going up against teams with ONLY superboost level 2~3.
Post-REBORN, it's in human nature, to max superboost their cards, and there is a greater ease of doing so (APU+30) because now you only need 10 duplicates compared to 30, also with the increased legend drop rate for whales.
In addition, most whales have their legends already at 2~3 superboost level from, pre-REBORN.
Hence, going by pre-REBORN terminology, now you are going up against ALL APU+30 FSPU+160 teams, with full player chains incorporated into the superboost, on their legends.
That's why you are feeling this reality change post-REBORN.
Therefore, the PvP game balance now is no longer FSPU+160 teams, but MOSTLY APU+30 teams and you are expected to do the same, to max superboost your team.
This is the same for PvE because developers are not going to design PvE content for superboost level 2 (aka FSPU+160) teams anymore. They are going to design PvE content for max superboost teams. Prepare yourself :)
CoT are doable, non-RNG for most trials, time consuming for some but as mentioned earlier, CoT rewards have dropped drastically.
But F2P players have no choices but to at least try to do both of them because they are the consistent sources of crystals.
Unfortunately, during the REBORN major patch, there was no balancing changes.
Hence, we will discuss the balancing changes in the subsequent patches.
Clearly, these balancing changes were just quick-fix measures, with intentions to put out the fire wherever there is one.
The reason being, the whole planning for the game balance.... if there was one in the first place.... but most likely there aint any effective planning at all... resulted in a whole mess of the game balance post REBORN...
First, let us list out some of the known PvP imbalances post REBORN:
Of course, the first imbalance is still not fixed up to now.
As we all know from previous experiences, Bigball has openly admitted that legends are supposed to be a notch above SR cards and any SR cards that could previously compete with legends, such as Vaidi (Goalkeeper), were nerfed BADLY.
In the August 12th update,
Bigball developers focused their efforts to clamp down on attackers front and long range striker teams.
Attackers' reflection damage and ball holding power has been reduced by 15% and interceptors were buffed both by reducing their cooldown and increasing the capabilities of their actives.
Basically, this means that Bigball are nerfing the PvP teams of anyone using long range strikers OR attacker fronts.
This doesn't make your team unviable but it just makes it harder for your team in PvP;
If you have a good PvP strategy or PvP team, it is best not to show it.
These Bigball developers are going around to put out the 'fire' or PvP imbalances as they show up.
They are just reacting to whatever the 'community' or 'sheeps' tell them to nerf.
And even with the above balancing changes made over the last month, the game balancing is still in a BIG MESS currently, as felt by many players.
Coupled with the infinite loading bug, this actually gave the playerbase a 'great time' during the first month of REBORN.
To be honest,
Clearly, Bigball developers have no idea what they are doing; they are just throwing things out to trial and error instead of planning and testing everything carefully before releasing them.
Hence, existing and returning players should be prepared to experience major PvP imbalances, in terms of game balancing for the upcoming months, until our incompetent Bigball developers figure it out.
Well, since January 2020, these Bigball developers have been talking a big game; they want to make Soccer Spirits great again but then again, their performance?
Is this how they plan to make Soccer Spirits great again?
They talk a big game but their performance tells it all.
The only thing that Bigball has accomplished up to now, post REBORN, is to sink the game into a deeper abyss, with the new, highly restrictive gameplay design and the current BIG MESS to game balance, with their new superboost system.
As the Bigball developers put it, they are going to spend ONE year to strip the game apart, and then putting the pieces back together.
Those are not the future of Soccer Spirits, those are past content that we have seen before.
It's unimaginable to us, why would any developer decide to spend ONE year of time and resources to strip the game apart and then putting it back together, and finally to pat themselves on their back and say to themselves:
Is that what the Bigball developers planned to do?
On a serious note, we really do not see any future to Soccer Spirits until year 2021, after club matches are restored.
We do not know,
BUT, one thing that we do know, is that if they want to revive Soccer Spirits, below are the things that they need to do IMMEDIATELY.
It's time to take the rotten apples out of the basket.
Otherwise, the whole basket of apples will become rotten eventually.
These rotten developers think that they are irreplaceable in the company, because they are the ones who are the most familiar with the Soccer Spirits programming code.
The truth is that, in any company,
What are the characteristics of a rotten apple?
Who are these exactly?
Rotten Bigball Developers Playing the Victim Card
Of course, we expect these rotten apples to play the victim card; saying that they have been working tirelessly post REBORN and dedicating their heart and soul to Soccer Spirits, over the years.
We've heard too much of these. The truth is, their performance doesn't make the cut. They must be held accountable so others will take their work more seriously.
And It's exactly because of this group of rotten apples, that Soccer Spirits is in its current state.
These rotten apples need to be held accountable, to restore the credibility of the company and rebuild the trust/faith between the players & the developers.
Which is why it is extremely important to teach good moral values to our children so that they do not grow up to become like these scummy, rotten developers with half-hearted attitude and zero dedication towards their work. Some of you might want to argue otherwise, but their performance shows it all. The reality, the truth is right in front of us.
After sorting out the rotten apples in the basket, the next thing that needs to be done, is to
Seek help from as many people, who is great with game design, as you can.
And sometimes, you can't expect quality help without paying. Be prepared to pay for advice.
Because quality advice, doesn't usually come for free.
For the past few years, Soccer Spirits have had a really bad, worsening and acrimonious relationship with its player base.
Soccer Spirits REBORN was really a great chance for this game to start anew, to restart on the right foot with its player base.
As what we observed, many long-time soccer spirits players did return to the game for the REBORN major patch.
But all that awaited them was disappointment, an infinity of bugs and their hard-farmed resources missing, post REBORN.
This is probably not your fault but the fault of certain people; you were just unlucky to be on the same boat as these people.
Stay safe, maintain good hygiene, wash your hands regularly, practice safe distancing and social distancing.
Covid-19 pandemic is still on.
We do not know how long it will last.
But life still goes on... Try not to die before Soccer Spirits REBORN does... Good luck ;)
(Completed 22nd August 2020, Updated 27th August 2020)
This game review will be focused on two main directions:
- Examining the game from a New Player's Perspectives
- Post-Reborn Evaluation of Soccer Spirits for Existing & Returning Players
It's highly recommended for new & returning players to read this game review to help you decide on whether if this game is worth starting or returning to.
And if by any chance that you decided to start/return to the game after reading this game review, do share your experiences in the replies below to tell us how accurate our game review was.
This Soccer Spirits REBORN game review will be valid till year 2021.
Foreword
Soccer Spirits is a card-collecting strategy game that has been around since year 2014.
Due to bad management of the game and poor attitudes of the developers, who often do not listen to their community, the game has been going downhill since 2016 and has reached a critical state where a full revamp was necessary, hence the arrival of this major Soccer Spirits reborn update.
With all due fairness, we have given the game >1 month of time, since the reborn update (15th July 2020) to fix the respective bugs and resource conversion errors and all other stuff before writing this review.
So, let's see what Soccer Spirits have in store for us, 1 month after the Soccer Spirits Major Reborn Update.
General Review
- Game Visuals / Artwork
- Events / Bugs
From a New Player's Perspectives, we will be reviewing:
- Starting Off as a New Player
- Game Content (CoD, PvP, Challenge Mode & Upcoming Galaxy Live (Oct' 2020) and CvC (Dec' 2020))
- Game Progression
- F2P (free-to-play) Friendly or P2W (pay-to-win) ?
- Is it worth investing your time and $$$ into this game?
For Existing & Returning Players, we will be discussing the:
- Dilemma of Returning Players
- Resources' Conversion/Refunds & Soccer Spirits Customer Support Service
- The Grind, The Clover & The Fun - Before & After
- Competitive Casual Players - Do they really exist post-REBORN?
- Game Rewards Comparison - Before & After
- Game Balancing
- Future of Soccer Spirits
Final word
- What Bigball should do to revive Soccer Spirits
- To our Apocalypse Fans - Try not to XXX before Soccer Spirits REBORN does! (Guess the XXX word)
Prologue: A Brief History of Soccer Spirits Reborn
The decision to remake Soccer Spirits, on its 6th Anniversary, was officially announced on 30th January 2020.
www.facebook.com/notes/soccer-spirits/january-2020-developers-note-part-2/2664792313597411/
However, the major update was not released in May as planned (as mentioned in the video below); the official release date was first announced to be on 29th June 2020, by the developers on 8th June 2020.
In this video, Yongbeom Bang, the Bigball co-CEO, famous for initiating the idea of & leading the failed development of Soccer Spirits 3D spin-off, comes out and explain why reborn update was delayed and not released in May, together with the 6th Anniversary.
He goes on to account the blame of the reborn major patch delay on a 'big incident', to 3rd party programming providers whom they outsourced their jobs to. Great story. TL:DR, it's anyone's fault but theirs.
Regardless, this led to the first flop of this Reborn major update which was not felt until July 2020, where Bigball decided that, for accounts to qualify for new players rewards, they have to be created after 29th June 2020.
Many new players decided to start the game during the 6th Soccer Spirits Anniversary on May 15th 2020. This is due to the incredible events (due to 6th Anniversary) that were being held, such as 50% scout discount, 50% stone powerup discount and many impressive login rewards.
[/font][/b] when Bigball decided that only new accounts after 29th June, will qualify for new players rewards.[/font][/ul]The reason being, the new players' rewards, are of a value so great that if you started your account during the 6th anniversary and before 29th June 2020, most veteran players will advise you to restart a new account to take advantage of them because the new players' rewards are bigger than your ~2 months of gameplay time.
So basically, this group of new players had to face the dilemma of losing their ~2 months progress and restarting a new account
OR
miss out on the great new players' rewards that is right ahead of them.[/spoiler]
We decided to bring this up because this affected a small but significant group of new players that spoke to us.
Hence, we decided to make known their pain and losses, due to the mistakes made by the negligent developers, leading up to the major patch delay.
Unfortunately, some of these new players have decided to quit the game while some restarted new accounts.
This is sad. The question is, why was there no strict supervision, close follow-ups with the 3rd party programming outsources, leading to such a screw-up? Why is there such negligence? Who is to be accountable for the revenue & player-base loss?
Bigball developers are still their usual self, enjoying the complacency oozing out of their lazy bones and not taking things seriously; maybe the game is actually doing much better than we think they are.
Regardless, let's start the actual game review.
General Review
Game Visuals / Artwork
With the reborn update, Soccer Spirits has adopted a new, modern and sleekier user interface (UI) as compared to before.
The whole interface feels smoother than before, with pulchritudinous animations and spectacular in-game effects.
However, as a consequence of that, the game now is more resource-intensive, uses up more phone memory and tend to have game freezes, screen freezes, frame freezes.
These game freezes are highly undesirable and is definitely something that the developers would want to resolve.
Other issues with the user interface (UI) include buttons/toggles being too small and the loss of many other quality-of-life features that existed in the past versions of Soccer Spirits but were not included in the reborn version.
Screengrab (below): People are uncomfortable with the buttons being the size of a rice grain.
Artwork
In service for the past 6 years, Soccer Spirits has been known for its outstanding 2D artwork that mesmerizes.
However, it's a pity that card evolution has been removed, with the reborn patch, which means that we will get to see less great artwork per card.
In addition, the general artwork quality has been deteriorating over the years, especially in the past 2 years, hence, hopefully, the developers can put in more efforts in their artwork selection because Soccer Spirits artwork has been one of the its main attractions for its player-base.
Events/Bugs
After the reborn patch, we could see a lot of returning players and new players joining the game, resulting in a close to four-fold increase of Soccer Spirits player base.
However, unlike most other games where developers plan grand opening events to retain returning players or new players that join, developers of Soccer Spirits were busy spending their time to deal with the multitude of game bugs and resource conversion issues post reborn.
Low or little efforts were expended for designing great events to retain new players.
In-game events after the reborn major patch were lacklustre, with poor, unexciting rewards.
We will show some illustrations of a specific example below:
- Summer Goods Event (post reborn) vs Gren Pirate Event (before reborn)
- Gren Pirate Event - Before Reborn (*check spoiler)
- Summer Goods Event - Post REBORN
Rewards: 1 unique box, 2 adv custom seeds (not even supr seed), gold, 11x draw tickets and crystals
Finished it in ~2 days; totally bored after since the event was ~15 days
Possibly, most of the efforts with regards to events design were planned for releasing the reborn major patch together with the celebration of the 6th Soccer Spirits Anniversary.
The negligence of the Bigball developers (as mentioned in the prologue) resulted in a major disconnect between the 6th Soccer Spirits Anniversary Events and the release of the reborn major patch, and the impacts are far-reaching.
During this 1 month after the reborn patch release, clearly, there was insufficient attention paid to making great in-game events to retain players and as a result, sad to say, many players left and the consequences are irreversible.
"Once Bitten, Twice Shy, Three Times a Fool"
This is not the first time which Soccer Spirits do not follow up major patches with great events. To be fair, our past major patch reviews (Dec' 2016) have mentioned and taught this to the developers but they continued to make the same mistakes over and over again.
Link: soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/573/december-major-review-soccer-spirits
It feels disheartening, disappointing, and sad to see a great game, ruined by the incompetence of these Bigball developers.
Game Bugs
Like many other games, release of a major patch entails the following of many possible bugs, especially one as large as this reborn patch.
And to be honest, veteran Soccer Spirits players are a very forgiving bunch of people, especially to these incorrigible Bigball developers but even so,
There is a limit to people's patience.
We will leave out the minor bugs that have occurred. Instead we will focus our attention to major bugs that have brought great inconvenience to players.
- Infinite loading bug
Definitely one of the most horrendous bugs in Soccer Spirits post reborn, that most people are complaining about.
It can happen at the end of the match, during auto or any loading screen; basically, you get an infinite loading screen that is infinitely loading. - Game/screen freezes/crashes
This can happen when you clicked on something and the game freezes or crashes.
Sometimes, the screen just freezes for no reason even when you didn't click on anything.
At the time of writing, it has been >1 month now and the fact that these Bigball developers have yet to fix these bugs, is amazing.
We are sick of saying that the Bigball developers are incompetent but they really are. The irony is that, these Bigball developers think otherwise; they think that they are some genius and even when reality, revenues and figures stand in front of them and tells them otherwise, they are capable of blaming everyone and everything else except themselves. As mentioned earlier, to the Bigball developers, it's anyone's fault but theirs.
We are not surprised because such people are everywhere in this world. And in the real world, the boss will tell you, enough said, start packing up and adios.
*Update: A Brief Review of the Infinite Loading Bug planned to be fixed on 26th August 2020
~6 weeks after the REBORN major update, the Bigball developers are finally going to fix the infinite loading bug.
Now, the bigball developers are once again explaining that this infinite loading bug did not affect everyone and it was caused by the gap in the network environment that would result in a cut to server communication, especially for long matches; it was highly dependent on how your internet service provider(ISP) would handle the network gap in Bigball's network environment.
TL:DR: it's the internet service provider causing this issue. It's anyone's fault but Bigball's.
But then, there is this question: the previous versions of Soccer Spirits didn't seem to have such an infinite loading bug issue? Can we presume that the fix for this infinite loading bug does exist for the previous version of Soccer Spirits? Why wasn't this fix migrated over to Soccer Spirits REBORN?
OR did Bigball change the duration of the network gap in SS REBORN and if they did, as experienced developers, why didn't they check the impact of this change properly?
Then again, 6 weeks. For such an issue, the normal developer would probably be given ~3 days to figure out such a simple issue and ~1 week to finish writing, testing, and implementing the code to fix the bug.
3 days is already a fairly generous period of time; some bosses that are stricter, might even only give you 1~2 days to figure out the problem.
Now, the bigball developers are once again explaining that this infinite loading bug did not affect everyone and it was caused by the gap in the network environment that would result in a cut to server communication, especially for long matches; it was highly dependent on how your internet service provider(ISP) would handle the network gap in Bigball's network environment.
TL:DR: it's the internet service provider causing this issue. It's anyone's fault but Bigball's.
But then, there is this question: the previous versions of Soccer Spirits didn't seem to have such an infinite loading bug issue? Can we presume that the fix for this infinite loading bug does exist for the previous version of Soccer Spirits? Why wasn't this fix migrated over to Soccer Spirits REBORN?
OR did Bigball change the duration of the network gap in SS REBORN and if they did, as experienced developers, why didn't they check the impact of this change properly?
TL:DR: it's the internet service provider causing this issue. It's anyone's fault but Bigball's.
Then again, 6 weeks. For such an issue, the normal developer would probably be given ~3 days to figure out such a simple issue and ~1 week to finish writing, testing, and implementing the code to fix the bug.
3 days is already a fairly generous period of time; some bosses that are stricter, might even only give you 1~2 days to figure out the problem.
And our dear, genius Bigball developers? 6 weeks.
This says a lot about your work performance, and it's terrible. This is the fact. Time to wake up, my dear.It's understandable that some people might feel that we are insulting the intelligence of normal developers by saying that they need ~3 days to figure out such a simple issue.
In fact, the real good game developers, they could probably figure this out in minutes or hours.
But we don't want to sound too exaggerated nor to make the Bigball developers look too bad.
We do understand that they are the ones making themselves look bad, with their own performance but it's still good to be nice people, on our part.
In fact, the real good game developers, they could probably figure this out in minutes or hours.
But we don't want to sound too exaggerated nor to make the Bigball developers look too bad.
We do understand that they are the ones making themselves look bad, with their own performance but it's still good to be nice people, on our part.
General Review Summary
Overall, the release of Soccer Spirits Reborn was very ill-prepared and rushed.
This was totally unnecessary because this game has a previous working version and there was really no need to rush and release the REBORN version.
Bigball had ample time to test the REBORN version for bugs, prepare for events, resolve most bugs and to do a much better job before its official release.
From our perspectives, Soccer Spirits Reborn should have been released in December 2020 instead, with Galaxy Live and Club Match restored and everything done in an orderly manner.
This rushed release, with bad preparations, resulted in the extremely low retention rates of new & returning players which is disappointing for the current player base, that hoped for a more lively game as the game servers' population are dying.
Not only that the developers were disappointed, not only that the current player base is very disappointed, it also left a bad taste in new players joining the game and returning veteran players that have hoped to see something that is not this bad.
Most of our players' expectations are not very high tbh (in fact, reasonable) but it is impressive that the Bigball developers still managed to disappoint us once again, with their worst performance ever.
For existing and returning players, continue reading below, for a more comprehensive review, to uncover greater details of the changes in this REBORN version, that the Bigball developers doesn't want you to know.
[Review] From a New Player's Perspectives
For new players who are deciding if you wish to start this game, this review will give you a detailed understanding of what the game is all about and what to expect in the upcoming days ahead of you.
Starting Off The Game
Now, new players starting off the game can expect up to starting with 8~12 legends or more, from a combination of reroll, guaranteed legends from login rewards, quests and free 11x event draws daily for 14 days.
Soccer Spirits has never been more generous to new players than now, since its inception date.
For new players, below in the spoiler, are the two guides that you will need to succeed in this game.
Guide to Picking your Starting Legends for New Players™ Soccer Spirits Reborn
soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/841/guide-starting-legends-new-players
[Guide] Foundation LUQs for New Players™ Soccer Spirits Reborn
soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/840/guide-foundation-luqs-new-players
soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/841/guide-starting-legends-new-players
[Guide] Foundation LUQs for New Players™ Soccer Spirits Reborn
soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/840/guide-foundation-luqs-new-players
Game Content
There are 4 main game content currently:
- PvP (Auto AI controlled mode)
- CoD - Colosseum of Despair (Tower Climbing for Rewards Against Other Players)
- CoT - Colosseum of Trials (Clearing Individual Challenge Floors for Self-Rewards)
- Event Match (SR card only PvP)
- Upcoming Galaxy Live & Club Match
PvP mode:
- Held in a 5 week period, where you try to design a team to get to the highest league for the best rewards.
- In the current PvP meta, mono legends PvP teams will comprise of most of the teams that you will encounter.
Reason being, the multitude of legends given to starting players and the advantages of mono/dual teams being reduced due to the removal of chains. - It's a common sight now for new players running a team of 8~9 legends, consisting of maxed legend GK and striker so legends is the only way to go for PvP, with only a few useful SR cards that are actually used in PvP.
Colosseum of Despair (CoD) & Colosseum of Trials (CoT)
- As a new player, you would probably be very excited to try these game content, spending long hours just to try to beat them.
- But the truth is, CoD is just a OHKO content for veteran players; so you should be trying to work towards the same OHKO goal and don't waste your time.
Reason being, CoD is held weekly and you can think of it as your weekly, routinal content to do in this game.
You do not want to spend like 5~10 minutes on a single CoD floor. So, OHKO is the way to go.All CoD floors can be OHKO-ed as of now. - CoT is another bi-weekly content that you have to do to get custom seeds for your players.
It's basically something that you repeat every 2 weeks. It's easy to do if you have the right cards.
For new players, it should be relatively easy till the 4th stage and you will have to work on beating the 5th and 6th stages.
Event Match (5* Challenge Mode)
- This is basically PvP consisting of 5 PvP matches that resets daily, where you can only use SR cards.
- You have 5 matches to do everyday, to earn small rewards. Personally, I do not do these matches.Reasons being,
- This event match (futsal mode, its old name) used to give 300k gold and 40 crystals daily before the remake and now the rewards are only a quarter of what it used to be
- But most importantly, 5*/SR challenge league used to be something that was fun but the developers remade it into such a mode which horrendously disheartened old players like me, who enjoyed the previous 5* PvP challenge league.
- This event match (futsal mode, its old name) used to give 300k gold and 40 crystals daily before the remake and now the rewards are only a quarter of what it used to be
These game content are not something new, because they have been in the previous versions of Soccer Spirits, for many years.
Galaxy live is basically a game content where you can compete in live, manual pvp mode against the top whales in this game.
Expect nothing less than going up against fully maxed teams, all players equipped with maxed club suits and LUQs, maxed superboost and eveything else.
The main reason why many people do not enjoy Galaxy Live is because of the fact that it's time consuming and also because they are not able to compete against whale teams.
It's the same with club matches when you are up against top clubs with the same maxed, whale teams, except that it is like arena mode where it's manual and non-live but club defense buffs make it harder to win and more tedious to play.
Game Progression
During the first week of play, you are most likely going to explore the game, clear story mode and obtain all the possible quest rewards and login rewards.
In the 2nd week of play, you would have finished claiming all the new player's login rewards, free 11x event draws, cleared story mode and started figuring out your team for PvP and also trying the colosseums (despair/trials).
By the 3rd week & 4th week, this is where the game would have stagnated for most players because your income stream of player cards would have dropped drastically. The cards that you have right now are going to be your cards for the next few months, with little changes, if you do not spend.
Your goal will be to farm the free resources to max the cards that you have obtained up to the 4th week of play, through spirial matches, exp matches, special training token matches etc. (Trial of Star/Space-Time Continuum) and also through scout/dispatches/managers actives.
The speed that you can expect to max your cards through these free sources:
- ~1 month for 3 SR cards
- ~2 months for 1 legend card
The limiting factor is the superboost level which results in the above duration required, where you can special train and level up your cards much faster.
How to expand your pool of cards?
For F2P players, or non-spenders, there are really not much ways to expand your pool of cards FAST except through the endless repetition of CoD, CoT, PvP, event matches and dailies for crystals, for months.
There are 3 types of draws, pickup, normal and custom draws.
You should only spend your crystals on pickup OR custom draws and ONLY for legends, because this game is a.k.a Legend Spirits.
Hence, there are only 2 specific times when your player pool will increase:
- You saved up to 7500 crystals for a legend pick-up draw
- You keep on dumping 300 crystals on custom draw everytime that you have 300 crystals.
For new players, custom draw to pick up important legends that you miss, is the recommended way to go.
This will be the same for F2P, casual spenders or whales.
Summary
Game progression will stagnate for F2P players by the 3rd~4th week of play.
Further progression will require endless repetition of CoD, CoT, PvP, event match and dailies, in addition to space-time continuum matches and trial of star matches.
The sharp drop of progression relative to the 1st 2 weeks of play will cause many new players to either not know how to continue playing or to feel that they do not want to continue playing.
This has been proven by the sharp drop of player base by more than 50%, just nice ~4 weeks after the reborn patch, across all servers.
Most of the players that have stayed on, are mostly casual spenders or whales that could continue their unstoppable progression through countless draws, to build their teams. Other new players that have stayed on, also include players who are still trying to see how far their team can go in the current PvP league which is set to end this week (5th week).
After which, we might see another wave of new & returning players leaving the game because of the progress stagnation and the whole process of endless repetition do not appeal to them.
Is this game F2P friendly or P2W friendly?
Soccer Spirits has never been as generous to the new players as now.
But as mentioned earlier, game progression start to stagnate for F2P players by the ~3rd & 4th week of play.
If you do not spend, your progression is very much slowed and it will take months to see significant growth in your player pool.
And sometimes, you are just missing that one or two legends that can help you move up a certain level and you just cannot get those legends without spending.
It can be frustrating and there is nothing you can do about it if you do not spend.
So the question is, can you compete with P2W players without spending a dime in this game?
The answer is yes, if you've played Soccer Spirits for years OR is ready to spend years playing this game.
For F2P players, you have to be ready to do endless repetition of all the game content for at least 1 year, to be able to compete on a decent level with P2W players.
Is this game P2W friendly?
P2W friendly means different things to different people.
I've made friends in this game, who are used to spending 10,000$ USD on games monthly and they will talk about how they have played other games that made them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and how Soccer Spirits is a so much more affordable gacha game compared to those other games that they have played.
Reviewing the in-game paid packages, a new player would have to spend ~250$ USD to max a legend that they own and ~1000$ USD for 10 LUQ pick tickets to make up for one year progress of LUQ crafting.
Based on these 2 packages alone, the P2W new player should be ready to spend ~250$ USD monthly (~150$ on legend spirials package and $99.99 on LUQ pick package).
Hence, is spending ~250$ USD monthly P2W friendly for you? If it is, Soccer Spirits is P2W friendly.
For the casual spender, who wants to increase your progress speed while spending as little as possible, you should either spend on the monthly membership package or save up for the 99.99$ LUQ pick package but it will still take a few months for you to be able to pickup a legend.
Is this game worth your time & $$$ as a new player?
This is really a tough and very personal question.
With the game as it is right now, despite the generosity towards new players from the developers, the gap between a starting new player and the point where you start to have fun crafting PvP teams and enjoying the game is still enormous from our perspectives.
First, you need to have like, at least ~50% of the card pool, with most cards maxed level, maxed special training and maxed superboost with ~10 LUQs.
And to reach such a level, you would at least need ~6 months to 1 year of gameplay, without spending.
With spending, you might be able to shorten it to 3~6 months.
But due to the poor game balancing of players, endgame PvP teams are mostly of the same variety and types, mainly just legends-filled cookie cutter teams which dominates PvP with little place for PvP theorycrafting that you would have desired.
And of course with the declining player base over the years, one of the major concern of veteran players, which prevent them from further investing $$$ into this game, is the fear that Soccer Spirits might go under (close shop) at any point in time.
Hence, we do not want to be the ones to tell you that this game is worth investing your $$$ and end up getting the blame when the game closes down.
It will be up to you to decide, after reading this game review.
[Preface] Review For Existing & Returning Players
As in the official announcement, Bigball's intention of remaking Soccer Spirits falls on a few aspects:
- Simplifying the game (currencies, card progression system)
- Reducing the grind and allowing casual players to be competitive
- Improving the draw system
- Better game balancing
- Stripping the game apart, and build things back together again, to put Soccer Spirits back on track
First and foremost, we would like to point out the huge improvements to new players' rewards post reborn major patch.
This game has never been more generous to new players than now.
However, precisely because the new players' rewards are too good, this made many current & returning veteran players feel that they are not being included nor rewarded for their continued dedication & support for Soccer Spirits, especially players who continued supporting the game during the past few years when it was on a decline.
In addition, this presented a dilemma to these players, which we will discuss later, that is not only going to impact the players themselves but will also impact the long term survival of Soccer Spirits.
If you are under such circumstances, this review will present some advice and recommendations below for your consideration below.
Simplifying the game (Currencies)
The idea of simplifying the currencies sounded great from many angles, to many people.
Bigball developers even came up with a complete table and lots of information, before the reborn patch, to make the currencies conversion sound as fair as possible.
Everything sounded great, till the day that it actually happened BECAUSE, it never happened, the conversion didn't take place for all currencies. Many people had either resources missing, unconverted or just gone, vanished.
Could you be one of them? The details will be discussed below.
Comparsion of the grind before & after
Hearing from many players that came to us, the grind for casual players was not reduced but in fact increased. Details below.
Casual player becoming competitive post reborn? Did that happen?
Another blatant lie by Bigball in January that only sheeps will believe.
We will take a deeper look at the truth of what entails, for casual players, post reborn.
Improving the draw system while reducing in-game content rewards
The draw system was indeed improved in terms of the drop rate of legends.
Below, we will discuss the current paywall for P2W players, the status of the gap between F2P and P2W, through the discussion and comparison of game content rewards, before and after reborn.
Game Balancing
Bigball once again promised better game balancing post-reborn. Do you believe it?
A review of the game balancing post reborn will be discussed below, including the removal of chains and the current PvP meta.
Future of Soccer Spirits - Final Look at Bigball Amazing Plan
Lastly, we will look at Bigball's plans to strip the game apart, and build things back together again, so as to put Soccer Spirits back on track.
Will Soccer Spirits finally be on track? What are they on track towards? Continue reading till the end to find out.
[Review] Soccer Spirits Reborn - For Existing/Returning Players
Below will be the extensive review of the REBORN version of Soccer Spirits, for current or returning players, with pre-existing knowledge of the game before REBORN.
The Dilemma
Before reborn, as we all know, drawing legends is very hard, especially for casual and non-spending players. Some of us might draw one legend every year, some even lesser. The only free legend that we get, is the rank 30 legend and that is it. A huge proportion of the Soccer Spirits player-base, most middle-class players, would have accumulated only around 4~6 legends, through years and years of hard work, grinding PvE, PvP content.
Out of a sudden, Bigball decided that new players are going to get a similar amount of legends, huge amount of resources to help them start the game but what about existing middle-class players that have supported the game wholeheartedly, and dedicated their time to the game over the past few years when the game is down and out? They get nothing. NOTHING. Only new players, with accounts made after 29th June 2020, get those wonderful rewards.
This inconsiderate decision made by the Bigball developers, once again shown how foolish they are.
They are afraid that the whales/top players will get stronger and the new players will never catch up if the new players' rewards were distributed to every player. This is pure foolishness. Ask any whale or top player and they will tell you that, the new players' rewards gives a minimal impact to their progress/team and it is just like a small bonus to them. But to the middle-class players, these new players' rewards will help the accounts that they have cultivated for years greatly, to catch up with the endgame players greatly but unfortunately, they are not included to get these rewards.
What happens now is, these middle-class players with 4~6 legends, which makes up a significant % of the Soccer Spirits population, have to choose between retaining their old account that is no longer as competitive or to give up the account that they have cultivated for years, for a new account, just to stay competitive. It's heartbreaking every time when we give advice to long-time SS players to restart a new account because we feel their pain, to give up their accounts for many years.
As a rule of thumb, existing/returning players should consider restarting a new account if:
- You have 6 or less legends
- You do not have BOTH a legendary striker and goalkeeper (GK) in your legend pool
- You do not have sufficient legend spirials to max superboost your GK and striker to at least level 2 superboost.
If you meet ANY of the above 3 conditions, unfortunately, you do have to consider restarting a new account.
This rule of thumb is fairly conservative because we have seen quite a number of new players, starting with 10~15 legends and with the new players rewards, they are also getting 760+ legend spirials to max their legendary GK and striker to superboost level 5.
That being said, we also understand your pain of giving up an account with a huge player pool of SR cards, invested to a certain extent but remember, the game that we are playing is also known as, LEGEND spirits.
The pros of restarting a new account is that you will instantly increase your account strength in terms of legends, while the con is that your account strength in terms of SR cards will be likely to decrease. Certain SR cards can be important for clearing Colosseum of Trials and without those cards being invested, you will need to re-farm those cards again through drawing.
This is exactly why, the decision to restart a new account is such a dilemma.
Impacts
The impacts of this bad decision to only reward new players are multi-pronged.
- Existing players, especially the mid-game players, feel neglected and unappreciated by the Bigball developers, despite their continued support towards this game.
- Previously, old Soccer Spirits players will often return to the game because of their time and efforts invested into this game.
Existing/returning players that have given up their old accounts to start new accounts, are more likely to uninstall and quit the game permanently, in the near future.
The reason being, they are no longer as emotionally attached to their new accounts as compared to the old ones which they have dedicated their time to. The new account does not have that kind of sentimental value anymore.
Hence, these players, with new accounts, that have quitted the game, will not return to the game anymore.
Just because the developers were unwilling to part with some in-game virtual currency for all its player-base, but instead giving huge rewards to ONLY new players, this has left many existing mid-game players, feeling left out, neglected and most importantly, greatly underappreciated by the developers.
Again, this is something that we have taught the developers in previous game reviews but history still repeats itself.
Quoting what was written in the Dec' 2016 Soccer Spirits Major Patch Review: soccerspirits.freeforums.net/thread/573/december-major-review-soccer-spirits
The question is, how much are the developers willing to give, to keep the momentum going, to grow the game?
"Give and Take"
But if you are not willing to give, there will be eventually nothing left for you to take back.
Post Reborn Resources' Conversion
(Errors, Lies, Developers' Half-hearted Attitude & Non-Existent Customer Support)
(Errors, Lies, Developers' Half-hearted Attitude & Non-Existent Customer Support)
We will go straight to the point here, below are the various resources conversion errors that have been confirmed that they were not properly converted or not converted at all but were 'announced' to be fixed for most players after subsequent maintenance checks.
- Draw Exclusion Refund not given
- 5* & 6* Desty Refund not given
- Club Suits that have vanished post-reborn
- Clover Refund not done
- Slot attribute Pick Tickets refund not given
*Few of our clubmates have had the same club suits vanishing issue too.
*This was probably one of the most bizarre refund issue which we believed to be true also. Ellatrice seems to be this guy's waifu and thus, he's unlikely to get it wrong.
The reason that returning players need to know this, stem from the fact that based on our friend list, it states that players that have yet to login post-reborn, their game data has yet to be migrated from the previous version of Soccer Spirits. Hence, we have no ways to ascertain that if the Bigball developers did fix resource conversion errors for those accounts that have yet to migrate over to the REBORN version.
Given the Bigball developers' half-assed, half-hearted attitudes, in the manner that they have carried this conversion, we are truly concerned and worried for everyone.
All these resources are fruits of your hard work, and we understand that. Therefore, you deserve to get every single refund that belongs to your account, from the game developers.
In other games, this would have been things that players do not need to worry about and it will all be done nicely for them. But for Soccer Spirits, these scummy, cunning developers DID NOT carry out what they promised, with no whatsoever dedication to their work; they have no integrity, only half-assed attitude, which is exactly why the trust between the playerbase and the Bigball developers has been eroded over the years, due to many issues (such as bait & switch tactics, lies after lies), which we shall not elaborate here. This resource conversion fiasco further erodes the trust & faith between the players and the Bigball developers if there is any left, in the first place.
If there is anything Bigball developers needs to know, from this fiasco, it is that
They no longer have any credibility in the eyes of the players.
Bigball Lies & Non-existent Customer Support
Besides the resources listed above, there are also some other resources that Bigball developers claimed to have converted or fixed but didn't.
- Friendship points refund
- 6* Desty refund
In the very first bug megathread started by the community managers, after the REBORN major patch maintenance, there were dozens of SS players that provided feedback that they didn't receive their friendship points refund.
Link: old.reddit.com/r/soccerspirits/comments/hsmvn5/reborn_update_feedback_suggestions_bugs_megathread/
Screens:
Above are only a few of the people that didn't get their friendship point refund; there are lots more in the megathread and also on discord as well.
Few weeks later, the developers made an official announcement through the game's community manager that friendship point refunds have already been done, tripled checked, during the REBORN maintenance and they are not going to check them anymore.
So who is lying here?
Bigball developers OR the dozens of SS players that didn't receive their friendship points refund ??
After the official announcements, we have a clubmate who tried to contact support for her friendship point refunds, with full details given but there was no response from customer support for close to ~2 weeks now.
6* desty refund during 12/8/20 maintenance
Bigball developers made an error once again, sending 20 spirit cores for 6* desty refund to every player, regardless of the correct amount.
This 20 spirit cores were retrieved BUT the correct refund that every player was entitled to, was not resent.
Bigball is always the fastest to defend their own interests, but when it comes to the interests of the individual SS players, they couldn't care less.
They were quick to retrieve the 6* desty refund error (20 spirit cores) but did not bother to resend the correct 6* desty refund for everyone.
We had clubmates who tried to send customer support ticket but it has been almost a week now and there is still no response.
TL:DR
It's Bigball fault that the resource conversion was done POORLY, causing so much inconvenience for everyone.
Even the SS community manager came out and admitted that it's Bigball fault that the resource conversion was not done right, in the first place. Otherwise, all these subsequent troubles wouldn't have happened.
Question: Why put up a table saying that you are going to convert all those resources IF you do not plan to do it seriously? What kind of half-assed attitude is this?
Totally unacceptable by any standards.
Our advice to Bigball, stop lying to your players. If you said that you are going to do something, please do it fully as promised. Otherwise, don't make empty promises.
Because if you don't, things are only going to get worse. Soccer Spirits already had the worst start that you can get from the launch of any game, due to the poor performance of the Bigball developers.
The Grind, The Clover & The Fun - Before & After
Before Reborn
BB Developers: We are going to remake Soccer Spirits so that you can play casual, much lesser chores to do, much lesser grind and yet you can stay competitive.
Sheeps: Hooray!
Post-Reborn
Sheeps: Somehow this doesn't feel right. The grind, the chores that I need to do, seem to have increased and the whole thing doesn't feel fun anymore.
BB Developers: The game has less grind now! You can play casual and still stay competitive!
Sheeps: Hooray! (but something doesn't feel right)
Weeks passed...
Sheep A: feels frustrated playing Soccer Spirits.... something is not right... this is not fun....
Sheep B: don't doubt the BB developers... the grind is less now, we have less chores to do now!
Sheep A: Hooray!
Why is it not fun now? What's the difference?
The answer is actually very simple. It is because your freedom of choice has been taken away partially.
We will give you an in-real-life example in the spoiler below.
Imagine you are born in a family of doctors, your parents want you to become a doctor but you can choose the specialization that you want. Your choice of job is taken away but your parents would tell you that you are free to choose your specialization.
This is the same for the current Soccer Spirits Reborn. The Bigball developers expect you to do ALL matches that they have laid out for you but you can choose the player spirials that you want to farm.
This is the same for the current Soccer Spirits Reborn. The Bigball developers expect you to do ALL matches that they have laid out for you but you can choose the player spirials that you want to farm.
Before REBORN, you can choose to spend your ST on many different things that are OPTIONAL; swirlies, spirit stone matches, exp matches, penguins, gold matches, boss minions, story mode, elementals, evolution material matches and doing either of these matches, will result in progression in your team, directly or indirectly.
Sheeps were complaining that this is too complicated, too many choices!!!
Hence, Bigball decided to redesign the game for the sheeps.
Soccer Spirits - Sheep Edition
After REBORN, it's very simple now; a full set of limited matches are laid out for the sheeps to do and sheeps are just supposed to do ALL of them; do ALL, no choices or any decision making involved.
There are no options, no choices, no freedom. That's the life of a sheep.
So why are people frustrated if this is what they want?
The Truth: Most people are already sheeps in real life. These people come into the game, deep down in their hearts, they do not want to continue as sheeps in-game; they want to be free, they want to be something more, they want to be able to express intelligence in their in-game choices and participate in intelligent decision making and feel intelligent. However, they still complain like sheeps, like how they usually are.
And the joke is, Bigball developers actually took them seriously and allowed the sheeps to dictate the directions of the game development.
Now, all these freedom of choices has been taken away. Some sheeps know that this is a result of their requests and they keep quiet but they do not like the game anymore. Quietly, they quit the game, leaving Bigball developers frustrated as to why their sheeps are dying and leaving the game, despite them redesigning the game to please the sheeps.
Me: How dumb do these developers have got to be, to be listening to sheeps LMFAO
Sheeps: F**cking dumb.
(I can't stop laughing tbh; this is too funny but it's the hard truth.)
Sheeps: F**cking dumb.
(I can't stop laughing tbh; this is too funny but it's the hard truth.)
But of course, there are also sheeps that love to continue as sheeps in-game, sheeps that enjoy these brainless repetitive chores and they will defend this redesign of the game. They do not have enough of their life as sheep in real life and they want more of that in game. We respect that, we respect their choices, and we respect these sheeps. They are true-blue sheeps.
Enough of the sheep talk, let's go back to comparing the grind, before & after REBORN quantitatively.
Before REBORN,
The only limited matches that most players might do everyday, are the 2X fairy match, 3X spirit stone matches and 3X GOLD matches, presuming that you are done with penguins, swirlies, elementals.
And most people actually use skip tickets for these matches. It's done in, let's say ~3 minutes?
From time to time, maybe some people will login to dump their ST, using auto mode, on guerilla gold matches, during event X2 gold. But it's optional.
In nature, matches before REBORN are more OPTIONAL than compulsory.
After REBORN,
The gameplay has become highly restrictive.
It gives people the feeling that you are supposed to do ALL the limited matches that Bigball developers have laid out for you.
In nature, matches after REBORN feels more COMPULSORY than optional.
And there are not enough skip tickets to go around.
But the Bigball developers tell you that, the grind is less now, casual players can play with less grind and yet stay competitive.
Which leads to players (sheeps) being confused because developers to them, are in a power of position and sheeps do not question the people of authority.
But the truth is, everyday, you need like 1+ hour of time to finish all these limited matches as compared to maybe few minutes that you would spend before REBORN, to finish the limited matches, with skip tickets.
Hence, the existing & returning player-base continues to play with confusion in their mind and frustration in their heart.
Highly Restrictive Gameplay (Clover)
Beside gameplay decisions of which matches to do being removed, the use of clover (bonus drop) has also become highly restrictive.
After REBORN, the clover system has been changed to become a limited gauge (check at the space-time continuum screen), dependent on its level; meaning you can only use it on a restricted amount of matches.
Most existing & returning players should have your new clover system (fatigue system) at level 7 (140 / 140).
Before REBORN, developers promised that the new clover system will give 210 / 210 at level 7 but turns out otherwise. Oh well.
Again, we would like to tell to the Bigball developers:
Stop lying to your players, do as what you promised.
Before REBORN, you could use the clover system to gain a bonus drop in any of the matches that you desire.
After REBORN, you might still have the false impression that your freedom to use clover still exist but the truth is that, you will find out that you are supposed to just use your clover on the limited space-time continuum matches that the developers have laid out for you.
After doing them, your clovers have mostly run out and you have none to use it on anything else.
Soccer Spirits REBORN presents a highly restrictive form of gameplay, with not reduced grind BUT reduced gameplay decision-making.
To put it plainly, it's redesigned for a bunch of people (sheeps) that cannot make gameplay decisions so you just do ALL the matches that the developers have laid out for you; the same goes for the clover system; you don't need to think, just use them all on the limited matches in space-time continuum.
*Update to Clover System 26/08/2020 Patch Notes
Bigball decided to increase clover by the amount in the below table.
We thought that clover gameplay is finally not going to be as highly restrictive as what it was before.
But turns out, we were WRONG. Bigball also increased clover consumption of matches by 10X.
Probably this is the method that they came up with, to fulfill what they promised earlier and yet keep their highly restrictive gameplay model.
We are speechless; these Bigball developers are hopeless already.
We thought that clover gameplay is finally not going to be as highly restrictive as what it was before.
But turns out, we were WRONG. Bigball also increased clover consumption of matches by 10X.
Probably this is the method that they came up with, to fulfill what they promised earlier and yet keep their highly restrictive gameplay model.
We are speechless; these Bigball developers are hopeless already.
The Fun Factor
Fun and freedom are usually proportional for most people whereas time required and fun are inversely proportional.
Grind/Farming in soccer spirits has become highly restrictive and the amount of time required to finish the grind has increased, thus, the fun factor is very much reduced.
And because the grind is perceived to be more COMPULSORY than optional post-reborn, there is an additional feeling of being forced to do something that is not fun.
All these adds up to the frustrations that players are feeling right now, after REBORN.
Competitive Casual Players, Do they Really Exist Post-Reborn?
The two words that we are going to scrutinize here is "casual" & "competitive".
Casual
Is compulsory farming/grinding for 1+ hour everyday considered 'casual' to you? This is not yet inclusive of time required for PvP, CoD, CoT and event match. We still have Galaxy Live and Club matches incoming.
Does this sound 'casual' to you, my dear?
Competitive
It takes approximately ~2 months to max a legend now from playing 'casually', as explained above.
For these casual players to play competitive, they will need approximately ~22 months of playing to max one team of 11 PvP legends because afterall, this game is a.k.a Legend Spirits.
So, does Bigball developers mean that,
Casual players will be competitive after 1.5 years?
OR
Casual players are to be competitive in Platinum/Diamond PvP league?
What we feel that Bigball actually means is,
Players Can Stay Competitive, Playing Casually, w/ Spending Post-Reborn
Because if you do not spend, your game progress will be like a tortoise.
Hence, not only do you have to grind/farm 1+ hour everyday, you are expected to spend, my dear; so as to stay competitive.
Otherwise, Bigball doesn't even consider you their sheeps, you are considered as their tortoise.
[Review] Game Rewards - Before & After REBORN
The game rewards have been changed drastically before & after REBORN.
Here, we shall provide screens of the rewards before REBORN and you can compare it yourself.
For example, given that 1 DS = 10 crystals, based on Bigball developers' conversion, you can calculate for yourself the amount of game rewards' reduction post REBORN.
Colosseum of Despair Rewards - Before REBORN:
Colosseum of Trials Rewards (CoT) - Before REBORN
CoT rewards are significantly reduced post REBORN.
PvP Rewards - Before REBORN
PvP rewards are significantly reduced post REBORN.
Of course, there were also game rewards from other removed content such as Colosseum of Infinity which gives 2000+ crystals bi-weekly.
The Fun Factor
Overall, the general sentiments from the player base is that the game rewards post REBORN are not as good as before.
Fun and rewards are usually proportional. Players are less motivated to play, due to the reduced game rewards.
People are not excited to spend their precious time for minuscule rewards because it's not fun when the game rewards are unappealing.
Improvements to the Draw System
As most people would feel, this is probably the ONLY positive takeaway from the REBORN major patch.
Before REBORN, players are supposed to draw a legend, and then try to max the legend through other resources, such as littres, yowus etc.
And because legends are hard to draw, players are likely to have farmed resources faster than obtaining legends and have the resources required to max a legend up to full superb-ed, readily available when they draw them.
After REBORN, it's a totally opposite scenario. Players draw legends faster than farming resources. Players are always trying to play a catch-up game now, in terms of maxing their legends.
The reality of requiring multiple months or even years to max the numerous legends that they have drawn, is definitely an uncomfortable feeling, that is daunting on some players right now.
Before REBORN, every time someone draw a legend (red ball), it's an euphoria feeling.
After REBORN, every time someone draw a legend (purple ball), it's still an happy feeling but of course less exciting.
Regardless, the fact that the draw rates of legends are improved is something worth celebrating for all soccer spirits players.
Just one last thing that we would like to mention is that, the visuals/images of SR balls and legend balls are so fugly now.
Previously, SR ball (black) and legend ball (red) share the same visuals but of different colors. Those were impressive-looking.
Now, SR ball (red) shares the same visuals with R (4*) and N (3*) balls. It's just so UGLY now.
Question: Why change the visuals/design of the balls from draws?
Moral of the story:
Don't fix/change what's not broken
You wasted your time, resources, and efforts for something WORSE than before.
Why not put these time, resources to better use, to do something more meaningful for SS players, such as doing their resource conversion properly?
Less RNG Paywall for P2W
Before REBORN, one could spend 10,000+ crystals and not draw any legends.
And even with the boosted rates for specific legends, one could spend tons of crystals but not draw the legend that they desired.
After REBORN, you are guaranteed to draw the specific legend that you want, with either custom or pickup draws.
However, you are not encouraged to draw for duplicates to superboost your legends because of two reasons:
- Crystals are expensive and you want to save your crystals for other specific or new legends
- You can get a duplicate worth of 50 legend spirials from farming for ~6 days
Unless you are a mega-whale and wishes to enjoy the max prowess of a new legend 2 months ahead of other players, then you should draw to superboost your legends to max as fast as possible
[Review] Gap Between F2P and P2W players Post-Reborn
As mentioned earlier,
- Farmable in-game content rewards reduced -> meaning it's harder now for F2P players to catch up to P2W players
Hence, gap between F2P & P2W players widens, to the advantage of P2W players significantly. - Drop rate of legends increased -> meaning P2W players get more legends faster
To be fair, this also benefits F2P players.
But the gap between F2P & P2W players still widens, to the advantage of P2W players significantly.
But however, this is on the presumption that both F2P and P2W players play the game consistently.
Because P2W players might not be able to withstand doing the endless repetitive, brainless chores ahead of them for months.
Then again, the reduced in-game content rewards made it harder for F2P players to catch up anyway.
Game Balancing
Now for the review that everyone is waiting for -> Soccer Spirits REBORN Game Balancing Review
Let's start off by touching on player chains, something that existing & returning players would miss a lot; some people might wonder, where have the chains gone to?
Player chains are non-existent now, post REBORN.
For example, affection chains between Milky and Vonchi, Nemesis chain between Vitos and Duke because of their common affection towards Valkyrie Beth.
All these connections with the story-lore made game strategy in Soccer Spirits more than just a mundane interaction between skills, spirit stones etc.
Story-lore aside, the huge amount of player chains between 5* / SR cards in mono / dual element teams has also provided them with a sizable power-up to be able to go head-to-head with those overpowered mono-legend teams.
Veteran players in the community, are always asking Bigball to expand the story-lore and build the fascinating story-lore that we have, into the game.
But Bigball developers doesn't listen to their community. Instead, they decided to do WHATEVER that they WANT to, with their game, as usual.
Their decision to remove chains, have moved Soccer Spirits in a regressive direction, towards something more mundane and boring.
So what happens now post REBORN?
Player chains have been integrated into something called SuperBoost
APU, teamwork, superbs are also integrated into the new superboost system.
As a result?
With the total integration of player chains into the new superboost system, individual card power increases significantly.
Mono legend teams that were already dominating the PvP meta before REBORN, gets a greater boost of team power +++.
Mono / dual elements teams that were already struggling before REBORN, gets a reduction in team power ---.
We need to look at this with arbitrary numbers, to understand the magnitude of the impact on game balancing
- Mono legend teams +3000 power, Mono / dual elements team -3000 power
- So, the gap now, between mono legend and mono / dual elements team, widens between by 6000 team power, to the advantage of mono legend team.
Coupled with the tons of legend and legend-related resources that Bigball developers are throwing at ONLY new players, it is no doubt that we are only going to see MORE and MORE mono-legendary teams in PvP in the future.
So yes, the game balance now is skewed sharply towards legends; mono legend teams are the strongest because legends were already strong before REBORN and Bigball developers made them even stronger post-REBORN.
The Reality Change
Game balance is not just an interaction between the cards but also a reflection of players' mentality.
In reality, existing & returning players might suddenly feel that the teams that they are going up against suddenly became much stronger and they are not able to deal with it.
These players are confused. What has happened? Why has everyone's teams gotten so much stronger suddenly?
Why is there such a reality change?
The reason being,
Previously, before REBORN, whales were not very motivated to APU+30 their teams because legend drop rates are very low.
Hence, before REBORN, you were mostly going up against FSPU+160 legend teams with little player chains and low APU.
Translated to superboost level, previously, you were mostly going up against teams with ONLY superboost level 2~3.
Post-REBORN, it's in human nature, to max superboost their cards, and there is a greater ease of doing so (APU+30) because now you only need 10 duplicates compared to 30, also with the increased legend drop rate for whales.
In addition, most whales have their legends already at 2~3 superboost level from, pre-REBORN.
Hence, going by pre-REBORN terminology, now you are going up against ALL APU+30 FSPU+160 teams, with full player chains incorporated into the superboost, on their legends.
That's why you are feeling this reality change post-REBORN.
Therefore, the PvP game balance now is no longer FSPU+160 teams, but MOSTLY APU+30 teams and you are expected to do the same, to max superboost your team.
This is the same for PvE because developers are not going to design PvE content for superboost level 2 (aka FSPU+160) teams anymore. They are going to design PvE content for max superboost teams. Prepare yourself :)
PvE Game Balance
Currently, PvE is still the same old content; OHKO for all 60 CoD floors.CoT are doable, non-RNG for most trials, time consuming for some but as mentioned earlier, CoT rewards have dropped drastically.
But F2P players have no choices but to at least try to do both of them because they are the consistent sources of crystals.
Where are the PvP balancing changes?
Unfortunately, during the REBORN major patch, there was no balancing changes.
Hence, we will discuss the balancing changes in the subsequent patches.
Clearly, these balancing changes were just quick-fix measures, with intentions to put out the fire wherever there is one.
The reason being, the whole planning for the game balance.... if there was one in the first place.... but most likely there aint any effective planning at all... resulted in a whole mess of the game balance post REBORN...
First, let us list out some of the known PvP imbalances post REBORN:
- The first as we know it, overpowered legend teams all over the place
- Second, HP of all goalkeepers were dropped by ~1000 somehow and broke the PvP balance
- Attackers front became unstoppable, because most legend backlines are not able to steal from them.
- Long range strikers have their actives bugged and accumulated beyond the limits
Of course, the first imbalance is still not fixed up to now.
As we all know from previous experiences, Bigball has openly admitted that legends are supposed to be a notch above SR cards and any SR cards that could previously compete with legends, such as Vaidi (Goalkeeper), were nerfed BADLY.
In the August 12th update,
Bigball developers focused their efforts to clamp down on attackers front and long range striker teams.
Attackers' reflection damage and ball holding power has been reduced by 15% and interceptors were buffed both by reducing their cooldown and increasing the capabilities of their actives.
What about the other changes in the holding power and reflection damage of other roles?
Anything in the range of 50%~70% or below, shifting the values up or down, doesn't really change anything much, to the PvP meta.
Anything in the range of 50%~70% or below, shifting the values up or down, doesn't really change anything much, to the PvP meta.
Basically, this means that Bigball are nerfing the PvP teams of anyone using long range strikers OR attacker fronts.
This doesn't make your team unviable but it just makes it harder for your team in PvP;
So, what can we take in from this episode, as players?
If you have a good PvP strategy or PvP team, it is best not to show it.
These Bigball developers are going around to put out the 'fire' or PvP imbalances as they show up.
They are just reacting to whatever the 'community' or 'sheeps' tell them to nerf.
And even with the above balancing changes made over the last month, the game balancing is still in a BIG MESS currently, as felt by many players.
Coupled with the infinite loading bug, this actually gave the playerbase a 'great time' during the first month of REBORN.
To be honest,
What a horrendous way to start off Soccer Spirits REBORN
Clearly, Bigball developers have no idea what they are doing; they are just throwing things out to trial and error instead of planning and testing everything carefully before releasing them.
Hence, existing and returning players should be prepared to experience major PvP imbalances, in terms of game balancing for the upcoming months, until our incompetent Bigball developers figure it out.
Future of Soccer Spirits
Well, since January 2020, these Bigball developers have been talking a big game; they want to make Soccer Spirits great again but then again, their performance?
- Half-assed, half-hearted efforts in resource conversion for existing players, losing all credibility and trust.
- Rushing the release of the REBORN version with unacceptable BUGs that are yet to be fixed >1 month now, at the point of writing
- Insufficient testing and planning to ensure game balance post REBORN
Is this how they plan to make Soccer Spirits great again?
Bigball developers are a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth & the size of the brain
They talk a big game but their performance tells it all.
The only thing that Bigball has accomplished up to now, post REBORN, is to sink the game into a deeper abyss, with the new, highly restrictive gameplay design and the current BIG MESS to game balance, with their new superboost system.
There is no future for Soccer Spirits REBORN, till year 2021
As the Bigball developers put it, they are going to spend ONE year to strip the game apart, and then putting the pieces back together.
Galaxy live returning in Oct' 2020 and Club match months later
Those are not the future of Soccer Spirits, those are past content that we have seen before.
It's unimaginable to us, why would any developer decide to spend ONE year of time and resources to strip the game apart and then putting it back together, and finally to pat themselves on their back and say to themselves:
We've done a great job?
Is that what the Bigball developers planned to do?
Are their brains stuck in a clogged toilet bowl?
On a serious note, we really do not see any future to Soccer Spirits until year 2021, after club matches are restored.
We do not know,
How will these Bigball developers once again plan to take the game ahead, in year 2021 ?
Breaking Up with the Rotten Apples
It's time to take the rotten apples out of the basket.
Otherwise, the whole basket of apples will become rotten eventually.
These rotten developers think that they are irreplaceable in the company, because they are the ones who are the most familiar with the Soccer Spirits programming code.
The truth is that, in any company,
No one is irreplaceable.
What are the characteristics of a rotten apple?
- Poor work performance
- Half-hearted behaviour towards their work, as shown in their performance
- Blame shifting attitude
Who are these exactly?
- The Developer(s) in charge of resource conversion for the REBORN major patch.
These are the developers that caused the company to lose ALL credibility and trust from the player base.
Their half-assed performance, caused so much consequential workload for SS customer support, inconvenience for SS players, and most importantly, caused SS REBORN to get off to a very bad start, leaving a very bad taste to the existing & returning players.
The reputation of the company is DESTROYED because of these rotten apples. - The Developer(s) in charge of following up with 3rd party programming outsources, leading to the 'big incident'
The lack of supervision, follow-up over the work of the 3rd party programmers led to the 2 months delay of Soccer Spirits REBORN.
It totally messed up the timeline and resulted in the major disconnect between the awesome 6th Anniversary Events and the REBORN update.
Otherwise, the 6th anniversary events might have retained a huge portion of the players and given the game more time to fix itself.
Rotten Bigball Developers Playing the Victim Card
Of course, we expect these rotten apples to play the victim card; saying that they have been working tirelessly post REBORN and dedicating their heart and soul to Soccer Spirits, over the years.
We've heard too much of these. The truth is, their performance doesn't make the cut. They must be held accountable so others will take their work more seriously.
And It's exactly because of this group of rotten apples, that Soccer Spirits is in its current state.
These rotten apples need to be held accountable, to restore the credibility of the company and rebuild the trust/faith between the players & the developers.
Which is why it is extremely important to teach good moral values to our children so that they do not grow up to become like these scummy, rotten developers with half-hearted attitude and zero dedication towards their work. Some of you might want to argue otherwise, but their performance shows it all. The reality, the truth is right in front of us.
These rotten apples need to go.
Seeking Advice from the Great Ones
After sorting out the rotten apples in the basket, the next thing that needs to be done, is to
Seek Advice from the Great Ones
The developer(s) leading the helm of game development for Soccer Spirits right now, need to face up to the fact that, looking at what has been done, looking at how the game has been redesigned, they are not able to revive Soccer Spirits by themselves.
The developmental plan of Soccer Spirits right now, is flawed and in the wrong direction.
Game balance is in a BIG MESS.
Results, Figures, Revenues, Player Base are all staring you in the eyes, telling you the facts that have been regurgitated throughout this review.
The developmental plan of Soccer Spirits right now, is flawed and in the wrong direction.
Game balance is in a BIG MESS.
Everything is not working out.
Results, Figures, Revenues, Player Base are all staring you in the eyes, telling you the facts that have been regurgitated throughout this review.
Clearly, you can't do this alone.
Seek help from as many people, who is great with game design, as you can.
Stop listening to the sheeps that are always the loudest
Because their advice aren't going to save your game. If advice from sheeps can save the game, pigs can fly too.
We are sure that they are many such great people at Com2US, who are willing to help.
And sometimes, you can't expect quality help without paying. Be prepared to pay for advice.
Because quality advice, doesn't usually come for free.
Final Word
For the past few years, Soccer Spirits have had a really bad, worsening and acrimonious relationship with its player base.
Soccer Spirits REBORN was really a great chance for this game to start anew, to restart on the right foot with its player base.
As what we observed, many long-time soccer spirits players did return to the game for the REBORN major patch.
But all that awaited them was disappointment, an infinity of bugs and their hard-farmed resources missing, post REBORN.
Sometimes, a bad first impression ends it all.
This is probably not your fault but the fault of certain people; you were just unlucky to be on the same boat as these people.
To Our Apocalypse Fans
Stay safe, maintain good hygiene, wash your hands regularly, practice safe distancing and social distancing.
Covid-19 pandemic is still on.
We do not know how long it will last.
But life still goes on... Try not to die before Soccer Spirits REBORN does... Good luck ;)
Signing off,
Bruce Nolan
fuck this game .-.