Submitted by Sammy Snyder on
Kongregate's Animation Throwdown sounds great on paper. Who doesn't want to play a collectible card game featuring all the main and side characters from Fox's most popular animated series? The game includes characters and locations from King of the Hill, Family Guy, Futurerama, Bob's Burgers and American Dad, but unfortunately Animation Throwdown falls flat in all the key areas.
Instead of highlighting a new app for our App of the Week, we are going to look at 5 ways Kongregate can save Animation Throwdown before mobile gamers lose interest and move onto a new CCG.
Add sound clips - This is a main complaint in the Customer Reviews section of the App Store and gaming forums. Instead of licensing sound bites from the different shows, the characters just say their taglines in text. Players want to hear Roger insult Stewie, not read it.
Add more cards with different abilities - There is no deck building or gameplay strategy in Animation Throwdown. This is the biggest flaw of the game. All the cards are basically the same with a few slight variations on attack, defense and abilities. The major problem with card battles is that there is really no way to change the outcome. You can basically tell if you're going to win or lose by the third card played, and there is never anything in your deck to save you if you're losing. This is because there are no real ability cards, only cards that can enhance your character cards once per battle. In other CCGs there are spells and different enhancements that can change the outcome of a battle. This is not the case in Animation Throwdown, and it makes deck building boring. You just replace older cards with better cards as you advance in the game. Whoever has the best cards, or best draw is almost always going to win.
Add a real PvP mode - There is a single player mode and an Arena mode in Animation Throwdown, but you don't really play other players. You just play their cards controlled by an AI. The pairing system is also bad. In the beginning Arena mode is too simple, but as you advance and unlock new characters your opponents get increasingly harder. The whole system is confusing, pointless and honestly quite boring.
Fix the upgrading system - Upgrading your cards is also confusing and difficult. You need energy to upgrade your cards, but you can only earn energy by recycling cards, getting it randomly in a card pack or by completing quests. The main problem with the recycling system is that you need to fuse similar cards once you upgrade them 3 times. For example, you need to unlock two Professor Farnsworth cards, then upgrade them both to level 3 before you can upgrade them past level 4. This not only gets confusing, but it takes forever since the most affordable way to purchase cards is buying them one at a time for 1,000 coins. Not being able to upgrade your cards makes your deck too weak, which means you cant' advance in the game. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game, and the only way to avoid it is spend real world money. This system also makes you not want to recycle common cards, because you need doubles to fuse, but you don't get a lot of doubles in the first place. It's a real catch-22 and it sucks.
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Upgrade your characters - In the beginning of the game you are allowed to choose a main character from one of the five television shows, but you can't upgrade this character. Your main character keeps the same max health and abilities no matter how much XP you earn in Arena mode. Instead of applying XP to one character to improve your health and abilities, you must unlock stronger characters to advance in the game. This sucks the fun out of grinding since the reward is kind of lame. You want to build your own character stats, not just unlock a new one.
Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards has a lot of potential, but the App Store is saturated with way better collectible card games. Hopefully Kongregate is receiving enough feedback and plans to improve the game with future updates. If not I'm afraid a lot of people are going to grow bored and move onto better CCGs.
Comments
Skye replied on Permalink
So this article is actually garbage, the person who wrote this probably has very little played time on the game and doesn't understand it at all. I want to mention that I have spent no money on this app and yet have found getting good cards easy to come by due to actually learning about how the game works and not just playing for 5 minutes and making a decision on the game.
First I'm going to address the biggest misunderstanding that the author writes about which is how your hero won't become stronger no matter how much xp in arena you get and to have a stronger hero you have to "unlock" the stronger ones. This is completely and absolutely wrong, first and foremost there is little difference between any of the Heros in terms of strength. Each hero has different amounts of hp, but it isn't the only thing you look for when choosing a hero, each has different abilities with some Heros having show specific abilities meaning using cards from the show they're from is vital to that Heros success where as other Heros don't require specific cards to work well. Secondly the Heros actually do upgrade in strength from doing arena. Every hero starts at level 1 and gains strength based upon tokens you earn for that hero to upgrade them to a maximum of level 10. The hero you earn them for is partially random because you don't always get them and they are not always for the hero you are currently using. That being said you can see which hero the tokens are for before the battle and reroll if you want them for a different hero, this however comes with a cost of 100 coins. Personally I never do this and still most of my Heros are currently level 4.
Secondly I want to address the upgrading system, the system is designed so you actually don't upgrade every card. The author of this article is discussing upgrading grey cards and how it is disheartening when they don't get the results they want. The reason this argument is invalid is because you're actually not meant to be upgrading your common cards much and if you do you shouldn't really waste your time fusing them. I say this when I did that myself and found it a waste compared to upgrading cards which are of higher quality. Which are green, blue or hopefully purple. If you upgrade a grey card you card get all that energy back that you put into the card if you recycle it. Because of this you would actually just be better off if you saved that energy for more powerful cards which in general will actually help you win games.
Thirdly I'm going to address the authors complete lack of knowledge about how to get cards. 99% of the cards you get from card packs costing 1000 coins are meant for you to recycle in all fairness. Most are grey and you get some greens but it's not the most efficient way to build a deck. I've been playing since around about launch of the app on iOS and so far from card packs I've only gotten greys and greens with 1 exception where I got a Pawtucket patriot ale from one which happens to be a purple card so I was overjoyed to get. Now this being said I have completed 2 quests which give a blue card it higher as a reward and yet my current deck includes 15 blues 1 purple and the rest are greens or greys. The cause for this is because the game allows you to gain blue cards for completing bosses in the adventure mode multiple times. Since they are blue cards it's amazing how easy they actually are to get considering the game tells you which boss can drop which cards and allows you to see how that card changes as it levels up. After you get a few blue cards you start to realise why upgrading grey and green cards is worthless.
Finally I want to address the comment about more abilities. There are literally tons of cards with different abilities, you have sturdy, crazed, punch, shield, gas, jab, heal, cheer, crippled, cheer all, cripple all, sheild all, heal all, recover, boost, payback, leech, motivate and bomb. There might be others I'm forgetting FYI I'm not sure this is the entire list. However some of the abilities (the ones which have all at the end of the title) actually are show specific in the sense that if it's a family guy card they'll heal all family guy cards. But some versions of it will heal all cards no matter their show. This means knowing how their all abilities work is vital to using them well. Nothing sucks more than having a heal all card heal no one because they are show specific.
Finally I do want to say that not everything this author writes is wrong, a proper pvp arena would be nice. It also would be nice to have sound clips and spell cards and have a better control over the cards. That being said the way the game works now is actually fairly enjoyable in its own way. It's not a traditional card game but it has its own unique strategy that does to a degree work around if dropping another card down is best or if you should do a combo.
Hardaway19 replied on Permalink
I agree way more with your comments than the writers. I have tons of hours into this game and no money. Have 3 legendary and about 10 epics. Couple level 5 heroes also. Not gonna call the article garbage, because they make some valid points but think you summed it up much better than they did.
Skye replied on Permalink
I agree that there are issues I just dislike the fact that the author was just writing an article without knowing anything about the game.
Joblin replied on Permalink
I have been putting hours upon hours into this game over the last couple of weeks, and getting new cards is as painful as the author makes it sound. I don't know how you are getting all these blue cards from adventures, as no exaggeration, I average any card for reward probably once every 20 to 30 plays, and most of the time I get a green or grey (admittedly one legendary and one epic - brings my grand total to maybe 5 blue and 1 purple). The % of wins against the bosses just brings about such ludicrously low odds of getting cards
Upgrading heroes in the arena is certainly possible, but again aligning itself with the ludicrously low odds. I average winning a token maybe once every 7 arena wins. I always watch the ads too, and several weeks in and I still don't have any level 5 Heroes, nor am I really close with my level 4's.
On the topic of upgrading - even if the gold packs are intended to be recycled, the power produced from these cards is atrocious compared against the cost of upgrading. In the adventure game, I'm around level 15, and my opponents have around 50hp, and at least 4*** cards. I'm not inclined to do the math right now but thats at least 500 power point - probably around 1000. I don't know if I've mined that much in total since I've started, and that's just to get one card updated.
The authors comments are ripe with bitterness and certainly exaggerate several aspects of the game, but they're not far off. The game has the potential to be a great deal of fun but between the excruciatingly long timers, exorbitant cost of upgrading cards, and difficulty upgrading cards/heroes it pushes the game into the F2P category. And I can see someone sinking a lot of money into this app and getting very little reward for it
Skye replied on Permalink
Ok so I can tell you're doing something wrong right off the bat. You say you're on level 15 of the campaign and the boss has 50 hp and 4** cards. This means you're increasing the mastery of the boss and that is actually a waste of time. I have went up to chapter 20 and the boss only has 30 hp but I only defeat the bosses once because they don't give anything special if you defeat them multiple times. Instead to get as many blues I fought the same bosses from the first 5 chapters to get the blues. They cost less energy and are easier. I literally fought Bertram over and over again until he gave me 4 Brian's and then started working on harder bosses. They can also drop a card called rare shards which gives 50 power which helps you level up your cards. I currently have I currently have 5 level 5* blues and 8 level 5 blues and now 2 purples level 6. The extra strength gained from 5* to 5** isn't actually that big nor is the gain from 5 to 5* so you don't actually need to power up too much. Especially since you shouldn't be going against the higher bosses to gain blues.
I know that the arena can be annoying though it took me tons of battles to get a level 5 hero I'm nearly rank 9 and just got one this morning and unfortunately it's a hero I don't want to use but it is what it is.
Whety72 replied on Permalink
Lol this article is hilarious. While there are major downfalls to this game its obvious to anyone who's played the author of this article played for literally minutes before writing this. Top to bottom article is filled with inaccuracies. It's nice to see some of the comments by people who've actually played and know the game.
Jazmine Heredia replied on Permalink
Sorry but you are wrong in a couple areas....it isn't that difficult and confusing to upgrade your cards. I get giggawats ALL the time and I have never spent real money here and work and have kids and all and I still find time to play and get my share of the fun...also you can too power up your first chosen hero, I chose Leela and now she's at LEVEL 5 with over 40 health points when it was like 22 in the beginning lol seriously it's either you just hate the game, or maybe you're mad about your bad luck in this game, or you're just impatient and just want more power ups and better cards and heroes faster. You gotta earn it and it's such a huge game and there are TONS of cards. Nobody even knows how EASILY my first Legendary card came....I have been playing this game since the month it came out and I got my first legendary legendary card just by completing a QUESTLINE and a couple ADVENTURE ISLANDS. One pack had that purple Pawtucket PATRIOT ALE card!!!!! Sure most of the cards do have similar hit points and health points and abilities, but there ARE ways to change your outcome of the battles, how do I know??? BECAUSE I COME ACROSS IT EVERYDAY I PLAY....My opponent had all RARES AND LEGENDARIES and all I had were RARES and EPICS and I had 3 health points and my opponent had 16 and I ended up breaking some of their cards and WON with a THIRD TIER COMMON card. lmao PLAY THE GAME more, and yes I meant to put all that in CAPS , this is still a NEW GAME, give it a chance to GROW!!!!! They just added Consuela and Rumbles and there will be more. Get a graphics design job and help 'fix' the game if you think it sucks so much. Most of your blog is invalid and inaccurate. I can post a bigger, longer, and more detailed blog about how invalid THIS blog is. But I have a life and I was just looking here to answer my own question, but instead I'm correcting "opinions." Lol