When are they going to pay attention to the players is the real question.

Well now lets see where to start. I could start by referencing some old rants of mine (which are still pretty relevant unfortunately) or just start over... Yeah it has been awhile since I last posted. Took a break from the game and then came back and it looked like things were "better" but yeah they aren't. Also going to say I have been working on this post for a few days now which is why it starts off with the July events. But I will get to the August events which are even more annoying.

For starters I am going to paste something from the google play store in regards to this game....
Why is Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast free to play?
We want every Iron Maiden fan and every mobile gamer to be able to enjoy our game! You can fully enjoy the game without ever spending a penny! You can battle it out, earning every piece of of the game through sheer victory on the battlefield, or you can speed up your progress by purchasing Ironite in the Vault.
Yes people that is a cut and a pasted item. Supposedly it is possible but I am not completely sure of that.

Let's start with the July event. I can't beat it. Period end of discussion. Why is that? Well according to a few of the other posts it is because I don't have the right characters and talismans. Ok I get that so how do I get them wait those were the rewards from past events. The characters are still sort of available but the talismans nope not available at all. Let us start with the character collection aspect.....

Lets see now we have only a few methods of character collection and those are: turn in event souls; collect soul fragments from a grind task or use event souls. Basically the event soul item is a crap shoot in which you can get 3 and get all the event souls or go through 50 and get none. Turning in event souls and collecting the soul fragments is a great method to PAY TO WIN. Why because I have as of yet to see an event that actually drops the needed number of souls to collect the fragments. Yeah you got to buy them with ironite and yet again there isn't enough drops to provide you with enough ironite to not have to spend cash. This leaves the last method that most people use and that is grind through it. Which if it wasn't for that auto-play feature this game would be so done. Oh can anyone tell me about any other game that has that feature? Cause I sure can't think of any. And more on that later.

And now we have another method of character collection. This one is the new new one that they just started. First you collect enough of the prerequisite alternative currency to buy a key that allows you limited access to the dungeon that has an associated list of achievements to complete in order to get said special character. Of course the dungeon is on a timer and the number of times that you have to complete it are in the hundred's. Translation this is going to cost a LOT of resources and a significant amount of time. Yet again its a really good thing we have an auto-play feature.

Lets use the angel and the gambler as examples. Yeah it was possible to get them during the event but it sure seems like most people didn't. Someone already figured out the number of souls needed to get enough fragments to get one of them and yeah it wasn't pretty. So where does that leave us collecting frontier coins and buying fragments. Now why would we do this to ourselves you might ask. Well the answer is pretty obvious if you look at the current event. It appears that they have built this event (the hellfire thing) off of the stats of those 2 eddies. A chunk of the forums are pretty much saying its pretty well impossible to beat without the following eddie and/or other characters, where the eddie is the critical piece.

Yeah this isn't the first time that they have done this either. It absolutely isn't acceptable that you have to have completed and gotten the rewards from the previous event(s) before you can really beat the next one. Unless the only way you couldn't beat said event is by not playing. A gimmie type item is one thing but an event like the angel and the gambler yeah no.

Oh and yeah pretty much the same for event/special talismans. And there should be an added caveat of "there has to be a counter to them". If you can't counter it there is a problem. And releasing the counter a few months later isn't acceptable either.

And has everyone else noticed that they are redoing some of the older characters? Tells you how unbalanced the game has gotten. Where the original characters can't even compete in any aspect of the game other than the actual story line part.
Speaking of unbalanced how about the events with an easy that is so annoyingly easy that if there is any task associated with it it is almost impossibly to complete. To the mid level which is ok but nothing interesting, to the hard which is just fecking stupidly annoying to complete. Currently I really feel sorry for new players because they really can not compete on any level other than in the story.

Tied into unbalanced, how about the descriptions on some of the abilities of the characters. For example I present to you the sentinel corrupt rescuer. Lets see now, no issue with battery or the passive but avail there might be a problem. Steal all negative effects, and place them on yourself. Grant an extra turn to the ally if stun, sleep, taunt or freeze is removed. increase atk for 2 turns. Instantly gain an extra turn. So the question is what happens if the stolen effects are stun, sleep, taunt or freeze. Where do they go if the character gets an extra turn. There is no where that says it cleanses itself so the rescuer should be frozen, stunned sleep or taunted and depending on the effect NOT get an extra turn. This is not a new item either. There are a slew of issues with the character abilities being contradictory to game play, potential abilities based on if a specific effect is on the character than this will happen being almost impossible to do via talisman or provides zero benefit to the character (magic instead of attack), and attempting to do this with other characters providing the effect is well bass ackwards.

Oh has anyone else noticed when characters suddenly have new and exciting effects and abilities that can not be explained in any way since they aren't innate abilities and it isn't being shown as a talisman ability or effect either. Too many times of having characters do things that leave me going they aren't supposed to be able to do that and not being able to figure out how it did that even by going and checking the characters abilities and replaying to check the talismans. Good example is in the arena where I seem to notice it the fastest. Probably a bad section of code in regards to having multiple attack and defense groups.

Game play issues and outright complaints. Unless you want to start using the MR and DEF for something more than a damage modifier there shouldn't be any effect that a character can cast on another that has a 50% or higher success rate. Having 4 characters frozen, stunned, taunted etc at the same time is not conducive to a good game playing experience. And 50% is probably too high also. Now having a talisman giving you a bit higher of a chance sure but not innate.

Associated with this would be that lovely ability to repeat an action. Doesn't matter which one your using there should be no way a character (ANY CHARACTER) can repeat an action 5+ times in a row. Yeah I can't count the number of times I've seen this happen for me and against me. Either way it shouldn't be able to happen. This should be set up on a diminishing returns type thing. Where if you have a repeat action ability the first time should be at say 75% the second at 60% the third at 50% and subsequent at 30% success rates. Where any repeat actions past 4 or 5 become extremely rare.

Additionally when your in the arena and you have 0 and I repeat ZERO turns for the first 4 rounds there is a problem. Why do I say there is a problem because there isn't a damn thing you can do about it when it happens. Nothing zero zilch. Kiss that round in the arena goodbye cause it is normally game over. Associated with this is a lot of the passives NOT working correctly. For example, The Prisoner, seems to be a large amount of issues regarding his passive disable ability. Examples would be if there are two of them wouldn't it cancel out so there would either be no passives or everyone has passives for the first round? and what is this with the talisman passives working but the innate ones not or vice versa. Really can we say glitched. Pretty much the same for the sentinel hierophant also except the immunity to heal block and heal reduction effects don't work.

Speaking of passives not working right since when is immune to stun the same as immune to sleep?


Now for the real annoying part of this game, the autoplay. For the vast majority of games I have played this feature would get you banned for using it. An unattended combat macro. Which is exactly what the autoplay in the game is. Is it nice to have yes yes it is. Does it make certain tasks a lot easier (think any grind task for any event) yes yes it does. By now I figure there is probably a significant player population that are using it (and possibly along with an emulator) to make the grind tasks a lot better, because no one wants to play any freaking dungeon 300 times in a row to accomplish something. Basically it eliminate the value of an individual's time that they have spent actually playing the game.
Yeah I don't want to grind a dungeon 300 times either but there has to be an alternative that can be figured out.

You might have caught I said emulator in regards to the autoplay feature. For those that don't know an emulator is basically a version of phone software that runs on a standard computer. Most of the time they are used to develop and test software. But they can also be used as a stand alone item to play games on without killing your phone battery etc. The only reason I brought up emulators is the possibility of using macros in conjunction with the emulator while playing the game in autoplay. Again for those that don't know, a macro is basically a set of commands that have been strung together to cause a specific thing to happen in a game or other software. I.e. when I push this button the following events will happen or when it recognises a specific event is happening it causes something else to happen. Like recognizing the out of sands of time and clicking through to buy more and then returning to play mode. Now I can't say people are doing this BUT considering how stupid and annoying the grind quests have gotten and that there are now new hoops to jump through to get into certain dungeons and how long you can play in them or how many times you can play them it might be happening.

As far as the August event is concerned... Guys do you even check to make sure the game is playing correctly before you update it? There are so many odd issues with passives, order of events happening with fury skills, burn effects showing up out of the blue, cleansing events where the only character that can has already had its turn, passive disables not working as well as they should, flight eddies fury skill being completely wacked, talisman passives working after the character is dead, do I need to continue?
Flight Eddies is probably the worst of it all. When it says "Transform EXISTING burn effects into..." which means the 3 true burns that it inflicts are before or after it is supposed to transform existing burn effects? And considering the doom effect is a 1 turn item (which is just being an asshole I might add) and that I have never had my 1 turn after this because it all triggers and BOOM dead. Yeah there is a problem here. There is no issue with having a hard character to beat but having an automatic your dead and starting over is just being mean. Or else it is completely unintended and is a side effect of not having enough time to properly vet that things are working correctly.

For what its worth I do like that it is 4 dungeons instead of 3 where the majority of us can beat the madness dungeon and actually complete the event. Although I don't think the insanity dungeon gave out the right loot when I completed it the first time. It seemed kinda lame compared to the madness dungeon loot.

And last but not least... saw yet another player saying screw it I am done and leaving. Guys it is getting old and boring that we are dealing with the SAME freaking issues NOW as we were TWO years ago. About the only thing that has really changed is we now have a event routine that can not be broken. The only thing different then last month, this month and next month is (drumroll please) the talismans color and effects, the eddie(s), additional character(s) and that is it. The method of getting them will be virtually identical. The other events will be virtually identical, there will not be any real changes or developments in the gameplay or the game itself. About the only thing that might be different will be the method used to get us the players to spend actual money on the game.

There is a saying for this... Lather, Rinse, Repeat. It gets old fast.

And I am going to repeat something here:

Why is Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast free to play?
We want every Iron Maiden fan and every mobile gamer to be able to enjoy our game! You can fully enjoy the game without ever spending a penny! You can battle it out, earning every piece of of the game through sheer victory on the battlefield, or you can speed up your progress by purchasing Ironite in the Vault.