Game Over

Sadly, beyond a certain level, Battle Camp is essentially 100% pay-to-win, and it looks like that isn't about to change anytime soon. It's a shame, because I think there's a really fun game underneath the greasy layer of gambling micro-transactions. Like all of the games following this unsustainable model, the developers will get their payday, and the player base will eventually get jaded and dwindle.

I barely play the game any more, and I doubt I will have any more insights to offer. So consider the blog shut down. I may leave it up for historical purposes, but I won't be updating any more, or moderating comments.

Easter Event

The Easter Event has started in River Crossing and will run for the next 10 days. It follows the standard holiday event formula.

There are a few things worth mentioning for this event. Firstly, the reward tiers have been changed up a bit. The troop rewards are significantly worse than usual - specials and U grabs. On the other hand, the individual rewards are better than usual. If you can get under 2500, you'll get at least a super and legendary grabs, and tiers under 800 can net you supers and ultras.

I would bet more people than usual will be spending during this event, thanks to these rewards and the holiday specials that PennyPop is running this first day of the event. You may find it a little harder to get into the tier you expect from previous events.

The other interesting thing about this event are the boss mechanics. The changes to the lieutenant fight that we first saw in "I, Joebot" continue to be in effect. The Architect is also present, offering "prestige" raids to troops that can complete 5 extreme boss fights.

The boss himself, Farmer Brownhare, doesn't do any direct attacks. Instead, he inflicts a very strong poison - dealing 20k damage per turn on hard difficulty, and 30k per turn on extreme. You'll need to carefully manage your hearts and heals to get through the full timer.

Head over to River Crossing and start beating on bunnies and marshmallows. Good luck!

Update: Raid Halls, New Quests and Pet Skills

PennyPop seems to be making big changes on a monthly basis these days. In addition to preparing for the Easter event, today's update gave us several new features.

Raid Halls

Raid halls are new dungeons that can be found in Teepee Hollow, Turtle Falls, Spring Clearing, Rocky Ridge, and Mt. Magma. They're marked by these little wooden signs.

When you first enter the hall, you'll see a little animation showing off a big, angry monster. This is the final boss of the area. Each raid hall has several mini-bosses and a final boss. These boss fights are for your whole troop and can only be started by an admin.

Each mini-boss is a separate fight. Defeat each of them in succession, before their timers run out, to beat the hall. You'll get a reward for each boss you beat along the way. When you beat a hall on easy mode, you'll unlock the extreme mode - with harder fights, and better rewards.

Be aware that once you start a raid hall, you're locked out of all the others. Additionally, once you've beaten a hall, you have to wait 24 hours before activating it again.


One big change comes along with this. Players are required to beat the raid halls in Spring Clearing, Rocky Ridge, and Mt. Magma in order to earn the badge for those zones and unlock access to the next zone. This basically means players will have to be in a troop with people willing to run that hall, or they can't advance in the game. For old players who have already unlocked the zones, this isn't a big deal. For newer players, it might be annoying.

New Quests

The new daily quests seem to mostly involve running between multiple rangers on different maps and carrying out some simple instructions like "donate x of this monster". Overall, they seem to be less repetitive than the old ones, but also less lucrative.

Troop quests have also been introduced. These require the entire troop to do something within a 24 hour period, such as "pet the troop pet 15 times". They seem to be tuned so that moderately active troops can easily complete them.

Troop Pet Skills

Troop pets have finally woken up and are able to defend themselves. They now gain abilities at level 10, 20, 35, and 50. This might give troops a little more incentive to burn specials leveling the pet. This will be a very long-term goal for most troops. It's hard to even contemplate the number of specials required to get a troop pet to level 50.

UI Improvements

These are relatively minor compared to the last update. The raid log is the biggest improvement, as it's now split into four categories:

• Event (for donating specials and dealing damage to event bosses)
• Raid (including the new raid halls, old-school troop raids, and Lost Temple raids)
• Ranger (which shows troop membership changes and member level-ups)
• Pet (which just shows who has been petting or feeding the troop pet)

They've also added the monster animations to their detail cards in the Management section.

Monthly Updates?

The Lost Temple update was in late January, and the Troop Dungeon update was in mid-March. With this update falling squarely in the middle of April, I'm hoping that PennyPop is settling into a cycle where they add new features on a monthly basis.

What do you think of the new features? What would you like to see in the next month or two?

PvP Event, With a Twist

The PvP Event has started again. See the event summary post if you don't know the basics. There are two things that are a little different this time around.

Firstly, the daily event quests that we first saw in I, Joebot are back, tuned for this event. There's also a meta-quest that requires you to complete all the daily event quests. Should you succeed, you'll get the chance to try an Elite Spin - the new gamble that can (theoretically) net you a legendary monster. Once again, the first day's events were pretty easy. We'll see how they ramp up in difficulty, since this is only a 5 day event.

Secondly, the Architect has crashed the PvP party and is hanging around in the PvP fort. When your troop defeats the boss a certain number of times, you'll get the opportunity to battle the Architect's monster as a special boss. This guy hits very hard, but if you defeat him you have a chance to get elemental and rarity crystals to use in second evolution.

This is a really nice addition, allowing people the chance to get some crystals without the (fairly hardcore) requirement of running Lost Temple over and over. I doubt the Architect will show his face in every event, but hopefully he'll show up to dole out crystals every now and then.

Event Quest Disappointment

I was pretty excited when I found out about the new daily event quests for the I, Joebot event. They gave the event more variety, and more rewards. It was even cooler that completing these dailies allowed you to collect puzzle pieces for an event-themed super. And hey, it was my zodiac! Score!

I dutifully did my quests on day one, and day two. And then it became pretty obvious what was going on. The numbers required to finish those quests were increasing rapidly, and this was a 10-day event. I got three puzzle pieces out of the necessary six, and that was pretty much the end of that. I didn't come anywhere close to completing the 50 quests required to get the epic candy.

Since my troop ended the event comfortably in tier 3, it seems unlikely that there were even 100 troops whose players could complete the event super. And I doubt more than a handful of top-tier players completed all 50 quests for the epic candy.

Sad.

Now, if you're going to play Battle Camp, you need to accept the fact that it's a game supported by micro-transactions. Shelling out cash gets you an advantage, plain and simple. However, even in that light, I think these quests were poorly implemented.

At the start of the event, these quests seemed like something everyone could participate in. It would take enough dedication to log in and complete them every day, but they seemed reasonably doable for any active troop.

However, as the numbers ramped up, it quickly became apparent that completing all the quests would require more than dedication - it would require spending plenty of gold. Even a lot of spenders couldn't hope to finish them, because they required a troop full of spenders to complete.

The really silly thing about all this is that the rewards weren't even all that great. Most of the people who could actually get all six pieces of the event super were already running teams that out-class that monster. The epic candy would be nice, but most players don't have a pair of matched epics sitting around, so I don't think too many players cared about not getting that.

I'm sure the whole system was designed to try and get more people spending. I don't know if it actually achieved that goal or not. For myself and my troop, it mostly turned an exciting feature into a disappointing one.

I hope that PennyPop evaluates how the Joebot event went, and adjusts the quests accordingly for future events. I'd suggest they tweak the quests to allow average active players to acquire the 6 event super pieces. It could easily be designed so that average players can only finish on the final day of the event (preventing too many players from using the monster for extra event damage, while still letting people collect it). Completing all 50 quests could remain extremely difficult, so there's a prestigious goal for the top-tier players to shoot for.


Like many players, I really like the idea of event quests. With a few adjustments, I think they could be a fun addition for the majority of players. What do you think? Do you like them? Or do you think they need adjustments?

Troop Dungeon Changes

The troop dungeon feature has been out less than two weeks, and we've already gotten an update for it. There are two small changes, both of which should improve your rewards if your troop runs the dungeon frequently.

Seals

Next time you enter your troop hall, you'll find Sargent Lovejoy waiting for you. He's collecting "seal" items, which now drop every time you successfully complete the troop dungeon. When your troop donates 100 seals, everyone gets mailed a mystery egg.

Dungeon Ranks

The other change is the addition of troop dungeon ranks. Every time a person in your troop completes the dungeon, your troop earns a small amount of "dungeon experience". Higher difficulties earn more than lower difficulties. Earn enough dungeon experience, and your troop's "dungeon rank" will increase.

According to PennyPop, a higher dungeon rank is supposed to increase your likelihood of better drops from the dungeon. Unfortunately, nothing actually says what sort of improvement you'll get. The change has only been out for a day, but my troop hasn't noticed much of a difference so far.

Be aware that your troop rank will reset every day, at the same time the dungeon element changes. Check the countdown on the troop dungeon popup to see how long you have until the next reset.

Mo' Rewards, Mo'...Fun?

I don't think these changes are going to cause everyone to start doing troop dungeon runs if they weren't already. But they do add some additional rewards if you are participating. They also add a little more feel of community, since your whole troop can work on filling the bar toward a mystery egg. All in all, I think it's a good update to an already pretty solid feature.

I, Joebot

It's not a holiday (unless you count Pi Day), but brand new holiday-style event called "I, Joebot" has started in Winter Peak. The zone has been redecorated as a robot laboratory, and it's swarming with rock and fire monsters.

Just like any other holiday event, you're collecting event specials to donate to the boss so you can raid. The specials for this event are rock monsters called "Spybots".

Spybot

There's also the standard trader NPC - Mayaspace this time - who will sell you trophies, energy, specials, event rares, and event costumes for your event tokens.

Cool New Event Mechanics!

Twitterbell

The lieutenant this time around is a robot named Twitterbell, but she works a little differently from the lieutenant fights in previous events. Firstly, when you engage her, you have to pick a difficulty level. Then, you're faced with a cave battle, including multiple waves of robots. For the final wave you'll face Twitterbell herself. She always rewards a single Spybot and five event tokens. Additionally, she awards some amount of trophies, which varies based on the difficulty you chose.

Joebot

The other big change with this event is the introduction of event quests. These are quests that you complete by participating in the event. These quests reset daily, and it looks like there may be different variations each day. The ones for today are:

• Twitterbell Takedown - Defeat Twitterbell 1 time. (Missed the reward text).
• Raid Boss Takedown - Defeat the raid boss 1 time. Rewards 50 trophies.
• Mortimer Takedown - Defeat Mortimer 1 time. Rewards one super candy special.
• Raid Boss Donation - Donate 1 Spybot to Joebot. Rewards 5 event tokens.
• Daily Event Completion (4 parts) - Complete all of today's event quests. Rewards 1 Freezoid piece.
• Event All-Star (50 parts) - Complete all of the event quests. Rewards 1 epic candy special.

This is a pretty cool addition, adding some extra spice to the standard "grind monsters, fight lieutenant, fight boss" routine.

This is a 10 day event, so you have until March 23 or 24th (depending on your time zone) to kick some robot butt.