Though I was not tasked with reviewing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for the site, I needed to vent my frustration with the game so here is my open letter to Gameloft.
Dear Gameloft,
We’re all familiar with the freemium game model at this point, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this system, you have taken things too far.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a really neat anomaly in popular culture. The Pony series has always been targeted at young girls, but the current generation (G4) has proven popular to adults, especially men. This is largely due to the creative direction given by Lauren Faust (Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, etc). The adults in this fandom are referred to as bronies.
I am a Brony.
My wife bought the first season of G4 on iTunes and was watching it while I was in the room. After about six episodes, I was hooked. The writing is just wonderful. Since then, our apartment is completely ponified. Personally, I have 38 t-shirts, two book shelves full of toys, shoes, socks, pajamas, bed sheets, posters, stuffed animals, and even a My Little Pony tattoo. When I heard that you were creating an iOS and Android game, it’s safe to say I was extremely excited.
Nightmare Moon has returned and covered Ponyville in darkness and it’s your job, as Twilight Sparkle, to rebuild Ponyville and get all the other ponies to move back.
This story line is fun and all the characters are voiced by the same voice actors from the TV show.
At first glance, the game is wonderful. Not only is it a neat game, but you took the time to make it very fan-centric. It features many background ponies from the TV show that bronies are especially fond of and that most kids wouldn’t even know: Octavia (my favorite) and DJ Pon3 are here, the Great and Powerful Trixie, Dr. Hooves (yes, a Doctor Who reference), and even some pony versions of characters from The Big Lebowski are here.
And then you had to go and destroy it all with a greedy currency system, split into (not two), but three forms, the most frustrating of which are the regular gems.You can only get about 1 – 3 regular gems a day (at most) without spending real cash and as you well know, everything requires gems The heart gems (also annoyingly scarce) are next to impossible to get since they are acquired by connecting with friends and leaving them gifts every 24 hours. The problem here is that your server that connects you with friends hasn’t worked SINCE THE GAME LAUNCHED!
In most freemium games, you can spend real world money to get a sizable amount of the currency in the game not so here.
When spending real money on the other two forms of currency (bits and regular gems) the amount you get is very, very low for the money you spend. The economy in MLP is far worse than other freemium titles and feels like a greedy money grab. It takes $10-20 to purchase one of the higher-priced ponies. Some of the ponies (like Rarity and Rainbow Dash) take hundreds of gems to buy and you cannot complete the game without them!
Someone on Reddit worked this out. To get Rainbow Dash (500 gems), you would need to play the game every day for three years, or spend $80 cash. Again, (as you are well-aware) you can NOT complete the story mode without these characters, and unwitting players (like myself) have no idea about this problem until we’ve invested considerable time in the game as these ponies are only available at level 30+.
Granted, you do offer the ability to watch select video advertisements to earn gems, however I found a disturbing problem with this. A lot of the ads are for adult sex sites. Yes, in a game that will probably be played by children. What?!
Another huge issue…the game is rigged to punish players who may want to take a break for a day or two. Rocks & parasprites show up no matter how often you play, even if you exit the program for five minutes then reopen it, they could show up. They spawn once or twice every 24 hours, it seems and if you have any free space on your map, these rocks will grow in the spaces and get bigger and bigger if you don’t deal with them. To clear them, it costs considerable amounts of bits and gets worse the longer you wait. If you deal with them earlier and have open space, parasprites will arrive in your town instead. If you have parasprites, you cannot build on the map. The only way to get rid of them is to use magic shards, which are VERY RARE, and these same shards are needed to activate the Elements of Harmony for the story line, making the presence of parasprites even worse.
Oh but it’s all good because if I don’t have enough magic shards, I can always buy some with real world money (but you knew that).
Adding to the unfairness, you’ve include the balloon pop game that I can play for free every 24 hours, or spend my (regular or heart) gems to play. Though, what you disguise as an optional task is really REQUIRED as certain ponies can ONLY be accessed this way (including major fan-favorites). Another Reddit user dove into the code for the game, arguing that you can only get the ponies when playing the game that costs 25 gems to play. Not only that, but the six ponies (you can ONLY get in this game) have a less than 1% chance of showing up.
In the true spirit of the show on which it is based, this game should be designed so that little kids can enjoy it as well as bronies. Sadly, your game, which costs $100+ in real world cash to complete is just a horrifically greedy money grab. Unless you update the game with more ways to get gems, cut back on parasprites and rock growth, and lower the cost of the ponies required for the story, this is an insult to fans of the series.
You owe a lot of people a serious apology here.
- Jaden Walker – One seriously disappointed Brony.
I don't know if it was entirely intentional on their part or poor game design, but it needs to be fixed. Either change prices or create an expansion that allows you to convert bits into gems. Even if the conversion rate is terrible, it would be worth the bit farming.
And stop giving me quests that require gems to finish! I was not amused by one quest for materials–not even ponies!–that would have cost somewhere around 300 gems to complete!
I am hacking this game so hard tonight. I've got a lot of enjoyment out of this, and would have GLADLY paud $20 to $30 to buy a bit and heart only version (hearts are pretty easy once the system is up and running), but if you intend to fleece me, I have no guilt about breaking your EXTREMELY poorly designed code.
Protip: The 25 gem balloon pop ponies can be bought with bits if you start the game with wireless turned off. This is because the game downloads a different set of store prices from the game servers when you're connected online.
It's not much help though. Even considering this trick, in order to finish the main story of the game by finishing all the quests, you need a MINIMUM of 3000 gems to buy all the required items, including some buildings and ponies which cost 600+ gems. This would take roughly 14 years of getting daily bonuses to obtain.
Take it from me, a person who has a lot of experience playing freemium games by Gameloft and other companies known for the freemium game model like Glu. I have never encountered a paywall this high before. This is blatantly greedy even compared to other freemium games.
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My five year daughter is frustrated and disppointed with this game. I found this site because I was looking for hints on how to get gems for her, especially the heart gems. She's 5, she doesn't have a social network. Our family loves My Little Pony, but the game needs serious work.
I also have a kid (6yr old girl) who likes this game. If it was better designed I probably would have spent upwards of $20 to let her have fun playing this or buy a character like princess Celestia. I’ve spent real money on ‘Freemium’ games for her before, and since My Little Pony is her favorite show I figured I’d buy her some of these too, but not for virtually no pay off. Instead I taught her how to exit the game, go into the settings, and change the date to farm daily bonuses. The ‘free offers’ don’t work on my phone, and when I e-mailed the company about it after signing up for Zoosk who still spams me, they sent me an e-mail saying “Good news! Our servers say you have the gems!” This was before I ever changed the date, and I didn’t have the gems. But instead of arguing over fake digital currency I just googled “My Little Pony Cheats”. Please do that. Please don’t spend real money on the game.
Here’s a couple other hints I can give (android):
If you advance the game while in airplane mode, all of your buildings complete and you can do the crappy balloon pop every time. This is as well as the daily bonus. Do this before you buy any new areas on the map, because the whole map will fill up with parasprites and rocks if you have it open. If you don’t, then only what you have will fill up and you can fill most of that in with buildings and trees. After a solid hour or two of date advancing you’ll have enough elements of harmony to zap all the parasprites (I have about 300 of all of them after 2 hours). 2 hours also netted about 270 gems.
I would straight up delete this app if it wasn’t for the cartoon being my daughter’s favorite show. I hope everyone takes it upon themselves to not give gameloft a dime and make this one of their lowest grossing games. Please look at the cheats before you spend money. If your computer savvy you can get it all for free, and if your not (like me) you can just grind the date advance, which I figure if I could sell them for the price they charge for them would be like a $20 an hour job.
I LOVE YOU. I got past many of the quests thanks to you. Changing the date and time is genius. XD
SO much thanks. I am eternally grateful.
There's another bug which is making the game a bit of a sour experience to popular ones. Andrea Libman (voice of Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie) tweeted here that she had to delete and reinstall her game due to a serious bug – TREASURE CHEST OVERLOAD! The game could not draw all the treasure chests at once:
https://twitter.com/AndreaLibman/status/275311105…
The game should be set to change treasure chests over 20 into a big giant one that awards you the entire contents without overloading the drawing engine's memory.
TinyVillage also uses the "render graphics only when visible" mode to allow the game to be run on older devices.
I’m not sure if this applies for iOS, but the game seems to play differently on my old HTC Glacier then on my Note 2. Aside from the framerate issues preventing me from getting higher scores on the star leveling minigames, obstructions and parasprites appear MUCH LESS OFTEN on my Glacier then my Note 2. I know the game follows different instructions because the ponies don’t move on my Glacier, whereas they do on the Note 2. I hate to jump to conclusions, but it sounds like more of the obstructions appear if your hardware is more powerful (IE you’re more likely to pay for freemium content)
And thats why you should hack it, as I did
tutorial right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRYGahHemGY
But even if you do that, you'll see that the game doesn't offer anything more… Its like if it was unfinished.
Do you mind if I use this letter in a petition I am going to make?
I don't have an issue with that as long as you reference where it came from, but you should double check w/ Jaden since it is his piece. (his contact details are in the ABOUT THE AUTHOR box),
I'm fine with that
Unfortunately, unless you are willing to 'jailbreak' your iPhone etc, all the cheats are android device only. So gameloft seem to be in cahoots with apple as far as this game goes. I'm so envious of my friend who has an android and has gotten all the ponies from the balloon pop game with bits. I agree that there should be a system to convert bits to gems. That'd make things more fair for those of us who want to play the game legit.
Warning people: don't bother with the holiday quests! The first couple are easy enough, buy certain things with bits, but before long they're asking you to buy gem-only DECORATIONS like a phonograph for 30 gems. It's just a cheap way to force people to buy gems.
For ipad, iphone users, try “pony liberator”. It uses a different pricelist and blocks the real one. All android can hack it themselves. Just look on youtube for mlp free gems. Have fun getting everypony!
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Not to embarrass anyone, but responding to the phrase of:
"Granted, you do offer the ability to watch select video advertisements to earn gems, however I found a disturbing problem with this. A lot of the ads are for adult sex sites. Yes, in a game that will probably be played by children. What?!"
These adds are based on your internet searches… It's the same with the computer. Sorry to be the one to tell ya.
Mine only had adds for things like Ice Age games, Netflix, and and an app called Magic Piano.
Delete all your Cookies and History, and it should fix the problem.
I like the game but I can't spend over a hundred dollars to play. Everything in the game is just to expensive. There are to many parasprites and rocks. They multiply to fast before anyone can get rid if them. There are not enough Elements of Harmony to take care of the parasprites and complete the game. This game really needs work.
Thank you for posting this. I'm an adult who loves MLP Friendship Is Magic. This game is a giant slap in the face for all the reasons you said and more. I feel bad for any kid who trying to play this they will be sadly disappointed as I was.
I don't even see how this game would be possible for a kid to manage. Sure, go ahead and add Easter eggs for the bronies, but don't convert the game into a game your target- yes, TARGET- demographic cant play because of lack of funds. Heck, I doubt some of the people you seem to have carefully tailored this game for to pull money from can even afford everything. I will play this, but I won't spend a dime.
I would rather pay a bit too buy the actual app instead of it being free and not have to wait days and days to get anything in the game, one mission 150 hearts and another 200 gems!!!