Great team play game spend real $$ or not

I’ve been playing for 8 months now and have not spent any real $. Yes, the more you play the better you do. Spend some real $ and you will be better in the game. I’m on a team that has riders from around the world. We chat game strategy weekly and it’s as much as you want to get out of the game. I’m very satisfied with the game. It has a new racing “season” every 6 weeks where your team compete against all other teams on the game on who can collect the most points. The prizes for the top 20 are pretty good. It’s an enjoyable game as it’s ready when I want to play and I'm connected to a small online community of players who talk about the game but understand real life still exists. Put in as much as you want to get out of the game. Still fun even without spending real $. Some riders spend $ until they are established and then stop spending. Great game all around.

Fun but ultimately pay to win

No doubt, Dirt Bike Unlimited is fun game but it’s replay-ability is limited in the long run unless you’re willing to shell out cash for in game materials to upgrade bikes and unlock skills. After a couple of weeks of play, most races – even when played perfectly – are rewarded with a loss because you are outclassed by other players with higher tier, better equipped bikes, and additional boosts. Moreover, progression is slowed not only by the severely diminished rewards from a second, third or fourth place finish, but from the exponential increase in the cost of new bikes and upgrades, which generally provide low value or utility due to their brief usefulness before difficulty scaling begins pitting you, once again, against higher tier, better equipped players. Make no mistake though, this is a design feature, not a bug, designed to encourage players to spend real world cash in an effort to remain competitive… and it’s a shame too because the whale or nothing duality is likely to dramatically reduce the game’s shelf-life for most F2P players – even those would otherwise be willing to put in the effort to progress further if only the developer valued player time as much as they do cash.

Fun, but...

If you’ve read all the other reviews, mine will come as no surprise. It’s very fun at first, but becomes a ridiculous quest for nothing. The better you get, the more difficult the challengers. That part I’m fine with. But they obviously match you with people who have much more upgrades, as you’re doing everything right and the other bikes just start leaving you. Again, I have no problem with things getting harder as you progress. But you grind and grind for money to get an upgrade on a higher paying bike, and you’re automatically put in races with even better bikes. So it does absolutely no good to spend the time and money, just to consistently come in 2nd and 3rd places. With the tier 1 bikes, I consistently win. Tier 2, similar, but not quite as much. Tier 3? Forget it. 3 stars thru a turn, dead even with another player, and he just walks on you. Obviously he’s got a higher ranked bike. I’ve played this game nearly every day for 3 weeks or so, because it is a fun game. But due to this obviously rigged junk to get me to spend money, I’m pretty much done and going to free up the space on my tablet.

Good Fun Game, Not Perfect

Overall this is a GOOD game that I play everyday, however, it's not GREAT. The graphics are great, the gameplay is easy, and there is a solid fun factor to it. Where it goes off the rails a bit is in the match-making process. The developers say it's base don your past runs and the runs of other players, but won't explain the algorithm. I often wonder when a company is not transparent, are they being shady? It’s not like these are trade secrets. Anyway, you will notice how jerky and non-fluid other racers will appear while playing the game. This seems like they are adjusting to your actions in a emulation of balance of power. The whole jump landing system also makes no sense. I have been racing bikes for years and it is just not realistic. Finally, the Bulldozer is pure hot garbage and needs a major rework. I’m starting to think the developers created that bike with the intention of hating it. It is a pure dumpster fire. There is no fun value with it, and it appears in every team board. I hate playing with it and we are forced to use. Overall it is a good game. A couple minor tweaks and it could be a home run.

Fun at first, becomes boring later

I loved it at first. It’s not pay to win. It’s all about perfect timing of landing/sliding and learning/memorizing the tracks. If you learn the tracks well you’d know where to long jump and where short. It gives you some edges to compete. But then here come the problems. It doesn’t seem like a real time game. You can wait at the starting line for a long time and you can still race with the opponents together. If you start fast, your opponents never finish late either. So I think the game uses recorded datas of previous players to assign you “opponents”. (Or maybe bots). And then if you don’t upgrade your bike, at some point you can never progress in trophies anymore, which means the matching algorithm is based on the trophies and the stats of your bike. It makes you feel that your race has been pre-destined. And when a bike reaches 500 trophies it becomes almost impossible to win anymore, which means the algorithm is assigning you super fast opponents (or maybe bots) to stop you at 500 trophies of each bike. The official webpage of the game also confirms that if a bike reaches 500 trophies it’s considered done. So basically the race is rigged to some extent. So after you’ve mastered all the tracks and memorized all the moves, the rest is just pure repetition, earn cash, upgrade bikes, buy new bikes, until you reach 500 trophies for all the bikes. There is no real competition.

Unfair

I’m consistently racing against players ranked significantly higher (for ex: 8000 rep vs 300,000 rep). Makes it difficult/impossible to win. Upgrading a bike can cost anywhere from 200k to over 1,000,000 depending on tier, which takes forever (think years of playing daily) especially when you’re not winning much because they race you against much better players. I paid for about two months of pro (not cheap) and still advanced very slow because I’m having to race ten times just to win 2-3 races (you have to get 1st or 2nd to get any decent cash to get upgrades). It was fun at first because you win more at the lower levels. But once you progress they match you against better players. I’m fine with a challenge but winning should always be possible. It would be like playing a UFC game where you start as a rookie featherweight and they match you up against Brock Lesnor. Losing all the time is no fun. The graphics are awesome and the game can be fun. But in an effort to make it challenging, the developers forgot that people play phone games to waste time and have fun, not to feel like a loser lol.

Rigged

Think about it, you’re not racing live against anyone. I’m not sure if you’re racing bots or if you’re racing the ghost of real players previous runs. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because the game knows the times of the other 3 racers already. So with that foreknowledge, how does it select the opponents times that you are going to race against? And why does it select race times that are impossible for you to beat even if you play perfect? So, the entire game is set up for you to lose or win whenever they decide you should. It’s all predetermined. If it wants you to win, it will select slower race times where you can’t lose even if you race horribly. And when it wants you to lose, it will select race times that you can’t possibly beat. And it does this back and forth so you think it’s random, but it’s not. And it makes the game extremely boring and waste of time when you think about it. It takes all the fun out of it. You’re not doing anything but holding you’re finger on the screen and wasting your time accomplishing nothing in the end.

Decent thumb game hampered by cash grabs

The game is controlled with one finger, most likely the thumb. The controls are simple but ultimately boring. It’s pretty much holding a finger down and knowing when to lift it up and put it back down. The difficulty is also just a very specific time. For the most part you’re racing against a ‘ghost’, a non interfering time marker that looks like a player. But those ghosts have a set time, and if you don’t do everything perfect when you’re at the standard level for that point, you’ll lose. That means either trying again and again, or spending in-game currency on bikes and upgrades. The cheapest bikes cost 1000. The first upgrades cost around 1000 for the first round or two. Now if you want to buy in game cash, you need to buy coins. Now, the real currency to in game currency ratio is $2 for 3000. That means for $2 you can buy a starter bike and upgrade two pieces.

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