The Facebook game now just plain sucks.
What used to be the premier game of all bingo games on Facebook and probably on line, Bingo Drive started out as a really cool game. But now it just sucks. Its become a torture to play this game every day, as it has become a pay to win game, with Gliding Deer Inc the owners being too greedy.
At first you could win enough credits to keep going as you slowly made your way thru all the nation maps.
The game revolves around assembling a puzzle. You win pieces by winning bingos. Each puzzle piece contained part of the picture and a description about the "theme" of that puzzle. Complete the puzzle and you get a big reward. First they started with a world tour. Each continent had a series of games. Each game had its own puzzle.
Then each year they added something new.
Holiday games like Christmas, Easter, St. Paddys day, etc. and with these games came some unusual ways of getting a bingo. It wasn't just straight line bingo, or 4 corner bingo. Some games required you uncover 5 reindeer (in any location on that card) to get a bingo. Or 5 potion bottles (for the Halloween games), or treasure chests for the pirate games. Others required birds fly from the top of the card down to the bottom. Another required Christmas presents to drop from the top to bottom and yet another one contained cookies some with cream on them that had to be hit twice before they cleared out. First hit cleared the cream, then another number was below it. Very difficult to get bingos in that one.
Then they came out with Weekend Race. Then the daily winter race.
THEN they came out with "spookies" and chests. Get a bingo with a chest and win a spookie. Collect all the spookies in a collection of 10 themes, and win a prize. Finish all 10 themes and get a jackpot prize. And you could trade some spookies and puzzle pieces with buddies to help you finish your collections. There was a daily buddy gift part of this where you could send a gift of coins, chips, power ups (low level) or Free spins to a buddy.
They gave out daily chips too, and on their page posted ways to get even more freebies. The game has power ups so you can increase your chance of getting a bingo. It also has auto daub - for a price.
The object of winning bingos, getting bingo chips and coins, all while playing the game was very attractive to a lot of people, Chips pay for bingo cars. Coins buy power ups and pay for auto daub.
Some games only used coins, and not bingo chips. Nice twist to the game.
Over the years they increased the maximum daily bingo chips to 96. However this last year things changed in a very bad way.
2 years ago they introduced boosting. Spookie chests now came in 4 colors, orange, blue, violet and pink. Some spookies were extremely rare and could not be traded and the only way to win them was thru a pink chest. To boost your spookie, you paid more per game.
A game would start out with 4 cards, and orange chest, and 1 puzzle piece among the 4 cards. For example, each card cost 2 chips for a total of 8 chips for a 4 card round. For a blue chest you paid 16 chips or double the original price, and there were 2 blue chests and 2 possible puzzle pieces to win. The Violet chest cost you 24 credits, and gave you 3 chests and 3 puzzles. And last the Pink chest cost you 32 credits, up to 4 pink chests and 4 puzzle pieces. Getting a puzzle piece still required you get a bingo.
And it was harder to win puzzle pieces. If you only paid for boost 1, only the top 2 rows of a 15 piece puzzle would show up in the puzzle cards. If you collected 4 of one, you could trade up to the next piece. If you boosted, you had a better chance of seeing the higher number puzzle pieces.
And of course all the time they kept pushing buying more bingo chips and coins from them at ridiculous prices. And this got worse each year.
It used to be that you could win enough to keep going, and keep up with new games coming out every month.
But this year it all changed. They introduced ranking. At first you could only trade with someone of your own rank, and it did not allow trades between say a 2 ranked person and a 6 rank person. This killed off the buddy incentive and trading of puzzle pieces and they lost a lot of people over this.
Then they increased the price of each game base on your rank. A 2 ranked person pays standard price of 12 or more credits for each 4 card round at boost 1. A 8 ranked person pays 60 credits per 4 card round at boost 1 and still only collects 96 credits per day. This means you cannot even afford to play 2 rounds per day unless you manage somehow to win credits - or buy them.
Also, winning any kind of bingo became harder. Then they started pumping out games, a new one every other week and people cannot keep up. All the time they push buying their bingo chips and coins. But people will not because too many did buy them only to see them wasted away due to the fact that getting any bingo, let alone one with a puzzle, became so difficult.
People are spending 2 and 3,000 bingo chips on new maps and only getting 3 puzzle pieces. It is very frustrating to them, and its why many are walking away from the game.
Now we have people who save up bingo chips for a week and only play 1 day a week, because its all they can afford. Many have simply quit the game. They came here to play bingo, not head games about how to collect overpriced bingo chips. And its getting worse.
At 60 credits a round, I save up for a week the play about 8 to 10 rounds in 30 minutes and I am out of credits for another week. Ptthhhhhhhh!
That is why Bingo drive now SUCKS. They do not listen to the players. They are only interested in forcing you to buy their chips and coins. Too bad.. There really isn't anything else comparable on face book to compete with them. Oh well. When enough people leave the game, maybe they will start to listen to the remaining players. Or maybe they will just shut down; which is what they should do now.
