Battle Beasts are not currently included in the database, mostly due to the randomness of how they were packaged.
For example, Rocky Rhino could be packaged with Sly Fox or Grizzly Bear (or who knows who else, could be others?). On the surface, that wouldn't be all that bad as we'd have a Rocky Rhino Sly Fox product record, a Rocky Rhino Grizzly Bear product record, and so on, but the fact that each figure could be either fire, water, or wood, really complicates things. And, on top of that, you have no way of knowing until you open the package.
So, "one" Rocky Rhino Sly Fox product record would technically be:
Rocky Rhino Fire Sly Fox Fire
Rocky Rhino Fire Sly Fox Water
Rocky Rhino Fire Sly Fox Wood
Rocky Rhino Water Sly Fox Fire
Rocky Rhino Water Sly Fox Water
Rocky Rhino Water Sly Fox Wood
Rocky Rhino Wood Sly Fox Fire
Rocky Rhino Wood Sly Fox Water
Rocky Rhino Wood Sly Fox Wood
Total of nine records.
Repeat with Rocky Rhino and Grizzly Bear:
Rocky Rhino Fire Grizzly Bear Fire
Rocky Rhino Fire Grizzly Bear Water
Rocky Rhino Fire Grizzly Bear Wood
Rocky Rhino Water Grizzly Bear Fire
Rocky Rhino Water Grizzly Bear Water
Rocky Rhino Water Grizzly Bear Wood
Rocky Rhino Wood Grizzly Bear Fire
Rocky Rhino Wood Grizzly Bear Water
Rocky Rhino Wood Grizzly Bear Wood
Total of nine records.
Plus, I'm not sure if Rocky Rhino is always on the left in packaged samples. If he's not, that opens up a whole new package combo set of nine combinations.
The reason we are able to include the Beastformers, the Transformers Japanese Headmasters equivalent of Battle Beasts, is that they are individually packaged, so the randomness aspect is reduced to only fire, water, wood. Still, you don't know what you've got until you open it, but for our purposes, that's something we can currently tolerate.
The way the database is currently set up, we'd have to treat each combo of Battle Beasts, taking into consideration figure combinations and fire-water-wood, combinations, etc. as a separate product. So, you get nine (maybe 18?) products records for the Rocky Rhino Sly Fox pairing, which bloats the database, so that's not a viable option.
The alternative to that would be to create a single base Rocky Rhino Sly Fox product and then, for the contents, have every combination of figures you could get and have people remove/add whatever figures they own (let's say they have a Rocky Rhino fire and a Sly Fox water, they'd have to remove the other figures from the record to show ownership). The problem with this is we'd end up with one product record with 18 figures in it, instead of two, which is not at all accurate as to how the item was actually sold. Internally, it would would lead to incorrect product contents completion percentages as 16 figures are being removed from each product record, so that's out.
Another possibility would be to create a base Rocky Rhino Sly Fox product record and have users, for their own use, indicate which combo they own in the notes section of the collection UI. But, if we do this, we can't add any figures to the product record, so we'd have a product record with no contents, and technically, NO Battle Beast figure records in the database, only product records, so that's a no-go, too.
At some point, we'll be able to more gracefully handle stuff like this (Battle Beasts, Mini-Spy Pack-Ins, Decoy Pack-Ins), but until then, we don't include them.
MIKE
engledogg
