About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[RawDataSystems]

@buzzeeee, experienced that few times. Feels like bus driver stopping for you, then not even opening doors, showing middle finger and driving away. Only thing more infuriating is “ghost” player appearing from nowhere, magically having unbelievable amount of points despite not occupied a slot in the list earlier… and taking your #1 spot just as the week ends for Arena.

 

Today I had a weird occurence happening at the last room of last Arena level. Everything seemed to go wrong and points were really low for me and “opponent”. First “WUT?” moment came when “opponent” did not use its last bird. Second came two rooms later when I used my last bird and the “opponent” still had the last one unused. Despite me being in 2M lead, game announced loss for me and offered the extra bird. Got a million points more even with unsuitable bird… and then the biggest “WUT?” happened. The game did not end and even FF button did not change that!

At the end, I had to FC the game and take a loss… at the point where I would have completed the streak. Instead, no reward, back to level 1. Sometimes I hate the game so much that I wonder why I’m still playing…

 

[Buster]

Supposedly your opponents’ games are based on actual rounds played by someone at a similar achievement level. When the match starts they have the number of cards indicated, including spells. BUT, if it’s based on real game play, what if that player had bought extra cards with gems? Wouldn’t that explain why those extra points seem to come out of nowhere at the end?

I too have been baffled and frustrated when this happens and this is the only explanation I could come up with that doesn’t involve a deliberate effort to p*ss me off.

[AggieGuy]

What I hate the most are arena opponents with basically the same flock power, who can outscore you 2 to 1, 3 to 1, even more.

You clear a room with Terrance and get 4-6 million, they get 10-20 million. Next room is cleared with 1 or 2 birds and you’re up to around 10-12 million, and they’re streaking past 30 million.

Just finished a match with 42 million points, my opponent was over 80 million. Never wasted a bird, actually used a couple of spells because I felt like it, and still I could not come close to catching up to the guy.

[RawDataSystems]

For some time already I’ve been sure that those “recorded” opponents are not playing even the same room as player and they are… well, just records for score advances from somewhat similar level of rooms. Your “opponents” can actually score higher than the points available and their birds or level of them have no effect on points. The “opponent” can score even without any birds left. Straight forward cheating by Rovio.

 

[Psygaz]

A couple of things happening in the arena that may have logical explanations that I’ve failed to see.

– how come the person beating me to 1st place in Legendary League is showing as being in Vanilla League?

– what’s this all about? Is that FP possible without hats?

Thanks for any thoughts or explanations.

[angrybirdspoop]

I have noticed that the opponent always get the meter suddenly filling up very fast in the last bird, and will get an extra bird to surpass you at the last second. It happens more often in free tickets and video tickets, and always lose those match, but once you use your real tickets, you can win.

I can only win at number 2 or 3 in the legendary league now, it probable can’t be sustained for this week as I don’t have enough time and resource to play that much every week.

[RawDataSystems]

I stopped trying to stay in LL. I’m not going to waste hours daily just to play and if  couple of those “opponents” are playing aggressively, that’s what’s required. You *can* have easy week, but often it’s just an opposite.

 

[AggieGuy]

Finally saw someone get over 100M against me in the arena.

His FP was 605 to my 555, using blizzard, inflator, and chili.

I used all 5 spells and finished with ~52 million. He never seemed to run out of birds, having 3 left when I ran out to finish at ~107 million.

Needless to say I wasn’t even going to try to win that one with gems.

Of course, it was someone with a Russian name, which pretty much means cheater. Should have paid the 15 gems for a different opponent, but I didn’t pay attention to the name until it was too late.

[Joe B.]

They’ve about killed all the fun out of the arena…For the past 2 weeks, I’ve noticed the first stage of the arena has consistently lined me up with opponents bringing 15 FP or higher than mine as opposed to the early stages usually throwing an even match or sometimes lower if lucky.

The result has had me lose most attempts without multiple spells and I’m about done with the Arena as the rewards really aren’t worth the time or spells invested. It used to be a fun way to play but I hate burning through 2 or 3 spells just to stand a chance to win a lousy reward.

And I’ve been seeing enemy score hikes at the end of all the battles too…I see what they did here.

[RawDataSystems]

There’s little fun in AB2 left anymore. Just when I’m starting to get over about “server issues” which cost me a load of jewels, I’get hosed in small, but new way at Arena. Somewhat similar as “force field”, but this time I saw something fall down and knock off my first bird in-flight. So, basically I got one bird wrecked by space junk!

I hate it when there’s never ending stream of new bugs, which by Rovio, either does not happen or they are “experiments designed to improve user experience”. I’d say the first things which would actually improve user experience are stopping the insane experiments and start fixing the bugs!

Then again, what would one expect, when company tells “improving user experience”, while the truth is more like “improving cash income”.

 

[DJLarryt]

Just watched my opponent get 10,000,000 off his last card (someone called “Speedy Star”), which was a snowflake spell. Oh incidentally, it was enough to beat my score even though I came into the round fully loaded with 5 spells, and had to pay for the win.

Rovio, you’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

[Psygaz]

Remember the good ol’ days when you could count on Terence to smash through two structures with ease? He’s a shadow of his former self and ready to be pensioned off.

[RawDataSystems]

Meanwhile at Rovio HQ: “Let’s tinker with the powers of the old birds, so we can make new crappy ones look better than they actually are. Maybe we can get users to buy more jewels and use them.”

 

[angrybirdspoop]

Anyone notice  the pig inflators sometimes could only pop the pigs but left all the structures intact. I have lost many points and have to waste another bird to topple the structures to reach the remaining pigs. This glitch have started since the introduction of Hal.

[AggieGuy]

I’ve noticed that as well with the pig inflator. Sometimes it works normally, other times it simply kills the pigs. It’s a fairly recent thing, but I don’t remember exactly when it started.

[RawDataSystems]

Pig inflator change was really disappointing, because it makes pig inflator less useful and basically weaker. Any bets what’s coming next? How about halving the amount of ducks? Or making structures immune to ME and just popping the pigs?

 

[DJLarryt]

This is what I’ve noticed has changed in game dynamics in the past couple of weeks:

1. Birds are a lot weaker: Red’s shout cannot cause as much damage as before (sometimes shout right in front of a pig doesn’t pop it), bomb does a lot less impact damage, Terrence gets stopped cold by a balloon and doesn’t break it, a lot of the time Blues doesn’t cut through the glass blocks anymore

2. There are a lot more mini-pigs encased in stone blocks in the foundations of the structures- so unless you can destroy every building from the bottom up, it will take more than one bird to clear these blocks, and even then they don’t break when piles of stuff fall on to of them (also it’s quite likely these little encased pigs get buried by more garbage making it necessary to use MORE birds to dig them out and get them). Also these structure are often built behind hills now

3. Pigs are stronger- I’ve dropped pigs from the top of the screen to the bottom and they’ve survived, rolled over, and sat there. This never used to happen before. They also tend to survive enough to roll into cracks and make you FC your game.

4. There are more “one-bird pigs” per screen- at one time you would only have to contend with a single one of these b*tches at a time (laser pig, teleporting pig, balloon piglet, scuba pig, etc). Now it’s very common to see two or even three of them in a single screen, and the combination of them wastes all your birds (especially the newly-added fireman pig which just nullifies any bird that gets near it, and it’s usually perched right in your path to hit one of the other one-bird pigs like magician or laser-beam pig). Goodbye birds.

5. Gravity is increased on most items, meaning things fall straight down now instead of falling over and knocking something else down. This also allows less to be destroyed by a single bird.

I echo the comment from someone before about how this is a LAZY way from Rovio to up the difficulty of the game. It likely took one single programmer 1/2hr to just go into the code and change like fStrength = 10 to fStrength = 5 in a couple of elements. Cheap and lazy.

[Ang Ryone]

Today I played arena and at stage 2 (!) I faced an opponent with 70 FP over me (I’m 500ish) and 4 spells :D.

 

Arena is way too hard.

[Psygaz]

Was in second place in my league this morning. Downloaded a game update, I’m now in 10th place. I hate this game sometimes.

[Jacob]

Sometime during the Arena, there was one user who popped out of nowhere in the tournament and had between 150 – 155 stars in his 1st day. I currently have over 400 stars, and it took me 6 days to earn them. >_<

[AggieGuy]

@cobby, that happens all the time.

I was cruising along to a first place finish, and on the last day a guy who had been at the bottom of the rankings, went flying past me faster than Chuck could move.

My current tournament, first place is 761, second is 494, and third is 491. The next three are all in the upper 300s. The guy in first place had over 300 in less 24 hours when the new tournament started.

I don’t even bother trying to win when it is like this, just play enough to keep myself from dropping.

[Buster]

If you have enough spells & gems you can score 100 points in a couple of hours, easily. You only play when you have the advantage and don’t care about the winning streak. If I’m trying to move up fast, mostly I just do the first 3-4 levels and load up with 5 spells each round. You hardly ever lose and typically get 8-10 points each battle.

It’s really not a ton of fun playing that way. I just do it when I need some arena victories to build up my gem supply.

[Jacob]

@aggieguy I guess he might’ve bought the 35 tickets and used them for about an hour without noticing. Just a quick theory.

[RawDataSystems]

Main account ended #2 with 535 stars. I sneaked at the end past 3 players, but I had no hope to overtake #1 being 250 stars ahead.

With FTP account the competition of top spots were tough. Any other 4 players could have won. Fifth player was almost 30 stars behind me at the end, but my need for those rewards was greater.

I think I’ll drop to lower league, because Legendary is too taxing for my time and spells.

Erm…buying tickets? How can people use so many that they have to buy more?

 

[SB311]

@doulgas, that is what I do about 3 days before the tournament is going to end. I play until I am 150 stars above second place and then watch the  tournament for the remaining days.

I always try and maintaim at least 150 stars above second place. Luckily, this last tournament, I was on the same time schedule as the other active players so I was always able to stay above them. :)

It does takes a bit of time and effort though.