New Arena: problems and suggestions for fixing

[Circlerev]

@aeshna
Just be patient, Rovio customer support will respond eventually. There may be some delays, because they were on vacation last time.

By the way, sorry for the off-topic.

[Sutekh137]

@clovos

Thanks for the level, diplomatic tone. That goes a long way.

Some general things that should be fixed everywhere, but especially in the Arena where head-to-head competition makes every little bit all the more important:

1. Stop letting pigs live when they are blown under ledges or into tight corners such that they can’t be reached by all or most birds. The bird draws are random, so if a pig is somewhere only Bomb can get him (if even then), that pig should die. We blew him into a corner, after all.
2. Pig toughness in general: I have noticed this on the latest levels more, actually (400-420), but I have had tiny pigs live after Bomb blows up within a few blocks of them (and they are not protected in a stone block). Often these pigs roll away and end up violating rule number 1 — they cannot be reached until I get a certain bird that can somehow reach them. This KILLS in the Arena. My opponent continues to rack up 3 million+ points while I am stuck at 1.5 million with literally nothing to be done. The pig who should be dead continues to chortle, but I’m not laughing.
3. The same goes for pigs that cannot be reached in the sky. In the Arena just now I had a floater pig blow up his balloon and camp out BEHIND a large downward outcropping. No way to get him with my current birds. Burned Blues and Chuck and they couldn’t even get close at the pig’s lowest altitude, but luckily drew into Matilda, timed it just right, and it took an epic shot to have her drop her egg and then loft to juuuust catch him when he bobbed to his low point again. So, wasted two birds, and lost by about 300,000 points — two more bird could have turned that match around.

I’m far from the best player around — I wouldn’t even consider myself in the top 10% (at least out of folks who post here). But what you are seeing in terms of some people talking about money-grabs and change-for-profit’s-sake is natural. It comes when damage randomness, bad bird draws, and unreachable pigs combine into a stew of massive frustration. And that is amped up even more in Arena play when someone has a slump and loses 8 out of 10 battles.

Fixing stuff that burns birds for no good reason would go a long way toward it seeming like Rovio actually cares about fair game-play (especially in the Arena) WITHOUT us reaching for our virtual wallets to buy gems.

I, for one, very much appreciate you taking your free time to monitor the pulse of the community here, and I hope the new year is finding you well.

Thanks,
sutekh137

[furby69]

The old arena might have had its problems but the latest one is downright terrible. Sorry Rovio, despite you thinking it’s an actual improvement, it’s not. It might be an improvement to your wallet I guess but for how long? Once people stop playing and the paying customers realize that it’s completely pointless to compete in the arena, you will be left with a crippled player base.

There is no incentive in playing the arena. Only the top 3 players advance to the next league and to be in the top 3 you most certainly have to spend gems. And that’s alright because ultimately you need to generate some income from a free 2 play game however what reward do the top players get? A couple of gems (which probably translates to a negative amount since you need to spend much more than you get) and the privilege to do it all over again in an “upgraded” league that is identical to the previous one.

Alright I haven’t signed up to rant without giving any suggestions so here goes:

• Bring back the old arena..
  Why was the old arena better? Mainly because there was a reason to play it. You’d receive a decent amount of feathers every day and there was a reason to get in a higher league since you’d receive an increased amount of feathers based on your current league.
• No way, we’re not doing that!
  I know what you’re thinking, just let me explain. You don’t have to replace the current system, just improve on it. Currently a tournament lasts a week and the rewards are non-existent so I propose that each tournament should have 7 rounds. Each round lasts a day and would work in a similar fashion as the old arena. You get a point for beating an enemy and at the end of the day you receive a score based on how many enemies you’ve beaten that day, you could use the current star system or change it slightly (1st place – 15 points, 2nd place – 14 points and so on). At the end of the tournament the top 3 people advance to the next league, bottom 1-3 get demoted.
• Give feathers based on your daily score.
  The current way of gaining feathers is terrible. You don’t receive them automatically, you have to notice the tiny red sign which is easy to miss and there’s a 24 hour cooldown from the moment you got your last daily feathers which means that depending on when you play you might not even be able to get your “daily” free feathers at all. All this can be fixed by giving players feathers based on their position in the current round, similar to the way the old arena worked. Higher league means a larger amount of feathers.
• Get rid of the star level system.
  Correct me if I’m wrong but the only point of having a star level is to get bonus daily feathers (10 + Star Level). If you’re gonna implement the suggestion above then this system is unneeded. Oh and we get a chest every level up which frankly we can live without.
• Increase the cost of timer skip.
  Say it costs 10 gems to skip the timer, increase it by 5 gems with each skip and reset it daily. The game should be fair to everyone, what’s fun in competing against someone richer than you?
• Show score of enemy player on your current round
  This has been said before and you’re probably already working on a fix but I thought I’d mention it anyway. Evening the cards in the beginning does not make the ending more exciting. We want to know what the enemy’s score was when they finished the round we just cleared so we can compare how well we’re doing. Also show which cards and the number of cards they used to beat the level.

That’s about it in regards to the arena however I have a few more points to say about the game in general:

• The new scoring system ruined the game.
  Why, just why? Revert this as soon as possible before it’s not too late. While I do think the new scoring system is great in the arena, keep it there! The normal levels did not need this change. While getting 3 stars before was a challenge in itself, now you are basically guaranteed 3 stars as long as you finish the level, granted your birds are upgraded a couple levels. The old system rewarded skill and getting strikes and birdies was actually necessary as opposed to just destroying as many building as possible like it is now. And what’s the point of trying to get a high score if it’s gonna be obsolete once you level up a bird? Nope, not gonna redo all the levels. We never asked for this and we don’t need it.
• The chests on the map.
  The amount of feathers they give is insulting. I’d rather not want to collect these chests than to be disappointed each time I open one. There aren’t that many chests on the map, you could at least double the amount they give to 40-50 if you don’t want to give us 100, like a red gift would.
• Quick navigation.
  Whether you want to go and play the newest levels or jump back and 3 star a level that you might have missed, navigation is a pain. We should be able to jump between worlds in 1 touch.
• Bring back the statistics page.
  Or at least show how many stars we had obtained on the normal levels (e.g. 1259/1260). We used to be able to see our total number of stars and pigs popped but that page was removed in an update.
• Spice up the game.
  Give us something to collect. Red has a crown, why not let us customize our other birds? You could give random headwear for doing tasks, 3 star-ing worlds, reaching a new league, hidden in levels, you name it.

I might sound very displeased and I think many others share the same feeling but I hope that at least some of my suggestions will help in improving the game. Sorry for the tl;dr wall of text.

[Brandon Davis]

^

Wow. Now that’s some solid advice.

[Nobody Special]

I want to clearify that I’m here on my private time. Try to appriciate my efforts and take the opportunity to improve the game by influencing me with improvements and ideas :-)

Anyone on the most popular Angry Birds forum who believes that the Rovio employee who comments here and always paints the sunniest picture possible isn’t a paid community manager is hopelessly naive.

[kedik22]

@clovos

@bankler

Hi everyone.
There have been a lot of complaints and some great suggestions.
Say you take cheaters out of the equation.
What needs to be done is bring the game back to its escence.
The game/arena should be based in: skill, perseverance and a little bit of luck.
Huge amount of gems and or money should NOT be a factor when competing.
AB 2 is a great idea, but I feel the game/arena/scoring system have made players become frustrated, I know I am.

And thank you for listening.

Kind regards.

[Clovos_RovioSweden]

@sutekh137
Hey there!
So, lets begin with the things that is easy to manage. “Places that you can’t reach”. This is an issue that our level designers can fix. Next time you find such a place please screen shot it and post it to me and I will forward it to the right people.
Regarding the pig toughness, we’ve had some physics issues when we converted our project to Unity 5 from Unity 4. I’m not sure if its related, or if you’re just unlucky because that is also a big factor in those cases that I encounter myself. Sometimes you are just very lucky and even manage to kill that extra pig that you was not planning to kill, but sometimes its the other way around which can be very frustrating. That is the nature of Angry Birds. So it’s a very thin line of what is actually a bug/issue or just pure luckiness/unluckiness.
There has been no changes to how the physics works for the new levels.
We are working on a lot of cool stuff for the arena to make it a better experience to play. I can’t discuss them further, but a lot of the stuff are positive to what I’ve read here.
Thanks! It has been a good start and I wish you the same :-)

@furby69
A lot of good suggestions, thanks!
Lets start with the old Arena. Some people liked it better but overall the new one is voted to be better, by the community. We did run a poll to the players and the new Arena was rated higher then the old one.
With this said, the new Arena is in a very early stage. We are working hard to make the overall experience with the Arena much better.
There’s a lot of cool features that will satisfy your suggestions. I can’t wait until we will release it to the live game.

So, the star rank is a very newly introduced feature that will give the player a easier way to monitor you own progress and it allow us to release content to the player based on their rank. Just like the Arena and the Tournament which is unlocked on level 5 & 8. This opens a window for future features to be introduced on a more natural way.

“Show score of enemy player on your current round”
This is already on its way for the next update :-)

“The new scoring system ruined the game.”
I agree personally that having the score multiplier in singleplayer might have been a mistake. Specially for all our score hunters in our community. And I’m sorry for that. But playing AB2 from the beginning from now on will give your birds levels a purpose. By leveling them up they will give you more score.

Quick navigation.
I agree, jumping between chapters is a pain. I’ve tried to come up with a good suggestion how to make it easier without making the UI taking over the screen. Please come with suggestions, I’m listening :-)

The old statistics was replaced with Star rank and badges that you get from the Arena. I can suggest bringing back some old statistics but I’m not sure if they have purpose anymore.

Spice up the game.
The future look brighter then ever my friend :-D

Thanks again for all your suggestions and lets see how the future unfolds itself.

[RizDub]

I got a pig in an unreachable place in the Arena today. I wasted a bird trying to get to him, but luckily I had decided to bring a chili spell into that level. :/

@clovos @bankler Regarding the new scoring system (which I, too, am not a big fan of) – how are 3-star minimums for levels determined now? Is it based on the levels your birds are assumed to be at (like the recalculated high scores for older levels), or is it based on the levels your birds are actually at?

Reading some of the above comments, I heavily agree with @furby69 about how the new scoring system works better in the arena than in single player mode.

[Anonymous]

I’m seeing a lot of comments saying that the arena is pretty much for only making Rovio money. This is exactly why I was hiding the star exploits. The arena is Pay2win, this way people can avoid that.

Now I think I’m ready to reveal them. But not public. PM me if anybody wants to avoid the Pay2win problem too.

[Rovio_Bankler]

@rizdub
“how are 3-star minimums for levels determined now? Is it based on the levels your birds are assumed to be at (like the recalculated high scores for older levels) […]”

Yes, it works just like that. We estimate the average score multiplier you would have first time you play that level, not counting any extra feathers (from boxes and such).

[Aeshna]

When you level up in the arena, get rid of the cards as rewards. Don’t think a golden duck card is much of a prize, marginally better than 3 gems out of the daily chest though.

[furby69]

@clovos

With this said, the new Arena is in a very early stage. We are working hard to make the overall experience with the Arena much better.
There’s a lot of cool features that will satisfy your suggestions. I can’t wait until we will release it to the live game.

Let’s hope those changes are for the best, until then I guess I’ll take a break from the arena.

So, the star rank is a very newly introduced feature that will give the player a easier way to monitor you own progress and it allow us to release content to the player based on their rank. Just like the Arena and the Tournament which is unlocked on level 5 & 8. This opens a window for future features to be introduced on a more natural way.

Didn’t think of that, in that case it may be worth keeping it. I just didn’t see the point of it in the current state of the game.

I agree personally that having the score multiplier in singleplayer might have been a mistake. Specially for all our score hunters in our community. And I’m sorry for that. But playing AB2 from the beginning from now on will give your birds levels a purpose. By leveling them up they will give you more score.

I still believe that it’s not too late to change it back, hopefully you have backups of the database with the old scores, as for the new levels you can simply divide the score by the average level of birds. We might need to redo some levels to get 3 stars but at least the game will once again be satisfying to play. Also bird levels would still have a purpose in the arena, the new scoring can be kept there. Please talk with your colleagues and think about reverting this change, maybe make a poll and ask players which system they like the best.

I agree, jumping between chapters is a pain. I’ve tried to come up with a good suggestion how to make it easier without making the UI taking over the screen. Please come with suggestions, I’m listening :-)

It should be quite easy, the basic functionality is already there, when you scroll far away you’re given the option to jump back to your bird. Just make 2 buttons on both sides of the screen that will jump to predefined levels, to the starting level of each world. Something like this: http://i.imgur.com/PurN8zl.png

Or a more intuitive idea that doesn’t clutter up the UI would be an “endless” scroll. Quick swipe left or right and the screen will keep scrolling and snap to the start of the next world.

The old statistics was replaced with Star rank and badges that you get from the Arena. I can suggest bringing back some old statistics but I’m not sure if they have purpose anymore.

Well it was just an idea but the main thing I miss was the number of stars you obtained from normal levels. This would help keep track of your progress and check if you still need to 3 star any level.

[Sutekh137]

@furby69

In regards to changing our scores on non-Arena levels, I was under the impression that all that data was stored on our local copy of the game — not on the server. If I install AB2 on a new device, I do not see my progress even after I sign in with my Google account (there is no place to sign in to my Rovio account, is there?).

So, I don’t see how an update could adjust my scores or star achievements, unless I am missing something. I would LOVE if AB2 were completely stored in the cloud, as with Go! and Epic, but I didn’t think that was the case? Currently I back up AB2 the same way I do all the other offline AB games (via an adb script that saves backup files to my workstation at home).

And I don’t really want to have to go back and replay recent levels to three-star them. That is the one thing I like about these crazy high scores — no need to go back once I finally get through some of those six-roomers… *smile*

Thanks,
sutekh137

[RizDub]

@bankler Is this also the case for levels you haven’t completed yet?

All my birds are at level 4, so if I play a new level and it assumes my birds are all at level 3, then there’s not really a challenge in getting 3 stars anymore.

[angrychick]

@sutekh137

Hey, I made a related suggestion @clovos in the thread ‘AB2 UI related bugs’. Currently you seem to need to log in with your Facebook account to automatically having your progress synced. Being able using your Rovio account for AB2 I wound find great, too.

Can you tell me how you do the syncing currenlty? I want to switch to the new device. At some point I may have to abondon playing AB2 if I don’t find a suitable way of transferring my progress. Thanks, ABC.

[Rovio_Bankler]

@rizdub
That is correct.

[Sutekh137]

@angrychick66

Thanks for the info about Facebook. I thought I linked to Facebook, but I really don’t do much with FB in gaming.

As far as backups, I am on Android for AB2, and I use the tool “adb” (Android Debug Bridge) when my tablet is connected to my PC at work or Mac at home (adb exists for both platforms). The basics behind android backups is discussed here:

How to Back Up Angry Birds Progress on Android (Rooted and Non-Rooted)

It requires some level of tedium: rooting your device, getting developer settings enabled, setting up adb, etc. Once it is working, though, adb works pretty well. I have a script set up on my Mac that goes through all the games I want to back up, though each backup job has to be approved separately by tapping a button on the tablet (so it is not fully automated).

The adb command to back up Angry Birds 2 is:

adb wait-for-device backup -noapk com.rovio.baba -f “C:\angrybirds2.ab”

This will place the backup file at the root of your C drive. To restore a backup, use the “restore” keyword (the link I mention above talks about the finer points of adb).

And yes, that is not a typo, “com.rovio.baba” is the internal name of AB2 on Android.

If you are playing AB2 on an Apple product (iOS) then I don’t know how to do a game-for-game transfer. That’s why I like Epic — I play it on Android, iOS, and via BlueStacks and have never had an issue with sync’d progress. And with Go!, I lost all my progress at some point but Rovio restored a cloud backup within one day for me. But for Star Wars, Star Wars 2, Rio, Bad Piggies, Seasons, Space, and AB2, I am on my own for backups (Seasons might backup some things in the cloud these days, not sure).

Thanks,
sutekh137

[hooksfan]

@mvnla2 I’ve gone up against two people who have used all of their spells in a game and I can tell you that the scores that I got beaten by wasn’t even close even when I was clearing the levels with one bird. Both of these players where lower level players one was six and the other four.

[MVNLA2]

@hooksfan — The level of the player doesn’t matter as much as the level of the birds. I totally agree that using spells in the arena definitely does increase your chance of scoring high. BTW — I am not playing the arena right now; waiting to see if things are improved in the next update.

[Maiasatara]

It’s just getting worse. All my birds are Azure now and when I go against other players who have NONE higher they are STILL scoring triple to quadruple after the first bird in the first room! I’m getting total destruction with a strike with bomb and getting 300,000 and my opponent ALL EQUAL, is getting 900,000-1,000,000 after that same bird in the same room. If I’m already destroying everything, where are those extra 600,000 points coming from? A cheat file?

I’m losing 8/10 now. Occasionally, my win will be 1,500,000 but mostly it’s about 50,000. Not representative of my playing.

My Azure birds are behaving like limp noodles. (I know that ranks increase points only not behavior – I’m just telling you the level.) This has been for two-three days now. They don’t push things over, don’t crumble or explode structures, debris hits TNT but won’t blow it up.

Most frustrating, all of a sudden (2-3 days) I am regularly getting one pig that falls into an unreachable crevice when I have no Matilda or Grey to get down there. Makes me waste 3-5 birds just trying for one pig where I should easily be getting strikes in each room.

No new levels anywhere and I’ve got this bull in AB2 and Android players exploiting the Matilda Glitch in Friends. IT’S NOT FUN ANYMORE Rovio. I don’t know how else to say it. Bravo to the poster who “translated” the corporate-speak recently; you hit the nail on the head.
@bankler

[kedik22]

Hi @maiasatara

I am also frustrated by the arena, specially by cheaters.

Am playing friends also.
Heard about the Matilda glitch.
What is it exactly?
Thank you in advance for your replay.
Kind regards.

[furby69]

@sutekh137
You’re right, the scores might be stored locally but they could still be gathering data for statistics so if they do have backups and depending on how much information is stored on your device (last time a level was played, the level of the birds etc) the scores could be more or less reverted.

@mvnla2
I’m going to disagree with you on that one. While in theory spells should be giving you an advantage, they are more of a curse. I have probably beaten more users playing with a full spell deck than people who don’t use spells at all. If you’re as skilled as your opponent then it basically comes down to who messes up first. You also have to keep in mind that just because you beat a level with a strike it doesn’t mean your opponent hasn’t caused more destruction thus achieving a higher score. You should focus on dealing as much damage as possible while also getting strikes or birdies.

Spells don’t really help with that as they are not affected by your birds’ level multiplier and more often than not, they just ruin the level for you causing you to get a lower score than you normally would have. Furthermore they clog up your hand and force you to use less effective birds when you would need others. There are certain situations where a spell does help when used at the right time (e.g. using a chili pepper or the mighty eagle to kill the last piggie so you don’t have to waste a bird on it) however most time they just increase the chance of you messing up.

[hooksfan]

@furby69 I will disagree with you on spells. I’ve had players use their full assortment of spells in a arena battle with me twice. Both times I was beaten by well over 2 million points. I was getting strikes 90% of the time and pretty much clearing the room of the structures. I can understand how people are getting fed up with the arena battles. I’ve hit the TNT next pigs and on more than one occasion it has left the pig there.

[angrychick]

@sutekh137

Many thanks for your detailed reply. This should be useful info for people looking to do the same. It sounds quite complex, but let’s see. Thanks, ABC

[furby69]

@hooksfan Your opponent was either more skilled than you, their key birds had higher levels or you just performed bad. It is theoretically impossible to obtain over 2 million points just from spells and I’ll explain why.

Let’s assume the 5 spells in the game are completely overpowered and destroy everything in a level including pigs. You can get a maximum of 100000 points per level and an additional 25000 bonus for getting a strike, that brings the total score up to 625000. That’s the equivalent of a 1 well thrown bird at level 6. But we all know spells don’t work that way, the ice spell is pretty much rubbish and does nothing, even the best spell in the game the Mighty Eagle, only pops pigs and barely does any damage to structures. You are NOT gaining any reasonable advantage by using spells, in fact you’re at a disadvantage for the reasons I’ve explained in my previous post, the only times they do come in handy is when you need to kill off 1 or more pigs after a failed throw and that’s ONLY if you’re lucky to have the right spell at the right time in your hand.

The most important thing that matters is the level of your own birds and how much damage you cause with them to structures, that’s where 90%+ of your final score comes from. Remember that your birds can have varying amount of levels and if you use the lower leveled birds more often than the rest then no matter how many strikes you get, your final score will be considerably lower (3 strikes at lv 4 is more or less the equivalent of 4 strikes at lv 3). There are plenty of problems with the arena but spell usage is not one of them.