[Gary S McD]

@sutekh137

I had my android game tablet set up to auto-update… in retrospect maybe not the best idea

Hopefully Rovio will push a fix in the next couple of days, I hope that it does not require a newer version of android because the maker of the tablet is not planning on rolling a patch for a new version gah!

[Gary S McD]

Was there a pushed update last night?

Right now when I start Angry Birds 2, it goes to a new splash page with some neatly rendered birds, then gets stuck while it says “LOGGING IN” with a full bar at the bottom of the page.

I left it plugged in at this point for about 10 hours today and it was still stuck at the same place. Since then I have rebooted twice and it is still getting stuck at the same place.

Is anybody else experiencing this? Is there a workaround?

Thanks,

Gary

[Gary S McD]

@aeshna The destructo meter fills more quickly early in the match, by the last couple levels is barely fills at all. I figure that is their way to keep you from playing forever.

Also, once that you have filled it in a level, it fills very slowly until you are at the next level

My strategy has been to use my best birds (bombs if I got them) on the earliest levels (unless it is one that has very low value due to few targets) and get as many of them paid back as possible. It makes for good scores and can get you in the lead in the match.

So far I have won a few silver medals in the diamond league. I’ll use the gold up early for extra matches, then try and time my day around the 3-hour cooldown before I can play a match again. I have not seen anybody get 1000 points yet, maybe just lucky

I may come across as a bitchy jerk, but I enjoy playing the angry birds games and I would hate to see them turn into something different if, like I have seen happen with other franchises, they lose focus on the player and decide that we are just something in the way of them getting more ad sales. If you ever want to stroll through the yuck-fest that neo-pets turned into you would understand

[Gary S McD]

@mvnla2 not sarcastic as much as blunt. If I think something I say it, how the person reacts tells me a lot, or to drag out an oldy, but goody… “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”

[Gary S McD]

@sutekh137 Thank you for your reply, I did not consider that you would take such offence.
Relax, have a coffee and enjoy your day.
Thanks,
Gary

[Gary S McD]

@mvnla2 More than likely they did really poorly in a higher league and got dropped to the lower league that you are in (the bottom three players drop to the next league down)

I have considered the tactic of loosing a tournament so bad that I drop to a lower level or two (at Diamond now) so that I could rack up some easy wins since I still do not have a gold medal for first place.

To be honest it would mean that I would not be playing any (or many) games for a couple of weeks and I really have a hard time staying away from the game :)

Anyhow, if a player comes in the top three in their tournament, then they should be on the higher league the next time around. I do not know how strictly they enforce player name uniqueness, but I suppose that it would be possible to have a few birds, and give them all the same alias. But I do not think that there is a market for maxed-out angry bird characters like there is for WoW

[Gary S McD]

@sutekh137 Thanks for the passive-agressive reply, “At some point and on some of these issues we need to give Rovio the benefit of the doubt, otherwise we should just be uninstalling the game”

Obviously, you are playing at not being a rovio employee while Bankler takes it on the chin. It is a handy way to work a discussion forum, but you show your hand when you attack the person who you are supposed to act like you are supporting.

All that I am saying is that rovio has a great game, they should not cave in to the desire to use artificial means to drive more revenue. Carry that water to the next meeting and stop being so thin-skinned with the people you are trying to demonstrate empathy with

[Gary S McD]

@bankler
1. We all know that the ability to fill a destructo meter is reduced in the later levels. For the last bird to have the ability to completely fill the destructo meter is more than a ‘bug’, for them to fill three destructo meters in a row is ridiculous. I am still calling foul on this as a means to force a player to watch another advertisement by giving the other player enough birds to change the outcome on the very last move

2. I am speaking very specifically about the bird that is received for watching a video after being behind at the end of the match (particularly following the scenario above). The bird received is unusually weak, and I have even seen a group of blues bounce off of a glass panel (or a yellow fail to break a wood block, etc…) at this point in the game

Really, I get it. Nobody is making games for free, we are paying with our eyeballs, but to intentionally force more advertisement views in this manner is infuriating. I have to have a million point lead late in the game to end up with a 6 star game after the barrage of magically appearing birds. Almost as if I am being pushed to purchase coins to remain competitive…

Many mobile games are facing waves of rage-quits and angering your players does nothing to keep them playing.

[Gary S McD]

@bankler That would be a believable angle if it was not possible to watch the other player use each card. Time and again I will see the other “player” spend their cards down to zero, and then their icon grey out while I am in the lead. Get it, all gone, nada, zip…. and then here it comes, they pull a card out of thin air, and it miraculously earns them another card, and another… until I am forced to watch a video for a free bird (note, this is a revenue source). Sometimes I will get ‘lucky’ and receive something that I can score with, but the odds seem to be heavily weighted to getting some bird that has no effect at all, or some ‘magically’ tough piece of wood that a yellow bird bounces off of.

Online games face a steep loss of revenue when all of the player rage-quit

[Gary S McD]

@hooksfan, what you are seeing here is a player who is buying coins in order to level up their bird as fast as possible. This is a revenue source and, obviously, the way rovio would like to see people play

[Gary S McD]

Yes, they are ‘recorded’ players… or are they?

I used to think that the opponent that I was facing represented another humans being’s efforts…. however, the rough play that involves way-to-many-birds at the end of the game, the consistent need to watch a video for another bird, or purchase additional extra cards has opened my eyes.

And it is not a pretty sight. I have become convinced that Angry Birds 2 Arena is not about being a better player, leveling up better birds, or even winning a tournament or two, Angry Birds 2 Arena is about using none-to-subtle contrived ‘recorded’ games to just barely beat any player, that is any player who does not spend money on extra cards, or their time on watching advertisements

The kludgey end-of game advantages given to the fakey players was the final give-away. Rovio, clean up your act and let players play against players instead of turning us into consumers

Sincerely,

Gary

[Gary S McD]

For the second time since I started playing Angry Birds 2 I had an entire level of immortal pigs

It started as a simple platform with fans and even a couple boxes of tnt on the tower. I use a silver bird to shatter the platform, expecting the boxes of tnt to explode and kill all the birds… Lo and behold the birds and tnt just float about in the fans breeze, occasionally bouncing off of each other and a building above the fan and back.

Eventually one of the tnt boxes explodes, leaving a tnt box behind. The silver bird gets caught up under the building with a pig and gives me a few ‘Headshot’s until the silver bird falls between the platform and a fan leaving three pigs to sit about and laugh at me

Ah Angry Birds 2 Arena, why do I keep playing you?

[Gary S McD]

Thanks Sutekh, that makes a lot of sense on the extra cards. Another oddity that I just noticed is that after winning my second silver medal, the chart reads 22 instead of 2…

[Gary S McD]

@sutekh137
This most recent update of the arena seems to have introduced two ‘bugs’ for me

The first one that I noticed was an opponent who started with +8 cards on their card-meter (for a total of 11 cards starting). I double checked my card count and it was the normal +4 (for 7 cards)

The second is that on their last moves I have seen an opponent gain extra cards in a single turn (like they hit a golden pig) repeatedly until they have gone from well behind me to half a million ahead of me. It looks like this was introduced with the whole ‘get an extra card for watching a video’ thing when you are behind on points, but when they get three in a row it is kinda disheartening.

Gary