New League-style. How is everybody doing with it?

[burbman]

IMO, as the power up users continue to take the upper spots in the lower level leagues, and move upward, those of us who play without will be left by ourselves in glass, wood, etc. This will probably take several weeks to shake out, but I think Rovio is on to something with the various tranches.

[27feathers]

I thought of that too burbman! Eventually all the non PU users will end up together.
Although, whoever gets the top spots in those weekly games will get moved up to the next level, so eventually all the top players (even without PU’s) will end up in the same place.

I am loving the leagues because I only have one friend who plays the tournament with me, and if I don’t let her win a few I feel too competitive. Playing against strangers is a much more comfortable competition!

[Andrew Apps]

900k+ Without Power ups,… Seriously? How is that even possible? I do not have anywhere near 900k with power ups!

[DrRocket]

Same here 27feathers.

My sons are the ones who introduced me to AB in general, and dogged my to join their Friends game in particular. After a few weeks of me thumping them solidly, they quit playing me. So I’m really liking the challenge of trying to beat the other league players. It makes it much more interesting.

I’m hoping this is a permanent feature.

[stosh]

@Andrews Apps Angry Birds Nest has walkthroughs that post a video for both P/U and non P/U users. I rarely use them but they are available for all nesters to improve their scores. A discussion thread is below the the video to brag and share alternate gaming methods. Not all involved in ABF are nesters. I have shared ABN with all 5 of my friends and 4 are 886,000 or better. Now at 908,970, in 1st by 330, 5th in league for now. I play on PC only. I am sharing my scores to help others who do not use power-ups to know what is obtainable without power-ups. ABN does not have separate leader boards. Fling hard and often.

[burbman]

Managed to earn enough points to be upgraded to stone class :( I think players who play every week will be moving up in class pretty quickly regardless of usage of power ups. So much for my earlier optimism.

[tomason]

I requested a refund. Both fb and rovio had to be contacted with screenshots as well with copies of correspondence to each. They were gracious about it though, I will say they were very polite and professional and made good on this issue as it is/was legit. If you go that route, I suggest being equally prepared to prove your case.

[Kif]

I totally agree! I enjoy the challenge of not using power ups, but it seems there is no way of being towards the top unless you use them. I’m currently in 24th place and see no change in site.

[Vic the Hun]

Guys, could somebody please explain the rules or criteria of advancement in this new League Tournament? Eg. in ‘wood’ category, one must be fifth or higher to advance to stone, or something similar. I tried to find these rules (if they are written at all) but to no avail.

Thank you in advance.

[tomason]

You nailed it. As far as I can tell, If you finish in the top 5, you get a green arrow next to your name and advanec. If you don’t advance then you stay back in your old grouping until you move up or move down. Just win all of the time and you’ll be fine.

[burbman]

Pretty sure points are awarded depending on where on the leaderboard you end up. Accumulate enough points, and you move up to the next class. I have not seen a week where I have lost points, last week only gained 10, but it was enough to move from wood to stone.

[mm]

@tomason33, thanks for pointing out the green arrows, that makes sense, but in Copper league, on the top two have green arrows next to their name. Maybe you have to be higher up on the list as you move up, so top two for copper but in glass it was the top 20. I’ve seen some red arrows near the bottom of copper as well, so I guess those guys go back to stone? I didn’t know what those meant, but I’m kind of a noob to ABF.
I guess I’d need to keep playing at Copper to move up after a few weeks, but honestly, some of those high scores are pretty far ahead of where I’m at.

[tomason]

@martin-mix-9 All valid points and I came in 7th in stone last week so did not advance to copper (stayed in stone),I believe it is helpful if you get scoring early on when the new tournament starts every Sunday at midnight. That’s just my experience, not sure if it is a bona-fide fact. but I’ve been first place in all my league play EXCEPT last week when I came in on Monday afternoon.
Wow, top two eh? Here’s the thing though. They are eliminating known cheaters, the person that was in first in my league this week was taken out completely, I mean his name is no longer available and it went from 40 to 39 in competition. Dunno if this data is helpful, I hope it is.

[mm]

@tomason33 I’m glad they’re getting rid of known cheaters and I assume they have ways to find them, but I also have to wonder about some of those high scores I’m seeing in my copper league and if they’ll get zapped too.
Let me posit a theory about the person #1 in your league though and while I could be totally off on this, it just happened to me so who knows. I had been playing ABF solely on my mobile phone. I was in 5th place or so in Copper league. I wanted to start playing on my PC too, so I created a new FB account (I don’t want people getting invites from my normal FB account to play ABF, I’ll lose a bunch of friends if that happens). I got on my laptop and played some ABF but since I was new to the game on that account, I am in glass league. When I logged into FB on my mobile phone, I expected it to transfer my phone scores to my FB account, but it went the opposite way and transferred my PC scores to my mobile. So now in both places I’m in glass league. I logged out of FB on my phone and restarted my ABF on my phone and boom, I’m back in copper, but my scores are all gone. It’s like I’ve never played in copper on my phone and my 5th place spot is now 30th (or whatever). I don’t know if this could have happened to your league’s #1 (I think it’s much more likely someone somehow complained about them or they were found on some monitor and zapped), but in my league, the #5 player (me) disappeared too.
On a completely separate note, on my mobile once I logged into FB in glass league, every time I went to the league overview screen, ABF gave me another 6 coins. I abused this glitch and got another 700 or so coins (I have to admit I wish I was on 50 coins), but that’s the extent of my “cheating”.
Finally, (sorry for the long post), what seems like an outrageous score this week in total? I’ve got some folks who were in my copper league with about 1,160,000 points. Seems like the top three are all around there and then there’s a big dropoff to around 1,104,000 which was about where I was. I’m either missing 50k somewhere or it seems like those scores are somehow inflated. Figured it’d be a good place to ask here.
Great to be a part of the community here!
–mm

[tomason]

@martin-mix-9 Well, I don ‘t know that getting coins really counts as cheating in terms of gameplay, and honestly, I haven’t the foggiest clue of how these people figure out even HOW to cheat. However, I do rest assured that they will be discovered in this league format sooner than later. When Rovio started this league-style global competition there were several bugs still to iron out, some of which were attributable to their server becoming overwhelmed and others involving coding that gave a significant advantage to smartphone users over PC users. I’m certain there are people much smarter than me here that could articulate more technically the myriad of potential variables that can go wrong… But trust and believe the potential for failure on any scale is always possible… that kind of is true for everything, all the time… but I digress.
In my league I am number #1 (at 1,155,990) for the third time in four weeks and I can promise and swear that I have never ever cheated while playing any angry birds game… mainly because I don’t know how, but also because I find games and puzzles are better and more fun if played as they were meant to be played… you know? That score was not easy or cheap to achieve, and always involves some real out-of-the-box thinking and calculating… plus Rovio always leaves markers to help you aim… if you know what to look for.
The problem you described is a new one and I’ve not seen or heard of that one. If you spent ANY cash in power-ups to achieve those scores then you are truly entitled to a proper refund, I did that last week (because of the phone advantage thing) and it can be done.

[mm]

Thanks, @tomason33. Yeah, I didn’t mean do sound like I was saying the guys at the top of the league were not legit, I just didn’t know. Since I posted, I’ve been able to use some power-ups and get up to 1,127,000 or so (and I’m in the glass league where it’s enough for #1, at least so far). Mostly, I was able to pick up a lot with the big wooden structure to the right on the first level (I think) and I was able to pickup a bunch of points on the one with the hanging bird above the TNT over the stone car using the Wingman. I just wanted to ask if those types of scores are possible legitimately and I’m glad to hear they are.
I didn’t lose anything when they booted me in Copper other than my score. I think I’m just going to play on the other ID anyway. The good news is, when I started this new ID, it preserved my golden sling.
I was also only half-serious about the cheating. I took advantage of the glitch and if it happens again, I’m definitely going to rack up as much coinage as I can.

[mm]

@tomason33, I wondered about the markers to help you aim. I’ve found spots in the backgrounds that seem to be there to help get better scores, but I always wondered if it was just coincidence. Either way, once I find something that works pretty good I use background stuff to help me aim. Of course, when I use the power up sling, it screws everything up for me. ;-)
Thanks again for providing the info. I’m excited about getting going with my account that I can use with my PC and with my phone. I’m kind of bummed all that time on the zombpigs levels were for nothing, but I’ve got more power ups with this login and some extra coins due to the glitch yesterday.
Off to play some now. Only one more day left…
–mm

[cryptanalyst]

I have also noticed some interesting behavior regarding people dropping out of the league. Within the first hour of when this week’s tournament started, there were 37 people in my bronze league pool. This has dwindled to 25 right now. I have a couple theories, but no way to test what’s true. Possibilities include:
– They were kicked for cheating. For example, the highest score in my league group just a couple hours after it started was 1,151,610, which was pretty high for so early on. The person had disappeared by the next morning. Of course, the scores very well could have been legitimate… that total is certainly doable, as the ABN leaderboards now show.
– Some sort of rebalancing occurs when a new person plays for the first time in a week, if there’s not already a non-full newly-formed pool for them to join. I’ve never had it happen to me though, where I was rebalanced to a completely different group of competitors.
– Any sort of glitch that resets someone’s scores/placement like Martin explained.

[mm]

@scottrogoff, I wondered about the rebalancing as well. Like I said I had to start back in glass league and I can’t be sure, but it seemed like the league I got dumped in all had scores under 1M but when I get on level three, it seemed like a bunch of league total scores were over 1M. I wondered if since I posted good scores on the first two levels, they moved me into a league with spots available where people had higher scores. Again, I could have just not been paying attention too closely, but I did wonder as it was going on if I got pushed into another group. I wonder too what happen to those folks in your league. It’s interesting that you started out with an odd number like 37 and then settled on something like 25. Maybe they do rebalance as more people jump in. If so, I wonder what the routine is for doing that. I haven’t ever really noticed it before, though. In the first four weeks of me playing, I was battling the same top few people for the #1 spot so if they did rebalance, they either added folks down the ladder to my league or they took folks away who were down the list a bit.
Thanks for posting!
–mm

[mm]

By the way, you guys are awesome. I’m at 1,125,940 and can’t seem to find those other points. I’m not going to stress since it’s enough to move me up to Wood league next week and has me at #1 in the league, but I’m sincerely impressed with the scores you guys are able to put up! Rock on!
–mm

[Jkhab69]

i actually dont know how the league stuff works other than usually i play levels, see what my scores are then try to figure out how Im so far behind. this week i had some extra time and i used a massive amount of powerups trying get my scores up. i’m currently at a bit over 1147000 in the stone league. i expect to be bumped to second place soon since i cant seem to get more points than i already have and the number 2 player has added a lot of points today. im ok with it. this week was an exception. i usually dont have so much extra time or willingness to use coins on powerups. i like the league but im not going to stress about my position. im thinking about focusing more on regular play without powerups. its much cheaper, even though it seems every week in seasons there’s a glitch on one platform or another which permits those players to get scores way out of reach. granted, I’ve had a few levels where i launch a bird and when the dust clears, i scratch my head in amazement and wonder what just happened, but 99% of the time, aside from zompigs, my scores arent unusual. yes of course i’ll play league, but as i said i usually dont have a lot of time to devote to it, and no way can i afford to repeatedly blow through as many powerups on league levels as i did this round. i also prefer the “pure” gameplay, where nobody uses powerups and its a bit more skill.

[Vic the Hun]

Thank you all, gentlemen.

1) I do not have a long-standing experience with the Tournament, but during my brief presence I saw that really good players did not engage the race on the first day. Quite the contrary: they tend to start playing on the last day, which is, from a sportsman’s POV quite logical: the less time remaining till the closing time of the given tournament the less chance for others to beat your highs. Three weeks ago, in glass league, I had been second on Saturday, and was seventh on Monday morning 7 am (two hours before opening the new tournament, central european time). The same occurred a week ago: Saturday evening I was first; Sunday evening, a couple of hours before opening the new one, I was fourth. Currently I am, on a Sunday early afternoon CET, first in the stone league. Let’s see what Sunday late evening or Monday early morning brings :)

2) Many of you gentlemen mentioned the possibility, indeed the (hypothethical) occurrence of cheating. I play on Samsung Galaxy Tab / android, and do not quite see how any kind of “cheating” is possible on this platform. (I hope the use of power ups does not qualify cheating, as Rovio is indeed – implicitly – encouraging their use in Tournament.)

[mm]

@vic-the-hun, I don’t know if there is a way to cheat on tablet or mobile, but it sounds like you can pay for an extension to Firefox to be able to cheat with that browser. I don’t know the details, if it lets you just pick a high-score, if it gives you unlimited coins, infinity power-ups or what, but there’s some info on the boards here. I’ve hit kind of a glitch with my mobile device, though. Sometimes when I collect my daily coin reward, it gives it to me multiple times. Unfortunately for me, it’s only worked on the smaller coin amounts so while I’ve been able to stash enough coins for a Jingle Sling and a hundred or so power ups for potions, quakes, and power slings (and Wingman), I’ve definitely gotten fewer coins than the $80 bundle and I can’t figure out why sometimes it does this and sometimes it doesn’t. But as for straight up cheating, I don’t know what is out there and what is “legit” versus just a virus or adware or whatnot. I don’t want to take that chance even if I wanted to cheat. Besides, if you can just plug in your own score without playing, what’s the point? Maybe I’m not much better than a cheater by taking multiple daily rewards, but with ABF giving them to me without me having to jailbreak the application or whatever, I feel less guilty. ;-)
I also have no idea if there is a benefit to jumping into the tourney early versus late. But then I’m in wood league now (I had been in copper but kind of screwed that up) so I’m about 50k ahead of second place (something like 1,025,000 to 975,000). I jumped in early Monday morning.
Anyway, best of luck. I’m still relatively new to ABF, but love the game and the Nest is super cool.
–mm

[Vic the Hun]

Thank you, mm.

Unlike many of my coplayers, I do not think there are lots of cheaters out there. Admittedly, some of the scores this or that player reaches seems to be unbelievable at first sight, but then 1) it is Rovio that records them, it is not an uncovered cheque like here at the Nest, furthermore I myself had reached scores – pure chance and lots of attempts – that I found unimaginable before; and 2) maybe a few of them find the way to – for the sake of argument – get an unlimited amount of power-ups, that is cheating all right. But they still have to be smart, sometimes cunning and agile enough to reach top scores, do they not? For instance two or three weeks ago with these Egyptian-themed mummy thing, I spent a whole day finding out how to reach a top score in a given surrounding – with PU-s of course – and another half day with actually executing it. Some of them require much thought and more cunning this and nothing else is the reason for some really high scores, IMHO.

[elle]

First three weeks I was top of the leagues but this week can’t get up there for love nor money (and yes I bought a ton of power ups). And now I read about no more Angry Birds for PCs (and I had to hunt for that information) – is this what my problem is? If you’re on a PC, tough luck? Did I buy all those power ups for aught? It would have been nice to have been notified about this, if this is the case. Could’ve saved me time, money and huge frustration.