Ok folks here it is. I’m just going to copy/paste the exchange between myself and the Rovio agent. Your questions have been answered!
This is what I sent:
“1) Is buddy syncing supposed to work cross-platform? A lot of people say they can’t see their buddy if they are on android and the other is on iPhone. I have noticed this myself as I have a “Real life” friend who is on Phone and i can never see her although we have double checked our FB syncing. (I am on Android)
2) What do I need to do to receive five keys on a Hard mission?
I’ve got three TFs all receiving three stars, plus using the video bonus, and I consistently only receive four keys, not five.
In this case, all three TFs were at L11. Do my TFs need to be higher level?
3) Do the levels scale linearly? I’ve run missions using L7s that seem to be only slightly less effective than running missions with L10s and L11s.
If it’s linear, then running a mission with 2 x L15 would come to the same result as running the same mission with 3 x L10. Is this correct?
4) I’d like to know what Rovio has planned with the last two “Coming Soon” areas (one at the very top of Pig City, and the other one to the south of the Hard mission portal).
In particular, once these are active will there be another fundamental change to the way the game is played, like how post-1.5.15 we now have to collect special materials?
I’d like to know if I should start modifying my overall gameplay strategy now
5) think it would also help if we knew:
1. when / how often the game is supposed to back itself up
2. when / how often the game is supposed to restore itself
This is of course related to the discussion of the known bug here:
"Updating Progress" Problem (Looks like a New Bug, Rovio!)
6) Can you shed any light on Airachnid and why she shows up sometimes with the deceptihog icon, and sometimes autobird, as discussed Here (https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/forums/topic/airachnid-using-deceptihog-items-for-upgrade/).
Thanks a ton!
And this is his Reply:
“Hello again,
I’ll go straight to the point:
1) The new update allowed cross-syncing your progress (iOS <> Android and vice versa), so nowadays you should also be able to use your friends’ buddies, even if your friend is using different OS than you.
2) In order to receive five keys, your Transformers need to have higher upgrade levels. This was done in order to make sure that there’s an incentive to upgrade your characters, there would have been a risk that people get too comfy getting five keys if it was too easy to do.
3) Yes, levels scale linearly based on your Transformers’ ranks.
4) Unfortunately I’m not in liberty to say what the future updates might include, we want to keep it as a surprise. But I can tell you that personally I like what they’ve done! Patience my friend, patience..
5) The game handles cloud-saving by going through a predetermined checklist that includes everything from in-app purchases, your rank, silo level, pigs, material levels to coins and if some of the values for these items are different than the last time, the game will back itself up. The game also saves itself after every completed mission and after you’ve closed the game (closed in a way that it won’t run in the background, aka hard-reset). The game saves itself to a local save file at first and then it transfers that data to your cloud-save file.
6) The thing with Airachnid is an unfortunate glitch and we are aware of it, but at the moment it’s not our most important priority, so we haven’t gotten into it that much yet. Our main priorities are getting the rest of the iOS users back into playing the game and fix the freezing issue with the Android Lollipop users. The difficulty level glitch was also fixed and it will be introduced in the future update. Once we’ve handled all these tasks you can remind me about the Airachnid glitch and we’ll look into it, since I might forget it due to my hazy memory.
Phew, that was a lot of information, hopefully you’re happy! I can’t go into too much detail about the technical side of things, but these points should atleast shed some light on the matters that are confusing you and the other users.
Thanks again!”
