Reply To: About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

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ADBjester
@adbjester

@sambeaver “Why i suspect that they are just computer generated virtual opponents? Because their names are different but their avatars repeating again and again. For example who choose stupid looking pink female bird avatar if the name is clearly male and vice versa Terence or Bomb avatar with female birdname? And i’ve seen opponents with same name (for example Beaky Goosebump) but with different avatar quite often too.”

Shiny side out, Sam. There are a limited number of names and they are randomly generated from a few dozen first names and a few dozen last names. They did AWAY with using Facebook names a while back… and most people don’t bother to upload a custom image now that it no longer auto-links to Facebook. There are also a finite number of pre-supplied images (not many), so it is unsurprising that there’s repeats there, too.

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@jeremyharrod
“12 hours into this weeks arena and someone already has 137 points. I’ve given up already this week – absolutely no point. Second place has 98 points.”

“Bird”, please. 26 hours in and I have 739 points, and I didn’t play much at all today because I have a thing called a job. Third place in my arena has over 500 points. They aren’t cheaters — just prolific players willing to either grind or buy their way to the top.

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@cosmo2503
“I don’t think that someone’s demotion to 1 point has anything with real demotion and penality for cheaters. Two weeks ago I had @chucky-2 in my league. While she/he could see herself/himself at first place (game name Boom) and me (Selma) as second, I had her/him at the bottom of the board with 1 point.”

Ummmm, probably not the same player. First, there are hundreds of thousands of leagues. (Millions of players, grouped by 15’s) The odds of you being in the same league with someone you know are very slim. As I said above, the names are RANDOM, and the number of first names is not great. If the combined first name and last name are very long (i.e. Boom McPigSlayer), the game truncates the name to JUST the first name.

I’m “Rush Einswine” but even that is too long, so I just show up as “Rush”.

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@mad4paok
“Hoarding arena tickets the way you propose doesn’t increase the chance of getting demoted? (playing only the video tickets). If I do what you say I guess I will be demoted no?”

I don’t work for or speak for Rovio, but I will say with certainty that you would not be demoted for this strategy. Why? Because it is *exactly* the same strategy as paying 900 gems for 18 tickets, and then using them in a flurry to rack up points.

If most of the people who believe there are cheaters are believing so because they can’t imagine scoring my 739 points in 26 hours of on-and-off play (mostly on Sunday while lazing at football) because they can’t do it themselves playing twice every three hours… then no wonder there’s a false belief that the games are rife with cheating.

Exploiting an obviously intended feature of the game (earning a non-expiring ticket) cannot be cheating, and Rovio would face a murder of crows flocking mercilessly on their support lines if they started punishing people for it.

That IS NOT CHEATING. I will even suggest that two players who Facebook-friend each other with the sole intent of trading 100 gifts per day in the daily challenges, is not cheating (though it runs closer to the line than ticket hoarding, since it involves players working in tandem — but if Rovio wants to stop that, they can just lower the frequency of gifts in rooms).

Cheating would be hacking the program or data files. Cheating would be exploiting the forced-program-exit method detailed by another player in this thread, to achieve unlimited spells.

@mad4poak “Buck Birdface” who was in 15th place before I went to bed at manages to get an astonishing 534 stars by the time I woke a few hours later. Now I’m a very distant 3rd place. If what Jester says is true, how come he wasn’t caught?”

What was there to “catch”? If what I said is true, he had a nest of entry tickets, and played non-stop for a couple hours. Remember: If you win every match (which you *can* do with top level birds and/or spells), you pay 4 net tickets for a full streak. You may even average 8 stars per match. That’s 56 stars earned per full streak, so he had ten full streaks.

I very nearly accomplished that on Sunday because I was gunning to level up Red (currently at level 15) to having 3300+ excess feathers, so that when level 16 cards are released, he will instantly be promoted. This is one reason I didn’t take a week off this week…. as I want all my birds “ready” to be 16 at the earliest point possible. So, @ravenlunatic, you asked “Those levels are insane, nice work! So when Rovio comes out with new levels are you automatically promoted into them?”, the answer is “ohhhh, yeah! How do you think you wind up facing a guy with 5 top tier cards the same day a new card comes out?

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Now for my own tin foil hat. I suspect that the arena groupings (which 15 players you end up with) is not entirely random. Based on @selma and @chucky-2 screenshots of people with over 3000 points in the same league, I suspect high-scoring players are grouped with similar high-scoring players. I won last week with 1800 stars (running away with it — 1300 points for second). I have NEVER played against a winner with more than 2000 stars, even on alternate “weeks off”.

I don’t believe this would be rigging the game on Rovio’s part. It would be a smart move by Rovio to ensure that people who are going to rack up 3000 stars don’t annoy everyone else into giving up the arena (where people buy things). If you know that these four players are going to average 2800 stars each, group ’em up and let ’em be competitive — it’s no fun to win EVERY game. Let people who “compete” at the 2000 point level play in the same arenas as each other as well.

Sorry to spew — I only get one chance per day to roll up all replies. See you tomorrow!

Jester