About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[Sutekh137]

@guttermouth

Arena battles have never been real-time. Not even sure how they would do that — what do you do if some one else takes 45 minutes to finish? Hang around?

No, you are playing someone else’s replay. It’s a real run, according to Rovio, that they save on their servers. You are playing the most recent run for that level and that opponent. They might stink that run (I’ve destroyed some opponents) or might have a sequence where you lose 10 in a row (I’ve had that happen, too). But you are playing another person as closely as possible.

Two issues that remain (and that Rovio is supposedly working on):

— The match algorithm seems off at times, and some opponents look like cheaters. Not sure if they match by star level, average score, bird power, or a combination, but some matches seem too easy while others seem impossible to beat.
— The play of your opponents cards can be wacky at the end. It used to be your opponent burned cards up front too fast and got a huge lead, but now it is the other way around…it seems like opponents finish with 3-4 cards out of nowhere. We’re not sure whether that is an interface glitch, cheating, or what, but Rovio is supposedly working on that, too.

So that’s why your opponent always finishes up as you do — because the computer is showing you how your opponent’s run finished up. Their final score should accurately reflect how they last did (at least that is how it is supposed to work).

Hope this information helps…

Thanks,
sutekh137

[Dwhite]

The 12 jewels gets a player (1) entry in to the arena. They’ve said the players we play against are pre recorded data of other players. So we are not playing real time against other players.

[peter-barlow]

I think the battle should end – and stars be awarded- when both players have used their cards. Any bonus points (from extra cards for coming close) should only be awarded after the winner has received their stars for the win.

[Dallasreds]

I just sent Rovio a request about my arena opponents.
1 Terence # 1216 has 196 gems
2 Bomb # 3793 168 gems
3 Miguel. 140 gems
9 me 73 gems
Is everyone’s board like this with fake players in the top two spots?
This assures no one can make it to the top two spots and win the top prizes.
I quit due to the cheating by Rovio.

[Sutekh137]

@dallasreds

I assume you mean stars? Those scores are not that high — I have 291 stars currently (third place) and have played completely legit. One week I got over 300 stars. On average I get in 12 battles a day and win half of them. Even if I only get 5 stars for the win, that’s 30 per day. That average has gone up since they re-calibrated the number of stars you get based on how badly you beat your opponent.

First place on my board has over 800 stars and second place has over 500. I assume they are just idiots with nothing better to do than spend gems for a meaningless trophy. That happens in the Diamond League. Though, 800 is a lot of stars. Could be a cheater, I suppose.

Thanks,
sutekh137

[Dwhite]

What Sutekh137 says is spot on. Those scores are actually quite low for the leaders. I currently have 354 in the Diamond and I’m in second place. All mine are legit too. Well, I guess I had some extra plays from finishing second last week but I haven’t bought any. I did cash in some ITunes cards a few weeks ago and bought a bunch of gems. I scored over 1,000. That was a classic case of buying the tourney but it wasn’t cheating. It was snowy here in Kentucky and I was bored so I just played and played.

[Dallasreds]

@sutekh137
Yes i meant stars. I was angry and delirious when I wrote that. I just wondered if everyone had what I think are plants as players in the first two slots? Since the new tournaments started, I am in first place with 0 points! I have never paid gems after the free entries but obviously some are. Thanks for your input. I have almost calmed down now. There appears to be only real players on the board.

[MVNLA2]

@bankler — Ok, please explain this:
Last week these were the top scores in my Azure league with 8 hrs to go:
Red 44552 392
Mvnla (me) 325
Boris 257
Red 58896 124
HACTUK 121 (the name is Russian so I think it’s more like Nastek)
I got promoted to Emerald, and these are some of the people in my league:
Mvnla (me)
Boris (same avatar)
HACTUK (same avatar)
So the arena says only the top 3 get promoted.
Red 44552 should have been promoted since I didn’t beat him, but he seems to be in another league
Mvnla (me) was promoted
Boris was promoted
So why is HACTUK in my Emerald league?
I have screenshots of the leaderboards if that will help.

[Dwhite]

I think it would be a wonderful idea to come up with some way of rewarding the player whose birds are already maxed out (8’s) with gems as opposed to feathers as whatever daily rewards are handed out. It goes without saying that feathers are totally worthless to a bird that is already an 8. I think this game as a whole needs to provide the player with better rewards. I recently ranked up to level 51 which required I think 255 stars. I received a whopping 3 gems. This is a little on the greedy side of the tracks. I’ve spent more than my fair share of $$$ on this game and I expect a little bit of reciprocity in return.

[MG516]

@mvnla2 @bankler
I mentioned this in another forum – I finished 2nd in an azure league (all my birds are level 5) and was promoted to a diamond league. The competition is a little tougher, but is near impossible when I am matched with an opponent with +10 cards. I still enjoy playing AB2 but am really frustrated with situations that are presented. The person in first in my league already has well over 150 points which is a great weekly total for me. Oh well, onwards.

[MVNLA2]

@bankler — I didn’t mention this yesterday when it happened, but I got an opponent (with a decently high rank) with 0 birds and 0 spells. I was curious to see if this was some cheat, so I played. No cheat, and I won 10* with the score bar totally filled. So yes, it does sometimes totally fill up.

[cognitive]

Newbie to the forums here but not to Angry Birds, currently #1 in the Emerald League (the one I am seeing at least :)). I have a few questions / observations…

1. The matching algorithm needs a bit of work as others have said. There’s no point matching someone that has +5 cards with a common mortal. Absolutely none. It can’t be that difficult to match opponents by # birds in a round +/- some threshold. One or two I can understand, but not 4-5 as reported.

2. How many different instances of each weekly league are there? is there just ONE Diamond, ONE Emerald, etc or are there multiple parallel leagues. I mean, I’ve won Gold in Vanilla thru Azure (except Silver in one, can’t remember)…

3. Why is it that there are people in my league that are listed as higher? When I was in Azure league last week I could swear half the people in the league were Diamond… This week it seems a bit better, a few people in Amethyst but most everyone in Emerald at least…

Keep up the good work Rovio, I’m a mobile / embedded developer myself and know the challenge!

[Rovio_Bankler]

There are several instances of a league. Luckily for me, we’re still more than 15 x 8 players in the game! :)

The way it works is that you are matched against 14 other people that have roughly the same card levels as you, and preferably are in your league. But in the case we don’t find 14 perfect matchups for you, we sometimes fallback to giving you some higher or lower leveled players, in some cases even from another league (the latter should be relatively uncommon, but yes it happens, and I agree that it’s not optimal).

There is currently no guarantee that Player A sees Player B in his/her tournament just because Player B sees Player A. Hence, technically, it might happen that a player you saw finishing 4:th place, actually finished 3:rd or even won, from his/her own perspective, and gets bumped to the next league tier next week. This should answer the specific question @mvnla2 asked yesterday.

[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

[kedik22]

@garysmcdermott

Hi Gary.
Could not have said it any better.
Regards.

[Rovio_Bankler]

@garysmcderm
You are only playing against other real players.

We do indeed have some problems in the arena, where it looks really weird in the end of a round, and where you can get matched against a player who dropped out mid-round (showing fewer than seven birds). The game is also still sensitive to hacking in some areas. These are bugs and shortcomings in the game, and it’s our responsibility to get them sorted out asap.

Sometimes the matchmaking can give you a tough challenge where you get to compete against a player who has slightly higher card levels than you. This is by design.

However, we never put you up against a fake opponent.

[hooksfan]

@bankler, sorry but I call BS on that. Explain to me how I lose to a Level 7 player that brings in nearly all their spell cards. People are getting frustrated with the arena battles. Most of the time when I get the extra card for watching a video it’s The Blues who are worthless going up against most structures.

<https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/members/hooksfan/album/picture/18159/”&gt;” alt=”Angry Bird Opponent” />

[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]

@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

[Aeshna]

Getting an opponent who is slightly higher than you!

Yes, matching me against someone with all level 8 birds and playing 5 spell cards. An offer I just had to decline.

I would imagine if all players do the same as me and log out and then back in to get a better match then is putting more of a strain on Rovio’s servers. I’m using three times the bandwidth, logging in and out three times!

I fully expect the backing out of an arena match up with no penalty to be closed soon. Isn’t this how Rovio works? Close an exploit.

[DJLarryt]

Even when you take on a player who supposedly has the same bird flock ranking as you do, it’s still not a guarantee the fight is fair. I snapped this today- both of us were at the same level. But this is entry into the second screen… I had to snap a shot to prove how ridiculous this was. Check out the number of birds left and the score compared to mine…. seriously… I quit right then and there.

473,443 vs 2,954,198? REALLY?

View post on imgur.com

[cognitive]

Another improvement in the Arena could be to add some more random screens. Right now there seem to be a fairly small number of levels in Arena, and sooner or later the decent players pretty much can recite them by heart.

This kind of reminds me of playing Pac-Man. If you can train your muscles to do it in a specific way, and play the “pattern” perfectly, you can play forever. Same here :). I am at Level 4 so far (Emerald) and it doesn’t seem to be very difficult. I do encounter the occasional rash-of-cards-at-end but usually if I lose I lose because I messed up.

[Sutekh137]

@djlarryt

A picture is worth a thousand words… I have NEVER seen anything like that. Gots to be a cheater.

Rovio, build in a sanity filter. No way someone has 3 million after one level. Detect the cheaters!

Thanks,
sutekh137

[kedik22]

@cognitive

@sutekh137

Yes, @bankler could please ask Rovio weather this is a cheater, a fake or a hack?

And, is it Rovio´s plans to eliminate this type of participants?

Kind regards.

[Rovio_Bankler]

@hooksfan “sorry but I call BS on that. Explain to me how I lose to a Level 7 player that brings in nearly all their spell cards.”

I’m not following you. How is my statement that the arena is not rigged, “BS”, because you were matched, and apparently lost, to somebody who uses spells? It has nothing do with rigging. It’s how the game works, and it’s no secret.

@garysmcdermott
Regarding the grayed out opponent suddenly getting extra cards. This is the opponent getting an extra card from watching a video, and in some case even getting an extra destructometer card as a result of this. This is NOT how it is intended to work. It’s unfair indeed, but it’s not rigging nor hacking. It is an embarrassing bug and it will be fixed when next update is out. I’m just very sorry that we screwed this one up.

Regarding the feeling that you always get the “wrong” bird against the towers you’re facing. I’m sorry you get that feeling, but there is no weighting involved here, it’s just purely random. I have personally programmed that feature, so I’m very certain about this. It takes a random card from the cards you have used and gives it back. Excluding spells in the arena.

@djlarryt
That looks indeed like a hacker. I don’t know if it’s entirely impossible to get that kind of score if all you’re card are level 8 and you bring all five spells, but it seems unlikely. I’m sorry for this. Thanks for the report btw. This is very useful for us.