About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[cognitive]

There’s some Arena magic there that even with mid-level birds one can apparently get a million points in a single room/bird. With a level 7 bird I’m lucky to get 500k points.

[kelshe]

New to my Arena experience this week: every time I attempt to start a streak after winning the first wave, I get pitted against someone with a low star rank all birds at levels 10, 11 or even 12 and 5 spells. Every. Single. Time. I haven’t had a streak over 4 in a week, whereas before, I had a 7 streak run every time I attempted it. The barbarians are no longer at the gate. They now control the Arena.

[heybert17]

I had something very strange happen last night. In a usual 2 bird room I needed 7 birds, 2 of them got flung back, not just bounced, but flung almost the distance of the room, the only thing, they literally hit nothing. There was no part of the structure in the area they got flung from. I thought it was weird when the first bird did it so I flung another with the same result. I hope it was just a glitch.

[Proteus]

Hi @hank,
Today i’m found some issue with arena scoring system. Here’s what i found.
I’m leading against my opponents (5.3 millions against 5.1 millions) but the final screen said that i’m losing and an offer for extra birds appears. After get extra birds, i’m getting extra 400k points, so i get final score of 5.7 million. The weird thing is, in final screen, my opponents score is 5.5 million, although he/she don’t have any cards left. Maybe that explain why i’m losing before an offer appears.
Can you solve this issue or give an explanation for me ?
Thanks

Edit : Once again, i’m facing with this glitches again…

At the end, here’s the results

[cognitive]

The streak has really become mindless. My experience:

#1: usually opponent below my level most of the time, once in a while I get a 4-5 spell guy. But I have yet to blow out an opponent with a 9 or 10, as I did before. There are occasions where I lose to someone with stats below mine, with only one mistake from my part Winnable 75%

#2: usually someone with a lot better birds than me, spells ok (maybe 1-2). Winnable maybe 50% of time.

#3: most of the time a multi-spell miracle kid, and quite difficult to defeat (10% at best)

#4-#5: not likely to defeat without serious rubies or spells

Beyond: forget it

What I find really strange is that in the past I ran into bad opponents, like, clueless. Those were guaranteed 9’s or 10’s. Now I rarely see a bad opponent, really rarely. Almost seems that Rovio is handpicking the best against us… Am I imagining things?

[Rovio_Hank]

Hey Flingers!

A lot of talk about the latest update, that’s healthy! I’ll see if I can add some insight to your thoughts.

1. Crashes
We’ve actually seen a decrease in crashes lately as we’re continuously trying to fix all issues reported to us. This is however something we know exists for some players and we’re working on improving it further. Whenever you get a crash, information is sent to us with data to help us pinpoint where it went wrong so we can fix it. If you get a crash, try to explain the steps you made before it happened and include a screenshot if possible. I will personally ask the programmers for insight if there’s an issue that’s reported by more than one person.

2. Spells
With the introduction of the winning streak in Arena, the spell usage went up by a lot. This isn’t something we’re controlling or expected to such a magnitude. This is due to the fact that every win is now more important and players want to maximize their chances of winning.

3. Arena Opponents
There are no planted opponents. Each time you progress in your winning streak the opponent gets slightly tougher as the reward increases. Even after a few victories the difference shouldn’t be remarkable. If you face an opponent that has birds that are several levels above yours, screenshot it and send a private message to me and I’ll look into it.

4. Arena Score
Displaying the incorrect score at the end of an Arena run is bad and I’ll look into this right away. Thank you for the observation and screenshots.

[DDeck]

@hank

Here is a glitch in the arena for you: nearly all the overlays (including the “pause” button) have disappeared.

And, if I may, I would like to draw your attention to that little pig under the ledge. I bet you are wondering how he got there, no? ;)

He was on the structure to the right, but the force of an explosion propelled him to the left, smacking him into that piling, dealing very little damage.

It’s almost like there are assigned masses to pigs based on their size, and impact force is based on F = m * a. However, the mass assigned to the µpigs is so small that the force of impact often does not exceed whatever critical threshold is need for “popping”.

And I think the same goes for birds who’s primary ability is running into objects (e.g., terrence, blues, chuck), though in this case ‘a’ becomes critical, because when they are at the top of their arc where sling acceleration is effectively 0, these birds tend to bounce of objects they should destroy.

Actually, I should say F = (m * a) + α where +/- α scales the total force to add a little randomness.

[Rovio_Hank]

@ddeck

The way collision is calculated is pretty advanced and differs a lot between dynamic objects, static objects, character objects (birds/pigs) etc. There’s both set values and formulas for how things work; I don’t dare to dive any deeper into the technicalities of that subject but if there is a problem with pigs we’ll look closer at it.

However, we do try to make levels without the little gaps where pigs can get stuck but it seems we missed it in this one. I’ll see if we can fix that right away!

Thank you!
/Hank

[cognitive]

3. Arena Opponents
There are no planted opponents. Each time you progress in your winning streak the opponent gets slightly tougher as the reward increases. Even after a few victories the difference shouldn’t be remarkable. If you face an opponent that has birds that are several levels above yours, screenshot it and send a private message to me and I’ll look into it.

Hank, with all due respect this is not the case in my experience at least. Once you’re past streak of 2 or 3 you’re running into opponents that are lightyears ahead of you. Every time. Not only in star count but in bird strength and spells.

I’ve lost 4 or 5 streak = 1 games in a row once, just to fuel my conspiracy theory that if you play multiple matches in a row it’s even WORSE. I felt it was.

When the new Arena was rolled out what you wrote applied, and matches were far more equal. Then in the middle of the week something happened and as many others reported, it got REALLY ugly.

[DDeck]

@hank

Thanks for the information! My real reason to post was to point out the lack of overlays, but got sidetracked on that µpig, and of course I realize the physics engine is much more complicated.

Sometimes to understand a complex physical system, it is best to strip down any conceptual model to its most fundamental terms. The rest is just noise. Observing µpig behavior in this context, I’ve seen them blasted across the board, slammed into static and dynamic objects, and fall from great heights, often with little to no damage.

It is great that the designers are attempting to avoid gaps for them to roll/fall/fly into, but that must be really difficult, since any nook or cranny on the entire board can potentially accommodate a µpig blasted from afar.

EDIT: Or to say it a different way, the model with the fewest degrees of freedom that sufficiently explains an observed phenomenon, in this case µpig survivability, is probably getting it more or less correct, even though it may lack the higher-order physics.

My conclusion: the little pigs are too hard to pop.

[heybert17]

If me and my opponent are playing the same level, I assume we are. I really like how I can fling my first bird and destroy all but maybe 1 or 2 small pieces, yet even if my opponent has the same level bird they can somehow get 20-100,000 points more than me.

[Rovio_Hank]

@cognitive

Thank you for reporting your findings. We’re looking into if there’s something that needs to be fixed with the matchmaking. I personally tried it out yesterday and I didn’t experience the same results as you described. If you, or anyone else, encounter an opponent “light years” ahead of you, please take a screenshot or write down your bird levels, the opponent’s bird levels and how far into the winning streak you are so I can take a look at it. If there’s something wrong of course we want to fix it as soon as possible.

Good luck!
/hank

[angrynerds2]

If bots, cheaters, clowns or f*ckin rich kids.. it’s no more fun to play the arena!

Immediately after the updates I won some streaks, but now it’s impossible to win more than two games in a row! At least the third opponent has level 10 birds and spell cards. I still far away from a level 10 flock, although I play regularly for a while.
These guys received their feathers in a very short time, didn’t they?

[Dwhite]

Whatever Hank. If you play the same game as the rest of us then you will experience EXTREMELY uneven matchmaking.

[cognitive]

Hi Hank,

thank you for looking into this. For next week I will record the matches and report. What I’m surprised tho is that since the last update you really don’t run into BAD players. I don’t think the computer generated opponents are still around (I milked those for all they were worth :) back then, they were easy 10’s). These days even streak=1 matches I rarely get > 6 playing opponents clearly below my level.

Could you confirm whether it is impossible to have two birds of the same type show up on your opponent’s bird lineup without cheating? I keep seeing this on a regular basis.

Thanks!

[heybert17]

I am really tired of losing every battle by a million points because my opponent gets scores I have never seen per room and my birds are not damaging near as much as they used to. And this is against evenly matched opponents.

I have been paying closer attention to what birds my opponent starts with compared to what bird I start with, and what we end with. They always seem to have a slight edge both times. Now I understand if you pay attention to your meter you can kind of pick which birds you end with, but the beginning birds are random.

[heybert17]

Come on, I just lost a battle because I was down by less than 50,000 and Red bounced off a structure he usually has no issue with. I tried to get a screen capture of Red lying there useless but wasn’t quick enough. I even timed his blast perfectly but no effect. The level was one of the Carnival levels where all you have to do is knock over the small tower sitting at the bottom by a trampoline, even if you miss most of the time you bounce off the trampoline and get it on the bounce.

[CaptSternn]

Cognitive, it is possible to have two of the same bird show up on the opponents list. Mr. Bankler explained that we are seeing what birds got used, not what birds they have. Today bomb was my last bird, then I got another bird for destruction and it was bomb, so my opponent would have seen me having two bomb birds next to each other.

Bert, had the same thing happening to me this morning. I am locked in battle for 1st and 2nd in my group right now and this morning I could not win a round. Must have played a dozen times and won once. Set it aside to do some actual work and came back and started winning as usual again.

Here is an observation, I keep getting the same opponents over and over. I understand that we are not playing against a person live, we are playing against what they did previously. That would make sense because otherwise how would we know what spells they brought since we don’t get to choose spells until after accepting the battle? I played a person named Mo twice in a row, some cards, same single spell, same ending score. Lost badly first time, almost got him second time.

[cognitive]

OK, @CaptSternn, that helps a lot. It makes sense.

[kedik22]

@hank

Hi.

@bankler once told us that arena opponents are drawn randomly, so they should NOT get slightly tougher.
For the past four days, I have NOT encountered a single opponent with less than three spells and lower or equal ranking than mine.
All of them have scored well above the 7,000,000 mark!
And all of them have had funny names, that is NOT random!

But you are misreading the sentiment in this forum: everybody is complaining about “light year” mismatched opponents.

Please let Rovio know this fact: Arena gameplay is NOT fair, and therefore NOT fun anymore.

Writers in this forum are very intelligent, articulate and experienced gamers.
You should definitely understand what they are saying, experiencing and feeling, and once and for all FIX it.

Oh, and by the way deal with cheaters, get rid of all of them, not just a few.

I think I speak for many of us: Make AB2 an enjoyable experience again!

[kelshe]

As an experiment, I just backed out of 75 Arena games in a row. 100% had at least 3 spells and 60% of that group had 5 spells. Over half were low star ranked, that is, 15 or less stars and 100% of that group had level 10 birds. Of those 75 players, I saw 30 twice or more. Rovio must have hundreds of thousands recorded games, so what are the odds of this pattern repeating itself so many times? I’m sure that some of these were legitimate players. But the low star, level 10 players? Add this to the obvious algorithmic manipulation of scores combined with birds slowing down dramatically just before impact resulting in zero damage and birds failing to deploy special skills, e.g. Matilda’s egg either doesn’t drop or if it drops doesn’t explode, Bomb making a direct hit, exploding and doing no damage, Red’s battle cry not deploying, Blues not splitting, etc. This is my last week in the Arena. I’d drop out now but I have a 600 point lead and want to claim 300 gems for my efforts. So, after this week, it’s only the regular levels for me. Even though I usually burn through them in a day. That should free up a lot of time.

[Dwhite]

The low star rankings is what gives it away from my perspective. It’s just one after another. Like I’ve said, I don’t believe anyone is gonna drop $1,000 on this game to upgrade to level 12 birds while they have a 7 star ranking. I do not and will not believe these low star studs are legitimate players.

It’s almost a week away from the arena for for this flinger and I’m actually in a much better mood. LOL. I’d highly recommend it. Fighting all the cheaters and the cheater changing leaderboards was like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream. Constantly frustrated going nowhere.

[heybert17]

I have lost every battle today, almost all because birds not doing the damage they should. My question, if my birds are so bad, why aren’t my opponents, we can’t see what they do, but if they beat me by a million or more almost every time, they’re birds must be reacting fine.

[Anonymous]

After reading all of these comments, I’m starting to see a missing link:

First of all, Rovio doesn’t cherry pick. I think we’re all pretty sure that Rovio doesn’t favor some people over others. So, as Bert said, why isn’t everyone elses birds behaving so badly? Why is it just ONE SIDED?

I’m starting to think the arena scores are fake. Not the runs (Not the score glitch either), the actual score outcome. Why? Because if everyone is having the same “weak birds” problem, the scores would remain equal and the better opponent would win.

However, all the pictures I’m seeing are of people only slightly losing the battle. SLIGHTLY. Meaning that your win is only just out of reach, which makes you want to pay gems to get to the win. Like some people have said, they are constantly paying gems to get anywhere.

This is why I feel like the scores are staged. Nobody gets scores this close that often. The weak birds IMO, are there to make you feel like you screwed up and lost your good score, when in reality, they are just a cover up for the opponents scores being slightly over what you scored.

Now I know this is all just an assumption (And a rant), but come on! Doesn’t this seem really fishy? I bet the opponents on the other end are having just as hard of a time as we are.

I also have a question: Does anybody have problems with weak birds in the main game? Not the arena, not the DC. I’m talking actual levels where there’s not much reward. Because I for one am not.

[kedik22]

@hank

I concurr with @partshade ´s sentiment.

Where does “randomness” come into play, when everybody experiences the same unfairness in the Arena?
Where does “randomness” fit in when everybody faces several cheaters everyday?
Why is complaining the main topic in these forums?
Why are so many honest players treated so badly by Rovio every day?
Why does Rovio provoke so many doubts, bad feelings and even worst experiences?
Why can´t Rovio generate complimentary remarks?

Mr. @hank, do you think it is about time you or Rovio addressed all of these very specific issues in this forum in a clear, transparent and satisfactory way?

Kind regards.