About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[kelshe]

@klm13
SNAFU also comes to mind.

[KLM13]

@kelshe: Ha! That, too!

[JezzaH99]

Has anyone else noticed something?

The last 2-3 weeks playing the arena has been fairly straightforward. I’ve often got to level 5 and 6 and have even won level 7 a couple of times. The last 2-3 weeks I’ve ended up with 300 points – finishing respectable 6th or 7th in the league. I work so can’t play all day! the winner has the usual 100 points as presumably they don’t have much of a life.

Rovio must have realised there was something wrong with their programming because no one was buying gems as a result.

Since Thursday I’ve barely been able to win at level 1.

I don’t believe for one minute that I’ve become a bad player or everyone has become a world beater. So Rovio must be fixing this again and again i wonder why I bother.

Anyone else have this problem?

I presume there will be another 20 levels this Thursday and every two weeks for the next millenia.

Boring

[angrynerds2]

Today one guy leads with 223 Stars in just one day.
On sunday he will have over 1000 and again it makes no sense to use arena tickets this week.

[Rhys4AUFC]

And what’s worse, I get matched up against the same cheats (on the 5th streak birds that are level 9 or 10 with one level 8), maybe it’s best that I stop playing this pointless game altogether?

[heybert17]

Wish I could figure out the secret of almost every opponent I face of how to get ridiculously outrageous high scores on my last 2 birds. Even when I win I still see their score jump A LOT on those last 2 birds.

I am also starting to lose a lot of round ones because I am getting outmatched a lot in round one.

[ABeggerToo]

@angrynerds2 I am in the Silver League and number 1 (Diamond League player) who wasn’t on the board 12 hours ago, now has 773 stars. Owlie Buttstomp has 44 gold medals, 9 silver, and 4 bronze, so obviously is competing in a fashion consistent with Rovio’s rules. It’s going to be a rough week with 8 Diamond league players, multiple Amethyst and Gold, and one bronze league player in my group. After being matched against same league players in the bronze league last week, this week I am the only silver league player in my silver league.

Rovio’s response when I complained weeks ago was “We are aware of the issue and our developers are working on fixing it,” however that was two updates ago.

[JezzaH99]

What gets me is that it’s so obvious what Rovio are doing they must think we are stupid.

I’m good that this game but this morning so far I have played level 1 and 2 4 times and won just once.

Two weeks ago I’d have won by 10 points.

Maybe I’m the stupid one.

[heybert17]

Levels that are so poorly designed they take 5 or more birds because you basically have to pick off the pigs one at a time are NOT fun. And if they are designed that way on purpose these people do not know how to keep players interested.

[Psygaz]

Same old, same old bore today. Win level one (entry ticket), win level two (30 feathers) then lose level three by around a million. Because I’m fighting birds that are much higher ranked than me. This has happened time after time since yesterday’s new arena.

Joke is, I would be tempted to spend gems/spells if I was confident it was a level playing field and that I may be able to progress. No way will I spend more money knowing the arena’s designed to make me fail.

Rovio really has made some poor judgements with this latest update.

[CaptSternn]

Well after an easy 1st place last week I am back in a group with high scores. Do these people have any life outside AB2 at all? Seriously, 1st place already has over 700 points, 2nd is near 600, 3rd is near 500. I have a whopping 38 points in 8th place. I will play more later and make sure I don’t get knocked out of the Diamond League and bank more feathers. There are apathetic players below me, several with 0 points, so staying in the Diamond League should not be a problem.

Thankfully Rovio has made some real improvements to the game so that winning in the arena is no longer all that important. They lavish us with gifts and rewards just for playing and opening the chest every half hour, getting feathers by advancing in the winning streak even if we don’t get all the way through, beating the easy rooms of the daily challenge, etc.. And we don’t face opponents with all the spells.

Thank you, Rovio (Mr. Hank and Mr. Bankler and all the rest), for listening and keeping things interesting and fun. There are still cheaters out there, but they are so watered down now as to be next to meaningless. Keep up the good work and we will keep on flinging birds.

[AngryPlayer]

Well, I took a much-needed break from the perils of this game and returned last week to give this week’s arena a shot.

While I was waiting for the timer to count down, I studied the ranking 15 minutes ago:

I was leading my league with 198 stars.
2nd place was Buzz Biggles with 190 stars.
3rd place was Ave with 175 stars.
4th place was Stefan with 50 stars.

When the ticket became available, I just went in to play my 3hr round to bring my count to 206.

To my surprise, when I completed my round to look at my placement, someone out of nowhere (not even in the top 4 15 minutes ago) is now leading with 218 stars… named “Raven Smaxx”.

Rovio @hank how does someone get over 160 stars in 10 minutes? It takes 3- 4 minutes just to play a game, let alone win 10 stars in it.

Or is league-jumping a problem again?

[ABeggerToo]

@angryplayer I don’t know if identifying the player makes a difference, but during the day today, Owlie Buttstomp (whom I named yesterday) was demoted to 1 star (designated as a cheater by Rovio). They still have 44 gold medals, but I will be watching to see if they suddenly reappear with an unbelievable star score. Whether coincidental to my post or not, someone is watching at some level.

[AngryPlayer]

Well I checked this score 4 hrs later, he’s now up to 385.

Seriously. I expect this score to be over 1000 by tomorrow morning at this rate.

[angrynerds2]

The update didn’t fix the problems with the invincible mini pigs.
They are meaner and stronger than ever.

[heybert17]

When did Bomb lose his radius powers, it seems any more if he isn’t physically touching something when he explodes he does almost no damage. I used to be able to use him to get out of the way balloon pigs if I could get him close enough, but he seems to have lost a lot of his blast distance.

[AngryPlayer]

AB2 now with 200% more indestructible micropigs!

…..Especially the ones tucked into cracks at the base of a building constructed with tiny little blocks of all different types of materials so they won’t go down with just one hit. #deliberatebirdwaster

This morning I hit one of them with 3 direct hits and still didn’t pop the thing: 1) Red’s Blast, 2) Matilda’s egg and 3) Terrence, who just ended up rolling the thing into a crevice.

Also threw Bomb into a building and he flashed/detonated by hitting something invisible before reaching it…. Um- yeah. Oh and that was the last shot I had at beating my opponent too. Guess I have to use up 60 gems to continue.

Welcome to AB2 Arena where the rules and gameplay change daily. I never played a game before where the production team strives to take cheap shots against its player base, all in the name of money. Pathetic.

BTW I’m going to rename Terence to “Will“. As in, “Will he actually demolish a building or get stopped dead in this tracks?”

I went into the Level 3 Arena round and took in 3 spells and my opponent still maxed my score by 1,750,000 points. I watched their score every time I played a card and there were times their card didn’t disappear but their score went up. And this included after their last card was played- their score climbed when I played my final few cards (remember I took in some spells).

I see AB2 is back to its old tricks.

BTW Raven Smaxx is now up to 411 stars. I guess this person never sleeps.

[Heinousk]

I’ve noticed some very strange happenings lately in the arena. Someone may have already mentioned it earlier but there’s just too much on this thread to read them all. Since the onset of the slingshot levels, bronze, silver, etc., it seems that the match ups in the arena are completely falsified. I have managed to upgrade my birds hats over the past couple of weeks so that each of my birds is wearing a street cap. I’ve been winning the daily challenge each day and done fairly well in the arena but each time I level up my slingshot, low and behold every opponent that I face after that not only has the same slingshot as me but some also have hats that way surpass mine. There is no way that someone could have possibly leveled up their slingshot and been able to purchase multiple cowboy hats in the amount of time that this has been available. There have just not been enough opportunities to get that many pearls. I also notice that the level of slingshot does not match the hats that the birds are wearing. For instance the opponent may only have one street cap and the rest are party hats yet their slingshot is gold, signifying that they should all have street caps. Has anyone else been seeing the same thing in the arena?

[heybert17]

AB2 owes me 500 yellow feathers and a free round. I was winning my streak 7 easily when the game crashed. When I restarted I was still on streak 7 but had lost the play and I got a different level this time and got my feathers waxed.

[Jon S]

@angryplayer

Lot of these players either don’t work or even sleep. I have this Bonnie Aquila who went from jumped from 434 to 557 by the time it took me to finish one round. Now I turned on the game after my 3 hour wait time and the guy has 652. I’m a distant 2nd with 352 stars.

@heinousk

I was the one that mentioned this. Rovio’s algorithm matches your opponents according to your star rank and the level sling shot. So if you have a gold one every player you face will have a gold slingshot. According to the different hats, this is normal as the player can choose the type of hats he/she wants, which makes it more competitive. So for example I can use party hats on my silver sling shot if I wanted to…but I’d be stupid to do so since I’d be at a disadvantage of having x15 lvl bird rather than a x16 lvl bird. As for the multiple cowboy hats, it could be done. Let’s do the math LOL

I’ll assume the hat update has been around for around 6 (?) weeks.

– Everyone started out with 90 pearls
– winning DC’s every day for these 6 weeks earns you 1260 pearls in your bank
– If you did well on the arena (say 3rd place) that’s 180, you should have have 1080 pearls
– add them up and that’s about 2430 pearls you should have. So 4 of your birds should be able to have cowboy hats. Now keep in mind… This is only valid if you didn’t spend those pearls on buying party hats, crowns and street caps. Otherwise it’s nullified :(

As for getting multiple cowboy hats, there’s 2 ways.

1) Play the game on more than one device. Currently I’ve got 770 pearls on my iphone version saved up with all party hats and crowns purchased, and 5 of my birds having street caps and 0 on my ipad (spent 100 getting blue’s street cap). When you sync your game between devices, only the gems/pearls/spells are NOT carried over. So on my iphone I use it to win DC’s and to collect the weekly arena rewards while playing the arena to hoard for spells/feathers. On my Ipad, I do the same but I don’t collect the reward (since the arena only rewards you once). By the end of this week…I should be able to afford 3 cowboy hats.

2) people already have hacked the game by getting unlimited black pearls. If you already seeing players with Azure sling shots no matter which level they are at (in my tournament there’s at least 3 of them) they’ve cheated. It is not physically possible to do it this early as it takes around 5040 pearls to get the azure sling (assuming you have to upgrade your sling from wood to gold). Not even the people that pay to win to get the coveted first place won’t have enough since they’d be at 3150….almost 1900 short.

[Anonymous]

Just figured out a 3rd way @jon3800 involving the daily challenge and the date on your device, I am sure some regulars will know what I mean!

Edit: I might have azure within the next week or so.

[angrynerds2]

Now the summary of “improvements” after the last update:

– invincible mini pigs got stronger
– Bomb and Terrence are in return weaker
– spell card clowns are gone, but that doesn’t mean that you win easier in the arena.
– special slingshots, hats and high-level birds give no advantage, because you get harder opponents if you are stronger.
– That “opponent-gets-birds-and-hundredthousands-of-points-just-when-you-thought,-you’ve-won-the-match” crap is back!!
– winning the weekly tournament and getting gems is harder because of 24h-permanent-players or cheaters.

[Psygaz]

Here’s how it goes for me on Arena level three these days.

Me: birds 8s and 9s, set of crowns
Opponent: birds 10s, 11s, crowns and cowboy hats

Me: winning until the end
Opponent: suddenly jumps ahead, so I need 500,000 points to win

AB2: ALMOST THERE! KEEP FLINGING TO BEAT YOUR OPPONENT. IMPROVE YOUR SCORE WITH A FREE BIRD!

Me: watches video, get blues against granite, don’t win a single point

AB2: ALMOST THERE! KEEP FLINGING TO BEAT YOUR OPPONENT. PLAY ON, 60 GEMS!

Me: walks away

[Davetv]

Good luck getting your feathers back and a free round. They (rovio) doesn’t like giving you anything. Even though it’s just like digital currency and doesn’t cost them anything to give it back to you. I’ve already been down that road.

Also no one should get in a real hurry to level up your birds. I spent a lot of gems and hours of play to level up to 14 just to find everyone else I play is level 14. It was easier when I had lower rank birds. I now have at least 3500 to 4000 feathers already accumulated on each level 14 bird. I’m ready for the level 15 birds to be released because I should already go straight to level 15. Again it won’t matter.

It’s become very obvious to me that this game is just a money pit and I’ve just been a sucker for it for over a year now.

I have a new approach. I’m going to sit back and milk it for all the free stuff for about a year and add up gems and spells and then maybe come back every now and then to play.

Also when I leveled up to lvl 14 I stopped getting the free feathers in the free chests. I get 3 gems every 15 minutes and about 3 times a day I get a chili, duck, or ice spell. I can’t see where leveling up gets me anything extra. I got better rewards before. Trust me you can’t win a streak of 7 anymore without gems or spells. Rovio has done a great job of making us all suckers.

[AngryPlayer]

@angrynerds2 of course not, anytime Rovio updates they give you one little thing and they screw you with three other things. It’s come to the point that whenever I see the update for AB2 appear, I always roll my eyes and then hesitate thinking “Is this update going to finally push me off this game for good? I already took a soujourn from it and am not impressed at what I saw upon returning. How are they going to f**k the game over this time?”

@psygaz Perfectly said. And yes, it’s THAT obvious.

@davetv: “Rovio has done a great job of making us all suckers.” Some of us. But it’s more like Rovio thinks we love their games so much we’ll eat whatever sh*t they feed us and call it candy.

All I can say is that IF there’s another tier level in the works after Elder Diamond, I’m dropping this game like the hot PoS it is. Rovio with this game has become such a deceitful, manipulative, rigged, predictable act, that it’s become clear they are out to grab the money out of your pocket and convince you you’re having fun while they do it.