About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[Rovio_Bankler]

Regarding the cumulative score. Can you please explain in detailed steps exactly what it is you see? Thanks in advance!

[Green Whacker]

@bankler
I can give an example. One time I posted a high score on first try (like 900k or something) and I was placed in 1st place so I figured it was good enough. Later I checked and it had like 30 min left and I was still in first place by 40k. Then after the results it showed me in 8th place!!! There was no final score posting so there was no way to see if people actually scored better (which I doubt very much) or it was cumulative.

[Ang Ryone]

@bankler
John and Sue play the arena at the same time.
John gets 200k points. Sue gets 700k.
Sue gets first place. John gets second place.

Sue stops playing for the day.
John plays one more time. This time around he gets 600k points.
According to the leaderboard, Sue is still no 1 on 700k points and John is no 2 with 600k points.

John stops playing for the day.

Next day when John and Sue wakes up and check out how many feathers they got, Sue got less feathers than John eventhough she should get more! John and Sue think that eventhough the leaderboard states one thing, the scoring works in a different way. It seems that no matter how high they score, the player who has scored the highest total score (total sum of every single time they played the arena added together) wins. They think that the scoring probably worked out like John got 800k points (200+600) while Sue only got 700k points. This is called cumulative scoring and is probably not how the arena scoring should work.

[Rovio_Bankler]

Thanks a lot for the explanation. One more question. Let’s say (using your example), you are John. We can’t assume much about Sue, since we don’t know her (except that her best score in the round shouldn’t decrease), so let’s focus on what you see from your perspective:

After playing a couple of rounds, you see yourself in position #5, and then stop playing, the next day (when the round ends), have you suddenly seen yourself in position #1 to #4 (a better position, compared to what you had before)? This should clearly never be possible. Dropping to worse positions should obviously be possible though, since other players may play the last few minutes before the round ends.

Thanks for your patience.

[Ang Ryone]

@bankler
Yes. Your example of me being John, seeing myself as no5 and then the next day getting the message I got 4th and being awarded feathers like I got 4th is correct. And this happens although I never was in 4th position (or better) in any way or form according to the scoreboard/leaderboard.

[Orange Bubbles]

@bankler About your question… yes, that can really happen. Anything can happen, we can be in a better or worse position in the next day. We can be in position #5 in the leaderboard and win the 1st place at the end of the day… and we can be in 1st and then end up in #5. We never know how many times each person played and the respective cumulative score. In theory it’s even possible to jump from #15 to #1 if we played a lot of times during the day, always with a low score.

[Rovio_Bankler]

Thanks for the help! You’re the best.

[Rovio_Bankler]

We just found the problem and have a fix for it. There’s an update coming very shortly and unfortunately the fix won’t get in that one, but in the next one. For your information, the score is not cumulative (so no need to grind the Arena over and over to get better positions, unless you beat your own best every time). There was “just” some error when we calculated your final position.

So in short:
* A better “best score” will more likely earn you a better place.
* You will not get better score (or increase your chances to end up in a better position) by running the arena multiple times unless you beat your own best. Only the best one counts.
* Because of the bug, your final position will not correspond to what you see in the arena leaderboard just before the arena round ends.

So play the arena as you normally would. But take the visible leaderboard positions with a grain of salt for now.

Sorry about this. And thank you a lot for your reports! I can assure you it assisted us a lot when trying to nail down the error. <3

[sal9]

That’s great news @bankler Thank you so much!

[ABeggerToo]

Impressive exchange and identification of solution. The nest obviously serves well as a source for user experience testing, with the ability to effectively document issues.

[MVNLA2]

@bankler — New one for you — I played the arena twice this morning and did not get daily quest credit for either the “play the arena” or “pop 30 pigs”. Just did hard close of all apps and hard shutdown of iPad. The one thing that was recorded is that I played the arena and now have to pay or wait 3 hrs.

[MVNLA2]

@bankler — Well, I did get credit for pigs popped and stars outside the arena.
P.S. Forgot to thank you for keeping me from playing the arena multiple times a day to raise my cumulative score.

[fangston]

@bankler – Thanks for the update. A different Arena question – what is the purpose of diamond league? Are the current prizes (1 feather) just temporary and you plan better ones (gems maybe)? Or is it just for the sport? Currently with no actual reward, there is no real incentive. Thanks

[Anonymous]

@fangston Why do you even need feathers in Diamond League? Aren’t all of your birds maxed out? I don’t see the point of having more than a 1 feather prize if feathers aren’t useful anymore.

[fangston]

@partshade
That is exactly the point – diamond league is a league without a prize. I would expect that after all the grinding, you would get something. At least for 1st place. Maybe gens or cards. The fact is, that since I got to diamond, i hardly play anymore – since there is no difference between 1st and last. Both give me the daily 2 gems…

[Anonymous]

@fangston Getting gems and/or spells as a prize in diamond league would be pretty nice actually. I support this.

[Rovio_Bankler]

Yes, the one-feather reward is a temporary placeholder-solution. It will get fixed at some point. We underestimated how fast you guys would get there. :)

[fangston]

Thanks for the answer, @bankler. It was summer, you know…

[Orange Bubbles]

@bankler That’s really cool.

I still have a long way to go, but knowing that gives much more motivation. :D

By the way, as a reward for our help in fixing bugs, you guys could finally add Bubbles to the game… just saying… hahahahahaha

[jwgardenwiz]

Anyone know the significance of the “4” and the feather icon on the birds available in the most recent arena update? I refer to the bird cards in the lower left available to be launched. Thanks for any insight.

[Green Whacker]

4 with feathers means that bird is level 4 (gold). If you have birds in azure, it should show as 5 with feathers or silver birds are level 3 with feathers.

[jwgardenwiz]

@dragonofheart – thanks. I kind of guessed that’s what it meant but I would not have known for sure until I upgraded to Azure (and started seeing “5”) which will take a while.

[AndalayBay]

I’m not sure about your explanation @bankler. I’ve had arena playthroughs where my score was only good enough for fourth or sixth place. I never bettered my score on subsequent plays and yet at the end of the day, I wound up in first place.

Also, as of the 2.2.1 update, there seems to be a new bug, although it might only be a glitch in today’s selection. Yesterday the award was for Silver and when the day ended, I got my feathers for Silver. However, today’s award is also for Silver. It didn’t change to another bird. It’s Saturday 10 Oct for me currently. It would have been for Sunday 11 Oct when the new tournament day started.

[Ankit Joshi]

today Same bug here @andalaybay,again for silver,arena of AB2 very buggy,to me new bug every 3-4 days,actually arena never worked as it should,I would have unistalled this game a month ago,continuing just because love this game but devs really should fix all these things

[Rovio_Bankler]

@andalaybay There is a bug that causes your final position to not correspond to what you see in the arena leaderboard. Many times you end up in a better position than expected. The underlying problem has been found, and should be fixed in the next update.

Regarding the Silver feather issue, we’ll look into it. Thanks for the heads-up.