About the Angry Birds 2 Arena

[Gazzer]

At least a few times per week, my Arena Free Bird screen freezes and I can’t continue and must close the app and open again. When I do, my winning streak is broken. Is this happening to anyone else? This also causes me to waste Spell cards if I used any on that particular challenge. I apologize if this has been discussed before but it’s very frustrating! Thanks.

[ZoomRhonda]

@gazzer

Something similar happens to me sometimes. At the end of a arena round I can win with the extra bird the one with the lowest score gets to play but sometimes when it goes to that screen to watch the video to get the extra bird if I click to watch the video it doesn’t click and open and I am stuck there and just have to close the game and lose or pay 60 gems which I don’t do.

[gjs96743]

@cognitive

Well, the spell level game feature finally made it to me. Flock level at 181 and the spells magically dropped from levels 21 to 1. Hasn’t changed my gameplay much but I miss seeing the score counter going up by a million points at a time.

I can hear the pigs snickering at me…

[Ash Stubitsch]

Not only does this happen, but I swear to you that it happens most often when I’m late in a streak in the arena. I must be the unluckiest person alive.

[Katydid]

It used to happen to me often…..until I quit

[Angry Beaver]

I leveled back to the diamond and guess what? Spells are now level 1! I sincerely hope that this is a bug and will be
repaired as soon as possible.

[cognitive]

Just when you thought Rovio developers couldn’t be more pitiful, I ran into the usual “can’t background the game on Android” bug but with a new twist.

I was playing streak 7 and winning big when I paused the game to take a picture of my cat. Tried to return to the game only to have it restart (Rovio alone appears incapable of backgrounding Android apps reliably).

OK, no big deal, I’m not losing the streak, just a ticket. Wrong. It considered me losing the game and streak altogether. A rare occurrence. NOT.

Which, come to think of it, is par for the course with Rovio. Like the ‘1’ spell so-called bug, the unpredictable destructometer that always fills fast for your opponent and slow for you, and many other “bugs”.

Speaking of the ‘1’ spell bug, since there is no conceivable use case that sets the spell level to 1, and no reason to reset it across the board for all spells at once, I am not quite sure it’s a bug to begin with.

Unless it’s one of these

spell_level = 1;

instead of

spell_level += 1;

which is beyond hilarious if it slipped thru testing, and even more hilarious that it hasn’t been fixed yet…

Signed

Avid game player, UX/UI developer with 31 years experience, 17 in mobile, and reasonably well skilled in Android development

[Anonymous]

I am not quite sure it’s a bug to begin with.

Really? Even after posting in a thread where Hank from Rovio clearly states:

We noticed a bug that slipped through our testing that a lot of you guys have been seeing. Spells are not supposed to be level 1

&

We’re sorry about it and we’ll fix it as soon as we can.

[cognitive]

Chucky, as I indicated, I’ve worked in software for 31 years. There are several products I helped design and implement that have several hundred thousand users out in real life. It’s streaming media related applications with a healthy dose of wireless connectivity, client/server, smartphone… I’ve also shown my work in nearly every CES in Vegas from 2000 on.

There’s absolutely NO WAY that something like that would slip past QC, and absolutely NO WAY that it would be out in the field with customers screaming and not being fixed with priority DEFCON 1.

Not to be too cynical, did you expect Rovio to say anything different? This addresses a huge number of issues (infinite spells, lots of people 9 and 10 starring every round, places the focus more on pearls and such…).

Same as the bug for closing the app when in background. One of the first things we learned in Android programming training is managing the activity lifecycle https://developer.android.com/training/basics/activity-lifecycle/index.html). It’s not rocket science.

Given the intentional minuscule changes that are slipped in with every release (Terence stopping in mid-air, lolz) or my new favorite, flying debris ALWAYS nailing a bird on the way to destruction, I need a healthy dose of salt to consider the ‘1’ spell issue a bug.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for clarifying, so you are clearly saying @hank is lying….Interesting.

It sure would be great to get @hank’s input on the situation, especially being he is the one that has clearly called it a bug, and also stated it will be fixed…….with no ETA as per usual.

[Katydid]

This used to be a forum where people helped one another. What has happened to civility? I guess it’s time to quit reading posts as well as quitting the game.

[Anonymous]

What has happened to civility?

What did I miss?

Cognitive made a statement, I questioned said statement, Cognitive explained how he came to said statement, I then proceeded to thank Cognitive for clarifying and I asked for Hank to clarify….Did I miss something else, or can you explain what is not civil about that?

This is the second or third time I have seen ‘civil’ and ‘civility’ being used in this thread, and I fail to see in between your last 2 posts how the posts in the thread are not civil.

[cognitive]

I do not think my statement contradicts Hank’s. The fact that the issue occurs only on ‘high end’ players seems to suggest to me that there was some code that was in progress of being added or changed to ‘manage’ spell strength for such ‘high end’ players and something went wrong.

My question is more at the requirements / design level… What use case would one make for spells counting DIFFERENTLY depending on flock strength?

It used to be that spells had no strength or level of their own, but were pretty effective regardless. Then we got levels in spells, too, and that worked quite well for a while. Then all of a sudden there’s a change that only impacts high end players? To a significant extent? and to Rovio’s favor, at least from where we high end players see it.

[Anonymous]

Sorry I think you are losing me now Cognitive, as from what you have said it 100% contradicts Hanks statements.

You say it is not a bug, he says it is, you say such a bug couldn’t slip past QC, he says it slipped past them. They are exact opposites of each other are they not?

[cognitive]

Let me shed some light into my thinking.

I agree that it is a bug. Just like Hank said. What I do not agree with is the reason the code was being changed in the first place.

The code for spell strength was working fine for a while. Then, all of a sudden, high players get impacted with 1’s.

I do not question the presence of the bug, but I do question the reason for changing the code in the first place. Why would you change functioning code unless some behind the scenes functionality was being added, especially one that only impacts high end players? In my mind, that is where I start going ‘ummmmm’.

We have plenty of reason to be skeptical, given other aspects of the game.

[Anonymous]

I think I understand what you mean Cognitive, but without knowing how the game is coded, or understanding code in general, I think I am best stepping away from that convo :P

[Angry Beaver]

Lot of players spend their $ for buying stuff in game. Now when spells are useless people will not buy as much gems anymore. In average playing day i spend 60 gems (usually in KPC’s boss room) and i get ’em from daily quests and friends gifts (not from free chests anymore). So i just have no reason for buy anything. And what is funny: blizzard is most valuable spell now. Other spells i use now as helping things – for last pig when small score does no matter.

[Rovio_Hank]

@chucky-2 @cognitive

Hello!

I’m not dabbling with the AB2 -code so I can’t defend it nor explain it in detail. What I do know is that this bug happened when we re-calculated the numbers shown on each card. Usually it was just the card-level, now it’s card level + hat level + slingshot level to better show the strength of the card. Spells were usually as strong as your weakest bird level in your flock, but as the bird levels are not the only thing visible (but rather all multipliers) they would lag behind a lot (i.e lowest bird 10+3+4 while spell only 10). So instead spells also take slingshot into account (10+4) to be closer to your bird level. However, we got the bug that if your spell + slingshot was higher than the highest allowed bird level, it would wrap around and only be level 1. So this only affects people at the very end with the highest cards, and this is something Quality Assurance must have missed to test.

So there you have it, that’s how the bug came to be.

Now for the ETA.
We fixed the error as soon as we found out, thanks to you guys, and we had an internal discussion when we could ship the live fix. Sadly, I must honestly say, it would complicate a lot of things for us as we have deals with Apple, cool events coming up shortly and tests running for new users that would all have to be re-negotiated/re-made. This means that it will be fixed for the next client update. I’m truly sorry about this, it really stings for us that we can’t fix it. Thankfully it’s something that affects most users within the same “player level”, so hopefully it doesn’t skew the competition too much.

I hope the transparency helps, but I understand your frustration. Take care!
/Hank

[James Peden]

Dear rovio
What about the deal you have with everyone like myself who spent hard earned money on a product that doesn’t work properly? I do believe that since AB2 is not working for me that I should be given a refund of all money spent since this bug showed up.

[ZoomRhonda]

@james-peden

This all sounds strangely familiar to me as this is the same way Angry Birds GO! went downhill and was then abandoned by its players like rats leaving a sinking ship. Rovio couldn’t fix the problems in Angry Birds GO! so they ended up just changing the whole game entirely and really ruining it worse than it already was. I don’t know what will happen with Angry Birds 2 but it is the players who get screwed in the end. With Angry Birds GO! the woman from Rovio, who was their rep named Salla, resorted to form letters when answering questions when asked for answers from players. I think they will just start a new game soon and call it Angry Birds 3 just in time for maybe another movie to come out they are making.

[Penz]

Yes nice story. The spells are a big part of the game and when you’re facing higher level opponents or opponents who are clearly playing far easier rooms than you, then the fact the spells are so weak does skew the competition, so don’t try to say hopefully is doesn’t matter. There are enough ‘random’ factors designed into the game that make things hard for us without this bug not getting sorted asap. Without the consumers you guys wouldn’t exist so get your priorities right.

[David Martin]

@hank – As this glitch has caused several Arena losses for me in situations where one might expect to reasonably catch up with the spells at their proper level, I think the best way to make reparations would be to give a “free gems” award as an apology, similar to when we had that massive Arena outage a while back. I figure I’ve had to pay to continue in order to keep a streak going at least 5 times since my spells got nerfed to level 1, compared to it hardly ever happening before that unless I [i]knew[/i] I had really tanked a match. Not sure how that stacks up against other players. But 300 gems seems like reasonable compensation.

And please, patch it to make the spells work as already described, not to introduce another new and unexplained set of rule changes. We can handle losing or not performing as well as I hoped because the game is challenging. We can’t handle constant and seemingly arbitrary rule changes that patch one problem but open up another set of glaring new problems for us to figure out hack-y ways to work around. If nothing else, PLEASE STOP SCREWING AROUND WITH THE BIRD LEVELS.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the additional information @hank but I am hoping you can go just a little further with one part of your post….

This means that it will be fixed for the next client update

…and the next client update is expected when? ie a day, a week, a month etc?

I don’t need the exact date, as I realise things can change, but a rough idea as to when that client update is expected would ease at least my concerns (and hopefully the concerns of a few others).

[cognitive]

probably in time for the holidays :)

[Epic Buttstomp]

Whatever they fix, they will introduce couple of new features that will make something else worse.