Answers from Rovio! Accesories/doubler-ads/New Characters etc.

[Hex]

Hi All, I got a little crazy and thought that maybe I could get some answers for us just by asking Rovio support. So I composed an email asking a few simple questions and they actually provided some concrete answers!! I would like us as a group to compile a list of specific questions so we can propose them to Rovio. They (Or at least this particular agent) seemed very willing to give us details beyond what the cut scenes, and bot-bios tell us. I think we should keep bug reports out for now. But if someone wants to compile a list of bugs I can send that to him separately. So far the few things he has confirmed are:

1) The “double up videos” = There is no concrete number of videos you get, and there are not set times they “reset.” I know most of us get the feeling that you get 5-6 per day and then can’t do anymore for 24 hours but i have not seen that be consistent. He says “it all depends on how many companies would like to use their ads in our game.” So it’s completely random.

2) Gems/accessories. He confirmed that the accessories do nothing for the bot abilities, they are purely decorative. Again, I think most of us were getting to believe that but it is nice to have someone confirm it.

3) The “wrong area clearing” but WILL be fixed in future updates

4) There will be more characters in the future (As he said, “You need to save the whole piggy island from Egg-bots.” So i guess it’s good no know that, at least for now, ABT hasn’t been abandoned.

IF i get enough questions from people then I will submit them to him and hopefully we can get some answers.

Thanks All

Topic

[Mad Kat]

Thank you. This is so nice of you.

I would love to know:

1. Is it better to pop open a gem box as soon as it materialises on piggy island, or does the game reward patience by growing more gems? How long to wait before popping open a box?

2. Would they consider allowing the player to see not just how many times facebook friends thanked them , but also how many times they thanked each friend in the next release?

3. Why is the leaderboard accurate for the player, but inaccurate for facebook friends (behind by what seems like up to 10 ranks sometimes). Strangely the level of transformers of facebook friends seems by and large to be correct.

4. sometimes, even if I defeat the eggbot in an intercepted event, I don’t get rewarded with a gem. Other times, even if I don’t defeat eggbot, I get a gem. What is the criteria for winning a gem in an intercepted event?

[Optimus_Pig]

Great stuff, thanks for following up with them!

[LadyDi]

Good questions both of you.

My Question For Rovio Support – Are there any Easter Eggs in this game like all other Rovio games? I was tapping all in the credits, the clouds, the ToS, etc. looking for something, anything.

[BuriedTreasure]

I guess most of my comments relate to bugs, so I will refrain from listing them now. However, I would like to know if they are going to improve Jenga mode?

1) will they fix or remove the score, as it is completely random and worthless right now?

2) will they introduce any more puzzles, characters, layouts or anything new that would make it less repetitive?

That probably covers it…

[boyskoegh]

When will the Amazon players receive the upgrade to access new characters????

Can they make a magical Jega configuration with all coin boxes say maybe every 100th time you play???

[marioandsonic]

Fix the random crashes, please!

I just lost a Dome level, and wasted 10 gems…

[Hex]

@marioandsonic, I feel your frustration, it did it to me yesterday. I had been waiting almost 4 days for a gold dome and i was over 12,00 coins (and sill had what seemed like plenty of miles to go) and the game crashed. I was so angry I almost threw my phone… But this is more of a bug fix/feature request and I don’t think that this i they guys department. As I said before I am going to reach out to him and find out the proper way to file bugs etc, and then work with the group here to get a list to them.

@boyskeogh I don’t think this is his department either, again more of bug fix/feature request So we will put it on the next list. (Amazon might know the answer for this one, as it is undoubtedly they who are controlling when it gets released, Rovio doesn’t control their App store). Just a thought.

@buriedtreasure Thank for refraining from the bug requests, I will add your two questions to the list.

@ladydi102 I will add this to the list, but i doubt he will answer, that’s the whole point of Easter eggs. I wouldn’t be surprised if; as someone else mentioned, the little sayings that scroll by when you start the game could be the equivalent of an EE.

@vrinda-rajkumar I will add these as well, but could you clarify #3? I am not sure I know what you are asking? If not I can just quote you directly, maybe he will know what you mean. thanks.

So, One more call for suggestions, then later tonight or tomorrow I will compile this list, and add a few of my own, and post it one last time for additions. Thanks all. WE just might get this thing figured out!

Side note: I just hit level 200, and realized that It is probably going to take me three months of waiting for the upgrades to complete to get to 250 :( Very sad, and frustrating lol. I might just have to buy some gems to speed up the process, tax return is coming soon!!

[LadyDi]

@Hxadecmel thank you kindly.

[Mad Kat]

@Hexdecmal, thank you kindly from me too.

To rephrase Q2:
The “Friends Activity” screen shows a log of “thanks” that a player received from facebook friends. There is no equivalent record of thanks sent to Facebook friends after using their bots. It would be nice to see thanks sent too.

To rephrase Q3:
The “leaderboard Screen shows rank and pigs popped by the player and the player’s Facebook friends. The rank displayed for Facebook friends is wrong. It is usually too low. I have moticed that it can be off by a margin of about 10.

[20Qmindreader]

@Hxadecmal. Thanks! Mine are mostly bug related (most noted in other threads), but Thx for compiling and posting.

[wackybadger]

I really would like to know when the fix is coming for the clearing the wrong level problem. It is incredibly annoying and unpredictable and now we’re going on 2 months without a fix. That’s ridiculous. As for new characters, one would appear to be Stella, based on the startup screen.

[Jasonred79]

Ask him when they will fix the “miles travelled” achievement… Been stuck on 0 for me, and I BOTH want the gems and also care for the achievement.

Ask him to confirm something for me…. I have the theory that using an Ultimate character, ie one of the coin doubling transformers, will cause the game to spawn fewer Energon cubes. This experience is fairly consistent for me, does anyone else here think this happens?

[Wingman]

Thanks a lot! This is super helpful!

[BuriedTreasure]

I have several more requests, all involving the advertisements…

1) While I would prefer NO ads, I understand why they are there. however, they are often completely irrelevant and boring to ME. I am not a gamer. I am barely interested in most of the ads shown to me. If they are going to show me ads, can’t they do a better job finding me relevant ads that I am not immediately going to skip? Perhaps ad a like / dislike button to the ad. Some are actually funny or interesting. Some have Kate Upton. Also, in choosing ads, be a little pickier. Some of them look like crap or are excessively long. I am on an iPad, and many are really fuzzy and probably should be restricted to smaller screens.

2) if you are going to make me watch ads, can you at least not show the same ones over and over. can you prevent me from giving to see the same ad in the same hour? Can you also ensure that I never see another video error? If there is an error, handle it and show me something new without telling me there was an error. Why should I, the user, care if there was an error? If I happen to be offline, which happened when I was on a cruise, figure out a good way to deal with the problem without constantly telling me about errors. Finally, if there is an error, do not penalize me and prevent me from doubling my points. There error was your problem, not mine…

3) I do not EVER listen to the sounds of the game. They would be distracting to everyone around me, especially my wife in the middle of the night. When I turn the sound off, I think I should safely assume that the sound is ENITIRELY off. However, that is not true. Everything is quiet and all of a sudden an ad comes blaring through unexpectedly. I should not have to police the volume control on the iPad to be sure that the ads inside of a game stay muted.

Thanks

[LadyDi]

@buriedtreasure – I think the ads depend on WHO pays them to advertise in their game and if they are receiving $$, they probably don’t care if we like them or not. It’s those click throughs that add to the revenue. Or maybe the forced 6 seconds that I have to watch before hitting SKIP. I’m on Android and have not had ad video errors as yet but I do share some of your sentiment about the visual appeal OR LACK OF. I’ve seen blurry, messy, crappy videos that make me wonder if they were tested on a tablet PRIOR to the addition in game. I, too, wish for a way to opt out of the ads and would even pay for an ad free version but we see how that went in previous version of Rovio’s games. Ad free MEANS ad free even for Rovio games too ROVIO!!

[Jasonred79]

If you want the iPad to be completely silent, there’s this thing called a mute button…
As for ads, well, yeah, as noted, the purpose of ads is not to entertain you, it’s for Rovio to be paid money for showing ads. How we feel about them is irrelevant.
:(

I wasn’t aware you could watch videos to double coins in offline mode. Interesting…

[BuriedTreasure]

The mute button is besides the point. It is normally muted, but sometimes I have to turn the mute off for something else. Then I play a silent game or two and am shocked silly with an incredibly loud ad.

How feel about the ads is completely relevant. If I hate them, I stop playing. If they are merely annoying, I put up with them or skip them as soon as possible. If I like them, I actually watch them all the way through. If I like what they are selling, I watch and maybe even download. Frankly, I’d rather they were selling something I might buy or at least have interesting ads. (What I REALLY want to know is how much money they make on Game of War: Fire Age. Those ads, especially the one during the Super Bowl, must cost a fortune!)

You can’t watch videos in offline mode, but that doesn’t mean it knows that and doesn’t cause an error trying to run a video anyway.

[Optimus_Pig]

I don’t believe that Rovio has any control over the ad content, if anything they’ve outsourced the provision of ads to a third party to avoid having to do it in house.

And it’s what we have to put up if we want a free game. It’s not perfect, but with all the bugs we’ve had to contend with, I’d rather not pay real cash for an ad-free game. And for Rovio it’s probably a more consistent revenue stream than waiting for people to pay for gem boxes.

Also, if you didn’t voluntarily play the ad (i.e. you didn’t click to play it to get either a coin bonus or a buddy time bonus) then it gives you the option to close the ad after about 5 seconds or so.

[LadyDi]

Not quite off topic, I recently had better ads come thru. I watched a trailer for the movie ‘HOME’, back to back and a couple times over, but it was a nice change. I think I saw another trailer or maybe it was a game ‘Agent Alice’?!?! Some of the games coming through look better and a wee clearer. I’m not sure what happened to trigger this but if someone is reading… THANK YOU!!

[BuriedTreasure]

I agree. I greatly prefer movie trailers and ads for a variety of apps as opposed to the constant stream of dragon or fighting related games.

I’m sure Rovio makes more money if we watch the ads, so giving us the ability to like an ad or even just keep track of which ones we actually don’t skip should help them as well as making the experience better for us.

HOWEVER, it is getting boring. I just realized that I haven’t seen any sorties in that field with trees and waving grass since at least 50 levels ago. The locations are usually close to identical these days and entirely predictable, down to knowing exactly when I am going to get hit by a missile. It is lazy coding and they need to show us some new areas soon. I’d like to see mountains, inside the dome, and maybe on one of those islands.

[Jasonred79]

The level of “interesting” ads, might have something to do with this following process:

Marketing manager A and marketing exec B:

B: so… How much would it cost to hire a really top quality production team to make an advertisement that will really appeal to lots of viewers and hold their interest?
A: including market research, running it past test groups, collecting data… About $5million? And it’ll take half a year before it’s ready.
B: ouch that’s expensive and slow! …. How about if we just get an average quality team to produce something reasonably good, we skip all the time consuming steps, and just pay Rovio to stick it onto their angry birds game?
A: we can have it ready in 1 week and it’ll cost us $100,000 a month.
B: ding ding ding! A clear choice, 2nd option it is!!!

So… Yeah… There you go, buriedtreasure… Lol…

[LadyDi]

Again on the ads, I saw ‘Hero 6’ I think but it cut off before it could finish.

[LadyDi]

I want to know will ABT ever have a gems sale?

[boston_fan]

Thanks Hex, this is good stuff! Appreciate the efforts.

[Matt Rohde]

I asked this question: In the latest Angry Birds transformers update there are several new spots added to the map. when I touch them, a message appears saying “coming soon”. What are these places? And what are their purpose?

And the response was that they are new levels coming in future updates.

I didn’t think that they would be new levels because they look nothing like current levels.