@dwhite40704 I am all with you on this. I have also been in the gameDev industry at one point and I know how transparent it is to flip little bit settings to get the game acting a certain way.
In their defense, as with most businesses, Rovio is bottom-line focused. At the end of every week I’m sure the suits sit down with the production team reviewing the revenue generation and say, “how much did we rake in this week?”.
Team: “Ummm, figures are going down.”
CEO: “Then wring it out of ’em dammit!!! Make ’em pay more gems! Get more cash purchases!! Come up with ways to force ’em to pay to play! Because if you don’t you’re out of a job!!!” I have been in this very same scenario myself.
The rules change on this game weekly. What used to work yesterday doesn’t work tomorrow. Birds crash into buildings and fall dead without making a single dent. Single pigs remain after annihilating an entire room, costing the player one more bird or buy-in. Rooms that took one bird to clear suddenly take 3 or 4. I just had Matilda AND Red literally bounce off separate buildings and just roll away. My flock is all at level 9 and I just played an entire level 8 flock in the Arena and got my score whupped by over 1,500,000 pts. Coincidence? Hardly.
Hackers amp up their gem count to 999,999,999,999 and therefore can just buy their way to wins. When Rovio added the ‘Elder’ level, how come players immediately had flocks of level 10+ the very next day? Hack hack hack. I just played a guy in the arena who has an avatar of a car flying into outer space (I forget his name). He is a known hacker who even has videos on YouTube showing how he hacked his game. WHY is he still allowed to play??!
Because Rovio can’t stop him. There are too many people who have found ways to script into their game engine and Rovio has no way to find them out, so they just ignore and concentrate on rooking the honest players, because those are the ones they can still control. It happened with Webkinz, it happened with Smurfs and it’s happening here too.
Starting a whole new tier of birds essentially just moved the finish line further for those who worked to win the race. Once everyone completes Elder Diamond you just watch that there won’t be ANOTHER tier to amass. And another. And another.
Every day I play this game it costs me gems. There is no way I can just log in and go through a few rounds without buying spells or paying to continue. The writing is on the wall; this is akin to the carnival games where the barkers nail down your targets so you can’t win but think you will. It’s all to frustrate players into maxing out their CCs trying to get ahead against forces that far outweigh them. Arcade owners in the 80s did this with their machine games and now Rovio is doing the same thing with their apps. It’s a losing battle.
Thanks for reading my rant. If Rovio starts wondering why their games are losing money, they can look here for the answer. It’s come to this: as @aeshna stated before, “I no longer even care about playing.” Same with me. Why bother? The fun is gone.
