Conspiracy theories and more…
Hello All,
I want to address some of the theories I've seen posited here, and to debunk them from the perspective of an experienced developer / user. Background: I worked in game security for the world's largest online poker site for 10 years as a key "anti-cheating", game integrity principle.
1) CLAIM: The Tower isn't random.
I've charted my experience extensively -- many times up the whole 90 levels. It's indeed random, every draw. Think about this for a moment. If it were *not* random, it wouldn't take long for someone to document statistically that it was not... and such a revelation would be the END of the Rovio gravy train -- not just here, but in every Rovio game. It isn't worth the risk to them. Instead, they have priced the random failures and pig hits to entice players to consider "sunk costs", encouraging them to go deeper for additional (likely paid) gems.
Rovio would absolutely NOT risk this gravy train to squeeze a few extra gems out of people by rigging the game, which could be EASILY documented over a few hundred recorded instance via screen capture.
2) Chest awards are pre-determined to maximize profits / gem purchases.
The same logic above applies. If it wasn't random, we'd have proof by now.
3) Opponent mismatches in the Arena. This includes bot theories, and far others.
Guess what -- the same principle applies. While we don't know *exactly* who we're playing against, or what rooms they played, it would be trivial to keep a log of arena matches and prove a bias towards gem expenditures. No such log yet exists.... and my own experience in programming suggests as good an experience as can be expected in a non-real-time matchup process.
Those who want to see "what their opponents did" (visually), or to play real time, have zero concept of programming, or of the data / bandwidth requirements to make that happen. As it is, the game already includes exploits used by many, because Rovio didn't want to incur the bandwidth costs of updating feather or pearl counts on each such transaction, trusting local storage to be "99% effective".
There's always a tradeoff between "cheater-proofing" a game, and the cost or effect on legit customers. Even World Of Warcraft encountered this with it's "warden" software... and I wrote some seriously complex anti-cheating software myself as regards online poker... but I was given resources to do so because it was a multi-billion dollar industry.
News flash: AB2 doesn't merit such investment, and we reading this are the extreme minority. 99.9% of players don't know about the exploits available. (90% of those reading *this* aren't aware). Rovio isn't going to dedicate resources to the vocal minority here.... who are, by their own admission, not "revenue" customers. (They get $10/mo from me for the letter for cheap gems -- no more).
So, stop griping about the exploits, or about how Rovio codes to extract gems. I would expect no less. They are in business to make a profit, and SOMEONE has to pay Hank's wages.... and that's NOT you or me. There will be bugs, and it will be unfair for those surfing the edge. Get used to it... or drop back to playing "fair" the way 99.9% of players already do.
If you have "all hat sets" or "maximized bird cards" (especially within hours of a push), then you have no basis to complain about exploits or bugs. You're part of the "problem", at least in Rovio's eyes. Get over it, and accept that they let you abuse their system because it is cheaper than the cost of policing against YOU in favor of those that pay their bills.
Jester