Challenge in C Minor Contest

[watuzzi]

@thebirthoflove if you had all that time to type that lengthy a response, you could have been playing the challenge.

[watuzzi]

I have close to 900 haybales and I didn’t cheat. I recharged once, so only 10 gems. The level and number of haybails is completely random. For people who say that they need to work and cannot play that much, well, that’s the way things go in life. I’m not sure what Rovio is supposed to do if you dont’ have the time to play a challenge. That’s why it’s a challenge. It would be equally unfair for players like me, that put in tons of effort, if there were some kind of handicap or system to even the playing field based on a ratio of playing time or something.

[SnTrooper]

@pampeans Considering that the image used for the challenge has the other types of missiles I’m guessing their removal is a bug. Were you using Photoblast? That might explain the lower coins because you don’t get any coins from destroying missiles (or balloon pigs) with it (or I think any other Energonicon).

[Melissa]

@watuzzi (still not sure if this is actually tagging correctly or how to do it)…considering I type 165wpm it didn’t actually take me long to type my “lengthy response.” I wanted to acknowledge the person who had taken their time to respond to me. Also, you are right, at the time I chose to reply, I could have been playing, but I could NOT play the challenge in question that I was referring to because it was over! I was referring to the days in which I am working my clinical rotations, which is the during the week; not on Friday night or Saturday morning. I did not get a chance to play the challenge until about 6:45 PM EST last night after coming home, taking care of my son, making dinner, cleaning up, getting him in the shower and ready for bed. I only played 4 bars of energy last night. As I mentioned, I do NOT spend gems to reboost my energy to play (I don’t have many and I am not about to spend money on a game). Then I need to wait 45-55 minutes to be “recharged” if I wanted to play again. By then, the challenge is either about 15 minutes until over or it is actually over. So, even had I played, it would not have counted as it would have been “last minute” or it simply would have been the following challenge. Not sure if this is making sense. Anyway, I am busy today, but since I actually have my phone on me, I can take periodic breaks to play a little, so this issue won’t really apply to me today. I am also not super competitive about it. I’d like to get one of the prizes, but that’s about all. As I said previously, it’s just the control which Rovio built in to prevent people from taking advantage does hurt other honest players. People who have the kind of hours and life that I have right now may not be in the majority, but if we take the time to engage in something, I really don’t think that our lack of availability to commit time to the game should really be held against us. That was the only point I was trying to make! Good luck to those of you are working hard to win!

[Scotto]

Ok looks like I will win this one, but why. Damnit, Jim, I’m a ROBOT not a fashionista! Where’s the beef- I mean, GEMS?

[werehamsta]

@weenaoise, after some consideration, I tend to think that late players should not be penalized. Okay, some of them might try to use it as a winning strategy, so what? By arriving late, they place themselves in a company of a) wiseguys of the same sort, who are fair game, and people who weren’t going to compete seriously in the first place anyway. It’s not like a last-minute strategist gets an unfair advantage over a diligent grinder, since these two sorts of players will never meet in a same flock. So where’s the abuse in their choice of playstyle?

[WeeNaoise]

Just spent my tokens. Got what appeared to be black sunglasses for Soundblaster which looked quite cool when I tried them on in the barracks. Horror or horrors – they turn out to be blue rims which look terrible on the black and red body.

[WeeNaoise]

@werehamsta – Why not make contests completely optional then and just give everyone the prizes anyway?

@thebirthoflove – You are contradicting yourself. Initially you said you could only join games within the last hour due to your busy schedule, but now you say you don’t want to wait for your energy to reload because the new game would have started – i.e. you’d be joining at the beginning of a contest, not the end. So it seems you could be in from the start and compete for 100% of the tokens but just choose not to.

As a general observation. Over the seven days of this contest I have placed between 2nd and 5th. I did not use gems. Every day, I was beaten by at least one person who clearly used many gems. Every day, I beat people who clearly didn’t play very much. That seems to be as it should be. I certainly don’t see why I should end up with the same or lesser reward for playing constantly than someone would get by playing four rounds in 8 minutes at the end of the day.

[sammer48]

@gradientturtle? What the heck now!!! I cash in 500 tokens to get Energon Soundwave sunglasses and it deducts 1000 tokens instead of 500. I did not play much because I had to address the Update Progress loop and eventually disabled Cloud Load. Now I crash one or two times on open, and then it takes twice the amount of tokens. I do not care about getting the tokens back, but tell me what the heck is going on so I can figure how to play and KEEP that which I earn!!!!!

[Melissa]

@Weenaoise, — clearly I am somehow not communicating what actually happened correctly or something. I don’t know.

I don’t play ABT very much. I get on maybe once or twice a day and play for about 20 minutes. I collect my coins, redeem my missions, and play a few nodes. That’s my typically game play on days in which I am NOT in clinical rotations. I knew about this challenge and I played a bit here and there beginning when it first started. I did not play any harder, longer or differently. I didn’t even pay much attention to if or how I placed because I didn’t really care.

That being said, on THURSDAY, I had clinical rotations. So, on Wednesday night I had gone to bed around 8 PM. I had played a few times on Wednesday, but I did not start the challenge for Thursday the minute it opened on Wednesday night. I went to bed, so I could be up at 4 AM on Thursday. I already explained the no cell phone policy and why I had no access to my phone on Thursday. I think that’s pretty clear. After taking care of dinner and getting my stinker ready for bed, I retired to the bathroom for a few minutes of peace and played my 4 bars of energy for the challenge. I exited the game and went to bed with my son after reading him a story, so I could be up before the crack of dawn on Friday morning for clinical.

When I got home from clinical, I opened up the game and saw that I had managed to get 3rd place in the challenge which I had played before going to sleep the night prior. I was excited about it, though I really have no clue how that happened since as I’ve previously explained, I do not use gems to play. Then I saw I only got 30 tokens instead of 300. I thought it was weird because I had been earning more tokens then that when I had placed much, much lower on previous days.

So, I came on here and found the thread about the guy who placed first and got 100 tokens instead of 1000. Then I saw the response that a user posted from Rovio addressing that particular issue. It really rubbed me the wrong way since I felt robbed of something I had rightfully earned. I may not have worked super hard for it and I may not have bought gems or played all day like some people, but I got 3rd place by playing my one time and should have gotten the tokens I earned for playing. I would have been even more upset had I, for some reason, when I played Thursday night, used some of my precious gems to play and been penalized NOT KNOWING this was something new that Rovio was doing. This issue ONLY affected me on Thursday. During the week, I was playing more often and was placing anywhere from like 4th to 20th. I don’t know because I don’t keep track. The only reason I even noticed this whole thing at all was because I had gotten excited that I placed 3rd on Thursday’s challenge when I first saw that Friday evening.

By the time I read ON FRIDAY evening about what was going on, the entire day had already passed and I did not get to play until around 6:45 for Friday’s challenge. So, it affected me that day as well for Friday’s challenge. I did play again last night before I went to bed around 10:30 PM for the beginning of Saturday’s challenge and I played a few times today as well because a) I was NOT in clinical today and could sleep normal hours, b) I had access to my phone and c) I knew I had to play earlier in the day to avoid being penalized.

To truly beat Rovio’s system, you would have to be quite dedicated to doing it, I think. Obviously, there were enough people using that last-minute strategy that it was problematic somehow for Rovio’s profit margin and they had to do something about it. I don’t really know.

It doesn’t matter now. The competition is over. I managed to get 2960 tokens…so, I got one decent prize and some coins. I was just 40 shy of the rumble thing. But, since I didn’t go crazy trying to win, I am not bent out of shape about it. I don’t care if I don’t earn something because I am not playing. What pissed me off was that I DID play when I COULD play, happened to do well…and then didn’t get crap-diddly for it. I think that’s understandable, is it not?

Hopefully, THIS made sense…otherwise, I apologize, but I can’t continue to discuss this because it’s not super important anymore and I have other priorities. Hope you all did well and feel good about your outcomes in the game.

[Drover’s Dog]

I used gems regularly during the competition as unlike the last competition the start/finish times in my time zone were 11am and as I start work at 8am I had to ensure that if I wanted a good token reward I would have to have a good lead.
My strategy worked getting 5 x 1sts and 2 x 2nds and although I did not keep a running tally of gems used I would put it at between 550 to 650 over the week, however, I knew how many I had at the start and by running missions and work in the lab I ended the week with 6 gems more than I started with.
I think these were gems well spent as I ended up with Rumble, Ravage, Ratbat and Cannon which would cost in excess of 3000 gems if I wanted to buy them.
Comment has been made that the competition was not long enough for players to accrue enough tokens to exchange for all items on offer. I don’t think that every item should be able to be collected only that any exclusive item is attainable with a bit of effort and in this case only 430 tokens needed to be accrued each day to get there. If every item was available for free there would be no one buying or using gems and if Rovio isn’t making any money out of their investment there is no way they will spend money on developing the game further for us.

[SnTrooper]

Ended up being able to get Rumble, Ravage, two sunglasses and some coins. 1380 tokens short of my goal of Rumble, Ravage and Ratbat. If I had known it was only seven days long I would have tried harder in the first few rounds. But 1050 gems worth of accessories (plus Rumble) for about 50 gems isn’t half bad. It stinks that Soundblaster’s and Energon Soundwave’s glasses are switched from what is pictured though. The blue on Soundblaster looks terrible and while the black on E Soundwave looks fine I wanted the blue.

[werehamsta]

@weenaoise, because it wouldn’t be a competition, while allowing a small margin of players to use a loophole in rules does not ruin the competition for everyone else.

Just ask yourself a question: what is the purpose of sorting players by entrance time? Why those arriving later do not start surrounded by players with hundreds of tokens on their hands?

[watuzzi]

I managed to finish first every day of the competition. I generally spent 10 or 30 gems each day to get to 1st place, except one day, when I recharged a 3rd time and spent 70 gems.

I ended up exchanging tokens for Rumble, Cannon, Ravage, Ratbat, Energon Soundwave’s sunglasses and 10000 coins. If my math is correct, I ended up exchanging 10750 tokens and I had 30 leftover. In hindsight, I should have recharged a couple extra times more on a few days because I left tokens on the table by not reaching the max each day. Despite that, I’m very pleased with the rewards for this competition. I was able to slightly improve my characters and that’s all I’m trying to do anyway.

I play a lot and this type of competition is perfect for the amount of effort I’m willing to put into the game. The rewards are great since I’d probably never spend the gems to ‘buy’ them.

[Optimus_Pig]

@watuzzi

“If my math is correct, I ended up exchanging 10750 tokens and I had 30 leftover”

I’m impressed, given that the maximum tokens we could have accumulated each day was 1,000 (from the competition side) plus 550 (from the challenge side) = 1,550 / day x 7 = 10,850 for the week.

I was trying fairly hard early on as well, until Day Four or Five when I realized that even if I somehow maxed out my tokens on the last few days I still wouldn’t have enough for more than two of the major accessories (ended up with Ravage and Beastbox).

I got unlucky with my groupings – unless I spent an unacceptable number of gems, that meant realistically I might have expected to get 1,050 x 7 = 7,350 tokens at most for the week, which isn’t enough to get more than two of the major accessories. (I didn’t bother going after sunglasses, since I already had sunglasses on all three of the TFs, just in different colors).