Eliminate unfair advantage in events due to the timeframes

[steven-van-ingelgem]

I had been thinking already a while about this, because for me the start & end of the competition is always around 1am, 2am… Time when I have to be in bed as I do have a working life you know.

Now my idea is actually fairly simple: make each “day” in the competition 23 or 25 hours. If you do it this way, after a little less then a month, the timings are the same.
And the unfair advantage for our American friends vs the Europeans is gone.
Right now I can win maybe 10-20% of the time if I put effort and gems in it. But victory always gets stolen during the time I have to sleep. Frustrating!!!
The way I’m talking about that would still happen (on at least 8 of the days), but on the other days I could at least have a chance to win. Same like everyone else on this planet who sleeps 8h a day… Everyone would be getting exactly the same advantages (not at the same time though), but it wouldn’t be a one-sided unfair advantage anymore.

I also submitted this idea to Rovio, but I got the standard boiler plate answer “we listen to our users bla bla bla…”. So I don’t really think anything would be done with it.
Unless of course more people are like me :)… Then you can submit the same idea and Rovio can really put it in their wishlist. The more people think the same, the more requests are filed and the higher it goes in priority.
Or so I assume.

Have fun!

Topic

[pandaczar12]

If you’re willing to give up sleep to play, it doesn’t matter where you live. If your not willing to give up sleep, that’s why you don’t win.

[werehamsta]

Right now my game day starts and ends at 02:00 AM. 25-hour day will start my day at 2,3,4,5,6 o’clock. 23 hour day will start Dehli gamer’s shift at 5,4,3,2, and 1 o’clock. No plan can be fair to everybody.

[kingbird]

Beauty

[ED209]

I live in the U.K. And my start time is middnight, it used to be 1am but with the clocks going back an hour it helped. When summer comes it will back to 1am when the clocks go forward. I struggle to get first or even in the top three due to the amount other players are a head and no matter how many gems I put in I’ll not come first

[loynis]

I had different idea. There should be option to enter the contest with ‘early finish’ option. Here is how it would work:
When entering competition for the day, you can opt to finish early (for example 3,6,9 or 12 hours earlier). At ‘early finish’ time the competition is locked for you and your position on leaderboard at that time determines your prize. You must wait until global finish time to claim the reward. The Rovio could split players into boards based on their finish time as well as entry time. By the way, this may help ‘last minute servers overload’ thing.

This way those who are happy with their playtime can continue to play as it was, and those who had event end at nighttime can now shift it.

[Optimus_Pig]

I’ve changed my competition habits.

I’m located in the Eastern time zone of North America (UTC-5).

My start time is 7pm (8pm when we go to Daylight Savings in the summer).

For quite a while I’ve been starting at midnight, for several reasons (1. so I could enjoy my evenings without having to play, and 2. to coincide with the restart of the Daily Quest at midnight).

Anyway ever since the start of the Chromia event, I’ve been starting instead at 7am or 8am. This allows me to get in a full night of sleep without messing up my sleep patterns (Rovio should get sued for this – it’s a health and safety hazard). There’s still plenty of time for me to complete the Daily Quests.

Is there a “risk” that I won’t get in enough runs to reach Level 100 of the Challenge? Sure, but the Competition has been so hyper-competitive of late, that I’ll almost inevitably use gems on recharges, so the extra (4, or 8, or 12) runs is more than enough for me to complete the Challenge as well.

TL;DR – I’m playing less and enjoying the game more.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig Once you get everything from the token exchange do you continue to play?

[Optimus_Pig]

@datguygamer

Nope.

The only time I did continue was during the previous event when I was hoping that Chromia would suddenly appear in the Token Exchange after the event closed (in the same way that Dead End did several events ago). I was obviously being naive.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig Okay then. I merely asked as some people still seem to continue.

[Optimus_Pig]

@datguygamer

I’m not sure why they would continue (unless being naive like I was).

It’s a waste of time and only screws over people who actually need the tokens.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig Well, to each their own I suppose. I got Chromia and the three Sparks. I am done.

I am waiting to see if they will offer some characters I have missed in the next event.

[Asen_77]

@datguygamer How did you get Chromia and Sparks for 3 days event? Did you use gems or save tokens from Rovio that they provide us for excuses?

[Optimus_Pig]

I did the arithmetic and determined that there was no way I could earn enough tokens to get all the Sparks plus Chromia. I mean, it’s theoretically possible, but I’d have to come in first place all five days.

Also, getting the Sparks upfront allowed me to upgrade my TFs early so that I could benefit from the additional bonus for the five days of this Event.

So I just spent gems to get Sparks early on.

Unfortunately I was stupid and claimed the apology tokens during the previous event.

[datguygamer]

@asen I came first on all days until yesterday which gave me the tokens needed on top of daily 550 and then used some gems. I cannot compete so ferociously with my less ranked bots everyday but I was lucky to get into really mellow boards these past few days. So I spent some gems and it was not that much.

[Geli]

Rovio cannot please everyone regarding start times. D*mned if the do and d*mned if they don’t. I just changed my habits by starting later, similar as noted by @optimuspig. Start about 3 hours after 0:00 UTC. Can still get the 100 token level just about anytime.

If I really really REALLY need to, I’ll make runs at oh-dark-thirty to stay in the top 3. Happens much less since the cessation of the 4 hour squad change.

[Cynical Bird]

@datguygamer When did you start playing? How many hours since the start time? All my boards have been super competitive in places 1-3. I’m near max level and the top 3 guys always have 2 gold crown bots. I’m sure some hacked before the hack detection came in to have 2 gold bots in all competitions. I can understand 1 but these people seem to have Grimlock and the competition bot maxxed, which seems near impossible that they have all bots maxed for every competition.

[datguygamer]

@sickcyn I started 3 hours after the day started as that is 4:30 am and I am not gonna compromise with my sleep. After I woke up, it was a combination of playing and recharging. Also, at the end I purchased some missing tokens with gems to reduce my gem usage.

[Mighty Dove]

I’m curious how this game can be hacked…?

If so, I’m looking at you player called ‘TOASTER’! (out of nowhere with your golden wings progress!)

[Cynical Bird]

In the ABTF Facebook group, a mod or maybe even the creator of the group posted he had been told of a hack to max all bots to gold crown. He did it and had all his bots max sparked gold crown. Pics were posted and in one of the first 3x bonus comps he had a 630% buff with 2 bots, pics posted etc. Exient/Rovio claim their next update (this current one, 1.24) would have hack detection, etc. Don’t know if it’s there or not, but it doesn’t seem it will do any checks for past hackers.

[Optimus_Pig]

Well that’s just Prime.

Even having a pair of TFs max-promoted to +105% each is bad enough.

But to promote every single TF to +105% and then be able to pick and choose which to use so you can get the 3X bonus is just ridiculous.

With +630% you don’t even need to run a good TF in the event – you just need to survive each run.

[Mighty Dove]

@sickcyn ah, probably don’t want to jailbreak my iDevice if this is how they did it.

[TheShadow]

There really isn’t an advantage based upon timing of games. Events are 24 hours, and most everyone will be taking some time off for sleep, so it doesn’t matter if the events start at noon, 6:00 pm or midnight GMT, most people will be sleeping during the 24-hour period.

Additionally, with regard to rankings, I read on this forum somewhere that you are grouped with other people who started around the same time you did. This means if I start an event at 6:00 pm, everyone else in the grouping of 20 will have started the event around 6:00 pm. If I start the event at midnight, everyone else in the grouping of 20 will have started at midnight.

Maybe this is wrong information, but the scores of other competitors when I start events are similar to my scores. It’s not until later when there are differences between competitors.

[Optimus_Pig]

@dlurbauer

There’s an advantage if your strategy involves using gems and sniping your way into the lead in the last half hour of the game.

[datguygamer]

@optimuspig That requires a constant stash of gems which the game doesn’t even award properly…

[Anonymous]

@datguygamer Not if you do it the right way. What I do is start the event about 45-90 minutes late, play 8 runs (1st recharge), then just play as I usually do for the time being. After that, I always get on 15 minutes before the event ends, while ensuring that I have a full energy bar, then do the last 8 runs (2nd recharge) so I always finish right before the event ends.

Doing this pretty much guarantees me a 300 (500 on a good day.) token spot on the leaderboard, while only paying 30 gems per day.