Nerfed Again?!

[e5c4p3artist]

I have played this game since it was released, and almost daily, so that I keep getting my prizes from the daily challenge.

I have noticed three changes to the game recently that I do not like at all, and am hoping they are bugs, not intentional changes. Anyone else noticed these?

1. You do not get to keep coins collected during races anymore. Until recently, if I won a race, I got a set prize amount of coins (say 500) and I could pick up more during the race (say 200) and end up with 700 coins at the end of the race. Now, it does not matter how many I pick up during the race, I am only getting the set prize amount. So in the example above, no matter how many I get during the race, I end up with only 500.

This also means that I always get ZERO for daily challenges (assuming the prize is not coins, such as gems), which was not true up until recently.

2. Until recently, if you failed a daily challenge, you could try it again. Now if you lose, you cannot try again. Which makes my third observation even more frustrating…

3. I have gotten very good at every track (I have played this game a lot). I rarely make mistakes. I can be running a perfect race, have made no mistakes, be 2/3 of the way through the race, and I will look up at the bar that shows the positions of the other racers (this is not in PvP, only in player versus computer) and one of the computer-controlled racers will already be finished with the race! There is no way, they would have had time to make it to the finish line, and no other racers are anywhere close to them. Some mechanic has been changed to allow this. I used to come in first place 19/20 times I raced. Now I am lucky to come in 1st place 50% of the time. And there is nothing I can do about it; I am already racing with no mistakes. It’s just that one of the computer players has gone berzerk and somehow gotten to the end twice as fast as it is possible to do!

Each of these changes has made the game less enjoyable, especially to someone like me who is somewhat burned out on it already. Especially #1 and #3.

I play TRACK 1 in the STUNT course A HECK OF A LOT because it pays out the most money in the least amount of time. I have purchased the coin doubler. For the last couple of years, I typically win around 750 coins (500 for first place, 250 picked up on the track) which is doubled to 1500 coins per race.

Now I have been getting 450 for second place (because of observation #3 above) and ZERO for coins picked up on the track (observation #1). That gets doubled to 900 coins per race. Needless to say, I make FAR LESS money than I have for the last couple of years. Frustrating to say the least.

Topic

[AMslimfordy]

@e5c4p3artist

(1) Coins collected in-race are immediately added to your “bank”. You can see them tallying up in the top-left corner. Since they are counted in-race, they were removed from the screen shown at the end of the race.

(2) Correct, you cannot retry. But you also don’t go backwards in days. You need only finish in the Top 3 to claim the prize from the Daily Challenge (winning not necessary).

(3) I’ve never noticed anything screwy in this manner. The closest thing I’ve noticed is that if an opponent leaves your line of sight ahead of you, they will never crash or slow down. They’ll run a 100% perfect race, making them impossible to catch.

[e5c4p3artist]

@amslimfordy

Hi! Thanks for the response. Here are my thoughts:

(1) I see this functionality happening now that you have pointed it out. The old way was more intuitive for users. Not only could they see that they had received the extra coins if they did not notice them adding up as they were racing, which would be easy to miss since concentration would be on the racetrack, not on the HUD, but they could also see how many coins they had collected during a race. The way it is now, they would have to do math (ugh!) to calculate how many coins they grabbed during a race.

(2) This was recently changed. I know, because I have done the daily challenge nearly every day since it was introduced and I could always retry on the rare occasions when I came in 4th place or greater. I would consider this a nerf, since it takes away functionality a user used to have that allowed them to retry. But since it is intentional, it is not a bug, granted.

(3) I am still seeing this happen. I completed several races yesterday, all on Track 1 of the Stunt course. In most of them, an opponent who was ahead of me, but easily within my field of vision just took off until I could no longer see them and as I watched their dot on the progress bar, they zoomed to the finish line impossibly fast, like they had fired a rocket booster. Please check into this if possible. That track is the one I race the most (most money per time put in) so it is where I see it happen the most. But I have seen it happen elsewhere, including in the daily challenge races. I have only started observing this behavior recently (within the last couple of months at most).

[AMslimfordy]

(1) The benefit of the new system is that if you restart the level mid-race, your collected coins are already credited to your account.

(2) This change was included in the update that added the “pay to retry a weekly tournament race” feature. I agree it’s a bit rough.

(3) I’ll try to reproduce this. I’ll try Stunt-1.

[dbkraemer]

@e5c4p3artist – I am curious about your desire for coins. It seems to me that the gems are the only useful currency in AB Go! I’d really like to know what you use the coins for, in case I am missing something. Also, you mention in your original post that you are getting somewhat burned out on the game. Are you only racing in the VS races? Have you tried to beat any of the challenges? Just wondering…

[dbkraemer]

Unless you are gathering coins to upgrade your karts. I just thought that since you say you play every day that you already have enough coins for any upgrades. But if that is what you want them for, then I understand :)

[e5c4p3artist]

@dbkraemer – Hi! You have a good point about collecting coins, and are alluding to another “nerf” that I did not mention. This is the fact that in the earlier days of the game, it seemed more vehicles were available to purchase with coins. Now it seems that gems are required to purchase most of them. However, my main reason for stockpiling coins is to upgrade vehicles as new courses become available. For example, I had stockpiled close to a half-million coins before “Sub Zero” was released. Once it was released, I was able to purchase one of the vehicles that could be purchased with coins, and immediately upgrade it fully. I am not a “delayed gratification” kind of guy. Plus, watching my coins pile up provides me with a goal, above and beyond the challenges, which eventually become very difficult and in fact, are (or at least were) impossible.

Speaking to the challenges, yes I have completed many many of them for each track. In fact, I am to the point in almost every challenge on every track, where my next one includes “beat a friends score.” I do not know if this has been addressed yet – but I was told by Rovio support a few months back that it was indeed impossible to complete this challenge – even if you have Facebook friends playing ABG, which I do not. I am searching for where they told me that – I think it was via Twitter, and I am finding it extremely difficult to figure out how to search my history of tweets and replies. I will post the exact reply once I find it. But unless something has changed, I cannot complete any more challenges because of this issue.

@amslimfordy – are you aware of this issue, and whether it has been fixed?

Even if I could complete this challenge, the few other challenges I have are very difficult to complete (like collect less than 5 coins on Stunt Track 1 – that is a LONG course with tons of coins!) and require me to spend 40 gems if I want to skip it. I am not willing to spend that many gems just to skip a challenge.

So, in summary, I have complete challenges up to the point where it is impossible/unfeasible for me to complete any more. :)

[AMslimfordy]

I dislike the “Beat a Friend’s Score” challenge as well. Especially with the later tracks, I don’t have any friends who have completed the track so I can’t beat their scores. Really rough.

[e5c4p3artist]

Ah, yes. The Rovio reply telling me that it was actually IMPOSSIBLE (not just difficult) to complete the “beat a friend” challenge was on Facebook. Which I also do not know how to search for old posts. If I find it, I will post it. Otherwise, you may be able to find it quicker than I. It was posted on this page: https://www.facebook.com/RovioEntertainment

[dbkraemer]

@e5c4p3artist – Yes, it seems that all karts now must be purchased with gems, although they recently reduced the cost dramatically (in some cases from an outrageous 9,000 gems to a slightly less outrageous 2,400 gems…) :)

The “Beat a Friend’s Score” was fixed, maybe a month or two ago. There was a point when it was not functioning properly.

The Lucky Boxes used to occasionally offer a “Free Skip Next Challenge” gift, which was cool, but that seems to have stopped within the last month. :(

I am hoping that the next upgrade will have a new track, rather than just more upgrades to the mulit-player, which I don’t really care for.

@AMslimfordy – You are welcome to add me as a FB friend (a link is in my profile) so that you can pass the “Beat a Friend’s Score” ones. I have completed all of the tracks. But my scores are pretty high, so it should still be a challenge :)

[Newtdog]

Has anyone else noticed that the subzero tracks have disappeared in the multiplayer mode? I was seeing them regularly until a couple updates ago.