[AngryPlayer]

More of the same, just different packaging with new icons. No new physics are introduced- no new pig types, gameplay thrills, ways to use your birds to get points… same 7 birds and same annoying pigs.

I think I’m finally done with this game. Seriously, I can’t keep up- I have a life, two jobs, go to the gym every day and I only want to play this game here and there for a little fun.

Hat sets at 25K pearls? Seriously? I would have to play this stupid game brainlessly for X hours per day for Y years to get anywhere with it, and I happened to have better things to do with my time (like Dead Rising 4 is being released in a few days and I will have way more fun playing that).

What started off as insane fun and cool gameplay has now become the chore of an infinite treadmill.

Good bye fellow flingers, good bye Rovio and all your apps that I had begun paying since Day One. You’ve finally burned me out as a player.

Deleted all AB apps and am moving on. Tchau.

[AngryPlayer]

What, like this garbage? “Get ’em while they last???” IT’S A FREAKING PIXEL-GENERATED IMAGE, ROVIO CAN SCORE AS MANY OF THESE AS THEY WANT UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

“My lucky day” would be if this game actually worked properly.

I have better things to spend $13.99 on than some shiny virtual prizes.

View post on imgur.com

[AngryPlayer]

And the ironic part is that the pre-recorded Arena games that you have to beat have retained scores which included spells with normal level scoring, making it almost impossible to garner a win against the “good players”. It’s like being forced to run a race with an anchor tied to your leg.

[AngryPlayer]

Thanks, @chucky-2 generally this works and is a good idea.

I find however now that 50% of the time AB2 gives me all my spells right off the bat :-/

[AngryPlayer]

Generally what it’s come down to is these structures can only be effectively damaged by a single bird each- eg Bomb, Matilda, sometimes Red can knock them over.

And essentially if you haven’t got that one bird in your lineup, you’re on a fast track to failure (or gem spending). Total setup.

[AngryPlayer]

I thought @bankler @hank @whoever_the_stand-in_is_this_week said that this spell level=1 bug would be “fixed on the next update.”

It’s obviously not.

[AngryPlayer]

15 attempts today, saw the boss screen once on the DC through an hour and a half of playing to try to make it through 3 lousy screens without having to use gems.

All due to the magical little pig that suddenly takes 5 birds to knock out in the Boss level, room 4/6. Very aptly applied tactic that occurred in EVERY attempt.

Sorry Rovio, your “challenges” are just too difficult for me. Giving up for today.

[AngryPlayer]

@gazzer They’re still on their monthly hiatus before checking the income report, then calling up their last developer left to take 5 minutes to come in and make sure the servers haven’t crashed.

They haven’t even removed the Halloween splash screen and that’s been overdue by 3 weeks.

[AngryPlayer]

Strange, Sunday’s DC and KPC cost me a total of 850 gems to complete. Foreman Pig in DC bounced up and got stuck between fixed structures and only one bird could potentially knock him out (Silver) so I had to throw birds until I got her again. In the KPC the King Pig miraculously flew up to an area where only Chuck could hit him after flying through the portals, and having to burn 3 birds at a time to get another Chuck to reach him is the reason why. Rovio stuck it to me good both times, I should have just opted out like I’ve done for the past few days.

I’m also not a fan of this being able to “Strike” the first screen of the Boss level and nullify potentially 2 extra cards (which you don’t receive because you’ll have your 7 cards and spells are not allowed), then running out of cards by the 4th room. Again, I know this is a setup- but it’s a pretty sucky way of forcing players to use gems because they want to get the black pearls.

[AngryPlayer]

OK I just got a screen with 3 magician pigs in it. Seriously? I’ll post a picture later tonight.

Chasing three stupid teleporting magician pigs around? In one screen? That’s a 5-bird suck right away.

This game has truly reached rock bottom. It is certified FUBAR.

UPDATE: Today’s DC is absolute gem rape. There is NOT ONE screen in the 6-screen boss ‘challenge’ that can be done with a single bird. 4, 5, even 6 buildings in each room. PLUS the myriad of bird wasters (magician pigs, umbrella pigs, laser beam pigs….). I’ve never seen it so desperately impossible to get through.

If anyone here in the forum can do this without buying in, let me know what your secret is. I’ve been playing it for over an hour and a half and still haven’t even seen the boss screen.

[AngryPlayer]

Thanks @rhonda90402. Good to know the game is sucking all around. :)

[AngryPlayer]

Is the Arena freezing up for anyone else on a ‘continue’ match?

Can’t select the “free video” button and can’t select the “60 gems to continue” either…

BTW I just went into a 6th win streak with 5 spells and got beaten by over 2,000,000 points. Would you believe I threw a duck spell and got 0 points?

*UPDATE*: just played another game, reset my device because AB2 locked up and got kicked back to Streak 1. Took in 3 spells and just got beaten by 9,000,000 pts.

Your game sucks, Rovio. Fix it.

[AngryPlayer]

I’ll be long dead as well… I was subtly making a point about how Rovio keeps lifting the achievements bar to keep addicted players in the game, to a point where, without cheating, it would take almost a lifetime of playing to complete those achievements.

And or course once everyone gets closer to completing their Knight hat sets (et al) and is playing with fully leveled birds and a diamond slingshot, you can bet Rovio will turn around and introduce a whole new tier of birdwear to some other ridiculously high purchase level and a whole new tier of slingshots that multiply your score by a googleplex… and the gameplay will be the exact same.

It’s called ‘player base burnout’… :P

[AngryPlayer]

I’ve cleared screens with two of the same bird before (eg where I threw a bird and got the same bird as a replacement and then used it)… let me look for a screenshot where I’ve got both bird bodies lying around at one time…

So it’s possible to have two of the same bird in a row, it just depends on which bird you last use and which bird you get awarded as your free card.

[AngryPlayer]

I finished all my sets in 2099

…meaning, without cheating, that’s how long it’s going to take me to collect all this stuff. I’ll probably just get bored of the game and un-install it before I ever complete all of this.

[AngryPlayer]

And gameplay is still being manipulated.

Yesterday I was on the last room of Wave 3. I had a chili pepper in my lineup (and a couple of birds as well). My first shot, which should have obliterated the entire room (a well-placed bomb)got rid of everything except one little micropig which was the furthest thing away from the slingshot and landed there after flying halfway across the screen.

I thought that this was a setup to use my pepper since if I saved it, it would go back into my spell bank. But since I had some birds left, I decided to try otherwise and just use them since there was only one block of wood and this mini-pig.

Direct hit from Chuck on the piece of wood he was laying behind did nothing.

Almost direct hit from Matilda’s egg right in front of him did nothing except roll him further away.

Direct hit from Blues (who also bounced off the balloons above, uh-huh) did nothing.

None of my other birds could reach far enough to touch him.

I actually said out loud, “OK I GET IT, ROVIO YOU WANT ME TO WASTE MY SPELL.” and used it.

Beyond pathetic.

When it takes me almost an hour and a half and 15 attempts just to get through 3 stupid ‘challenge screens’ and still never complete it, I put the game down and abandon it. Just an FYI, Rovio.

[AngryPlayer]

@psygaz I’d have deleted the app right then and there.

[AngryPlayer]

@penz Like I said in a thread earlier: The game is on autopilot. Their last remaining developer simply pre-codes dates into the dB to +1 bird level, + another autobuilt world, + whatever arena physics settings they have in store and only comes back to check the game and servers every few weeks (or if there is a crash).

The rest of the time the Rovio CEOs look at the income statement for the month and if they’re not generating enough revenue, they call the programmer to go back in and up all the difficulty levels to try to frustrate players into dumping more cash into the game.

It’s a dream business model of a proverbial cash cow.

[AngryPlayer]

Rovio’s player-against-player-against-Rovio setup scheme is now blowing up in their face.

That’s what happens when you try to puppeteer your users out of their money.

[AngryPlayer]

@puttekula Thanks for your thoughtful response. Without knowing the history of what drives people when playing this game, it’s hard to take what someone says at face value- this is a forum after all. But I need to state that I have a renewed respect for your opinion now that I understand your point and how you got there. :) Sorry for being such an azz, I owe you an apology.

Although on one hand, I’m not a fan of 2 wrongs making a right: Rovio cheating players and players cheating Rovio in return. That part is not cool.

On the other hand, the way Rovio deals with the transparency of rooking players is pretty disrespectful as well. Players should just be able to play AND ENJOY the game and leave it at that. I get it that Rovio wants a return profit on their product but there’s a fine line when that process becomes full-out extortion on user addictions.

I’ve been playing this game since it debuted and have noticed a 125% shift in game mechanics. It was really fun in the early days. However it looks like the clear case of “opportunistic profit” which many companies get a taste of when they see their product could make them rich and then they relentlessly dig their claws in. As I mentioned in another thread, I was on their side of the fence for some years, working as a game developer/programmer/modeler and I know EXACTLY what they’re doing: I’ve seen it in action first-hand and still had the same ethical dilemma about shifting from fun game => overblown profit opportunity. Rovio makes enough profit off their product lines to stay in business, but greed has taken the steering wheel (and in such a petty fashion).

Anyway, I’m still not fully onboard with the self-justification that it’s OK to cheat just to keep up with this game. Players shouldn’t have to resort to dishonesty just to play this, or any of Rovio’s other products.

However when balancing that against the underhanded bait-and-switch “tricks” Rovio has been pulling since inception, the scales tip rather heavily. Couple that in with their dishonesty/ non-transparency about rigging and other game mechanics that they’re incorporated, PLUS the way they ignore problems they can’t seem to fix (eg hackers), my sympathy redirects to give power back to the players.

Apologies for being so judgmental. I’ll have to decide myself if I’ve been driven to the point of cheating just to play this game- I’ll likely delete it first. But have fun and give Rovio a few sucker punches for me :)

BTW I’m surviving both my parents, and am old enough to have kids with their own kids as well ;)

[AngryPlayer]

LOL @djlarryt!!

But seriously @puttekula, if you didn’t cheat at playing this game how long would you have lasted in it? Would you have spent a dime of your own money on it like others have done?

Calling people whiners who are trying to play the game fairly and advising them to use the exploits available isn’t exactly a great reflection on you, either.

NEWSFLASH: Downloading a hacked game and using it is STILL CHEATING.

BTW shouldn’t you be doing your homework and not trolling forums?

[AngryPlayer]

Not sure what’s going on this week, but in my current Arena, Diamond League, out of 15 potential players only 4 have scored anything. Considering the tournament closes tomorrow, I find this kind of weird.

Player #5 has 1 star so obviously they got caught doing something.

Players #6 – #15 all have 0 stars so they are not even bothering to play.

I’ve played very minimally all week (chosen to spend my time elsewhere) so it looks like my chances of getting a prize for my meager amount of stars and placement are high for a change.

[AngryPlayer]

@ktcain Playing AB2 is like being challenged to run a race. So you prep up at the starting line.

Next thing you know the race organizers shackle up one of your legs. Then the starting gun sounds and unseen spectators along the track start throwing things at you. You notice huge hurdles with ladders against them that are broken. Then you encounter deep holes filled with quicksand on the route, blinding lights are shone in your eyes and unseen snipers pellet you with paintballs. As you get closer and closer to the finish line, it continues to get moved further away.

All of this can be avoided however if you pay $$$ at each encounter, and none of it was ever disclosed to you at the beginning of the race.

However you are competing against many other runners who seem to know shortcuts that get them to the end of the track in a hurry. The race organizers know this but can only do so much about it.

Along the way the race organizers laugh at you for not succeeding.

Such is the player experience in AB2. There’s only so much ‘strategy’ one can adopt to overcome all of this.

[AngryPlayer]

@david-martin CEOs’ kids will come up with those names for free ;)

[AngryPlayer]

@james-peden no big shock, considering we know Rovio has trouble following through on its promises. I learned my lesson about buying bonuses after that crown/gift box fiasco right at the beginning of this whole circus.

I would be on their case every single day demanding either a refund or they own up to the purchase. Keep track of how many gems you SHOULD be getting for each day skipped and make sure they deliver every one of them.

@trash2002

Rovio is a cruel money-making machine

BULLSEYE.

I have come to the conclusion that after the recent staff ‘layoff’, the ‘voluntary’ departure of @bankler, and the absence of any activity towards issues on this forum is that Rovio’s large-scale plan is being fulfilled. I’m pretty certain that the intent on AB2 was to create a self-generating, self-healing cash cow that gets attention by an occasional programmer maybe once per two weeks (or whenever updates/fixes are scheduled). Between those times it just runs in autopilot.

Screens build themselves; levels construct themselves; AI manifests itself depending on how advanced the player’s stats are; money-grab pop-ups appear at opportune times, especially when the player is in distress.

Think about it. The ultimate revenue generating machine is one that runs without any manpower required, and simply rakes in the sales on a monthly basis while the system’s users blindly dump cash into it, paid ads send viewing counter values to a cash register tally, and CEOs wring their hands looking at the figures saying to themselves, “mmmmExcellent…”

BTW I am a developer, have been in the game development industry, and am currently employed in a high-finance business world. My thought process on the statement above does not come from paranoia ;)