[birdMeister]

I was thinking they would disassociate replays from players names and assign random names. That way I could potentially play myself. Probably not the way its done, but the thought occurred to me.

[birdMeister]

So if the games are replays, I suppose one could end up playing against oneself. That would be wild!

[birdMeister]

Its another ploy to get you to use and buy more powerups. Those who use even one power per contest will easily beat a non powerup opponent. Of course if both are using powerups it becomes an arms race and probably he who uses the most wins. This is exactly what Rovio is aiming for. ABF has become arms race to the point where some levels cant be 3 starred without a powerup or two.

 

 

[birdMeister]

Today, the whole thing turned into a farce. The wins / Losses I made at the level were different than the wins / losses on the final summary. In the end I wound up with the same totals, but the level results were mostly wrong.

This reminds of the farce that AB2 daily arena was becoming before I stopped playing. I will give it one more day, but I am already frustrated at being treated in an arbitrary, disrespectful way.

[birdMeister]

Are the opponents real or bot? They seem like lame players. Got to think they are bots.

[birdMeister]

Yeah me too. I use an Android tablet and am in Diamond level. Its been more than 12 hours since I first finished a level. Have seen delays of up to an hour before.

[birdMeister]

I’m not so sure about more Pig Days. The last update shows a sign with a question mark in it. Usually it says “Coming Soon”.

[birdMeister]

This game has gone from weird to bizarre. The already inexplicable scoring system is wacko with the new multi million points levels. Who had that as an item on their wish list?

Playing in the arena against another “player” doesn’t feel realistic at all. It feels like playing some bot who puts up arbitrary scores. A round starts off with my score being a fraction of the oppenents and then me slowly playing catch up and perhaps catching him in the last stage. Doubt if I will play any more tournaments.

[birdMeister]

@waimea, some suggested upgrading my tablet. But then I read a comment that 4.0 caused wifi problems on Samsung Galaxy, I rejected that as too risky. So it seemed inspirational when I saw your comment.

If its no trouble to ask your friend, I would appreciate. I have a touch pad. I know a wireless mouse gives better control because my sister has one. Just been stubborn about changing. The odd thing I noticed is that triggering Hal is OK, but that could be because I don’t need a fine level of control.

[birdMeister]

@waimea, that was a great suggestion, thanks! It was a bit of fussing to set up the account and its taking a while to adjust to the bigger screen and increased speed.

I find that Matilda and Stella are really hard to trigger precisely compared to a touch screen. The taps to trigger them seem to slower to respond and sometimes seem to be ignored. Any hints or is it a matter of more practise?

[birdMeister]

I tried downloading and was informed that it wasn’t conpatible with my device – Android tablet.

[birdMeister]

Twenty new levels (241 – 260) available today. Didn’t have to update game, so I guess they were on a timed schedule.

@admins, could we have the score boards updated? Oops, forgot its American Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is fine.

[birdMeister]

I solved 326 on my first attempt. On the Boss Chef stage, I had five birds left. The three birds showing were Matilda, Terrence and Bomb. I started with Matilda to blast away the perch and dropped Chef pig to a lower level. Not much damage – maybe 10%. I then chose Terrence and thats when the fun began. I lofted him high through the area where the perch was and landed him on top of Cheg pig. This knocked him down into the pitcher plant (flower). Chef was propelled upwards and took out some debris. Then he fell into the flower again. This repeated another two times until most of the debris was gone and the damage to Chef pig was about 80%. The next toss threw him to the left and he fell into the opening which finished him off. The key is to have Chef pig bounce around, self destructing rather than firing more birds.

[birdMeister]

This game is broken badly. My first 3 attempts to play it on Android caused it to crash. Rovio has really messed up recent releases unbelievably.

[birdMeister]

@glavold, the colour brighting option was not present until today. It is a welcome addition, the “gloom” mode was very hard to play.

[birdMeister]

@meanguy, I have also contacted Rovio about this and gave them a poor rating on Play Store. I posted comments on a few walkthroughs alerting others to this so they won’t waste as much time as I did.

[birdMeister]

@meanguy, I have the same problem on my Android tablet. Its not just on missions with the old Mirror Space levels, it also affects the new Brass Hogs Mirror levels such 2, 3 and 5.

I thought at first it was me missing something. Then I thought it was a sneaky attempt to force me to use Powerups. After more investigation, I am convinced it is a bug. How such a major flaw could get released is beyond me. But lately, Rovio has been shipping shody games (Rio2, Star Wars2, Finn Ice) for Android devices.

From now on, I will avoid being the first to test their products. If I am treated as a beta tester, I should be paid as one. Is rhis any way to release a product?

[birdMeister]

Its a hard choice to make, there are so many bad ones to choose from. Certainly 6, 7, 9 and 10 are at the top of my list. They are just too simplistic. There is one obvious means to shoot and then it is a matter of luck.

On the other hand, there are several fascinating levels such as 8, 15 and 16 which offer multiple means to come up with high scores. I spent an hour or more on each approach, some which only became apparent by serendipity.

Overall, I would rate Finn Ice as satisfactory. Certainly much better than Stella and SW2. But I still like Ham Dunk as the best of all.

[birdMeister]

We have to recognize that Rovio’s interests do not align with ours. That is true of most corporations who can’t resist cutting expenses and grabbing extra revenue. Not building extra security into their app was an easy (and probably necessary) choice during their formative years. But today there is no excuse other than senior management indifference and/or ignorance. It is not a technical failure; I am sure they have the necessary resources or can hire them.

Grabbing for the extra ad revenue available for targeted placements is going to be a harder situation to correct. After all, we agreed to accept free apps in exchange for ad placements, so we must share the blame. Rovio needs to stress that their ad free apps will also increase our online privacy. Do you think that would bump up their revenue enough compared to ad placements?

[birdMeister]

I meant to include this link for the quoted section in my previous post, but it didn’t appear. Will try a different means.

[birdMeister]

Rovio may not know what is going on and not condone it, but once the spy agencies found the holes in their apps (“leaky” is the term used), I’m sure they couldn’t resist tapping into such a popular app. Plus the advertisers who buy placements from Rovio know how to target certain age and demographic groups from user profiles. Apparently the NSA has used this means to gather info on us.

In another example, a secret 20-page British report dated 2012 includes the computer code needed for plucking the profiles generated when Android users play Angry Birds. The app was created by Rovio Entertainment, of Finland, and has been downloaded more than a billion times, the company has said.

Rovio drew public criticism in 2012 when researchers claimed that the app was tracking users’ locations and gathering other data and passing it to mobile ad companies. In a statement on its website, Rovio says that it may collect its users’ personal data, but that it abides by some restrictions. For example, the statement says, “Rovio does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years of age.”