[ThinkBui]

Not necessarily.  They probably wouldn’t have bothered to fix the Facebook login issue from just a few months ago if they were planning on shutting it down completely.  And taking down a page of an older game isn’t out of the ordinary.  I’m a software developer and I’ve been playing the game since the day it launched.  I’ve been through a lot of the issues the plagued the game and everything I experienced suggests poor software design that makes the game extremely difficult to make changes and fix issues.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they leave the game in the state it’s currently in if it doesn’t require a lot of support and has some chance to generate some modest revenue.

It is quite concerning to hear that they won’t confirm or deny whether they’re planning on taking the servers down.  If they are planning it, this is the way they’d behave so they don’t disrupt the revenue that’s still coming in.

[ThinkBui]

My cousin’s boyfriend says that his Facebook friends suddenly reappeared a couple of days ago.  I’ll double check with him, but I don’t think he did anything besides just play the game periodically.

[ThinkBui]

I was wondering what would happen if you got the Challenger Class rewards chest after you’ve earned all the Challenger Classes.  I’ve significantly reduced my Arena play, so I’m nowhere near earning it for this season yet, but I’m on pace to earn it in two weeks and get to look forward to opening up another support ticket if the game really has been abandoned.

[ThinkBui]

That probably wasn’t a cheater.  The last time I remember seeing one was when Rovio turned off the cheater detection system to fix issues with it.  The only flaw I’ve been able to see in it since then is that it’s overaggressive and occasionally flags an honest player as a cheater.

Chances are you were just given a really tough opponent.  The way it chooses opponents is far from perfect and will often hurl one that has XP and everything else maxed out at you and about the only thing you can do is exit and reopen the game to get a different opponent until you build up your XP, mastery, etc.

Even then you have to choose your birds, banner, and battles carefully.  Only recently have I found the last item I need to fully optimize my bird team and banner for my style of play, but there are some bird teams that would still pulverize my team because its strengths line up with my weaknesses.  For a lot of these opponents, I’ll just choose a different bird team.  Some I just refuse to fight and I go do something else.

[ThinkBui]

I still see it in Google Play in the US, but that might just be because I have it installed.

For a game that’s had a lot of issues in its relatively short history, it’s surprising that it’s going out quietly.  Did they ever fix the Facebook Friends issue?  If not, I guess I’ll have to tell my family members who are affected by it that it’s looking more like it never will now.

[ThinkBui]

@nurw, then they must not have turn off the limitation of class upgrades for specific events.  They’ve done that in the past for other events like Winter Wonderland, which was the only place to earn Frost Savage and later Elite Frost Savage before it was opened up to pretty much any class upgrade.  The Ice class upgrades might have been introduced with that event one year too; I don’t remember, but again it’s no longer limited to those.

 

At one point they might have turned off limitations for all events before turning them on for some events and class upgrades.  I somehow have all 5 Halloween class upgrades even though there have only been 4 Halloween-themed events since they were introduced in 2017.  The first two I know for sure I was manually awarded by Rovio’s support after I made a big stink about missing both 2017 events (among other things) due to the Patch 2.4.0 disaster.  I must have earned the third sometime early last year because by the time the first Halloween event started last October, there were only class upgrades left in the chest.  The same might have happened with the Christmas class upgrades, but I’m not sure.

 

Since the game’s development has been shelved indefinitely, I think that it’s safe to assume we will see this whole pattern of specific class upgrades/mastery/currency rewards for the Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, and Christmas in addition to Valentine’s Day.  Since the currency reward for Valentine’s turned out to indeed be just one of Lucky Coins, Friendship Essences, or Enchantment Shards instead of all of them, I’m probably going to skip them from here on out except for the one Christmas class upgrade I have yet to obtain.  Since it takes Lucky Coins to re-roll for a different reward and the other currency rewards can be bought with them, it’s not worth the time to earn that event rewards chest, especially when more Lucky Coins are earned by beating the Chronicle Cave 26 boss twice and you can play the cave boss anytime once unlocked.

[ThinkBui]

Still seems kind of strange since 70 Lucky Coins are worth a lot more than 50 Friendship Essences and 25 Enchantment Shards.  Maybe it’s supposed to be all of them like the first rewards chest in the Arena.

 

Though Rovio has made a lot of bizarre decisions throughout the life of the game, especially since PvP was shoehorned into it, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out to be just one of them.

 

That said, they must really want the residual ad and IAP revenue.  It’s clear that they don’t want to support the game anymore, which is both the cause and effect of the player pool evaporating, so by not offering a class upgrade for this event, they’re extending the time that those of us who are still playing just to collect them to continue playing before we quit.

[ThinkBui]

Yeah, I just got more or less the same response today.  I had opened a support ticket because of a bizarre situation where I finished week #4 in the Arena at rank #5 and didn’t claim my reward until week #6 because of family obligations and somehow got demoted twice instead of being promoted once.  The conversation was quite frustrating to say the least.  Given the rampant cheating that had been going on in the early days of the Arena followed by an overaggressive cheater detection system, I kept asking why it was “impossible” to move players between leagues when there had been ample reasons to develop some kind of tool to do that over the years, but often times Stefan either didn’t seem to understand what I was saying or was trying to say whatever just to close the ticket so he could move on to something else.  Since I had already had a short fuse following the Patch 2.4.0 debacle, I basically lost it.  I didn’t make a reference to Stefan’s mother or anything like that, but I refused to take ‘no’ for an answer until finally another support team member, Pawel, stepped in to say that development for Epic is dead and they won’t be fixing any of the remaining bugs.

I may not have spent anywhere near as much money as others have apparently spent, but like @winkwink said, it feels like all of that has gone to waste, especially since much of that went to overcoming bugs.  I may stick around to collect the remaining class upgrades, but after that I’m going to call it quits.  I even suspended play on 2 and Evolution so I could focus on Epic, but given everything that’s happened, I don’t feel comfortable going back to those either, so this may be the end of the line for me with Rovio’s games.  I’ll log on periodically to ensure that my progress continues to be saved, but that’s it.

[ThinkBui]

I’m a little late to the party, but I had been putting off this cave until after maxing out mastery on all classes.  Having done that yesterday, I finally sat down to focus on the Alpha Pig while I was babysitting something at work and 3-starred with 90k points flat or whatever it was.

 

Bird Level 100

Red with M100 Pumpkin Paladin and Ancient Flaring Presence, L102 and E10

Chuck with M100 Haunted Rainbird and Ancient Last Will, L102 and E10

Matilda with M100 Legacy Cleric and Ancient Sweet!, L102 and E10

Blues with M100 Legacy Tricksters and Ancient Avenging Will, L92/L102 and E10

 

The key thing I found was that you need multiple ways of healing and despelling harmful effects in case one or more of your birds get stunned.  Sweet! obviously also increased the healing.

The Pumpkin Paladin’s Last Breath was also necessary to kill undead pigs, which was helpful whenever big brutes like the FrankenPig showed up.

The Flaring Presence’s Rage Chili bonus basically ensured that it was filled by the time the pig allies showed up.  I think I used it on Chuck all but 1-2 times.  I don’t recall if I used it on Matilda or Blues, but if I did, it would have been to heal/despell all simultaneously or to stun the Alpha Pig if it was the only enemy on the board at the time.

I didn’t really need the Last Will or Avenging Will bonuses since neither Chuck nor Blues were knocked out.  The Ancient set items that go with those just happened to be the strongest weapons I had for those birds.  Other set items probably would have been more helpful.

In at least half of the turns, I used the Trickster Blues’ Cheer support ability specifically to remove harmful effects.  I also ensured that Paladin Red’s Devotion was protecting Chuck and Cleric Matilda’s Healing Shield was up throughout the whole battle.

One annoying thing I had was that Chuck was the only effective bird against ironclad/dodging pigs that showed up because of the birds and classes I had picked.

 

I got another JARSU after the battle, but it turned out not to be that big of a deal.  After I spun the wheel and returned to the cave, the flag didn’t show up for the level nor did the door to Cave 26 open, but then both did after leaving the Chronicle Mountain and reentering it.  I was about to open up a support ticket before I figured that out and am not sure if I should still do that since it could easily distract the apparently shrinking Epic support team from fixing other issues that don’t have a DIY workaround.

[ThinkBui]

I saw that too.  Makes me suspect that it’s a JARSU and they meant to hide the battle button instead of the pig machine.

[ThinkBui]

Anyone else getting the “indefinite break” message in the Arena?

[ThinkBui]

@budstheawes, that’s another reason to suspect that Rovio may be trying to wrap up Epic.  We’ve known for awhile that they’ve been having problems making the Angry Birds games profitable and Epic is far enough down the list to not even be mentioned in reports while the game’s bugs seem to have been getting bigger and more frequent in the last year suggesting to me that much of the staff have either been reassigned or let go.  The numbers for the Chronicle Caves, XP, and Mastery are also natural places to stop, so the boss being an anthology of the whole game makes me wonder if there’s no place left for the game to go besides a few more variations of classes/headgear.

[ThinkBui]

And the first thing that happens after I update is that I get flagged as a cheater in the Arena.  When was the last time that they “patched” the game and not noticeably mess something up?  I’m running out of patience and may soon join the other deserters.

[ThinkBui]

With this latest JARSU, now we know that they’re already looking ahead on what to do with the rewards chest if and when they run out of ideas for new headgear.  I don’t know if the 10,000 mastery some of us saw is sustainable since it only showed classes that aren’t already at max, but it’s a clear sign that they’re trying to figure out what else they could put in there.

 

[ThinkBui]

@metztli013

About the only thing you can do is open up a support ticket with Rovio.  I ran into a similar problem among others with 2.4.0 and after a lot of teeth-pulling, they monkey-patched the problem by having me create a new Rovio account and then transferred my progress from my old account.

There doesn’t seem to be a very big support team though, which is probably why cleanup of 2.4.0 took so unacceptably long, so it might take awhile for them to get to you.  They might be starting to catch up after all the grief I’ve been giving them in the last few months, but it still took them 11 days to respond to the ticket I opened last month, so it would be best to open up a ticket ASAP.

[ThinkBui]

Given the problems they’ve been having recently, I have serious doubts that it was a prank and even if it was, it’s not a great time for it.  It might be a different story if they were actively engaging with their user base before 2.4.0, but it’s leaving those of us who have been seriously affected by problems since 2.0.0 with the impression that it’s just another thing we have to compensate for by spending even more real money.

[ThinkBui]

@werehamsta

Completely reinstalling is a much slower process.  Just purging the game data (at least in Android) clears up the storage just fine.

[ThinkBui]

That’s been a problem for awhile.  When I’ve seen it happen, it’s when one of the retaliation/counterattack features knocks out a bird that hasn’t been played yet during the turn and the game is still waiting for that bird to be played not realizing that it’s impossible.

I’m not aware of a workaround and I don’t think it’ll be fully fixed anytime soon since it’s caused by a number of different things.  That and it inflates Rovio’s revenue stream by forcing people to spend Lucky Coins.

[ThinkBui]

Do you mean the “Game update required for this profile” message when you signed in?  That’s the same problem a lot of us have had since 2.4.0 was released 2 weeks ago.  We haven’t been able to play the game at all since then no matter how many times we reboot, reinstall, and clear app data/cache.

The only thing you can do is open up a support ticket with Rovio.  Though without even being snide about it, they’re several weeks behind with a ton of issues, including others introduced in 2.4.0, and it may be some time before you hear back from them.  I would open up a ticket now and hope that they get to it before the end of the year.

[ThinkBui]

Rovio finally admits that 2.4.0 created problems after waiting until they fixed one of them 10 days later.  Looking back this seems to be standard practice for them and they largely got away with it before because it usually didn’t take very long to fix them, but as the problems with Epic seem to be getting bigger and worse ever since 2.0.0, the lack of empathy for their players demonstrated by this practice is only going to be magnified and placed under more public scrutiny.

[ThinkBui]

Given the bugs and other problems that 2.4.0 introduced, I don’t think that’s going to go over well.

[ThinkBui]

Has anyone even heard from Rovio’s ABE team since last Wednesday?  Their marketing folks tried to help players out for maybe a day since 2.4.0 was released replying to comments on their Facebook page, but then conspicuously fell silent.

If this isn’t the death knell for the game itself, it’s going to be to a lot of players.  Having problems clamping down on cheaters is one thing, failing to fully test new releases or show any empathy for the user base during the fallout is quite another, so I expect a large exodus pretty quickly here.  I might not even stick around depending on if/when Rovio responds and with what.

[ThinkBui]

@toolow, don’t worry about it. I’ve had to contend with cheaters myself getting so upset that I’ve barked at Rovio’s support team on more than one occasion and I’d be lying if I said that being falsely accused of cheating for playing a little too well that one week didn’t amuse me on some level.

I’m trying to remember what might have happened back then that would have led you to think I was cheating. IIRC that was when whatever selects the PvP opponent in the Arena had gotten screwed up and kept providing significantly inferior opponents. Since I tend to play as long as I can until I either get 3 strikes for the day or have to go do something else, I was getting higher scores than I normally do. I don’t recall if it was week 11 specifically, but one week I did start out averaging 30k per day or something like that out of an abundance of concern that other players I was grouped with would be doing the same and only slowed down when it became clear that no one else was. I can’t answer why you might have seen my score suddenly jump between battles, but if it was that I was already approaching 100k before the week was half over, this might have been what you were seeing.

[ThinkBui]

@bubbley
Haven’t been in the ABN forums a ton, but just saw that you guys flagged me as a cheater. What did I do to make you think I’ve been cheating?