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You have asked me for more feedback if available @QueenB . So here it is, with evidence supplied:

A new player, started playing a few hours ago. I've just started the second episode race, level 65. The daily treat machine pops up:

This is the third time in a week that I have had this UFO treat pop up before I reach level 73. Because guess what happens next?

I play the next level:

See the lock on that UFO at the bottom? Yes, it's locked, of course it's locked! We all know the UFO is locked until we reach level 73.

So why does the Daily Treat Machine give it out to players who haven't got there yet? This player needs some timed colour bombs, not a a UFO. This is incompetence. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing in this game of Candy Crush.

What kind of message does this send to new starters?

So by level 85 I've run out of lives and out of boosters: The three boosters we get for free were used on second or third attempts at levels 59, 68 and 75. (Other accounts will need to use it for level 72 instead of 68, it does vary.) The 10 minutes timed boosters after the first episode race were wasted on easy levels.

I do have 104 gold in the account now. So what does the app want this player to do now? Buy lives to keep playing? I'm in the midst of a "delicious dash" which I need to finish in one hour if I want the extra gold. So sure: I get the vibe from this game that is wants me to keep going.

Once I've spent 69 gold bars for indefinite lives my gold is down to 36. It's not enough to buy boosters at the best rate:

To really stand a chance to keep going successfully I need to buy colour bombs and wrap/stripes, that's half the gold gone. This is what I will do, because I know this game well and I know I can play fast enough to make it all worthwhile. It is theoretically possible to keep going like this. But this is theory.

In practice what would a new player do at this point?

These levels are written in a way that using starting boosters is really helpful. I know that. But new players are not learning this because they don't have enough starting boosters in the early game. This game is not teaching players how to use boosters. This game is teaching players to spend gold for extra moves, which is no fun at all. It is sending out all the wrong messages in these first 100-200 levels. To me this seems to be what you get if you leave a computer in charge.