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The levels above 12,000 are rearranged and mislabeled
MannyFae
Posts: 636 
in Discussions
After passing level 12,000, I discovered that all levels in each episode I play are rearranged in a different order. I almost always receive a board that is different from those shown in the videos, and it turns out to be a substitute from another level from the same episode. The worst part is that the labeling of levels is left unchanged, so it no longer corresponds to their actual difficulty.
Two examples:
I had a suspicion that something was amiss when two levels marked as 'Normal' needed a strategy similar to one required for Nightmarishly Hard/Legendary levels to pass. Of course, the intentional mislabeling of levels makes it difficult to choose an appropriate strategy to pass them.
Although the two levels above were just swapped, it's not always the case, and the pattern appears to be more complex.
This is the second time I have been subjected to such a test. For the first time, this happened when I was in the early 6,000s, and the test continued until I passed level 7,000. So unfortunately, this can possibly continue for a long time. Given that I have almost no ads and few events to earn boosters, wasting boosters due to level mislabeling will leave me without them really quickly. Unless I can figure out the exact pattern of how levels are rearranged to accurately determine their difficulty, I will likely have to put this account on hold for a while.
Comments
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Oh dear, that must be so annoying! In fact, I did experience this as well once, a long time ago in the late 14,000s when I was playing the newly released levels. I think when I experienced this two or three episodes were affected. I did post about it in the feedback thread at the time as I was not sure if it was a glitch or a test but of course I never got an answer as to why my levels were in the wrong order. If this is deliberate deception to trick players into using boosters inappropriately then …. I am speechless.
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I have been thinking about the possible goal of such a test since the first time it happened to me. It's possible that they're testing a different 'difficulty profile' for episodes or something similar. Even if that is the case, they obviously have no regard for the 'collateral damage' this causes to the players. Worst of all, I know the test can run for a really long time. Back then, the pattern of levels was simple, most of them were sorted from easiest to hardest, so at least I knew when to use boosters. This time, the pattern appears to be more complex, and the boosters are scarce. Maybe I should start a second account, I was thinking about doing so anyway. But... right now, I'm disgusted.
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I took note of the levels marked with skulls and the new placement of these boards in three episodes. The skull boards were moved towards the end of each episode. First seven levels in each episode are easy, the second half is hell.
So, the basic pattern is roughly the same as the previous time. What is the reason for King's preoccupation with making the ending of each episode difficult? Is it because the player might have used up their boosters by this point, the timed ones at least, and needs to complete the Episode Race? Do they anticipate that the player will start to spend money out of despair as they go through the horrible series of levels?
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What is the reason for King's preoccupation with making the ending of each episode difficult? @MannyFae
I suppose the most likely explanation is FOMO. That is, a fear of missing out on receiving the gold from your Episode Race. Also I get the impression that a lot of people play an Episode a day, so by making the end of the Episode difficult it causes panic in those players thereby maybe (in King's mind) encourage more people to buy things.
Also by making the end of an Episode more difficult it causes those that only play a whole Episode at a time to linger longer in the game. Again I guess King hopes this will encourage spending.
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I suppose the most likely explanation is FOMO. That is, a fear of missing out on receiving the gold from your Episode Race. Also I get the impression that a lot of people play an Episode a day, so by making the end of the Episode difficult it causes panic in those players thereby maybe (in King's mind) encourage more people to buy things.
I think you got it right, @Alienscar. I play a whole episode at a time, and most often one episode a day. This might explain why they run such 'tests' on me. Also yes, I'm generally more likely to expend gold towards the end of an episode, either because of time constraints or because I'm tired. Okay, I need to make adjustments to my strategies and prepare to deal with difficult episode endings now that I am aware they are made difficult.
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I think you are spot on here with your explanation. They are out to get us and stop us from making more gold bars than we spend, using our strategy of playing each episode as an entity.
I play like you and I found myself finishing an episode I should never have started late last night, tired and fed up with those impossible levels and using far more boosters just to get the job done than I normally would so I could finally get to bed at midnight! ( I have also abandoned my adventure path now, since they have made that much harder and less fun than it used to be. I am finding it worse this time round than the corresponding normal levels). For reference, I am at level 3411.
King know that we play each episode at a time, to win each race, not least because we've been talking about this in the community. The more I spread advice here, the more I find King change the game to make that advice obsolete. For example I used to advise players to make the first recommended move but since then the game has started to confuse us with three different move suggestions, plus some obviously bad first move suggestions. We suggest waiting for a lucky board, but hey there IS no lucky board for levels as early as level 255 now (see my answer on that thread above). I am starting to get paranoid. Is it my fault? Or is it a coincidence? If you do decide to start a new game @MannyFae it will be interesting to see how you find levels like that one. I was pretty shocked how impossible they have made level 255, so early on in the game. What advice do they expect us to give to newbies stuck at these levels now?
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It appears that King are trying to limit the strategy of winning races by completing them in 24 hours. To be honest, I had the same thought that this strategy has been popularized too much. On the other hand, this community is rather small compared to the hundreds of millions of players this game has. Could it possibly impact the player base enough for King to bother? King brand themselves as a data driven company, so it's likely that they made this decision based on data they collect from the game. It's possible that enough players figured out that strategy on their own, especially those players who started playing in the last year or two, and King can see this in the game data. By the way, I remember reading in that Off-Topic thread a while ago that several people lost their races after 12 hours. Was it a test? Or do we have 12 hours to finish the race now?
The change made to suggested moves is very interesting too. The game sometimes suggested bad first move before, but it got worse, as I've read in your post in another thread. Don't have it yet in my game, so can't test, but this change makes me suspicious too.
Regarding adventure path, I did the same. I quit the last adventure path that appeared in my game as soon as I saw it. When I was playing the path before the last one, I recognized a couple of levels. They were levels from the 10,000 range, the most boring 'jumble of blockers' type. Certainly not easy.
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I think you are right about players figuring it out themselves and that is probably just showing up in the data. I have repeatedly pointed out here in the past year that the way the game boards are pre determined and the events are manipulated has become much too obvious in the past twelve months. We are certainly not the only ones who have figured out how to beat the game. It's as see through as nicely polished window. Two years ago I wasn't even sure if the candies dropped randomly, and I was wondering how Johnny Crush managed to post all those "without boosters" videos, because back then it just wasn't this obvious. I didn't learn all this by experimentation, I learned it because it is all so easy to spot now.
