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My All Stars 2025 Experiment: Findings and Feedback

This is my third year following All Stars in this Community.

About a year ago I decided to start a brand new test game to try find out the following:

Can a player win All Stars by playing Candy Crush exactly as intended by the game without spending any money?

I kept my account pure, no merging and no tricks. I made lots of friends generous with giving me lives (thank you all!!!) to allow me to use 20 extra lives per day, I used boosters and gold wisely, and utilised the events I was given effectively. I watched a few adverts here and there for extra moves but spent no money.

The outcome:

I came third in Final Knockout Round 3/3, with 4,5 million points.

Feedback will follow in my next post.

Welcome! 👋

Comments

Kiwi2025

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/3318966#Comment_3318966

Thanks for the awesome breakdown!!!!! I also found the 24 hours to be the most challenging. Which, it probably why I liked it the most.

unknown

This content has been removed.

christinewupp

Now the live finals are over and the results are in it would appear that no one from my leaderboard qualified for the live finals.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I was apparently beaten by a cheater who was eliminated in the vetting process and a person from Brazil who quite possibly did not have the necessary travel documents because they would have needed a visa.

So the experiment is concluded: It was all rather a waste of time, really.

cookiemae

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/3318966#Comment_3318966

This is a great post.

❤️❤️❤️❤️

QueenB

Wow, thank you so much for sharing this @christinewupp 💛 It really means a lot that you took the time to reflect and send us your thoughts. This is a detailed, thoughtful feedback and a well-documented experiment, that we're grateful for.

We love seeing players get so involved, and feedback like this truly helps us make things better. I’ll make sure your message gets passed along to the right people 😉

You should be super proud of how far you went, amazing effort 👏

christinewupp

Now I have by chance come across this level and reached this position during perfectly normal gameplay without even trying:

I do see how tempting it can be to just play all the boosters in your inventory to accumulate the highest score possible here!. I could have easily reached the cap limit of 90,000 with this one level by using some of my spare gold to buy party poppers, UFOs or just lollipop hammers. Perhaps if King really don't want to see this kind of method used (but do they?) then the cap per level should be set at a more realistic level that "normal" gameplay would reach.

Please, please, please, King do NOT change all these wonderful and well written levels to achieve a "fair" event! These levels were designed by actual humans who knew how to play Candy Crush and many of the old levels are fun to play. Don't ruin them the same way that levels 1-3000 and levels 18,000+ have been ruined!

Stop standardising all the levels and dumbing down the game.

Don't get rid of the conveyor belts, don't replace every chocolate or frog level with frosting and even more frosting! We want to use some strategy. Just having 20,000 identical, standardised levels for All Stars 2026 would be incredibly boring and lead to the whole event being pretty much like a lottery.

Does anybody really want that?

christinewupp

This is my findings and feedback @QueenB :

First and foremost my little experiment very nearly failed because the event did not show up in my account! King apparently had a pre event vetting system in place that excluded players with a "suspicious" amount of boosters or gold in their accounts. It is clear this system was faulty and could lead to the exclusion of honest players because it initially excluded ME! I would ask that next year this will not happen and that all players from eligible countries will automatically see All Stars in their game. Any exclusion/vetting should take place during the event, not before it.

Positives:

Rounds being played over weekends
Plenty of space between rounds this year
the green "playing now" feature I found really helpful to see who is trying to catch us and who has given up: great
despite the complaints -which will keep coming in as long as all players are being led to believe they are amongst the best players in the world- this was the fairest competitions I have seen and there were no obvious bots or cheaters
I do like the 24 duration of the last round. It was hard to keep going, but that round is meant to be hard and a challenge, so I enjoyed playing it.
Community feedback: FAQs and moderators sending queries to FAQs were better organised and seemed to work quite well this year. The spirit in the community was much more positive than in previous two years. Removing the All Stars Forum was a good idea, made it less confusing for us all to navigate.
All the info both in game and in the community made it really clear what players had to do to advance to the next round and also that they had to work through ALL the stages, so there was less confusion this year
not sending out a million contact forms too early avoided a lot of confusion and stress for participants in the first final knockout rounds, a huge improvement compared to previous years
putting an end to gross "unfair play" by introducing a cap per level,

Negatives:

The Terms and Conditions are getting longer and more complex with each year. We've come to a point where even the most intelligent people here get confused (e.g. the role of the stand-by player) It would help to have an official version "Terms and Conditions made easy" in the announcement section as the original document is a grim read
Long 90 hour rounds 1-5: In theory no one is forced to play the entire round, and of course many of the most experienced players choose not to (I joined at about 24-36 hours into the rounds). If King could definitely spot and eliminate account sharing and terminate those accounts during the rounds it would not matter having such long rounds, but judging from community comments this seems to be impossible, because some honest players are still trying to keep up by themselves playing round the clock and losing sleep. So there probably is no way to kick out the teams while not erroneously kicking out the go-without-sleep single player fanatics. If this can't be done is there a way to force players to take rest periods? Is there a feasible mechanism this can be policed?
confusion over what exactly "unfair play" means. The definition is too vague. If King don't want players to be inventive in how to draw out/milk a level perhaps the cap per level should be reduced
Player cards: Too much information and often the wrong information. Far too many players think these get updated live, like the leaderboards and they do nothing but cause unnecessary confusion and unfounded complaints

Overall findings and conclusion:

If players are allowed to save up gold and boosters and are allowed access to the event then All Stars can definitely be played and can be won by players who have not spent any money. I only used up half of my gold reserves to reach 3rd place: My own methods and speed were what stopped me from winning, not access to gold or boosters.

There is no way for me to know what methods the winners used. There are two fair methods to play if you have unlimited resources: Either speed through as many levels as quickly as possible or try to milk levels as effectively as possible, or use a combination of the two. Clearly if there are 10 million competitors in All Stars then there will always be some better than ourselves.

To win All Stars you have to analyse the game, know the ins and outs of the levels you are about to play and use your strategy accordingly. The winners will always be players who are experienced and dedicated to the game. All Stars cannot be won by luck nor by an inexperienced player.

Comments

Kiwi2025

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/3318966#Comment_3318966

Thanks for the awesome breakdown!!!!! I also found the 24 hours to be the most challenging. Which, it probably why I liked it the most.

unknown

This content has been removed.

christinewupp

Now the live finals are over and the results are in it would appear that no one from my leaderboard qualified for the live finals.

So the experiment is concluded: It was all rather a waste of time, really.

cookiemae

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/3318966#Comment_3318966

This is a great post.

❤️❤️❤️❤️

QueenB

We love seeing players get so involved, and feedback like this truly helps us make things better. I’ll make sure your message gets passed along to the right people 😉

You should be super proud of how far you went, amazing effort 👏

christinewupp

Now I have by chance come across this level and reached this position during perfectly normal gameplay without even trying:

Stop standardising all the levels and dumbing down the game.

Does anybody really want that?

christinewupp

This is my findings and feedback @QueenB :

Positives:

Rounds being played over weekends
Plenty of space between rounds this year
the green "playing now" feature I found really helpful to see who is trying to catch us and who has given up: great
despite the complaints -which will keep coming in as long as all players are being led to believe they are amongst the best players in the world- this was the fairest competitions I have seen and there were no obvious bots or cheaters
I do like the 24 duration of the last round. It was hard to keep going, but that round is meant to be hard and a challenge, so I enjoyed playing it.
Community feedback: FAQs and moderators sending queries to FAQs were better organised and seemed to work quite well this year. The spirit in the community was much more positive than in previous two years. Removing the All Stars Forum was a good idea, made it less confusing for us all to navigate.
All the info both in game and in the community made it really clear what players had to do to advance to the next round and also that they had to work through ALL the stages, so there was less confusion this year
not sending out a million contact forms too early avoided a lot of confusion and stress for participants in the first final knockout rounds, a huge improvement compared to previous years
putting an end to gross "unfair play" by introducing a cap per level,

Negatives:

The Terms and Conditions are getting longer and more complex with each year. We've come to a point where even the most intelligent people here get confused (e.g. the role of the stand-by player) It would help to have an official version "Terms and Conditions made easy" in the announcement section as the original document is a grim read
Long 90 hour rounds 1-5: In theory no one is forced to play the entire round, and of course many of the most experienced players choose not to (I joined at about 24-36 hours into the rounds). If King could definitely spot and eliminate account sharing and terminate those accounts during the rounds it would not matter having such long rounds, but judging from community comments this seems to be impossible, because some honest players are still trying to keep up by themselves playing round the clock and losing sleep. So there probably is no way to kick out the teams while not erroneously kicking out the go-without-sleep single player fanatics. If this can't be done is there a way to force players to take rest periods? Is there a feasible mechanism this can be policed?
confusion over what exactly "unfair play" means. The definition is too vague. If King don't want players to be inventive in how to draw out/milk a level perhaps the cap per level should be reduced
Player cards: Too much information and often the wrong information. Far too many players think these get updated live, like the leaderboards and they do nothing but cause unnecessary confusion and unfounded complaints

Overall findings and conclusion:

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Discussions
Chat about Candy Crush Saga, share thoughts, news, or anything sweet!
Support
Stuck or having trouble with Candy Crush Saga? Ask your question here and get help from others.
Contests
Enter for a chance to win Gold Bars and sweet in-game rewards in Candy Crush Saga!
Ideas
Have a sweet suggestion? Share your ideas to help improve Candy Crush Saga.
Off-Topic
This is your chill zone! Talk about anything that’s not Candy-related with other Candy players!.