Discouraged

Hi @Tina_Williams-2 There is nothing wrong with venting, and compared to some your post is barely a vent as it is far too polite and readable.

I am never sure if people want replies to posts like yours, but I don't like to see people go without some sort of response, in case they feel ignored.

Here is my two cents

If you have read any of the posts from level designer @LindQ then you will already know that player data is continually collected and monitored to ensure that levels aren't too hard for the 'average' player.

Ultimately then what this means is that the final number of moves for a level is determined by the players. If thousands of players have completed your 15 move level without issue then the designers will sit back and think they have done okay.

The problem with this approach is that the collected data doesn't show how many of the players bought boosters, or even used boosters to pass a level. So when a player that doesn't pay, or have loads of boosters comes along then the collected data is meaningless and results in discouragement like yours.

The above would be my considered answer

If I were to offer an off the cuff answer it would be that the designers are stuck in a rut and don't actually think about the number of moves they remove from a level. I think Candy Crush has come to the end of its life, and the developers don't know what to do with it. Randomly removing moves from levels and then waiting for player data to see if a level is still playable isn't design work.

My pleasure.

Something else related to your vent

I read somewhere that 70% of the people at the end of the map don't pay anything towards the game. Sounds like a lot of non-paying players doesn't it?

Thing is there are apparently over 200 million players, so that 70% means that 60 million people do pay.

If each of those paying customers only spent £0.99 that is still just shy of 60 million quid.

Obviously anyone buying anything will be spending more than 0.99 mostly because the 0 99 offer gets removed as a choice

So whilst the game is free to play you can see why it pays King to motivate those players that don't mind paying to buy something by making the game a little bit harder.