What are they doing to this game?

I am deeply saddened to have to report this here but King are running tests on one of my games which are quite disturbing in my opinion. As a serial "tester" of how to play Candy Crush I could not help but notice the missing fish in level 1236.

I failed to take a screenshot of my opening board thinking I could do so on replaying the level, but when I replay the fish is there:

As the two outer jellies at the top cannot be gotten at by any means other than fish this would make this level impossible to pass without the fish. In my game the fish was replaced by frosting when I started playing this episode just now.

Now you could speculate that this is a glitch. But I think I have evidence that this is deliberate. I had a super colour bomb so would have lost this if I had failed this level on my first attempt. With five colours on the board the only other chances of passing this level, two separate wrap/stripe combos or a double colour bomb, would be so remote as to be impossible.

Think again:

I got exactly that the moment I ran out of moves: A double colour bomb. To be able to post here I paid the 10 gold so I can post my evidence. Please note that the 5 moves are the extra five moves I have just bought.

This must be King's latest and dirtiest trick to get us to pay to play on with gold or use a party popper. It is so obvious I want to cry.

@MannyFae I kept saying here that I had a really bad feeling about these most recent changes in the game. I felt something like this coming in my gut.

@QueenB is there any way still to stop this kind of manipulation from being rolled out to all players? So far this one is probably only a test group, but this rewrite is going too far. This is "pay to keep your super colour bomb" . It is far too obvious. Please tell someone at headquarters. Although I have no definite evidence of the missing fish I swear on my father's grave that the fish was replaced by frosting on my first attempt. I am really upset King are even considering introducing this. Even testing this is outrageous. Is there a way to stoop any lower?

I have played the Warcraft games since I created this thread and while doing so my mind has wondered and I have come up with a theory of what may underpin all these recent changes we have seen.

I managed to score 174,600 purple per hour, bringing me to the top of my leaderboard easily of course. I used the following method:

• No thinking, just bashing away at the dumbed down boards (remember I am part of a test group with moronically boring board designs involving nothing but the most basic of elements, mostly frosting, rainbow twist, key droppers and striped candy dispensers)
• Using the super colour bombs and using boosters or paying for extra moves to keep this feature going, so essentially paying whatever gold it costs to keep my top win streak
• Using gold to buy boosters, including timed starting boosters so I start each level with those

In the past I used to achieve similar scores for purple using my preferred method of using experience and pattern recognition skills to assess the board while I was playing and strategically get the best out of the boards and use boosters wisely.

These boards (levels 1000-1300 so far in my game) as so simple that the only strategy needed is to bash through the many levels the game will make us automatically win without thinking thanks to the starting and win streak boosters and the super colour bombs and then pay your way out of those that the game won't let you win.

This makes me predict this:

Candy Crush is being changed from a puzzle game to a gaming experience.

The New Candy Crush is going to be aimed at the wider audience who wish to be able to make money by playing and have the chance to win cash prizes. So all these changes are really a big test run to see if any Tom Dick or Harry can win All Stars.

The verdict I can give is: Yes they can.

With dumbed down game boards and dumbed down event strategies King can indeed claim that anyone can start to play this game now, and if they are willing to put enough time into it can win All Stars and beat the nerdy experienced players like us. I used to liken All Stars to the Olympic Games: Only someone like Usain Bolt can win the 100 metres at the Olympics, to win at the Olympics takes a combination of hard work and an innate skill or gift. In the past All Stars was similar to this, it took both hard work and an innate ability for pattern recognition to get to the finals. I think King want the New Candy Crush and the New All Stars to become like a School Sports Day or Village Fete: Fun for everyone and everyone gets a chance to win.

Only: It isn't actually fun if it's that easy.

Count me out.

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