Several Ideas within this rant...

I get it! You want to change things up from time to time. You are a business, looking for a profit.

BUT...

Your changes are going to lose customers, and therefore profit, if you don’t keep us less frustrated and at least somewhat entertained.

Specifically dissatisfying are the changes in how often we are able to gain the free boosters.

-We are no longer able to build-a-bot on old levels.

-Recently we could only acquire 5 candy drops at a time. Now they have been completely gone for several days. 

-You took away the ability to back out of a level without losing a life.

-Strategic placement of buttons so we have accidental loss of boosters, gold bars, and/or lives.

-Preying on our vulnerabilities of addiction, competition, bells and whistles, wanting to progress, and win bonuses all in the hopes people will spend money to meet their needs....

I also get that we are not completely without freebies, as we still have access to bonuses via the daily spin, the calendar, Fantastic 5, dragon and sheep feed and grow.

In my case, if I am stuck on a level more than a few days, I resort to the help of build-a-bot, sometimes combined with other boosters, to just get it over with, because being stuck too long is not fun for players. Mind you, I will absolutely not make 1 monetary purchase in order to pass a level. 

Removing some of the perks would be ok if the game was more generous in other ways. Like up the amount of CB’s, stripes, and wraps, other booster that randomly occur in every level.

Change the items on the daily spinning wheel. Remove the coconut wheel and add the flying saucer and the party piñata. The coconut wheel is already on the calendar twice, anyway.

Periodically (and more often) bring back the plant climb, daily video, gold-silver-bronze ribbons, spaceships, other perks that come and go. Bring back the Dream World, you don’t even need to make new levels, just bring back the ones you had.

Get rid of: Sugar stars, chronicles, ranking and awarding frames, the Fantastic 5 (or at least the people that score nothing).

 I have plugged along, passing levels daily, until some of these recent eliminations, where I get stuck for too long on almost every level.

This is not players “swiping stress away” any longer, you are adding to it.

Your changes are sucking the fun out of the game, making people frustrated enough to quit.