I always knew the game was rigged, but it's been taken to a whole new level.
I've been playing long enough to notice some of the mechanisms the algorithm puts in place:
- Depending on your playing patterns, levels can be set to fail (e.g. with the cake, even supposedly doable ones)
- Number of moves has been dramatically lowered: either use boosters or fail
- No more ads for additional moves, no more daily rewards (there used to be a ball to open and 2 gold bars for ads)
- Fish even more useless than before, instead of going to the supposed target, they just act randomly, often destroying bombs you were holding on to for a combo
- Even if you start with the bomb+color bomb combo, sometimes it will only clear half of what it's supposed to. Same with other combo moves: although targeting specific boxes, they don't clear.
- Moves behavior deviates from expected towards the end of available moves: you use your last one calculating outcome, and end up failing with just 1 move needed to pass.
- Gaining gold bars has become impossible. No way you can pass 5 levels that quickly or 10 without failing (unless you pay for more moves). Either you purchase them or you make peace with constant failure.
- Bottles stop dropping! This one is the worst, cause it makes passing the level mathematically IMPOSSIBLE.
The inconsistency between what's saved locally vs what's saved online is nonsensical. If you log out, you lose your progress, but if you log in it saves it. In any case, all your boosters disappear.
I think King should consider being less GREEDY.
It's ok to have in-app purchases for those who want them, but FORCING purchases by rigging the game is just dishonest. Don't you earn enough as is?
At some point you start feeling like it's taunting you, like when you've been trying long enough and it offers you 300 extra moves if you pay. And why is the minimum 10 gold bars? Why not give the chance to get 1 move per gold bar, since you designed it to often end with just 1 move needed to pass?
Seriously guys, stop squeezing money out of your users!
Enough is enough.
