This week, I am continuing the Candy Crush discussion with the original game. As I mentioned last time, I have only played the game through Facebook; never on a mobile device. This has caused me to develop an unusual playing style over the years. When I first started the game, I didn't have my own computer. As such, I couldn't play regularly, and when I did, I needed to get as much out of the game as I possibly could. That's when I discovered a glitch. If I was losing a match, I could simply leave the game before it ended by switching to another page on Facebook. Usually, it was the home page, but I remember maybe starting a different game instead. I would then return to Candy Crush. For some reason, the game would think I was just starting it for the first time that day. My life total would be full, and the daily bonus for just logging in would trigger again. Since I couldn't play on a daily basis back then, not getting beyond the first day of bonuses didn't matter much. However, it did allow me to play well more than through five lives without having to worry about waiting for the lives to refresh.
I continued doing this after I finally got my own computer, as the glitch worked on it as well. On the down side, it meant that I would never get beyond the first day (or second if I was playing around the reset time, which was around eight back then) of bonuses. On the positive side, I was racking up hundreds of the basic bonus, which was an extra striped and wrapped candy that I could put on the board before the start of a match. I think I wound up with over a thousand of these benefits before the game started to get updated.
Most of these updates didn't seem to be much of a big deal, until I realized that the glitch was no longer working. I almost lost out on a lot of wins before I found out. I began having to use extra bonus pieces for most matches. At least the game now had winning streak bonuses giving free bonus pieces at the start of a match. I was soon on great winning streaks, as more and more features were added, and as game modes and other bonuses were removed. As this was happening, I missed one subtle change. Originally, the game would list how many of the bonus pieces one had available at the start of a match. The exact number. In the updated game, the total would still be shown in the inventory screen, but the pre-match screen would only list the exact total if it was under ninety-nine. Otherwise, it just shows 99+. I wasn't paying attention to these totals for a long time, and my stash of hundreds fell to around seventy-eight before I noticed.
I started to watch my resources more carefully after that. However, all of the changes began to really hurt my playing style. I went from almost having to take a break from the game because I had almost caught up to the new levels being released, to barely playing once a day if I was having trouble with a level. What's worse is that some of the newest features only show up if I refresh the game while in the middle of a playing session. This sometimes happens without me doing anything as my browser sometimes refreshes itself for no reason. (My Safari app got messed up in an update last year, and further updates haven't always helped it.) This wouldn't be a problem, except one glitch still remains. If I leave a match before it is over, say to go to a different page on Facebook, my winning streak remains where it was. This allows me to keep a rather large set of bonuses going at the start of a match, as well as getting other bonuses at set times. If I continue playing though, after one of these resets, the winning streak disappears, but I can now access the newest features. I have to close out the browser now before playing again, or I lose the winning streak bonuses. This is too much work just to play one game for a longer session, so I usually just play once or twice a day now, until I lose or a page refreshes.
I hate not being able to get as much out of the game as I used to. I can spend days just trying to beat one level now. I can't win often enough to qualify for special competitions. I miss out on so many special events just so I can keep up bonuses just to play. It is almost just going through the motions right now instead of being fun. If the right set of bonuses come up though, the game is almost the same again. Just enough so that I can have a little more fun.
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