Is Angry Birds becoming easier with new versions? [closed]

Question

Background:

In a celebrated Arqade's question Andreas Bonini asked if Angry Birds has some random factor. A celebrated answer to this question by Agent86 beautifully demonstrated that the algorithm is deterministic, but added that it's arguable that the overall result of launching a bird is effectively non-deterministic because it relies on (extraordinarily sensitive) user input.

The Question

I would like to ask about another, perhaps naive, impression that I have by which Angry Birds becoming easier with new versions.

Is Angry Birds becoming easier with new versions?

Reasons behind the question

Of course, it is a possibility that the physics remains precisely the same and it is only me that get better and gradually learn new strategies. But I have two reasons behind my impression.

1. When you are using precisely the same strategy (given the effective randomness due to input-sensitivity) we can expect that the number of record-breakings will be logarithmic in the number of attempts. In contrast, my impression is that even in very simple episodes (like the very first one), where I use the same strategy, the number of record-breakings is considerably higher.

2. There is a site with high scores and tips and records for the highest records in Massachusetts from two years ago. It seems unreasonably easy now even for a mediocre player (like myself) to get scores comparable to these very best old scores.

Three remarks

Let me first remark that the impression of learning new things, and the impression of new versions allowing higher scores are not contradictory. It is possible that new versions enable learning strategies which were unavailable in old versions.

Second, while a definite answer may be difficult the kind of experiment that Agent86 made in the question about random ingredient in Angry Birds can be quite telling.

Finally, even if indeed Angry Birds is becoming gradually easier I see nothing wrong with it. (It will be nice if life will become gradually easy as well.) I am just curious about the factual matter.

Answer 1

I don't play angry birds, but I can think of a reason that it may appear easier to you while not suggesting you are just getting better (a real possibility).

Consider that the touch screen sampling is akin to a grid with a fixed cell size. This limits the accuracy of measurements, causing aliasing (which for movement might be described as jitter).

If you manufacture a touch screen with a higher sampling rate (higher resolution), you get more accurate measurements, and less jitter; however APIs for the device might still limit the bounds of the measurements (see for instance: This question)

In addition to this, the coordinate system used to calculate object placement in the game itself may benefit from a higher resolution display: lower resolutions will suffer from (what I believe to be called) truncation error. This is where a continuous variable suffers accuracy due to finite sampling. The mitigation strategy is more sampling.

This is less an answer than bald assertion, but...