Re: starting late, does anyone know whether leaderboard assignment is delayed if you play offline? For example, if I were to go offline right after the event started, click firecrackers regularly for a day or two while continually staying offline, and then finally go back online after building up my totals, would I end up on a leaderboard with folks who started right away, or folks who started around the time I went back online?
Asking for a friend.
So - ran a mini-experiment for the current spider event to figure this out.
To recap: I have two separate games going, one on my iPad and one on my iPhone, currently at levels 42 and 46, respectively. For the previous firecracker event, I started at the same time (about 1 day after the start of the event) on both devices and wound up on the same leaderboard.
For the spider event, I took my iPad offline as soon as the event began, without having tapped any spiders on either device. I meant to wait a full 24 hours before starting, but accidentally hit a spider on my iPhone game about four hours after the event began. (Ugh.) I then immediately grabbed my (still-offline) iPad and tapped a spider to start the event on that device; there was about a 1-minute delay between start times. I continued from there playing as usual on both devices, keeping the iPad continually offline. Yesterday evening, about 1 and a half days after the start of the event, I went back online on the iPad.
Result? I was immediately in the number one spot on the iPad game, ranked first with 88 spiders tapped, with the number two spot held by someone with 40 spiders tapped. On the iPhone game, the top spot was held by someone with 144 spiders, and my 104 spiders tapped was only good enough for a ranking in the high teens.
Conclusion: Clearly, playing entirely offline on the iPad for the first part of the event landed me on a far less competitive leaderboard. I conclude that leaderboard assignment depends not on when you tap your first spider, but the first tap that is "registered" by the game when you go online. So, if you have the option to play offline, you can do that instead of delaying your start time and wind up in an even better spot because you will have accumulated points in the meantime while still ending up on a less competitive leaderboard once you go online. (Just make sure you go online before the event ends so that your score is recorded!)
I've already got everything in them, but I'm really happy for those who are getting what they need.
