At the end of the day it depends on one’s resources, time, and money that is. I was he11 bent to get Red to level 10, and had a good streak, so I burned a few tickets from my stash. Red is at level 10 now and all is good.
Rovio really messed up the strategy tho. Good players have the means to get better without too much effort (last two weeks I’ve been hitting 7-streaks nearly at will, with 500 feather bundles. But getting a few birds to 9+ was a struggle. Now it’s simply pick a date and time and fling away. The game has a reverse normal distribution feel to it, that is, there’s a bunch of good players blowing away everything that moves (I’m not :)) and a bunch of average players trying to earn a few pearls or gems. And nothing in between. I understand Rovio’s desire to get the latter group to buy up stuff with real dollars, but it really messes the game up.
And yea, there may be no cheaters in the traditional sense, but when I see someone with all level 10 birds that can’t score more than a couple million points in a match it’s really sad for the game.