I just finished the 6* shard arena. It is the only one of the shard arenas I've done this week. After the first few milestones I pulled a 6* Cull Obsidian, so I'd like to say right now: I'm not mad about a bad crystal pull. Best 6* I pulled since about february, which peaked my 6* pulls with Stealthy.
My problem with the arena is that I barely got it done before it was over and had no time to do the others. Sure, I could've done it faster if I sunk my whole life into the game for a week. Last time this kind of arena was present, I was able to do both the 4* and the 5* shard arena, go to my second account that I occasionally play with and grind out the 4* and part of the 5* arena as well. This week, my second account got nothing at all.
Put a bit more clearly, I dislike the exclusivity of this arena. It was either get 5k 6* shards and no other shards, or get the 5* shards for both accounts but no/very little 6* for the main. It wasn't possible for me to complete both, and that just left a sour taste in my mouth. I know this was probably intentional, it wasn't the plan to hand out 5k 6* shards for little effort. But I'm not a fan of the way this was done. No matter what I would've done this week, I'd have felt like I was losing out on something. Not a good feeling...
Not everyone likes, or even tolerates grinding in the arena. But that's true for every game mode. For complex reasons I've discussed in the past, I don't do high tier war or high map AQ. In terms of roster and skill, those things are achievable on paper, but I choose not to do them because they would greatly interfere with my overall enjoyment of the game. As a result, I pass on a boat load of rewards. Vastly more rewards than show up in special arenas like this.
I can choose to feel bad about "loosing" those rewards, or I can choose to feel good about the fact that the game offers choices to players: people who love arena but hate war can still grind out a significant amount of rewards that help them advance in the game, while people who hate arena but love alliance content can jump into a Map 7/Platinum alliance and get a ton of rewards without the grind doing what they find more fun. And casual players that just want to do solo monthly content can do that also, and ignore the rat race completely.
Long grind arenas are like high map AQ or high tier war or high difficulty challenge content, in that it appeals to some players and not to others. In fact, probably more people don't like any of those things than like them: most people don't like high tier competitive war, most players don't like Map 6 or 7 AQ, and most players can't even do the high skill challenge content. But most people can do at least one of them. The question is whether you can appreciate the game for what it gives you, and also appreciate the fact that most of the other people playing the game probably are only here because of other parts of the game that you don't like as much.
To address your specific observation, what I think most people who actually do enjoy grinding in the arena like most about the arena is that it directly rewards effort. If you want more, you can just do more. It is the one part of the game in which your rewards are not capped by completion limits. Even to the extent that some rewards do have limits, those limits are very high, so for most people they don't exist. The arena scales with effort. But that means if you can put almost unlimited effort into it for more and more rewards, it also means you can't always get everything in multiple accounts, or sometimes even one account. The arena appeals to grinders, but not completists (unless you're a grinder that can complete everything you want consistently). For some people, that's annoying. But for the people that game mode targets, that's appealing.
I’d be interested to know why you feel this way about high map AQ. After all, you did mention that on paper you have the roster and skills to achieve it. Therefore, based on what I’ve read it’s quite difficult for me to fathom someone with the requisite skills and roster being put off by high map AQ as it would impinge on their level of game enjoyment. Your elaboration would be much appreciated.
this made me curious. i would also very well like to know too
I just finished the 6* shard arena. It is the only one of the shard arenas I've done this week. After the first few milestones I pulled a 6* Cull Obsidian, so I'd like to say right now: I'm not mad about a bad crystal pull. Best 6* I pulled since about february, which peaked my 6* pulls with Stealthy.
My problem with the arena is that I barely got it done before it was over and had no time to do the others. Sure, I could've done it faster if I sunk my whole life into the game for a week. Last time this kind of arena was present, I was able to do both the 4* and the 5* shard arena, go to my second account that I occasionally play with and grind out the 4* and part of the 5* arena as well. This week, my second account got nothing at all.
Put a bit more clearly, I dislike the exclusivity of this arena. It was either get 5k 6* shards and no other shards, or get the 5* shards for both accounts but no/very little 6* for the main. It wasn't possible for me to complete both, and that just left a sour taste in my mouth. I know this was probably intentional, it wasn't the plan to hand out 5k 6* shards for little effort. But I'm not a fan of the way this was done. No matter what I would've done this week, I'd have felt like I was losing out on something. Not a good feeling...
Not everyone likes, or even tolerates grinding in the arena. But that's true for every game mode. For complex reasons I've discussed in the past, I don't do high tier war or high map AQ. In terms of roster and skill, those things are achievable on paper, but I choose not to do them because they would greatly interfere with my overall enjoyment of the game. As a result, I pass on a boat load of rewards. Vastly more rewards than show up in special arenas like this.
I can choose to feel bad about "loosing" those rewards, or I can choose to feel good about the fact that the game offers choices to players: people who love arena but hate war can still grind out a significant amount of rewards that help them advance in the game, while people who hate arena but love alliance content can jump into a Map 7/Platinum alliance and get a ton of rewards without the grind doing what they find more fun. And casual players that just want to do solo monthly content can do that also, and ignore the rat race completely.
Long grind arenas are like high map AQ or high tier war or high difficulty challenge content, in that it appeals to some players and not to others. In fact, probably more people don't like any of those things than like them: most people don't like high tier competitive war, most players don't like Map 6 or 7 AQ, and most players can't even do the high skill challenge content. But most people can do at least one of them. The question is whether you can appreciate the game for what it gives you, and also appreciate the fact that most of the other people playing the game probably are only here because of other parts of the game that you don't like as much.
To address your specific observation, what I think most people who actually do enjoy grinding in the arena like most about the arena is that it directly rewards effort. If you want more, you can just do more. It is the one part of the game in which your rewards are not capped by completion limits. Even to the extent that some rewards do have limits, those limits are very high, so for most people they don't exist. The arena scales with effort. But that means if you can put almost unlimited effort into it for more and more rewards, it also means you can't always get everything in multiple accounts, or sometimes even one account. The arena appeals to grinders, but not completists (unless you're a grinder that can complete everything you want consistently). For some people, that's annoying. But for the people that game mode targets, that's appealing.
I’d be interested to know why you feel this way about high map AQ. After all, you did mention that on paper you have the roster and skills to achieve it. Therefore, based on what I’ve read it’s quite difficult for me to fathom someone with the requisite skills and roster being put off by high map AQ as it would impinge on their level of game enjoyment. Your elaboration would be much appreciated.
My problem with high map AQ is simply this: to do it, I would have to abandon the friends I've made in my long term alliance who aren't as capable. I've been in the same alliance that I first joined. In that time the alliance grew from a Map 3 sometimes alliance to a Map 5x5x3 (back when that was all there was). When Map 6 came out, half the alliance wanted to move up to Map 6, the other half simply couldn't, either because of time constraints or honestly because of skill or roster. Because of that, the alliance split, and I decided to stay with the lower half which contained most of the people in my battlegroup (they were also most of the English speakers). The alliance filled back up again, and split again for the same reason. Also, during this period I had to kick many players that were good guys (as the officer of my battlegroup) but just couldn't keep up for whatever reason, especially in war, because we were also a tier 6 alliance trying to move up to tier 5.
One day, I just couldn't kick any more people. This may sound overdramatic, but I just couldn't do it. It was actually costing me sleep. I decided that I couldn't, and wouldn't kick a player that was actually trying and actually growing albeit slowly, but just couldn't quite keep up. So I decided I would downshift the alliance to something where everyone could keep up, and there was no pressure to push people out. My alliance rewards are probably a tenth what they could be, but I'm much happier now. If an alliance member wants to take a camping trip or spend the weekend with the kids at Disneyland, its all good. I'm currently debating whether to do one map of Map 5, just to bump the rewards up a bit (we currently do 441). But it is more to keep everyone engaged than to get more rewards for myself. I'll be fine either way.
I just finished the 6* shard arena. It is the only one of the shard arenas I've done this week. After the first few milestones I pulled a 6* Cull Obsidian, so I'd like to say right now: I'm not mad about a bad crystal pull. Best 6* I pulled since about february, which peaked my 6* pulls with Stealthy.
My problem with the arena is that I barely got it done before it was over and had no time to do the others. Sure, I could've done it faster if I sunk my whole life into the game for a week. Last time this kind of arena was present, I was able to do both the 4* and the 5* shard arena, go to my second account that I occasionally play with and grind out the 4* and part of the 5* arena as well. This week, my second account got nothing at all.
Put a bit more clearly, I dislike the exclusivity of this arena. It was either get 5k 6* shards and no other shards, or get the 5* shards for both accounts but no/very little 6* for the main. It wasn't possible for me to complete both, and that just left a sour taste in my mouth. I know this was probably intentional, it wasn't the plan to hand out 5k 6* shards for little effort. But I'm not a fan of the way this was done. No matter what I would've done this week, I'd have felt like I was losing out on something. Not a good feeling...
Not everyone likes, or even tolerates grinding in the arena. But that's true for every game mode. For complex reasons I've discussed in the past, I don't do high tier war or high map AQ. In terms of roster and skill, those things are achievable on paper, but I choose not to do them because they would greatly interfere with my overall enjoyment of the game. As a result, I pass on a boat load of rewards. Vastly more rewards than show up in special arenas like this.
I can choose to feel bad about "loosing" those rewards, or I can choose to feel good about the fact that the game offers choices to players: people who love arena but hate war can still grind out a significant amount of rewards that help them advance in the game, while people who hate arena but love alliance content can jump into a Map 7/Platinum alliance and get a ton of rewards without the grind doing what they find more fun. And casual players that just want to do solo monthly content can do that also, and ignore the rat race completely.
Long grind arenas are like high map AQ or high tier war or high difficulty challenge content, in that it appeals to some players and not to others. In fact, probably more people don't like any of those things than like them: most people don't like high tier competitive war, most players don't like Map 6 or 7 AQ, and most players can't even do the high skill challenge content. But most people can do at least one of them. The question is whether you can appreciate the game for what it gives you, and also appreciate the fact that most of the other people playing the game probably are only here because of other parts of the game that you don't like as much.
To address your specific observation, what I think most people who actually do enjoy grinding in the arena like most about the arena is that it directly rewards effort. If you want more, you can just do more. It is the one part of the game in which your rewards are not capped by completion limits. Even to the extent that some rewards do have limits, those limits are very high, so for most people they don't exist. The arena scales with effort. But that means if you can put almost unlimited effort into it for more and more rewards, it also means you can't always get everything in multiple accounts, or sometimes even one account. The arena appeals to grinders, but not completists (unless you're a grinder that can complete everything you want consistently). For some people, that's annoying. But for the people that game mode targets, that's appealing.
I’d be interested to know why you feel this way about high map AQ. After all, you did mention that on paper you have the roster and skills to achieve it. Therefore, based on what I’ve read it’s quite difficult for me to fathom someone with the requisite skills and roster being put off by high map AQ as it would impinge on their level of game enjoyment. Your elaboration would be much appreciated.
My problem with high map AQ is simply this: to do it, I would have to abandon the friends I've made in my long term alliance who aren't as capable. I've been in the same alliance that I first joined. In that time the alliance grew from a Map 3 sometimes alliance to a Map 5x5x3 (back when that was all there was). When Map 6 came out, half the alliance wanted to move up to Map 6, the other half simply couldn't, either because of time constraints or honestly because of skill or roster. Because of that, the alliance split, and I decided to stay with the lower half which contained most of the people in my battlegroup (they were also most of the English speakers). The alliance filled back up again, and split again for the same reason. Also, during this period I had to kick many players that were good guys (as the officer of my battlegroup) but just couldn't keep up for whatever reason, especially in war, because we were also a tier 6 alliance trying to move up to tier 5.
One day, I just couldn't kick any more people. This may sound overdramatic, but I just couldn't do it. It was actually costing me sleep. I decided that I couldn't, and wouldn't kick a player that was actually trying and actually growing albeit slowly, but just couldn't quite keep up. So I decided I would downshift the alliance to something where everyone could keep up, and there was no pressure to push people out. My alliance rewards are probably a tenth what they could be, but I'm much happier now. If an alliance member wants to take a camping trip or spend the weekend with the kids at Disneyland, its all good. I'm currently debating whether to do one map of Map 5, just to bump the rewards up a bit (we currently do 441). But it is more to keep everyone engaged than to get more rewards for myself. I'll be fine either way.
Thank you for elaborating on your reasons. I can understand your emphasis on maintaining close bonds and friendships over the need to get more rewards. It is a mentality that I respect.
It wasn't that hard I did all 3 of the Arenas this week with days left over. I also have a full time job and I still was able to complete all of them. P.S. I pulled a 6 star Domino with my 6 star shards I earned it was 100% worth the grind.
It all depends on your own schedule and roster. I did the featured 5 and 6 shards arena and finished in 3 days. I then did the 5 shard arena and featured 5 again. I hit at least 25M in each featured.
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One day, I just couldn't kick any more people. This may sound overdramatic, but I just couldn't do it. It was actually costing me sleep. I decided that I couldn't, and wouldn't kick a player that was actually trying and actually growing albeit slowly, but just couldn't quite keep up. So I decided I would downshift the alliance to something where everyone could keep up, and there was no pressure to push people out. My alliance rewards are probably a tenth what they could be, but I'm much happier now. If an alliance member wants to take a camping trip or spend the weekend with the kids at Disneyland, its all good. I'm currently debating whether to do one map of Map 5, just to bump the rewards up a bit (we currently do 441). But it is more to keep everyone engaged than to get more rewards for myself. I'll be fine either way.
Managed to clock all milestones for the other arenas though since my main motivator for arena is the units.
Shards or not, doesn’t matter too much to me if it interferes too much on my schedule. Lol
I also have a full time job and I still was able to complete all of them.
P.S. I pulled a 6 star Domino with my 6 star shards I earned it was 100% worth the grind.