**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
PSA: One hour a week = One Odin per year
I did a couple of arena rewards analyses previously. The first one just looked at my normal relatively casual (in terms of effort, not time) arena grinding to see how much rewards I was getting in what amount of time: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/187556/a-case-study-and-analysis-of-arena-grind-rewards
Then I looked at what you could do if you actually paid attention to what you were doing and actually tried to do it more efficiently, rather than the way I normal grind arena which is to do whatever while watching TV. I ended up doing way, way better and going much faster, but at the cost of like actually having to pay attention: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/241505/grinding-arena-milestones-arena-rewards-part-deux
But it occurred to me recently that this is a blizzard of numbers, and it can give people the wrong impression. I'm a hard core arena grinder. I *grind* casually, but I also grind a lot. Someone could look at these numbers and say "but I can't do that" or more likely "but I don't want to do that." Nor should you.
The first analysis measured my grind speed at generating about 700 units in 14 hours per cycle, and the second managed to do that in about 7 hours per cycle. That is a range of between 50 and 100 units per hour. What does that mean for non-hardcore grinders? What does that mean for casual players, or time limited players, or players who don't think it is worth it to spend time in the arena because the rewards are only good if you spend a ton of time in there? I wanted a way to provide a short to-the-point sound bite that expressed just how much rewards are actually in the arena for anyone to snatch up.
Let's think about how many units are in an Odin, the oft-used measure for spending in the game. Most people don't spend a dime on this game. Let's set them aside for now, even though they are way more than 90% of all players. Of those that do spend, how many spend more than a hundred dollars a year? Probably not a lot. Probably even fewer spend more than two hundred dollars a year. Let's compare those units to the units you can earn in the arena. One hour per week is 52 hours per year is something between 2600 and 5200 units in a year. The average between "not paying attention at all" and "paying close attention" is about 3900 units (for me, at least).
Very, very roughly then, we can say that spending one hour per week in the arena equals about one Odin of units per year.
That's how to think about the arena. Not in terms of players like me who grind a ton. Not in terms of players with mega rosters scooping all the milestones for hundreds of units per day. No, the true power of the arena is that it is accessible to everyone, and even very tiny amounts of effort translate into significant rewards over time.
One Odin per year is more than most people spend on the game. One hour a week gives you more units than that. One hour per cycle is just twenty minutes a day, and generates over two Odins of units per year. That's $200 USD per year of units for twenty minutes a day, six days a week. Or one hour a day, two days a week.
Not many people spend two hundred US dollars a year on the game. The arena gives you that much rewards and more for a level of effort most people would consider very casual.
One hour a week = One Odin per year. The arena is not just for grinders.
Then I looked at what you could do if you actually paid attention to what you were doing and actually tried to do it more efficiently, rather than the way I normal grind arena which is to do whatever while watching TV. I ended up doing way, way better and going much faster, but at the cost of like actually having to pay attention: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/241505/grinding-arena-milestones-arena-rewards-part-deux
But it occurred to me recently that this is a blizzard of numbers, and it can give people the wrong impression. I'm a hard core arena grinder. I *grind* casually, but I also grind a lot. Someone could look at these numbers and say "but I can't do that" or more likely "but I don't want to do that." Nor should you.
The first analysis measured my grind speed at generating about 700 units in 14 hours per cycle, and the second managed to do that in about 7 hours per cycle. That is a range of between 50 and 100 units per hour. What does that mean for non-hardcore grinders? What does that mean for casual players, or time limited players, or players who don't think it is worth it to spend time in the arena because the rewards are only good if you spend a ton of time in there? I wanted a way to provide a short to-the-point sound bite that expressed just how much rewards are actually in the arena for anyone to snatch up.
Let's think about how many units are in an Odin, the oft-used measure for spending in the game. Most people don't spend a dime on this game. Let's set them aside for now, even though they are way more than 90% of all players. Of those that do spend, how many spend more than a hundred dollars a year? Probably not a lot. Probably even fewer spend more than two hundred dollars a year. Let's compare those units to the units you can earn in the arena. One hour per week is 52 hours per year is something between 2600 and 5200 units in a year. The average between "not paying attention at all" and "paying close attention" is about 3900 units (for me, at least).
Very, very roughly then, we can say that spending one hour per week in the arena equals about one Odin of units per year.
That's how to think about the arena. Not in terms of players like me who grind a ton. Not in terms of players with mega rosters scooping all the milestones for hundreds of units per day. No, the true power of the arena is that it is accessible to everyone, and even very tiny amounts of effort translate into significant rewards over time.
One Odin per year is more than most people spend on the game. One hour a week gives you more units than that. One hour per cycle is just twenty minutes a day, and generates over two Odins of units per year. That's $200 USD per year of units for twenty minutes a day, six days a week. Or one hour a day, two days a week.
Not many people spend two hundred US dollars a year on the game. The arena gives you that much rewards and more for a level of effort most people would consider very casual.
One hour a week = One Odin per year. The arena is not just for grinders.
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Comments
2 milestones of 2* (2-3 rounds) 10 units
2 milestones of 3* (3-4 rounds) 10 units
3 milestones of 4* basic 30 units
That’s 50 units in 30 mins probably, do that twice in a week @Nocko
If you don't want to spend a hundred dollars on a mobile game, I can understand that. If you don't want to spend an hour a week in the arena, I can understand that also. But if all your decisions about playing the game are transactional in that way, I'm not sure why you would do anything in the game. No activity generates results worth the time from a purely economic basis.
I don’t run suicides but it’s 7 rounds of 4* basic to get 30 units for me. Anyway, that’s 50 units for 10 rounds and some boosts you won’t miss. Plus, battlechips are worth small amounts of units in the aggregate.
I think if you’re trying to maximize your return, the answer is to spread yourself out across as many as possible.
1) Use champs where they matter the most. Once you have your multiplier, use only 6-seats in the featured arena. Use your max 5’s in the 4-5 arena, where milestones are much lower. Use maxed 4-stars in the 4-star basic and check for them to refresh.
2) Make sure to hit the lower milestones, because they get progressively farther apart. You can start hitting milestones in 4-star basic every 150,000 points, then 200,000, then 250,000. Thr ones up to about 600k are easier to obtain once you’ve got your multiplier. Same thing in the 4-5 arena, where jumps might be 350k instead of more.
You can't argue the game would be better without the arena, because it is a boon to F2P players. But I wouldn't bet a single dollar on the proposition that Alliance War has had an overall positive impact on the game. Some people like it. Some are even only here because of it. But I would bet cash that more people have left because of it than it has retained. I think AW is the only game mode you can reasonably make that assertion about, and that's saying something powerful.
Also, as many people have pointed out, arena grinding is not, or at least does not have to be dedicated time. A lot of people grind arena while doing other things, like watching their favorite Youtubers or watching TV or kicking back and listening to podcasts or music. The time they spend grinding isn't time they could simply shift to working for more money. It often isn't even time out of their day. It is time that if they were not arena grinding they would still be in the same place doing the same things.
Something between 75% and 90% of all the time i spend arena grinding is time I cannot get back if I stopped grinding. It is time I'm also doing other things that wouldn't change if I wasn't grinding. It is, for lack of a better way of describing it, a past time. It is what I do to relax because I'm too young to buy a rocking chair and a cat and too old to turn elmer's glue into slime.
Arena=
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There's only 13 weeks to go. The maximum possible milestones per cycle is 535. 535 x 13 x 2 = 13910.
Technically you can't get 15k units from only milestones between now and July 4. However it is still possible to earn 15k units between now and July 4 because grinding arena earns you battlechips which ultimately generate units via arena crystals. If you did enough to get all of the milestones consistently, you'd probably end up with 3-4k of units on top of the milestones and end up with around 17k-18k by July 4. But if you do less, not only will you get less milestones you would also get less battlechips and thus less units from arena crystals. The margin is small.