ARENA Q: Do 6 and 5 star champs reward equal points but 6 star still take longer to revive?

Just trying to understand what is going on here... is it intentional to make 6 stars "worth" the same as 5 stars but at the same time make them less usable / useful and thereby 6 stars are actually worth less that 5 stars in Arenas?

Apologies if I am way off here just an observation which prompted a question. Thanks for listening.

Comments

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Gamer

Only for the basic arena because everyone complain the first time so there decided that was the best I’m stil not agerd with it in my eys there shuld ben rise a bit

ArjunChandra

6*s and 5*s giving same points but 6*s has double recovery time. That's unfair

Magonus

@ArjunChandra I agree. I don't like it. I am going to stop playing basic arenas now.... @Kabam Miike Thanks all.

Gamer

@ArjunChandra I agree. I don't like it. I am going to stop playing basic arenas now.... @Kabam Miike Thanks all.

I’m meant. The unit is nice get not a arean I’m go for basice champions

hungryhungrybbq

Just trying to understand what is going on here... is it intentional to make 6 stars "worth" the same as 5 stars but at the same time make them less usable / useful and thereby 6 stars are actually worth less that 5 stars in Arenas?

Apologies if I am way off here just an observation which prompted a question. Thanks for listening.

Yes, it's intentional. I and a few others were speaking out against it in the main arena thread after it's announcement. It's a fundamental change to how the arena scoring system has always worked. Rarity and rank have always mattered up until now. And frankly just feels like a nerf to our rosters and a devaluation of the accounts we've worked for. All in an effort to "balance" the new 3 arena model. I feel like the milestones could have been adjusted without nerfing our rosters. There's gotta be a better way.

Magonus

@hungryhungrybbq I totally agree. If anything, to recognize how much rarer and more valued 6 stars are, if they made both 6 and 5s earn the same points, then 6 stars should have a shorter revive time than 5s to make them more sought after and valuable. That or equal revive time but worth more points. Worst case, more revive time and worth more points (basically unchanged from before). Any of those 3 are better than what we have now imho. @Kabam Zibiit

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Shadowstrike

@ArjunChandra I agree. I don't like it. I am going to stop playing basic arenas now.... @Kabam Miike Thanks all.
I’m meant. The unit is nice get not a arean I’m go for basice champions

You get more units from the summoner trials.

GroundedWisdom

6*s and 5*s giving same points but 6*s has double recovery time. That's unfair

It's actually an equalizing factor.

Monk1

It actually madness to appease people who moaned rather than just developed their rosters like we all had to do at one time

Raichu626

Looks like you can raise the milestones back to 16m in the basic and give people back their 6 star bonus because that's what they want kabam

Before you had to get 4 mil points in the basic for all milestones and you couldn't use 6 stars

Now you have to get 4 mil points in the basic for all milestones and you can use 6 stars with reduced points

Stop whining

Exactly. One of the biggest problems with the previous new structure was that only 4* and 6* champs were useful, all other rarities were pretty much completely worthless. And the only way to make 5* meaningful was to not have 6* outshine them by a mile.

Might have been a better idea to remove 6* from basics completely, but there are dis/advantages to both.

Gamer

@ArjunChandra I agree. I don't like it. I am going to stop playing basic arenas now.... @Kabam Miike Thanks all.
I’m meant. The unit is nice get not a arean I’m go for basice champions
You get more units from the summoner trials.

Jep im just Said if you need alot of unit

hungryhungrybbq

Looks like you can raise the milestones back to 16m in the basic and give people back their 6 star bonus because that's what they want kabam

Before you had to get 4 mil points in the basic for all milestones and you couldn't use 6 stars

Now you have to get 4 mil points in the basic for all milestones and you can use 6 stars with reduced points

Stop whining

Idk, folks seem to be coming up with all these theories as to *why* Kabam made the decision. Yet, as far as I know, they haven't said why they nerfed 6*. Some folks are claiming it's because they wanted to start introducing a redistribution of wealth into the arena system...😂 Look man, untill I hear them say otherwise, In think it's solely because they didn't want folks with 6 star to farm 135 units "too quickly". That seems way more likely to me as the reason.

And neither myself or others ever said the milestones didn't have to be fixed. I've *always* said that they did. Just not by nerfing people's rosters.

Rasilover

4 million is not even hard in the basic arena

BigManOnCampus

To top it off , my 6*'s are getting less points then my 5*s in this arena too.. 6* R2 = 33K , 5* R5 = 42K ....

DNA3000

Idk, folks seem to be coming up with all these theories as to *why* Kabam made the decision. Yet, as far as I know, they haven't said why they nerfed 6*. Some folks are claiming it's because they wanted to start introducing a redistribution of wealth into the arena system...😂 Look man, untill I hear them say otherwise, In think it's solely because they didn't want folks with 6 star to farm 135 units "too quickly". That seems way more likely to me as the reason.

Yes and no. Yes, that is a factor. It is what prevents them from just making all the milestones in every arena achievable by trivially low effort, because the easiest way to ensure that no one is doing worse now than originally is to just lower the milestone effort to ridiculously low levels. But that's not going to happen.

The baseline is the original five arena system. The devs have a pretty good idea (at least in theory) of how much effort it took to achieve how much stuff in those arenas. The specific intent of the revamp was to simplify the arenas from five to three, maintain roughly the same opportunities to grind rewards for the widest set of players, and update and improve some of the shard and champion rank rewards in them.

The first attempt was a failure, because it radically increased the effort to grind milestones for a very wide range of players. In particular, there were a few opportunities that were lost completely or reduced substantially. One of them was the 4* featured arena. This arena allowed players to grind for milestone rewards in an arena optimized and balanced around 5* scoring. 5* champs were the highest rarity allowed, and the milestones reflected a moderate amount of effort with those champions to clear all of the milestones. That opportunity vanished in the new iteration. 5* champs were unusable in the Trials arena, and meanwhile the new Basic and Featured arenas were balanced around 6* scoring.

So while the original five arena system had one arena balanced around 2* scoring, one balanced around 3* scoring, one around 4* scoring, one around 5* scoring, and one around 6* scoring, the new arenas had one arena balanced around 4* scoring and two balanced around 6* scoring. There was no arena optimized for 5* grinding (or any rarity lower than 4* grinding).

Losing an arena optimized around 2* scoring is no big loss, but losing the opportunity to grind optimally with 5*, when that is a central rarity in the current progression ladder of the game, is a lot less palatable, so it was worth attempting to put that back in. There's a couple ways to put that opportunity back into the arenas. We could allow 5* champs in the Trials, but then that would have to be optimized around 5* scoring, which eliminates the low end opportunity entirely. The alternative is to take one of the two 6* arenas and balance the milestones around 5* scoring.

But that then creates the problem of balancing the milestones around 5* scoring while allowing 6* champions to blast through those milestones at least twice as fast. That's simply not an option. The alternative is to reduce or eliminate the scoring gap between 5* and 6* champs, so that the milestones can be safely balanced around 5* scoring. Which is basically what was done.

We could also just completely eliminate 6* champs from being used in the Basic arena. In effect, reduce their scoring to zero. But that takes a player option away for no reason other than to satisfy the psychological needs of the scoring purists. There's no game design reason that higher rarity champs must always have that advantage. There have been arenas in which there is no such scoring advantage, when we simply don't want that advantage to exist. So long as there is a reasonable reason why we wouldn't want it to exist here either, it doesn't have to be here.

The notion that the game "took something away" from the players is frankly untenable. We originally had one arena where 6* champs could have been used for scoring advantage: the 5* featured arena. We now still have one arena where we can use those champs for scoring advantage: the current Featured arena. But that arena generates far more rewards than the old 5* featured arena did. Anyone who possessed a strong 6* roster is undeniably better off now than originally, and has a greater opportunity to leverage that 6* roster into more rewards. Structuring the Basic arena identically to the Featured arena doubled that opportunity, but that was a mistake: it added that opportunity at the expense of taking away completely the original opportunity that existed to leverage 5* champions in an arena optimized for them. Saying players should be allowed to keep that opportunity and the devs should just magic a new one to replace the one that was lost might be understandable, but it is also completely unreasonable.

hungryhungrybbq

Idk, folks seem to be coming up with all these theories as to *why* Kabam made the decision. Yet, as far as I know, they haven't said why they nerfed 6*. Some folks are claiming it's because they wanted to start introducing a redistribution of wealth into the arena system...😂 Look man, untill I hear them say otherwise, In think it's solely because they didn't want folks with 6 star to farm 135 units "too quickly". That seems way more likely to me as the reason.
Yes and no. Yes, that is a factor. It is what prevents them from just making all the milestones in every arena achievable by trivially low effort, because the easiest way to ensure that no one is doing worse now than originally is to just lower the milestone effort to ridiculously low levels. But that's not going to happen.

The baseline is the original five arena system. The devs have a pretty good idea (at least in theory) of how much effort it took to achieve how much stuff in those arenas. The specific intent of the revamp was to simplify the arenas from five to three, maintain roughly the same opportunities to grind rewards for the widest set of players, and update and improve some of the shard and champion rank rewards in them.

The first attempt was a failure, because it radically increased the effort to grind milestones for a very wide range of players. In particular, there were a few opportunities that were lost completely or reduced substantially. One of them was the 4* featured arena. This arena allowed players to grind for milestone rewards in an arena optimized and balanced around 5* scoring. 5* champs were the highest rarity allowed, and the milestones reflected a moderate amount of effort with those champions to clear all of the milestones. That opportunity vanished in the new iteration. 5* champs were unusable in the Trials arena, and meanwhile the new Basic and Featured arenas were balanced around 6* scoring.

So while the original five arena system had one arena balanced around 2* scoring, one balanced around 3* scoring, one around 4* scoring, one around 5* scoring, and one around 6* scoring, the new arenas had one arena balanced around 4* scoring and two balanced around 6* scoring. There was no arena optimized for 5* grinding (or any rarity lower than 4* grinding).

Losing an arena optimized around 2* scoring is no big loss, but losing the opportunity to grind optimally with 5*, when that is a central rarity in the current progression ladder of the game, is a lot less palatable, so it was worth attempting to put that back in. There's a couple ways to put that opportunity back into the arenas. We could allow 5* champs in the Trials, but then that would have to be optimized around 5* scoring, which eliminates the low end opportunity entirely. The alternative is to take one of the two 6* arenas and balance the milestones around 5* scoring.

But that then creates the problem of balancing the milestones around 5* scoring while allowing 6* champions to blast through those milestones at least twice as fast. That's simply not an option. The alternative is to reduce or eliminate the scoring gap between 5* and 6* champs, so that the milestones can be safely balanced around 5* scoring. Which is basically what was done.

We could also just completely eliminate 6* champs from being used in the Basic arena. In effect, reduce their scoring to zero. But that takes a player option away for no reason other than to satisfy the psychological needs of the scoring purists. There's no game design reason that higher rarity champs must always have that advantage. There have been arenas in which there is no such scoring advantage, when we simply don't want that advantage to exist. So long as there is a reasonable reason why we wouldn't want it to exist here either, it doesn't have to be here.

The notion that the game "took something away" from the players is frankly untenable. We originally had one arena where 6* champs could have been used for scoring advantage: the 5* featured arena. We now still have one arena where we can use those champs for scoring advantage: the current Featured arena. But that arena generates far more rewards than the old 5* featured arena did. Anyone who possessed a strong 6* roster is undeniably better off now than originally, and has a greater opportunity to leverage that 6* roster into more rewards. Structuring the Basic arena identically to the Featured arena doubled that opportunity, but that was a mistake: it added that opportunity at the expense of taking away completely the original opportunity that existed to leverage 5* champions in an arena optimized for them. Saying players should be allowed to keep that opportunity and the devs should just magic a new one to replace the one that was lost might be understandable, but it is also completely unreasonable.

Insightful post as always, but some of us believe there's another way to do it without radically changing the scoring dynamic for an arena that awards a fully formed 6 star character. I think that's part of the disconnect between some of us falling on opposite sides of the debate.

I understand, and completely agree with everything you said about the need for an arena to be balanced around 5 star. Sincerely. It's mostly that... what's happened IMO, is that it's been done in a weird way. It's been done to an arena that is unique in that it's the first arena in history to award a 6 star basic champion. Under the logic that the Featured arena has a greater value to veteran players than the Basic does. The problem is that many of us will disagree on that. It's just one of the side effects of condensing the arena system. That's the core issue, to me. That this theory that 6* champs can still be used without handicap in the arena with "the highest value" doesn't take into account anyone who disagrees or believes that the Basic can at times be the arena with the highest value. Folks keep comparing this to the 4* Featured... It's markedly different. As you can earn a 6 star champ...instead of a 4 star as previously. You can't just ignore this fact when comparing them. Why is it ok for an arena with a 6 star champion as it's top prize be balanced around using 5 star? It's moving backwards. And forcing anyone who wants to compete for the highest available rarity champ in the game to use their past champions and not their present (let alone future) isn't a great move IMO.

All is to say, I'm still not convinced a 3 arena system will ultimately work for everyone. Which is why myself and others have suggested the possibility of Summoners having 3 arenas available to *them*. Rather than 3 available to everyone. This way the arenas could be tuned more individually for each level of roster?

hungryhungrybbq

To top it off , my 6*'s are getting less points then my 5*s in this arena too.. 6* R2 = 33K , 5* R5 = 42K ....

If that's true, that's even worse man. I'll check it out.

DNA3000

All is to say, I'm still not convinced a 3 arena system will ultimately work for everyone. Which is why myself and others have suggested the possibility of Summoners having 3 arenas available to *them*. Rather than 3 available to everyone. This way the arenas could be tuned more individually for each level of roster?

The problem here is that I do not believe the devs first decided to improve the arenas and then chose to reduce the number of them because they thought that would be better. Rather, the motivation was to simplify the arenas and the reward improvements came along for the ride. I believe there was a two-fold goal here. The first was to better align the arenas towards their long-term goal of accelerating players to Uncollected. Our playerbase encompasses a wide range of power, and it is getting wider all the time. It takes time and resources to manage the large amount of progress tiers that encompass all that progress. The stated goal to accelerate players towards Uncollected is, I believe, part of an overall plan to make the playerbase more manageable: reduce the number of "important" progress landmarks as it were. Simplifying the arena structure by reducing the distinction between the lower arenas while expanding the rewards upward (to 6* champs) was part of this overall plan.

Second, there's a lot more stuff going on now that before when those arenas were created. Part of the fall out of the situation that prompted the dev diaries and the expanded development directions is that time and resources are a lot more constrained. Five arenas takes longer to maintain than three, and I believe collapsing the arenas was in part a resource-saving strategy. They want to reduce the time spent maintaining the arenas, so that they could reclaim that time and put it towards all of the new stuff on their development plate.

The easiest thing to do would have been to just tweak the existing arenas. The fact they spend the time and effort to refactor them tells me they think there's a long term return on that investment, and it is probably the long term time savings in having to manage fewer arenas. It is possible that in a sense the enhanced rewards we're getting in the arenas was "paid for" by the time savings Kabam will realize over time with the simplified arena structure. Not exactly, but the justification for touching them at all was the development simplification, and once any change was justified, it opened the door to reviewing the rewards in them.

In general, more is better when it comes to making content appropriate to different players. More progress tiers, more content tiers, more reward tiers, more gate tiers. But more is also more costly in time and resources, and the more tiers we have, the less interesting each of them can be given limited resources. We see direct signs of that: we gain Cavalier, we lose Beginner. We gain Thronebreaker, and now Kabam wants to start pushing us quicker out of Proven and Contender. I believe we gain 6* arenas, but we have to lose 2* and 3* arenas.

GroundedWisdom

I would agree. Server constraints add to it as well.

hungryhungrybbq

All is to say, I'm still not convinced a 3 arena system will ultimately work for everyone. Which is why myself and others have suggested the possibility of Summoners having 3 arenas available to *them*. Rather than 3 available to everyone. This way the arenas could be tuned more individually for each level of roster?
The problem here is that I do not believe the devs first decided to improve the arenas and then chose to reduce the number of them because they thought that would be better. Rather, the motivation was to simplify the arenas and the reward improvements came along for the ride. I believe there was a two-fold goal here. The first was to better align the arenas towards their long-term goal of accelerating players to Uncollected. Our playerbase encompasses a wide range of power, and it is getting wider all the time. It takes time and resources to manage the large amount of progress tiers that encompass all that progress. The stated goal to accelerate players towards Uncollected is, I believe, part of an overall plan to make the playerbase more manageable: reduce the number of "important" progress landmarks as it were. Simplifying the arena structure by reducing the distinction between the lower arenas while expanding the rewards upward (to 6* champs) was part of this overall plan.

Second, there's a lot more stuff going on now that before when those arenas were created. Part of the fall out of the situation that prompted the dev diaries and the expanded development directions is that time and resources are a lot more constrained. Five arenas takes longer to maintain than three, and I believe collapsing the arenas was in part a resource-saving strategy. They want to reduce the time spent maintaining the arenas, so that they could reclaim that time and put it towards all of the new stuff on their development plate.

The easiest thing to do would have been to just tweak the existing arenas. The fact they spend the time and effort to refactor them tells me they think there's a long term return on that investment, and it is probably the long term time savings in having to manage fewer arenas. It is possible that in a sense the enhanced rewards we're getting in the arenas was "paid for" by the time savings Kabam will realize over time with the simplified arena structure. Not exactly, but the justification for touching them at all was the development simplification, and once any change was justified, it opened the door to reviewing the rewards in them.

In general, more is better when it comes to making content appropriate to different players. More progress tiers, more content tiers, more reward tiers, more gate tiers. But more is also more costly in time and resources, and the more tiers we have, the less interesting each of them can be given limited resources. We see direct signs of that: we gain Cavalier, we lose Beginner. We gain Thronebreaker, and now Kabam wants to start pushing us quicker out of Proven and Contender. I believe we gain 6* arenas, but we have to lose 2* and 3* arenas.

Good point. I guess my main complaint is that I effectively never got to experience the (brand new) 6 star Basic arena without taking a severe handicap to my roster. I think I'd at least feel slightly more accepting about it if say.. after a year of playing it, I'm now told it's going to be altered to benefit players other than myself. Ok, while I still fundamentally disagree with the logic of using 5 star champs to obtain a 6 star, at least I had an opportunity to experience the first ever 6 star basic arena without a massive handicap. But what this effectively does for me is completely remove the progression I've made over years.. in an arena I've patiently waited for.. for years.

At the end of the day, I don't see you making a counter argument to the fact that my progression has been markedly reversed, in the one arena I was most excited about participating in. But rather that it was necessary to do so for the greater good.

DNA3000

All is to say, I'm still not convinced a 3 arena system will ultimately work for everyone. Which is why myself and others have suggested the possibility of Summoners having 3 arenas available to *them*. Rather than 3 available to everyone. This way the arenas could be tuned more individually for each level of roster?
The problem here is that I do not believe the devs first decided to improve the arenas and then chose to reduce the number of them because they thought that would be better. Rather, the motivation was to simplify the arenas and the reward improvements came along for the ride. I believe there was a two-fold goal here. The first was to better align the arenas towards their long-term goal of accelerating players to Uncollected. Our playerbase encompasses a wide range of power, and it is getting wider all the time. It takes time and resources to manage the large amount of progress tiers that encompass all that progress. The stated goal to accelerate players towards Uncollected is, I believe, part of an overall plan to make the playerbase more manageable: reduce the number of "important" progress landmarks as it were. Simplifying the arena structure by reducing the distinction between the lower arenas while expanding the rewards upward (to 6* champs) was part of this overall plan.

Second, there's a lot more stuff going on now that before when those arenas were created. Part of the fall out of the situation that prompted the dev diaries and the expanded development directions is that time and resources are a lot more constrained. Five arenas takes longer to maintain than three, and I believe collapsing the arenas was in part a resource-saving strategy. They want to reduce the time spent maintaining the arenas, so that they could reclaim that time and put it towards all of the new stuff on their development plate.

The easiest thing to do would have been to just tweak the existing arenas. The fact they spend the time and effort to refactor them tells me they think there's a long term return on that investment, and it is probably the long term time savings in having to manage fewer arenas. It is possible that in a sense the enhanced rewards we're getting in the arenas was "paid for" by the time savings Kabam will realize over time with the simplified arena structure. Not exactly, but the justification for touching them at all was the development simplification, and once any change was justified, it opened the door to reviewing the rewards in them.

In general, more is better when it comes to making content appropriate to different players. More progress tiers, more content tiers, more reward tiers, more gate tiers. But more is also more costly in time and resources, and the more tiers we have, the less interesting each of them can be given limited resources. We see direct signs of that: we gain Cavalier, we lose Beginner. We gain Thronebreaker, and now Kabam wants to start pushing us quicker out of Proven and Contender. I believe we gain 6* arenas, but we have to lose 2* and 3* arenas.
Good point. I guess my main complaint is that I effectively never got to experience the (brand new) 6 star Basic arena without taking a severe handicap to my roster. I think I'd at least feel slightly more accepting about it if say.. after a year of playing it, I'm now told it's going to be altered to benefit players other than myself. Ok, while I still fundamentally disagree with the logic of using 5 star champs to obtain a 6 star, at least I had an opportunity to experience the first ever 6 star basic arena without a massive handicap. But what this effectively does for me is completely remove the progression I've made over years.. in an arena I've patiently waited for.. for years.

At the end of the day, I don't see you making a counter argument to the fact that my progression has been markedly reversed, in the one arena I was most excited about participating in. But rather that it was necessary to do so for the greater good.

I look at it the other way. If the Basic arena had stuck around for a year and then was altered, the developers would have to justify why they were taking away the advantage of 6* scoring. But that arena hadn't even finished a single instance before the problems with it were acknowledged: it is an advantage I don't see as being taken away as it existed for an immaterial amount of time before the entire design of the first three arena iteration was called into question. As I said, I believe the fair point of comparison is the original five arena system, and whether the current one sets anyone backward relative to that. The first version of the Basic was akin to a bug, in that it didn't do what the devs stated their intentions were.

SummonerNR

To top it off , my 6*'s are getting less points then my 5*s in this arena too.. 6* R2 = 33K , 5* R5 = 42K ....

I’d venture to say that was probably comparing Apples to Oranges (at a different point in the streak, etc).
Depends when each of those circumstances were, and what rating the matched up opponents were (which has a noticeable affect on how many points you earn.

Was it during opening rounds of arena (against much lower opponents), then score would have been less (no matter whether you used 5* or 6*).

Was it higher in buildup to streak (like around 10) matching up against “real” opponents a couple ranks higher than yours (that's when you probably see highest amount of points).

Was it further on but still before 15, facing Thanos/Kang, which in past without 6* being available would have given little less than at around 10-ish because Max 5* Thanos/Kang is without mastery, thus lower points. But now that 6* are include, Thanos/Kang could be at Max 6*r5 so may actually be giving very high points as well.

Was it post-15, where you are now relatively equal in opponents as your own ? And then again, also depends if you pick the 3rd team matchup (ie, Suicides, higher Rating, higher Points), or the1st team matchup (same Ranking, but less Rating so lower Points).