Removing units in Arena

Vote to see how the community feels about removing units in arena and moving those units to another game mode. Help kabam understand how the community would feel about major changes to arena.

Comments

Ironside47

It’s a shame we can’t have them in both arena and EQ. I don’t really understand the “unit economy” argument all the time those with deep pockets can buy them in game, and now on the Summoner's market with extra units thrown in.

Hector_1475

This thread:

ahmynuts

This thread:

Everyone really took the concept and ran the thread entirely into the wrong direction even after the clarification of Miike and others lol

Vanitelia

I am genuinely curious how much time people spend on arenas in a given week (just to hit the final milestones). Some have mentioned the the additional time requirement if units (from milestones) were moved to other game modes.

For me, it usually takes about 1.5-2 hours for the featured and then a little less to get to 4 mil in the basic. With a smaller amount of EQ paths, I can get a full exploration done in about the same time and that's once a month. I feel like most content can be done around that same time frame. The fact that arenas run twice a week, that's a significant investment in time.

Personally, I think arena detracts from the game enjoyment. It's a bummer to rush through content as quickly as possible so you can get back to the dull arena grind. Resource management also applies to time spent in game just as much as catalysts, energy, gold, etc. With Jon saying that next year is shaping up to be pretty packed, time is going to be even more important to manage.

ahmynuts

I am genuinely curious how much time people spend on arenas in a given week (just to hit the final milestones). Some have mentioned the the additional time requirement if units (from milestones) were moved to other game modes.

For me, it usually takes about 1.5-2 hours for the featured and then a little less to get to 4 mil in the basic. With a smaller amount of EQ paths, I can get a full exploration done in about the same time and that's once a month. I feel like most content can be done around that same time frame. The fact that arenas run twice a week, that's a significant investment in time.

Personally, I think arena detracts from the game enjoyment. It's a bummer to rush through content as quickly as possible so you can get back to the dull arena grind. Resource management also applies to time spent in game just as much as catalysts, energy, gold, etc. With Jon saying that next year is shaping up to be pretty packed, time is going to be even more important to manage.

I wish i could have a solid number but I'm really never paying attention when i play it and am just doing it in the background while doing other stuff

Shadowstrike

The "spreading" part is dumb. First, there aren't that many to spread across other game modes. If you want units elsewhere, just add them there and leave arenas alone.
Second, by spreading them across multiple game modes you'd force players to play those, so basically play more. At least you'd make everyone unhappy, since each player hates at least one game mode.
Wouldn't put it past kabam, since they seem to be doing some stuff just out of pure spite.

Because it doesn't work like that. It would be like just printing out money into the real economy, it devalues and then it negatively affects everyone if they were to just give them away without a thought as to the long-term ramifications. No one's saying you can't earn more units in the arena or you can't purchase more units in the arena, but they are specifically saying that they have a set budget for how much they can give you for certain content.

But sometimes it's just easier to think it's all one grand conspiracy against you then to look at anything from a business standpoint.

Standardman1989

Adding a little more context here, this was a thought that one of our team members had, and he made it clear that it was his opinion only, and not necessarily the opinion of the whole team. We have no plans to remove units from the Arenas at this time.

His thinking here is that we could spread those Units to more places where people play often. Some players love Arenas, some players don't. But that's the same case for every other aspect of the game, so that's also something to take into account.

Ok thank you I was afraid that people would give bad ideas

laserjohn26

I am genuinely curious how much time people spend on arenas in a given week (just to hit the final milestones). Some have mentioned the the additional time requirement if units (from milestones) were moved to other game modes.

For me, it usually takes about 1.5-2 hours for the featured and then a little less to get to 4 mil in the basic. With a smaller amount of EQ paths, I can get a full exploration done in about the same time and that's once a month. I feel like most content can be done around that same time frame. The fact that arenas run twice a week, that's a significant investment in time.

Personally, I think arena detracts from the game enjoyment. It's a bummer to rush through content as quickly as possible so you can get back to the dull arena grind. Resource management also applies to time spent in game just as much as catalysts, energy, gold, etc. With Jon saying that next year is shaping up to be pretty packed, time is going to be even more important to manage.

With a well developed roster and not boosting it takes about 6 hours to complete all milestones in all arenas. Everything in arena is a net positive. Doing arena you can get roughly 4k units a month from milestones and if you are a grinder another 8k or so from battlechips so 12k a month plus never have iso or gold problems.

They wouldn't just move units into game modes you already do. It would be something like elder marks where you spend units to get some units backs. You would still operate at a net loss.

Changing arena would a terrible idea for the player base.

Lovejoy72

How do you take units milestones that occur 2x per week, and dump them in a monthly event? How many units would that even be?

How do you take milestones that are available to anyone with a small group of champs (provided they keep coming back to restart after cooldowns), and wall them behind progression title access?

MBogusz

@Kabam Miike quite honestly at this point we need a blanket statement along the lines of “we can assure you we will NEVER remove the ability for players to farm units in arena” If you aren’t willing or able to do so, you may as well close the game now, there’s been many signs of the MCOC Apocalypse but this would be the final horseman

ahmynuts

@Kabam Miike quite honestly at this point we need a blanket statement along the lines of “we can assure you we will NEVER remove the ability for players to farm units in arena” If you aren’t willing or able to do so, you may as well close the game now, there’s been many signs of the MCOC Apocalypse but this would be the final horseman

I don't know if you've ever been in a position where you'd need to publically state anything but the #1 rule is pretty much always to never promise anything

Noob_Master69

@Kabam Miike quite honestly at this point we need a blanket statement along the lines of “we can assure you we will NEVER remove the ability for players to farm units in arena” If you aren’t willing or able to do so, you may as well close the game now, there’s been many signs of the MCOC Apocalypse but this would be the final horseman

They did basically that during the livestream today. Saying that it was just, again, Jon talking about an idea he had at some point and is nowhere near being an actual thing they will actually add into the game

I don't know how much more you want than has already been said, it was basically something that was discussed for a minute and pretty quickly dismissed again as they went onto the next topic.

Also, WOW you are a doomer huh, he explicitly said that the units from there would be moved to other parts if they were to ever do it, not outright remove them entirely

Man some people in this community really know how to turn every single comment into a whining session

GroundedWisdom

As above, when you're speaking as an essential figure head for a company, directly to your player base, you really should be more careful on what you say, especially with a community like this that will take the smallest thing and run 10 miles with it.

There's no preventing the community from taking anything and running with it. What they say, what they don't say, how they say it, it never ends.
We're fortunate to have an opportunity to communicate with the Devs, but their responsibility is the game itself. Not Communications Managers. That's not a reasonable expectation to place on them for having a sit-down chat.

DNA3000

@Kabam Miike quite honestly at this point we need a blanket statement along the lines of “we can assure you we will NEVER remove the ability for players to farm units in arena” If you aren’t willing or able to do so, you may as well close the game now, there’s been many signs of the MCOC Apocalypse but this would be the final horseman

Yeah, no, they aren't going to do either of those things.

The problem with transparency is that a lot of players don't actually want transparency. They don't want to hear what others think. They want ammunition. They want you to talk so they can contradict you, and they want you to draw a target for them to hit. They don't want to know why the developers designed a particular piece of content. They want to know what the developers say so they can prove them wrong. Especially when it comes to rewards.

No one is ever going to say "we will never" or "we will always" because those are impossible promises to make. Things change. In fact, the developers themselves change. And one day it will be different people making different design decisions for different circumstances. There might not even *be* an arena in five years. There probably will, but you can't guarantee that.

They aren't going to shut the game down either, just because you hear hoofs and think Horseman and not horse. You know what happens when you decide the game has no future? They let you quit, and continue on without you. You are not the first nor will you be the last player to cry apocalypse. You know where all the players are that cried end of the world when 6* champs were added to the game? Some of them are actually still here, and probably don't admit it, but many of them did in fact leave, and we kept on humming without them. They join the players who left because of 12.0, alliance war refactoring, Act 6 gating, the end of gifting, and just plain getting bored. Our playerbase isn't shrinking to zero, the game keeps adding new players while losing some old ones. Turnover happens.

I don't know what signs you're reading, but I see no signs the game isn't going to be around for quite a few more years. But if you need promises and certitude, maybe the problem isn't that the game is reaching the end of the road, it is that you're on an off ramp.

Polygon

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol

GroundedWisdom

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol

No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.

Polygon

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol
No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.

Just move them from arena to eq/side quests/monthly objectives etc

DNA3000

How do you take units milestones that occur 2x per week, and dump them in a monthly event? How many units would that even be?

How do you take milestones that are available to anyone with a small group of champs (provided they keep coming back to restart after cooldowns), and wall them behind progression title access?

I believe they edit a few numbers in a spreadsheet.

I'm assuming what you're really asking is how do they make such changes and still have the amount of units that every player gets be exactly the same. And the answer is: they can't. But to be a game economy designer, you have to understand that literally every decision you make poses the questions you're posing here, every single day. They are constantly deciding between doing this and doing that. You don't see those decisions, but every single one of them ends up giving some players more rewards and other players less, shifting opportunities towards some player activities and away from others, and at some point you have to look at the big picture and do what's holistically best for the game.

Of course, when players don't know what the choices are and they only see the end result, they can't miss what they never knew they could have had. Which is why the devs are unlikely to make arena unit changes. Crashed was saying what he would do on paper in theory, but in practice the fact that those units are there for players to see restricts what he can do in practice. In an alternate timeline, the arena could have had less units and other modes could have more, and that would mean some players would get more and others would get less, but they wouldn't know that. In practice, changing things always has a cost that could be much higher than the benefits you might get from changing them in the first place.

Thanos learned that lesson at the end of Avengers Endgame. You can start over from scratch in a different way, but you can't always change things to what you think they should have been in the first place. Navigating the difference between where you want the game to go from here and how the players are extrapolating where the game should go from here is a never ending source of difficult to ameliorate frustration.

GroundedWisdom

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol
No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.
Just move them from arena to eq/side quests/monthly objectives etc

I can make 1000+ Units a week in the Arena. I don't see them moving that amount to SQ/EQ. Plus, the Arenas need that number of people who play, whether for Units or not.

Buttehrs

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol
No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.
Just move them from arena to eq/side quests/monthly objectives etc
I can make 1000+ Units a week in the Arena. I don't see them moving that amount to SQ/EQ. Plus, the Arenas need that number of people who play, whether for Units or not.

Think he means just the arena milestone units. The ones from crystals would still be in crystals as they're rng.

DNA3000

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol
No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.
Just move them from arena to eq/side quests/monthly objectives etc
I can make 1000+ Units a week in the Arena. I don't see them moving that amount to SQ/EQ. Plus, the Arenas need that number of people who play, whether for Units or not.
Think he means just the arena milestone units. The ones from crystals would still be in crystals as they're rng.

1000 units a week is basically all the milestones in the three main arenas (135 in the basic and featured, and 270 in the trials is 540 per cycle, 1080 per week).

GroundedWisdom

People are complaining against moving units from arena elsewhere, without realizing that arena is just going to give them Carpal Tunnel over time lol
No matter where they move them, they're going to be a grind to earn. They take time and effort. Some people want everything with a few clicks, and that's not how resource compiling works.
Just move them from arena to eq/side quests/monthly objectives etc
I can make 1000+ Units a week in the Arena. I don't see them moving that amount to SQ/EQ. Plus, the Arenas need that number of people who play, whether for Units or not.
Think he means just the arena milestone units. The ones from crystals would still be in crystals as they're rng.

They all add up to the total sum. To be honest, and I don't mean this to be directed at anyone in particular here, people are getting - for lack of a better word - lazy. They want Units without any added effort, they don't want to run something monotonous, they want an easier and softer way.
It's really want versus need, and need always comes before want. Some people don't want to run the Arena, but they need the Units. I'm fortunate to enjoy what I do, but I don't want to have to work to earn a living. Given the choice, I would be free of the need and just work doing what I love. The same goes for bran. I don't like the taste of bran, but since the doctor told me I have high cholesterol, I eat it daily.
I know that a game is meant to be enjoyable, and that MCOC is large enough for people to focus on what they like playing, but if I don't run something because I don't like it, that choice comes at the expense of whatever it is I gain from that aspect.

startropics

don't even acknowledge the silly idea.

from a time and money perspective the relationship between the devs and the player base is not friendly, it's hostile.

they want us doing more for the same rewards and we want to do less (or at a minimum things stay the same), so the devs are constantly trying to shift things in their favor as much as the player base allows it.

but we're not a homogenous group who thinks the same. we have different goals and there's a lot of in-fighting, so a strategy that the devs *could* use to tilt the game in their favor (not saying they would) is to sow division between the playerbase so they can manufacture a solution later. "we heard you talking, so we've come up with a compromise". yeah no...

it doesn't take much to get a talk going. one off-the-cuff comment on a livestream got the community to spin in circles and start discussing a *potential* change that no one even asked for. it just popped up out of nowhere and the community is spinning it's gears trying to make something of it. don't.

regardless of what happens, they were successful in planting the seed that one day they might spread units around the game.

moving units around is awful. the last time players complained about arena, they tripled the rounds needed for the 4* arena and halved the points given to 6*s in the basic 6* arena, which added 100 rounds on top of people's grinds every 3 days.

the grass is NOT greener so don't fall for this nonsense and don't expect that it will be better cause it won't. they'll force you to play two extra game modes that you won't have time for, so instead of playing arena (which doesn't require much attention), they'll force you to play game modes that require more time, effort, and concentration, and most likely you won't get the units you were looking for anyway.

they might add them to battlegrounds and stick them in an objective that expects you to WIN 6-8 matches however many days, or they add them to EQ and only pay out after exploration instead of completion like we have now. do you want that?

you know where to find units if you want them so don't even consider the idea. if you think it will be better, it won't. they'll have you juggling on a tight rope for the same stuff we have now. be thankful for what we have.

LeNoirFaineant

@Cvlr It would be just the milestones. Units from BC's would be untouched. I'd like to see them moved elsewhere. I only do enough Arena to get the milestones. Grinding isn't something I enjoy doing and a lot of people don't even touch arena because of the monotony.

If you are grinding arena for units to revive in a quest, you need the milestones. Battle chip units aren't reliable enough. I have zero units from my last 200k battlechips.

LeNoirFaineant

A lot of people explore the two hardest difficulties of EQ. By not adding units to the Cav difficulty, Those people are getting fewer units from EQ than they used to. Leave the units in Arena and add units to Cav EQ.

Cvlr

@Cvlr It would be just the milestones. Units from BC's would be untouched. I'd like to see them moved elsewhere. I only do enough Arena to get the milestones. Grinding isn't something I enjoy doing and a lot of people don't even touch arena because of the monotony.
If you are grinding arena for units to revive in a quest, you need the milestones. Battle chip units aren't reliable enough. I have zero units from my last 200k battlechips.

Of course, that's why I think this change would have positive and negative aspects

DNA3000

don't even acknowledge the silly idea.

from a time and money perspective the relationship between the devs and the player base is not friendly, it's hostile.

they want us doing more for the same rewards and we want to do less (or at a minimum things stay the same), so the devs are constantly trying to shift things in their favor as much as the player base allows it.

This is so far beyond wrong it isn't even wrong. The devs don't care how much stuff we get, at least not in absolute terms. They care about the ability for rewards to incentivize play.

In absolute terms we get dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times more rewards than we used to eight years ago. Are we spending thousands of times less? Of course not. The rewards we get only have any value at all relative to the current state of the game. The goal of the game designers is to balance the content of the game and the rewards of the game so the rewards have enough incentivizing power to promote engagement with the game, without being too small to be insufficient and without being too large to saturate the requirements of the game.

There is no "in their favor." If reward levels are too low, that's bad for the game. If the reward levels are too high, that's bad for the game. The self interest of the developers is to maintain the success of the game, because that's how they get to have jobs that pay the rent and put food on the table. Giving us too few rewards is bad for them. Giving us too much rewards is bad for them. There's only the optimal value that best balances the long term health of the game, and any amount higher than or lower than that is worse for them. But there's no direction that is "in their favor" because they don't get to keep what they don't give to us.

startropics

don't even acknowledge the silly idea.

from a time and money perspective the relationship between the devs and the player base is not friendly, it's hostile.

they want us doing more for the same rewards and we want to do less (or at a minimum things stay the same), so the devs are constantly trying to shift things in their favor as much as the player base allows it.
This is so far beyond wrong it isn't even wrong. The devs don't care how much stuff we get, at least not in absolute terms. They care about the ability for rewards to incentivize play.

In absolute terms we get dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times more rewards than we used to eight years ago. Are we spending thousands of times less? Of course not. The rewards we get only have any value at all relative to the current state of the game. The goal of the game designers is to balance the content of the game and the rewards of the game so the rewards have enough incentivizing power to promote engagement with the game, without being too small to be insufficient and without being too large to saturate the requirements of the game.

There is no "in their favor." If reward levels are too low, that's bad for the game. If the reward levels are too high, that's bad for the game. The self interest of the developers is to maintain the success of the game, because that's how they get to have jobs that pay the rent and put food on the table. Giving us too few rewards is bad for them. Giving us too much rewards is bad for them. There's only the optimal value that best balances the long term health of the game, and any amount higher than or lower than that is worse for them. But there's no direction that is "in their favor" because they don't get to keep what they don't give to us.

i understand, what i'm saying is be careful what we wish for.

the last time the community moaned about arena in early 2021, kabam bumped the 4* milestones from 1.5m to 4.4m (which players still say is too high these days) and halved the amount of points given to 6*. this change added like 100 rounds over 3 days for players who went for all milestones plus the top 5% rewards in the basic and featured.

significantly more work for roughly the same rewards (i know there's extra battlechips from doing more rounds but it's relatively negligible).

any changes now will probably end up doing the same. no new units, just redistribution, and more work in more game modes that probably require more time, more headaches, more attention and maybe even more resources like refills and another batch of complaints.

if there's no real unit growth, why are we asking for it? the other modes already have reward identities. bgs gives a mix of shards and relics, aw historically was about shards, and AQ typically gives end game rank up resources and glory. none of them were ever tied to units because that's what arena was for.

i'm not sure what redistribution of units will do other than make players believe they'll get them easier (which i doubt they will).

Greed_Exodus

Please change Sunday arena to have the platpool crystals so we can gain some units consistently

GroundedWisdom

Please change Sunday arena to have the platpool crystals so we can gain some units consistently

The ironic thing about this name is I could get behind that idea.