let's think about what this title: 1640 units / week, less than 2 hours a day. Let's round that to 10 hours a week (less than 1.5 hours a day)... 1640 is roughly what you get for buying the black panther from the store... which is $50 US (let's call it $52.50 in value since you get a whopping 40 units more)... for 10 hours work, or $5.25 an hour.
Now if you enjoy doing the arena... then do it, have fun, this rationalization is not meant for you. But if you cringe at doing more than a couple rounds... there are other options, like earning money at work and choosing to spend it. Time = money, and the above exchange rate... is awful.
People shouldn't have to be like the south park kids killing sheep in the forest hours a day, having to sit on portable toilets to grind enough do-hickeys to level up and beat the guy on top of the game... just to be able to play the game.
let's think about what this title: 1640 units / week, less than 2 hours a day. Let's round that to 10 hours a week (less than 1.5 hours a day)... 1640 is roughly what you get for buying the black panther from the store... which is $50 US (let's call it $52.50 in value since you get a whopping 40 units more)... for 10 hours work, or $5.25 an hour.
Now if you enjoy doing the arena... then do it, have fun, this rationalization is not meant for you. But if you cringe at doing more than a couple rounds... there are other options, like earning money at work and choosing to spend it. Time = money, and the above exchange rate... is awful.
People shouldn't have to be like the south park kids killing sheep in the forest hours a day, having to sit on portable toilets to grind enough do-hickeys to level up and beat the guy on top of the game... just to be able to play the game.
Except 50 USD takes different time to earn on different countries
let's think about what this title: 1640 units / week, less than 2 hours a day. Let's round that to 10 hours a week (less than 1.5 hours a day)... 1640 is roughly what you get for buying the black panther from the store... which is $50 US (let's call it $52.50 in value since you get a whopping 40 units more)... for 10 hours work, or $5.25 an hour.
Now if you enjoy doing the arena... then do it, have fun, this rationalization is not meant for you. But if you cringe at doing more than a couple rounds... there are other options, like earning money at work and choosing to spend it. Time = money, and the above exchange rate... is awful.
People shouldn't have to be like the south park kids killing sheep in the forest hours a day, having to sit on portable toilets to grind enough do-hickeys to level up and beat the guy on top of the game... just to be able to play the game.
If you think about the game as only a financial proposition, then the most efficient thing for me to do would be to simply buy a maxed out account. I'm not 100% certain what those go for these days, and I'm aware that is technically a violation of terms of service, but no matter what the price, I can make that in less time than it takes to build one.
There's an inherent presumption in all discussions of what rewards are worth in this or any other game, and that is that the player actually wants to acquire them by playing the game, at least to some extent. No reward is worth the time it takes to buy it, deliberately so. If things were *easier* to acquire by playing than by spending on a time adjusted monetary basis, no one would spend on the game. Monetization requires two basic premises to be true: that spending is more efficient than grinding, and that most people would rather grind anyway.
Some people do not spend on the game because they literally have no money, but given the technological costs required to play the game, this is unlikely to be the reason why most people don't spend. Most people don't spend because they actually want to play the game, to see what they can accomplish in the game.
Nobody has to grind arena. Nobody has to do anything in the game. The game presents opportunities, and players are free to take advantage of them or not. And the game doesn't actually punish players very much for not taking advantage of them. If you don't grind today, the rewards will be easier to get tomorrow. If you don't do the content today, easier content will have the same rewards tomorrow. Rarely does the game say you must do this, and now, and a lot of it, or you are permanently screwed.
It is not about whether you "enjoy" the arena or not. it is about whether you play the game to play the game, or you think everything in the game is just material transactions. My time is worth X, the rewards need to be worth more than X. If that's how you approach the game, and you don't live in a Chinese labor camp, that's your choice, but that's a sad way to approach a game in my opinion. I do arena because I want to see what comes of it, just like I do AQ and AW and EQ and even Necropolis. To see if I can, and to see what comes of it when I do.
I could grind for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours to get 100k units in a year. Or I can just drop $3k USD and get the same amount of units in seconds. But the day I just randomly drop $3k USD on the game to save myself from the arena grind is probably the day I quit the game, because at that point the game would be pointless to me.
It depends on roster probably but 116 in 4star arena is a lot. My average is 106.
I never use 4star below 8k PI in arena. Maybe that is why less fights there. Also one round with my 7 stars is about 8m points in featured. So I am doing basic after I finish my featured and I am using 7 stars in 6 star basic arena. In round 1-15 I never use my highest pi champs. Some tips which can lower your total fight count @DNA3000
It depends on roster probably but 116 in 4star arena is a lot. My average is 106.
I never use 4star below 8k PI in arena. Maybe that is why less fights there. Also one round with my 7 stars is about 8m points in featured. So I am doing basic after I finish my featured and I am using 7 stars in 6 star basic arena. In round 1-15 I never use my highest pi champs. Some tips which can lower your total fight count @DNA3000
I went for fastest speed, not fewest rounds, and for me at the time doing arena express ended up taking the least amount of total time compared to turning off arena express and picking the highest match, which reduced the number of rounds but was slightly slower in total net time overall for me. YMMV.
As to the other two arenas, I am not 100% efficient on the basic arena because of what you mention: I should immediately switch to using highest PI in the basic once I reach the max milestone in the featured, but the reason why I don’t do that is because I do not know,, when I am starting an arena cycle, if I am going to have the free time and the desire to push farther in the featured arena. It would not take a lot of extra effort to get the 6* in there if it is not a high value first run champ, and if I happen to be missing that champ (there are still a couple I don’t have) then I might decide to go for it. So I keep my 7* champs in reserve to do that and only use the 6s in the basic, just in case. It ends up costing me only a couple rounds in the basic, so it isn’t a material difference overall. But for someone who is strictly going for the milestones only, then I agree this is the better strategy: use 7s until you hit the top milestone in the featured, and then use the highest PI, regardless of 6 or 7, in the basic.
Comments
Now if you enjoy doing the arena... then do it, have fun, this rationalization is not meant for you. But if you cringe at doing more than a couple rounds... there are other options, like earning money at work and choosing to spend it. Time = money, and the above exchange rate... is awful.
People shouldn't have to be like the south park kids killing sheep in the forest hours a day, having to sit on portable toilets to grind enough do-hickeys to level up and beat the guy on top of the game... just to be able to play the game.
There's an inherent presumption in all discussions of what rewards are worth in this or any other game, and that is that the player actually wants to acquire them by playing the game, at least to some extent. No reward is worth the time it takes to buy it, deliberately so. If things were *easier* to acquire by playing than by spending on a time adjusted monetary basis, no one would spend on the game. Monetization requires two basic premises to be true: that spending is more efficient than grinding, and that most people would rather grind anyway.
Some people do not spend on the game because they literally have no money, but given the technological costs required to play the game, this is unlikely to be the reason why most people don't spend. Most people don't spend because they actually want to play the game, to see what they can accomplish in the game.
Nobody has to grind arena. Nobody has to do anything in the game. The game presents opportunities, and players are free to take advantage of them or not. And the game doesn't actually punish players very much for not taking advantage of them. If you don't grind today, the rewards will be easier to get tomorrow. If you don't do the content today, easier content will have the same rewards tomorrow. Rarely does the game say you must do this, and now, and a lot of it, or you are permanently screwed.
It is not about whether you "enjoy" the arena or not. it is about whether you play the game to play the game, or you think everything in the game is just material transactions. My time is worth X, the rewards need to be worth more than X. If that's how you approach the game, and you don't live in a Chinese labor camp, that's your choice, but that's a sad way to approach a game in my opinion. I do arena because I want to see what comes of it, just like I do AQ and AW and EQ and even Necropolis. To see if I can, and to see what comes of it when I do.
I could grind for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours to get 100k units in a year. Or I can just drop $3k USD and get the same amount of units in seconds. But the day I just randomly drop $3k USD on the game to save myself from the arena grind is probably the day I quit the game, because at that point the game would be pointless to me.
I never use 4star below 8k PI in arena. Maybe that is why less fights there. Also one round with my 7 stars is about 8m points in featured. So I am doing basic after I finish my featured and I am using 7 stars in 6 star basic arena. In round 1-15 I never use my highest pi champs. Some tips which can lower your total fight count @DNA3000
As to the other two arenas, I am not 100% efficient on the basic arena because of what you mention: I should immediately switch to using highest PI in the basic once I reach the max milestone in the featured, but the reason why I don’t do that is because I do not know,, when I am starting an arena cycle, if I am going to have the free time and the desire to push farther in the featured arena. It would not take a lot of extra effort to get the 6* in there if it is not a high value first run champ, and if I happen to be missing that champ (there are still a couple I don’t have) then I might decide to go for it. So I keep my 7* champs in reserve to do that and only use the 6s in the basic, just in case. It ends up costing me only a couple rounds in the basic, so it isn’t a material difference overall. But for someone who is strictly going for the milestones only, then I agree this is the better strategy: use 7s until you hit the top milestone in the featured, and then use the highest PI, regardless of 6 or 7, in the basic.