Arena overhaul?

All these changes being made to overall game play, AW, AQ, Battlegrounds, Incursions etc, will the developers ever overhaul the arena content? The milestone rewards alone are long past due for an upgrade. PHC shards hold no true value in the grand scheme of the game anymore, even Grandmaster shards are somewhat obsolete now. I mean they are great for lower tier accounts or for collecting ISO as a rank up material but that's really it. Me personally, I would like to see Grandmaster shards be replaced by Thronebreaker cavalier shards. It's difficult to remain competitive with the featured arenas especially now that some higher ranking players have Rank 3 or Rank 4 7 stars on their roster.

Just my two cents on the subject.

Comments

ahmynuts

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone

the_eradicator

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone

So just trying to understand here what is your fear ?
Kabam does not want to touch the amount of units available but they can replace the grandmaster crystals with something current and replace 4* with the 5* version. I am aware of what they said earlier, you think they will decrease the units massively if they even make a small update to it ? Battlechips and units should stay the same as they are.

Furrymoosen

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone
So just trying to understand here what is your fear ?
Kabam does not want to touch the amount of units available but they can replace the grandmaster crystals with something current and replace 4* with the 5* version. I am aware of what they said earlier, you think they will decrease the units massively if they even make a small update to it ? Battlechips and units should stay the same as they are.

They are unlikely to decrease units, but what they will do is make them harder to get, which means more time spent in arenas. They'd have to blow us away with rewards to make up for it. Not worth it.

startropics

roster progression since 2021 has made grinding the 6* feature arena easier and they've said that if they ever touch arenas they will make units harder to get.

imagine the feature milestones being 30m pts instead of 12m...

ahmynuts

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone
So just trying to understand here what is your fear ?
Kabam does not want to touch the amount of units available but they can replace the grandmaster crystals with something current and replace 4* with the 5* version. I am aware of what they said earlier, you think they will decrease the units massively if they even make a small update to it ? Battlechips and units should stay the same as they are.

They've said at multiple occasions that if they touch arenas for any reason that they will make units harder to get because it's way too easy and fast right now. The most valuable thing in the entire game is units, nothing they could do to arenas would be able to make up for the loss that we would face when it comes to unit grinding

MrSakuragi

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone
So just trying to understand here what is your fear ?
Kabam does not want to touch the amount of units available but they can replace the grandmaster crystals with something current and replace 4* with the 5* version. I am aware of what they said earlier, you think they will decrease the units massively if they even make a small update to it ? Battlechips and units should stay the same as they are.
They've said at multiple occasions that if they touch arenas for any reason that they will make units harder to get because it's way too easy and fast right now. The most valuable thing in the entire game is units, nothing they could do to arenas would be able to make up for the loss that we would face when it comes to unit grinding

Do we think they’re pulling the units for the radiance store out of arenas? Or they just found some extra units somewhere? lol

JESUSCHRIST

Not every FTP game out there have premium game currency farming available

In 1 of the FTP mobile games that don't, I still managed to reach end game status in that game regardless without the ability to farm premium currency

So I question the need for such feature in games, the main beneficiaries of this feature are the ultra heavy farmers with high 6 digits or 7 digits arena wins under their record in their profile, it's amazingly scary how much time have been spent by them to farm units

Arenas are quite useful when you need a little bit more units, if you farm units regularly for big unit spending events, you are quite well off and prepared

Imagine an ATM where you can withdraw unlimited amount of money, that's what some unit farmers are doing, they are essentially devaluing the currency in the game, when FTP players don't need to spend to get all the rewards in big events, the developers inadvertently have to raise the minimum amount of units that is required, we see that the best rewards are locked behind higher and higher unit spending requirements over the years, those who can't spend the time to farm units either have to spend money or they are locked out of such big events, we hear complaints from such players in the last banquet event

I don't really farm units, won 60 k arena fights over 9 years, I don't propose touching the arenas to be safe but if Kabam really revamp the arenas, you will definitely have a harder time getting units from there

startropics

Imagine an ATM where you can withdraw unlimited amount of money, that's what some unit farmers are doing, they are essentially devaluing the currency in the game, when FTP players don't need to spend to get all the rewards in big events, the developers inadvertently have to raise the minimum amount of units that is required, we see that the best rewards are locked behind higher and higher unit spending requirements over the years, those who can't spend the time to farm units either have to spend money or they are locked out of such big events, we hear complaints from such players in the last banquet event

i don't see arena as devaluing hard currency.

a. i believe the amount of players who consistently farm arena is very small
b. the game has a f2p model and farming units is a feature so if you take that away the game becomes something else.

the units needed for the big events have gone up by a lot, but i don't think that's because of arena.

if there are 10 apples and you have $10, each apple costs $1. if you have $20 on hand, apples are now $2. kabam can ask for more because there's 2-3+ extra big spending events (valentines, 2 sagas) that dump units into our accounts.

Hiddenfuture69

Imagine an ATM where you can withdraw unlimited amount of money, that's what some unit farmers are doing, they are essentially devaluing the currency in the game, when FTP players don't need to spend to get all the rewards in big events, the developers inadvertently have to raise the minimum amount of units that is required, we see that the best rewards are locked behind higher and higher unit spending requirements over the years, those who can't spend the time to farm units either have to spend money or they are locked out of such big events, we hear complaints from such players in the last banquet event
i don't see arena as devaluing hard currency.

a. i believe the amount of players who consistently farm arena is very small
b. the game has a f2p model and farming units is a feature so if you take that away the game becomes something else.

the units needed for the big events have gone up by a lot, but i don't think that's because of arena.

if there are 10 apples and you have $10, each apple costs $1. if you have $20 on hand, apples are now $2. kabam can ask for more because there's 2-3+ extra big spending events (valentines, 2 sagas) that dump units into our accounts.

I believe crashed mentioned in his banquet post that the players who complete all milestones in arena are a very small minority. And I believe that's the reason Arena( a literal gold mine) is allowed to exist. If one was to clear all arena milestones all year round, grab all the units from DSE, and EQ, they could get 120k+ units for free. That's more than enough to buy out July 4th, Cyberweekend and Banquet as a f2p. Easier said than done, as that grind is very time consuming and soul crushing.

BringPopcorn

Its a dead mode that needs to stay dead, stop trying to overhaul it. They are not going to give you more stuff on top the free units. Matter of fact you don't want them to give you more, that's how in game inflation happens.

Sunstar19

No, leave the arenas as it is. Current state of arenas has achieved an optimal balance for units vs. time. There are other modes if shards are what you are looking for.

This game inherently always has a trade off between spending money vs. time. Arenas are the only format that consistently rewards unit for time.

Units are not devalued from the ability to grind arenas (I don’t call it farming as there is a finite amount of units available each 3 day cycle). They are devalued because offers are relatively more expensive. I recalled days when 18k was sufficient to buy all tiers but recent times you need 30k.

TotemCorruption

Who in the world grinds arena for the Grandmaster shards??

Folkvangr

No, leave the arenas as it is. Current state of arenas has achieved an optimal balance for units vs. time. There are other modes if shards are what you are looking for.

This game inherently always has a trade off between spending money vs. time. Arenas are the only format that consistently rewards unit for time.

Units are not devalued from the ability to grind arenas (I don’t call it farming as there is a finite amount of units available each 3 day cycle). They are devalued because offers are relatively more expensive. I recalled days when 18k was sufficient to buy all tiers but recent times you need 30k.

It is technically farming, as you still get battlechips even after completing the milestones
The amount is low asf but still you get some

SoSA__Remake

Please for the love of god, STOP MENTIONING ARENA.

DNA3000

NO

Istg theyre going to do it just out of pure spite at this point with the amount of people who keep asking.

Leave arenas alone
So just trying to understand here what is your fear ?
Kabam does not want to touch the amount of units available but they can replace the grandmaster crystals with something current and replace 4* with the 5* version. I am aware of what they said earlier, you think they will decrease the units massively if they even make a small update to it ? Battlechips and units should stay the same as they are.
They've said at multiple occasions that if they touch arenas for any reason that they will make units harder to get because it's way too easy and fast right now. The most valuable thing in the entire game is units, nothing they could do to arenas would be able to make up for the loss that we would face when it comes to unit grinding

I don't know if they've said this directly multiple times, but Crashed has hinted at it, and I've been saying it for a while, as someone with direct knowledge of how the arenas were designed, the thought process behind their last update, precisely how the unit economy was handled that last time, and direct knowledge of how the devs see the unit economy and how they view game mode reward balancing.

Short of Crashed staring at the camera during the next live stream and swearing a blood oath that the next time they touch the arenas they are going to nerf unit earning rates into the ground with lightning strikes from Mjolnir while bathing in the tears of the players, players should take the hint and stay away from asking for arena buffs. It is possible they might one day tweak the shards in there, but if so it would be something someone does for fun during their spare time. The day someone gets directly assigned the project to revise the arenas because players keep asking for it, presume it will become about three times harder to earn units in the arena.

I am not just pulling random numbers out of thin air.

People can say "units can stay the same" all the want. They could. But they won't. Kabam is just looking for an excuse to rebalance that side of the unit economy. Give them one, and they will take it.

JESUSCHRIST

Even without Kabam touching the arenas, it is getting harder and harder to farm units for new players with 3x 7* rank 4 teams

So good luck to the new players

DNA3000

Even without Kabam touching the arenas, it is getting harder and harder to farm units for new players with 3x 7* rank 4 teams

So good luck to the new players

Is it?

Discounting the time it takes to throw your phone out the window, go outside, fetch it, and come back to the couch, the time lost to losing streak is not as bad as some people think. Let's consider the math. Suppose that you've worked your way up to infinite streak and are at a 3.0 multiplier, and then you lose streak by losing. Let's assume this is a complete wipe out, you lose all three fights and get no points. Now you have to build streak back up. What's the net cost to your points?

Well, had you kept your streak you would have been earning 3x points per round. With the loss you score 0 for that round, then as you build up streak again you will score 1.0, 1.25, 1.5,, 2.0, 2.5, and finally we'd be back to 3.0 points again. If we add this up we get 0+1+1.25+1.5+2.0+2.5=8.25. For six rounds we would score a normalized 8.25 points. Had we continued winning all three matches and kept the streak alive, we would have gained 6x3=18 points. So losing streak cost us 9.75 points. We get 3 points per round in infinite streak that we win all three matches in, so in effect we've lost about three rounds. In effect, every time we lose streak we need three rounds of time to catch up.

If you're going to get slammed in a death match, it is likely to happen between rounds 10 and 15. So let's say the worst case scenario is the player keeps drawing death matches in round 10. In that case, consider what happens. It will take them six rounds to get back to the 3x multiplier. So they score zero in round 10, then they ramp up to the 2.5x multipler in rounds 11 through 15, and then finally in round 16 they are back to 3.0 multiplier. To equal the score they would have gotten had they not lost streak, they would need three extra rounds, so rounds 16, 17, and 18 are necessary just to reach the score they would have gotten normally by round 15.

it will take them 18 rounds to score what they would have scored in 15 rounds, which means their points scoring rate has been reduced to 0.83x, or alternatively they're scoring points 17% slower.

Meanwhile our jumbo rosters are now blasting through the two higher arenas three times faster than they were originally designed for, if not more. So players have a period where they are scoring points 17% slower than originally designed, and eventually reach 200% faster. It is difficult to categorize this as a net player loss. Meanwhile the trials arena is basically frozen by virtue of being capped to 4* champs, so players are not getting much faster in that arena, but lower progress players are also not falling behind anyone in that arena either.