Mathing: The Concept of 1 Million Units

Battlechips conversion rate in my opening of arena crystals comes down to
529 battlechips yield 1 unit and 1,360 gold

1 million units would require 529 million battlechips depending on RNG

Milestones aside since there are limited milestones every 3 days

1 fight yields 100 battlechips
So you need to win 5.29 million arena fights

Let's say you average out to 30 seconds for a 4* fight, you need 2.645 million minutes

Which converts to 44,083 hours

Let's say you grind arena after work for 8 hours per day since your day job pays you more than grinding arenas

You need 5,510 days while the game has existed for 11 years which is 4,015 days

Let's say you started grinding units since day 1 of the game, you need to put in about 11 hours per day to accumulate 1 million units not considering the free units and milestones you get from time to time

Let's say you start grinding units now, you need the game to last another 15 years based on 8 hours of grinding a day

1 million units is about $32,258 USD depending on where you bought the units

Any faster way to earn $32,258 USD to buy 1 million units from Kabam? Yes there is

Appreciation in your property and flipping properties will easily yield you much more money than just grinding arenas

Investing in US stock market will yield you more money as well

There are a million ways to make money faster and buying units than grinding arenas

It is not the most efficient way to get insane amount of units

Comments

JESUSCHRIST

Footnote: The winner of Battlerealm Brawl won 1 million units which is a pretty cool prize

But grinding arenas isn't that efficient or cool at all

Furrymoosen

Each fight won yields 100 battle chips plus 20-70 depending on the star level of the champion you beat. So if you're facing mostly 6-7* champs, fights will yield 160-170 per, not 100. Even if it's a 4* fight, I believe they are 30 more, so it would be 130 per fight.

Nobody has ever said grinding arenas is the most efficient way to amass units. Value of time vs value of money plays a role, and buying units will always win. But if you don't want to or can't spend money on the game, then arenas are the best way to stockpile units.

Halley

Yeah, but the winner is deserved it for sure, it's like the King of Throne, over million players around the world.

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897591#Comment_2897591

Thanks for adding more info, I missed that part out

Arena is good if a player needs a bit more units here or there but delivers less monetary value than taking on a side gig to earn more money and buying units outright

Playing arenas also doesn't improve on your skills or it's mainly for getting some units

Even if Kabam removes units from arenas, I'm not going to sweat about it

Zacharias10719

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897597#Comment_2897597

Yes, because the job market is booming right now 😂. "Just get a side gig bro". You subbed to a bunch of grindset grifters as well mate?

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897605#Comment_2897605

Any job out there will pay you more than grinding arenas

Yes I do noticed the job market is getting tighter for people around the world

HaverTime

You also didn't count the units from the milestones which increase the total quite a bit as well.

I think the 4* Arena has 270 units alone every 3 days. 540 a week there. 28,080/year. 135 Units in the 6* Arena as well. 14,040/Year. 42,120 Units there.

Zacharias10719

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897611#Comment_2897611

Most jobs barely pay enough for people to cover their rent and bills.

This is such a dumb argument, just saying get a side gig and buy units without any nuanced thought put into how people's lives actually function. People might have families and not have time to just get a side gig, but they might have an hour or two a couple of times a week to grind arena.

Also, nobody has ever said grinding arena is the most efficient way to get units. The reason people do so is because they want to keep their accounts at the top end but don't have the means to buy the units they need.

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897612#Comment_2897612

Yes I left that out on purpose but it does adds up substantially over time

DNA3000

The statistical average units from battleships is (if I remember accurately off the top of my head) 1840 units per million BC. This works out to about 543.5 BC per unit, slightly higher than the OPs estimate. Elsewhere I estimated the average unit haul of a player who consistently grinded all the units from arena milestones as about 96k per year including both the actual milestones and the units from battlechip conversion. This makes Liam’s one million units equivalent to just over ten years of arena grind doing it in the most reasonably efficient way.

It would most definitely not take 15 years of 8 hour grinding. Without recoil masteries it would take me just under ten and a half years of grinding about 535 hours a year, or about 5573 hours total.

Of course grinding arena isn’t an economically efficient way to earn units, but that depends on how you count time. Most of the time I’m grinding arena I, and I believe most long time arena grinders, are doing something else as well. Technically speaking, in economic terms the time I lose to grinding arena is close to zero. If you count the time I spend grinding arena my return on investment is less than minimum wage. But if you count the time I lose to grinding arena that I could have spent elsewhere my return on investment is probably higher than the salaries of most of the people reading this.

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897614#Comment_2897614

Yes I agree the flexibility to grind arena any hour of the day with whatever bits of time you have is a plus

If your job isn't paying you well enough to cover your rent and bills den a mobile game shouldn't be your top priority in life

You don't need to be competitive and be inside Celestial for a mobile game, it's not the most important thing in life for an adult, a game is just for entertainment, not for you to slog it out for digital rewards like radiance

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897617#Comment_2897617

Thanks for adding more info, milestones do indeed accumulate substantially over time even though it will still take 10 years to accumulate 1 million units which is a pretty cool prize for the champion

Not every player needs 1 million units though for MCOC, I'm just putting into perspective what 1 million units will be like roughly for players using time or money as a form of measurement for conversion into something we can relate to more easily than a digital currency like units

And yes most ppl I believe are doing something else along with grinding arenas be it watching YouTubers talk about MCOC or some other videos on YouTube

TotemCorruption

I can grind arena while stuck in the bathroom with diarrhea.

So unless there is a job I can do under similar circumstances, I view arena/work as a false dichotomy.

Crys23

I grind every arena unit, but stop at the milestones (no additional BCs). Adding in DSE and daily quests, double tracks and other random events that might give a small amount of units, I can get to about 110K a year.

So, 9 years to get 1mil units.

I've been playing for 10.5 years, and in the early years there weren't as many units available. (as per kabam, unit inflation is what drove the offers from 15k/18k on July 4th to 306k now). So my guess is that I haven't yet earned 1mil units in all my time playing :)).

Chuck_Finley

oh good, another “it’s time to trash arena grinders” thread. Hadn’t seen one this week. I guess it’s been a little slow as the others are out getting a second job and playing the stock market.

Mixtapevol02

It’s a video game. That’s all you need to know.

JESUSCHRIST

I used to think arena is a loophole for getting free units without paying a single cent until I realize I needed to spend time doing it even if I'm watching youtube while doing arenas

I did some calculations and decided I am not going down this path of insane arena grinding for all the milestones very early on

I have less than 70,000 arena wins over 10 years of playing

I still do arenas mainly to collect new champions in 3* and 4* but I stop at 7.5 million points

Jerichoharris

Downvote from me for using ‘mathing’ in cold blood.

Polygon

To let you all in on an insider, they could've moved a portion of the units in arena to another aspect of the game but people were paranoid and didn't want them touching arena cause they immediately assumed itd be a nerf.

Arena always is dead last when it comes to polls on game mode engagement (even lower than AQ or incursions) . And its a dying game mode in itself , unless theres a special event with extra rewards.

The units should just be moved to another aspect of the game.

smdam38

it does seem weird to give one of the best players in the game a ton of units.

Probably doesn’t need them.

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897901#Comment_2897901

You probably want to be in the same alliance as Liam during the banquet event

JESUSCHRIST

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897899#Comment_2897899

Move the units to daily super event, 3 milestones isn't enough for me

phillgreen

Sitting in underpants and watching sports on tv while doing arena is an order of magnitude less annoying than getting a job just to buy units unless the job involves sitting around in my underpants, watching sports, and drinking beer since they'll need to be a sweetener to the deal to get me off the couch.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2897899#Comment_2897899

I'm not sure who told you that, but that is, at best, a massive oversimplification.

The thing about arena is you can grind it in an almost unlimited fashion. The amount of units people get from it varies wildly. Even the milestones themselves are not something everyone gets, not even everyone who grinds arena. Some people get very little, some get a lot.

Shifting units away from the arena to other content would almost certainly change that. Most content doesn't work like the arena. The distribution of the rewards would probably shift to be a lot more even. And that means any shifting of rewards from arena to other content would help those who interact with it the least, and hurt those who interact with it the most.

Now, if you hate arena that sounds great, but the bigger picture is consider what kind of developer would do that: would decide to shift those rewards away from the minority towards the majority. A developer willing to do that indiscriminately for arena would do it for anything else. They could be convinced to shift rewards away from end game content towards core content. They could be convinced to shift rewards away from tier 1 war towards participation. They could decide concentrating rewards in Battlegrounds, a game mode by Kabam's own admission is a "niche" mode, to the rest of the game.

Many people fought long ago to ensure the arena's rewards were kept mostly intact when its design was refactored. I was one of those people. If you hate arena, if you want it to be scrapped and its rewards shifted elsewhere, then you probably don't like that. However, I would, and have done this for everything else. I've defended the need to focus attention on the end game, even though end gamers are a tiny percentage of the game. I've defended the need for high difficulty content, for competitive content, for casual AQ even though everyone complains its boring, because these things are things big chunks of players need. I recently pushed for difficulty agency in Adaptive EQ for the same reason.

This will sound bold and aggressive, but the people perfectly happy to scrap arena because they want those rewards and don't want to do arena, so advocate for those rewards to be taken out and placed in the parts of the game they actually like, do not actually deserve the parts of the game they actually like. The problem is not that any change to the arena would be perceived to be a nerf. It is that it would actually be a nerf to those who play it. That includes a lot of F2P players who use the arena to avoid spending on the game. I both spend and grind, and if the arena was gone I could just choose to spend more. But the people who do use the arena to enhance their F2P experience deserve to have their part of the game protected just as much as everyone elses. Especially when it is a part of the game so ridiculously beneficial and bordering on uniquely so across all mobile games.