For the basic arena I don't see the point in reducing the base value for the 6* champs but still leaving them useable in there. It doesn't make much sense to use 6* in the basic for not many more points than a 5* but a much longer cool down.
The downside of having 6* champs in the basic arena is that we will still face 6* r3 squads with suicides or 6* r5 teams with our weaker 4/5* rosters. For the, maybe, small point benefit of lower rank 6* I don't personally feel it is worth the presence of these really strong opponents.
If you want to reduce the value we get from using 6* in basic but keep the longer cool down time over 5* then please consider just removing the ability to use 6* from the basic arena so we don't have to face them as opponents.
For the basic arena I don't see the point in reducing the base value for the 6* champs but still leaving them useable in there. It doesn't make much sense to use 6* in the basic for not many more points than a 5* but a much longer cool down.
The downside of having 6* champs in the basic arena is that we will still face 6* r3 squads with suicides or 6* r5 teams with our weaker 4/5* rosters. For the, maybe, small point benefit of lower rank 6* I don't personally feel it is worth the presence of these really strong opponents.
If you want to reduce the value we get from using 6* in basic but keep the longer cool down time over 5* then please consider just removing the ability to use 6* from the basic arena so we don't have to face them as opponents.
For the basic arena I don't see the point in reducing the base value for the 6* champs but still leaving them useable in there. It doesn't make much sense to use 6* in the basic for not many more points than a 5* but a much longer cool down.
The downside of having 6* champs in the basic arena is that we will still face 6* r3 squads with suicides or 6* r5 teams with our weaker 4/5* rosters. For the, maybe, small point benefit of lower rank 6* I don't personally feel it is worth the presence of these really strong opponents.
If you want to reduce the value we get from using 6* in basic but keep the longer cool down time over 5* then please consider just removing the ability to use 6* from the basic arena so we don't have to face them as opponents.
Actually it makes perfect sense.
To elaborate, regardless of the number of Points they give, it's still more. More × the number of 6*s. Having longer cooldowns is a balancing effect.
As a consistent ARENA GRINDER for the last 4 years I am going to provide my feedback. I am looking forward to these changes. I'm not sure why everyone is so upset about their precious 6* 150 champ whale rosters not being able to DOMINATE both arenas. FTP and Casual spenders deserve somewhere they can compete for champions. Now my roster CAN do this against a full blown whale due to this change. Seems some folks are pretending that the milestones DO NOT end at 4 million now. You don't need your 6* in this arena UNLESS you are grinding for a champion. So take your 6* to the Featured arena.
I still think the cutoffs for both Arenas should have been lowered though since its just a cheater fest in the top 100.
Are these changes perfect? No. Are they better than the current trash system you gave us. Yes. Possibly. Gotta see where the ranks land based off the grind data over a couple weeks.
I'm concerned about your higher milestone in the trials for my gf's UNCOLLECTED account. I'm also concerned that you demand too high of a cutoff for a 4* basic champion. If you were to lower that cutoff to 1.75 million I think it would be a great change to help the newer players out. They are 4*'s Kabam there is no reason to squeeze more of our lives out for them.
Other then that I look forward to the changes and to see how it effects the game an grind. Literally anything would be better. The current system is just whaley whale boys dominating both arena's as they see fit. Folks acting like the whales didn't dominate the basic last week are just not actual grinders and talking out their blow holes. The basic arena needed some kind of balance and I dont think a lower cutoff would ever fix that. Whales CANT just have it all.
They made the milestones more inclusive so that's a great change for the community and the game but for basic champ grinds they crippled big rosters. Spenders built their accounts, why shouldn't they have an advantage? Isn't that the whole point?
I'm happy players have access to all milestones now, but not for champ grinds. It's called Marvel Contest of Champions for a reason, not Marvel Equity.
Sorry I neglected to mention my feedback is for Kabam. Not you guys. Have fun fighting back and forth.
Whales shouldn’t be disadvantaged in the basic by having a 6* focused roster though
I understand your concern that whales will not have that much advantage in basic arena because their big 6* rosters will not be that useful. I agree with you to some extent that big spenders should have some advantage than others. But I also want to point out that this advantage should not come on the cost of other players.......If your suggestion is accepted that 6*s will get more points than there is no way that kabam will keep the milestones same. And if milestones were increased like in the arenas after shang-chi arena than it will be not be viable to use 5*s in the basic arena which will the hurt the non whale players who are mainly eyeing for the units. And also than what will be the point of ranking up 5* champs if they cant be used in arenas. Also the number of non-whale players is much more than the whale players which is another reason that these changes have occurred.
If we compare the new updated arenas with those of pre shangchi arena than whale players have got much more benefit than the non-whale players as they are now able to get the 6* featured champs in the featured arenas and also have the edge in getting 6* basic champs. While the non whale players have only been little benefitted by the rank rewards. If kabam accepts your suggestion than it will become a case where few hundreds of whales will be hugely benefitted while thousands of others will be totally ripped off their units and the rank rewards. Whales have their own featured arenas and they should be happy about it since no one can challenge them their when it comes to rank rewards. Let the non whale players also have their basic arenas where they can challenge the whales.
There was nothing wrong with trials but now you taken effort out of featured which should IMO been left alone as that should take effort. You went to the opposite extreme in basic…and you took all the extra effort in those 2 and stuck it in trials. Trials and featured should of never changed. The issue was always basic. You went from one extreme to the complete opposite…perfect balance was taking about half the milestones out and design it around the Sunday 4-6* arena
I think these changes are extremely fair. Here is a quick synopsis:
Featured Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward.
Basic Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward and focus all ammo on this arena (6 stars) if you want this character. If you are "going for it" this is a cheaper refresh rate as there is no incentive to refresh 6 stars as well, so you can refresh 5 stars at 10 units a pop for the same competitive impact.
Trials arena. The feedback I am seeing doesn't seem to take into account you are comparing this to all 3 of the 4 star basic / 3star / 2 star arena. If you were doing ALL of these arenas, this is a positive total round count. You also have the ability to use normal and big boy 3 star and 4 star arena boosts to lower the round count significantly.... note if you were doing the 2 star arena previously you were unable to boost your points and lower the round count.
If your expectation was lower rounds and more rewards, this isn't it.
If your expectation was a reasonable reduction in total rounds required and throw in some grandmaster shards or ability to compete for a 6 star character, this accomplishes it and this is a well thought out response to that expectation.
One other note, I've seen significant complaints about shallow lower star rosters. If that is the case you weren't doing the 2-3-4 star arenas before. You can't expect to be spoonfed some rewards now that you weren't earning before. That's not a reasonable expectation.
I’m not really understanding how the game team thought this change would be better. I thought we all asked for two things.
1: change the milestones to be less stretched apart.
2: if #1 is not doable then raise the multiple to x4 or at least x5.
Even though the 6* arena points reduction is only for the basic arena we really didn’t ask this. It’s almost like that’s the cost for changing the milestones.
For the basic arena I don't see the point in reducing the base value for the 6* champs but still leaving them useable in there. It doesn't make much sense to use 6* in the basic for not many more points than a 5* but a much longer cool down.
The downside of having 6* champs in the basic arena is that we will still face 6* r3 squads with suicides or 6* r5 teams with our weaker 4/5* rosters. For the, maybe, small point benefit of lower rank 6* I don't personally feel it is worth the presence of these really strong opponents.
If you want to reduce the value we get from using 6* in basic but keep the longer cool down time over 5* then please consider just removing the ability to use 6* from the basic arena so we don't have to face them as opponents.
6* champs are usable in the Basic arena because 6* champs are the top prize in that arena. If they removed the 6* champs from being usable, they would also remove the 6* champs from the top rank rewards. That is just an unfortunate design constraint on arena rewards at the moment. Deleting the 6* champ from the basic rewards would eliminate the current situation where players must split effort between the two 6* prizes that exist, which means there's always going to be a "more desirable" and "less desirable" champ, which creates opportunities for players who don't have the arsenal to compete for the more desirable one.
It is true that in some sense the Basic arena removes a large advantage from players with large 6* rosters. The way I see it, the arena structure offers a counter-balancing benefit, although not every player will see it as such. It looks like we have two 6* arenas, but we actually have four. We have a basic arena with low 6* advantage. And we have a featured arena with high 6* advantage. But we also have the case where the Featured champ is much more desirable, and the case where the Basic champ is much more desirable.
So there are four arena possibilities, and every cycle we get one pair of these four possibilities:
Highly Desirable Featured, Less Desirable Basic Highly Desirable Basic, Less Desirable Featured
Most players can't grind for in every cycle for every champ. They have to decide which arenas to put their effort into. They now have four possibilities: monster grinders will probably tend to aim for the Highly Desirable Featured. More moderate grinders have a shot at the Less Desirable Basic. And then we have the weird ones: the Highly Desirable Basic and the Less Desirable Featured. Someone with a small roster but willing to commit a lot of units to the grind might have a better shot at the Less Desirable Featured, because the top grinders will be elsewhere and if you're commited to spending a ton of units it doesn't matter if you have a hundred 6* champs or three. Three will do. Conversely, if you're someone that wants to compete for highly desirable champs but you don't have a huge 6* roster but you do have a lot of time, your odds of being competitive are higher in the Highly Desirable Basic arena when that particular situation comes along.
Having these extra strategic options for players to consider is something I'm personally interested to see what players make of. In general, I tend to favor game design elements that offer wider strategic options to a wider set of players. And since the top tier rank rewards in the 6* arenas are competitions, what's "fair" is somewhat arbitrary. You could argue that players with larger rosters should have an advantage, but you could also argue that players who put in more time should have an equally large advantage. The new arena structure contains possibilities for both player positions. As these are not wildly unreasonable positions to take, having the arena acknowledge both, even if coincidentally, is not a bad thing in my eyes.
I’m not really understanding how the game team thought this change would be better. I thought we all asked for two things.
1: change the milestones to be less stretched apart.
2: if #1 is not doable then raise the multiple to x4 or at least x5.
Even though the 6* arena points reduction is only for the basic arena we really didn’t ask this. It’s almost like that’s the cost for changing the milestones.
That's not what everyone was asking for. The problem with the initial arena modifications were that lots of different players across a wide range of progression were complaining their source of units was significantly, and in some circumstantial cases radically reduced. Even *that* wasn't the only thing being complained about, there were other complaints about things like the rank placement for featured and basic champs, for example.
There were some players who were perfectly fine with the basic structure of the arenas, but just wanted smaller milestones. These were players that wanted all of the benefits of the changes without any of the deficits, and were fine with throwing everyone else under the bus in the process. I don't think this was given all that much consideration.
The structural problem was that in reducing the number of arenas from five to three, the new arenas were balanced around the point scoring capabilities of the highest rarity usable within them/ That was 6* champs for both 4/5/6 arenas and 4* champs for the Trials. The devs could not simply lower the milestones in the 4/5/6 arenas because that would then make those milestones, and the units contained within them, far too easy to get. Changing the multiplier is just another way to do the same thing.
The original arenas has one arena balanced around 6* scoring, one balanced around 5* point scoring, one balanced around 4* scoring, and so forth. If both 4/5/6 arenas left scoring alone, their milestones would not be allowed to change. They couldn't balance the basic milestones around 5* scoring but allow 6* champs to obliterate those milestones. They could just tweak both arenas downward slightly to make the overall grind for top grinders more or less identical to what it was in the OG arenas for comparable units, but then that would make everyone else significantly slower. The only way to spread the benefits out across a wider group of players was to go back to the drawing board and redo the structure of the arenas. That included changing the basic to be more balanced around 5* scoring, so it would have comparable performance to the old 4* featured arena, which necessitated eliminating the ability for 6* champs to stomp all over those lower milestones.
As I said when the previous iteration came ou: there were lots of things in that version of the arenas that would benefit me personally, but I didn't want those benefits paid for on the backs of more casual and lower progression players, because to me that's not what the purpose of the arena is. Yes, there's a competitive element to it in the rank rewards, and personally I'm fine with the absolute top grinders beating each other up for those however they please. But the arena was always best when it functioned as a moderate past time from the core game, where players of all progress levels could build up some grindable currency (units and battlechips in particular, and gold as a side reward) and champion shards. The prior iteration shifted a lot of that benefit upward, and depleted it from lower progress players. To put it bluntly, we have to give that back so everyone can get a better arena. What everyone else had to pay for us to get those benefits was far too high, and far too inappropriate of cost shifting.
I think these changes are extremely fair. Here is a quick synopsis:
Featured Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward.
Basic Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward and focus all ammo on this arena (6 stars) if you want this character. If you are "going for it" this is a cheaper refresh rate as there is no incentive to refresh 6 stars as well, so you can refresh 5 stars at 10 units a pop for the same competitive impact.
Trials arena. The feedback I am seeing doesn't seem to take into account you are comparing this to all 3 of the 4 star basic / 3star / 2 star arena. If you were doing ALL of these arenas, this is a positive total round count. You also have the ability to use normal and big boy 3 star and 4 star arena boosts to lower the round count significantly.... note if you were doing the 2 star arena previously you were unable to boost your points and lower the round count.
If your expectation was lower rounds and more rewards, this isn't it.
If your expectation was a reasonable reduction in total rounds required and throw in some grandmaster shards or ability to compete for a 6 star character, this accomplishes it and this is a well thought out response to that expectation.
One other note, I've seen significant complaints about shallow lower star rosters. If that is the case you weren't doing the 2-3-4 star arenas before. You can't expect to be spoonfed some rewards now that you weren't earning before. That's not a reasonable expectation.
You shouldn’t have to use boosts for trials where rank rewards aren’t that great.
Having read through the changes I have to say this looks much better on the surface than the current mess. I'm looking forward to actually putting it to the test. The only thing I still disagree with is the decision to effectively ban players that are still "collected" from the basic/featured arenas. I still don't see the reasoning behind that decision.
Having read through the changes I have to say this looks much better on the surface than the current mess. I'm looking forward to actually putting it to the test. The only thing I still disagree with is the decision to effectively ban players that are still "collected" from the basic/featured arenas. I still don't see the reasoning behind that decision.
Whenever the devs are designing and balancing rewards, they always ask what those rewards would mean to all possible players who can acquire them. If players below Uncollected were allowed to participate in the 4/5/6 arenas, it would then bring up the question of whether GMC shards were appropriate for them, whether 6* shards were appropriate for them, whether the size of the 5* shard rewards were appropriate for them. This would extend to conversations asking if the rewards in the 4/5/6 arenas were so high relative to the content that pre-UC players were doing that it would draw their attention away from core content and towards the arenas just because the rewards were too compelling.
You might disagree, or even dismiss these concerns completely, but those are the debates that happen internally at Kabam, and for that matter any game dev team working on games like this. Ultimately, that's what progress gates are for: they exist to partition the playerbase so that the devs don't have to worry as much about reward appropriateness issues across too wide of a segment of players.
Short answer is: if Collected players were allowed to grind the 4/5/6 Basic and Featured arenas, the rewards in them would be lower for everyone.
Don't get me wrong I like that the milestones were reduced and the units/battlechips became better obtainable than what kabam originally tried doing with the new structure, absolute props for that and it was the right move, but its the idea that in 1 arena alone we are going to devalue 6* champs and not reduce their cool down times. That just doesn't make sense to me. It just makes the idea of even using a 6* in the basic arena virtually pointless.
Again, this is just from my initial perspective. Will have to wait til June 10th to see what I really think about it.
If they don't take the 6-stars out of the Basic arena, I think I'm done with arena. They've doubled the grind for the Basic champ, and as worthless as 4-stars are now anyway, it just isn't worth the trouble. I dropped Dungeons/Incursions, I dropped AW, now I guess I'm dropping Arena. At least I'll be getting plenty of time back.
Don't get me wrong I like that the milestones were reduced and the units/battlechips became better obtainable than what kabam originally tried doing with the new structure, absolute props for that and it was the right move, but its the idea that in 1 arena alone we are going to devalue 6* champs and not reduce their cool down times. That just doesn't make sense to me. It just makes the idea of even using a 6* in the basic arena virtually pointless.
Again, this is just from my initial perspective. Will have to wait til June 10th to see what I really think about it.
Just pretend 6* champs are unusable in that arena, and the cooldown and base point issue disappears.
The Basic arena is being tuned to be roughly comparable to the original 4* featured arena, which did not allow the use of 6* champs at all. Imagine taking the old 4* featured, and adding 5* and 6* champion prizes to the rank rewards. That's more or less the updated Basic arena. That's a huge win for players. The biggest difference is in that situation 6* champs would be unusable, and in the Basic they are usable but with identical base value as 5* champs.
Usable but without higher base value cannot be worse than not usable at all. So the new Basic will be basically the old 4* featured with higher rewards, if you pretend 6* champs are unusable.
What a surprise. A giant middle finger to top end players to cater to a bunch of loud low to mid level players. At least they're being consistent with it these days
People will have more of a chance to access 6*s when they have more need. That's not a bad thing. Unless you think the Featured AND the Basic should only go to people will 80-100+ 6*s.
Well that's just nonsense. If I wanted a basic champ I still have my 150+ 6*s I can use. It just makes zero sense to ever use them outside of going for a champ. All it does it makes it far more annoying to do so as I'll have to do twice as many rounds as before. This doesn't even the playing field it just annoys anyone that used 6*s to go for a basic champ.
Why wouldn't you want to use them? They still score more points per round on average, which means they score more points per hour of your time.
Bc it's pointless to use them unless going for a champ specifically bc they get the same points with twice the cooldown. They'd be much better spent in the featured arena towards those milestones. I personally couldn't care less about the milestones or where they are.
I just know that to put up 60-70+M in the basic arena I'll now need to do twice as many rounds than I do with the current system.
I agree , and this really sucks !! 6* took a big hit in this new setup...
So the new Basic will be basically the old 4* featured with higher rewards, if you pretend 6* champs are unusable.
And with 6r3 deathmatches. That's the part people are taking issue with. It completely changes the complexion of the fights early on, and make it significantly harder to get to infinite streak if you have no 6r3s, like 95+% of players.
Whenever the devs are designing and balancing rewards, they always ask what those rewards would mean to all possible players who can acquire them. If players below Uncollected were allowed to participate in the 4/5/6 arenas, it would then bring up the question of whether GMC shards were appropriate for them, whether 6* shards were appropriate for them, whether the size of the 5* shard rewards were appropriate for them. This would extend to conversations asking if the rewards in the 4/5/6 arenas were so high relative to the content that pre-UC players were doing that it would draw their attention away from core content and towards the arenas just because the rewards were too compelling.
You might disagree, or even dismiss these concerns completely, but those are the debates that happen internally at Kabam, and for that matter any game dev team working on games like this. Ultimately, that's what progress gates are for: they exist to partition the playerbase so that the devs don't have to worry as much about reward appropriateness issues across too wide of a segment of players.
Short answer is: if Collected players were allowed to grind the 4/5/6 Basic and Featured arenas, the rewards in them would be lower for everyone.
Actually, you make some good points and I don't disagree with your reasoning. But I would also say that a player that has not yet become Uncollected probably does not have the roster of 5 & 6*'s to effectively complete much in the way of milestones in these arenas. Unless they sold off all their lower champs and if so they are paying the price for it now. But I do see your point and I'll wait to see how this actually plays after the 10th to make any judgements.
Yay thanks Kabam ! Now I have to stop leveling up my 5 and 6*s to level up 4*s to get units Personally, I hate playing my 4* champions because they are very old so not fun to play, and I don't want to waste my t4cc and t4b (that we need to rank up our 6*s to rank 2 by the way) to rank up 4*s to r4 or r5. Plus, let's be honest, because of the reload timer, you cannot get as many points as you used to in the pre-Shang-Chi arenas. You give more points by using 1 and 2*s champs, but don't forget that they still give few points because of their low prestiges. So why did you top the arena at 4.4M? This is too much.
@Kabam Miike I for one, am happy with the changes (as they appear on paper). I am at Cavalier level and previously I used to grind the 5* and 6* arenas. I'm happy I can do that again for Basic and Featured Arenas. I've never done more than milestone 8 for the last year or so in the 3/4* arenas, so I'm OK with the format of the Trials arena. On the whole a positive change.
Positives as I see them: 0. Reducing the milestones. 1. Basic Arena: can still get the milestones done with my 5* champions. Since 5* and 6* champs have the same base points, this incentivizes use of 5* champions in this arena. I'm OK with that. This means I can use my 6* champions only for the Featured Arena. 2. Featured Arena: I can now takle the larger milestones with only my 6* champions. 3. Trials Arena: It's OK. The higher units at lower milestones mean I can get some good number of units without grinding all the milestones (I never did this even in older Arenas).
Negatives: 1. Trials arena milestones seem to be a bit too high. Is it too much to ask for less grind and higher units? Can't the "balance" favour the players? I doubt anyone but the most hardcore arena grinders did all the previous arenas.
Don't get me wrong I like that the milestones were reduced and the units/battlechips became better obtainable than what kabam originally tried doing with the new structure, absolute props for that and it was the right move, but its the idea that in 1 arena alone we are going to devalue 6* champs and not reduce their cool down times. That just doesn't make sense to me. It just makes the idea of even using a 6* in the basic arena virtually pointless.
Again, this is just from my initial perspective. Will have to wait til June 10th to see what I really think about it.
Just pretend 6* champs are unusable in that arena, and the cooldown and base point issue disappears.
The Basic arena is being tuned to be roughly comparable to the original 4* featured arena, which did not allow the use of 6* champs at all. Imagine taking the old 4* featured, and adding 5* and 6* champion prizes to the rank rewards. That's more or less the updated Basic arena. That's a huge win for players. The biggest difference is in that situation 6* champs would be unusable, and in the Basic they are usable but with identical base value as 5* champs.
Usable but without higher base value cannot be worse than not usable at all. So the new Basic will be basically the old 4* featured with higher rewards, if you pretend 6* champs are unusable.
The point I, and others, were trying to make is that with the decrease in the points the 6* get in basic arena it isn't worth the added difficulty of having the 6*r3 suicide or 6*r5 death matches that people without large rosters of high rank 5* and 6* champs get. We can't pretend 6* are unusable if we don't want to use them ourselves because of the decreased points because we will still be facing opponents that are 6*s. I also don't understand what you said in your prior response to my post about being able to get a 6* from the arena meaning that you have to allow 6* champs to play in that arena. Why can't we be able to win the 6* but only allow 5* at highest to do the fights?
Reducing the 6* points in the basic 6* arena isn’t the right step. Some people don’t have the time to run through 100 6* on the feature then 160 5* on the basic to hit all the milestones in both.
It’s QOL change that has gone in reverse imo.
What were those people doing before the arenas changed? 6*s weren't allowed in the basic arena.
Yay thanks Kabam ! Now I have to stop leveling up my 5 and 6*s to level up 4*s to get units Personally, I hate playing my 4* champions because they are very old so not fun to play, and I don't want to waste my t4cc and t4b (that we need to rank up our 6*s to rank 2 by the way) to rank up 4*s to r4 or r5. Plus, let's be honest, because of the reload timer, you cannot get as many points as you used to in the pre-Shang-Chi arenas. You give more points by using 1 and 2*s champs, but don't forget that they still give few points because of their low prestiges. So why did you top the arena at 4.4M? This is too much.
If people never stopped Ranking 4*s to begin with, they wouldn't be at a loss.
I was critical when first changes arrived, and now I shall give credit where it’s due. Congratulations and thank you Kabam. I think game will be much more enjoyable and rewarding with these new changes.
Yay thanks Kabam ! Now I have to stop leveling up my 5 and 6*s to level up 4*s to get units Personally, I hate playing my 4* champions because they are very old so not fun to play, and I don't want to waste my t4cc and t4b (that we need to rank up our 6*s to rank 2 by the way) to rank up 4*s to r4 or r5. Plus, let's be honest, because of the reload timer, you cannot get as many points as you used to in the pre-Shang-Chi arenas. You give more points by using 1 and 2*s champs, but don't forget that they still give few points because of their low prestiges. So why did you top the arena at 4.4M? This is too much.
If people never stopped Ranking 4*s to begin with, they wouldn't be at a loss.
Why should I waste t4b and t4cc ranking up 4*s if I will never use them ? I prefer to have a huge diversity with 6r2/5r5 than spending catalysts with absolutely useless 4*s. Maybe you say that because you don't have access to act 6 ?
Comments
The downside of having 6* champs in the basic arena is that we will still face 6* r3 squads with suicides or 6* r5 teams with our weaker 4/5* rosters. For the, maybe, small point benefit of lower rank 6* I don't personally feel it is worth the presence of these really strong opponents.
If you want to reduce the value we get from using 6* in basic but keep the longer cool down time over 5* then please consider just removing the ability to use 6* from the basic arena so we don't have to face them as opponents.
If we compare the new updated arenas with those of pre shangchi arena than whale players have got much more benefit than the non-whale players as they are now able to get the 6* featured champs in the featured arenas and also have the edge in getting 6* basic champs. While the non whale players have only been little benefitted by the rank rewards. If kabam accepts your suggestion than it will become a case where few hundreds of whales will be hugely benefitted while thousands of others will be totally ripped off their units and the rank rewards. Whales have their own featured arenas and they should be happy about it since no one can challenge them their when it comes to rank rewards. Let the non whale players also have their basic arenas where they can challenge the whales.
Featured Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward.
Basic Arena: Same milestones, same effort, now have the ability to compete for a 6 star rank reward and focus all ammo on this arena (6 stars) if you want this character. If you are "going for it" this is a cheaper refresh rate as there is no incentive to refresh 6 stars as well, so you can refresh 5 stars at 10 units a pop for the same competitive impact.
Trials arena. The feedback I am seeing doesn't seem to take into account you are comparing this to all 3 of the 4 star basic / 3star / 2 star arena. If you were doing ALL of these arenas, this is a positive total round count. You also have the ability to use normal and big boy 3 star and 4 star arena boosts to lower the round count significantly.... note if you were doing the 2 star arena previously you were unable to boost your points and lower the round count.
If your expectation was lower rounds and more rewards, this isn't it.
If your expectation was a reasonable reduction in total rounds required and throw in some grandmaster shards or ability to compete for a 6 star character, this accomplishes it and this is a well thought out response to that expectation.
One other note, I've seen significant complaints about shallow lower star rosters. If that is the case you weren't doing the 2-3-4 star arenas before. You can't expect to be spoonfed some rewards now that you weren't earning before. That's not a reasonable expectation.
1: change the milestones to be less stretched apart.
2: if #1 is not doable then raise the multiple to x4 or at least x5.
Even though the 6* arena points reduction is only for the basic arena we really didn’t ask this. It’s almost like that’s the cost for changing the milestones.
It is true that in some sense the Basic arena removes a large advantage from players with large 6* rosters. The way I see it, the arena structure offers a counter-balancing benefit, although not every player will see it as such. It looks like we have two 6* arenas, but we actually have four. We have a basic arena with low 6* advantage. And we have a featured arena with high 6* advantage. But we also have the case where the Featured champ is much more desirable, and the case where the Basic champ is much more desirable.
So there are four arena possibilities, and every cycle we get one pair of these four possibilities:
Highly Desirable Featured, Less Desirable Basic
Highly Desirable Basic, Less Desirable Featured
Most players can't grind for in every cycle for every champ. They have to decide which arenas to put their effort into. They now have four possibilities: monster grinders will probably tend to aim for the Highly Desirable Featured. More moderate grinders have a shot at the Less Desirable Basic. And then we have the weird ones: the Highly Desirable Basic and the Less Desirable Featured. Someone with a small roster but willing to commit a lot of units to the grind might have a better shot at the Less Desirable Featured, because the top grinders will be elsewhere and if you're commited to spending a ton of units it doesn't matter if you have a hundred 6* champs or three. Three will do. Conversely, if you're someone that wants to compete for highly desirable champs but you don't have a huge 6* roster but you do have a lot of time, your odds of being competitive are higher in the Highly Desirable Basic arena when that particular situation comes along.
Having these extra strategic options for players to consider is something I'm personally interested to see what players make of. In general, I tend to favor game design elements that offer wider strategic options to a wider set of players. And since the top tier rank rewards in the 6* arenas are competitions, what's "fair" is somewhat arbitrary. You could argue that players with larger rosters should have an advantage, but you could also argue that players who put in more time should have an equally large advantage. The new arena structure contains possibilities for both player positions. As these are not wildly unreasonable positions to take, having the arena acknowledge both, even if coincidentally, is not a bad thing in my eyes.
There were some players who were perfectly fine with the basic structure of the arenas, but just wanted smaller milestones. These were players that wanted all of the benefits of the changes without any of the deficits, and were fine with throwing everyone else under the bus in the process. I don't think this was given all that much consideration.
The structural problem was that in reducing the number of arenas from five to three, the new arenas were balanced around the point scoring capabilities of the highest rarity usable within them/ That was 6* champs for both 4/5/6 arenas and 4* champs for the Trials. The devs could not simply lower the milestones in the 4/5/6 arenas because that would then make those milestones, and the units contained within them, far too easy to get. Changing the multiplier is just another way to do the same thing.
The original arenas has one arena balanced around 6* scoring, one balanced around 5* point scoring, one balanced around 4* scoring, and so forth. If both 4/5/6 arenas left scoring alone, their milestones would not be allowed to change. They couldn't balance the basic milestones around 5* scoring but allow 6* champs to obliterate those milestones. They could just tweak both arenas downward slightly to make the overall grind for top grinders more or less identical to what it was in the OG arenas for comparable units, but then that would make everyone else significantly slower. The only way to spread the benefits out across a wider group of players was to go back to the drawing board and redo the structure of the arenas. That included changing the basic to be more balanced around 5* scoring, so it would have comparable performance to the old 4* featured arena, which necessitated eliminating the ability for 6* champs to stomp all over those lower milestones.
As I said when the previous iteration came ou: there were lots of things in that version of the arenas that would benefit me personally, but I didn't want those benefits paid for on the backs of more casual and lower progression players, because to me that's not what the purpose of the arena is. Yes, there's a competitive element to it in the rank rewards, and personally I'm fine with the absolute top grinders beating each other up for those however they please. But the arena was always best when it functioned as a moderate past time from the core game, where players of all progress levels could build up some grindable currency (units and battlechips in particular, and gold as a side reward) and champion shards. The prior iteration shifted a lot of that benefit upward, and depleted it from lower progress players. To put it bluntly, we have to give that back so everyone can get a better arena. What everyone else had to pay for us to get those benefits was far too high, and far too inappropriate of cost shifting.
You might disagree, or even dismiss these concerns completely, but those are the debates that happen internally at Kabam, and for that matter any game dev team working on games like this. Ultimately, that's what progress gates are for: they exist to partition the playerbase so that the devs don't have to worry as much about reward appropriateness issues across too wide of a segment of players.
Short answer is: if Collected players were allowed to grind the 4/5/6 Basic and Featured arenas, the rewards in them would be lower for everyone.
Again, this is just from my initial perspective. Will have to wait til June 10th to see what I really think about it.
The Basic arena is being tuned to be roughly comparable to the original 4* featured arena, which did not allow the use of 6* champs at all. Imagine taking the old 4* featured, and adding 5* and 6* champion prizes to the rank rewards. That's more or less the updated Basic arena. That's a huge win for players. The biggest difference is in that situation 6* champs would be unusable, and in the Basic they are usable but with identical base value as 5* champs.
Usable but without higher base value cannot be worse than not usable at all. So the new Basic will be basically the old 4* featured with higher rewards, if you pretend 6* champs are unusable.
And with 6r3 deathmatches. That's the part people are taking issue with. It completely changes the complexion of the fights early on, and make it significantly harder to get to infinite streak if you have no 6r3s, like 95+% of players.
Personally, I hate playing my 4* champions because they are very old so not fun to play, and I don't want to waste my t4cc and t4b (that we need to rank up our 6*s to rank 2 by the way) to rank up 4*s to r4 or r5.
Plus, let's be honest, because of the reload timer, you cannot get as many points as you used to in the pre-Shang-Chi arenas.
You give more points by using 1 and 2*s champs, but don't forget that they still give few points because of their low prestiges. So why did you top the arena at 4.4M? This is too much.
Positives as I see them:
0. Reducing the milestones.
1. Basic Arena: can still get the milestones done with my 5* champions. Since 5* and 6* champs have the same base points, this incentivizes use of 5* champions in this arena. I'm OK with that. This means I can use my 6* champions only for the Featured Arena.
2. Featured Arena: I can now takle the larger milestones with only my 6* champions.
3. Trials Arena: It's OK. The higher units at lower milestones mean I can get some good number of units without grinding all the milestones (I never did this even in older Arenas).
Negatives:
1. Trials arena milestones seem to be a bit too high. Is it too much to ask for less grind and higher units? Can't the "balance" favour the players? I doubt anyone but the most hardcore arena grinders did all the previous arenas.
Anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks