Arena express mode: what is the actual benefit
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 19,876 Guardian
TL;DR: Arena Express Mode can offer between 6% and 15% speed increases in the arena, depending on how you grind arena and what precisely constitutes a "speed increase."
With all the discussion surrounding Arena Express Mode (some of it even predating the actual release of the feature) I wanted to take a close look at the actual quantitative benefit of using the mode, to put the feature into context. it is described (by Kabam) as a QoL arena feature, is it?
Let's start by what the Arena Express Feature does.
Express mode is enabled with a checkbox from within the arena (and yes, this is pretty much the worst possible place to put this). When this checkbox is selected, picking Quick Fill and then starting a match will skip the match selection screen:
and jump straight to the easy match. You do still have an opportunity to rearrange champions within the match, When the fight is completed, the arena advances to the next fight, then the next one, and then finally back to the team selection screen. This streamlines an arena match by removing a few screens, but how much time savings is this?
Well, it depends. Many of the screens being skipped could also be advanced through by tapping, so the amount of time saved depends on how fast and aggressive the player is. Also, since one of the screens skipped is the match selection screen, how much time is saved depends on how long a player used to linger on that screen and think about picking the next match. In very informal testing, I measured the amount of time saved per match to be on the order of fifteen to twenty seconds total, which at about two minutes per round would be about 15% improvement in speed.
However, the situation is more complex than that, for reasons that will require a detour. The benefit of arena express actually depends on how you grind the arena, and what your arena goal is. This may not seem obvious, so let's discuss this in broad strokes. Suppose my goal every arena iteration is to get all of the milestones in the featured arena. To do this I run all my 6* champs through the arena, as many times as it takes to reach 12 million points and then stop. Arena express mode will help me, but in a very specific way: it will help me by allowing me to do this in less time. It will not increase the amount of points I can earn, because I'm already reaching my point goal as it is. I'm faster, but I earn no more points and gain no more rewards. The benefit is purely a matter of this process taking less time.
However, if I am attempting to grind for the 6* featured champ, say, then arena express should not just speed me up, it should also increase the total amount of points I can earn, specifically because I am going faster, and will likely spend the same amount of time to try to get as much points as possible. Here, the benefit is not spending less time, it is earning more points.
Okay, but that's just a minor quibble, right? Whether we reach a certain point goal faster or get more points spending the same amount of time, that's just two different ways to describe the same benefit, right? Well it would be, if it wasn't for the fact that these two players are also probably not grinding in the same way. This gets back to how arena express delivers its benefits. It skips screens players would ordinarily spend more time on, and it immediately picks a match and runs with it rather than waiting for the player to pick one. And it is the easy match.
For a casual grinder, these two choices are overall a net benefit. Casual grinders probably linger on screens longer than necessary, they often do not have 100% of their attention focused on the arena. And while picking the easy match isn't always the optimal choice, for casual grinders it is generally good enough. These people will probably see the ~15% reduction in time spent I mentioned above. But a competitive grinder, or someone that is focusing more of their attention and time to get more points in the arena isn't, because they will get less time savings from skipped screens and might also potential lose points from consistently running the easy match choice (it scores fewer points). So I decided to test this carefully.
I ran a long sequence of matches in both the featured and basic arena, running 6* champs in the featured and 5* champs in the basic. I ran long enough match sequences to allow random match circumstances to average out. And I also ran the arenas as fast as I could, to compare arena express mode to non-express mode for a player who wasn't wasting as much time on the accelerated parts of arena.
With arena express mode on, I was able to do 36 rounds in the basic arena in 79 minutes (no recoil masteries) scoring 3,112,959 points. This is 27.3 round per hour, 2,364,272 points per hour. In the featured arena I was able to do 70 rounds in 151.5 minutes scoring 14,784,309 points. That is 27.7 rounds per hour and 5,855,172 points per hour.
I then did the featured arena again with the same roster fully recharged, but with arena express mode off. This time 70 rounds took 165 minutes scoring 14,804,241 points. This is 25.4 rounds per hour and 5,389,894 points per hour. Compared to non-arena express mode, arena express mode was allowing me to do arena rounds 9% faster and generate points 8.6% faster. This is less improvement than the "casual" numbers would imply, because I am speeding through the screens that arena express mode eliminates, and because I am spending as close to zero time thinking about the match selections as possible. Since I am attempting to replicate what arena express is doing, I am simply mindlessly picking the easy match every time, which reduces the speed benefit of skipping the selection screen. It also makes sense that the match acceleration and point acceleration would be essentially the same, as I am basically replicating the same scoring environment.
For the basic arena, I redid my express run with arena express off, but instead of picking the easy match every time I picked the hard one every time. In prior testing I found that while picking the harder match *can* generate more points, it is tricky because when you're casually grinding you're more likely to lose a match against the harder match selection. This can erode the point benefit to the point of making it counterproductive in many cases. However, for this test I was not casually grinding and focused on winning every fight as quickly as possible. In this run I did 36 rounds in 88 minutes scoring 3,264,275 points. This resulted in a net rate of 24.5 rounds per hour and 2,225,710 points per hour. This compared to these numbers, arena express mode was 11% faster in terms of arena rounds per hour, but only 6% faster in terms of points per hour.
So the overall benefit of arena express seems to depend on how you grind, and I haven't explicitly tested many other corner cases, such as repeatedly refreshing the same champions as part of a featured run. However, it is clear that the overall benefit covers a pretty wide range. The most casual grinders who are naturally slow in general can see speed ups of as much as 15% or more. Fast grinders that are already scoring lots of points and doing lots of rounds might see benefits as low as 6% or possibly less. It does seem to be the case that the slower you are and the less points you typically grind out, the more benefit you will get from express mode. Meanwhile the faster you are at running through the arena mode and the more points you strive to score, the less benefit you will get, although you will still get some benefit.
One other thing worth addressing. Is arena express a "QoL" feature? Well, it is and it isn't. In strict literal terms, arena express accelerates earning rewards in the arena. That makes it not a "pure" QoL benefit. It is in effect a reward enhancement. However, it delivers that benefit in a classically QoL way: by streamlining the UI of the mode. Streamlining UI is typically the realm of QoL. It is the grinding nature of the arena that creates this unusual overlap between the streamlining of the interface and the resultant rewards that is somewhat unique. I would say arena express is a QoL feature that has non-QoL benefits, and is neither a 100% QoL feature nor 100% not a QoL feature.
Last thing: recoil masteries have a huge impact on arena speed. Putting those back on for me would swamp all of these benefits by a significant margin. If you're concerned about Sigil players having a substantial advantage in the arena and you don't have recoil masteries on, everyone who does is already blowing your arena speed away by huge margins.
With all the discussion surrounding Arena Express Mode (some of it even predating the actual release of the feature) I wanted to take a close look at the actual quantitative benefit of using the mode, to put the feature into context. it is described (by Kabam) as a QoL arena feature, is it?
Let's start by what the Arena Express Feature does.
Express mode is enabled with a checkbox from within the arena (and yes, this is pretty much the worst possible place to put this). When this checkbox is selected, picking Quick Fill and then starting a match will skip the match selection screen:
and jump straight to the easy match. You do still have an opportunity to rearrange champions within the match, When the fight is completed, the arena advances to the next fight, then the next one, and then finally back to the team selection screen. This streamlines an arena match by removing a few screens, but how much time savings is this?
Well, it depends. Many of the screens being skipped could also be advanced through by tapping, so the amount of time saved depends on how fast and aggressive the player is. Also, since one of the screens skipped is the match selection screen, how much time is saved depends on how long a player used to linger on that screen and think about picking the next match. In very informal testing, I measured the amount of time saved per match to be on the order of fifteen to twenty seconds total, which at about two minutes per round would be about 15% improvement in speed.
However, the situation is more complex than that, for reasons that will require a detour. The benefit of arena express actually depends on how you grind the arena, and what your arena goal is. This may not seem obvious, so let's discuss this in broad strokes. Suppose my goal every arena iteration is to get all of the milestones in the featured arena. To do this I run all my 6* champs through the arena, as many times as it takes to reach 12 million points and then stop. Arena express mode will help me, but in a very specific way: it will help me by allowing me to do this in less time. It will not increase the amount of points I can earn, because I'm already reaching my point goal as it is. I'm faster, but I earn no more points and gain no more rewards. The benefit is purely a matter of this process taking less time.
However, if I am attempting to grind for the 6* featured champ, say, then arena express should not just speed me up, it should also increase the total amount of points I can earn, specifically because I am going faster, and will likely spend the same amount of time to try to get as much points as possible. Here, the benefit is not spending less time, it is earning more points.
Okay, but that's just a minor quibble, right? Whether we reach a certain point goal faster or get more points spending the same amount of time, that's just two different ways to describe the same benefit, right? Well it would be, if it wasn't for the fact that these two players are also probably not grinding in the same way. This gets back to how arena express delivers its benefits. It skips screens players would ordinarily spend more time on, and it immediately picks a match and runs with it rather than waiting for the player to pick one. And it is the easy match.
For a casual grinder, these two choices are overall a net benefit. Casual grinders probably linger on screens longer than necessary, they often do not have 100% of their attention focused on the arena. And while picking the easy match isn't always the optimal choice, for casual grinders it is generally good enough. These people will probably see the ~15% reduction in time spent I mentioned above. But a competitive grinder, or someone that is focusing more of their attention and time to get more points in the arena isn't, because they will get less time savings from skipped screens and might also potential lose points from consistently running the easy match choice (it scores fewer points). So I decided to test this carefully.
I ran a long sequence of matches in both the featured and basic arena, running 6* champs in the featured and 5* champs in the basic. I ran long enough match sequences to allow random match circumstances to average out. And I also ran the arenas as fast as I could, to compare arena express mode to non-express mode for a player who wasn't wasting as much time on the accelerated parts of arena.
With arena express mode on, I was able to do 36 rounds in the basic arena in 79 minutes (no recoil masteries) scoring 3,112,959 points. This is 27.3 round per hour, 2,364,272 points per hour. In the featured arena I was able to do 70 rounds in 151.5 minutes scoring 14,784,309 points. That is 27.7 rounds per hour and 5,855,172 points per hour.
I then did the featured arena again with the same roster fully recharged, but with arena express mode off. This time 70 rounds took 165 minutes scoring 14,804,241 points. This is 25.4 rounds per hour and 5,389,894 points per hour. Compared to non-arena express mode, arena express mode was allowing me to do arena rounds 9% faster and generate points 8.6% faster. This is less improvement than the "casual" numbers would imply, because I am speeding through the screens that arena express mode eliminates, and because I am spending as close to zero time thinking about the match selections as possible. Since I am attempting to replicate what arena express is doing, I am simply mindlessly picking the easy match every time, which reduces the speed benefit of skipping the selection screen. It also makes sense that the match acceleration and point acceleration would be essentially the same, as I am basically replicating the same scoring environment.
For the basic arena, I redid my express run with arena express off, but instead of picking the easy match every time I picked the hard one every time. In prior testing I found that while picking the harder match *can* generate more points, it is tricky because when you're casually grinding you're more likely to lose a match against the harder match selection. This can erode the point benefit to the point of making it counterproductive in many cases. However, for this test I was not casually grinding and focused on winning every fight as quickly as possible. In this run I did 36 rounds in 88 minutes scoring 3,264,275 points. This resulted in a net rate of 24.5 rounds per hour and 2,225,710 points per hour. This compared to these numbers, arena express mode was 11% faster in terms of arena rounds per hour, but only 6% faster in terms of points per hour.
So the overall benefit of arena express seems to depend on how you grind, and I haven't explicitly tested many other corner cases, such as repeatedly refreshing the same champions as part of a featured run. However, it is clear that the overall benefit covers a pretty wide range. The most casual grinders who are naturally slow in general can see speed ups of as much as 15% or more. Fast grinders that are already scoring lots of points and doing lots of rounds might see benefits as low as 6% or possibly less. It does seem to be the case that the slower you are and the less points you typically grind out, the more benefit you will get from express mode. Meanwhile the faster you are at running through the arena mode and the more points you strive to score, the less benefit you will get, although you will still get some benefit.
One other thing worth addressing. Is arena express a "QoL" feature? Well, it is and it isn't. In strict literal terms, arena express accelerates earning rewards in the arena. That makes it not a "pure" QoL benefit. It is in effect a reward enhancement. However, it delivers that benefit in a classically QoL way: by streamlining the UI of the mode. Streamlining UI is typically the realm of QoL. It is the grinding nature of the arena that creates this unusual overlap between the streamlining of the interface and the resultant rewards that is somewhat unique. I would say arena express is a QoL feature that has non-QoL benefits, and is neither a 100% QoL feature nor 100% not a QoL feature.
Last thing: recoil masteries have a huge impact on arena speed. Putting those back on for me would swamp all of these benefits by a significant margin. If you're concerned about Sigil players having a substantial advantage in the arena and you don't have recoil masteries on, everyone who does is already blowing your arena speed away by huge margins.
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Comments
The former players are getting a small reward bump. The latter players are getting a QoL benefit.
** This is extrapolatable from the arena participation and rank data
With arena bots able to maximize scores with the cooldowns, it still may not be possible to even the score.
I'm glad they didn't tie the cooldowns to this express feature though.
And I have got the sigil many times in the past, it isn’t a case of not willing to spend, I just find it beyond me that an improvement to the game mode overall should cost any player money.
Mind blowing.
The notion of what can reasonably be paywalled is a very shifting and often self-contradictory thing. In general, this game has monetized speed. Spenders can get what other players can get, only faster, or earlier, or at a higher rate. Very rarely is anything absolutely paywalled (Red Deadpool has in general been one of the few rare exceptions, for example). Arena express mode falls well within the limits of what the game traditionally monetizes as a concept.
The Sigil has always been explicitly targeted at relatively small but useful QoL and QoL-adjacent game improvements. Inventory increase for example is a QoL-adjacent improvement. It is mostly QoL, but higher inventory limits can, in some circumstances, translate into in-game improvements in performance or rewards. Catalyst trades are a convenience with real in-game performance benefits, but are generally considered near-QoL improvements. Arena express both in terms of its direct effects and its indirect benefits is consistent with the kinds of things put into the Sigil. Even to the extent that there are people who claim it is wrong for those things to be in the Sigil at all. This was a complaint about inventory limits, shard trade ins, and other Sigil benefits. So in that sense, Arena Express Mode fits in with the other Sigil benefits quite well.
This is fine and all, but now reword this to the tune of R. Kelly's In the Closet pls.
Indeed.
The reason why “infinite streak” happens is due to an unusual failsafe built into the game from day one. If the game cannot find a proper opponent, it defaults to finding a relatively easy match. And if you use a team that’s strong enough, and your streak counter gets high enough, the game can’t find an opponent team because no such team exists. The arena “breaks” and you start getting nothing but easy matches. *Unless* you use a weak enough team. Then the game *can* find a proper strength opponent team, and you get a “death match”.
What we discovered when the devs tried to help the players by lowering the worst case arena strength multiplier is that if you reduce the strength of what the game is looking for, you also make it easier to find the “correct” difficulty match. For example, when they reduced the maximum difficulty multiplier from 4x to 2x, what happened was the worst case death match did drop to 2x, but also layers started *seeing* those 2x matches all the time. Because they actually existed.
Because there is no infinite streak formula, it’s actually an emergent property of the arena, reducing the difficulty penalty of “breaking streak” is not something that can be easily altered. That’s what we collectively learned from the last time this was attempted.
This would also likely be outside of Zero’s purview to tinker with, given the source of the behavior.
However, once you have two, the odds are very high that adding one more will be easy, because three is generalizable from two. Whatever you did to make one into two can often be simply extended to three or more. We already have two (or more) mastery profiles: they exist to support deck-based masteries. So adding mastery profiles for other game modes is likely to be much easier now than before Battlegrounds implemented decks.
** A variation of this rule is the Zero, One, Infinity rule of software engineering that says for every data structure, there should either be none of them, one of them, or an unlimited amount of them supported by the software. The One, Two, Three rule attacks this from the retrograde side, whereas the Zero, One, Infinity rule attacks this from the proactive side of software engineering.
Brian's numbers show advantages that are dramatically higher than mine. What's going on here?
I'm speculating here, but I can think of three sources of that difference:
1. Brian is using recoil masteries, which speed up fights and amplify the advantage of express mode. This is noteworthy, because in the specific scenario where someone is a serious grinder going for top ranks, you would presume suicides were on. However, in that scenario Brian's test might be *too* apples to apples. In other words, Brian in effect compares express mode to grinding in non-express mode while picking the easy match every time (because that's what express mode does). However, it is not obvious that this is the strategy an actual grinder would choose in practice. While there are significant round/hour advantages to doing so, it isn't clear that with recoil masteries there is a consistent points/hour advantage. Recoil masteries have a non-linear benefit in the arena, because they don't just kill incrementally faster, they can change the nature of the fight to make it even faster. *IF* the strategy of always picking the easy match is in fact the optimal points/hour strategy then comparing express mode in the way Brian does would directly measure the advantage express mode is providing in his testing parameters. But it may not be. Something new to test.
2. Brian is testing a shorter sequence of fights. Because he is using video editing to directly measure the express mode advantage, he doesn't need to average out his results across a longer stretch of fights, something that I or anyone who tested in the way I did would ordinarily have to do. However, it isn't just the number of rounds that is different, it is also the specific champions that are different. Specifically, Brian's test tests his top 30 arena champs, whereas my test ran over a hundred champs deep into the roster. This also changes the speed and types of fights, which can change the material advantage being measured. In what specific ways I am not certain, but my intuition says that the deeper into my roster I go, the slower my fights tend to get. So in a related way to #1 above, it is possible that my test differs from Brian's testing in looking at fights with a wider range of express advantages, whereas Brian's test cherry picks (not intentionally) match ups more likely to have more concentrated advantages.
3. I could be an additional source of difference by simply not playing as efficiently in the 50th match as I am in the first. Since Brian looked at ten matches, his arena fighting was probably just as crisp in the first match as the tenth. However, I'm less likely to be as fast on match 40 as match 1. Since match speed affects the express advantage (the faster you are, the higher the advantage) it is possible my testing incorporated more human-degradation in performance than Brian's. Whether this makes Brian's testing better or worse depends on your point of view.
Before doing long-sequence testing, I tried to estimate the raw advantage of express mode and came up with a ~15% advantage, plus or minus (which I mentioned in the OP). My more "real world" tests, at least as I conceived them, generated lower numbers for the reasons I discussed. I believe that Brian's tests are more precise measurements of the more casual guesstimates I first made, and represent something closer to the theoretical maximum possible benefit. It is *possible* to get that benefit. My testing shows the benefit a real player might see playing like me in practice, at least within a certain margin for error (being statistically averaged, my test numbers are less precise than Brian's). These are also numbers real players could conceivably see. Just exactly how much benefit an individual will see will likely be somewhere between mine and Brian's.
The big question is: which numbers are more relevant to which situations. For example, if you're grinding for top ranks, what's your grind strategy? Are you going to run through your roster, and then supplement with boosted and continuously recharged champs? Are you going to focus on boosted recharged champs only? How sharp are you going to be able to play during a sustained grind? Those kinds of factors will determine whether you're getting a 6% improvement or a 20% improvement.
These tests are pretty exhausting and time consuming, even for a regular arena grinder, so there's more testing that can be done, but it will take time to do it. I don't think we have the complete picture yet. But Brian's analysis is definitely another valuable data point in the discussion, and it is something I probably would have considered doing, if my video editing skills were non-zero.
The automatic matchups have produced some particularly nasty scenarios for me and have cost me streaks once or twice. There’s just no accounting for scenarios that require a specific counter and with suicides on the opponent, simple mistakes can cost you quickly.
Please acknowledge that at least this was read @Kabam Miike @Kabam Jax