Arena rewards adjustment suggestion

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

I put it in feature requests, since I wasn’t sure what else to tag it with (if it should be somewhere else, just move it there, thanks).

First of all, I assume @Sirrian has access to actual stats on how often arena is played and a spread of lvls of the people who actually play it - my personal guess, it’s mostly low level people (or very bored ones, like me :frowning: ).

The biggest problem with arena, from the top guild players PoV (and “top guild” is loosely used term, lets go with top50) is crappy trophies return from arena compared to pvp. As it is right now, the arena has:

  • OK seal return,
  • good soul return,
  • no glory return at all,
  • very low gold return (1500 base gold for 8 wins is comparable to 2 1-trophy fights, or one “GOOD” 3-trophy one (the extreme case with 1,4-1,5k base gold), the gold reward amount is relic of the past,
  • very bad trophy return rate (10 trophies for 8 battles is like doing 8 1-trophy games with the 2 “bonus” on top for winning all 8).

In my opinion (and I’d like to stress that it’s all what it is, idk if what I suggest is optimal, feel free to comment with feedback or your thoughts) what we need for arena to be more viable and playable is:

  • TROPHY BUFF, and I mean a serious buff. I found a topic that died a natural death of being ignored and forgotten from a while back (Arena Trophy Rewards) where Tacet suggested pretty reasonable (again, imo) scaling for trophies in arena:
    0 - 0
    1 - 1
    2 - 3
    3 - 5
    4 - 8
    5 - 12
    6 - 16
    7 - 20
    8 - 25

It would correspond with 3-trophies per battle, yes, but notice that the “bonus” is only for winning all 8 games (even 7 is slightly below). And arena games are longer than pvp anyway (especially if we consider the super-humans doing 60-sec games :wink: ), so that’s OK.

What I’m trying to say it, I enjoy playing arena, it gives me a chance to play random teams against other random teams (unlike pvp sadly) in a way that is a lot more tactical than the high-stat-pvp. Also a chance to enjoy using different hero weapons. Sadly with the current reward system in arena, if I play it rather than doing pvp, my guild is suffering because I don’t provide the trophies (not at the pace even remotely comparable with pvp).

I think that missing out on glory (which is giving up on a personal reward), and big part of the gold (even if you’d buff it which it needs aswell, I imagine it will still be relatively lower than pvp) is enough of a trade-off for doing something else than pvp. So pretty please balance the trophies, so I can play arena without feeling bad about not getting trophies for my guild <3

Personally I think that adjusting gold to a linear 500-700 base gold per win should be OK (yes the number 5600 base for 8 wins pre-multipliers seems big, but that’s the amount of gold you get for 8 1-trophy games in pvp, so by doing arena you would still give up on the potential higher gold you’d get from doing 2 or 3 trophy battles, while getting the “fair” minimum). It wouldn’t have to be linear, it could go 500 - 1000 - 1500 … at first and then ramp up in the last 2 wins towards 5600.

Many feature requests / fixes that could/should be implemented come with a lot of effort on your (DEVs) part, because of the butterfly-effect in the code of the game (one of the best examples is the stunned units still resurrecting due to the order of actions, which can’t be fixed by simply swapping those lines of code). THIS however is just a matter of adjusting NUMBERS in the arena code, which in no way can blow the game up (an assumption on my part, I am a potato when it comes to coding, but well …).

So pretty please, could we get an answer from @Sirrian or @Nimhain on the subject, and possibly a timely adjustment to the arena rewards? :wink: I’m sure everyone would be very happy seeing DEVs take action in a timely manner when it’s possible. I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong) that it wouldn’t take up much of your time and the arguments I made pretty much make the case. On top of which the rewards can be further adjusted in the future after reviewing the data about arena with “new” values.

If someone has any suggestions / objections - post away, lets see where it goes, it’d be great to see this addressed soon :smiley:

TL:DR Arena needs rewards adjustment to be a viable alternative to other activities in GoW. Buff the trophies and gold please. Lack of glory (and part of the potential gold) is already enough of a “payment” for arena being an alternative to pvp. Yes my suggestions are a BIG buff to the arena rewards, but honestly it’s about time. The arena rewards come from different times in GoW. LET’S MAKE ARENA VIABLE AGAIN! (I’m better than Trump or Hilary, I swear)

11 Likes
2

Yeah agreed with pretty much all points. Arena should be just as or close to as viable as pvp is. I’m sure there are quite a few sets of people that don’t enjoy pvp.

3

I play Arena a lot. I really enjoy the challenges and the drafting reminds me of MTG. I agree that the rewards are low, but I’m not sure what would be fair. The suggestions you made make sense as related to PVP. Maybe they could use a similar tier system as is used in PVP. Maybe after 4 wins you start getting glory or keys.

I do see a lot of the same names when playing. At the beginning of the week I see some new players. I guess they are trying to get the bonus seals.

Well, that’s my 2 cents worth.

4

I’m in a hardcore guild and am NOT a fan of arena at all anymore. It was fun when I was starting, but it’s pointless and a waste of time in it’s current state.

Honestly the BIGGEST improvement I think they could do for the arena is I allowing all 9 cards to be on the selection screen at once. As opposed to one set at a time.

3 Likes
5

That is one of the more complicated sort of changes, whether it’d be a good or bad change - you’d probably get as many different answers as ppl you asked. (on one hand it’d allow you to create a team with good synergy, on the other, it wouldn’t be “the same” anymore :stuck_out_tongue: or some people may say it’d be too easy).

What I suggested is a quick fix, that doesn’t require long time re-making the entire mini-game and potentially messing up the game’s well-being. It also wouldn’t require time consuming testing, while at the same time it should increase arena viability by a lot.

/edit

that does sound like a nice idea too, even if the glory would be exclusively for the 8-win run, so a final bonus (but again, I’m afraid adding a new type of reward might require more work and thus push the arena fixing somewhere to the bottom of the to-do list :frowning: )

6

You are most definitely correct, and if they did what you are suggesting it would certainly be a step in the right direction.

I’m all about efficiency and arena is NOT efficient, even with your proposed changes.

Also I strongly propose they should bump the glory UP, I would actually prefer they have massive glory rewards, that would make taking the risk worthwhile.

7

Since they added the new troops you face it’s a lot harder. I am rarely offered them but get the same crappy cards. The new troops are higher points and do more damage. Even not on warlord lol. (poking fun at myself there)
The only thing arena is good for is souls. Perhaps that is the intent. I did a lot of arena for that reason. With guilds pushing for trophies and gold arena is largely passed by. If one or the other was increased I think more people would play.

8

I agree there should be some rebalancing of the rewards in the arena, to make it more comparable to pvp. I enjoy the arena, but when I was a newer player, it was crucial, and I think adding glory to the mix would have helped me a lot then.

For a very long time (way too long!) I refused to pvp, or join a guild. I had bad experiences with other games, where other players had targeted me repeatedly, stealing resources, and ultimately forcing me to leave the game, because I was always going backwards. I did not want that to happen here, not to my puzzle quest. I had played all through pq1&2, and played GoW as a single player for months, working through quest lines and challenges. Progress was slow due to the lack of keys and glory. I am still missing many of the old weapons - not because I wasn’t around, but because I rarely had enough glory to buy them.

Allowing players to earn glory in the arena (and maybe elsewhere as well) provides flexibility to players, so they can play how they feel most comfortable. If it stops a long time player from getting bored and giving up, that’s a good thing. If it helps a newer player buy a few arcanes, and stick around long enough to realise that pvp and a guild is pretty much essential (in game chat helps a bit here), that’s even better.

TL;DR Had bad experience in other games with pvp, wouldn’t do pvp in GoW, did arena instead. Rewards in arena should be high enough (and include glory) to help other new players reluctant to try pvp.

9

Yup, another person bringing up glory reward(s) in arena, and again I agree. But not at the cost of postponing arena rewards balance by weeks ahead because it might need some serious code-work. If you decide to either rework reward system or add glory to it (or other stuff, idk, gems, or other keys, maybe a “random” reward for 8 wins, like the new legendary tasks will have - I don’t mean exactly same quantity/quality, but the randomness of it), and that means a lot of work - pretty please split it into two updates for arena.

I still strongly believe what I suggested could be implemented fast, and go a long way towards more people playing arena.

One more thing I was considering is the low-level players aspect. When I was suggesting specific numbers for the rewards (I’m talking about the gold now mostly) I used as a reference 700 gold as being average on the lowest end for a pvp battle. I realise it’s an observation made from a high level player perspective (I honestly don’t know how much gold low levels get from pvp) and that it could be brought up as an argument against the change. Therefore I would like to point out that:

  • most low lvl players don’t have any armor that would provide the multiplier to mentioned 5600g for 8-wins,
  • even if they do, that is actually not a problem.
    For some time now, once in a while there was brought up the issue of how to let new players catch up a bit faster, without letting high levels abuse the system too?
    Personally I think arena could be one of the tools to do it, in a limited way anyway. By adjusting the gold to the suggested value (or something along those lines), arena will become something similar to TH for new players, which will allow them timely unlocking/lvling of the kingdoms, while being merely an alternative to pvp for the high level player-base.
    Treasure Hunt already is a pinata for new people (as intended), arena would be another one (offering more gold in comparison at the cost of not getting full spectrum of resources like from TH). And while comparing things (arena vs pvp vs TH) - and that’s a comment mostly for other forum users - please remember the TIME factor (i.e. reward / time spent).

(on the subject of helping new players catch up, I’m still a big fan of the idea of introducing a permanent gold/soul buff -like the armor ones- starting at lvl1 with diminishing returns as players lvl up, but that’s a different topic and wrong place :smiley: ).

10

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for the thread & all the feedback.

I agree with much of the stuff here, and improving Arena has been on our to-do list for a little while.

The trickiest aspect is that if we make the rewards relevant for end-game, we need to be careful not to give too much away early game… I mean we LIKE giving things away, BUT the sad reality of F2P games is that if we’re over-generous, it’s hard to earn enough money to run the game, so we need to get rewards just right.

We’re going to have a couple of meetings next week, look at some numbers from Arena, and see what we can do.

15 Likes
11

And a quick update on this… due to holidays at 505 (LOTS of people out on leave last week, and trhen attending a conference) I wasn’t able to get everyone together to discuss any arena changes.

I promise I’ll follow up on it this week though!

9 Likes
12

@Sirrian I am admittedly NOT a designer or developer of any sort, but wouldn’t it be possible to set rewards based upon player level? The game already has code that acknowledges whether or not you have unlocked different difficulties, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to say if a player has Warlord IV unlocked then they receive THESE BASE rewards to be comparable to the rewards they are gaining elsewhere…

I am suggesting this in ADDITION to the reward modifier for difficulty.

Just a thought… :wink:

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13

/shyly asks if there’s any news on the arena-meeting? :wink: @Sirrian

14

We’ve had an initial discussion about the Arena, but nothing to report yet.

However we DID manage to finalize a small hero buff going out tomorrow as promised!

9 Likes
15

posted 5 hours ago, a hero buff. Omg i look forward to this, will it be a ninja patch or will it be worth a topic to list the changes?

16

but what? another hero buff

I can´t believe it. Sure the hero is overpowered?
I don´t think so.

17

early game the hero gets really powerful, but then you need specific hero weapons for mid-game, and hero only has one end-game weapon that works really well. I mean only aoe weapons are really good at end-game that have other effects.

18

thanks for keeping us in the loop, please continue to update us on the discussion. Also any info on changes to maps? can we get a second use for them so that the 600 in my inventory actually do something?

Cheers,
H.G.

19

I was able to confirm that a change in maps is on the table and that maybe as soon as next week sirrian will bring it to the crew for review. The change will most likely speed up map use by at least 8-14 turns.

2 Likes
20

at 8wins, same trophies, same gold, no glory, but 10 glory keys and 2000 souls.
That way low level player can build more teams for more fun.

1 Like