So, I turned in my 8 wins Arena run to look at the new price for buying troops. It’s now 20 gems, up from 1 gem.
Allow me to provide some context. I’m around level 400, no big guild, fairly active player. I’ve got all common troops to mythic, all rare troops to legendary, thanks to gold keys. I’m utterly starved on anything with a higher rarity. I like to buy the Arena troops for the ultra-rare, no matter what it is, just to make some progress with my collection. I couldn’t care less about the common and rare troops.
Now, this is where math and expectations kick in. For 10 gems I can get a gem key, which nets me at least an ultra-rare drop, possibly even better. I don’t care which ultra-rare, I’ve got none at mythic, they are all welcome. I might even see an epic or legendary, which in my experience have become so scarce as of 1.0.8 due to the absence of iron keys, they might as well be extinct.
For 20 gems I’ll buy 2 gems keys, even when drunk.
For 10 gems I’ll buy 1 gem key, without blinking.
For 5 gems I’ll eventually buy 1 gem key, because I could get an epic or legendary troop.
For 3 gems I might buy the Arena troops, if the ultra-rare is something I really, really want.
For 2 gems I’d probably buy the Arena troops, if tributes have been favorable.
This doesn’t even factor in that I have to have leveled up those troops to 15 before buying. And that I now have to get to 7 wins to be able to buy them. To put it in Pasa’s words: “Arena troops poor value!”.
If they really jacked up the price to 20 (dont know for myself, havent played an arena since the patch yet) - that means that option is now completely useless.
I was expecting something along the lines of - common - 1 gem, rare - 2 gems, ultrarare - 3 gems. Go buy whatever you need… and instead this?
Since theres no crafting system that would let you make more copies and opening chests is RNGfest, arena was the only way to semi-reliably sometimes get a troop that you wanted to ascend…
Usually you would get like two random ones and one troop you managed to pick something usefull… So now you essentially pay 20 gems for one card…
I think that considering the chances to get epic / legendary / arcane traitstones - back to RNGfest it is.
Well, it was nice part of the Arena reward while it lasted. I hope the next patch doesn’t change the souls reward in a similar way, being offered to buy them at roughly shop prices.
I also think that 20 is too strong an increase. I get that the price may have been too low before with just one, but at 20 this option just loses out in any scenario versus simply buying gem chests with the gems in the first place.
Most people when buying troops in arena did it for the ultra-rare troop, and they didn’t care for the other two simply because rarely if ever you got the ultra-rare you desired and were lucky enough to also draft a common and rare that you didn’t despise.
Think all the trouble you have to go through now if you want to buy an arena draft.
You have to pay 1000 gold, then draft a troop you actually want/like, and then the rest of your draft needs to perform well enough to grant you 6 wins at least.
Imagine the already real frustration after thousands of gold spent on countless redrafts to get to the UR you want, then you get two bad luck streaks and insane drops by the AI(and the improved static damage values on troops in arena now make this even tougher, Tauros is real now^^) to kill your run before win number 6.
And then you have to spend gems worth two gem chests for? Gem Chests that are also your main source of legendary and epic troops.
That just completely kills this option/feature and you might as well take it out entirely.
At 10 Gem cost i might get used to Arena as a much greater effort and invest-heavy method of getting ultra-rares with the ability to aim at specific ones(still a huge gold sink considering the Arena drafts) but 20 is just outright killing this feature.
This is something else entirely. If I’m not mistaken, you console players are one patch behind, so you still do have the 1 gem offer. However, you need to already own all three troops and have leveled them up to Arena level for that. If it’s asking you for a lot more gems, you must have at least one of the three troops below the level they’re at in the Arena.
On PC & mobile, since 1.09 we have to pay 20 gems even if we already have all three troops at level 15. You’re the lucky ones in that regard.
20 gems seems at best double what they would normally cost. Especially considering you can get Rares from a couple extra gold keys, and Ultra-rares from a couple extra glory keys.
I haven’t played enough Arena to notice/test this but I could safely assume I should have gotten at least one offer for 1 Gem with the number of runs I have done since the majority of my Troops are level 15.
Arena has been broken since last Monday when the combo breaker for the AI was turned off. Makes getting even 2 wins a complete crapshoot.
For the PC crowd, your “scaling” AI combo breaker you got in 1.0.9 would be an improvement for us on the Consoles since ours is off completely (not just in Arena, but in all Modes unfortunately). Doesn’t help the Console developers deny anything is wrong and refuse to fix it.
Sorry to hear that. Since there’s a third party involved, the console experience is bound to be a little… let’s say “different.” Best of luck in any case.
Arena was totally not worth to be played in 1.08 considering the rewards you get for the time it takes. I played it for the fun and the challenge in 1.08 and was happy to buy the troops in the end. I thought increasing the souls back to 1.07 values would bring more people back to the arena, but killing the option to buy the troops (I agree with the OP 100%) makes arena a total waste of time.
Uhm…
To be fair to the dev team, I don’t think this is a “Hike” per se.
If the troop prices are set to 20 gems, then for the majority of the player base this is actually a HUGE discount change.
Keep in mind not all the people just happen to have the right target of troops conveniently trained to level 15.
Before, new to semi-veteran players could only gawk speechlessly at the 200+ gem cost troops because they never worked on those troops.
It looks like the issue is only affecting the older base, who has most, if not all, of their troops leveled to max, and was enjoying the 1 gem cost. However, keep in mind that for the Rest of the public, this is a actually a nice change.
Anyway, I havn’t touch Arena in a while, so I’m not actually sure if the 20 gem cost apply to ALL arena purchases, or only those that are trained to max. So ignore me if I’m misunderstanding the situation completely.
Havent finished an arena in 1.09 but I’m pretty sure it’s 20 gems if all troops are at 15+ already. You cant give people 3 cards at level 15 for 20 gems.
For the lower price you actually have to have all 3 troops at lvl 15 or higher. this 300 is about the price of gems would be needed to buy the card and souls to level it up to 15.
