True. Fact. Relatable. Thanks.
2 Likes
@awryan I want to try and answer your question honestly. I changed my answer to yes based solely on Igniteiceās explanation. Iām in a similar point in the game as he is so i like the arena change if only for the fact that I didnāt play it before, wonāt play it now, but if i did at least I could get more trophies and some arena weekend event rewards. Itās something to do when Iāve done everything else in the game already. So my answer is a true yes, but understanding itās not for everyone and thatās ok. Least it wonāt affect game progression as itās an optional mode.
What I donāt like about the game:
Guild Wars: Not so much the mode itself as I know itās here to stay but the rewards are utter trash for guilds outside the top bracket. This mode either needs to be weekly to increase movement of active guilds up the brackets, or rework the reward system to be more even. I say this knowing the devs wonāt touch GW with a ten foot programming pole because of bracket 1 GW diehards.
Pure Faction: I donāt have time to do Tuesday event pure faction 500 runs so itās unfortunate I have to wait for additional kingdom level faction bonuses to open up in a few years to help with some delves. This is in combination with massively high hoard levels and some may still require Tuesday event runs with potions in the end. Itās a reality Iāve accepted though. A potential fix would have been allow us to use a hero weapon, even one of just that kingdom, but seeing the future of kingdom levels, I know now this is a dead solution.
Class level 100 talents: Most are useless and not worth leveling towards. On one hand this makes it easier for beginners and those who canāt grind a lot to get classes to a functional level quicker. But on the other hand doesnāt reward those who work towards 100.
Life and Death and Doomed converter affixes: Not the worst issues in the world in my opinion. But ones that def need to be fixed at some point in the future.
Treasure Hunt: Like everyone else in the game I think this needs a rework, but I wouldnāt put it as a top priority. Iām indifferent like with arena.
Tower of Doom: Itās unfortunate this event is now only between campaigns every 10 weeks. Any new player hoping to level up their doom weapons they have crafted might be waiting forever. Doesnāt mean much for endgamers but for beginner to mid-level players this is pretty brutal.
Explore rhythm: I donāt play explore a whole lot but itās annoying how many extra clicks you have to go through. More of a minor annoyance but one I feel could be adjusted.
PVP LB rewards: Iād love to see a rework of the LB rewards. As someone who has made the pvp LB an embarrassing amount of times, this would be a nice thing to adjust.
Ad Reward: I stopped clicking on the ad link a week after it came into the game. Donāt even notice flashes anymore. Rewards are absurdly low. I get they didnāt want to be in your face about selling out, but if you are going to, you might as well reward us for the effort. For 5k gold Iād click on a 30 second ad. I get the platform discrepancy issue, but still, it wouldnāt be economy breaking when you can make any of that up in 1 pvp battle.
Chat and communication rework: Unless you have a discord setup for your guild or guild network guild communication is very difficult. Especially if you want to DM someone. There are easy ways to allow DMās without being intrusive like having an āwould you like to allow private messages from player Xā feature. This is done well in other games. Just copy those, the devs did with battle pass, I mean sorry, campaign pass.
Inconsistency in trait/skill wording: This makes filtering a nightmare for some things. Some troops require more clear wording about what things do as to avoid confusion. Once you know what they do though, i tend to forget that itās an issue. Shouldnāt have to have a learning curve though.
Medals not attached to teams: I know they said this couldnāt be done. Still disappointing. Than again they said pause speed also couldnāt be adjustedā¦so there could be hope?
Kingdom weekly cycle: This has to be consistent to 34 weeks. I know they have some internal schedule of weekly kingdoms but going to a consistent 34 week cycle would be beneficial to soo many players. Donāt think this will ever happen, but one can hope.
Beginner learning curve: First, the game speed should be automatically put at 2x or higher and if not Luther needs to show how to adjust this. They have probably lost soo many players to slow game speed and donāt even realize it. They also have really really poor beginner level assistance. If a lower level player isnāt in a good guild or guild network they can forget about progressing at a reasonable rate. Networks shouldnāt have to carry soo much of the weight and since they do they should have better tools to help their communities(see in game chat above).
Pause Speed: FIXED. This would have been right at the top of my āthings I hate about GoWā. So thank you devs for this fix!
TL;DR: Gems has some issues but nothing that really affects the gameplay loop. Gems wonāt be reinventing the wheel so expecting them to is only going to setup more disappointment. Could the arena rework be better? Absolutely, but in my mind it is an improvement, even if only slightly and for a small portion of the game.
10 Likes
Iām going to test my thoughts later this week most likely.
But I honestly think this new Arena may be the savior for those who just want to play gems of war and donāt want to play a resource management/collection game.
So though it doesnāt appeal to me. And it canāt help with Guild Events.
New Arena allows players to get seals, trophies and gold for their guild. Without spending a dime or even worrying about raising kingdom stars or the 20 other things required for progression.
3 Likes
I can relate to that. Iāve actually played more than 3 rounds of Arena every day because itās somewhat fun, as long as I donāt get an overpowered troop (nor the enemy). I technically have other stuff I could/should be doing, like farming for medals, but I lost my motivation to grind months ago.
My poll answer is still no though, since Iām really only playing it because thereās not much else I want to do in the game, and I donāt want to get sucked into another game. I still think it needs a fair amount of work to be a game mode that Iām still going to be playing a month from now. But if Iām still playing it then, Iāll change my answer to yes.
2 Likes
One of my main issues with Arena now is being forced to select Godslayer/Siegebreaker troops often during the final draft.
They are great in the game modes that they were originally intended for, not so great in Arena.
1 Like
My answer is no because this really isnāt a rework at all. I am around for a long time and I can remember the old old arena without hero. This is just that, but the troop selection got worse because of all the crappy event troops. I had to choose between two tower troops and a boss troop. I just aborted the run.
I expected a real rework. Not this.
8 Likes
There are a ton of event troops that are amazing. Which ones did you think were useless?
Almost all of the Tower killers are bad because most of them do just base dmg, or the bonuses they have are conditional or based on chance. When you are picking them last, the conditional ones are a long shot at best. And banking on chance just means it lets you down when you need it most.
However, Kartek the Climber (remove 10 armor from all enemies), Sir Wulfric (add 8 armor to all allies) & Toadsqueezer are good to have.
Boss Killers have a few more than that that are good to have: Birchthorn (Entangle all), Envoy of Pride (Steal 4 magic from all enemies), Lord Ehrondil (Damage boosted by enemy Mana 1:1), Lucifria (Burn all enemies), Moira (Green to Doomskulls).
Remember there are other Epics that are much better than most of the ākillersā
2 Likes
I try to avoid negativity, but I also try to avoid dishonesty. Soooooā¦ I voted no. Iām one of those unicorns that actually played arena pretty regularly. Even though my weird self enjoyed it, I certainly recognized the many problems.
However, not only does this change not address those many problems, it removes the one thing that somewhat mitigated the problems.
I voted early, but waited until I had a chance to to really dig into the new arena to actually post. For me, a good change is one that makes something better. Better can mean any number of things. I canāt find a single ābetter boxā to check on this change. I want to say the reduction from 8 battles to 6. Butā¦ the battles are almost exponentially longer, so no.
The gameplay is essentially the same other than not being able to count on one slot. Thus, there is at best (Iām being really generous) no change in fun.
The rewards have been significantly nerfed. They were lackluster before, now they are more or less lackluster/2.
So basically itās not more fun, more interesting, more lucrative or less time consuming. This was a change that solved zero problems for the apparent 99.9% of folks who hated arena and caused problems for the 0.1% of us that enjoyed it enough to play it regularly.
This is why I voted no. Side noteā¦ all of my offers, every single one, were for icky delve treasures.
16 Likes
So now, there is a possibility for someone to lose a battle in arena. Is that why many are disliking the change?
P.S.: This is only a curious question.
I think (at least part of) the case is, rather:
If you lose a fight because you have been forced to draft a bad team (either because of limited choices or lack of context in current choosings, as their usefulness are dependent upon future choices), then you are likely to lose the entire run.
Because your team is bad. Basically.
And this problem [I am stuck with a bad team through no real fault of my own] leads to many of the other complaints Iāve seen, too: battles become slow, certain troops become OP and insurmountable, mana-blocked troops arenāt fun to fill mana for, nor is hunting-and-pecking for skulls, etcā¦
And thatās before anyone even touches the rewards aspect, let alone the rewards-per-unit-time. Or the āshould the hero be used in this modeā debate.
Anyway, thatās what I seem to be seeing from people whose complaints arenāt just railing against Arena for being what itās always been: bare-bones mode, meaning low levels, no traits, no higher rarities, etcā¦
People who donāt like that are never going to be pleased unless the Arena is erased and replaced with a mode where their progressions matter ā against the spirit of the mode, I think (though Iād have been on board if the rework had allowed one to choose between 3 Arena styles: Bare-bones, Your Current Progress, and All-The-Marbles where all content would be available in a no-holds-barred version).
6 Likes
No. With the reduced amount of key rewards, itā s even more useless to play now.
2 Likes
Ah see thereās the problem. I donāt think expecting [good] things to happen is ā¦ correct ā¦ anymore.
10 Likes
New arena is okay I guess but itās not something I will spend any time playing other than during campaign reqs. But that was also the case with its predecessor. Today I came up against a looping heronath deck which I could never have beaten. I also had a draft set with 2 summoners; I was surprised that both summoned troops were empowered (one was spirit fox) despite no traits supposedly being active.
I miss the third option āindifferentā
I feel that selection has been made worse because
-
before: you can select troops knowing your weapon and build around that
-
now:you donāt have that clue, so your choice are basically random.
Resource nerf is meaningless; crap before, crap now (except trophy hunting, which I donāt understand in first place, whatever). Certainly not good however.
New event is a sure skip for me , so no bother.
The rest is the same,soā¦ rework???
4 Likes
Not sure if it was a case earlier, but gnomes appear in Arena after rework.
How to find a Gnome
You donāt need to unlock Gnomes as they have a very small chance to spawn into battles including:
- Quest
- Explore
- PvP
- Pet Gnomes only appear in PVP (including ranked PVP, casual and Arena)
- Challenges
- Arena
Gnomes should not spawn in other battles such as Guild Wars and Training Battles.
2 Likes
After playing it over and over yesterday, I would say that itās not harder to win. The problem, as I stated (perhaps badly) is that none of the changes make Arena better in any way.
I play this mode quite often. I really wanted to like the revamp. But there is simply no angle to look at this āfixā and see it as an improvement.
3 Likes
Well, except when itās a campaign task and you need to win all 8 arena battles in one run.
Perfect waiste of time or 100 diamonds just to skip the campaign task to be able to continue in the campaign.
Otherwise Iām perfectly fine to ignore the Arena completely.
2 Likes
Arena isnāt hard at all. No one has an advantage over anyone else, so if someone is saying āArena is impossible!ā they at least canāt say others are winning because of hero level or weapons or troops they own or anything else.
Itās also one of the fastest ways to earn trophies now. You can get ~600 per hour if youāre fast.