I genuinely want to know a real answer to the question. I want to be able to play the arena. But the devs make it so crazy and unbearable that it ruins the fun overall for the game.
Whether it’s rigged drafting choices or in the match RNG that always favors the AI. It’s complete bull shit.
(Just the most recent example of RNG being rigged)
This was right after I drafted a decent team but didn’t win more than 1 match because the teams I faced got all the skull cascades and people will just keep drafting until they get a decent team so that leaves every defense with at least 1 power house.
The whole thing is just painful. And you’ll find maybe 5-10% of the player base who endures arena just to boost the overall trophy count. But does anyone even enjoy it besides the few who say they do just to troll?
This is the only Arena I have known, and I find it pretty fun. I found a guide with a bunch of tips and it has helped me to consistently get 5-6 wins each run.
The highlights were:
Always take skulls
Select troops That deal damage to multiple enemies > Can do sustained damage (burn/bleed) > grant extra turns.
Destroy is better than explode, especially if it is boosted
Remember none of your bonuses apply to Arena, so damage is king.
I enjoy Arena, but I don’t farm it. I imagine I would get irritated by the mana conflict presented by the lineup RNG if I farmed this mode for an hour+ straight.
Basically, I find myself drafting with a strategy that uses that first single color troop as a planned meat shield because of the constant mana blocking.
I’m not convinced the drafting RNG is rigged; it’s more the case that purely-random selections from the troop pool very often won’t have any synergy. (And there’s also probably a bit of selection bias here in that we will tend to remember – and complain about here! – the drafts which are particularly egregiously non-synergistic.)
I suspect what would really help here would actually be to rig the drafting RNG slightly in the player’s favor; bias it towards showing more troops that match color/type/kingdom boosts on previous-tier picks, fewer troops that mana-block previous-tier picks.
I’ve documented before where a troop is boosted by a certain color type and then none of that color was available out of 9 other troops. So my OP was not an isolated experience.
@Sunnovah is obviously just trying to be friendly and helpful. There’s no need to bite their head off or expect them to know your history with the game. I think this is an unfairly rude unwarranted response to someone that was trying to help address issues you posted about.
Yeah, no, I was thinking specifically of stuff like your Tuskor example, where its spell is boosted by blue allies but the RNG didn’t offer you any.
I think this was simply bad luck; you think it was rigged against you. But either way it’s frustrating and it’d be a better experience if the game leaned a little towards deliberately offering synergistic draft picks.
The more important question is why are you playing arena if you hate it so much? The occasional imperial deed offer? I haven’t done an arena battle in months and I’m much happier for it. Not worth the aggravation it obviously gives you.
Hey there, I am just trying to help. I was trying to lay out some of the tips I read that helped me. You certainly don’t have to follow them if you don’t want to. Enjoy the game how you want to.
What I mean by Destroy being better than explode, as an example is [Excavator]. Granted this is columns and not rows, so you can’t use this to grab an extra turn, but you get all the mana from it, plus a chance at an extra turn with the gems created.
I got just this troop in an Arena draft earlier today, and he was quite beneficial to my team.
Because you are getting An Ultra-Rare, Rare, Uncommon and Common, and 1 of each from among hundreds, there is very little likelihood that you will get anything synergistic. This is why I feel you should always draft for damage.
I still have bad runs where I get 1 or 2 wins, but more often than not now I am 6 and done. YMMV.
I have no idea what your experience is in the game. I myself have only been playing about a month, though I have been playing Match 3 games since Bejeweled. I am actually playing Arena to learn more about each troop and familiarize myself with them.
At the end of the day I am just someone on the internet trying to help. If you don’t like what I say, you can always ignore me.
I probably have something like a 75% chance to not lose a match and I still think this is one of the least-fun most-bad parts of the game.
Troops in here are just bad. Unless they’re not, in which case they’re dumb as rocks. We have troops hard-coded to gain 12 life and 12 armor while nuking something, for instance. On the flip side, “destroy x random gems” where x is now equal to two or three or something … ehhh …
Yes. I shouldn’t disagree with any opinion that was unsolicitedly given to me.
Had I said anywhere in the OP. Hey, any tips to make my experience better? Then it would’ve much more warranted.
So now you’re attacking me. For me standing up for myself and basically saying I’m not asking for help here. Because you feel the need to get involved.
“Obviously”…I should learn to play the arena better and also just thank people when I’m treated like I’m ignorant about a topic. Got it dude.
That’s also a great issue that I forgot to mention!
The AI difficulty scales from ridiculously hard to beat. (Or the match just stalls and takes forever)
Or…the AI purposely let’s you win.
Which may be the reason some still like the arena.
It’s a fact that in PvP the AI takes it easier on some players compared to others. So there’s probably some code trying to do the same thing in the arena.
But the arena (more than anything else in the game) should be the most even playing field possible. So any artificial difficulty imposed is stupid.
They should be able to track how many people actually interact with a game mode from the back end. If its a low number, then there might be a problem. At the same time, they just changed it in the last year and probably dont want to change it again willingly (and are stuck on a very unflexable schedule as is) .
The answer to your screenshot is to redraft and call it a day.
I love arena. I win 5-6 battles in 99% of runs. I wish the devs made the rewards better but even now it’s my most played game mode. One troop like Armored Boar or Rock Spirit or Ranger or alike let you win even if the rest of the team is total trash. At the moment it’s the only place in GoW giving a real variety in battles.
