Arena payout change proposal

NinjaOfSEA

The number one change I'd like to see in arena in this game would be if we could collect our payout whenever we want, and then immediately had a 24 hour cooldown until collecting the next payout.

This is how some other games work, and it works beautifully: no sniping, no weird schedule pressure, no crowded shards.

You just climb when you have time, collect rewards for your highest rank, and call it good. It solves so much of the angst that players experience in the arena.

The trick would be to find a mechanism that allows scarcity of prizes to be maintained, but without the pressure of an arbitrary arena payout time.

Are there other potential downsides that I'm missing? Please chime in with your thoughts.

dhongshowman

@CG_Kozispoon please!

Kyno

It would be really hard to keep the prize scarcity in a system like that.

NinjaOfSEA

Perhaps there could be a one-time selection mechanism to allow us to choose a payout that works well for us? Mine is the moment I clock out of work, which means that the busiest hour of my work day (the last hour) is also when I need to battle back up to first place and lock out against sniping. Not ideal!

TimMarshall

No

Necromorg

yeah would be an amazing quality of life change, there would likely be an increase in payouts from this but I'm sure the designers could come up with something (if they even need to because outside of the top spots it probably wouldn't be a huge impact.

phinfan309

You might as well throw out the ranking system. People are already upset collusion (doesn't bother me). This would just make it worse. You could could have 20+ people get rank 1 rewards every day. How does that benefit the game? In terms of the individual payout time, it could be good if they allowed you to request a different payout time. Mine is fine the way it is but I know other people who have a bad one. They would probably get inundated with requests though so that's not realistic either unfortunately. It's just part of the game that everyone has to deal with.

AntiHeld

Well you can alrady have 24 ppl claiming rank 1 rewards during a day - so no big issue if there were some more. My proposal would go a step further: Keep the payout time, but simply rate the highest rank you could archieve during the day.
That way you would have absolute flexibility every day regarding when you have the time to play your arena games.
The way it is now sucks big time because you actually have to keep the hour before payout rid of any diversion. And the hour after that fpr fleet arena. Not easy for someone having to work, or with other obligations...

Kyno

It is clear we don't care if more people get max rewards, but it does devalue that a little. I'm sure the dev teams cares. They set up the system to reward X amount of crystals, changes that allow for more than 24 payouts of each position drastically increases the amount of crystals in game.

AntiHeld

Sure. And it's not only max rewards but affects all the other ranks, too. Of course there would be more crystals distributed. 2 Solutions to this:
1. The game is already so havily developed towards microtransactions and p2w that a few crystals more won't matter, but would be an improvement to the game expierience of the customer.
2. People who get paid for it could calculate, discuss and if necessary adapt the rewards.
So I think this is a problem that can easily be solved.

The real problem ist, that the arena system as it is now, forces you to priorize the game in your real life scedule for 2 hours a day. And that ist something players and good developers should always avoid in my opinion.
And one last thougt about the "value" of a good rank (not only in crystals). A big portion of ones ranking depends on the number of competitors from his time zone one has in his rank area. 2 weeks ago I could easily quit my 5 arena matches 30 min before payout and be sure nothing happens to my rank. Now some players changed around me and my rank depends mainly on how tight I can time my Arena matches to 18 o'clock. Not mainly on my team and playstyle but on timing... so the value of the rank as it is now is highliy questionable anyway.

ctyc123

The real issue is some time zones are just worse than others. Why would someone spend real life cash if he or she knows that they are losing x number of crystals everyday to another person whose payout is alone.even though he can get top spot.

Kyno

Changing the payout amount because there are more payouts.

And adding additional payouts to the day.

Those 2 things would devalue the payout in the "mind of the player", which is what I mean by devalue. Not the biggest issue, but something to consider when looking at ideas like this.

The model is fairly f2p friendly when all things considered. IMO