Arena has become very messy!

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Perhaps I've gotten a little selfish and greedy with arena but lately I see a bunch of new faces appear and that bothers me.

It's like you can't do anything to surpass these people as with a meta so diverse everyone can beat you. You run a Rey team, they smash you using Palpatine or Nightsisters. You run Palpatine or Nightsisters, they smash you with cheap Titans or Rex. You run Titans or Rex, they smash you with everything available.

It's a little bit disappointing cause it doesn't take much effort to get any of those teams either. By now everyone has at least 2 of the four dominant teams in arena (Rey, Palpatine, Nightsisters , Titans) so it's impossible to escape.

I used to do 2-4 battles a day and I would comfortably maintain my rank. Nowadays I gotta always do all 5 and some times I'm forced to even refresh to get back to where I was. My mods are pretty decent too however with the current meta and their counters a team with lesser speed can defeat teams with higher speed.

I think this creates a messy situation that increases playing time significantly as well as making arena very volatile and stressful. Perhaps it's time to consider different payout methods as well as better defensive strategies that can allow you to actually win on defense.

Replies

  • scuba
    14034 posts Member
    Welcome to diversity.
  • I see competition. It’s how it should be. No one should be comfortable sitting at the top of a shard forever even with the “collusion” coordination with shard mates to rotate payout times.
  • Just wait until everyone starts unlocking traya. Then either you won't lose, or won't win.
  • To be fair, I would MUCH rather have the current volatile and chaotic arena where one must actually work for their spot. It's supposed to be an ACTUAL arena, where everyone is competing and the best of the best win. You shouldn't be comfortably winning, in my opinion. Fight for your spot, or lose it.

    At least, those are my feelings on it, and my experience with the game. I'd much rather have this rather than the almost imperious reign of CLS when he first came out.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    To be fair, I would MUCH rather have the current volatile and chaotic arena where one must actually work for their spot. It's supposed to be an ACTUAL arena, where everyone is competing and the best of the best win. You shouldn't be comfortably winning, in my opinion. Fight for your spot, or lose it.

    At least, those are my feelings on it, and my experience with the game. I'd much rather have this rather than the almost imperious reign of CLS when he first came out.
    scuba wrote: »
    Welcome to diversity.

    sums it all up nicely. :smile:
  • Random9
    510 posts Member
    Lol. It's called diversity, and it's the optimal state of arena. What fun is it if some people who got a character are in the top 20 and the people who didn't are far down? Now, Palp can compete, Rey can compete, Rex can compete, CLS can compete, even first order and murder bears can compete. Nothing is perfect, and that means diversity. I'm sure you're someone who got CLS the first time around and ran titans to sit at the top of your arena without effort. That was nice, but that era is over now. If your placing top 20, buying a 50 crystal refresh is nothing.
  • Jeric
    271 posts Member
    Yep, there's a counter for almost every team at the moment. Traya may change that, but if you have a deep enough roster you development it the current environment allows for versatility. That's a good thing.
  • Shaunyvee
    916 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    An empire/sith squad with a maxed Sion is still an absolute pain to play against.

    Aoe stuns from palpatine every other turn, sions aoe buff-wipe, insane TM Gain, Nihilus smashing your cooldowns, Thrawn fracturing out a toon completely.

    So many things that can cause a device to be thrown against the wall.

    It is good that because of the diversity I can usually choose to attack a different squad.

    Arena is good currently IMO.
  • I am half agree with the OP and the rest, but I have different thoughts on this matter...Yes, I absolutely welcome diversity and a more heterogeneous arena with different teams, BUT, what happens with old players who wants to keep improving their arena teams and they can't because of level and gear cap??? I have my main arena (nightmare) team with full lvl 12 gear and zetas and I don't have a chance to get better than that, and many slowest players are also fighting on top 50 because it's easy to have a decent team in a short amount of time... We want to improve our CURRENT teams and we can't, I don't want reworks, I don't want new characters, I just want to KEEP LEVELING AND GEARING UP arena team. CG should start increasing level and gear cap.
  • Wouldn't it be great if it were the same old teams fighting the same old battles and getting the same old results...


    Er, no.

  • Darth_Julienus1
    394 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    I get the pros and cons that have been said. I have to say there is "diversity" and "diversity".

    It is just not normal that speed was negated in such a way. I spent a considerable and regular amount of cantina energy to get to where I am now (+110-131 speed in arena), yet a mirror team with 20-30 speed less on each toon can easily wins on offense. I made this sacrifice at the expense of farming more toons with my cantina energy and I am often at a lower GP level than some FTP players despite spending regularly.

    Why is arena messed up? Because enemy Sion gets to held by hatred faster when being passive because the enemy team is much slower, because you have this silly coin toss that determines who goes next, because somehow DN can annihilate on his second move (yes yes, his cooldown decreases when stunned), because of the RNG around Palp's stuns, because EP sucks against RJT on defense, etc.

    So many reasons to say that the arena is anything but healthy at the moment.

    There are days when the gods are simply against you and you will lose 3-4 fight in a row against a team you easily win against. You try everything (e.g. your vader uses his basic on enemy vader to inflict ability block and get the speed order respected but no, enemy sion and DN have their cooldowns reducing in the background and their next move completely turn the tide against you).

    This is not a healthy meta, it's snipers central, and this is just a race to the bottom with weaker teams able to compete.

  • Oh, and I forgot a very important point, more diversity in the arena penalizes people with a payout in a very populated area. I have a Western Europe payout where you have a lot of players pilled up, and making it easier for people to win on Offense makes your payout even messier.

    The mechanics of arena are broken, the payout concept is discriminatory against people living in area with a high concentration of players. Arena should be much closer to TW where you would face a number of teams and the more arena prepared rosters should prevail.

    I see people running 1 year old teams because they are alone at their payout and they can climb quietly with an outdated team and they don't have to worry about chasing the meta. I need to stay on top of my arena with the strongest team at all time otherwise I get quickly de-ranked by fellow shard players climbing at the same time.
  • I'm seeing a shift too, a few weeks ago I was comfortably hovering between places 120-200, nowadays when I get home from work, I lost 150 places in 5 hours... By then, I don't have the time to climb back into the 100-200 slot.
  • you've just described a balanced game... that's not a bad thing
  • Isn't a competitive arena what most people have been asking for?
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    The downside of "ballance" everyone seems to ignore when they want OP characters nerfed. With mods not adding that much of a competative advantage anymore and so many teams that are amazeballs on offence vs specific other teams that are also amazeballs on offence, there's not alot you can do to outperform your peers. Coincedentilly mods and OP characters are one of the most complained about subjects on this forum along with powercreep. When i read those complaints i always think that the ones complaining think that they would have done better ingame if it wasn't for OP characters, mods and powercreep, but removing those aspects would just result in more competition at the top, making it even harder to maintain a high rank.
    I can't wait for traya to make her appearce on the scene, that will shake up things a little atleast temporary. I've been saying this since like forever, balance is not something we should want ;)
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • CPace
    151 posts Member
    I'm using an old meta. Wedge and Biggs with rebels and it' still good but it's not good against many things on defense which is disappointing. Also, when I was at level 72, I've noticed I've been having these level max teams that were almost impossible to beat unless i got a better team. Which is pretty sad, especially that I am a F2P player
  • CPace wrote: »
    I'm using an old meta. Wedge and Biggs with rebels and it' still good but it's not good against many things on defense which is disappointing. Also, when I was at level 72, I've noticed I've been having these level max teams that were almost impossible to beat unless i got a better team. Which is pretty sad, especially that I am a F2P player

    Just wait until late game
  • pinkfloyd wrote: »
    I am half agree with the OP and the rest, but I have different thoughts on this matter...Yes, I absolutely welcome diversity and a more heterogeneous arena with different teams, BUT, what happens with old players who wants to keep improving their arena teams and they can't because of level and gear cap??? I have my main arena (nightmare) team with full lvl 12 gear and zetas and I don't have a chance to get better than that, and many slowest players are also fighting on top 50 because it's easy to have a decent team in a short amount of time... We want to improve our CURRENT teams and we can't, I don't want reworks, I don't want new characters, I just want to KEEP LEVELING AND GEARING UP arena team. CG should start increasing level and gear cap.

    I don't necessarily think gear level and level cap is the answer, it won't be long before everyone catches up
  • I see competition. It’s how it should be. No one should be comfortable sitting at the top of a shard forever even with the “collusion” coordination with shard mates to rotate payout times.
    I agreee. Its a game, defend your position and dont wine on forums like a kid!
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    I see competition. It’s how it should be. No one should be comfortable sitting at the top of a shard forever even with the “collusion” coordination with shard mates to rotate payout times.

    What the OP described is one of the reasons it pays off to "collude"' with your shardmates though. Winning on offence was never the issue, being sniped during pay-out was and still is. Colluding with your shardmates decreases the chances of being sniped, the more players being able to snipe you, the more beneficial colluding becomes.
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • leef wrote: »
    I see competition. It’s how it should be. No one should be comfortable sitting at the top of a shard forever even with the “collusion” coordination with shard mates to rotate payout times.

    What the OP described is one of the reasons it pays off to "collude"' with your shardmates though. Winning on offence was never the issue, being sniped during pay-out was and still is. Colluding with your shardmates decreases the chances of being sniped, the more players being able to snipe you, the more beneficial colluding becomes.

    That
  • jursllla wrote: »
    I see competition. It’s how it should be. No one should be comfortable sitting at the top of a shard forever even with the “collusion” coordination with shard mates to rotate payout times.
    I agreee. Its a game, defend your position and dont wine on forums like a kid!

    Don't you see the paradox here though? You say "defend" your possition however no team can stand on defense any longer. The only way to defend is by attacking and since attacks are limited to 5 without spending crystals to refreshe, but you can be attacked unlimited amount of times, it creates a problematic situation because if you get hit 6 times but can only attack 5 times now you are forced to buy a refresh just to get back to where you were before.

    When it comes to being hit more than 5 times, you can't really do anything about that, even the scariest nightmare team is a piece of cake for my Rex team so it's basically all luck at this point.
  • The real problem is multiple payout hours in the same arena shard. The fact that you have 5-6 players in each shard who are in sparsely populated timezones that have little to no competition and an easy path to the number one spot, while other players in the same shard have 10+ active players in the same payout hour plus active players in the hour before and after them.

    Why should people in Paris and Chicago have more built in competition than someone in Hawaii or Portugal? Players in “off” timezones get to accumulate more crystals faster, which gets them into better guild, which gets them better guild rewards.
  • The real problem is multiple payout hours in the same arena shard. The fact that you have 5-6 players in each shard who are in sparsely populated timezones that have little to no competition and an easy path to the number one spot, while other players in the same shard have 10+ active players in the same payout hour plus active players in the hour before and after them.

    Why should people in Paris and Chicago have more built in competition than someone in Hawaii or Portugal? Players in “off” timezones get to accumulate more crystals faster, which gets them into better guild, which gets them better guild rewards.

    I have 5 people with the same payout in fleet who we cooperate with and at least 2 more not in chat. Others in my chat who live in Europe have 7-8 people and then there a a couple guys who are the only ones in their payout so they always get 1st...
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    PeteSolo wrote: »
    I used to do 2-4 battles a day and I would comfortably maintain my rank. Nowadays I gotta always do all 5 and some times I'm forced to even refresh to get back to where I was.

    [...]

    I think this creates a messy situation that increases playing time significantly as well as making arena very volatile and stressful. Perhaps it's time to consider different payout methods as well as better defensive strategies that can allow you to actually win on defense.

    Perhaps it is time for you to be gratefull you had an easy time for so long, that you got used to it and regard it as the norm rather than having a competitive arena.

  • Waqui wrote: »
    PeteSolo wrote: »
    I used to do 2-4 battles a day and I would comfortably maintain my rank. Nowadays I gotta always do all 5 and some times I'm forced to even refresh to get back to where I was.

    [...]

    I think this creates a messy situation that increases playing time significantly as well as making arena very volatile and stressful. Perhaps it's time to consider different payout methods as well as better defensive strategies that can allow you to actually win on defense.

    Perhaps it is time for you to be gratefull you had an easy time for so long, that you got used to it and regard it as the norm rather than having a competitive arena.

    Well that's just not true, you don't know how much effort I've put in my squads so far so your statement has no backing
  • TVF
    36519 posts Member
    Easy only having to battle 2-4 times a day, not easy getting to that point.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
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