Reporting the prevailing sentiment in my shard chat about arena: an RNG-fest

FraxisStargazer

Currently, arena is viewed as an RNG fest in my squad arena shard.

At first people thought it was simply a gap in mod quality, but even people with competitive mods and fully geared DR and DMalak feel they have little to no control on their victories. Here's the wide variety of experiences reported:

• One day your climb is easy, your squad doesn't run out of protection in any of the fights.
• Other days, you're 0-3 vs that same DR/DM squad you beat yesterday, even if nothing, not even their mods has changed.
• On even worse days, you can't even beat the same squad you beat yesterday, even after you asked for a de-mod.
• Then sometimes, when you're frustrated, you just enter the next battle and hit auto... and win.

The above doesn't seem sensible. These players aren't noobs (I don't think so at least) and have been playing for most of the game's life, but everyone who has had something to say about the current meta has only said something of dissatisfaction and/or confusion (most of it coming out with the DR/DMalak meta. The JKR meta was nowhere near as contentious).

It seems like there's no figuring the meta out - there's only throwing yourself into what's practically a roll of the dice every fight.

Some of the things being said are:
"This isn't fun anymore."
"Anyone want to buy an account? I might be close to walking away."
"I saved for malak...and for what? to always guarantee 2x refreshes and more importantly not to use him on a climb.."
"I'm never spending again"

My personal experience jives with the above, even if my DR and DM are still WIP. I use JKR with JKA, and I'll beat the best DR/DM team in the shard one day, then the next day I wont. The bad thing is, I will not be able to tell you why it went either way, because force knows I've been trying to figure it out to keep up.

I hope you guys can make use of this information. I love the game, but sometimes I feel like I'm in a bad relationship.

Cheers, may the force be with you.

PS - This doesn't even touch on the "Nerf found counters" thing that started with DMalak

leef

FraxisStargazer wrote: »

[*] On even worse days, you can't even beat the same squad you beat yesterday, even after you asked for a de-mod.

YaeVizsla

FraxisStargazer wrote: »

PS - This doesn't even touch on the "Nerf found counters" thing that started with DMalak

Only one change has been made to target a counter.

That was to prevent a fifth Palpatine meta. This is not unreasonable; he's had enough metas for a very long time.

Nikoms565

The OP isn't wrong. Some of our shard chat has stated the same things and I'm on a launch shard.

TVF

You are?

Kiritoismyname

Same experience. Its like any fleet 2.0 meta before you finally give cassian the yellow balls.

FraxisStargazer

YaeVizsla wrote: »

FraxisStargazer wrote: »

PS - This doesn't even touch on the "Nerf found counters" thing that started with DMalak

Only one change has been made to target a counter.

That was to prevent a fifth Palpatine meta. This is not unreasonable; he's had enough metas for a very long time.

While I agree that Palpatine has had enough metas, they did consider doing it for JKA. He's just not consistent enough for it. If he was doing it as consistently as Palp, they no doubt he would have gotten the nerf-hammer. This was made clear by their recent post regarding JKA, saying that "he is performing as desired" or something like that. Meaning, it is clearly policy to curate the meta even if it takes 1) nerfing newfound counters 2) nerfing recently reworked charcters.

The issue with this is that it makes resource allocation tricky, because, if you happen to find a counter, or want to test for one, you risk your gear investment being nullified by the devs.

For example, in a fictional scenario where they release a character that is supposed to make the top of arena, then you as the player make the amazing discovery that it can possibly be countered by some weird, underused character, like Lobot.

Before this policy was made known, it would be easy enough to invest and attempt the counter, because if it succeeded, you had a reasonable expectation that the "Final text" in the new character's release was truly final for at least several months. This is part of the game's fun, figuring it out, figuring how to break the meta. But, because countering something that SHOULD be meta is punished by the devs, you don't get to do that anymore.

This is also a negative impact on the community, because now theorycrafters have less incentive to work the meta, because the devs are (I'm assuming obligated) to keep it a certain way that favors new releases.

Granted, this could all be solved by the upcoming test servers, because more rigorous testing would help ensure that "final text" is indeed "final" for a reasonable amount of time that justifies gear investment. That devs are moving in this direction shows that they recognize that the current system of "achieve expected utility at all costs" is problematic.

Mzee

Yeah. The RNG in this game has always been frustrating. With Darth Revan I find I only lose to people with faster Fallens (I just need that furnace and mine will be quickest in my shard) If yours is slower then you can't land her fear and no debuffs. Makes all the difference.

YaeVizsla

You say you understand that Palpatine has enough metas, but Anakin is the exact same situation.

The problem under consideration with Anakin was not Anakin doing to well against Drevalak. It was what Anakin let Kevan do to Drevalak.

We just came off of six months where Kevan was 90+% of the meta. If Anakin had proven to be a hard counter to Drevalak, then Drevalak would have been driven out of the top slot within weeks by the thing that's been the most ubiquitous meta in the game's history for half a year, with the only change being a launch toon.

If there is one thing that could be worse than letting Palp meta 5 happen, it's letting Kevan meta 2 happen weeks after Malak dropped. I do not believe the reaction would have been quite the same if the team that was faring well after the rework was, say, GK, Snips, Ani, 3PO, R2 winning against Drevalak but losing against Kevan, instead of what looked like a potential Kevan hard lock on the meta. Which they decided wasn't happening, so it was fine.

Putting Anakin on a Kevan team was not a triumph of clever theorycrafting. It was using the newest Jedi on the previous meta Jedi team to keep it rolling. It wasn't a case of Thrawntroopers with Magma serving as antimeta when the triumvirate was at its height.

People have been saying for a long time they want more communication. But more communication means parting the kimono a little bit on the fact that the game and every aspect of it is designed. Deliberately. Including the meta. That's neither a secret nor a surprise. That's game design.

Antimeta can exist, but the meta will always be the designed central unit or units.

And tweaking things when design goals collapse is not punishing theory crafting. It's also game design. And the honest communication we're getting around it is dissolving the illusions people seemed to have around the myths of much being organic in the game.

FraxisStargazer

Thanks YaeVisla, I think taken from that angle, it becomes more understandable why a potential nerf to JKA was acceptable to people had it been able to create JKR Part 2. I do accept that the meta is designed, I can't imagine why people would imagine otherwise.

I just don't like it, when I, the player, am the one who is punished for their design goals collapsing. Granted, from their perspective, they would be punishing players either way. In the example of the palpatine nerf (through malak's tweaks), they could
a) punish the people who worked for/bought malak and leave it be or
b) punish the people who upgraded palps to beat dr+dm (an admittedly narrow, but not necessarily F2P slice of the game)
From the capitalist perspective it's easy to see how this was decided.

If you can wish for an ideal world where people don't have myths about this game being organic, then there's room to wish that smart design decisions are made so that no part of the player base is punished by rushed or incomplete design.

I do accept that what they're doing is game design. But is it good game design? Is releasing content, that causes players to invest resources in a certain way, then very quickly taking away the value of said investment good game design? Even the devs seem to think it isn't, or else they wouldn't be pushing for a more rigorous way of testing their releases before dubbing them final.

FraxisStargazer

So several points:
1) If JKA had made JKR consistent enough to dominate the meta again, that would be a bad thing - agree

2) BUT ensuring metas do not overdominate is not mutually exclusive with releasing content that doesn't need immediate rework, that doesn't cause players to invest resources and then have that investment be nullified. (I'm assuming the response to this is your final point, "tweaking things when design goals collapse... is also game design" will get to that in number 4)

3) "Putting Anakin on a Kevan team was not a triumph of clever theorycrafting". Okay, agree, but what about palps?

I honestly don't know the answer to this question. I can see what you are getting at with the JKA vs Magmathrawn comparison, but I can't draw clear lines between theorycrafting and not theorycrafting. If the solution is easy (one read of palps zeta can tell you he has potential) is it still theorycrafting? Also if the palps discovery was easy, why didn't the devs see it? This seems to be a long, separate discussion.

4) Just because something is game design, doesn't mean it isn't also punishing theorycrafting. To say "tweaking things when design goals collapse is not punishing theory crafting. It's also game design." seems like a false dichotomy. Something can be both punishing to theory crafters and valid game design. That being said, because the term theorycrafting is a bit subjective, we can still draw a clearer line using player loss instead. To illustrate:

Devs release content > Player invests resources in counter devs didn't see > Devs use valid game design tactic and nerf counter in very quick time frame BUT do not refund recent investments in said counter > result is player loss of resources without time to reap benefits of investment (along with preserving the desired meta)

The meta is designed yes. Not a lot of the game is organic, sure. Tweaking is game design, certainly. But is tweaking at the cost of player loss good game design? Even the developers seem to think otherwise as evidenced by their desire for a better, more rigorous, testing process before the release of content.