Cascading consequences of the arena ranking system.

HershBathens

I had a tough GW today. Around battle 8, I faced a maxed, whale team of QGJ, FOTP, Poe. Leia, and Poggle. A team designed for the current meta in the arena. I sent in a suicide squad, the opponents used all of their first turn powers and killed my squad. I then sent in my squad, 4 levels lower, with a mix of 7, 6 and 4 star characters. It was extremely easy. Those toons are set up for maximum first turn damage and control with only minimal staying power. Why does this game place such a high value on one playing style?

In contrast, I faced a later battle with characters only 1 level above me. That team included Daka, Dooku, Lumi, Sid, and one Phasma. This battle was much, much more difficult because this team was built to last multiple turns. Even though the characters were not Meta and not maxed out, they created a larger challenge. A suicide squad is of no help for a team like that.

It seems this is driven by the way the arena ranks are determined. With arena ranks being determined by the rank of the person you defeat, battles have to have a time limit or high ranks could just sit on a battle and never move down. But that 5 minute limit puts an artificial value on fast battles. The major nerf to happen so far was to lower the effectiveness of tanking and healing because it extended too many battles out of the 5 minute limit.

If that 5 minute limit was not a consideration, then there could be more diverse playing styles that are effective. Surely there are other ways of determining ranks among players. Ones that do not require battles to be done in a short amount of time so that first turn damage and control are not the most effective way.

From a game player perspective. It is not very fun to play a game when many of fully leveled and starred characters do not even get to take a turn because I lost the coin flip to start the battle. In general, every fully starred and leveled character should survive to at least take 1 turn before dying. Sure bad toons or poorly synergized teams should not win. But they should be able to survive long enough to take at least 1 turn.

Triqui

If you don't have timer, people will start battles and stall them forever, to avoid being attacked.

HershBathens

I know. With this type of arena ranking system, a battle timer is needed because it can lock out people. All of the game play issues cascade from this one decision about how to set up the arena rankings. A different system would not require this kind of timer, so there would be no push to keep battles to be decided in the first turn. If battles were not decided for 3 or 4 turns, a much more diverse battle meta could be developed.