The Meta and Arena Shards Punish Progress (Long post)
March 10, 2017 12:55AM
edited March 2017
TL;DR Arena shards make progress (and rewards from progress) almost soley based on comparison to competitive peermates, and not actual progress. I make a team that is better than my old team, but I did it slower than my whale shard, I'm punished, not rewarded even though I made progress.
I wonder how many people are in my boat. So, I want to transition to a Sith team, or maybe a FO Team, anything that isnt my current wiggs+rex... but im behind my competition on them, and by the time I have those teams ready I know my arena shard will have moved on to the next meta, be that phoenix or whatever.
Lots of people complain about the meta, which tbh is a lot cooler than when I started (diversity wise) but there's the still the issue that while the meta includes a lot more teams, youre still not able to farm those teams before they lose their luster (unless youre a whale or an old vet player). And think about this: Maybe you farmed your FO team slowly due to your lack of gear, but I garauntee you you surely are building a team faster and a better team, than probably the majority of the playerbase. Yet your rank drops, and you lose progress!
What's the solution?
In addition to arena shards, which im not saying we need to get rid of, we need a game mode that compares us not to people who are always roughly equal, but the whole playerbase. Why does this solve chasing the meta? Because if you farm a non meta or soon to be outdated team... youre still making progress. If you farm krennic from shipments or R1 from chromiums right now, or are having problems gearing your sith, youre still making progress and your team is recognized as being stronger than it was before even though your rank and rewards dropped because of your shard. I think its important that we feel we make progress when we do progress-like things like buy characters, gear characters, level characters make new teams, even if our competitive peers are doing it faster. Its bizzare that we need to be so rigid in our character choice and gear farming or we actually lose progress (drop rank). We need to stop accepting this. In most games youre method of advancement does not consist entirely of comparison to equally or greater matched peers. Let us take things at a more flexible pace, and still have progress because we are still doing what the game is about: growing our roster.
I get it, the devs need to push their chromium/citadel packs which makes baze or krennic are a lot more enticing since your chaze/krooper arena relevancy lasts you months instead of a couple weeks. But id be a lot more willing to buy R1 from chromiums if it meant anything and wasnt just an outdated team. And I get arena rewarding strategic decisions and money spent. But we can have both. Something to reward hardcore competitors, and something to reward those who don't want to play that hardcore, but are still progressing. Dont punish progress!
And don't forget: We wouldnt need to chase the meta nearly as hard if we didnt have just arena shards. Wouldnt that be fun?
I wonder how many people are in my boat. So, I want to transition to a Sith team, or maybe a FO Team, anything that isnt my current wiggs+rex... but im behind my competition on them, and by the time I have those teams ready I know my arena shard will have moved on to the next meta, be that phoenix or whatever.
Lots of people complain about the meta, which tbh is a lot cooler than when I started (diversity wise) but there's the still the issue that while the meta includes a lot more teams, youre still not able to farm those teams before they lose their luster (unless youre a whale or an old vet player). And think about this: Maybe you farmed your FO team slowly due to your lack of gear, but I garauntee you you surely are building a team faster and a better team, than probably the majority of the playerbase. Yet your rank drops, and you lose progress!
What's the solution?
In addition to arena shards, which im not saying we need to get rid of, we need a game mode that compares us not to people who are always roughly equal, but the whole playerbase. Why does this solve chasing the meta? Because if you farm a non meta or soon to be outdated team... youre still making progress. If you farm krennic from shipments or R1 from chromiums right now, or are having problems gearing your sith, youre still making progress and your team is recognized as being stronger than it was before even though your rank and rewards dropped because of your shard. I think its important that we feel we make progress when we do progress-like things like buy characters, gear characters, level characters make new teams, even if our competitive peers are doing it faster. Its bizzare that we need to be so rigid in our character choice and gear farming or we actually lose progress (drop rank). We need to stop accepting this. In most games youre method of advancement does not consist entirely of comparison to equally or greater matched peers. Let us take things at a more flexible pace, and still have progress because we are still doing what the game is about: growing our roster.
I get it, the devs need to push their chromium/citadel packs which makes baze or krennic are a lot more enticing since your chaze/krooper arena relevancy lasts you months instead of a couple weeks. But id be a lot more willing to buy R1 from chromiums if it meant anything and wasnt just an outdated team. And I get arena rewarding strategic decisions and money spent. But we can have both. Something to reward hardcore competitors, and something to reward those who don't want to play that hardcore, but are still progressing. Dont punish progress!
And don't forget: We wouldnt need to chase the meta nearly as hard if we didnt have just arena shards. Wouldnt that be fun?
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Replies
Sacrifice the NOW and go for the THEN.
You need to focus on farming characters, waiting for the buffs to happen.
Prime examples:
Mace (will come),
Kylo (already happened),
Zinn (already happened),
Boba (already happened),
Maul (already happened),
Vader (this goes back to BP (before palps)),
Biggs (before wedge),
Another thing is that you won't always farm the right toons.
Instead of chasing the meta, and subsequently always being behind, be the pre-meta and stay ahead.
To start:
Try to unlock every char, so won't be worth it i.e. hard hard node chars (Veers could have a buff coming). Try to g8 every char.
I understand that new characters are released that might be more powerful, but most of the time they work best with already released chars.
They won't keep brining out full new meta squads each month cause that would even start to alienate some of the whales and the game will die pretty rapidly in that scenario. Not even the biggest of krakens would keep paying for what boils down to a +1000£/$/etc monthly 'subscription' to a mobile game (If you want to stay competetive in arena that is)
Yes this is good advice for efficiently keeping up, and i probably AM gonna skip the next meta for reasons you guys stated. At least im not a big fan of rebels. Unfortunately im a fan of R1
But my point is, is that it doesnt have to be this way. If we have a major game mode (like comparable to 500 crystals daily) that rewards progress and not strict player comparison, it could be a lot funner to do my skip-meta, or non-meta thing.