Hello CG/EA,

1. Purpose
To establish my point of views on how to make Arena more competitive by giving the players a better gameplay and feel of the game.
2. Scope
This will cover all areas of the Arena section of SWGOH game.
3. Responsibilities
CG/EA will be responsible of developing User Requirements for the new Arena change. Testing of these User Requirements. Develop the probable Risks that are involved with the implementation of these changes and mitigating them. Implementing the changes and enjoy increment of the player base.
Jona2109 will be responsible of explaining the desired changes and make a valid point for each one.
4. Reason for Change:
As you can see in the SWGOH Forums, most players are tired of the Arena ranking, system, AI and gameplay. Most of them make valid points on how bad/good Arena is and most of them can agree that the game really needs changes in all areas but specially in the Arena structure.
5. Description of Change:
5.1 Arena Battle Attempts: Yesterday I left my arena ranking at 16, now at 8:26 am my arena ranking is 59, when we get to the prize cut off (6:00 pm) my arena ranking will probably be in the high 90's. You may be wondering why does my team tank rank so much, well, it is because I have an awesome Offensive team with powerful attackers with high speed but two of them (QGJ and GS) are 5 stars, I can beat most teams but my defense is terrible and the AI makes such bad moves that I probably loose every fight while controlled by AI. Now, 5 attempts of battle will not even remotely help me in getting back my rank 18 or any higher rank than that. I have to refresh another 5 battles to get close to rank 1, then another refresh that will cost 100 crystals now to even held my rank at prize cut off. So, the battle attempts really need to be removed, we do not need to pay the price by bad AI. if AI is going to be bad, then at least gives us the chance to redeem ourselves by our efforts, not by paying crystals. Seriously, that cheese of paying 50 more crystals just to get into a battle so you can save rank 1-5 is total disrespect.
5.2 Arena AI: I don't have to explain much here, it makes horrible decisions.
5.3 Arena ranking: the process of ranking up needs to completely change. The need to defeat a player and take their rank place is totally unfair to everyone, the real bad guy here is the AI. This is why all players (P2P and F2P) players get frustrated with the game, for example, my F2P team can beat any P2P team because the AI makes bad decisions for their (+$1k dlls) team and take rank 1. Now, that should never happen, in any game that is totally unfair, if you spend enough time and money on a game, you should really be in the top. And for those F2P players that spend a lot of time playing, they can also be on top with a total F2P team (QGJ, Lumi, Sid, Dooku, GS). You can take that team to rank 1 against any other team, it just takes good decisions, good RNG and that is totally acceptable.
The way that I'm proposing is to make brackets and to have a Arena rank rating. This means that your team will have the following stats:
Team Power: consists of the total power of each character on your team.
Arena Ranking: your rank basically (1, 2, 5, 10, 90, 500, etc).
Arena Rank Rating: everyone starts at 1500 rating, by beating a player you will get +X points (depending on your bracket and rank), beating a higher rank player will give you more points than beating a lower rank player. Depending on your rank rating is how you will pass another player. This means that if your Team A beats Team B, if you do not pass him on rank rating you will not take his rank even though you won. This will make the game way more competitive, more fair for P2P and F2P and encourage everyone to make a better team and keep playing. More play time = more players = more money.
5.4 Arena live playing: All of the previous points work better if this was a live arena. By changing it to Arena Rank Rating you don't have to be playing and sniping and cheesing it at prize cut off. This has two scenarios:
5.4.1 Good P2P and F2P players will definitely be on top of the arena ranking. This means that they will have their respective arena rank rating, if they do not want to play they can keep their respective ranking and no one will move them, unless someone passes them in ranking, which is fine, if you don't play you tank progressively.
5.4.2 You can only play live battles, this will definitely encourage players to play more and try to beat a team or friend even if they are in the high ranks or low ranks.
There is no more pleasure in a competitive game than beating another player. It is an ego boost and gives the player the right to show off. This builds a better community of players. Take for example Jedi Master Ailan and his Arena server, he has Cythis, Pilot, JSA...these are very good players and we love to see their videos, but till this day they haven't fought each other, they don't have the bragging rights to say that they have beaten themselves, etc. In my server there are guys like this, that I know they have an awesome team but it just does not feel satisfying when I go against their P2P awesome team and the AI just demolishes their team in horrible actions for the match.
6. Acceptance Criteria: Please make these changes and more people will play this game, you will have more players and they will be encouraged to spend money to go up in ranks.
7. References: Personal experience, SWGOH Forum and videos.
8. Conclusions: Thank you CG/EA for this awesome game, it is really fun. It just needs to get better.
Jona2109