Grand Arena Megathread

Replies

  • Ultra wrote: »
    24 hours to join, 24 hours to set defense, 24 hours to fight, 24 hours to sit there and review....c’mon. Idk what could be done, but this is way too much time sitting around waiting. Also, there’s a lot of people saying they can’t attack and how annoying that is bcuz the other person set no defense.
    Its annoying but its the best solution because timezones

    For a 12 hour limit, Your opponent might be in an area where he's sleeping or woke up and has to work when Grand Arena starts or can't attack during the period

    24 hours can be boring but its ideal

    There’s no reason we need 24 hours to set a defense, especially when it defaults to our previous defense if we don’t get it done.
  • Better reward zetas OR this is a massive step backwards
  • You don’t want everyone to join, because you don’t want inactive accounts as opponents. That’s why I suggested everyone who logged in within 24 hours is automatically joined and we go right away.
    So you want people who have no interest in GA to be forced to join? No thanks and that certainly won't solve anything.
    24 hours to join, 24 hours to set defense, 24 hours to fight, 24 hours to sit there and review....c’mon. Idk what could be done, but this is way too much time sitting around waiting. Also, there’s a lot of people saying they can’t attack and how annoying that is bcuz the other person set no defense.

    The GA event involves people across all timezones. The 24 hour periods are to be fair to everyone no matter what timezone they are in.
    chron wrote: »

    That's why GP matching should be based on the defense squads placed before calculation. Even if you save your heavy hitters for offense, you're going to get wasted if your defense is naff.

    You wanted to take the biggest strategy aspect out of GA by requiring people to place their defense BEFORE they are matched with someone and can scout their roster? No thanks.
  • Facepalm head nod......
  • Here is a thought. Why not add a tab in settings to opt in for TW and GA and any other event that requires joining, even raids. When the event launches it automatically joins you and you don’t need a 1 day join window. Maybe a 30 min to 1 hr window to join everyone and do calculations.
  • 3pourr2
    1927 posts Member
    edited December 2018
    Here is a thought. Why not add a tab in settings to opt in for TW and GA and any other event that requires joining, even raids. When the event launches it automatically joins you and you don’t need a 1 day join window. Maybe a 30 min to 1 hr window to join everyone and do calculations.

    The first 24 is fir matching it cant be removed and it wont make the event come sooner
  • 3pourr2 wrote: »
    Here is a thought. Why not add a tab in settings to opt in for TW and GA and any other event that requires joining, even raids. When the event launches it automatically joins you and you don’t need a 1 day join window. Maybe a 30 min to 1 hr window to join everyone and do calculations.

    The first 24 is fir matching it cant be removed and it wont make the event come sooner

    It could easily be reduced to 1 hr or less if there is a check box you set as to whether you want to participate when the events roll in.
  • 3pourr2
    1927 posts Member
    edited December 2018
    3pourr2 wrote: »
    Here is a thought. Why not add a tab in settings to opt in for TW and GA and any other event that requires joining, even raids. When the event launches it automatically joins you and you don’t need a 1 day join window. Maybe a 30 min to 1 hr window to join everyone and do calculations.

    The first 24 is fir matching it cant be removed and it wont make the event come sooner

    It could easily be reduced to 1 hr or less if there is a check box you set as to whether you want to participate when the events roll in.

    How do you know? It take the computer awhile to generate all the match ups. Everyone seems to think there is a magic button the push abd its done.
  • And its still not going to change the start date
  • 3pourr2 wrote: »
    The first 24 is fir matching it cant be removed and it wont make the event come sooner
    Not really. The first 24 hours are for joining.
    The actual matching is done after those first 24 hours, once everyone has joined (and just before the defense phase begins).

  • Liath wrote: »
    Liath wrote: »
    Ok then, thanks for the rundown (genuinely), and back to substance:
    According to many posts here (not attributing this to you specifically), the ideal format for the matching would take into account every factor that differentiates one player’s roster from another and match them as closely as possible across all of these different metrics. As I see it, the closer you get to that “ideal,” the less incentive you have to improve your roster for GA, because any improvement you make will just result in a harder opponent, and you will just be treading water.

    You are 100% correct on this point. People who want the matchmaking to take all this into account don’t realize how much they’re asking for, or that it would require rebalancing the algorithm essentially every time a new toon or ship is added. It would also create incentives that the devs would want to avoid, just like you say. That’s why I’ve been advocating an Elo rating system for GA. I think it preserves the incentive to gear up your PVP roster, and ensures that incremental on your roster will generally be rewarded with incremental success.
    I did, however, respond to your question of what the point is of improving your roster when the mismatches are egregious by arguing that you can still improve your chances of having a favorable matchup even if the matchups are rarely even.

    I made a point earlier in this connection, and you didn’t respond, but I would like to know what you think about it: In anticipation of GA, I was wondering whether I needed to privilege my PVP roster more, and from what I’ve seen, it would be unreasonable to change my farming habits. The small improvement I could make to my GA squads every week is going to very likely to be swamped by the uncertainty introduced by the bad matchmaking. Over the very long run, statistically, yes, I would het higher rewards by making that small weekly investment in more PVP teams. But I really do believe that the long run we’d be talking about in order to realize those gains is longer than the life expectancy of the game. That calculation is very different if I can count on seeing similarly situated opponents every outing.

    I want to also say that although I’m not super-into PVP, I was very excited for this mode when it was announced. I was optimistic about the devs’ ability to match the roster strengths of individual players, because this mode isn’t confounded by the guild-level dynamics that make it complicated to create pairings in TW. I’m really disappointed, because this seemed like a fun mode, but the fun has been **** out by the bad pairings.

    Depends how small your weekly changes are. If you put one gear 8 piece a week on a pvp toon and then go back to collecting and spreading the gear, then you're right it won't make a difference. But if you focus you can improve a pvp team by 20-30k in a few weeks. That makes a difference rather quickly. It also adds to your gp but not enough to significantly affect match making.

    I should be clear that what I mean is that I’m always going to be investing something in PVP squads—even Ewoks have their uses in TW, and probably in GA as well. But there’s a certain amount of discretionary resources that I could either use for more PVE squads (raid squads, working on top tiers of mythics, assault battles, etc.) or for GA squads. So what I’m really talking about is the marginal utility of diverting those discretionary resources from PVE toons to PVP toons. I just don’t see that the ROI from making that change justifies it, so I’m not changing anything. If the goal of GA was to incentivize the investment of resources in PVP toon, it hasn’t worked for me.

    But most good raid squads are also good in ga. Ns, jtr, bastilla, and bh are 4 squads I use for hstr. I use all 4 for ga and tw too. The other squad for hstr I use is cjex with chewie and almost all of the characters in that are good in ga squads.

    The haat squad i use is abc with hoda instead of thrawn. Almost every toon in that squad is good in ga. Pit I use zader empire with cls for an easy solo. I use an empire team in ga so no waste there.

    So I just don't see where you have to choose between raids and pvp. I get top 5 in my guild in hstr and haat and pit is just a solofest at this point. And I already have a competitive roster for ga mostly because I developed good teams for hstr.

    Probably the best example of a purely PVE squad that I’ve considered working on is First Order. I haven’t touched them since I unlocked BB-8. Under KRU, they’re tough on defense, but they’re not arena-worthy, and other than running up the score a bit in the kitchen sink phase of HSTR p4, they’re not good for much PVE content. That’s the sort of team I could be persuaded to invest in if the incentives were right in GA. As it stands, I post them on defense at G7-G9 and cross my fingers.

    I built FO for PVE. They aren’t the best raid team available but they were a decent one (about a million points) I could work on after I had the biggest ones done, and that would also be good for DS TB, where at the time I was lacking a consistent winning team for all phases. Also I was annoyed by having to do the first phase of the BB8 mythic every time because I couldn’t 3* it. They’re pretty fun.

    The real question is if you didn’t work on FO, what would you do instead?

    At the moment, my priorities, in order, are Ewoks (for Threepio), Smugglers (for the highest tier of Smuggler’s Run), and cargo pilots for the highest tier of Contraband Cargo. There’s quite a bit of new PVE content that I haven’t quite finished. The ROI for those seems better than putting together a solidly second-tier defense GA squad.

    Ewoks are an interesting case. They are actually a good team and can punch above their weight class, but if you want them to be really strong, you have to pretty well max them out. Since we don't know for sure how strong they will need to be for C3, it's tough to fully analyze. But for my personal play style, I would 100% prioritize getting C3.

    Smugglers. Chewie makes this event significantly easier and is great for GA, same for Nest. With a Qira lead (which requires levels but not as much gear), good Chewie, Nest, and Raid Han, the 5th spot doesn't matter. Not much of a conflict here.

    Cargo pilots. The only one that's pretty useless for GA is Young Lando.

    The cargo pilot event is beatable with only ghost, phantom, ep 7 falcoln, and slave one. It is a bit of an rng fest but doable. I have fett g12, most of pheonix g9 or so, and scav rey g12 and finn g8. I anticipate it being easy once I 7 star ht.
  • Gannon
    1619 posts Member
    TWings wrote: »
    3pourr2 wrote: »
    The first 24 is fir matching it cant be removed and it wont make the event come sooner
    Not really. The first 24 hours are for joining.
    The actual matching is done after those first 24 hours, once everyone has joined (and just before the defense phase begins).

    Actually, it's somewhat in between. After join period, they do matchmaking in the background while you set defense.
    It takes more than the one minute shown in game to match every guild in the world
  • Rebel_yell wrote: »
    Gannon wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    24 hours to join, 24 hours to set defense, 24 hours to fight, 24 hours to sit there and review....c’mon. Idk what could be done, but this is way too much time sitting around waiting. Also, there’s a lot of people saying they can’t attack and how annoying that is bcuz the other person set no defense.
    Its annoying but its the best solution because timezones

    For a 12 hour limit, Your opponent might be in an area where he's sleeping or woke up and has to work when Grand Arena starts or can't attack during the period

    24 hours can be boring but its ideal

    24 hours is ideal, yes, but I'm sore there must be some wiggle room to cut this down some. For example, they could do the matchmaking for round two in the background while you finish round 1. The player pool should already be selected, right? Shouldn't need near as much time to match the winners..

    Seconded. Each GA is a group of 8, so the matching should already be done. Next round should just be a natural reshuffle based on win or loss. How much time do you really need to move to the next round? Maybe have a join button for the first round and then each subsequent round you go straight to setting defense.

    that's how it is. Read the post crumb made about it.
  • Ultra
    11449 posts Moderator
    Schedule: Each Grand Arena event is a week-long event that consists of a series of 3 rounds against different opponents. There are seven 24 hour phases: Join, Set Defense (Opponent 1), Attack (Opponent 1), Set Defense (Opponent 2), Attack (Opponent 2), Set Defense (Opponent 3), Attack (Opponent 3)

    Hope that answers your question Rebel_yell
  • I loved it. Lost by 7 points but it was easy to chart with my opponent and get some feedback.
    Maybe make join and defense places 12 hours with a 24 hour attack phase.
  • TWings
    59 posts Member
    edited December 2018
    Gannon wrote: »
    Actually, it's somewhat in between. After join period, they do matchmaking in the background while you set defense.
    It takes more than the one minute shown in game to match every guild in the world
    You're greatly underestimating the average processing power of nowdays computers.
    For something so trivial, we're probably talking about seconds (maybe even less).
    If it was taking minutes to compare and sort players by GP, I'd be pretty worried.
    Post edited by TWings on
  • TVF wrote: »

    If any of you would ever bother to read the dev post, it's going to be a week long event.

    Day 1 - Join. Put into group of 8.
    Day 2 - Set defense for first pairing.
    Day 3 - Attack
    Day 4 - Set defense for second pairing.
    Day 5 - Attack.
    Day 6 - Set defense for third pairing.
    Day 7 - Attack.

    Exactly. 3 days where you get to do a few attacks out of 7 days with day long waits in between. Thats the point. The lag time to fun ratio is ridiculously slow.
    There are a few options that I see: Get rid of the join period altogether OR reduce only the defense days to 12 hours OR reduce them all to 12 hours

    Honestly, even at 12 hours that is still a whole lot of time not fighting but...

    I'm not sure who thought attacking a few teams 3 days out of 7 was going to be a fun game mode but it needs to be reevaluated.

    I really like the theory behind it. Multi team, single player PvP with brackets is a good idea but the way it is being implemented is poor.
  • When do we receive the rewards ?
    After the analysis phase ?
    I haven’t received anything yet.
  • Ugnaught wrote: »
    I'm not sure who thought attacking a few teams 3 days out of 7 was going to be a fun game mode but it needs to be reevaluated.
    And that's if you're lucky enough to have your opponents set any defense. You might still end up with only 1 day of available attacks or worst...
  • Has anybody suggested having an exhibition match during the join phases of the actual tournament? That way those who want to continue playing can choose to join an exhibition match and those who just want to concentrate on the tournament can just wait for the next match.
  • chron
    89 posts Member
    edited December 2018
    You wanted to take the biggest strategy aspect out of GA by requiring people to place their defense BEFORE they are matched with someone and can scout their roster? No thanks.

    Defense was barely any strategic aspect until the Attack Phase. Scouting what roster, one's entire character collection? No thanks.

    1. Defense
    2. Matchmaking
    3. Attack

    No real detriment to strategy here, and it makes more sense in terms of balance and future means of setting defense.

  • chron wrote: »
    You wanted to take the biggest strategy aspect out of GA by requiring people to place their defense BEFORE they are matched with someone and can scout their roster? No thanks.

    Defense was barely any strategic aspect until the Attack Phase. Scouting what roster, one's entire character collection? No thanks.

    1. Defense
    2. Matchmaking
    3. Attack

    No real detriment to strategy here, and it makes more sense in terms of balance and future means of setting defense.

    There is absolutely strategy behind it. No doubt about it.
  • urtil
    73 posts Member
    edited December 2018
    I rarely post on the forum but I guess I will be a bit more active on this thread because I believe that GA has amazing potential and could be the best thing they did in a long time. Unfortunately I think it could also become a massive failure especially if they implement some suggestions made here.

    Firstly, why do I like this? I like that they set up a banner system that rewards getting the most out of your squad and try maybe to go for a 4 man win instead of a certain 5 toon win. Or to add a healer to a combination that normally does not have it to keep more toons at 100% health. Try to figure out the weaknesses and strengths in your opponents roster when setting your defense and planning your offense. Simply having a different experience all the time depending on the matchup which is therefore crucial to the playing experience.

    What could make this mode a failure for me?

    1. poor match making. I was lucky so far in that my second opponent had a very close roster. And it was fun. But I heard from others that there were many uneven matches. In the first match my opponent did not even bother to set a defense. Those uneven matches are neither fun nor challenging. And it does not matter if I get steamrolled or steamroll myself. Please revise the matchmaking to consider more than just GP. There have been many suggestions such as looking at G11/12 and looking at zetas or simply ignore anything below G10 etc.

    2. not showing opponent when setting defense. This is one of the key elements of fun for me. trying to figure out the best teams and best balance between defense and offense given an opponents inventory. please do not give in into demands of having us setting it blindly.

    3. not having enough time. As you can see the way I approach it actually takes a bit of time to look at the opponent and devise a strategy. 24h phases are fair to everyone involved in every time zone and there is still a lot ongoing at swgoh outside GA I really don't want the phases to be shortened or even worse dropped.

    I realise that different people have different approaches to the game but for me personally GA has the potential to become my most favourite mode. Unfortunately there is also the risk that it becomes another boring time sink with too many uneven matches that don't need any strategic thought. Please don't let that happen.

  • urtil wrote: »
    I rarely post on the forum but I guess I will be a bit more active on this thread because I believe that GA has amazing potential and could be the best thing they did in a long time. Unfortunately I think it could also become a massive failure especially if they implement some suggestions made here.

    Firstly, why do I like this? I like that they set up a banner system that rewards getting the most out of your squad and try maybe to go for a 4 man win instead of a certain 5 toon win. Or to add a healer to a combination that normally does not have it to keep more toons at 100% health. Try to figure out the weaknesses and strengths in your opponents roster when setting your defense and planning your offense. Simply having a different experience all the time depending on the matchup which is therefore crucial to the playing experience.

    What could make this mode a failure for me?

    1. poor match making. I was lucky so far in that my second opponent had a very close roster. And it was fun. But I heard from others that there were many uneven matches. In the first match my opponent did not even bother to set a defense. Those uneven matches are neither fun nor challenging. And it does not matter if I get steamrolled or steamroll myself. Please revise the matchmaking to consider more than just GP. There have been many suggestions such as looking at G11/12 and looking at zetas or simply ignore anything below G10 etc.

    2. not showing opponent when setting defense. This is one of the key elements of fun for me. trying to figure out the best teams and best balance between defense and offense given an opponents inventory. please do not give in into demands of having us setting it blindly.

    3. not having enough time. As you can see the way I approach it actually takes a bit of time to look at the opponent and devise a strategy. 24h phases are fair to everyone involved in every time zone and there is still a lot ongoing at swgoh outside GA I really don't want the phases to be shortened or even worse dropped.

    I realise that different people have different approaches to the game but for me personally GA has the potential to become my most favourite mode. Unfortunately there is also the risk that it becomes another boring time sink with too many uneven matches that don't need any strategic thought. Please don't let that happen.

    Great post :) please post more on here.

    GA isn’t a big concern for me. I’m not super competitive but love this game. So I play all the modes.

    I think the problem with matching with just gp is flawed in any game mode. But I don’t think it will change.

    This is obviously easier for the devs. Also if you are in a mismatch - i.e. you don’t have a revan and traya vs someone who does- you have more incentive to get them. Whether that means spending or going to a guild where others are more likely to spend.

    Ea is pretty big on showing others what they don’t have to make you want to get them.

    So if you’re matched up against someone with those 2 toons you are more likely to believe that revan and traya will be the key to help you. Until the next meta comes or op toons come about.

    Especially in pvp where competition will drive spending.

    I believe more even match making is better and healthier, but I’m just a player not a dev.

    It is my hope that with enough feedback here for tw and ga matchmaking will improve.
  • I think the problem with matching with just gp is flawed in any game mode. But I don’t think it will change.

    This is obviously easier for the devs.

    There is nothing difficult in matchmaking based on the selected set of player toons instead of entire GP. But, of course, this will arise additional fuss (about how this set should be selected, etc). And adding ranking system like Elo rating will allow to solve most of problems in the long run. I'd say that implementing some sort of ultimate PvP competition is not possible without special ranking system. It all depends on what devs really want to achieve though.
  • Hortus wrote: »
    I think the problem with matching with just gp is flawed in any game mode. But I don’t think it will change.

    This is obviously easier for the devs.

    There is nothing difficult in matchmaking based on the selected set of player toons instead of entire GP. But, of course, this will arise additional fuss (about how this set should be selected, etc). And adding ranking system like Elo rating will allow to solve most of problems in the long run. I'd say that implementing some sort of ultimate PvP competition is not possible without special ranking system. It all depends on what devs really want to achieve though.

    I think it would be really cool to make this a world ranking system. Assign players an initial ranking based on their GP, and then treat it just like an Elo rating after that. Have various leaderboards that show where you rank (Global, Regional, Start Date, etc). Give everyone the same rewards based on their finish in their 8 man group, but then also give small additional rewards based on their rank compared to people who started the same month/quarter/etc they did.

    This would do a couple of things. First it would ensure everyone is facing opponents at their own skill level. No need to worry about factoring in rosters. No matter how good or bad you are you can have a legit chance of winning your group, and there should be competition there.

    Second, for those who want to be extremely competitive, you have the overall leaderboards. This would drive the game for those who want to strive to be the best. It will also drive more spending for those characters. Those who don’t want to be this competitive don’t have to be, as the bulk of the rewards would come from fighting people at their skill level, and they can still enjoy GA without needing to be ultra competitive.

  • GA had so much potential but now it's just kind of a letdown the only thing that would make it better is boss Rewards but that would only make me compete for the rewards not because I like the game mode. Also the 48 unnecessary hours for the preview review phases really just makes this whole thing dry. Some things I did like about Grand Arena though was the graphics after you kill a team, and I don't have to worry about anyone stealing my kill.
  • You can have the other players roster visible and still get rid of the join phase.
    Those things are not mutually exclusive.
    Its like some people don't understand what others have issues with. Attacking a few teams 3 days out of 7 is simply way to slow and not fun.

    The people who are concerned about the strategy of checking another persons roster completely miss the point...
  • Ugnaught wrote: »
    Attacking a few teams 3 days out of 7 is simply way to slow and not fun.

    ...So everything before GA was introduced was slow and not fun?
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
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