Hi,
Here I try to suggest improvements for the arena:
Intro:
As far as I can remember, I started playing raid sometime early 2019. I eventually reached gold 1 or gold 2 in arena. After a bit, around the time when we had the new quest system for tormin or frosting (forgot what it was called; where you got the bears), I quit raids as I got bored. When I came back to raids, a few months ago, I found myself being able to climb to maximum silver 3.
Problem No. 1:
The problem with arena is that behind it locked a major account progression mechanism. This in itself is not a problem, what makes it a problem is if players can’t progress in arena. The account progression mechanism I am speaking of is not missions, which generally seem to be the main point highlighted by even content creators. I feel the great hall is a much more important mechanism which allows for account progression than one character (Arbiter). Furthermore, the issue although highlighted is not restricted to new players, but extends deep into midgame players. We have to remember with arena becoming so much harder, definition of beginner and mid game player has also evolved. I consider myself as mid game player and will obviously face arena missions as road blocks once I get to the relevant ones; although as expressed earlier my concern is more for the great hall.
Now with the background to the problem out the way, let me highlight the problem with my personal example. It has been around 2 months I have been back to the game and over these 2 months (roughly) I have only managed to accumulate around 400-500 silver medals for the great hall. With a simple calculation, at this rate it would take a staggering 17.1 months to max out one section in the great hall (considering we are able to use silver medals to upgrade the gold medal parts of great hall). With such slow progress, how long can layers be expect to carry on playing? One month? Maybe two? What makes it worse, the current system will not allow progress to higher arena tiers for majority of the average players. See problem no. 2 as to why.
Problem No. 2:
With the current situation, of course the problem is not going to get better. As mine, or anyones account progress, so will others who are in same arena tier. Thus although our accounts may be progressing, one can expect our progression in the arena to be stagnant due to everyone progressing at the same average rate.
Solution:
I agree with Valkyries post that removing the arena missions or addressing them specifically is not the solution to the problem. Arena is bigger than just the missions.
Plarium can use examples from other games, and see how they evolved their arena as the player base and power grew. Once such example I can think of is Clash Royale; Ash maybe you can help here? I am sure plarium would be able to evaluate their system and since I am unable to dig deep into Clash Royales system atm, here are my suggestion on improving arena:
• Rebalance the points needed for all tiers. For example: B1 (900p), Bronze 2 (910p), B3 (930p), B4 (970p), S1 (1000p), S2 (1010p), S3 (1030p), S4 (1070P) and G1 would start at 1100p. In this way, majority of player who climb past the beginner stage would be in gold and able have their account progressing (such as in the great hall) in an observable rate.
• Rebalance the progression from tier to tier by increasing the amount of points gained for a win and decreasing the amount lost for a loss. Since this will eventually also become bottlenecked, this system may need constant balancing.
I think Clash Royale probably used a combination of these two ideas to address their arena. Of course, these suggestion are a rough guide, and would need fine-tuning by plarium.
I hope these ideas are helpful. I look forwards to your thoughts.