So Krama, are you still running that, by your own admission, painfully slow Rotos team?

Yup. And I'm well aware that it is slow. But why should that be a factor in a competitive game?

If you know we're in a slow meta and wait to push up until Sunday and run at least one glacially slow team on offense, I'm not quite sure what you are expecting. I don't think I agree with UDK 100% being the reason for the length of fights at higher level or arena, or that he's meta changing. Combos of endless revives/cleansers/stone skin/Tarichka/sheep seem to be doing that job just fine.

As to your question: if you are willingly bringing a very slow team to a slow meta, then you have accept the consequences of said choice

Some good points made.

Firstly, i do use UDK in one of my tag teams but i dont avoid him at all- he is fine.

Secondly it is true that arena is dramatically easier nowadays, that isnt a bad thing but i remember i couldnt hold G1 despite having months of gameplay behind me. 

Finally - i agree with kramasky about time being a huge issue. I deliberately dropped out of G4 tag this week  and will probably let myself go down to G1 because the fights just take forever in g3/g4 .  If it was just tag that would be fine, but there are already a tonne of time consuming dailies.

This is the "real" issue. 

I can't confirm this with numbers because it's impossible to know the Player Level / Account strength of everyone who's posted about UDK or Arena being too hard, but the problem I see is that players are attempting to compete in content that they are under-leveled / under-geared / unprepared for. 

Gold Arena isn't supposed to be an "all inclusive" or "readily available" activity for everyone right out of the box. It is supposed to take time, account development, game knowledge / strategy, gear, masteries, etc.

For example:

Where are the "I can't one key Clan Boss, it needs to be nerfed" post?

Where are the "Hydra needs to be nerfed" post?

Where are the  Doom Tower nerf request?

Where are the "Nerf Faction Wars" post?

Every one of the items listed above will have a greater effect on account progression than the few gold medals received from arena battles. Is it because new players see Arbiter sitting there behind a wall of Arena related quest? This is just my opinion, based on my personal experience, but by the time I had progressed to the point in Raid where I had access to the Champions, gear, etc. needed to actually complete the Arbiter questline... she wasn't really "account changing" anymore. Do I use her? Sure, she is a good champion. Is she on every single team I have for every activity I participate in? No.

So why is it that players seem to have no problem accepting that they have not progressed enough to complete these areas of content? Why is it that when a player comes to these forums and ask for guidance on one of those activities that the guidance is accepted as constructive and the responses are civil and productive?

I don't recall seeing anyone get angry about the guidance they receive when they come and ask for help with a difficult stage in Faction Wars or Doom Tower. I don't recall anyone ever becoming irate when someone suggested that they modify their Clan Boss team. So why is it that when anyone on these forums tries to give newer players advice on UDK or Arena is it consistently met with anger, outrage, and accusations of people just being "elitest" and that those players "just don't understand"?

I honestly find Scyl more annoying. That probably has to do more with my team makeup. UDK does make for a slower fight. I am lacking some of the key Epic champions that are on most teams at my stage so I run UDK with a fully loaded Ursala. It has to be an annoying team to fight because if you ignore my DK it syphons off enough damage from Ursuala to last long enough to do her revive spell and suddenly you are fighting my entire team again. 

My problem with UDK is that when I fight a team with him I know that I am going to defeat him and the team but it just adds extra time and this game is already a time sink. 

This is nothing new, we all go through this and it is because people hate going backwards and losing progress. So if a player got used to holding say- G4 in arena and now struggles to hold onto G1 they will look for reasons to complain and see it as unfair.

I was the same, i got my arbiter in 2021 and stayed in g4 (then the top) for a couple of months then gradually got pushed down into G1 as it got harder and harder.

Because i had 'gotten used' to being in G4 i was very annoyed and probably posted lots of complaints on here.

We are just seeing the same thing i imagine.

Why should I have to accept the consequence of said choice? If we're happy with the fact that Plarium have shifted the meta away from speed nuke, which I think we all are, as it adds significantly more depth, why should we be happy with the fact that we now have to invest significantly more of our time?

We already are asked to commit more time than I think is reasonable, in order to remain competitive. If we aren't going to be given other methods due to game constraints (eg, for example, x3/x4 speed permanent super raids, etc), then why is it unreasonable to request they instead simplify these areas? Is there literally anyone that truly wants to be doing dozens of tag fights per day?

Yes :)

But agree with the overall time contsraint.  I'd prefer to do more tag (I droppeed this week because I didnt have any time this weekend, oh well).  Reducing the time for everything else makes much more sense (for me) than limiting pvp tokens.  Your suggestion will never happen as it caters more towards f2p than p2p imo.  Live arena prsents a significant time constraint that could break many of us that feel if they cant do everything the game isnt worth playing.

See, this I could understand and be sympathetic to. Especially if you came here and asked for advice but nothing you could do changed the situation. This is not the case here since it has been shown several times that not only is it possible to defeat UDK and progress through to Gold Arena, but it is possible with a new account, without the use of Meta Champions or insane gear.

This is not where 90% of the UDK hate comes from. The players that become irate and foam at the mouth when anyone dares to suggest that UDK is NOT the Scourge of Raid and that he can be countered by utilizing game mechanics are not G4 (mid-game) players who have suddenly found themselves unable to compete due to a new variable introduced recently. They are players who have what you could consider "early game" accounts coming to complain that they cannot get into Gold Arena during their first 3 months because of a single champion and basically stomp their feet while screaming how "unfair" it is. 

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people complaining about UDK now were not even playing Raid prior to his introduction. Therefor this isn't a case of "I was preforming at this level then something changed that completely wrecked my progress". I don't see UDK destroying arena any more than I see the dificulity increase from normal to hard modes destroying doom tower or dungeons.

I haven't cleared Faction Wars. There are several factions that I lack the champions needed to complete them. Would it make sense for me to come here demanding that this aspect of the game be changed so that I could complete it at my current stage of progression? My clan hasn't progressed past Normal Hydra, therefore I can't aquire more than 2 or 3 Mithrala fragments per week. How is Lydia sitting at the end of a quest chain in Faction Wars or Mithrala being locked behind fragments from Hydra any different than the Arbiter questline?

You need a new clan, lol

Knowing you use an extremely slow team, not changing this, and then complaining about the length of your matches is not really compelling to me. You have chosen to run slow offense teams, and that is in spite of time being a major factor in all of arena, Live, Classic and Tag, whether at Plat reset or Tag Reset or the Live window.

It is a tank meta, and you certainly shouldn't be waiting until the last couple of hours before reset to trying to retain your rank, not playing any before that, knowing that you use glacial teams. Tag hasn't really changed Krama, and UDK didn't slow it down insanely. You just have been outside G3-G4 so long your teams worked.

Here's the thing, time IS a factor in the entire game. You will NEVER get all the content done if you still run 45 minute FW21 teams, or 12 minute Dragon 20 teams, or in your case, 30+ minute Tag Teams. A huge part of this game is building teams better and faster, and that is across the board. To be fully competitive in this competitive game, you have to be good enough in Arena to fight the number of battles you need in the time frame you have, or accept you're going to fall. 

Let me ask you this, Quinn. Given you're roughly at tag3/4 right now - how much time do you spend, on a daily basis, on tag fights?

Another thing I should mention is to have a good enough defense that you never really fall into the red after you push up against 1 champ defenses on Wednesday-Thursday and put your defense in. 

For sure it's hard to do for F2P folks, with our champ pool, but many folks don't have to do more than five or so fights Sat and Sunday to stay in place in Tag cause they're just never hit.

The folks I chat with about my own teams often give me quite a hard time about how much my teams are hit and how little theirs are hit. So I'm certainly having to run more matches than them, and I get sassed pretty good about it.

So better offense or better defense, or you're gonna be forever stuck putting in a lot of time to maintain G3, @kramaswamy.kr.

@Trips 

"You need a new clan, lol "

Lol... I'm kind of attached to these guys. They are a good group, laid back and entertaining. When I get bored there's always one or two people on Discord to BS with. Plus, It's been kind of rewarding to "grow" with a group and be able to help the newer people who have joined along the way. When we do cross milestones and open up new levels, it feels like we've accomplished something as a group. I don't think I'd feel the same if I joined a veteran Clan where everything was already opened for me.

I could swap clans and progress faster but I'm not in any hurry. I spent a lot of time feeling that I needed to rush my way through to areas like Gold Arena & CB... now that I easily maintain G5 & 1 key UNM on auto (thanks to some advice from @harleQuinn) ... both of those activities, that I thought were so important, are just another set of "dailys" that I do for some rewards.

Quite a lot, tbh. More than any single other thing in the game, I would say.

My teams aren't good enough to stay in G4, my defense just gets SMASHED there, so I get easily pushed out and have to claw back in. I can't say I play it every day though. I play a lot of 1 champ clicking Mon-Wed, ignore it for a couple days, and then try to devote a couple to three hours across either Sat and Sunday to it. Depends on how RNG is. 

But I enjoy Tag. I don't want some artificial limit on my tokens because some people have slow teams.
When Tag is grinding me down, I start looking at what other teams I could be running, what I'm doing wrong, and how I can emulate the best players who just get to click start a few times and laugh their way into another week into G4. The ability to save time is on me, Kram. I have the power to more easily stay in G3-G4 by improving my gear, my teams. By hitting Hydra for better Stoneskin. By saving for the right guaranteed champs and the right 10x to maximize my ability to get champs that I need.

When I lose or fall, I don't want to nerf the entire system so I can compete easier. I want to improve and compete where the system is now. You see, Krama, there is always the same amount of people in G4 and G3. I will not be convinced it's impossible to get and stay there, because there is always 5.5k people in G3-G4. They somehow got there and compete.

If you are still using the same G1 teams from when you were happy to just stay there, and expect to compete at the same level and same time commitment, that's certainly gonna either eat away at your sanity or time.
And yes, I struggle in Tag. I enjoy the challenge, I both enjoy and absolutely hate Tag. It's infuriating at times, and also awesomely fun to steamroll 12 +2 to +4 champs. Basically, I'm not gonna support you that the system needs changed solely because people don't want to deal with the hassle of gitting gud. You either want to beat the other 5.5k people in the bracket, or you don't. 

Let me go what seems like a bit off topic from your question, Kram. I am not sure where I am getting time for Live Arena out of my schedule. Literally only one time window for me that isn't in the middle of the workday or the middle of the night. And frankly, it's not a good time either. So we'll see how much of that I can actually do, I don't think it will be much at all.

As far as the overall time in game itself, I am struggling to find time to run all the things I want to do, and build all the teams I might want to. Hydra and Tag eat up all my "active playing time", and so team building gets put off quite a bit. I think I'll have to figure out some full auto Hydra teams to make time for Live Arena.

So yeah, there really is a time crunch compared to a year ago, especially with two new dungeons (in Sand Devil and Robot Fortress), a new CB (Hydra) and a new Live Arena mode.

I just don't think that Tag being too hard or whatever is a reason to cut tokens there. Just cause the game mode is difficult for you personally to compete in with your teams, doesn't mean I want it nerfed. It's hard for me too, but my fun in the game is entirely built around Tag and Tag alone.

Like maybe four weeks ago I crashed when I got back from a trip on Sunday. Woke back up like two hours before reset, realized I was at Zero Points as I hadn't had time to play any matches all week. Climbed over 1k points in that two hours, so was FLYING through matches. That was fun to stay in G3. Certainly was relying on my fast teams and the wonderful world of autoing. lmao

Playing the game in a way you enjoy is the most important part! 😀 If that means growing with a clan, that's great.

I have never changed clans, not once, and I think I do alright in the game.

UDK didn't hose the QoL in 3v3, stoneskin did.  Slowed everything way down... and now here we are, unless you have some specific champs you just have to grind out the wins and honestly it's the only part of the game I rarely play purely because of the time it takes.

I also enjoy my painfully slow rotos team because it's painfully consistent. 😂

Honestly - I think can summarize my response to this quite simply as, the game generally is asking for too much of my time. And I fully understand that may just be an issue with where I am in the game. Maybe if you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said that I didn't mind spending 2-3 hours a day in tag. But that's just not where I'm at right now - especially in the context of everything else the game is asking me to spend time on.

Whether I change my teams or not, there's almost no world in which I'd be able to finish a full tag fight in under 15 minutes. The meta just isn't there. It worked back in the day, because the name of the game was "smash the other guy before they smash you". And, sure, my particular teams are slower than most. But can you honestly tell me that you're able to finish your fights in under 10 minutes apiece?

My suggestion of changing the game to restrict the number of fights is an attempt to reign in that time commitment. But I'm just as happy to make that change to any number of other parts of the game instead. Ultimately, I just think having this game designed around the idea of needing to spend 5+ hours a day to remain competitive, is simply bad design. I played WoW for years, and it was that exact problem which ultimately led me to quit.

Interesting to see how much time people spend on tag.

If i am in g3 and pushing for g4, i tend to just hit the 1 champ defences until wed and put my defence in wed evening. Its then the grind comes, i only ever do 5 fights a day from wed onwards, but to do those 5 tag matches still takes 45 minutes - and if an individual round is still going after ten mins i will quit it more often than not.

Same if i am in g4 and looking to stay there - this week i decided to let myself drop and didnt do my 5 fights on the sat and sunday.

I would probably enjoy tag more if i didnt have my daily classic arena, daily doom tower farming and the rest of the quests and didnt constantly feel pressured for time.

And speaking to clan mates who did live arena beta the matches take a while...so altho i have contemplated quitting before i do wonder if this will be the straw that breaks the camels back for me.