How do you view the Arena?

[Elbirn]

Build for fun, play for rares, and mark everyone down. Their bonus 5 electrum will not make me feel any better about losing on the last ring.

[willng3]

Seems like most people so far are pretty stingy with the praise.  Is it just me whose default position is thumbs-up?

I can be really stingy with my thumbs-upping, but I'm not really sure why.  I suppose that the more time I spend within the Arena causes certain decks to blend together to where I don't consider them unique or interesting.  When a deck comes along and blows my mind though...that's when I will always give it praise.

I play against the Arena to either test decks that others might find useful for grinding or gain score in Platinum and sometimes Gold League.  I have 0 use for electrum at this point and even then don't have much of a purpose for grinding score other than to give me something to do. 

I enjoy putting up decks with bizarre but challenging combos that others might consider exciting to play against.  Sometimes I'll take a commonly used deck such as Ghostmare and revise it to give the player something completely different to play against; I know how tedious grinding can be if all of the decks play the same way.

[mesaprotector]

I admit that I will rate you down if I see ghostmare, mono-aether, fire stall, speedbow, even if the card you get is perfect for such a deck. If you get nightmare, try nightmare flying weapons. Aether pendulum? Turn it into a wings deck. With the possible exception of high-cost cards like dragons or miracle, there's always something else you can do.

[KeeperofDreams]

Build - I did not have a large variety of cards and focused on getting certain decks upgraded when the arena came out.   I found most of the time I couldn't build a deck that would have a chance of winning.  I felt a sort of pressure to to support the game so to speak, and make sure some variety and decks that at least make some sense get posted.  I since then have spent my money on obtaining all the unupped cards to a full set of 6 (which I have minus some rares now).  Part of me wishes I did not do this as I feel I should have spent time toward a couple of decks I wanted, but I feel its a way of supporting the game, because the money of course is not worth the time.

Grade/Thumbs - 1 of probably 8 games gets a thumbs up from me, when I lose to a deck that is rarely played or has a little twist compared to the standard build that is the twist that caught me.  However, most of the time, it's standard fire rush, titan/accelerate, or speedbow that knocks me out and so they get thumbs down always.

Grind/Against - I like to play against the Arena in bronze and platinum, bronze to test and mess around, platinum for gold and a chance for a new upped rare.

Overall I like the Arena over the old Top decks system; however, I really think there is additional room for improvement. 
Like have an additional ladder the adds up all the wins and losses in each grouping and a chance to win custom art cards or rare cards that cycles every 4 months or so on submitted decks.
and/or
Specialized events.

The biggest thing though, is I think it exposes how really few combinations of decks are out there to play.  Of the  4 hundred or so cards out there, only about 20 truly distinctive decks are played, and perhaps 100 total that are mostly variations based on those initial 20.  To play the same 20 or so decks over and over and over again becomes tedious.  The greatest thing to this game I think should happen would be doubling or tripling the cards out there with additional capabilities.  For game balance, a couple of servers that go through the all combinations and seek out statistical abnormalities could prevent any one card from being too powerful.

[Xamuel]

I base my thumbs pretty much entirely on whether I see an evil card.

Dim shield? thumbs down
Maxwell? thumbs down
Otyugh? thumbs down
Dusk mantle? thumbs down
Fog shield? thumbs down
Skull shield? thumbs down
Firestall? thumbs down

Pretty much any other case: thumbs up 

[ralouf]

You are the first guy I see who will thumbs down a skull shield/vulture deck or a mono air with fog shield and will thumbs up all those speedbow or immorush.

[Elite arbiter]

Well, it really is a place to try to do creative stuff. Its also sort of a meta-game between the deck builders and the farmers, each adapting to the decks in there based on the little information they get rather than actually having a clue what they'll face. The farmer needs to see the random decks they face and adapt based on them and assume that it will continue to follow that trend. The Deck Builder needs to see what decks win and lose and try to discern what decks are being used, and make counter-decks, assuming that 'those' won't change. Its a strange and interesting game.

Also, I'd like to think I've made at least a few decks outside the norm.


As a side-note, from my studies I can give a bit of statistics of plat-league games ratings over the population. Pretty much no deck will ever get less than 30%, and pretty much no deck will get over 60%, assuming that the sample size gets large enough to get rid of flux. Also, creativity isn't determined too much by how effective the deck is, but more by if it annoys the playerbase. For example, a    Mindgate deck that runs mindgate off of Supernovas will get the same thumbs up as a generic SoSa Stall. Strangely, Flying Tridents also gets a ~35% approval rating, while Adrenapests gets over 50%. (Wasn't quite standard adrenapests, admittedly)

From all the data so far annoyance is largely caused by three things.
1. A card that player doesn't like regardless of actual effectiveness. (SoSa, Dimensional Shield, Discord, Steal, Supernova)
2. Its a 'overused/hated/generic element'. (Fire, Aether, Death, Dark)
3. The deck is aggravating to play against, regardless of actual effectiveness. (Earthquake, Nightmare, Fractal-Ball Lightning-Bonewall)
Sidenote: I can't say anything about rainbows since I haven't actually listed any rainbows, speedbow or otherwise, since the system came up.

Generally, 25-35 is a 'bad' approval rating, while 45-60 is a 'good' approval rating. Assuming over 20 votes to eliminate strata its almost impossible to get over 60-70, as is seen by the good portion of people here that auto-thumbs down.

[ElementalDearWatson]

Just because I'm not sure where else to post this, I'd like to announce that I've just won 3400 off Gold by gaining an EM against the no.1 rated deck.  I can only assume he had a bad draw, because my deck's just a standard Gold farming speedbow with a couple of minor tweaks (a little less PC, a couple of Shards of Serendipity, and a Black Nymph replacing one Graboid) and the no. 1 deck caused no problem at all against my incredibly average draw.

From all the data so far annoyance is largely caused by three things.
1. A card that player doesn't like regardless of actual effectiveness. (SoSa, Dimensional Shield, Discord, Steal, Supernova)

Although it can sometimes be something that you can't help.  I drew a Discord once, so I made a deck with Discord ( / , as it happens).  Everybody marked it down, and I wonder how many people marked it down because they hate Discord.

2. Its a 'overused/hated/generic element'. (Fire, Aether, Death, Dark)

Again, not always something you can help.  The last 3 days I've drawn  cards (Pillars one day and Pendula the next, no less), and I'm not going to make a deliberately weak hand just to avoid using the card I drew.

Actually, a statistical anomaly happened when I drew the Pendula.  I thought it'd be fun to make a  / deck with Crusaders Endowing themselves with Fahrenheit.   Not a quick deck, but one with the possibility of lots of damage if given enough time.  I played against it two or three times to try it out and beat it easily every time.  I thought I'd give it a go, though, left it up and went to work.  I came back home and it was the no. 67 rated deck with a 6/0 win/loss ratio.  I was gobsmacked and played against it myself again.  Again, I beat it easily.  "Strange", I thought and went to bed.  I woke up in the morning and saw it had fallen out of the top 500 with a win/loss ratio of 6/4. 

It wasn't a good deck, just one that got lucky the first 6 matches it played.

[TheIdioticIdiot]

when this was first released, I thought it was what EtG needed, instead of T50

now, I feel like it needs fixes, what it does is:
1) rares are not any rarer, just takes more boring grinding to find
2) boring deck archetypes

I think that the reward for a creative deck needs to be higher, not sure what that might be though