A few details about T500

[Essence]

Bronze League having low rewards is just fine; it basically plays the role of t50 only without farms OR upped cards -- you get your deck up to fighting par, and then you play AI3 for score and Bronze League for rares.  That's cool.  Having a deck submitted to the Bronze League means little; you get few wins, and you get a massive 1 per win, so it's more like a distraction than an investment.

Silver League is about perfect in terms of replacing the challenge level of the old t50.  It's great fun for unupped players who have bested AI3 but aren't comfortable fighting AI4 just yet.  Silver League decks still don't make all that much money for you, but they're much better than Bronze.

Gold League is about on par with FG farming.  The decks often don't have all of the advantages of FGs, but tend to be built to win, with all of the cards they need to do it.  The problem with that is that having a 97 payout and a rare spin every 4th win doesn't even start to compare with the relative predictibility and the UPPED CARD SPINS of FG farming.  Meanwhile, having a decent deck in the Gold League is badass -- the payout is good and it gets played just often enough that if you build a winning deck, you get that payout often enough that you can upgrade a card every other day just from income from The Arena.

Platinum League is The Ultimate Challenge, and it roxxors.  I love it to death.  But no one wants to risk it when there's no upgraded card spins, with the result that even after 24 hours, my deck (currently in 5th place) made a whopping 328 .  41 wins, 6 losses.  That's just sad.


The solution, to me, is obvious: allow limited upped spins in Gold League, and unlimited unupped spins in Platinum League.  Heck, I still maintain that 1/2/3 upped spins in Silver/Gold/Platinum Leagues would be entirely appropriate and encourage an appropriate amount of participation in each League, without the idea of allowing the live player to use points and have skills like the AI players do.

[ralouf]

For my part as their are no upped cards to win in platinum I will not try it. FG are just by far better for their rewards and really easier too

[Isei]

At this rate, zanz is probably just going to make FGs impossible to beat, just so people play platinum more

On a more serious note, PvP has never had the rewards of FG farming.  PvP exists as a way to test your skills against other players, not as a farming tool.  This is true in not just elements, but many MMORPGS in the past.  To me, and apparently to zanz, since the arena is labeled "Asynchronous PvP," this is how the Arena should be treated.  If this is the intention, then I would suggest (as several have before me) that a leaderboard be public, so that people can see where the top players stand.

[TStar]

*snip*

The danger I see here is that if you allow players to win upped cards from other players in spins you run the risk of having some/all players simply turning the Arena into a new farming ground.  Why have everyone build decks to win when instead everyone can build farm decks that people can spin up rare cards off of?  The payout for being a winner in Arena is dwarfed by the benefit of being able to farm upped cards off of player farms.  Just to start, players with a full set of upped cards have no incentive to get more money and win rather than put farms up for people.  t50 wasn't originally intended to be a farmers paradise, but look what happened.  Do you really think the Arena wouldn't quickly devolve into something similar once people realized they could farm dozens, maybe even a hundred and more upped cards per day there?  It's already happening as I've run into several farms scattered from Silver through Platinum.

Switching gears, one frustrating part of Arena is that you lose the "fun" of being able to make new decks each day if you want to get a high score since making a new deck wipes the slate.  What if there was a linkage between Oracle spins and Arena decks such that when you spin the Oracle your Arena deck is simultaneously reset.  This way people can't just sit on the same card for a week or more while nobody else can catch them.  Alternately, maybe a stat reset on Arena decks at the same time as the Oracle reset would work.  Players would still get the penalties for not changing decks but the wins/loss and score would reset daily so players who build new decks have a chance to become the leader for that day.

[Essence]

The danger I see here is that if you allow players to win upped cards from other players in spins you run the risk of having some/all players simply turning the Arena into a new farming ground.  Why have everyone build decks to win when instead everyone can build farm decks that people can spin up rare cards off of?  The payout for being a winner in Arena is dwarfed by the benefit of being able to farm upped cards off of player farms.  Just to start, players with a full set of upped cards have no incentive to get more money and win rather than put farms up for people.  t50 wasn't originally intended to be a farmers paradise, but look what happened.  Do you really think the Arena wouldn't quickly devolve into something similar once people realized they could farm dozens, maybe even a hundred and more upped cards per day there?

Do you really think that when the Arena goes out of Beta and there really are 500 decks in Platinum League that enough of them will be farms to be worth trying to farm them?   Also, you do realize that "the benefit of being able to farm upped cards" and "the benefit of winning money when your deck wins" aren't on the same scale, right?  The latter benefits the deck poster; the former benefits the people who play against it.

No, I don't see Platinum League turning into a farm situation.  At all.

[TStar]

Actually posting a farm benefits both since the player posting the farm can go make a deck and play against their own farm to win upped cards.  At least in t50 you had to play the same deck you are using.  Now you can post a complete farm deck and go farm with a real deck.

And yes I do see it happening.  t50 generally would have ~20% at most of players on it as a farm at any given time but it was still fairly profitable.  Even if only 1 in every 10 players in t500 posted a farm deck chances are you'd still make more money per hour farming upped cards from there than you would fighting FGs.  If that rate climbed up to around 20% like it was in t50 then it would make FG farming obsolete.

[tyranim]

Actually posting a farm benefits both since the player posting the farm can go make a deck and play against their own farm to win upped cards.  At least in t50 you had to play the same deck you are using.  Now you can post a complete farm deck and go farm with a real deck.

And yes I do see it happening.  t50 generally would have ~20% at most of players on it as a farm at any given time but it was still fairly profitable.  Even if only 1 in every 10 players in t500 posted a farm deck chances are you'd still make more money per hour farming upped cards from there than you would fighting FGs.  If that rate climbed up to around 20% like it was in t50 then it would make FG farming obsolete.

ive been facing the gold for a while now and i have yet to encounter my deck at all. :\
lol, i love being on the scoreboards now, it makes me all giddy!

[majofa]

It'll be tough to tell what the impact will truly be once the sample size jumps from ~100 --> 500.

[Essence]

I simply don't see why anyone would post a farm deck to the League.  You don't make any money, you don't any props for a badass deck, you have to play, on average, 500 games before you even have a 50% cumulative chance of seeing your own deck, and in all likelihood in the time it takes to play those 500 games, your deck will get pushed off the bottom of the rankings by new decks coming online.

People posted farms on t50 because there was no reason not to.  That just isn't the case with The Arena.  Even if you have a complete collection of cards (and very few of even the Platinum Leaguers do), you still want the score you get from having a successful Arena deck -- at least until you clear 100,000 points and you've effectively done everything you can do in the game.  No one is there yet, so I just don't see what you're worried about as being a legitimate concern.

[Sevs]

I simply don't see why anyone would post a farm deck to the League.  You don't make any money, you don't any props for a badass deck, you have to play, on average, 500 games before you even have a 50% cumulative chance of seeing your own deck, and in all likelihood in the time it takes to play those 500 games, your deck will get pushed off the bottom of the rankings by new decks coming online.

People posted farms on t50 because there was no reason not to.  That just isn't the case with The Arena.  Even if you have a complete collection of cards (and very few of even the Platinum Leaguers do), you still want the score you get from having a successful Arena deck -- at least until you clear 100,000 points and you've effectively done everything you can do in the game.  No one is there yet, so I just don't see what you're worried about as being a legitimate concern.

1 million

but i am on essences side. if it ever becomes a problem then changes can happen but with actual benifits(electrum and score) incentive shoots way down.

[BluePriest]

The incentive to change decks should really be increased. Even if it is more convenient not to change anything.

I got lucky and got pends yesterday. Today I see that my deck went 25 - 0 overnight. Am I going to change to Long Bow? Hardly... 199 HP is almost as it was yesterday.

HP really should decrease more drastically. 10-25 per day I think. Otherwise players (like me) will keep waiting for a good card before changing decks again.

On the other hand what if a player can't connect for several days? His deck will be screwed up and fall out of the league. That should be considered as well... 10 per day would be more reasonable still...

Why not make it so that if you spin the oracle it resets your deck? Simple solution.

[frlaa]

The arena is awesome!!! BUT i think that the platinum league is quite impossible and the reward is kinda low. I agree with Blupriest... spinning oracle should reset the arena deck. I'm guessing that only a few players log in every day so loosing 25hp is quite absurd. What do you guys think?