Can't say I'm really happy with this.

[zombie0]

arena is amazing!  i plan to regularly donate to support this if it goes live, once the kinks are worked out.  BUT, there needs to be some rotation of restricted/banned cards (changes per week) and players need to remake decks at least that often too.  the guy who gets a good oracle shouldnt automatically have a best deck forever.  if this is too recource-intensive, have the oracle automatically change the card of the day (which everyone has to work around).  do NOT allow players to change their decks after submitting.  if you want to build a deck around the oracle each day, you need to start from scratch.

that said, i imagine poor players struggling to get cards to participate.  game keeps assuming everyone has everything upgraded and may forget the casual starting player that will take months and years to farm everything.

[Hodari]

arena is amazing!  i plan to regularly donate to support this if it goes live, once the kinks are worked out.  BUT, there needs to be some rotation of restricted/banned cards (changes per week) and players need to remake decks at least that often too.  the guy who gets a good oracle shouldnt automatically have a best deck forever.  if this is too recource-intensive, have the oracle automatically change the card of the day (which everyone has to work around).  do NOT allow players to change their decks after submitting.  if you want to build a deck around the oracle each day, you need to start from scratch.

that said, i imagine poor players struggling to get cards to participate.  game keeps assuming everyone has everything upgraded and may forget the casual starting player that will take months and years to farm everything.

Something like this is already taken care of by having the decks hp gradually decay over time(something like 2,4,8,16 etc. points lost) so after 3-4 days, the deck is no longer nearly as strong as it was before.  As for players who can't afford to upgrade everything, just make decks for bronze/silver(most likely these players will have lower scores anyway so they won't have much option on this).  If they can't even afford a fully unupped deck, then they still have plenty of other challenges from the existing game ahead of them even without arena  

[PepeDosCanones]

i just made a deck for the arena, but did not want to spend all of the "level"-points i have earned so far (42, i think). instead i spent only 19, so the deck would be in the - probably more frequented - silver section and not in the gold one. the deck though kept its "level 42", and therefore gold, status.
do i now have to make use of every point i can allocate or have an ivariably inferior deck that is still rated not with respect to the skills i purchase but the maximum number possible?
that just doesn't seem right to me... but then again, it has just come out and some more tweaking is to be expected.
any new features and the work put into it, are sincerely appreciated.

EDIT: When i clicked on ARENA just now, for the fraction of a second, the deck levels showed "19" before switching back to 42. maybe this is of interest to anybody...

[twixy10]

i just made a deck for the arena, but did not want to spend all of the "level"-points i have earned so far (42, i think). instead i spent only 19, so the deck would be in the - probably more frequented - silver section and not in the gold one. the deck though kept its "level 42", and therefore gold, status.
do i now have to make use of every point i can allocate or have an ivariably inferior deck that is still rated not with respect to the skills i purchase but the maximum number possible?
that just doesn't seem right to me... but then again, it has just come out and some more tweaking is to be expected.
any new features and the work put into it, are sincerely appreciated.

EDIT: When i clicked on ARENA just now, for the fraction of a second, the deck levels showed "19" before switching back to 42. maybe this is of interest to anybody...

There is a whole topic (in general discussion) for this issue. I know it is iritating, I am level 43 and can only post gold decks, while having only 4 points more than a good silverdeck. The only thing you can do is lose score or gain score in order to reac a better level.

[LongDono]

I must say once one finds a good deck anything Gold and below is easy. Right now I play 6 upped cards ( not going to say the deck ) and I get alot of EMs when I win, and I win about 50% of the time so doubled score and electrum, it is fairly fast compared to any other grinding.
I might..... might try above Gold if the reward got higher. Let's face it they are harder than false gods.

[inthisroom]

Well, sorry for complaining but I'm not a fan of the arena at all, the Oracle cards are more a handycap than anything else and I find that so annoying that even though I'd qualify for Platinum league, I haven't even put up a deck yet, don't know if I will, I really liked t50 and I'm quite sad that it doesn't exist any more... well, it was fun while it lasted...

[Genuinous]

The Oracle cards are a challenge, ALL cards can make a good deck. If you're in Platinum, even a fairly badly contructed deck can be a big challenge. You can edit your deck, play against it and test it. I felt like my card today was crap... Thought a little bit and made some tests. Result? Have yet to lose.

If you don't like challenges and interesting things... go back farming the AI...

[inthisroom]

Well, I find this is neither a challenge nor interesting, just annoying. Farming regular AI is of no interest to me, I mostly played T50 because I exclusively play at work, which doesn't give me much opportunity to pvp, so T50 was the closest thing to pvp I had. The only choice I have now is playing sad AI (0-3) or FG and the Arena, which is FG-like, I found the idea of the Arena quite interesting, but unfortunately - and I'm aware that this is just my opinion - not every development is an improvement.

[Genuinous]

I don't quite see your problem... If you thought T50 was close to PvP (with half the decks farms, the rest USEM, CCYB and a couple different decks) then I think T500 (with lots of different decks and 2000 submissions) is way more than you can ask for. If you think it is too hard (Gold or Platinum) go against silver, which is not that difficult to beat...

What is it that you don't like about the Arena? Or do you just miss farms?

[ralouf]

I just totally agree with Genuinous t50 was only CCYB or USEM the rest was farm deck and a little minority of original deck.
= Nothing that looks like a pvp deck (no; nobody play USEM or CCYB in pvp).

Now we have arena :

We have 4 different lvl of leagues, bronze looks like pvp 1 a lot and silver is more like pvp 2.
Gold is like pvp2 too in harder because most of the time your opponent have 200 HP and *2 draw but the deck submitted looks like other decks you can meet in pvp2 (GotP nightmare, poison stall.. etc)
PLatinum is for player who are looking for real challenge. No it doesn't look like pvp that much but it is harder than FG.

The very good point in arena is DIVERSITY ! I played hundreds games and rarely met 2 similar decks. That is just awesome how many differents decks leaves here.
And this is due to the oracle card IMHO; this is just an awesome idea that forces player to be creative and create new decks. As Genuinous said you can make a good deck, regardless the cards you spun.

the rewards are really more awesome and for guys who are looking for rare there are the extra spins.

For me Arena is really awesome, and allows players like me (IE who plays a lot) to avoid the boring AI farming.

[inthisroom]

Well, people seem quite happy with this, so maybe I just don't like changes...
It's definitely not the farms I miss 
I'll probably get used to this and at some point, I might even decide to finally put up an arena deck, I'm quite undecided yet between following through or just changing games.

[zombie0]

Well, people seem quite happy with this, so maybe I just don't like changes...
It's definitely not the farms I miss 
I'll probably get used to this and at some point, I might even decide to finally put up an arena deck, I'm quite undecided yet between following through or just changing games.

post an arena deck.  you will start checking on it to see how its doing, it becomes your baby.

i miss running a rush deck vs other players decks.  quick win or loss, game decided in 8 turns or so.  while i enjoy methodical and tactical decks too, now i have no choice.  a very small number of decks can survive the card advantage and damage/healing of powerful AI decks.  it always felt like top50 was meant for simulated pvp.  now its simulated PvFG, but we already had FGs!  somewhere along the way we forgot what we were updating and improving =\

how about two systems, one like the old t50 but updated with rankings, and one like what we have now with superpowered player decks (aka player FG decks)?