The sorry state of the Arena

[CuCN]

let's admit it: Platinum is FLOODED with at least ten poison decks.

Oh no, ten poison decks. That's an entire 2% of the league!

[iDaire]

let's admit it: Platinum is FLOODED with at least ten poison decks.

Oh no, ten poison decks. That's an entire 2% of the league!

I was under exaggerating.
I can say that roughly 20% of the decks in platinum are poison decks, though this number altars, it usually stays between 15% and 20%
Every three or so decks play against have at least one poison and every other deck I lose against are poison based. I know other people experience the same thing so using this logic, I am DIRECTLY applying that at least 15% of platinum is poison based.

[nolf]

So, the Arena in Elements proves once again - I lack ambition. I have never cared about reaching the number 1 spot. Since I usually spend some time creating a deck, I want it to do well enough to last a few days. As long as it stays in the top 500, I'm happy.

Maybe I can persuade some of you to adapt this line of thinking? I'd like to see more variety in the Arena - and thus I'm trying to do my part to provide it. I don't need more electrum and even if I did, there'd be ways to make some a lot faster. Who cares about the #1 spot? Maybe all Zanz has to do is to remove the names of the current leaders from the menu.

@bripod: Sure, the limited AI prevents even more variety. On the other hand, if it was as smart as we are, we'd never stand a chance against a level 80 deck. Those advantages to choose from (or all of them together maxed out at level 80) are exactly what allows us to create decks that can do pretty well but would never work for the player. My current water/random rainbow deck stands at (surprisingly good) 18-3, if I took those 35 cards into a PVP2 duel I'd get crushed. I probably couldn't beat many bronze decks with that. It only works because of the high HP, the double draw and the double mark.

As for shards, I agree some of them are too powerful and/or make some simple mono-decks too deadly. Though I must say, I like the shard of sacrifice, it's a really interesting "new" tactic. I think the only problem is that it has only one real counter (purify) and think Zanz needs to add a counter which isn't tied to a specific element. So, for example just move purify into the "other" section. But shards should probably be discussed elsewhere.

[andretimpa]

My suggestion:

-Everyone sends dead decks to the arena.
-Farming plat becomes ridicullously easy.
-After a few days we can all chill with our trainer edition accounts.
-C'mon guys, we can do it.



But indeed, I wonder what would happen if the leaderboard simply got removed and neither you nor no one else was able to tell your deck rank, only if it was in the top 500 or not.
Better yet, don't tell your winrate too, only the number of thumbs up you got.

[farscape]

LOL @ Andre's suggestion. Why not just give trainer edition to everyone, much faster and simpler

[Submachine]

I wonder what would happen if the leaderboard simply got removed and neither you nor no one else was able to tell your deck rank, only if it was in the top 500 or not.
Better yet, don't tell your winrate too, only the number of thumbs up you got.

Maybe the competition would be less stressed. It would also need to tell how much money it earned yet, because that's the only true reason for arena.

[ARTHANASIOS]

LOL @ Andre's suggestion. Why not just give trainer edition to everyone, much faster and simpler

Or, you can just go to the Trainer and have all the fun of the world and a full card set (including the Nymphs of your dreams) in mere seconds instead of 10,000 playing hours.

[jawdirk]

Maybe Zanz could design an algorithm which reduces the likelihood of facing duplicate decks. So all the decks that collectively share a large quantity of cards split the chance of being assigned to a player.

Something like:
1. Find up to 50 of the largest groups of cards shared by 10 or more recently submitted decks.
2. In the order of # of common cards, assign all decks to the group if it contains all the cards.
3. When picking the arena enemy, groups and new / successful decks that don't belong to any of the groups have an equal chance of being picked.
4. If a group is picked, pick a random succesful deck from it as the arena enemy or drop the group entirely if there are no successful decks.

[timetock]

I don't need to say this much: The arena decks have been around for... quite a while.

I actually can't remember a time when arena had creative, nice decks that didn't involve shards. Heck, was there even a time like that?
The Arena in itself is just a broken machine. Platinum+ players just slap shards into their decks and pray the AI knows what its doing. I am guilty as well: I think the most creative deck that was fairly successful was an duo. Now I just stuff decks with supernovas and SoSer. It really doesn't get very interesting.

However, since Platinum is the most efficient way to farm electum, there's really no other alternative other than head into platinum or gold with PDials/Swallow. (If I'm feeling lucky I'll use refraction dials.) I guess there really is no way to change much of anything right now, other than just accept the meta and continue with those "boring" decks.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, unfortunately, things aren't going to change much until another patch rolls out (god knows when). The AI either has to become smarter, or you get the players to come to a mass consensus. Good luck.

[Terran 3]

An idea I think would be interesting is to allow people to decide which League they submit their arena decks in, with the usual limits on the number of points you can enter. Arena level can be kept for you to 'unlock' the ability to put decks into higher level arenas, but you can put your deck into Bronze even if you've unlocked Plat. People would be able to spread out by putting decks for different tiers of the arena, and reduce the stagnation somewhat, especially if the rewards from each league remain constant.

[iDaire]

An idea I think would be interesting is to allow people to decide which League they submit their arena decks in, with the usual limits on the number of points you can enter. Arena level can be kept for you to 'unlock' the ability to put decks into higher level arenas, but you can put your deck into Bronze even if you've unlocked Plat. People would be able to spread out by putting decks for different tiers of the arena, and reduce the stagnation somewhat, especially if the rewards from each league remain constant.

I believe that would be a bad idea as the leagues were invented to serve as a ranking system for people to decide where to fight. It keeps the basic idea and supports newbism. It also supports the structure held and the integrity of it: Beginners for bronze, Intermediates for silver, Pros for gold, and Strong Professionals for platinum. This structure helps people to know where they are at depending on which arena they do efficiently. I would like to keep this systems. What I find "dirt" about your reasoning is the integration of professionals into bronze. No one wants to go into bronze and face a 2x false god deck.

[Dm]

Whenever I see this thread title I am misled and think of all the several years old decks reviving in arena due to lack of players. Worrying about the wrong thing, this thread is.