The sorry state of the Arena

[Terran 3]

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.

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.

[nolf]

I have the following simple proposal I'd like some feedback on to help with this problem: Add a third voting option. Call it the "nuclear option" (see Wikipedia if you haven't heard the term) or "middle finger option" or, less controversially, just make three options, thumbs up, sideways and down. If enough people use the last option (I suggest 10  votes), the deck drops out of the 500 immediately. No visible counter for the arena players necessary and just a notice for the person who posted the deck ("no longer active due to 10 downvotes").

With that, the extremely boring mono decks (plus ghostmare and PDials I guess) would never be able to reach the top 10 and thus hopefully people would stop using them. Maybe somebody will argue "but those are valid decks" - but it takes two to tango. I played in the arena for a couple more hours over the weekend and must by now have faced my 1000th mono aether deck and if nothing changes I'm not going to bother with the arena anymore. Which is a shame because potentially it is the biggest strength of the game, fresh, interesting decks to face every day.

[Pineapple]

You assume the general voter is an awesome person who can judge original decks as original and unoriginal decks as unoriginal.

I've put of plenty of decks that are both competitive (capable of not losing a game) and original. Unfortunately, even with those decks my thumbs up/down rate barely passed 60%. On the other hand, sometimes i get a few thumbs ups on my completely unoriginal decks.

If you give more power to the farmers, I'm sure you'll just magnify the "ragequitter" problem.

[nolf]

How many "farmers" can there really be? Has anybody not got enough weapons and shards (and electrum) by now? And according to the farming studies, for pure electrum you'll (nearly?) always be better off playing the FGs than trying your luck in the arena.

As I said in the opening post, I never put up mono decks and try my best to make something semi-original and obviously also competitive so it'll survive for more than a few plays. I have noticed the same as you have, 60% thumbs up is about as good as you'll ever get. But I'm fine with that, I don't need the extra electrum anyway, there have been other discussions about this, I understand people find it hard to upvote if, for example, they lose just before reaching a special spin. But I would hope most are fair enough to not use the "nuclear option" unless it is a really worn out deck. And my suggestion is that this third option has no special consequences until a certain number of people use it, until then it'll be counted as an ordinary downvote. So it's not like one player gets too much power - only if enough players "agree" that a deck is extremely boring it would be "nuked".

[flyingcat]

Sometimes people don't have enough time to make a creative deck, so in goes the ignore-the-oracle-card-rainbow. Other variants include oracle-card-based-mono, and oracle-card-splash-in-mono-dark-or-aether. Although it is pretty hard to make a creative and successful deck. My silence/aether stall was 2/5 in gold, but my mono-death got to the top in silver. Many people also ignore the thumbs-up/thumbs-down and automatically do one or the other.

[jawdirk]

I still think it is easiest to handle this problem with code. Detect duplicate decks and give them a proportionately smaller share of the games.

[iDaire]

I have posted here when I was a newb before.
Arena is simply messed up.
The thumbs up and down buttons don't come up when you win. This is a huge problem because let's face it. When most of us get sneak attacked by a "random deck" that came out of know where, we immediately hit the thumbs down button. I will not lie. I thumbs down 95% of the decks I lose against because most of them are unoriginal. Or just ticked me off.

Arena needs to be made to detect what kind of deck a deck is. With this kind of functionality, we can track the meta of the arena game at the moment (Zanzarino and developers only) and nerf the decks that are used too much. Even if we don't do this, at least find a way to weaken monos and rainbows being in arena. Why you may ask? I would like to build on what flyingcat said. The ignore-the-oracle-card rainbow. The oracle-card-mono. These decks are seen very often in arena. Then there is the oracle-card-splash-in-mono-darkness. I played a mono darkness with mind flayer oracle card splashed in. I quit the match on purpose just to thumbs it down and get it out of arena.

Of course, stemming off of what I said earlier, the Arena needs to be more original. It's pretty obvious. If arena was as original as we say it is, we wouldn't have decks that are able to wreck arena. Decks win against other decks because the deck made was able to counter the cards in the other decks or the deck was made to beat the player with little influence from the cards in the other deck (Basically a rush deck). If one deck, let's say for instance FEVER, is able to counter more than 80% of the decks in Silver, then 80% of the decks in Silver all carry the same weakness. A conclusion that can be made from this is that the decks are structured in such a similar way that they can be countered by the same thing. Unoriginality.

I could be wrong. It could be that the decks used against arena are exceptionally good. If that is the case, then these decks in arena are submitted by players and made by players. As far as I am concerned, players completely made the decks shoved in arena. These decks can be shoved in PvP as well. How is it that these decks such as FEVER can be used for arena and these decks can't be used for PvP? The immediate answer is the AI. Yet, this can't be the answer. Why?
An example if I may. Let's give you and the AI a hand with a lightning. A bone dragon is attacking you. Wouldn't you use your lightning to kill the dragon? The AI would too. Let's get another example. You have a steal in your hand. The enemy has a Pulverizer and a Phase Shield along with a Sanctuary. I'm betting you wouldn't target the sanctuary. The AI wouldn't either. The AI plays very similar to a real player. So, the decks made by players should play like actual players would play. With this logic, if the decks in silver aren't all made the same way and it is FEVER that is making silver look bad, then I should be able to walk into PvP 1 and 2 and wreck everyone with FEVER. You can't. The decks in arena are simply unoriginal. I wait for the counter-argument.

[Zso_Zso]

Then there is the oracle-card-splash-in-mono-darkness. I played a mono darkness with mind flayer oracle card splashed in. I quit the match on purpose just to thumbs it down and get it out of arena.

Errrr, BIG MISTAKE!

You just gave it a win pushing it further AHEAD in the arena -- the exact opposite of your intention. Thumbs-down simply means it just gets the standard winning points. If you thumb-up then it gets double-points as a bonus. The way to push it out of arena is to BEAT it! If you lose to it, you are only helping it!

[Treldon]

One major problem with the Arena decks - or their creators - is that one can advance to higher tiers before they have the necessary knowledge to create original decks

If one takes a good deck for grinding HB or FG, they advance their score quickly, easily getting their Arena deck in Silver in a few days. But in the mean time they don't have cards or the expertise to make their decks work, only by copying a well known deck

Take for example me: when I get a card from Oracle I first check the Wiki first to see what cards it works with, and for an example deck. Then comes the forum, but that turns up well known and overused decks - or catastrophic ones.
At which point I will try to make the deck work, sure, but it will turn out as average at best

Though at least I know better than to try the 'splash Oracle in mono'

Oh, and one final note: the AI is good. But some decks it cannot play, for example OTKs

[flyingcat]

i agree that the AI limits the decks you can play. It (surprisingly) plays SUNDIAL when it has a SoSac up. The problem is that with all the stat boosts, it's not hard to make a mono with the oracle card. Aether card? SoW+Dragons. Fire card? Immorush. etc.