Arena improvement ideas.

  • I know that You guys said arena won't be updated in future but I wanted to drop some ideas from an experienced player who plays in NAL and loves arena that may bring more people to play it.

    I want to start off with last arena update - removing voice chat. For me and for a lot of others it was a game changer. It removed the ability to communicate between teams mid games and mayby set up a TDM before the game. Better solution would be disabling the voice chat as default BUT with an option to change it back to enabled.

    Like there is an emmisary ledger system in adventure, something like this in arena - rewards for most points earned in the season, just like adventure there would be four stages, one with no reward, second with just a title or gold, third - title and mayby some weapon / already existing sails and fourth - ship cosmetics. I wouldn't take silver to count the points, just the gold you receive after each game. (yes, gold hour would bring more people to play since it would be more rewarding)

    After the game players receive a sheet of paper with overall score with detalis of what gives and how many points. Instead of this overall system i suggest - personalised statistics. It would count cannonballs shot, cannonballs hit, enemies killed, chests dig up and sold and mayby cannonball kills. With hits and shot cannonballs you could calculate an average. For players who are more advanced in arena it could help with their accuracy.

    Since every company besides Hunters Call got maximum level buffed, why not update the arena to max lvl 75 and add some new commendations to achieve or add rewards for everyone who got legendary sea dog in 2020 like they got a new blunderbass in 2019.

    Thanks to everyone who read it, i would love your feedback and I encourage you to play arena, it is a very fun game mode to boost your skill, as well as play some TDM's, they are also cool but the community may be a bit rough.

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  • Exactly, basically Arena is not popular anymore because of the updates done to it, so people won't play so no more updates. I feel like really the only people who play are not doing it for enjoyment but for trying to get all commendations in game or really want the triumphant sea dog stuff. All of these suggestions will bring players back to arena, I get getting rid of voice chat but it would be awesome to have text chat in arena still. At least have a "TDM" option in the pirate chat radial please.

  • I still think a good solution would have been to move to a last ship standing type mode. Have the red sea contract and once you're sunk you're out. Would get rid of issues like people farming afk/bad boats for points and cheesing wins. The other advantage to sink and you're out is it would help repopulate lobbies quicker. Maybe add a way to for them to spectate if they want to see how that round winds up ending, but otherwise they would have the option to go right to a new lobby after they sink to get in to a new game. Also gets rid of the issue of being stuck in a game you have no chance of winning but are forced to play out to avoid the quitting penalty.

  • Add dedicated tdm yes

  • @rockaceyt You can rename your pet or use "I'll stay on the island." and they will understand for sure.

  • @snowboarderx115 Bans for leaving the game should be removed cuz of all the "Hazelnutbeard" errors that just randomly disconnect you.

    Last ship standing may sound good but only if ship spawn around the main island, not in a line like thic because the second ship from the edges loses in most cases. In NAL they would call it "Reaper's arena" - it's a interesting concept. I think that Sea of Chempions also had a turney where the last ship standing won.

    Arena should have a queue / GUI. You load in to a menu like in league / cs:go / other fps games and start loading on to the arena ONLY IF the lobby is full and every ship is full so there are no 1v1, 1 players per ship etc.

  • @naniewicz1337 Yeah, I agree you would have to space the ships around the edge of the red in a circle and then everyone sails at each other for last ship standing to really work.

    I think another decent option would have been to leave multiple chests in the game, but have them always be on one island. The biggest problem with arena 1.0 was they were all over the place. Now sometimes that wasn't a problem. If you had a full server and the crews were all more experienced this led to some really fun rounds and required strategy. Some of the best rounds I ever played were in arena 1.0. The problem was those types of rounds were too few and far between. Too often you would have a ship sail to an island with a bunch of chests, dig them up, and then turn them in without them ever being interfered with because all the other boats were off elsewhere. This was particularly problematic if the round wasn't full. For example if you had a 3 boat round and 1 boat went to one island and a 2nd boat went to another then whichever boat the 3rd boat went after basically handed a win to the boat that was left alone. The problem with arena 2.0 in my view is that the chest is essentially pointless to go after. At least in gally arena. It does still have value in sloop arena, but in gally arena you can easily get way more points off cannons. It's often to your detriment to sail for the chest if nobody else is going for it because by the time you dig it up and try to go turn it in you can have multiple boats that have already passed 1,000 points on cannon shots. However, if you bring back multiple chests and put them all on one island that still forces people to one area, but brings back the fun of fighting people on the islands and the strategy that was necessary to try and get the chests on your boat when you're being actively contested.

  • Arena needs to die.

  • @naniewicz1337 said:

    @rockaceyt You can rename your pet or use "I'll stay on the island." and they will understand for sure.

    TDM at fort says aye!
    Naval says no!

    Look at TDM at fort!

  • @reapinglegion Why? If you could expand your answer.

  • @naniewicz1337 said in Arena improvement ideas.:

    @reapinglegion Why? If you could expand your answer.

    I'll never give constructive criticsm and are toxic to this forum apparently so no.

  • Some of the ideas in this thread are actually great.

    A dedicated TDM or something fun to do while we wait for matches would be huge. Half the reason I went in arena when it was new wasn't because I needed ship combat experience, I wanted to practice my combat vs other pirates up close. I think tons of people want that and a mini game where we all fight on an outpost just trying to score kills would be awesome, casual and just fun.

    Another great suggestion was the last pirate standing type game mode. AFK farmers or people farming points not really playing the real game is a huge issue in arena and this would definitely give an option to those who wanna play something fun rather than just grind achievements/levels/commendations. Arena SHOULD be a fun experience not just a boring grind everyone is playing incorrectly.

    The red sea closing in forcing some player interaction and fights was another interesting one even if it risks being a bit battle royale-y....

  • @zappychan Yeah I realize the red sea closing basically turns it in to a battle royale, but I think it's the only way you could really make last ship standing work. Because if the round only ends when the last ship sinks you could have rounds that go on indefinitely if boats can just stay away from the other boats. The arena map is contracted compared to adventure but overall still pretty large. It's not hard to imagine that when the round gets down to the last 2 boats that suddenly they start playing really defensively and it just drags on forever. You need to have a way to make it so after 15 minutes or so the round ends.

  • The problem with last ship standing modes is it increases the amount of loading you need to do, which means less time actually playing, particularly if you get knocked out early. The load times are already abysmal and probably a big reason the mode is not that popular.

    I also don't think last ship standing would do anything to combat picking on or farming the lower crewed ships. This would definitely still happen to eliminate them from the contest early, or use them as bait to quickly eliminate a ship that might actually be ok/good. There would definitely be a lot more running or avoiding conflict for as long as possible, which is something that was complained about in Arena 1.0.

    The best version of Arena is somewhere between v1.0 and v2.0. Not as much focus on ship hits for points, and not as many chests available which cause runaways or wild swings.

  • 15-20 mins - clear waters
    15 mins- outside of map closes in with storms surround the play field while inside this storm monster appear randomly
    10 mins- storm continues to close gradually
    10 mins- storm has enclosed the entire play field with Monster RNG.
    At this point its up to your skill or RNG and the match will end one way or another.

    Adjust times to players desire.

  • @d3adst1ck said in Arena improvement ideas.:

    The problem with last ship standing modes is it increases the amount of loading you need to do, which means less time actually playing, particularly if you get knocked out early. The load times are already abysmal and probably a big reason the mode is not that popular.

    I also don't think last ship standing would do anything to combat picking on or farming the lower crewed ships. This would definitely still happen to eliminate them from the contest early, or use them as bait to quickly eliminate a ship that might actually be ok/good. There would definitely be a lot more running or avoiding conflict for as long as possible, which is something that was complained about in Arena 1.0.

    The best version of Arena is somewhere between v1.0 and v2.0. Not as much focus on ship hits for points, and not as many chests available which cause runaways or wild swings.

    Definitely loading in and out of rounds won't feel great, but I think the biggest thing that makes people not play is more about the fact you get stuck waiting in the lobby forever. It just takes too long to get rounds going in the first place. With last ship standing once a ship is sunk that crew is getting sent back to a lobby, unless a spectate option is created, which should help the lobbies refill quicker and get new games going quicker. Instead of having boats that have just given up and aren't really trying in rounds because they have no chance to win they're off to a new game that they do have a chance to win. Running I think wouldn't be so effective as long as you have a contracting red sea. You could have it contract every 5 minutes. So minute 5 first contraction, minute 10 second contraction, and then at minute 15 the red sea fully contracts. The minute 10 contraction wouldn't necessarily need to be super tiny, but it would need to be small enough that boats can't really run off anymore. This should be feasible. I mean it's like when someone is running towards the red sea in adventure. Unless they're actually going in to the red sea eventually they're going to have to turn left or right and at that point you can take an angle to cut them off. So you make that circle reasonably small enough and they're going to be forced to engage especially because you're not going to want to be caught on the edge when minute 15 hits or you're going to have the red popping holes in you while you try to sail towards the middle where another boat is probably already waiting for you.

  • @snowboarderx115 said in Arena improvement ideas.:

    Definitely loading in and out of rounds won't feel great, but I think the biggest thing that makes people not play is more about the fact you get stuck waiting in the lobby forever. It just takes too long to get rounds going in the first place. With last ship standing once a ship is sunk that crew is getting sent back to a lobby

    Surely you must see the problem with this line of reasoning.

    If you've played any type of battle royale mode with a shrinking game area, you have to be familiar with the fact that there are always players who turtle until the last possible moment before engaging in combat.

    The exact same thing is going to happen in a last ship standing mode in Sea of Thieves, except unlike in other similar modes you don't have a hundred players to fill the space and nowhere to hide, so it's quite easy to stay away from everyone until the last 5 minutes. It's introducing 10 minutes of boredom into an arena round.

    Imagine how boring your favorite Battle Royale would be if it had half or one third of the players on the same size map.

  • @d3adst1ck Well unless you don't make it super easy stay away from everyone until the last 5 minutes. I mean this is all speculative. There is no set size for what the starting play area would be at this point. It doesn't need to be as large as the current arena size is. Ideally you would test out different size play areas until you find the sizes that drive the ideal level of engagement.

  • I am glad that they added an alternative pirate legend sword to the renown track. I think that a lot of pirate legends gave up on getting their weapons from arena long ago.

    The basic pirate legend outfit is often regarded as a joke if anyone actually wears it - its sad that we still have to put in such ridiculous time investment for what should be starter legend weapon items.

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