Presently, the arenas are dead and broken. I don't want to debate how or why that came to be here. Instead I suggest some simple ideas that could breathe new life into the arenas and even improve the new player experience.
-
Fix the existing bugs, obviously
Not being able to tell where the treasure actually is during the match because the beacon is bugged is incredibly frustrating, and has been broken for like six months already. This destroys half the strategy of the game, and nobody wants to play a fundamentally broken game mode. Please fix. -
Keep cross team chat turned off
The only reason to chat across teams in a match based game is psychological warfare, to tilt your opponents so they play badly. This should have been turned off from the beginning in my opinion and Rare created their own toxicity problem in the arenas by not following this fairly standard rule in online match based team gameplay in the first place. -
Put regular item spawns in arenas
There was a bug recently where I found some gunpowder kegs had spawned on a fort in a sloop arena match. This bug was just patched apparently, but that was the most fun I'd had in an arena match in a long time. I think it would add some good variety and mix up the tactics a bit to intentionally keep random item spawns in the arenas. If a crew can spare a member to run ashore and look for cursed cannonballs or kegs, they could come back empty handed, they could turn the tide of the battle for the team, or they could accidentally keg their own ship. It would certainly alter the monotony of the arenas a bit. -
Add voting on arena game modes
This could be as simple as adding a big captains table to the arena lobby, where players can vote on one of a few different arena game modes. This could be as simple as an Arena 1.0 and 2.0 option for starters, modes that basically already are or were in the game. Some players liked the more PVE focused aspects of the original arenas, while others prefer the PVP focus of the current arenas. Let players just vote which one in the lobby. You could even add a "TDM AT FORT" mode, which would help with some of those gun achievements in the arenas. This might just reduce the frequency of veteran boarding campers farming other crews for gun kills to unlock those last achievements like they do in the arenas now. -
Follow the maiden voyage with Sea Dogs training grounds
A common complaint I have seen from new players is that they complete the maiden voyage, gain some basic familiarity with the PVE aspects of the game, then don't encounter their first PVP experience until they have a ship full of treasure that they now have no idea how to defend. Instead of continuously shrinking the arenas button in the main menu, the arenas could be promoted as the next logical thing to do after the maiden voyage to follow your basic PVE education with a PVP crash course, before losing your stuff in Adventure mode. -
Make a Sea Dogs themed season
Lastly, give the Sea Dogs some love and either base an upcoming season around them or feature them heavily some way in a season update, after implementing some/any/all of the improvements suggested above. A new set of rewards and seasonal events would bring people back to the arenas, and if they found all these other changes and improvements there, it could breathe new life into a game mode that needn't have died in the first place.
Rare, please steal these ideas and revamp your arenas, it's really in everyone's best interest. Personally, I can't play Adventure mode on my lunch break, and presently I can't play Arenas on my lunch break either because the game mode is so dead. Not everyone has the hours to spare for Adventure mode and I miss being able to just drop in for quick matches of Sea of Thieves.
