First of all, this is not a discussion about the Dev’s decision to close Arena. It’s just a retrospective review of the wrongs aspects of Arena, and what could have been done better. It’s a long text but I hope you enjoy reading it.
Unpopular mode
To be honest, Arena has never been as popular as the Devs wanted it to be. There has always been a lot of players that only play the game to chill out, therefore, never liked Arena, and if they gave it a try, they got very anxious. Arena was meant for people that enjoyed the tension and the stress of playing in a competitive way.
For me, Arena mode’s been a blast. I never laughed that much playing this game. In fact, when Arena got released, I didn’t play Adventure more for almost two months. It was a good mode to improve your cannon aim, boarding and spawn camping techniques, and overall, to improve your gameplay in stressful situations.
Matchmaking
Alongside with a lackluster cinematic tutorial, there never has been a proper matchmaking based on level or stats (hours played, ships sunk or players killed), neither a “maiden voyage” or first tutorial match, or even a gameplay video that showed you the rules and the goals of this game.
Therefore, there were tons of players that didn’t have any clue of what to do, and got outplayed easily by skilled players. This was one of the main reasons Arena was so hated.
Queue times
Since it wasn’t a popular mode game, sometimes, depend on the hours you tried to play, you could spend a lot of time waiting in the lobby, but after 10-15mins, the game started eventually. No everyone had a complete galleon crew to play with, therefore there were many crews that weren’t full and quit right after the game just started because they had no chance to fight for the victory.
When Rare changed things, in order to make Arena more competitive, it only got worse. Galleon crews needed to have at least 3 members, which only turned into games not starting by any means. Due to this, crews tended to leave the lobby, creating a loop of endless waiting times. Also, the strike that Rare added for leaving an on-going match just increased this effect.
Arena 2.0 and cannon farming
Back in 2020, in Ships of Fortune’s update, Rare changed the game mode, creating Arena 2.0, were the X maps were removed, and only one chest was on play at a time. Also, the silver earned for landing cannon shot was increased from 10 to 40 points.
While sloop Arena felt well balanced and more fast-paced, galleon Arena got unbalanced as hell. Now, the meta-gaming was neutralizing an enemy ship and farming cannon shots on their upper deck, which was way too cheesy. Many players complained about that, but at this point, Rare just surrendered and stopped caring about Arena.
While sloop has just one cannon on each side (40 points), galleon has 4 cannons (therefore, the points for landing cannon should have been 10). Fixing this would have been as easy as that.
Overall, this new game mode wasn’t well received by many players, which still preferred the old mode, for being more strategic.
TDMers
By the time of Arena 2.0, a large portion of the most committed players had already grinded all the commendations in both modes, Adventure and Arena. Some of them found a reason to keep playing arena, the TDM mode.
This alternative mode got very popular and made the game felt no competitive at all, where only 2 or 3 crews really cared about playing the game and winning the match. You may like TDMers or not, but in the end, it was their way to have fun in Arena.
Communication disabled in the lobby
Let’s be honest. One of the most fun things in Arena was the saltiness shown in the lobby, especially with those long queue times. Crews teasing and roasting each other, before or after the game, have brought me real moments of laughs.
Many of the players took it casually, as a way to get into the heat of battle. But many others usually felt frustrated and offended (some completely reasonable), which turned into a lot of reports sent to Rare complaining about toxic behavior.
Overwhelmed by the spam of reports, Rare took the decision to disable communications between crews, which was understandable but got a very negative feedback. A lot of players, including me, stopped playing Arena because it felt dull after this.
Emissaries, Seasons and Rewards
There was a lot of ways to keep Arena appealing and alive. One of them was the cosmetics. For example, the uncompleted Courage Set for example (which its jacket is worn by one of the skeletons in the rowboat of the Captains of the Damned Tall Tale).
The Arena ship sets, or clothing sets added from time to time, could have been purchasable with silver, a currency that was only earned by playing Arena games.
Emissaries is also a system that would have fit Arena completely. You vote for the Emissary flag in the lobby, and depending on what place you finish the game, you can reach an upper grade, or lost it, earning more silver, and making the game more competitive. At the end of the month, the Emissary rewards would be given to the players the same way it works now.
Lastly, Seasons. I’ve never understand why you couldn’t progressed in the Season Pass by playing Arena, with Rare forcing players to play only Adventure instead of giving them the choise. A bunch of monthly trials, and a Season rank would have worked and brought players reasons to keep coming back to Arena, maybe with some cosmetics to earn…
Hitreg
Although is a major issue of the game, I don’t think hitreg has been a main reason to stop playing the game, cause we still keep playing Adventure despite it. Neither a critical aspect to win an Arena game, which is most focused in naval battle.
This said, I’m going to miss Arena and the moments of laughs that has brought to me. Farewell, and I hope we could be able to visit the inside of the Sea Dogs Tavern in the Adventure mode, or see DeMarco brothers making their appearance in the world. They are great characters.
