The Arena despite being promised as a PvP game mode to really show your skill is not that at all. Instead it is a basic race to gather chests and run. Whoever engages in combat will never win so long as at least one ship ignores it and goes for the chests. The chests are worth way too much on turn in and enable passive players to bypass everyone who is actually competing. With the lack of combat options as well this is not the PvP we were promised on the initial announcement.
With these complaints there are a number of things that can be done to help this, the easiest ways are changing the values to chests or all the points as a whole.
Fix 1
Chest Find: 50
Turn-In: 250
Cannon Hit: 25
Player Kill: 5
Ship Sink: -1000
Fix 2
Chest Find: 100
Turn-In: 500
Cannon Hit: 25
Player Kill: 10
Ship Sink: -500 (+500 to crews who dealt damage to sunk ship in the last 30 seconds)
Fix 3
Chest Find: 100
Turn-In: 250 and gives a gunpowder barrel
Cannon Hit: 25
Player Kill: 25
Ship Sink: -500 (+500 to crews who dealt damage to ships in the last 30 seconds)
Alternately with the lack of gunpowder barrels (or the stronghold gunpowder barrel as advertised when the mode was first announced) we need a way to add them as well as curse shots.
Idea 1
Gunpowder barrels are given upon chest turn ins (see fix 3 idea).
Curse Cannon Balls are found in barrels on the Sea Dog (turn in) Galleons. With a respawn time of 2 minutes.
Stronghold Gunpowder Barrels are 1/4 of the X's on maps and are dug up (no way to tell which is which)
Idea 2
Gunpowder barrels spawn on islands like normal and can be found at random (higher spawn rate than normal)
Curse Cannonballs can be found in barrels but lower chance of high power curses (anchor, sleep, rigging, and ballast).
Stronghold Gunpowder Barrels can be bought for 1000silver at a Sea Dog Galleon potentially putting you behind but gives a small chance of pulling ahead (plus can be used to ambush at the turn in)
Finally some players really value using snakes as guards for loot or ladders, they should be added as well as cages for them.
Idea 1
Ships spawn with 3 snakes in cages at the very nose of the ship away from player spawn points. They can be moved to areas players value.
Idea 2
Snakes are on all islands at a regular density and cages can be found around the islands (with or without keg spawns).
