Active Skeleton Forts in Arena

@elya-pog Let me tell you, you would never win just by turning in your own chests. While you dug up your own, other crews would go after their own or after yours. There is where the genius of arena came out. PvP wasn't required, but it WAS highly incentivised because no ship would win by chests alone. You had to deny other teams from scoring, either by stopping them from selling, or stealing their chests, while making sure you keep getting points.

Proper sailing tactics paid off, and catching or sinking a ship could mean win or loss. Back then, newbies could actually score points and attempt to win. Now, if newbies try to fight/cannon farm, they sink. If they go after the single chest, the get sunk.
With multiple chests, it allows crews to split up and get time to themselves to coordinate strategies. I was an original legendary sea dog, one who understood the mode and loved the thrill. Many players simply hear arena and throw a fit when they hear PvE in their self-labled PvP mode, which, Rare has never referred to it as.

Just as Adventure is not the PvE mode, Arena is not the PvP mode.

@personalc0ffee

TDM is not the same as spawn camping. Spawn camping inhibits other crews from trying to play the objective and invokes seriously negative emotion from the camped crew.

I'm not for TDM either, but this whole facade of "well I was coming here expecting everyone to play this game mode and everyone participate 100% as intended" is sadly something that only new players experience for a brief moment. Then their expectations drop, and then they either accept the mode for what it is and continue to play, with a sort of apathy, or leave.

I think everyone else who plays Arena knows that it's a dead game mode that's pretty much used as practice for adventure and for commendations.

I wish it were different, but I also think that any attempt to remove TDM will also further decrease the population.

It already has pve in ….which is dumb.

Before there where sharks now it’s sharks and sirens….
I don’t know how many times I have had a kill stolen either by my target getting eaten by a shark or clawed to death by a siren.

@touchiertooth28 said in Active Skeleton Forts in Arena:

People who TDM in Arena are also doing so for weapon kill commendations.

Is it intended? No.

Does it satisfy a group of people without truly affecting another group of people, yes.

So I doubt this will change. Also, you know very well that the Arena is not going to be updated.

It’s either this or they’re just practicing combat. Problem is people who want wins that could easily go for the chest decide to go to forts where a tdm is happening and they start cannoning everyone’s boat.

@galactic-geek

I think a small section of players should get access to enough info to make a TDM mode. Not official without Rare approval, but let the community further Arena development. Less resources required outside of code/settings approval. Test it on Insiders. Release from before playing Arena. Keep all commendation, cosmetic and achievement levels the same.

Also the other PvP modes people ask for. A robust pvp community that focuses on Arena is possible IMO.

I think @xultanis-dragon and @Galactic-Geek are right on the money with this.

The Mentality that ''TDM doesn't affect other crews, just take your free win and leave'' is entirely wrong. Yes you can play arena how you want, but to an extent there is a 'right' way to play it, this being using the core aspects of the mode that are specifically provided to you. TDMing basically removes most aspects of arena, the ships, the sea, the chest, hell even the silver doesn't matter. I think that Xul and Galactic Geek are right by saying ''If 3/4ths of race cars drive in the wrong direction, does it affect the others?''. The style of arena match that is intended is crews fighting over the chest and sinking each other in order to remove points from the enemy team. Due to poorly designed mechanics, crews bypass a lot of this, either by cannon farming ships and intentionally keeping other ships from sinking in order to get as many cannon points as they can, or by scrapping the concept of ships and chests to go fight on an island. If you're trying to experience that core Arena experience, and most of the Lobby is ignoring the objective to TDM, then you aren't getting that player vs player you're looking for. The same people who whine that Alliance Server/PvE Servers are bad because ''if there's no risk of losing your loot, getting loot won't ever feel the same'' are also the same people that say ''If you don't want to TDM then just ignore us, go dig the chest, and get a free win''. They somehow don't see how they are telling people to do exactly what they dislike about Alliance Servers or PvE servers. If you want that intended arena experience, getting free wins by being uncontested with the chest while the rest of the match is busy fighting on an island, then the same problem applies, theres no thrill of the hunt, there's no threat of players sinking you, but I guess they make an exception for arena, because they don't want arena to be changed. That 3% is never going to get higher when most lobbies consist of;
TDMers not participating in the overall match
Spawncamping for Cannon Points
Spawncamping for kill commendations
Majority of crews leaving immediately

If a crew is spawn camping another crew, be it for cannon points or player kills, it means that 2 out of 5 ships are stationary, they aren't moving around, they aren't a threat to anyone who doesn't go near them. To the rest of the match, they may as well not be there, and the same thing applies to TDM crews.

I think theres a lot wrong with Arena that prevents that 3% from getting any higher, and one of the biggest problems I see overlooked is that the existing arena community does not want change, as the change that is needed will make the gamemode less appealing to them, but more appealing to the playerbase as a whole.

If you make TDM impossible (something similar to the OP concept) then a lot of the current 3% are gonna be mad. (I don't 100% agree with the OP concept, but I respect the idea of preventing TDM) If you prevent cannon farming points then it means people trying to grind out easy wins for LSD are going to have to play the mode normally, meaning it takes longer to grind, and be mad. If you prevent spawncamping for kill commendations by limiting amount of kills you can get per weapon/per enemy player, it will increase the length of the grind, and those players will get mad. The people playing currently either hate the mode and just want to get the commendations done so they can stop playing, or they are TDMing, I rarely see people in the third camp, which is people who actively play and enjoy the core gameplay of arena.

Its not surprising that people dislike arena when they play a handful of matches, and multiple times they see people TDMing which means there's less conflict, or when half the lobby leaves immediately meaning there's a lot less conflict, or when crews are being held in spawn camp, meaning there's less conflict. Or even if the crew themselves are being held in spawncamp, I can tell you that its not fun to sit and wait for 15 minutes getting killed immediately out of spawn (a lot worse on sloop with more predictable spawn locations) but the gamemode directly encourages this via commendations that slow down the pace of the mode.

In my opinion, if you want to fix arena, you have to do this;

• Remove/Change the Kill commendations so that people don't just TDM/ spawncamp new players the entire match, forcing them to either stay for 15 minutes and have a horrible time, or make them disconnect resulting in a temp ban (which will most likely be their last time playing the mode). Either max out the amount of kills that count towards the commendation per weapon to something like 3 per weapon, or only 1 kill per weapon per enemy player. At least then a ship would stop spawncamping a specific crew in order to go and fight a different one, which would keep the game in motion.

• Remove/Change how you score points when landing cannonshots, 40 points per shot and 1000 per chest means 25 cannonshots = 1 chest. If you're on Gally arena and all 4 of you are shooting at an anchored ship, at 4 cannons per second, you can get more points than selling a chest in under 7 seconds. Either flat out remove points for cannonshots and replace it with points for sinking enemy ships, or make it so that you only score points for damage that causes ship damage, either by creating new holes, reopening repaired holes, or widening holes to different damage tiers. This would mean that you can't just shoot at the Captains Quarters of a Galleon, or the broken masts of Gally/Sloop in order to score infinite points without the risk of sinking an enemy crew.

• Make arena ranked, not a ranked mode, make the entire thing ranked. If you're playing a gamemode that you oh so fondly refer to as the pvp gamemode; there should be no reason to be upset with this. If you're good, you fight good people, if you're bad, you fight bad people. If you're so thirsty for combat then surely you'd want this, as it means you won't just be steamrolling every crew you fight. Whenever people ask for ranked arena I see people say ''oH nExT yOu'Ll WaNt RaNkEd AdVeNtUrE''. There's a very big deference. You might be an amazing and skilled player with lots of hours in the game and very high faction levels, but you still might just want to spend the day fishing. That's not to say you should be immune to damage when fishing, but you shouldn't be in lobbies only with other high skilled/tryhard/serverhoppers that are so thirsty for combat that they'll chase an enemy ship with no loot for an hour and somehow think the other ship is wrong for running. You're playing Arena to fight other players and to win, its ENTIRELY competitive, its very different from adventure.

Multiple gamemodes to accommodate for Classic Chest/TDM/KoTH/Etc sounds good in theory, but as stated prior, 3% of the playerbase plays the mode, splitting that 3% in any way will make queue times even worse then they are. This concept would only be viable once the mode starts to gain more of a playerbase, so that when it gets split, it won't be as detrimental to queue times.

Oh also this is something separate but I've seen it a bit in these comments and it always annoys me when I see it. The semi elitist mindset of ''oh they have a different opinion to me? clearly they haven't played arena''. Like the comment from Flintlock Dan ''Do you really think he plays arena?''. You're reading a comment, you disagree with it, and then purely from that judge them and assume that clearly they don't play the mode as their opinion differs. You can have different opinions and still play the same game. Hell, you could not play Arena at all and still have valid opinions on the mode, that's probably why you aren't playing it, because you have (negative) opinions on it. If your product isn't hitting the desired audience; you then ask your desired audience what they want changed. In Arena's case, you have the current audience, at 3%, and the desired audience, at 97%. You don't just ask the 3%, ignore the 97%, and keep the 3% in their little echo chamber. You ask the 3% what they like about the mode, and you ask the 97% what they dislike, you then improve upon what the 97% dislikes while (hopefully) trying to compromise for the existing 3% if necessary. I think some of what the 3% would want will directly contradict what the 97% wants, as such I don't think its a bad thing if Rare decide to make changes that displease the 3% in some ways. But yea, don't just write off what people say if they don't agree with you, whether they play the mode or not. And just to clarify, I DO play the mode, I may not be an LSD but I've played enough matches to know how often you'll come across issues such as the ones I've described.

Congratulations if you read all that, you clearly have too much free time. But I guess I do too for writing it.

@frogfish12 Arena 1.0 had none of these issues. It had one issue I noticed: Players complaining that the old mode was PvE based. Rare built it that way, and it worked, and those who weren't whiners actually enjoyed it. New players were able to attempt to score without getting shut down by other players. In 1.0, sinking players helped you win. In 2.0, you can't win without solely sinking and farming players, which, to the ones getting farmed, is discouraging for them to play the mode. The newbies could go and dig up a couple chests, and score 4th, 3rd, maybe 2nd, and feel good about themselves and come back. But with the new mode's meta, the new guy gets picked on, camped, and he never clicks arena again.

Some quick pve activities like killing the boss while protecting the ship might be nice, cause now we dumbly sail for 1 chest thats marked on the map compared to previous state in which arena was
Not sure if it suits sloop arena, but with some adjustments the idea may be nice and add diversity to experience

Also I do not quite understand what is wrong with tdm guys, they just stay separated)

@galactic-geek by the way its quite possible to win this way lately. Not so many crews deliberately dig the chest this time

Btw chest for galy arena is something pathetic as you can gain 1000 points quickly, so your proposal may somehow work there

@klutchxking518 ye, and there was a good topic related to how dumb they made the arena after update
Previous one was more about strategy
Even though Im all for pvp there I really wish they made it back the way it was

@klutchxking518 I didn't play much of the original mode so I don't have much on that topic. If I recall correctly, rare removed multiple chests so that there was only 1 battle at a time, being 5 ships all trying to get 1 chest, instead of multiple ships trying to get multiple chests. Good in theory but opened the door to far too many loopholes.

@galactic-geek you know the tdmers would just end up on your boat if they had no islands to "tdm" at, it's crazy to me that this is a real post that actually is on this forum right now. Rare is done with arena and the PvP community anyways, they are focusing on adventure and leveling the playing field by removing things that take skill.

@frogfish12 it wasn't "good in theory", it simply worked. The longer match time allowed these multiple battles to converge and eventually, after everyone is done fighting over their own personal battles, it left the two highest competitors to settle their business. I believe what many players didn't like is that they couldn't feel like they had the match under control from the start. The gamemode was chaotic back then, allowing for some really crazy fun encounters. You could think you were doing good, but then the underdog team cashes in 5 chests, now you need to go after them, and while doing that, the other teams start getting chests. To win back then, you needed to be able to adapt on the spot, which many of today's "hardcore arena players" don't do. They've got a basic protocol to win they follow, because the match boils down the same every time. Pass by ships, light them up for points, and keep sailing to your competitor.

I am an advocate for mayhem, and old arena was my playground. I need it back, with or without the new mode on the side.

@atinyoldman wait until I see you on the seas, then tell me, are they removing the skill gap? ;)

@klutchxking518 I have never heard of u so I think that's my answer

It does not make any sense, although the arena was designed for short games, what is the point of activating a fort for the tdm? is not it better to create the mode for TDM? what about the compliments? it makes no sense to activate a fort in that mode

Cringe thread.

this is satire? right? please tell me its satire?

@klutchxking518 I meant ''good in theory'' in regards to the new version, not the old. There was logic behind the new version but it has too many loopholes that are being exploited.

@atinyoldman Removing things that take skull doesn't level the playing field in a way that's positive. They may NERF things that take skill as to make sure the high skill players don't completely dome the lower skill, but they won't just outright remove them. For example old double gun you could shoot both guns almost at the exact same time, it was skilful but if you could do it, you would never lose to people that weren't also doing it. They nerfed that to the current form of double gun, but didn't just outright remove it. Whether they continue to nerf things like this is still not confirmed. We just have to wait.

@frogfish12

I agree with 95% of what you're saying. TDM does affect the health of the Arena, absolutely, and it affects the sentiments of the players who would have gotten into it in a negative way to discourage them from playing. It's just kinda too late now, I think, and the 3% that play I assume are OK with how it is.

I also agree with all of the changes regarding how the scoring should work (at least for a galley it's ridiculous, I think the sloop is fine) , and how ranked play should be there, and altering the commendations.

But yeah, they're likely not going to change anything, because any change is going to upset the 3% who claim to be huge devoted fans or whatever.

That being said. Arena plays somewhat better now than it did months ago. I played 4 games yesterday, and in succession all ships partook in the objective (until some decided to quit). There were a few Legendary Sea Dogs that were just OK at the game, and probably grinding out weapon commendations, but no forts, TDMing, or spawn camping.

I still disagree with the analogy that TDM is like racing with some of the players going in the opposite direction. It's more like, some of the players decide to spin in circles at the start line, or tickle each other near the entrance of a short-cut. You just don't really interact with them.

@atinyoldman Never heard of you either!

@pvekilla420 This PVE bot would like to have a steely talk about the mentioned PvP mode. I know of no such thing. Arena and Adventure are PvPvE.

The problem with arena is the amount of players with cheats, hacks, or whatever.
I play random open sloops and met one crew mate who actually stated “I am here to test my guns.”
So I asked him “how” and said he wrote code with
C++.

If rare really intends for any future for this game or newer games they would need to focus on an anti-cheat to prevent new players from being hurt and pushed away from gaming. It is supposed to be fun and entertaining but being bullied and trolled is not what should occur to players.

@scurvywoof *PvPvE mode, just like Adventure, hence the chests and wind and waves and sharks.

@touchiertooth28 The reason the Racecar Analogy works is because just spinning in circles and then carrying on with the race would be the equivalent of a crew doing nothing for the first few minutes, then engaging with the match. Going off to TDM and not participating with the true core Arena mode is the same as a Racecar doing absolutely nothing. If only one Car is in the race, then its no longer a race as there's no one to compete with, same goes with for crews digging chests and going to sell them, without the threat of other crews there to steal it, there's no risk, and its the same issue people talk about with PvE servers, you need enemy players to make it interesting.

But yes its too late to fix Arena, and Rare said they stopped working on it entirely, so much so that they still haven't fixed the Beacon bug that's been in the mode for months that literally ruins the playability of it. Plus with the APL update they shrunk Arenas icon on the main menu to practically hide it from view. IMO not long till they remove the gamemode entirely as they can't justify the server space instead of just having more adventure lobbies. Either the cosmetics are locked in time or they change the obtaining method and put them into Adventure. I'm personally trying to get as much done as I can so I have less to do if the time comes and we have to hastily get the cosmetics before they're gone forever.

@scurvywoof He tries to improve the game while only seeing one side.